"Social Progress After the Age of Progressivism: The End of Trade Unionism in the West"

This essay is about trade unions, an institution that arose to play an important part in relation to the social progress characterizing much of the present century and that served as an important reference point for several varieties of normative progressivism. The past two decades of social progress in the most prosperous established nations appear to be rendering the institution obsolete. The objective of the paper is to reject all progressivist interpretations of this trend -- neither condemning the development as a regressive obstacle to progress nor welcoming it as a normal part of the developmental process. The aim is to inquire anew into the historical project of trade unions and the interplay between this project and the processes of social progress, past and prospective. The analytical thesis is that the institution has been multi-dimensional, serving in one of its dimensions as an important political response to social progress. The normative problem is whether the unions' political contribution to a socially conscious political democratization can be revived or transferred, when the unions' constitutive adaptations to past stages of social progress appear to be failing so badly in the present. After a brief overview designed to show that analytical awareness of social progress has historically been linked to critical politically-minded theoretical currents as well as to progressivist theories and that it has been the ideology-process that has tended to smudge this distinction, we briefly outline three alternative progressivist approaches to unionism. Next comes a review of the contemporary state of the problem and a proposal for an analytical approach that avoids the holistic errors of progressivist analyses and lets the political issues be properly posed. In this approach, unions are situated in the context of labor regimes, an historical concept that highlights the dual character of unions, between social progress and political constitution. The contemporary decline of unions is then analyzed in relation to both levels of analysis. The political dimension poses questions of strategy for unions, and the study closes with a critical assessment of strategic alternatives generated by the progressivist alternatives. The conclusion is skeptical and political rather than programmatic, but that illustrates the social-theoretical point of the exercise. The demise of progressivism does not automatically condemn either its contributions to social theoretical analyses of social progress or its political projects.

Iron concretions in the Cretaceous Dakota Formation

The Cretaceous Dakota Formation contains abundant iron oxide concretions. The precursors to the iron concretions are siderite (FeCO3) nodules that formed in a reducing floodplain environment. A variety of concretion morphologies formed when the precursor siderite nodules were dissolved by oxidizing groundwater in a paleoaquifer. Iron-oxidizing bacteria are able to oxidize aqueous Fe(II) to Fe(III) oxy-hydroxide at microaerophilic and neutrophilic conditions. This study investigated these concretions to determine if there was a microbial element in their formation and to characterize the concretion morphologies present in the Dakota. This is important for complete paleoenvironment interpretations and astrobiology pursuits

The footprints of ancient CO2-driven flow systems: Ferrous carbonate concretions below bleached sandstone

Iron-rich carbonates and the oxidized remains of former carbonates (iron-oxide concretions) underlie bleached Navajo Sandstone over large portions of southern Utah. Iron in the carbonates came from hematite rims on sand grains in the upper Navajo that were dissolved when small quantities of methane accumulated beneath the sealing Carmel Formation. As a second buoyant gas (CO2 derived from Oligocene–Miocene magmas) reached the seal and migrated up dip, it dissolved in the underlying water, enhancing the solution’s density. This water carried the released ferrous iron and the methane downward. Carbonates precipitated when the descending, reducing water degassed along fractures. The distribution of a broad array of iron-rich features made recognition of the extent of the ancient fl ow systems possible. Although siderite is not preserved, dense, rhombic, mm-scale, iron-oxide pseudomorphs after ferrous carbonates are common. Distinctive patterns of iron oxide were also produced when large (cm-scale), poikilotopic carbonate crystals with multiple iron-rich zones dissolved in oxidizing waters. Rhombic pseudomorphs are found in the central cores of small spheroids and large (meter-scale), irregular concretions that are defi ned by thick, tightly cemented rinds of iron-oxide–cemented sandstone. The internal structure and distribution of these features reveal their origins as ironcarbonate concretions that formed within a large-scale fl ow system that was altered dramatically during Neogene uplift of the Colorado Plateau. With rise of the Plateau, the iron-carbonate concretions passed upward from reducing formation water to shallow, oxidizing groundwater fl owing parallel to modern drainages. Finally they passed into the vadose zone. Absolute dating of different portions of these widespread concretions could thus reveal uplift rates for a large portion of the Plateau. Iron-rich masses in other sedimentary rocks may reveal fl ow systems with similar histories