The epistemic and strategic dimension of the establishment of the IPBES: “epistemic selectivities” at work

The economic valuation of biodiversity and related market-based policy instruments are increasingly being referred to in the international politics of biodiversity and related Multilateral Environmental Agreements. They are both the subject of diverging interests, hence leading to conflict and critique, and an impetus for compromise on the way toward a “reasonable” solution to the environmental and economic crises. This development coincides with an extensive debate on how to increase the profile of biodiversity science and make it more policy relevant. This article takes a close look at decision-making processes leading to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Particular emphasis is placed on the implicit and explicit conflicts around the significance attached to the concept of ecosystem services within the IPBES debate. The article is based on the assumption that struggles over biodiversity knowledge become marginalized in favor of a stabilization of the “global paradigm of valorization.” In this vein, the concept of ecosystem services contributes to sustaining the rationale that biodiversity can only be preserved if its diverse elements are commodified. This is theoretically underpinned by the concept of “epistemic selectivities,” and I discuss its contribution to the understanding of the role of knowledge in institutional change.     

Implicit Valuation of the Near-Miss is Dependent on Outcome Context

Gambling studies have described a “near-miss effect” wherein the experience of almost winning increases gambling persistence. The near-miss has been proposed to inflate the value of preceding actions through its perceptual similarity to wins. We demonstrate here, however, that it acts as a conditioned stimulus to positively or negatively influence valuation, dependent on reward expectation and cognitive engagement. When subjects are asked to choose between two simulated slot machines, near-misses increase valuation of machines with a low payout rate, whereas they decrease valuation of high payout machines. This contextual effect impairs decisions and persists regardless of manipulations to outcome feedback or financial incentive provided for good performance. It is consistent with proposals that near-misses cause frustration when wins are expected, and we propose that it increases choice stochasticity and overrides avoidance of low-valued options. Intriguingly, the near-miss effect disappears when subjects are required to explicitly value machines by placing bets, rather than choosing between them. We propose that this task increases cognitive engagement and recruits participation of brain regions involved in cognitive processing, causing inhibition of otherwise dominant systems of decision-making. Our results reveal that only implicit, rather than explicit strategies of decision-making are affected by near-misses, and that the brain can fluidly shift between these strategies according to task demands.     

The Changing Valuation of Dogs1

In recent decades, the United States has witnessed profound changes in the sociocultural valuation of dogs, variously described as humanization, sentimentalization, or sacralization. A broad look at this “sacralization” of dogs in the United States reveals that this changing valuation has altered dogs’ place within economic processes. In particular, these changes parallel Viviana Zelizer’s work on the changing valuation of children a century ago. In this article, we further specify Zelizer’s insights by arguing that these accompanying economic transformations are best understood as shifting of a dogs’ place within budgetary units: from objects for human consumption to fellow actors humans consume with and around.     

Cultural heritage as multi-dimensional,multi-value and multi-attribute economic good: toward a new framework for economic analysis and valuation

The purpose of the paper is to review critical issues concerning the economic dimensions of cultural heritage, in order to show that—tangible and intangible—“cultural economic” goods and services, as provided by cultural institutions, may be analysed and valued in a multi-dimensional, multi-attribute and multi-value socio-economic environment. On this multi-dimensional and multi-attribute setting, a conceptual framework for analysing cultural services and cultural capital is established. The paper is speculative in nature, suggesting new prospective for evaluation and empirical inquiry. The work is divided in three parts. The first part begins by surveying the literature on merit goods, re-examining how different paradigms, neo-classic and more unconventional, have dealt with the issue, and assessing why, and to what extent, merit good is a proper economic notion. The second part focuses on the role merit good theory should play in cultural economics, and specifically how it is possible to integrate the merit good and the mixed good theoretical and conceptual framework. Cultural resources are to be defined ideally as joint merit-mixed good, on a multi-dimensional scenario. Cultural capital offers and “produces” services and functions, providing private, public and merit good elements of benefit (value). The multi-dimensional framework also entails a multi-paradigmatic perspective, bringing together neo-classic and non-neo-classic elements. The last section summarises and concludes that such an established conceptual framework indicates and supports new routes for economic valuation and policy making concerning the cultural field and cultural institutions. Disaggregating cultural activities into many services and functions allows the analysis to focus on single components of “benefit” supplied by cultural institutions and demanded by users. Valuing culture as a non-holistic resource might help economic analysis and decision-making processes. The main emerging results are: (i) the notion of merit good is relevant for cultural economics and cultural policy, and it represents a relevant ideal “metaphor” and an important dimension of value associated to “cultural functions”; (ii) the inclusion of merit good theory gives the possibility to define cultural stock and services as a compelling case of multi-dimensional categorisation of private, public, mixed and collective services, where different theoretical perspectives are integrated with each other as far as possible; (iii) being intrinsically placed in a dynamic and uncertain setting, merit good theory demonstrates to be, in theoretical and policy term, the necessary a priori for the theory and policy of mixed good provision, both at macro and microeconomic level. Policies motivated by the merit good issue should aim at providing the necessary collective tangible and intangible investments on which long run effects of cultural policies rely; (iv) special effort should be devoted to the study of “demands” associated to cultural goods, emphasising the role of valuation analysis, supported by the conceptual framework here developed. The work intends to constitute a point of reference for future research, generating some controversy and stimulating further contributions.     

Coining societies: an inter-functional comparative analysis of the Euro

The present analysis of the Euro looks for the marks that function systems make on what we commonly take for the European money. Clearly distinguishing between coins and currency, the Euro coins and banknotes are not taken for economic tokens per se but for storage devices that contain both economic and noneconomic information. A systemic analysis of the function system references on these storage devices shows that the economy has left fewer marks on the Euro than politics, art, and the mass media systems have. We, hence, argue that “the Euro” “is” not just money with a political second mission but rather can be understood as an indicator of the relative relevance that specific function systems do or do not have for the European societies and the European society.     

The unconscious in economic decision-making: Convergent voices

Mainstream economics assumes that decision-making is a conscious cost-benefit process, ignoring the pervasive role of unconscious thought processes. Recent research in neuroimaging, genomics, and psychoanalysis exposes the role of unconscious and “nonconscious” processes, providing tools for analyzing economic decision-making. Neuroimaging reveals examples of brain function that modulate decision-making, but are not under conscious control. Psychoanalytic research provides evidence of the role of emotions and the unconscious in human behavior and decision-making. We advance the case for integrating psychoanalysis and neuroscience for a new perspective on the role of the mind in decision-making and economic behavior.     

Should we go “home” to eat?: toward a reflexive politics of localism

“Coming home to eat” [Nabhan, 2002. Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Norton, New York] has become a clarion call among alternative food movement activists. Most food activist discourse makes a strong connection between the localization of food systems and the promotion of environmental sustainability and social justice. Much of the US academic literature on food systems echoes food activist rhetoric about alternative food systems as built on alternative social norms. New ways of thinking, the ethic of care, desire, realization, and vision become the explanatory factors in the creation of alternative food systems. In these norm-based explanations, the “Local” becomes the context in which this type of action works. In the European food system literature about local “value chains” and alternative food networks, localism becomes a way to maintain rural livelihoods. In both the US and European literatures on localism, the global becomes the universal logic of capitalism and the local the point of resistance to this global logic, a place where “embeddedness” can and does happen. Nevertheless, as other literatures outside of food studies show, the local is often a site of inequality and hegemonic domination. However, rather than declaim the “radical particularism” of localism, it is more productive to question an “unreflexive localism” and to forge localist alliances that pay attention to equality and social justice. The paper explores what that kind of localist politics might look like.     

ETHNIC IDENTITIES AND CULTURAL CAPITAL: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF CHINESE OPERA IN SINGAPORE

This article weaves the trajectory of Chinese opera in Singapore with the country's political development. Starting in 1965, the year of Singapore's independence, it attempts to debunk the myth that national culture is resistant to global culture by describing the state's systematic erosion of local culture. From the late 1970s onward, with economic progress, state fears of “Westernisation” led to a centring of Chinese culture in national culture; this was followed by a mini-revival of Chinese opera that coincided with the emergence of Confucian ethics as national discourse and as a culturalist explanation for the “Asian miracle” of the 1980s. This article shows that globalisation's effect on local cultures is not a straightforward process. Instead, it is a complex relationship where the flourishing of a local culture depends on the changing recognition and valuation of cultural identities, ethnicity, and language as cultural capital. This in turn implicates the structural features of national policies and globalisation processes that determine the recognition and valuation of this cultural capital. The use of “cultural capital” as a conceptual tool to isolate the cultural and social components of Chinese opera demonstrates that a local culture flourishes or withers according to the effects of globalisation and national policies on such cultural and social factors.     

The origins and early diffusion of “shareholder value” in the United States

The shareholder value conception of the firm and its consequences for the functioning of corporations have been studied from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. In this article we examine in more detail than has been done sofar the origins and early adoption of this particular conception. By investigating public business sources from the perspective of field theory, we argue that the rise and early diffusion of “shareholder value” are best understood as a function of the changing power relations in the economic field during the first half of the 1980s. The deep economic recession at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s led to a crisis in the prevailing management beliefs, offering newcomers the opportunity to promote alternative business strategies, among which the shareholder value conception became dominant. The sources studied indicate that the spokespersons of the new business conception were initially wealthy outsiders, corporate “raiders,” who used the economic crisis to oppose management and acquire shares in undervalued firms with the threat of restructuring and selling parts of them in the name of shareholders’ interests. Although these hostile take-overs, or threats of take-overs, were widely contested, the Reagan administration blocked regulation and stimulated the take-over market. The rivalry between “raiders” and public pension funds over the profits of these takeovers led to the founding the Council of Institutional Investors (1985), which adopted the shareholder value doctrine inaugurating the organized activism of public pension funds with regard to the management of firms. It was thus in all likelihood the competition and conflict among different groups of shareholders, primarily corporate raiders and pension funds, that triggered the shift in the balance of power between managers and shareholders. Since managers found profitable ways to adapt to the new balance of power, the shareholder value ideology spread rapidly through the economic field, becoming the dominant business model of North American firms in the second half of the 1980s.     

The GOAT1 effects impact upon educational R and D

The GOAT (Goodbye To All That) Effect is introduced as a special research and evaluation “outcome” effect characterizing decision-making unduly influenced by abandoning “write-off” tendencies, especially in the face of mounting problems. GOAT behavior can enter into educational decision-making all too easily because it finds a congenial atmosphere in education's habit of fluctuating with the latest trends and vogues and because it can use the prevailing systems analysis approach in much of educational management and evaluation as a blind. The “gradual refinement” approach offers an antidote to the GOAT Effect primarily because it is a fundamentally different approach from systems analysis and directly opposes the faddish orientation of current education.     

From Economic Gains to Social Losses

This paper analyzes how stories shaped treasurers’ expectations in municipal swap activities and contributes to the sociological debate on the mechanisms of expectation formation. Employing a deductive variant of process tracing, it synthesizes the literature on expectations in economic decision making with the literature on the diffusion of “ideas,” “myths,” and “fashions” in organization theory and management studies. The swap story has spread since the mid-1990s among German municipalities. At the heart of this story is the replacement of traditional borrowing with active portfolio optimization; financial instruments known as swaps play a leading role. This paper examines how stories shape expectations. Specifically, it delves into how the swap story, as a solution to the financial woes of local governments, shaped these governments’ expectations despite the uncertainty resulting from the instruments’ complexity. We argue that the effect of stories on expectations depends on timing. Expectations at an early stage are shaped by economic analyses to reduce uncertainty, while expectations at a later stage are primarily shaped by societal pressures and an established trend. These two distinct mechanisms produce expectations related to economic and social consequences, respectively. Selecting four typical cases, our analysis confirms that stories affected the formation of treasurers’ expectations regarding the use of swaps through these different mechanisms.     

A theory and verities of market place behaviour

This study questions traditional notions of competitive economic behaviour from a theoretical perspective of social psychology and systems theory. Inter alia these approaches suggest, firstly, that economic relationships are simply an aspect of broader social relationships and are likely to be characterised by cooperation rather than competitiveness and the likelihood of conflict. Secondly, it is suggested that the conditions required for market participants to he “fully informed” would not he evident because of the potential instability of such a communications network or system.These broad hypotheses are examined by measuring aspects of communications and business behaviour in a wholesale agricultural market. The data. which are analysed by network and correlational procedures, support the hypotheses.     

Youth,Gangs and Society: Micro- and Macrosociological Processes*

The late 1960s saw the emergence of a few “super gangs” whose political and economic activities attracted much attention. More recently, gangs apparently similar to those of the 1950s have become newsworthy again in several major cities. This paper surveys these developments against the background of a variety of macro- and microsociological processes. Research conducted in Chicago and elsewhere during the late 1950s and early 60s suggests that delinquent gangs were rather “innocent” participants in the broad social trends of the times and that most gang members were relatively unaffected by the ideological currents associated with them. The primary effect on gangs was indirect, by changing the perceptions and attitudes of others toward gangs, and their behavior in relation to them. Gang life for most members of most gangs, individually and collectively, appears to have changed little in recent years. The prospects for channeling the energies of gangs into socially constructive programs seem bleak, because of the operation of group processes, and the limited experiences and social abilities of most gang members. Basic structural limitations on opportunities for the poor and the powerless to achieve economic and political power provide the framework within which these processes operate today as in the past.     

The long-term protection of biological diversity—lessons from market ethics

Economic markets are not morally free zones. Contrary to popular misconceptions, market functioning rests on the ethical principles of fairness and voluntariness. This ethical foundation can be traced back at least to moral philosopher Adam Smith, one of the founders of modern economics. In the inconspicuous form of microeconomic axioms, these moral foundations are preserved. Thus, virtually all “neo-classic” economic concepts presuppose a market ethics of fairness and voluntariness. In a world of pervasive uncertainty on the long-term development of the human-environment interaction, the protection of the global life-support systems is an important test case for the scope of the ethical content of market ethics. We review risk protection strategies in the face of this uncertainty that are (i) based on the insurance effect of biological diversity, and (ii) that employ a safe minimum standard (SMS). Because the fairness principle of market ethics requires that economic agents who cause “external” costs must, at least, compensate those who are burdened with these costs, the interests of future generations have to be included in responsible economic decision-making. The market and market ethics approach is applied to the analysis of a SMS for biological diversity, and to the inherent problems of such an approach. At the microeconomic level of individual decision-making, an unconditional protection is supported by market ethics neither for the putative interests of future generations nor for biological diversity: Poor people who struggle to cover their basic needs cannot not be required to care for biological diversity. In all other cases, the protection of biological diversity in favour of future generations is supported—if costs are not “unacceptably high”. At which cost level this point is approached, market ethics is not designed to decide.     

Etzioni’s new theory: a synthesis of liberal and communitarian views

There has always been a rather strong contrast between liberal and communitarian views. The liberal doctrine of “irreversible plurality of philosophical and moral ideas” for instance does not only mean that consensus about social values is difficult. “A public consensus about the necessary conception of the good cannot be obtained,” says Rawls. On the other hand, communitarians such as MacIntyre, Sandel, and Walzer, are deeply convinced by the idea of an “immanent telos” of societies, which in their opinion have the utmost influence on the development of individuals. A similar strong contrast exists between the liberal universalism of values and the communitarian particularism. Etzioni’s New Theory now tries to overcome these unsatisfactory “tyrannies of dualism” (A. Gutmann) Instead of the traditional and hostile either- or, Etzioni puts a reconciliatory as well as. “As many other dichotomies the dualism between universalism and particularism stands in the way of the development of a social Paradigm,” he regrets. Therefore Etzioni wants to combine instead of dividing. For example, social order (communitarian value) and personal autonomy (liberal value). So he proposes to install more personal autonomy in states with strong social order, as for instance Japan, and he demands more social order in traditional individualistic states like the United States (“Inverse Symbiosis”). Such “combining and balancing solutions” coincide with the theory of a “Flexible System of Private Rights” created and proposed by the famous Austrian Legal Scholar Walter Wilburg. On the level of “value principles” in the sense of Ronald Dworkin (instead of “rules” of law), Wilburg combines the differing “weights and strengths” of values (elements). An example of this is negligence, dangerous behavior, and economic capacity of risk spreading to more or less far reaching compensations of private damages, instead of the traditional either-or. The underlying idea is that of proportion. In terms of Etzioni, “The more social order within a state or society—the more individual autonomy has to be promoted.”     

A Typology of Families - Five Family Systems

This typology of families is composed of five family systems named “Two Against the World”, “Children Come First”, “Share and Share Alike”, “Every Man for Himself”, and “Until Death Do Us Part”. Each may occur as a pure form but mixtures are common. Variables such as purity of the system, timing of the emergence of a system and the family's flexibility in shifting from one system to another determine outcomes for sickness or health. The therapist's ability to recognise these systems gives coherence to family therapy and improves its effectiveness.     

Lightning Rods in the Local Moral Economy: Debating Unauthorized Migrants' Deservingness in Israel

Localized debates about who unauthorized migrants are and what they do, or do not, deserve unfold in a culturally specific register that is deeply charged with emotion and moral valuation. Structuring such debates are vernacular discursive frames that emerge from, and reflect, a common “local moral economy.” Taking Israel as case study, this article examines six elements of the country's local moral economy – biopolitical logic, historical memory, political emotion, popularized religion, an ideology of “fruitful multiplication,” and hasbara (“public diplomacy”/propaganda) – and explores their impact on public debates about unauthorized and irregular forms of migration. Here, as elsewhere, conventionalized distinctions that frame much migration scholarship – e.g. “economic” vs. “political” migrants, “migrant workers” vs. “refugees,” even the terms “authorized” and “unauthorized” themselves – bear but limited salience. Migration researchers who hope to influence local policy debates must recognize the weight and influence of local moral economies, and the chasms that divide vernacular from conventionalized frames. Achieving this sort of nuanced understanding is, at root, an ethnographic challenge.     

A socio-economic approach to market transactions

The task of this article is to explore social underpinnings in economic exchanges. This exploration is undertaken within the frame of reference of socio-economics that centers on the multifarious social and cultural variables of economic phenomena. In particular, the socio-economic perspective on the market, focusing on the social setting of market exchanges, is utilized. As such, this exploration probes under the surface of (seemingly) cost-benefit induced exchange processes and uncovers a far more complex social structure and dynamics underlying these processes. Hence, these processes are analyzed as constituting socio-economic categories of the market. The social-cultural contingency of economic exchange, especially of its market varieties, is the key hypothesis of this article. This signifies that market exchange, just as production, distribution, and consumption, is a dependent variable on concrete social-historical conditions, rather than being a human universal. The approach proposed here provides an alternative to the purely economic conception, which treats exchange processes as strictly economic variables driven by an intrinsic logic and insulated from other social relations. The mainstream economic literature’s lack of consistent applications of such an approach to market exchange contrasts with the richness of such applications in the field of socio-economics. The paper’s aim is to contribute toward further elaboration and application of socio-economics.     

Intra-Firm Transactions of TNCs in Ukraine: Empirical Investigation

Modern transnational corporations (TNCs) are integrated, internally deterministic systems characterized by sustainable organizational, production and financial interrelations between their subsidiaries located in different countries. Intra-firm shifting of financial resources within TNCs has become an important means of covering funding needs of particular subsidiaries in a more efficient way and responding to opportunities and threats of the macroeconomic environment. Although the literature on intra-firm transactions of TNCs is already sufficiently developed, most research is either theoretical, or is based on secondary sources of information. There is a lack of relevant research in Ukraine. In contrast, this study is one of a few in the contemporary economic research on intra-firm activities and the second one in Ukraine which is based on empirical information collected from primary sources. The study shows that most TNCs operating in Ukraine decide on financial terms of their intra-firm transactions based on a mixed decision-making system with a centralized system also commonly used. Responsibility over intra-firm operations is largely spread within different units of the group financial function and inside different departments of local subsidiaries. We found significant difference in the use of intra-firm financial instruments depending on the type of control over their Ukrainian subsidiaries. In particular, TNCs use a wider range of intra-firm financial instruments in their relations with subsidiaries with lower degree of control from the parent company than with wholly-owned subsidiaries. We found that tangible or intangible character of core activities of a TNC has an impact on the use of some instruments.