3,184 research outputs found
Increasing Infrastructure\u27s Resiliency to Global Climate Change Effects: Seeking Non-Traditional Federal Partnerships in Rhode Island\u27s Coastal Beach Zones
Federal Employee is Entitled to Trial De Novo on Employment Discrimination Claim and Not Merely Judicial Review of Agency Record. Hackley v. Roudebush, 520 F.2d 108 (D.C. Cir. 1975).
Ralph Hackley, an African American, was employed as an investigator within the Veteran Administration\u27s Investigation and Security Service Division. He had served for one year at the GS-12 level when he was denied promotion. Hackley complained that this denial was based solely upon his race. The charge was investigated and he was afforded a hearing before a complaints examiner, who ruled that there had been no discrimination. This finding was adopted by the Veteran\u27s Administration. Upon appeal, the Board of Appeals and Review of the Civil Service Commission affirmed. Having thus exhausted his administrative remedies, plaintiff commenced a civil action in the District Court for the District of Columbia pursuant to section 717(c) of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (EEOA). He sought injunctive relief, retroactive promotion, and back pay, plus a declaratory judgment to the effect that he was to be free from discrimination. The district court, in Hackley v. Johnson (Hackley 1), granted the government\u27s motion for summary judgment, holding that it only had jurisdiction to consider whether Hackley had been afforded administrative due process before the Civil Service Commission and that he had, in fact, received due process during the administrative hearing. In Hackley v. Roudebush (Hackley II), the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, remanding Hackley\u27s claim of discrimination for trial, concluding, inter alia, that section 717(c)\u27s grant of a private right of action requires the district court to conduct a trial de novo in civil actions filed under the section. In so ruling, the court fell into line with several other jurisdictions which had held that the vindication of a federal employee\u27s rights under EEOA required more than mere review of the administrative record
Risk and Capitalist Power: Conceptual Tools for Studying the Political Economy of Hollywood
In this article, the structure of Hollywood film distribution will be analyzed through the lens of risk. In both its technical and conceptual senses, risk is relevant to the study of Hollywoodâs dominant firms. In the interest of lowering risk, the business interests of Hollywood look to predetermine how new films will function in an already instituted order of cinema, which includes the creativity of filmmakers and the habits of moviegoers. This presentation of risk will explain why, for the political economy of Hollywood, the social world of cinema is an instrumental order. While risk is specifically about the size and pattern of future earnings, it is also an indirect prediction about the stability of the social conditions that would help translate potential earnings into an actual stream. The social world of cinema has a bearing on the Hollywood film businessâs degree of confidence, which refers to the ability of capitalists to make predictions about future earnings
Circumstellar habitable zones for deep terrestrial biospheres
SM and JOJ are grateful to the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for Aurora Studentships. We thank Dr. Stephen Clifford (LPI), Dr. Ravi Kopparapu (Penn State), and Claire Davis (St. Andrews) for generous technical advice. We thank Norm Sleep and two anonymous reviewers for constructive reviews of the manuscriptPeer reviewedPostprin
Selling Hollywood to China
China cultural policy film business Hollywood power trade United StatesFrom the 1980s to the present, Hollywoodâs major distributors have been able to redistribute U.S. theatrical attendance to the advantage of their biggest blockbusters and franchises. At the global scale and during the same period, Hollywood has been leveraging U.S. foreign power to break ground in countries that have historically protected and supported their domestic ïŹlm culture. For example, Hollywoodâs major distributors have increased their power in such countries as Mexico, Canada, Australia and South Korea. This paper will analyze a pertinent test caseâ for Hollywoodâs global power: China and its ïŹlm market. Not only does China have a ïŹlm-quota policy that restricts the number of theatrical releases that have a foreign distributor (⌠20 to 34 ïŹlms per year), the Communist Party has helped the Chinese ïŹlm business grow to have steady ïŹlm releases and its own movie star system. Theoretically, China would be a prime example of a ïŹlm market that would need to be opened with the assistance of the U.S. government. Empirically, however, the case of Chinese cinema might be a curious exception; we can investigate how a political economic strategy rooted in explicit power is reaching a limit. Hollywood is, potentially without any other option, taking a more friendly, collaborative approach with Chinaâs censorship rules and its quota and ïŹlm-production laws
Reconsidering Systemic Fear and the Stock Market: A Reply to Baines and Hager
capital as power stock market systemic crisis systemic fearA recent New Political Economy article by Baines and Hager (2020) critiqued Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzanâs capital-as-power (CasP) model of the stock market (Bichler & Nitzan, 2016). Bichler and Nitzanâs model of the stock market seeks to explain how financial crises are tied to the (upper) limits of redistributing income through power. Bichler and Nitzan use American financial data to show that âU.S.-based capitalistsâ have risen to a great height of power, relative to the underlying population. This height also produces a âforward-lookingâ fear about the ability to accumulate even more (Bichler & Nitzan, 2016).
Baines and Hager took the important step of examining the CasP model with financial data from four other countriesâFrance, Germany, Great Britain and Japan. They argue that these countries follow some of the patterns of the United States, but not all. These differences in patterns matter because Baines and Hager are curious to know how the CasP model of the stock market can function as a general model of capital accumulation at an international level.
This paper will respond to the part of Baines and Hagerâs paper where they analyze âsystemic fearâ in the stock markets of France, Germany, Great Britain and Japan. It argues that Baines and Hager were perhaps too quick to dismiss systemic fear as a concept to study national and regional differences in international political economy. This concept is still in its infancy and, with more consideration, there are opportunities to investigate the characteristics of systemic fear. By re-examining systemic fear in twelve countries, this paper will show the potential for the concept of systemic fear to support the study of capitalist crisis and national diversity in capitalist development
Is Hollywood a Risky Business? A Political Economic Analysis of Risk and Creativity
capitalisation creativity film distribution Hollywood riskThis paper seeks to explain why Hollywoodâs dominant firms are narrowing the scope of creativity in the contemporary period (1980â2015). The largest distributors have sought to prevent the art of filmmaking and its related social relations from becoming financial risks in the pursuit of profit. Major filmed entertainment, my term for the six largest distributors, must discount expected future earnings to present prices with the forward-looking logic of capitalisation; and uncertainty about where creativity in cinema is going can produce financial uncertainty about the future earning potential of new film projects. Conversely, a degree of confidence in the expected future earnings of Hollywood cinema can increase when the art of filmmaking and broader social world of mass culture are ordered by capitalist power [Nitzan, J. and Bichler, S., 2009. Capital as power: a study of order and creorder. New York: Routledge]. For the period of 1980â2015, major filmed entertainment lowered its risk relative to the period before, 1960â79. This historical process of risk reduction is the effect of major filmed entertainment making the wide-release strategy (a.k.a., saturation booking) more predictable through an aggressive implementation of the blockbuster style and the high concept standard
Why Scorsese is Right About Corporate Power
This is a lightly edited compilation of a two-part series originally published by Notes on Cinema in June and July, 2021. It has been re-published here with permission of the author.
Our thanks to Notes on Cinema and James McMahon
Blockbuster Cinema: Hollywoodâs Obsession with Low Risk
differential accumulation culture Hollywood riskHollywood is obsessed with blockbusters â for 20 years the major studios have been making them, and it appears that blockbuster cinema will be with us for many years to come. This presentation will theoretically and empirically explain how blockbusters, and the associated business strategies that surround them, serve Hollywoodâs financial goals. The key to blockbusters is that they allow major studios to reduce their risk. The revenues of designed-to-be blockbusters rarely fall below expectations, making the world of cinema increasingly predictable. Moreover, this predictability affects how the film business controls the social creativity of filmmakers and, indirectly, the behaviour of consumers.
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James McMahon is a PhD student at the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, York University ([email protected])
This presentation is the third in the Second Speaker Series on the Capitalist Mode of Power, organized by capitalaspower.com and sponsored by the York Department of Political Science and the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought.
Refreshments will be served and all are welcome.
WHEN: Tuesday, November 3, 2015, 3:00-5:00 pm
WHERE: Verney Room, 674 South Ross, Keele Campus of York Universit
Why Scorsese is Right About Corporate Power
art capital cinema corporation Hollywood power riskIn the March 2021 issue of Harperâs, Scorsese wrote an essay to pay tribute to Federico Fellini, the Italian director who directed such great films as La Strada, 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, Nights of Cabiria and Satyricon. Scorsese writing on Fellini is definitely newsworthy for cinephiles who want to know about Felliniâs beginnings in Italian neo-realism (for example, he worked with Rosselini on Rome, Open City), or who simply want to be reminded of why his filmography is so great. However, the news of this essayâs arrival went well beyond film studies and had very little to do with Fellini. People were talking about the essay because Scorcese framed his tribute to Fellini â which was both personal and knowledgeable â with an argument about the decline of cinema as an art form.
This paper explains why Scorsese is right about the differences that exist between himself and a director like Fellini. In fact, we can use Scorseseâs argument as a platform to widen our perspective on the political economy of Hollywood. The story Scorsese is telling about the business of Hollywood is a story about business interests wanting to reduce risk. The ambiguity of risk in this story â is it financial risk or is it aesthetic risk? â is a helpful shortcut to understanding what reducing risk means for those who have control over the industrial art of filmmaking. When the Hollywood film business is estimating its future earnings, risk perceptions account for the possibility that the future of culture will be differentâand perhaps radically differentâfrom what capitalists expect it to be. This logic of capitalist accounting, while quantitative in expression (prices, income, volatility, etc.), is social in essence. For this reason, the capitalization of cinema cannot overlook any social dimension of cinema, be it aesthetic, political or cultural. The eye of capitalization searches for any social condition that could have an impact on âthe level and pattern of capitalist earningsâ (Nitzan & Bichler, 2009, p. 166).
This paper is a lightly edited compilation of a two-part series originally published by Notes on Cinema in June and July, 2021. It has been re-published here with permission of the author
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