No measure for culture? Value in the new economy

This paper explores articulations of the value of investment in culture and the arts through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents, reports and academic commentary since 1997. It argues that in this period, discourses around the value of culture have moved from a focus on the direct economic contributions of the culture industries to their indirect economic benefits. These indirect benefits are discussed here under three main headings: creativity and innovation, employability, and social inclusion. These are in turn analysed in terms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift through the lens of autonomist Marxist concerns with the labour of social reproduction. It is our argument that, in contemporary policy discourses on culture and the arts, the government in the UK is increasingly concerned with the use of culture to form the social in the image of capital. As such, we must turn our attention beyond the walls of the factory in order to understand the contemporary capitalist production of value and resistance to it. </jats:p

The New ‘Hidden Abode’: Reflections on Value and Labour in the New Economy

In a pivotal section of Capital, volume 1, Marx (1976: 279) notes that, in order to understand the capitalist production of value, we must descend into the ‘hidden abode of production’: the site of the labour process conducted within an employment relationship. In this paper we argue that by remaining wedded to an analysis of labour that is confined to the employment relationship, Labour Process Theory (LPT) has missed a fundamental shift in the location of value production in contemporary capitalism. We examine this shift through the work of Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto and Arvidsson, who offer theoretical leverage to prize open a new ‘hidden abode’ outside employment, for example in the ‘production of organization’ and in consumption. Although they can open up this new ‘hidden abode’, without LPT's fine-grained analysis of control/resistance, indeterminacy and structured antagonism, these theorists risk succumbing to empirically naive claims about the ‘new economy’. Through developing an expanded conception of a ‘new hidden abode’ of production, the paper demarcates an analytical space in which both LPT and Autonomist Marxism can expand and develop their understanding of labour and value production in today's economy. </jats:p

Preparing to work: dramaturgy, cynicism and normative ‘remote’ control in the socialization of graduate recruits in management consulting

online) This paper examines the socialization of graduate recruits into a knowledge intensive labour process and organizational culture. Theoretically the paper draws upon the idea of ‘preparing for work’ to position this early socialization as a crucial moment in the production of subjectivities suited (and booted) for the labour process of management consulting. Empirically the paper reports on a two-day induction session for new graduate recruits joining a global management consultancy and their responses to this training. Particular attention is given to the use of role-play and a dramaturgical workshop used in part of the training process. The paper argues that the utilization of dramaturgy in training is consistent with the overall approach to control developed in the firm in response to the fact that the labour process of consulting is often conducted on client sites, away from any direct supervisory gaze. As such, the consultants were subjected to a form of cultural control that was designed to function independently of direct supervision. This control did not operate directly upon the new employees professed values, however, but at one step removed so that a ‘cynical distance’ from the content of the organization’s culture was accepted so long as a professional ‘ethic of behaviour’ was established. By focusing on an ‘ethic of behaviour’ these young professionals were encouraged to internalize a self-control akin to that of an actor, rather than internalizing the corporate values entirely

Fairness in Algorithmic Decision Making: An Excursion Through the Lens of Causality

As virtually all aspects of our lives are increasingly impacted by algorithmic decision making systems, it is incumbent upon us as a society to ensure such systems do not become instruments of unfair discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. We consider the problem of determining whether the decisions made by such systems are discriminatory, through the lens of causal models. We introduce two definitions of group fairness grounded in causality: fair on average causal effect (FACE), and fair on average causal effect on the treated (FACT). We use the Rubin-Neyman potential outcomes framework for the analysis of cause-effect relationships to robustly estimate FACE and FACT. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach on synthetic data. Our analyses of two real-world data sets, the Adult income data set from the UCI repository (with gender as the protected attribute), and the NYC Stop and Frisk data set (with race as the protected attribute), show that the evidence of discrimination obtained by FACE and FACT, or lack thereof, is often in agreement with the findings from other studies. We further show that FACT, being somewhat more nuanced compared to FACE, can yield findings of discrimination that differ from those obtained using FACE.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables.To appear in Proceedings of the International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW), 201

The ethical challenge of Touraine's 'living together'

In Can We Live Together? Alain Touraine combines a consummate analysis of crucial social tensions in contemporary societies with a strong normative appeal for a new emancipatory 'Subject' capable of overcoming the twin threats of atomisation or authoritarianism. He calls for a move from 'politics to ethics' and then from ethics back to politics to enable the new Subject to make a reality out of the goals of democracy and solidarity. However, he has little to say about the nature of such an ethics. This article argues that this lacuna could usefully be filled by adopting a form of radical humanism found in the work of Erich Fromm. It defies convention in the social sciences by operating from an explicit view of the 'is' and the 'ought' of common human nature, specifying reason, love and productive work as the qualities to be realised if we are to move closer to human solidarity. Although there remain significant philosophical and political differences between the two positions, particularly on the role to be played by 'the nation', their juxtaposition opens new lines of inquiry in the field of cosmopolitan ethics

A Precision Measurement of pp Elastic Scattering Cross Sections at Intermediate Energies

We have measured differential cross sections for \pp elastic scattering with internal fiber targets in the recirculating beam of the proton synchrotron COSY. Measurements were made continuously during acceleration for projectile kinetic energies between 0.23 and 2.59 GeV in the angular range $30 \leq \theta_{c.m.} \leq 90$ deg. Details of the apparatus and the data analysis are given and the resulting excitation functions and angular distributions presented. The precision of each data point is typically better than 4%, and a relative normalization uncertainty of only 2.5% within an excitation function has been reached. The impact on phase shift analysis as well as upper bounds on possible resonant contributions in lower partial waves are discussed.Comment: 23 pages 29 figure

Regularity of higher codimension area minimizing integral currents

This lecture notes are an expanded version of the course given at the ERC-School on Geometric Measure Theory and Real Analysis, held in Pisa, September 30th - October 30th 2013. The lectures aim to explain the main steps of a new proof of the partial regularity of area minimizing integer rectifiable currents in higher codimension, due originally to F. Almgren, which is contained in a series of papers in collaboration with C. De Lellis (University of Zurich).Comment: This text will appear in "Geometric Measure Theory and Real Analysis", pp. 131--192, Proceedings of the ERC school in Pisa (2013), L. Ambrosio Ed., Edizioni SNS (CRM Series

Climate Data Empathy

In the era of climate services, which provide globally complete data products in a ready-to-use form, the context of climate data is in danger of being neglected or forgotten. However, the historical and present-day context imprinted on this climate data is important in its own right. The data depend on political, economic and technological factors, as we show with a range of data coverage maps. We term awareness of and sensitivity to this context-dependence “climate data empathy,” and argue that context should be seen as a source of information to be communicated along with the data. Such context not only provides additional information about the data products, but may help in designing communication strategies and contribute more generally to raising awareness of the contingency of environmental data. Decision making should thus make use of both climate data and its context