A different capitalism? : Guanxi-capitalism and the importance of family in modern China

The emergence of Capitalism is said to always lead to extreme changes in the structure of a society. This view implies that Capitalism is a universal and unique concept that needs an explicit institutional framework and should not discriminate between a German or US Capitalism. In contrast, this work argues that the ‘ideal type’ of Capitalism in a Weberian sense does not exist. It will be demonstrated that Capitalism is not a concept that shapes a uniform institutional framework within every society, constructing a specific economic system. Rather, depending on the institutional environment - family structures in particular - different forms of Capitalism arise. To exemplify this, the networking (Guanxi) Capitalism of contemporary China will be presented, where social institutions known from the past were reinforced for successful development. It will be argued that especially the change, destruction and creation of family and kinship structures are key factors that determined the further development and success of the Chinese economy and the type of Capitalism arising there. In contrast to Weber, it will be argued that Capitalism not necessarily leads to a process of destruction of traditional structures and to large-scale enterprises under rational, bureaucratic management, without leaving space for socio-cultural structures like family businesses. The flexible global production increasingly favours small business production over larger corporations. Small Chinese family firms are able to respond to rapidly changing market conditions and motivate maximum efforts for modest pay. The structure of the Chinese family proved to be very persistent over time and to be able to accommodate diverse economic and political environments while maintaining its core identity. This implies that Chinese Capitalism may be an entirely new economic system, based on Guanxi and the family

Education for adaptation. Actuality of the “theory of half-education” of T. W. Adorno in times of lifelong learning

La presente comunicación tiene por objeto los desarrollos actuales en el campo de la educación en el capitalismo global que, sirviéndose de las obras filosófico-sociológicas de Adorno, pueden ser interpretados como una industrialización cultural de la pedagogía. Partiendo de una breve exposición del concepto de pseudocultura (Halbbildung) como forma de la conciencia cultural-industrial, se sostendrá la tesis de que, en el capitalismo post-fordista del presente, una pedagogía cultural-industrial contribuye de manera decisiva a la producción sistemática y la consolidación sostenible de la conciencia ‘pseudocultivadaThe article focuses on current trends in the education sector which, making reference to Adorno’s works on social and cultural formation philosophy, are interpreted as a progressive cultural industrialization of pedagogy in theory and practice. Departing from a brief definition of the concept of half-education (Halbbildung) as the cultural industrial form of consciousness, the thesis will be exposed, that under the conditions of contemporary post-fordistic capitalism an almost exclusively economically oriented cultural industrial pedagogy contributes decisively to the social production of half-educated consciousnes

La insistencia de la muerte en la vida: Hegel después de Heidegger

According to Heidegger's critique, Hegel would have subjected death to the logical consequences of speculative thought, thus depriving death of the sting of its negativity -such a critique belongs nowadays to the commonplaces of the confrontation with Hegel's thought. However, if one reads Hegel after Heidegger, and considers the unsolved problems of Heidegger's thinking on death, Hegel's concept of death emerges under a new light. Particularly because it was precisely the fact that Hegel did not hide the negativity of death from the consideration of thought, which allowed him to conceive of death as an immanent, pervasive and ever changing dimension of life. Only in this way becomes intelligible that death is not just an absolute negation of life, but also an unconditional claim governing it, and constitutive of life's temporal "form"La crítica de Heidegger, según la cual Hegel habría sometido la muerte a las consecuencias lógicas del pensamiento especulativo, y con ello, arrancado el aguijón de su negatividad, pertenece hoy en día al acervo de la confrontación con él. No obstante, leyendo a Hegel después de Heidegger, y a la vista del irresuelto problema de la reflexión de éste sobre la muerte, el concepto de Hegel sobre la muerte se muestra bajo una nueva luz. Puesto que es precisamente el hecho de que él no sustrae desde un principio la negatividad de la muerte al pensamiento lo que le permite conceptualizarla como una dimensión inmanente, evanescente y cambiante en la vida. Sólo con ello se hace comprensible que la muerte no es tan sólo una negación absoluta de la vida, sino también una exigencia incondicional, que rige la vida y que es constitutiva de su "forma" temporal

Exploring the Web of Heterotic String Theories using Anomalies

We investigate how anomalies can be used to infer relations among different descriptions of heterotic string theory. Starting from the observation that the construction mechanism of heterotic orbifold compactifications considered up to now prevents them from being resolved into fully smooth Calabi-Yau compactification manifolds, we use a new mechanism to obtain an orbifold which does not suffer from the aforementioned limitations. We explain in general how to resolve orbifolds into smooth Calabi-Yaus using toric geometry and gauged linear sigma models. The latter allow for studying the theory in various other regions of the string moduli space as well, which unveils interesting intermediate geometries. By following anomalies through the different regimes, we can match the orbifold theories to their smooth Calabi-Yau counterparts. In the process, we investigate discrete R and non-R orbifold symmetries and propose a mechanism for studying their fate in other regions of the moduli space. Finally, we introduce a novel anomaly cancelation mechanism in gauged linear sigma models, which manifests itself in target space as a description of compactification geometries with torsion and Neveu-Schwarz five branes

Coating of upconversion nanoparticles with silica nanoshells of 5–250 nm thickness

A concept for the growth of silica shells with a thickness of 5–250 nm onto oleate-coated NaYF4:Yb3+/Er3+ upconversion nanoparticles (UCNP) is presented. The concept enables the precise adjustment of shell thicknesses for the preparation of thick-shelled nanoparticles for applications in plasmonics and sensing. First, an initial 5–11 nm thick shell is grown onto the UCNPs in a reverse microemulsion. This is followed by a stepwise growth of these particles without a purification step, where in each step equal volumes of tetraethyl orthosilicate and ammonia water are added, while the volumes of cyclohexane and the surfactant Igepal® CO-520 are increased so that the ammonia water and surfactant concentrations remain constant. Hence, the number of micelles stays constant, and their size is increased to accommodate the growing core–shell particles. Consequently, the formation of core-free silica particles is suppressed. When the negative zeta potential of the particles, which continuously decreased during the stepwise growth, falls below −40 mV, the particles can be dispersed in an ammoniacal ethanol solution and grown further by the continuous addition of tetraethyl orthosilicate to a diameter larger than 500 nm. Due to the high colloidal stability, a coalescence of the particles can be suppressed, and single-core particles are obtained. This strategy can be easily transferred to other nanomaterials for the design of plasmonic nanoconstructs and sensor systems

Study of leakage currents in pCVD diamonds as function of the magnetic field

pCVD diamond sensors are regularly used as beam loss monitors in accelerators by measuring the ionization of the lost particles. In the past these beam loss monitors showed sudden increases in the dark leakage current without beam losses and these erratic leakage currents were found to decrease, if magnetic fields were present. Here we report on a systematic study of leakage currents inside a magnetic field. The decrease of erratic currents in a magnetic field was confirmed. On the contrary, diamonds without erratic currents showed an increase of the leakage current in a magnetic field perpendicular to the electric field for fields up to 0.6T, for higher fields it decreases. A preliminary model is introduced to explain the observations.Comment: 6 pages, 16 figures, poster at Hasselt Diamond Workshop, Mar 2009, accepted version for publicatio