Explicating trust and its relation to dialogue at a time of divided societies

Values, beliefs, opinions and attitudes on issues (such as religion, LGBTQ, immigration, etc.), and the proliferation of social media platforms have made society not only more diverse but also more divided. Competing and conflicting views and attitudes result in more schisms and disengagement. In addition, conflicts and disagreements on various issues also have resulted in a lack of trust and a reluctance of organizations and publics to engage in meaningful communication. As a result, developing trusting relationships by facilitating dialogues is significant. Trust has been an important construct in past research on organization-public relationships. However, the concept of trust has rarely been discussed in-depth in public relations literature. This special section of Public Relations Review, entitled Enhancing Dialogue and Trust in Diverse Societies, examines whether the current definitions of trust and its dimensions in the public relations literature are adequate in an organization-public dialogic communication setting.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

“Big Brother’s Bigger Brother”: The Visual Politics of (Counter) Surveillance in Baltimore

In 2016, without the knowledge of its citizens, Baltimore City Police deployed a military aerial surveillance technology called Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI), which can track the movements of every person in public view over the entire city. Though the trial of the “spy plane,” as the program was dubbed, quickly ended in scandal, organizers from Baltimore’s low-income minority neighborhoods successfully rebooted the program in 2020, this time framing WAMI partly as a tool of “sousveillance” (watching “from below”) that can track the movements of police officers. The paper shows how organizers “rebranded” WAMI around two conceptions of sousveillance—“citizen-centered” and “state-centered”—creating an unlikely coalition of supporters from both pro- and anti-policing sides of the criminal justice reform debate. But while the renewed program has vowed to be a “Big Brother” to the state, it will continue to be used for traditional surveillance, raising troubling questions about privacy. The article sheds light on the politics of watching and being watched in the era of technology-driven criminal justice reform.     

Aesthetics of disaster as decolonial aesthetics: making sense of the effects of Hurricane María through Puerto Rican contemporary art

ABSTRACT

On 20 September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico causing unprecedented disaster. From that day onwards, the Puerto Rican multi-layered colonial, social and political context was further complicated by the traumatic acceleration of a human disaster via this natural disaster. This crystalized the urgency of using art as vehicle for (social) catharsis, a practice that continues to be used by individual artists, collectives, community organizations, art projects, and other art institutions on the island and abroad, through mural art, community paintings, art exhibitions, literature, music, and many other aesthetic expressions. This article examines, from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective, post-Hurricane María artistic expressions in contemporary art as decolonial aesthetics through the cathartic use of the frame of an aesthetics of disaster. It is argued that, an aesthetics of disaster aims to re-assert an artistic form that is able to accelerate the discursive nullification of a deeply rooted colonial, social and cultural problem by way of art as catharsis inspired by the way that Hurricane María unveiled these problems. The piece briefly contextualizes Puerto Rico, and it examines the idea of Puerto Rican contemporary art as catharsis. Then, it describes how Puerto Rican contemporary art exhibitions and associated aesthetic production are processing urgent post-hurricane issues through three illustrative pieces in exhibitions in PR and abroad in the United States (US). Lastly, decolonial aesthetics is reexamined and re-understood, informed by Édouard Glissant's view expressed in Poetics of Relation which aids to the conclusion that Puerto Rican contemporary art using the frame of an aesthetics of disaster functions as a powerful form of decolonial aesthetics.     

On the almost sure convergence for sums of negatively superadditive dependent random vectors in Hilbert spaces and its application

Abstract

This paper develops almost sure convergence for sums of negatively superadditive dependent random vectors in Hilbert spaces, we obtain Chung type SLLN and the Jaite type SLLN for sequences of negatively superadditive dependent random vectors in Hilbert spaces. Rate of convergence is studied through considering almost sure convergence to 0 of tail series. As an application, the almost sure convergence of degenerate von Mises-statistics is investigated.     

人类解放的终极关怀：论马克思解放论的本体论追求

解放论是马克思主义哲学中的“元问题”，其根本在于实现每个人的自由而全面发展。传统本体论表征着人类摆脱自身的无根化、追寻存在根基的终极关怀，它构成了理解解放论的终极追求的思想前提。马克思关于人类解放的思想与其本体论的演化逻辑是一致的，是在马克思劳动本体论思想的形成过程中逐步展现的。正确地认识资本逻辑运动的辩证规律，才能真正抓住马克思解放论的革命性之所在，从作为人的现实实践活动的生产劳动出发，不断超越现实的资本与劳动之间生产关系，去构建新的通往未来的共产主义的终极道路。     

全球价值链背景下加工贸易企业升级路径分析

金融危机以来国际贸易保护主义色彩浓郁，中国内部粗放型经济增长方式存在一定的不可持续性和人口红利开始逐渐消失，中国加工贸易嵌入发达国家主导的全球价值链低附加值和低生产率问题引起了学者的注意。随着外部贸易环境、国内新常态要素禀赋结构的变化和深化供给侧结构性改革的需要，推动加工贸易企业升级已经成为中国经济结构调整的一个重要部分。通过分析中国加工贸易的起源、发展和现状，描述全球价值链背景下加工贸易的若干特征和“低端锁定”问题，引出了融资约束对企业经营决策、出口行为以及企业全球价值链上地位的影响，并围绕以生产过程、产品升级和功能升级为主的产业内升级和以劳动密集型向技术密集型转变为特征的产业间升级两个角度，提出了中国加工贸易企业在全球价值链上攀升的路径。研究认为，着重强调人力资本积累、本土企业技术外溢的吸收能力以及自主研发能力的培养，同时结合国际产能合作和“一带一路”倡议等现实背景，实现东西双向开放，塑造以我为主的包容性的区域价值链和国内价值链等，是中国加工贸易企业升级的路径和新机遇。     

World Social Forum – possible perspectives

ABSTRACT

In the first part of this essay, I reflect on the divergences of opinion that have always existed in the process of the World Social Forum. This first part was written before the elections in Brazil last autumn. Since then Jair Bolsonaro has been installed as president of Brazil and the divergences I discuss in that first part have cooled down, at least in Brazil. Nevertheless, it remains important to record those divergences when we try to take further our debate about the future of the WSF process, as I do here as well, in the second part of my essay.     

Indicator development as a site of collective imagination? The case of European Commission policies on the circular economy

ABSTRACT

In recent years the concept of the circular economy gained prominence in EU policy-making. The circular economy promotes a future in which linear ‘make-use-dispose’ cultures are replaced by more circular models. In this paper, we use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to ask how an imaginary of circularity has been assembled and stabilized, which imaginative resources were drawn on, and how goals, priorities, benefits and risks haven been merged with discourses of innovation, sustainability and growth. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with policy officers of the European Commission, we argue that the monitoring framework and indicator development function as a site collective imagination in which desirable ‘circular’ futures are co-produced. These futures are imagined to provide novel opportunities for the private sector and to generate jobs and economic growth while at the same time improving the natural environment as measured by selected environmental indicators.     

Freedom of association in the Bangladeshi garment industry: A policy schizophrenia in labour regulation

The right to freedom of association is fundamental for the establishment of labour unionism as an institution. While the Government of Bangladesh requires enabling legal provisions for unionization in its garment industry, regulation to ensure the right to freedom of association has proved ineffective in upholding labour unionism. This article highlights the need for legislation capable of drawing on the complementary skills and resources of the Government, factory owners, labour unions and global brands to secure a sustained commitment and contribution towards the socio-economic and political dimensions of labour relations in Bangladesh's ready-made garment industry.