Bargaining a Progressive Contract - Manuscript

In the academic year 2000-2001, the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly (UHPA) sought to bargain a contract on its conventional cycle for the period 2002-2003 with the State of Hawaii. The effort failed, leading to a two-week strike in April, coinciding with a state-wide strike of the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA). For the first time in U.S. history the entirety of a state’s public education system was on strike with its state employer. For UHPA the strike had been provoked primarily by the gap between the state’s salary offer and the union’s request. To place the matter in context, during the 1990’s, while the other states had experienced “Clinton prosperity” with a record number of quarters of positive economic growth, Hawai’i (its economy closely tied to Japan’s) had lagged, entering negative growth in 1996. From 1993 onward, the University struggled to maintain its state budgetary support, and collective bargaining for all public unions was a tortured affair. Matters came to a head in the strike of April 2001

The Function of Bachelardian Epistemology in the Post-colonial Project of Mohammed ‘Abed al-Jabri

This paper explores the function of historical epistemology in the thought of Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) and Mohammed ‘Abed al-Jabri (1935–2010). Attributing thought with a particular function challenges our tendency to explain the development of thought in other socio-historical contexts in terms of mere conceptual influence. Available English-language literature on al-Jabri commonly references Bachelard’s concept of epistemological rupture as a source of inspiration. Though the reference is astute, this term remains poorly understood and has long been overshadowed by Thomas Kuhn’s notion of ‘paradigm shift’. The broader function of Bachelard’s thought as a renegotiation of time, place, subject, and reason in the natural sciences has been largely neglected in historiographies of the philosophy of science outside of France. This paper emphasizes the level of insight and ingenuity with which al-Jabri employs the function of Bachelard’s epistemology by re-interpreting it within the framework of his own socio-historical context. Far from reducing al-Jabri’s thought to a mere programmatic reproduction of French thought, I suggest that al-Jabri was among the most astute interpreters of this long-misunderstood theorist

A pragmatic methodology for studying international practices

Practice turn marks an important advancement in International Relations theorizing. In challenging abstract meta-theoretical debates, practice theorizing in International Relations aims to get close to the lifeworld(s) of the actual practitioners of politics. Scholars from different positions such as constructivism, critical theory, and post-structuralism have critically interrogated the analytical framework of practices in international politics. Building upon these works, we are concerned with a question of how to examine the context of international practices that unfolds in multiple ways in practitioners’ performances. Our central thesis is that a distinct pragmatic methodology offers an opportunity to keep with the practice turn and avoid the problematic foundational moves of mainstream practice theorizing. This involves foregrounding three interrelated processes in examining practices: the role of exceptions in the normal stream of performances, normative uptake of the analysts, and the semantic field that actors navigate in political performances. We argue that this methodology is predicated on its usefulness to interpret practices through reflective social-science inquiry

Mereotopological Connection

The paper outlines a model-theoretic framework for investigating and comparing a variety of mereotopological theories. In the first part we consider different ways of characterizing a mereotopology with respect to (i) the intended interpretation of the connection primitive, and (ii) the composition of the admissible domains of quantification (e.g., whether or not they include boundary elements). The second part extends this study by considering two further dimensions along which different patterns of topological connection can be classified—the strength of the connection and its multiplicity

The Janus head of Bachelard’s phenomenotechnique: from purification to proliferation and back

The work of Gaston Bachelard is known for two crucial concepts, that of the epistemological rupture and that of phenomenotechnique. A crucial question is, however, how these two concepts relate to one another. Are they in fact essentially connected or must they be seen as two separate elements of Bachelard's thinking? This paper aims to analyse the relation between these two Bachelardian moments and the significance of the concept of phenomenotechnique for today. This will be done by examining certain historical uses of the concepts of Bachelard have been used from the 1960s on. From this historical perspective, one gets the impression that these two concepts are relatively independent from each other. The Althusserian school has exclusively focused on the concept of 'epistemological break', while scholars from Science & Technology Studies (STS), such as Bruno Latour, seem to have only taken up the concept of phenomenotechnique. It in fact leads to two different models of how to think about science, namely the model of purification and the model of proliferation. The former starts from the idea that sciences are rational to the extent that they are purified and free from (epistemological) obstacles. Scientific objectivity, within this later model, is not achieved by eradicating all intermediaries, obstacles and distortions, but rather exactly by introducing as many relevant technical mediators as possible. Finally, such a strong distinction will be criticized and the argument will be made that both in Bachelard's and Latour's thought both concepts are combined. This leads to a janus-headed view on science, where both the element of purification (the epistemological break) and the element of proliferation (phenomenotechnique) are combine

Energy model, boundary object and societal lens: 35 years of the MARKAL model in the UK

Abstract Technical energy models operate within social systems and those that perform particular social as well as technical functions are more likely to be used. We illustrate this with the example of the MARKAL energy system model in the UK, a model that is also widely used internationally. In the UK, MARKAL modelling has a long history helping underpin government energy and climate policy. We trace the use of the model from its initial development in the mid-1970s to the present day, highlighting attributes that contribute to its role as a successful ‘boundary object’ for different but interconnecting energy policy communities. We suggest that changing images of the energy policy problem have enabled MARKAL to shift from an initial role in identifying technologies to reduce oil dependency to playing a key role in target-oriented climate policy. Furthermore, we argue that the ability of MARKAL to perform different roles for different groups has served to embed and institutionalise the model in the energy policy community. Moreover, the capacity of the model to represent detailed technology options has accorded with a technological focus that has suited prevailing, shared conceptions of the energy-climate policy problem

Algorithms to Tile the Infinite Grid with Finite Clusters

We say that a subset T of Z 2 , the two dimensional infinite grid, tiles Z 2 if we can cover Z 2 with non-overlapping translates of T . No algorithm is known to decide whether a finite T ` Z 2 tiles Z 2 . Here we present two algorithms, one for the case when jT j is prime, and another for the case when jT j = 4. Both algorithms generalize to the case, where we replace Z 2 with an arbitrary finitely generated Abelian group. As a by-product of our result we partially settle the Periodic Tiling Conjecture raised by J. Lagarias and Y. Wang [14], and we also get the following generalization of a theorem of R'edei [16]: Let G be a (finite or infinite) Abelian group G with a generator set T of prime cardinality such, that 0 2 T , and there is a set T 0 ` G with the property that for every g 2 G there are unique t 2 T , t 0 2 T 0 such that g = t + t 0 . Then T 0 can be replaced with a subgroup of G, that also has the above property. 1 Introduction Tiling related problems..