Economic nationalism and the cultural politics of consumption under austerity: the rise of ethnocentric consumption in Greece

By nuancing the politics of consumption in the context of austerity, this article highlights the rise of economic nationalism and the reconfiguration of consumer cultures at the aftermath of the global financial crisis. As it argues, in the context of Greece, three types of consumer culture have manifested; these are evoking consumption as resilience, resistance or reinforcement. This work focuses on the latter through the phenomenon of ethnocentric consumption, which is part and parcel of economic nationalism. Economic nationalism can be explored through promotion of ethnocentric consumption and is demonstrable both in the inception and constitution of nation states, but also in times of crisis. This article critically appraises ethnocentric consumption as consumption based on ethnocentric criteria (natural resources, ownership, production, manufacturing, distribution and labour force). In the context of the crisis in Greece, economic nationalism has become manifest as a solution to the national economy. The specific case chosen is a citizens’ movement and its campaign for the promotion of ethnocentric consumption. A close examination of the campaign (We Consume What We Produce) reveals the historical alignment of the state’s and citizens’ economic interests, the reverberation of state narrative from the 1980s and exclusionary nationalism which is also used by fascists. Campaigns for ethnocentric consumption limit the creativity of consumer politics. First, this phenomena appears to be an alternative vehicle for political parties. Second, it is tied around a normative narrative of economic recovery, which is particularly mythological. Third, its overall target is to maximise competitiveness on a global scale, and finally, it demonstrates a densely dangerous relationship with economic nationalism. Yet, it is important to situate this phenomenon within the context of consumer cultures under austerity, especially as more creative modalities of social economy initiatives by grassroots groups have been re-socialising the market

Local mechanical properties of electrospun fibers correlate to their internal nanostructure.

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.The properties of polymeric nanofibers can be tailored and enhanced by properly managing the structure of the polymer molecules at the nanoscale. Although electrospun polymer fibers are increasingly exploited in many technological applications, their internal nanostructure, determining their improved physical properties, is still poorly investigated and understood. Here, we unravel the internal structure of electrospun functional nanofibers made by prototype conjugated polymers. The unique features of near-field optical measurements are exploited to investigate the nanoscale spatial variation of the polymer density, evidencing the presence of a dense internal core embedded in a less dense polymeric shell. Interestingly, nanoscale mapping the fiber Young's modulus demonstrates that the dense core is stiffer than the polymeric, less dense shell. These findings are rationalized by developing a theoretical model and simulations of the polymer molecular structural evolution during the electrospinning process. This model predicts that the stretching of the polymer network induces a contraction of the network toward the jet center with a local increase of the polymer density, as observed in the solid structure. The found complex internal structure opens an interesting perspective for improving and tailoring the molecular morphology and multifunctional electronic and optical properties of polymer fibers.V. Fasano and G. Potente are acknowledged for confocal and SEM images, respectively. The authors also gratefully thank S. Girardo for high-speed imaging of the polymer jet and E. Caldi for assistance in the SNOM measurements. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF Grant 2006061), the RBNI-Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF Grant 770/11). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement 306357 (ERC Starting Grant “NANO-JETS”)

COVID‐19, nationalism, and the politics of crisis: A scholarly exchange

In this article, several scholars of nationalism discuss the potential for the COVID‐19 pandemic to impact the development of nationalism and world politics. To structure the discussion, the contributors respond to three questions: (1) how should we understand the relationship between nationalism and COVID‐19; (2) will COVID‐19 fuel ethnic and nationalist conflict; and (3) will COVID‐19 reinforce or erode the nation‐state in the long run? The contributors formulated their responses to these questions near to the outset of the pandemic, amid intense uncertainty. This made it acutely difficult, if not impossible, to make predictions. Nevertheless, it was felt that a historically and theoretically informed discussion would shed light on the types of political processes that could be triggered by the COVID‐19 pandemic. In doing so, the aim is to help orient researchers and policy‐makers as they grapple with what has rapidly become the most urgent issue of our times

Communities and patterns of scientific collaboration in Business and Management

This is the author's accepted version of this article deposited at arXiv (arXiv:1006.1788v2 [physics.soc-ph]) and subsequently published in Scientometrics October 2011, Volume 89, Issue 1, pp 381-396. The final publication is available at link.springer.com http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-011-0439-1Author's note: 17 pages. To appear in special edition of Scientometrics. Abstract on arXiv meta-data a shorter version of abstract on actual paper (both in journal and arXiv full pape

Community structure and patterns of scientific collaboration in Business and Management

This is the author's accepted version of this article deposited at arXiv (arXiv:1006.1788v2 [physics.soc-ph]) and subsequently published in Scientometrics October 2011, Volume 89, Issue 1, pp 381-396. The final publication is available at link.springer.com http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-011-0439-1Author's note: 17 pages. To appear in special edition of Scientometrics. Abstract on arXiv meta-data a shorter version of abstract on actual paper (both in journal and arXiv full pape

The social construction of violence among Northern Plains tribal members with antisocial personality disorder and alcohol use disorder

Whereas recent reports from national studies have presented extremely high rates for many personality disorders in American Indian communities, persistent concerns about the meaning of these symptoms have left many troubled by these reports. American Indians as a group are known to suffer disproportionately from a number of violent experiences, but the dynamics of this violence have received little attention. This paper examines perspectives on violence in the lives of 15 northern plains tribal members who met criteria for antisocial personality disorder and comorbid alcohol use disorder. It explores how study participants constructed and understood their own violent encounters, as well as the motivations they described (characterized here as reputation, leveling, retaliation, catharsis, and self-defense). Violence was gendered in this study, with men generally presenting as perpetrators and women as victims. Men often described themselves as ready participants in a violent world, while women were quite clear that aggression for them was often simply required as they tried to defend themselves from male violence. While this analysis does not replace clinical analyses of violence in antisocial personality disorder, it does reveal an underlying cultural logic that may play a role in shaping the recourse to violence for that minority of individuals for whom it appears to be the obvious choice.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

'The Germans are Hydrophobes': Germany and the Germans in the Shaping of French Identity

This article addresses issues of national identity and nationalism in the age of the French Revolution by looking at French attitudes towards the Germans. It engages with theories of nationalism while presenting empirical evidence gleaned from archival research. This material, sometimes grimly, sometimes rather amusingly, reveals much about French ideas and prejudices about the Germans and how it reflected back on the revolutionary and Napoleonic sense of what it meant to be French

In search of the authentic nation: landscape and national identity in Canada and Switzerland

While the study of nationalism and national identity has flourished in the last decade, little attention has been devoted to the conditions under which natural environments acquire significance in definitions of nationhood. This article examines the identity-forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation-states: Canada and Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified. The first – what we call the ‘nationalisation of nature’– portrays zarticular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity. The second pattern – what we refer to as the ‘naturalisation of the nation’– rests upon a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. The authors offer two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in the cases under consideration: (1) the affinity between wild landscape and the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature, and (2) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity and the polyethnic composition of the two societies under consideration