Performativity, economics and politics: an overview

Presenting the theme of performativity in a journal named the Journal of Cultural Economy makes the role performativity plays in the economy a logical place to start and the debt to Michel Callon (1998) an obvious one to acknowledge. Callon’s idea was that ‘economics does not describe an existing external ‘‘economy’’, but brings that economy into being: economics performs the economy, creating the phenomena it describes’ (MacKenzie & Millo 2003, p. 108). This idea is now recognized by many authors as one of the major contributions to economic sociology (see, e.g., Barry & Slater 2002; Holm 2007; MacKenzie & Millo 2003; MacKenzie 2004, 2007) and has been accompanied by vivid debates across the social sciences about the actual influence of economics and economists over economic practices (e.g. Miller 2000; Callon 2005, 2007; Ferraro et al. 2005; Ghoshal 2005; MacKenzie et al. 2007 and more generally over society and political processes (see, e.g., Bazerman & Malhotra 2006; Fourcade 2001, 2006)

The farm as an accounting laboratory: an essay on the history of accounting and agriculture

The shop, the factory, the office: these appear, to the popular imaginary, as natural sites for accounting, and for accountants. They are the places where accounting is usually said to be invented and practised, the places where accounting sustains business. The shop stands for commerce, which reportedly saw the emergence of double-entry bookkeeping in the so-called ‘commercial revolution’ of the early-modern times. The factory stands out as the chief target of management accounting from the nineteenth century and its ‘industrial revolution’. The office is where accounting clerks work, but also itself an object of productive accountability in the ‘service economy’ of the twentieth century

Towards a Mixed-Reality Interface for Mind-Mapping

International audienceIn this work, we have explored an approach based on the hybridisation of physical and digital content for mind-mapping activities at schools. Based on the literature in the fields of cognitive science and HCI, we have designed a mixed-reality (MR) interface called Reality-Map. We conducted a pilot study with 11 participants suggesting that learning and manipulating information about the brain and their cognitive functions could be improved by the use of such a MR interface compared to a traditional WIMP interface

TACOTAC : Table augmentée et tangible pour des activités pédagogiques collaboratives

DémonstrationIn this demonstration paper we present TACOTAC a mixed-reality pedagogical environment made for collaborative learning activities in a scholar context. This environment allows users to manipulate both physical and projected-digital documents. TACOTAC allows users to accomplish among other sorting and classification tasks along with the creation of mind maps.Dans cette démonstration nous présentons TACOTAC, un envi- ronnement pédagogique en réalité mixte conçu pour des activités d’apprentissage collaboratives en contexte scolaire. Cet environne- ment permet de manipuler à la fois des documents physiques et numérique projetés. TACOTAC permet aux utilisateurs de réaliser notamment des tâches de tri, de classification de documents et la création de cartes mentales

CARDS : Un système de réalité mixte pour l'apprentissage collaboratif à l'école

International audienceTraditional computer systems based on the WIMP paradigm (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer) have shown potential benefits at school (e.g. for web browsing). On the other hand, they are not well suited as soon as hands-on and collaborative activities are targeted. We present CARDS, a Mixed-Reality system that combines together physical and digital objects in a seamless workspace to foster active and collaborative learning. We describe the design process based on a participatory approach with researchers, teachers, and pupils. We then present and discuss the results of a user study that tends to show that CARDS has a good educational potential for the targeted activities

Vulnerability of the North Water ecosystem to climate change

High Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous livelihoods are tightly linked and exposed to climate change, yet assessing their sensitivity requires a long-term perspective. Here, we assess the vulnerability of the North Water polynya, a unique seaice ecosystem that sustains the world’s northernmost Inuit communities and several keystone Arctic species. We reconstruct mid-to-late Holocene changes in sea ice, marine primary production, and little auk colony dynamics through multi-proxy analysis of marine and lake sediment cores. Our results suggest a productive ecosystem by 4400–4200 cal yrs b2k coincident with the arrival of the first humans in Greenland. Climate forcing during the late Holocene, leading to periods of polynya instability and marine productivity decline, is strikingly coeval with the human abandonment of Greenland from c. 2200–1200 cal yrs b2k. Our long-term perspective highlights the future decline of the North Water ecosystem, due to climate warming and changing sea-ice conditions, as an important climate change risk

Signal enhancement in protein NMR using the spin-noise tuning optimum

We have assessed the potential of an alternative probe tuning strategy based on the spin-noise response for application in common high-resolution multi-dimensional biomolecular NMR experiments with water signal suppression on aqueous and salty samples. The method requires the adjustment of the optimal tuning condition, which may be offset by several 100 kHz from the conventional tuning settings using the noise response of the water protons as an indicator. Although the radio frequency-pulse durations are typically longer under such conditions, signal-to-noise gains of up to 22% were achieved. At salt concentrations up to 100 mM a substantial sensitivity gain was observed

Ground beetles in city forests: does urbanization predict a personality trait?

Background. Urbanization leads to substantial changes in natural habitats with profound effects on wildlife. Understanding behavioural responses to such environmental change is essential for identifying which organisms may adapt, as behaviour is often the first response to altered conditions. Individuals in more urbanized habitats may be expected to be more exploratory and bolder than their conspecifics in less urbanized habitats as they may be better able to cope with novel challenges. Methods. In a two-year field study we tested ground beetles from differently urbanized forests for their exploratory behaviour (in a novel environment) and their risk-taking (death-feigning). In total, we tested ca. 3,000 individuals of four forest-dwelling ground beetle species from eight within-city forest patches. In the second year, we also transferred ca. 800 tested individuals of two species to the laboratory to test for consistent behavioural differences (i.e. personality differences) under standardised conditions. Results. Individuals were generally more exploratory in more urbanized than in less urbanized areas but only in one year of the study. Exploratory behaviour was not predicted by population density but increased with temperature or showed a temperature optimum. Exploration was consistent over time and individuals that were more exploratory also took higher risks. Discussion. We demonstrated that species which are generally less directly exposed to human activities (e.g., most invertebrates) show behavioural responses to urbanization. Effects of urbanization were year-dependent, suggesting that other environmental conditions interacted with effects of urbanization on beetle behaviour. Furthermore, our results indicate that different personality compositions might cause behavioural differences among populations living in differently urbanized habitats