Are we living in a time of particularly rapid social change? And how might we know?

n an editorial for this journal a decade ago, then-Editor-in-Chief Fred Phillips asserted that social change was proceeding at hyper-speed and, moreover, that it had consequently come to outpace technological change. This paper submits these claims to empirical assay. In so doing, we address the myriad problems attendant upon determining and interpreting the sort of data that might support us in our cause. Notwithstanding the innu�merable caveats that this necessarily entails, and restricting ourselves to considering US data, we conclude that a wide range of indicators suggest that millennial Americans are not living in a time of particularly rapid social change, at least not when compared to the period 1900–1950. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the data that we have considered does not easily support a contention that significant variation in social change occurs in long wave-like cycles. The evidence is more supportive of a punctuated equilibrium model of change

Prof. dr. Antun Bauer - inicijator i donator Zbirke Bauer i galerije umjetnina Vukovar

This article examines the profits and practices of commercial journal publishers and argues for an appropriate response from the academic community

Time for curriculum reform: the case of mathematics

Mathematics education is rarely out of the policy spotlight in England. Over the last ten years, considerable attention has been given to improving 14-19 mathematics curriculum pathways. In this paper we consider some of the challenges of enacting curriculum change by drawing upon evidence from our evaluation of the Mathematics Pathways Project. From 2004-10 this project, which was directed by England’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, aimed to improve the engagement, attainment and participation rates of 14-19 year old learners of mathematics. Our particular focus is upon the temporal problems of piloting new curriculum and assessment and we draw on Lemke’s discussion of time-scales, heterochrony and the adiabatic principle to consider the interlocking and interference of various change processes

Stages of busi(-)ness and identity

Cet article examine la manière dont est mobilisé l’espace dans le cadre de « l’entreprise familiale ». Le concept même d’entreprise familiale fait s’effondrer quelques distinctions profondément établies dans les sociétés occidentales modernes, celles entre maison et travail, public et privé, vie de famille et raisons d’affaires, distinctions qui cartographient l’espace au moyen de frontières établies entre l’espace de travail et l’espace familial, la maison et le bureau. L’entreprise familiale, en particulier lorsqu’elle est menée à la maison, fait tomber les barrières de cette conception de l’ordonnancement spatial lorsque les images familiales et la scène de l’entreprise se confondent. Notre analyse d’une petite entreprise familiale de pension canine porte sur la manière dont l’espace est utilisé pour encadrer différentes scènes d’action. Nous avons recours, en particulier, à des métaphores théâtrales pour explorer la manière dont le travail entre dans la mise en scène des identités et des relations sociales. Tout d’abord, nous discutons des relations entre l’espace, les scènes, l’action et l’identité dans une optique théâtrale ; ensuite, à partir des matériaux de notre étude de terrain sur cette petite entreprise familiale de pension canine, nous examinons la manière dont les propriétaires-entrepreneurs utilisent l’espace comme une ressource malléable qui leur permet de découper et d’assembler différentes scènes afin de se présenter eux-mêmes et de présenter leur entreprise à différents publics. Après être revenus au théâtre pour discuter de l’importance de la mise en scène dans l’assemblage cohérent des histoires de l’entreprise familiale ou au niveau dramatique, nous terminons par l’exploration des limites de la métaphore théâtrale pour l’analyse de la vie sociale.This article explores how space gets mobilised in the performance of “family business”. The very concept of the “family business” collapses some deeply entrenched distinctions in Western modern societies, those between home and work, private and public, family life and business rationality, distinctions that are mapped over space through the creation of boundaries between work space and family space, home and office. The “family business”, especially when run from home, unsticks this ordered sense of space as familial images and business stages are collapsed. Our analysis of small family run boarding kennels focuses on the way space is used to frame different stages of action. In particular, we draw upon theatrical metaphors to explore the work that goes into the staging of identities and social relations. We first discuss the relationships between space, stages, performance and identity through a theatrical lens; we then draw upon material from our study of family run boarding kennels to explore how owner-managers use space as a malleable resource from which they carve out and assemble different stages to perform their business and themselves to different audiences. After going back into the theatre to discuss the role of stages in weaving together coherent stories in the family business or in drama, we close by exploring the limitations of the theatrical metaphor for the analysis of social life

Organising destruction: A derivative logic?

In this article, we attempt to better understand war’s preponderance by exploring its relation to something we commonly see as ever present: the economy and the institutions of finance through which it is enacted. We delineate histories of warfare and finance, rendering our present as one of ‘war amongst the people’, in Rupert Smith’s words, in which finance is exemplified by the logic of the derivative. Through detailed examination of an infamous comment by Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Secretary of Defense, and the US Defense Department’s short-lived Policy Analysis Market, we explore the management of knowledge enabled by the derivative as emblematic of our times in both military and financial circles and draw upon the work of Randy Martin to suggest that this logic is increasingly imperial in its reach and ubiquitous in its effects, becoming in the process the key organisational technology of our times. At the core of the functioning of the derivative, we contend, in all of the domains in which we witness it at work, is an essential indifference to the underlying circumstances from which it purportedly derives, leaving us in a world in which we endlessly manage risks to our future security but at the cost of the loss of genuinely open futures worthy of our interest

As condições do cotidiano: organizando rotinas em negócios familiares

Este artigo se baseia em uma abordagem etnográfica para capturar as complexidades que envolvem o trabalho em empresas familiares. Tal abordagem nos permite concentrar na forma pela qual os gestores-proprietários são habilitados a construir as narrativas de suas vidas diárias, referindo-se a eventos mundanos; como eles tecem os relatos em que figuram imagens das rotinas cotidianas, como a refeição família, o tempo de abertura e fechamento, o trajeto da escola ou mesmo fazer livros

The matter of objects

International audienceReview ofHarman, G. (2016a) Immaterialism: Objects and social theory. Cambridge: Polity, (PB, pp. 140, £9.99, ISBN 9781509500970);Harman, G. (2016b) Dante’s broken hammer: The ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics of love. London: Repeater Books, (PB, pp. 261, £8.99, ISBN 9781910924303);and DeLanda, M. and Harman, G. (2017) The rise of realism. Cambridge: Polity, (PB, pp. 160, £9.99, ISBN 9781509519033)

The End of the Shock of the New

'Shock' advertising is the new black and the subject of the reflection in which this article engages. We do this in particular through consideration of the (largely) British high-street fashion house French Connection’s seemingly endless 'FCUK' campaign. The obvious resonance between this abbreviation and perhaps the most popular word in the English language was at the heart of the campaign’s appeal and it continues today through various extensions on both slogans and logos on French Connection’s own goods and indeed those who seek to piggy back upon and/or subvert its market power. It is far from the only example of such 'shock' tactics. Whether discussing reproduction in graphic detail with children, joyously dismantling chastity, or merely fucking with fuck, it seems that traditional mores can no longer remain virgin territory, unsullied by rapacious marketing. Our mediated experiences of reaching 'extremes', it now appears, are not paralysing, mesmerising, fascinating or inspiring but simply a further prod down the path leading to (gleeful) purchase. In this paper we explore how, via a series of semiotic reversals, the new, the strange, the unfamiliar and the would-be shocking are rendered banal, and thus thoroughly comprehensible through brand association and the endless re-iteration of existing works