Rethinking militarism in post-apartheid South Africa

This paper argues that contemporary South Africa is marked by a co-existence of both old and new forms of militarism. It tries to move beyond the statist conception of militarism in much of the scholarly literature in order to examine social relations more broadly, and the appropriation of the means and instruments of violence by non-state groups. The paper argues that a shallow and uneven process of state demilitarisation was underway in South Africa from 1990 in the form of reductions in military expenditure, weapons holdings, force levels, demobilisation, employment in arms production and base closures. However, this has had contradictory consequences. The failure to provide for the effective social integration of ex-combatants throughout the Southern African region, as well as ineffective disarmament in post-conflict peace building, has provided an impetus to a 'privatised militarism'. This is evident in three related processes: new forms of violence, the commoditisation of security, through the growth of private security firms and, most importantly, the proliferation of small arms. It is argued that small arms are highly racialised and linked to a militarised conception of citizenship. This feeds into a militarist nationalism, which claims a powerful army as an indicator of state power, which helps to explain a process of re-militarisation - evident in the R60 billion re-armament programme and increasing reliance on the military as an instrument of foreign policy since 1998. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for a regional approach to security as a further corrective to a narrow, statist focus on the South African National Defence Force

Review Essay: Adventures in Financeland

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets by Donald MacKenzie. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2006, ISBN 0262134608. Pages: 377. 25.95 (hbk) Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London by Caitlin Zaloom. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2006. ISBN 0226978133. Pages: 224. 18.50 (hbk) Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics by Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa and Lucia Siu. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2007. ISBN 0691130163. Pages: 373. 35.00 (hbk

Jumpstarting the future with Fredric Jameson: Reflections on capitalism, science fiction and Utopia

This paper turns around the key concern that it has become almost impossible to imagine a form of the future that is neither a prolongation of what already exists nor its apocalyptic demise. In trying to find ways of reconceiving the future in a more productive fashion, the paper relies heavily on Fredric Jameson?s work. Jameson worries that the traditional realist novel, which has featured so prominently in discussions of ?literature? in the field of organization studies, has committed itself far too readily to what he terms ?ontological realism?: the deliberate confusion of that which is meaningful with that which exists. He therefore explores the potential of Science Fiction (SF), and in particular radical SF from the 1960s and 1970s, for figuring a break with a hollowed-out present. This is achieved, for example, by transforming our own present into the past of something yet to come. It is as if Walter Benjamin?s angel of history would stand in an imaginary future with its face turned back towards our present. Such revelatory time-slips find their clearest expression in the novels of Philip K Dick, and it is to them that this paper will turn when working through some concrete examples

Internal rents and corporate property management: a study into the use of internal rents in UK corporate organisations

Research in the late 1980s showed that in many corporate real estates users were not fully aware of the full extent of their property holdings. In many cases, not only was the value of the holdings unknown, but there was uncertainty over the actual extent of ownership within the portfolio. This resulted in a large number of corporate occupiers reviewing their property holdings during the 1990s, initially to create a definitive asset register, but also to benefit from an more efficient use of space. Good management of corporately owned property assets is of equal importance as the management of other principal resources within the company. A comprehensive asset register can be seen as the first step towards a rational property audit. For the effective, efficient and economic delivery of services, it is vital that all property holdings are utilised to the best advantage. This requires that the property provider and the property user are both fully conversant with the value of the property holding and that an asset/internal rent/charge is made accordingly. The advantages of internal rent charging are twofold. Firstly, it requires the occupying department to “contribute” an amount to the business equivalent to the open market rental value of the space that it occupies. This prevents the treating of space as a free good and, as individual profit centres, each department will then rationalise its holdings to minimise its costs. The second advantage is from a strategic viewpoint. By charging an asset rent, the holding department can identify the performance of its real estate holdings. This can then be compared to an internal or external benchmark to help determine whether the company has adopted the most efficient tenure pattern for its properties. This paper investigates the use of internal rents by UK-based corporate businesses and explains internal rents as a form of transfer pricing in the context of management and responsibility accounting. The research finds that the majority of charging organisations introduced internal rents primarily to help calculate true profits at the business unit level. However, less than 10% of the charging organisations introduced internal rents primarily to capture the return on assets within the business. There was also a sizeable element of the market who had no plans to introduce internal rents. Here, it appears that, despite academic and professional views that internal rents are beneficial in improving the efficient use of property, opinion at the business and operational level has not universally accepted this proposition

Oblique evaporation and surface diffusion

The special structure of obliquely evaporated films has its origin in shadowing phenomena during film growth. Because of shadowing, the film consists of bundles of inclined columns with the bundles being aligned perpendicularly to the vapour incidence direction. The column inclination angle lies between the film normal and the vapour incidence direction. Different models found in literature relating process parameters and film structure are discussed. It is found that surface diffusion plays an important role, especially with regard to the difference between random and directional surface diffusion. The latter is induced by the oblique evaporation process. A quantitative expression is given for the relation between process conditions and surface diffusion including the influence of substrate temperature, rate and contamination with residual gasses. Using these models and adding our new calculations, the relation between surface diffusion and film structure is discussed in detail and found to be consistent with measurements published in the literature

Determinants of Organic Farming Conversion

In this paper the behavioural change framework of Ajzen and Fishbein is used to explore whether attitudes towards organic farming, the perceived social pressure of the environment and the perceived feasibility of organic farming standards on the farm determine the willingness of farmers to convert to organic farming methods. These variables together with the business and personal objectives and the organic farming information seeking behaviour of the farmer were used in an ordinal regression procedure to predict the intended organic farming conversion behaviour of conventional farmers.organic farming, firm behaviour, Farm Management, Q01, Q21,

Entry mode research and SMEs : a review and future research agenda

Research on SMEs’ entry modes remains limited and is spread across various, often disconnected research fields using a broad variety of theories, sample characteristics, and methods. This makes it challenging for researchers to identify interesting research opportunities. Our study investigates the current state of the SME entry mode literature by conducting a systematic literature review of 47 articles. Our review shows that scholars should be more careful when conceptualizing SMEs, and we recommend the use of both quantitative and qualitative longitudinal research designs. We explain how new theories and perspectives might address existing problems and weaknesses in this literature.status: publishe