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Organizing otherwise: translating anarchism in a voluntary sector organization
Although foundational texts in Critical Management Studies (CMS) pointed to the empirical significance of anarchism as an inspiration for alternative ways of organizing (Burrell, 1992), relatively little work of substance has been undertaken within CMS to explore how anarchists organize or how anarchist principles of organization might fare in other contexts. This paper addresses this gap by reporting on the experiences of a UK Voluntary Sector Organization (VSO) seeking to adopt non-hierarchical working practices inspired by anarchism. The paper analyses this process of organizational change by examining how ideas and practices are translated and transformed as they travel from one context (direct action anarchism) to another (the voluntary sector). Whilst the onset of austerity and funding cuts created the conditions of possibility for this change, it was the discursive translation of 'anarchism' into 'non-hierarchical organizing' that enabled these ideas to take hold. The concept of 'non-hierarchical' organization constituted an open space that was defined by negation and therefore capable of containing a multiplicity of meanings. Rather than having to explicitly embrace anarchism, members were able to find common ground on what they did not want (hierarchy) and create a discursive space for democratically determining what might replace it
Discrete Symmetries of Off-Shell Electromagnetism
We discuss the discrete symmetries of the Stueckelberg-Schrodinger
relativistic quantum theory and its associated 5D local gauge theory, a
dynamical description of particle/antiparticle interactions, with monotonically
increasing Poincare-invariant parameter. In this framework, worldlines are
traced out through the parameterized evolution of spacetime events, advancing
or retreating with respect to the laboratory clock, with negative energy
trajectories appearing as antiparticles when the observer describes the
evolution using the laboratory clock. The associated gauge theory describes
local interactions between events (correlated by the invariant parameter)
mediated by five off-shell gauge fields. These gauge fields are shown to
transform tensorially under under space and time reflections, unlike the
standard Maxwell fields, and the interacting quantum theory therefore remains
manifestly Lorentz covariant. Charge conjugation symmetry in the quantum theory
is achieved by simultaneous reflection of the sense of evolution and the fifth
scalar field. Applying this procedure to the classical gauge theory leads to a
purely classical manifestation of charge conjugation, placing the CPT
symmetries on the same footing in the classical and quantum domains. In the
resulting picture, interactions do not distinguish between particle and
antiparticle trajectories -- charge conjugation merely describes the
interpretation of observed negative energy trajectories according to the
laboratory clock.Comment: 26 page
Duality in Off-Shell Electromagnetism
In this paper, we examine the Dirac monopole in the framework of Off-Shell
Electromagnetism, the five dimensional U(1) gauge theory associated with
Stueckelberg-Schrodinger relativistic quantum theory. After reviewing the Dirac
model in four dimensions, we show that the structure of the five dimensional
theory prevents a natural generalization of the Dirac monopole, since the
theory is not symmetric under duality transformations. It is shown that the
duality symmetry can be restored by generalizing the electromagnetic field
strength to an element of a Clifford algebra. Nevertheless, the generalized
framework does not permit us to recover the phenomenological (or conventional)
absence of magnetic monopoles.Comment: 18 page
Phase analysis of the cosmic microwave background from an incomplete sky coverage
Phases of the spherical harmonic analysis of full-sky cosmic microwave
background (CMB) temperature data contain useful information complementary to
the ubiquitous angular power spectrum. In this letter we present a new method
of phase analysis on incomplete sky maps. It is based on Fourier phases of
equal-latitude pixel rings of the map, which are related to the mean angle of
the trigonometric moments from the full-sky phases. They have an advantage for
probing regions of interest without tapping polluted Galactic plane area, and
can localize non-Gaussian features and departure from statistical isotropy in
the CMB.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures submitted to MNRAS Letters, replaced with minor
change
Occam's razor meets WMAP
Using a variety of quantitative implementations of Occam's razor we examine
the low quadrupole, the ``axis of evil'' effect and other detections recently
made appealing to the excellent WMAP data. We find that some razors {\it fully}
demolish the much lauded claims for departures from scale-invariance. They all
reduce to pathetic levels the evidence for a low quadrupole (or any other low
cut-off), both in the first and third year WMAP releases. The ``axis of
evil'' effect is the only anomaly examined here that survives the humiliations
of Occam's razor, and even then in the category of ``strong'' rather than
``decisive'' evidence. Statistical considerations aside, differences between
the various renditions of the datasets remain worrying
Non-Gaussianity detections in the Bianchi VIIh corrected WMAP 1-year data made with directional spherical wavelets
Many of the current anomalies reported in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe (WMAP) 1-year data disappear after `correcting' for the best-fit embedded
Bianchi type VII_h component (Jaffe et al. 2005), albeit assuming no dark
energy component. We investigate the effect of this Bianchi correction on the
detections of non-Gaussianity in the WMAP data that we previously made using
directional spherical wavelets (McEwen et al. 2005a). As previously discovered
by Jaffe et al. (2005), the deviations from Gaussianity in the kurtosis of
spherical Mexican hat wavelet coefficients are eliminated once the data is
corrected for the Bianchi component. This is due to the reduction of the cold
spot at Galactic coordinates (l,b)=(209^\circ,-57\circ), which Cruz et al.
(2005) claim to be the source of non-Gaussianity introduced in the kurtosis.
Our previous detections of non-Gaussianity observed in the skewness of
spherical wavelet coefficients are not reduced by the Bianchi correction.
Indeed, the most significant detection of non-Gaussianity made with the
spherical real Morlet wavelet at a significant level of 98.4% remains (using a
very conservative method to estimate the significance). We make our code to
simulate Bianchi induced temperature fluctuations publicly available.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, replaced to match version accepted by MNRA
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