Online social networking and trade union membership: what the Facebook phenomenon truly means for labor organizers

Union membership has declined precipitously in a number of countries, including in the United States, over the past fifty years. Can anything be done to stem this decline? This article argues that union voice is a positive attribute (among others) of union membership that is experiential in nature and that, unlike the costs of unionization, can be discerned only after exposure to a union. This makes the act of 'selling' unionism to workers (and to some extent firms as well) difficult. Supportive social trends and social customs are required in order to make unionization's hard-to-observe benefits easier to discern. Most membership-based institutions face the same dilemma. However, recent social networking organizations such as Facebook have been rather successful in attracting millions of active members in a relatively short period of time. The question of whether the union movement can appropriate some of these lessons is discussed with reference to historical and contemporary examples

Film consumer decision-making: the Philadelphia story, 1935–36

This article uses consumer research conducted in the early 1940s to interrogate and interpret a new dataset of daily box-office returns for 22 cinemas in the city of Philadelphia over 33 weeks traversing 1935–36. Our findings attempt to contextualize the observation made by the 1940s market investigators that just under half of cinema audiences were non-selective. It does this by a detailed analysis of the system of film distribution in which films were distributed in a hierarchical manner, from first-run through to fourth-run cinemas. Through an analysis of the variation in the performance of films at each level of the distribution hierarchy, and the impact that this variation had on the distribution of film revenues, we conclude that the impact of non-selective audiences on film outcomes was limited, irrespective of the relative importance of this audience component. We conclude by comparing and contrasting risk environments of the 1930s and contemporary film industries

Reconstructing Modernism : Art in New York, Paris, and Montreal 1945-1964

" These essays reopen the case of postwar abstraction. They constitute a dialogue among historians, critics, painters, and art historians that allow not only new readings of specific artworks but also a new understanding of the reception of art in the postwar Western world. " -- Back cover of the document

"Our Granada": The Granada Theatre, Wellington Street, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, America, the World and Me

Built at the height of the atmospheric theatre fad in early 1929, the Granada Theatre of Sherbrooke, Quebec has been many things to many people over the years. Starting as a double-bill house of United Amusements of Quebec (owned by Famous Players of Toronto,in turn owned by Paramount of New York), the Granada eventually became the premier performance space in Sherbrooke in the 1940s and 1950s. It was eventually replaced in this function in the late 1960s by cultural centres at the two local universities. While it was sold off by Famous Players in the early 1970s it still survives relatively intact, at the end of this century a curious architectural reminder of how things once were and perhaps still are. The theatre's past, present and future provide the author with an opportunity to reflect upon his own place in late 20th century Quebec. Le Théâtre Granada, un cinéma atmospherique de l'année 1929 qui existe encore à la rue Wellington de Sherbrooke, Québec, offre pour l'auteur d'opportunité de faire des réflexions politiques, culturels et personnels. La nature de cet éspace comme un produit simultané local, provincial, fédéral, continental et mondial sugget pour l'auteur que ses éspaces comme le Granada peut donner aux chercheurs un terrain ou sujet fertile pour l'analyse des cultures québécoises