A Longer View: Is Industrial Metabolism Really the Problem?

Seen from the long perspective of recent historical research on Europe's pre-industrial millennia, large-scale human destruction of natural environments and ecological relationships evidently pre-dates industrial metabolism. If so, the limited view of the most recent centuries arguably fails to encompass the depth of experience required to understand current problems or therefore to formulate successful remedies or responses to human violations of carrying capacity. The longer past reveals some cultural mechanisms to counteract the pressures of human wants and needs. Comparative research is urged on long-term ecological outcomes in other great pre-industrial civilizations.     

Skizzen zur Frage der Identität

Traditional forms of personal identity are tending to disappear or dissolve. The current development does not allow us to conceive identity with a specific content This process is often considered destructive for personality. I suggest, seeing it as a chance to stop glorifying identity and to approach the concept and reality of the ?Empty Self“.     

Environmental determinism as Orientalism: The geo-political ecology of crisis in the Middle East

From ‘Resource Curse’ to ‘Climate Conflict’, more and more analyses of the current crisis in the Middle East start their reasoning from geo-physical or natural conditions as determinants of social life. Paradoxically, despite its resource riches giving rise to conflict, the region's ecology is portrayed as fragile, alien and hostile. This imperial oriental imagination, assumes that a scarce nature is mismanaged by societies and states overall incapable of negotiating modernity. This precarious, crisis driven environment is now pushed to the edge by the effects of climate change with looming desertification and weather extremes and a scramble for shrinking oil reserves threatening to make the region all but inhabitable. This article suggests that this environmental oriental determinism in Middle East can be overcome by entering political ecology into the register of historical sociological analysis. Re-socialising and historicising nature-society relations avoids reifying the Cartesian nature/society divide, offering historical sociology a better toolkit to navigate the current crisis. Vice-versa, it argues that political ecology can benefit from recognising the role of geopolitical relations in the social reproduction nature.     

On the malfunction of the generic approach in small voluntary associations

Management and marketing techniques that are of great value in private firms may not prove as important in voluntary and nonprofit organizations. The author highlights problems in the direct application of the so-called generic approach to third sector organizations by examining small voluntary organizations in the Danish sports sector. He argues, first, that it may be unnecessary to apply generic management techniques; second, that it may be dysfunctional with regard to leadership and management; and, third, that the consequences of the chosen (generic) strategies may be detrimental to the function and image of the associations. Instead, theories of organization, strategic management, and marketing should recognize the special mix of competing, complementary, and overlapping values, rationales, and evaluation criteria that characterize small voluntary organizations.     

On the landscape of the relation between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

Since Elisabeth Young-Bruehl first revealed it in Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, 1982, admirers of Hannah Arendt have been troubled by the fact that she was for four years—from 1924 to 1928—the mistress of Martin Heidegger. She was a Jew who fled Germany in August 1933, a few months after Hitler’s assumption of power. He was elected Rector of the University of Freiburg in the spring of 1933, and in a notorious inaugural address hailed the presence of the brown-shirted stormtroopers in his audience, claimed that Hitler would restore the German people to spiritual health, and ended by giving the familiar stiff-armed Nazi salute to cries of “Sieg Heil.” The thought that these two were ever soulmates is hard to swallow. I I am deeply indebted to Guenther Roth and Egon Bittner for important suggestion, which I used to improve an earlier draft of this article. I am grateful for help of many different kinds to Zygmunt Bauman, Inge Castellini, Teresa Gilman, Alison Grossman, Ellen B. Hill, Irving Louis Horowitz, Jonathan B. Imber, Denah Lida, Hans Mohr, Asja Petrović, David Riesman, and Harry Zohn.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

Five reports cover the 2009 Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians Conference, the COUNTER and Usage Data webinar, the 2009 Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge, the 2009 North American Serials Interest Group Conference, and selected sessions of the 2009 annual conference of the American Library Association in Chicago, Illinois.     

Emotions and Emotional Labor at Worker‐Owned Businesses: Deep Acting,Surface Acting,and Genuine Emotions

Members of worker cooperatives—organizations collectively owned and democratically run by their workers—report substantial differences in how they can or must perform various emotions, compared with previous work at conventional, hierarchical organizations. First, some emotions not allowed in conventional workplaces are fully permitted at worker cooperatives, including negative emotions, like anger, but also positive emotions, like enthusiasm. In contrast, other emotions must be displayed, even if insincere. Sometimes, these displays are accomplished through surface acting, like pretending to happily accept the slow pace of committee‐led change. Other times, through deep acting, members internalized new emotional reactions, such as pride, instead of resentment, when helping coworkers even after their own shifts had ended.     

Technological Diversification: A Systematic Review of Antecedents,Outcomes and Moderating Effects

Technological diversification has been linked to a wide range of phenomena, including financial performance, innovation, product diversification and inter‐organizational relationships. This is the first systematic review of this literature and provides an overview of its historical development and conceptual foundations. It finds that the role of contingency factors impacting the positive relationship between technological diversification and financial performance needs further exploration. Also, it finds that the research on the links between technological diversification and inter‐organizational relationships requires consolidation. This paper suggests three avenues for further research. First, it sets out an agenda for identifying the antecedents of technological diversification. Second, it identifies contextual factors that could shape the relationship between technological diversification and performance. Third, it argues that technological diversification research must engage with contemporary technological and organizational developments such as digital organizations, open boundaries and networks.