A panel data analysis of the growth effects of remittances

Many development economists believe that remittances by the migrant workers are an important source of long rum growth. Therefore, recent studies have investigated the indirect and direct effects remittances on the growth rates of the recipient countries. This paper analyses the strength of these effects with a common data set and with alternative methods of estimation. It is found that while the evidence supports the indirect effects of remittances, the direct growth effects of remittances seem to be insignificant.Remittances, Growth, Panel Data, System GMM

“On Deleuze and Guattari’s Italian Wedding Fake Book: Pynchon, Improvisation, Social Organisation, and Assemblage”

This article examines Pynchon’s literary invention of Deleuze and Guattari’s Italian Wedding Fake Book. Featured in his novel Vineland (1990), previous scholarship has either dismissed the reference as a throwaway joke or argued that Pynchon’s invocation of the philosophers is intended to point us towards the author’s engagement with Anti-Oedipus (1972). Following Charles Hollander’s argument that Pynchon’s jokes indicate important themes in his texts, this article looks beyond the reference to Deleuze and Guattari and to the author’s alignment of these philosophers with a “fake book”. A fake book is a book of basic chords, lyrics, and/or melody lines, which allows those who can read sheet music to improvise, or “fake”, the performance of compositions. Given that it is Deleuze and Guattari’s second collaboration of A Thousand Plateaus (1980) that addresses musicality in various guises, I focus on how Pynchon engages with the concepts of this latter text in terms of improvisation, social organisation, and assemblage. This engagement, I suggest, is less about influence that it is about identification. This is to say that Pynchon has long shared the philosophical outlook of Deleuze and Guattari, as demonstrated with reference to his short story “Entropy” (1960)

Race in the age of tribeless youth culture: Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope (2015) and recent shifts in African-American pop culture

This article posits Rick Famuyiwa’s 2015 film Dope as a site of convergence for broader shifts in recent African-American pop culture against the backdrop of post-racial ideology. Firstly, the film demonstrates how, while youth culture is now largely “tribeless,” the sonic boundaries between subcultures having collapsed, the corresponding racial boundaries nevertheless persist. Having established this, it is then argued that the film’s social media infused narrative, as well as its production and marketing, resonates with the broader new media strategies taken by African-American artists to create a space of power within still white-dominated media industries. Particular attention will be given to the way in which the artist-owned streaming site Tidal has subverted the politics of neoliberal colorblindness through the creative use of the internet

Psychedelic soldiers and tragic surfers: John Milius’ “Apocalypse Now” (1969)

This article examines John Milius’ 1969, first draft, screenplay of Apocalypse Now. Submitted by American Zoetrope to Warner Brothers as part of their development deal aimed at creating films for the ‘youth market,’ Milius’ screenplay explores the Californian counterculture from an alternative perspective to that of his contemporaries. Pitching the countercultural thinking of hippies as a dangerous deviancy from American post-war values, the writer instead contrasts this attitude with the sanctioned rebellion afforded to the preceding generation of Californian youth: the surfers. This intergenerational conflict plays out in the milieu of the Vietnam war, where the savagery of Colonel Kurtz and his cult of psychedelic soldiers functions to reflect contemporary fears around the hippie culture as the sixties would come to a close. This article further provides an extended critical reflection on the study of the screenplay as an autonomous work of art