LAST OF THE DINOSAURS? BIG WEAPONS,BIG SCIENCE,AND THE AMERICAN STATE FROM HIROSHIMA TO THE END OF THE COLD WAR

This article examines the origins and recent crises in linkages between big science, big weapons, and the U.S. state during and after the cold war. We examine the sources of legitimacy of military dominance of U.S. research and development (R&D) in the first decades of the cold war and argue that the exigencies of a nuclear arms race between two superpowers gave the military an unprecedented peacetime claim on science and technology resources. We argue that economic crises, political challenges by peace movements, and technological exhaustion of the nuclear arms race in the 1980s weakened military claims to science and technology leadership, but that the 1991 Persian Gulf war deflected what might have been a major shift in U.S. R&D priorities. We conclude by examining U.S. post-cold war R&D policy and find that military priorities remain preeminent.     

Women's entrepreneurship,neoliberalism and economic justice in the postfeminist era: A discourse analysis of policy change in Sweden

Since the early 1990s, there has been investment in women's entrepreneurship policy (WEP) in Sweden, which continued until 2015. During the same period, Sweden assumed neoliberal policies that profoundly changed the position of women within the world of work and business. The goals for WEP changed as a result, from entrepreneurship as a way to create a more equal society, to the goal of unleashing women's entrepreneurial potential so they can contribute to economic growth. To better understand this shift we approach WEP as a neoliberal governmentality which offers women ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘postfeminist’ subject positions. The analysis is inspired by political theorist Nancy Fraser who theorized the change as the displacement of socioeconomic redistribution in favour of cultural recognition, or identity politics. We use Fraser's concepts in a discourse analysis of Swedish WEP over two decades, identifying two distinct discourses and three discursive displacements. Whilst WEP initially gave precedence to a radical feminist discourse that called for women's collective action, this was replaced by a postfeminist neoliberal discourse that encouraged individual women to assume an entrepreneurial persona, start their own business, compete in the marketplace and contribute to economic growth. The result was the continued subordination of women business owners, but it also obscured or rendered structural problems/solutions, and collective feminist action, irrelevant.     

ENTREPRENEURIAL ENTERPRISES, ENDOGENOUS OWNERSHIP, AND THE LIMITS TO FIRM SIZE

This paper develops a simple model of entrepreneurial enterprises. The analysis differs from traditional work on entrepreneurship by analyzing why entrepreneurial activities are typically conducted in small firms owned by the entrepreneur. I argue that ownership incentives are an advantage of small firms. When the probability of success of an economic activity becomes small, if becomes costly for large firms to commit to strong incentives, and small worker-owned firms emerge. The paper discusses application of the theory to innovation, wild-cat oil exploration, restaurants and retail trade, professional practices, salesmen, and franchising.     

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE IRISH QUESTION:

This article builds on theoretical work in the social movements literature that uses "master frames" (Snow and Benford 1992) to account for the cyclical clustering of social movement activity within certain historical periods. I identify "master frame alignment" as the dynamic process by which social movement actors rhetorically transform the master frames within a cycle of protest to make them resonate more clearly with a movement's unique social and historical situation. Just as frame alignment processes serve to link a movement organization's activities, goals, and ideology with those of a potential group of adherents, master frame alignment processes link the activities, goals, and ideology of a movement organization with those espoused within the broader symbolic atmosphere of the social movement. I present historical data from Irish newspapers and political documents to show how the Irish Sinn Féin movement, seeking self-determination during the early twentieth century, rhetorically reconstructed the master frames generated by the League of Nations in order to better exploit this particular window of political opportunity.     

BUILDING ENVIRONMENTALISM: The Founding of Environmental Movement Organizations in the United States, 1900–2000

Between the 19th and the mid‐20th century, the environmental movement transformed American culture, forcing a rethinking of the “Manifest Destiny” ideology that had long dominated political thinking toward an understanding of the need to protect and restore the balance between humans and nature. In 1900, there were only a few environmental movement organizations (EMOs), but by 2000, there were over 6,000 national and regional EMOs and over 20,000 local EMOs. What drove this phenomenal growth of EMOs? We examine a 100‐year time series of EMO founding, showing that, in addition to the “legitimation‐and‐competition” effects of organizational density, EMO founding is facilitated by the discourse‐creative activities of critical communities, objective threats in terms of air pollution, foundation giving, and powerful political allies in the presidency and Congress. Environmental discourses also legitimized and competed against one another, favoring “early risers” and preservationist discourse. Environmental mobilization needs to be understood in terms of the creation of new discursive frames that identify environmental problems, as well as objective environmental threats, resources, and political opportunities.     

THE ART OF BEING CRENTE: THE BANIWA PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The central objectives of this article are to describe and analyze the Baniwa Art Project, a sustainable development project based on intensive production and commercialization of basketwork, which the Baniwa Indians of the Northwest Amazon (population approximately 12,000), with the assessment of the SocioEnvironmental Institute (ISA), a major NGO in Brazil, launched in the late 1990s. The goals of this project were to enhance the value of the Baniwa basket-making tradition, increase production within the limits of the sustainable use of natural resources, generate income for indigenous producers and their political associations, and train indigenous leadership in the skills of business management. This very successful project was initiated shortly after the creation of the Indigenous Organization of the Içana River Basin (OIBI) and essentially involves 16 of the more than 100 Baniwa communities of the Içana River and its tributaries in Brazil. This article reflects on how young Baniwa evangelical political leaders, with the support of the NGO, promoted the rise of individualism, as well as the introduction of Western values of economic and political success. This generated conflicts with more “traditional” values and practices of egalitarianism producing an increase of witchcraft accusations. The case of a young Baniwa leader who coordinated both the political association and the Art Project illustrates extremely well the sorts of grave conflicts that emerged. This article will also reflect on modifications in human/spirit relations following the introduction of evangelicalism and sustainable development projects. For this, I shall cite extensively from a recent interview I conducted with a Baniwa political leader regarding his perceptions of the relations between evangelicalism, the political movement, and the meanings for the Indians of the notion of “sustainable development.”     

THE GLOBALIZATION OF A MINOR SPORT: THE DIFFUSION AND COMMODIFICATION OF MASTERS SWIMMING

ABSTRACT

We examine the global spread of Masters Swimming (MS) focusing on the economic, social, and demographic conditions associated with its initiation in the United States and its international growth. We characterize MS as a modern sport and look at its subcultural form, organizational structure, practices, and early pattern of organizational growth from bottom to top. Then we describe the top down role of La Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA) in supplying legitimacy, resources, organizational coherence, and corporate sponsors to spread the sport among FINA members. By establishing mutually beneficial relations with corporate sponsors, MS rapidly commodified and diffused to countries and territories with middle to high socio-economic development.     

Leveraging symbolic capital: the use of blat networks across transnational spaces

In this article, we contribute to debates on how social networks sustain migrants' entrepreneurial activities. By reporting on 31 interviews with Eastern European migrants in the UK, we provide a critical lens on the tendency to assume that migrants have ready‐made social networks in the host country embedded in co‐ethnic communities. We extend this limited perspective by demonstrating how Eastern European migrants working in the UK transform blat social networks, formulated in the cultural and political contours of Soviet society, in their everyday lived experiences. Our findings highlight not only the monetarization of such networks but also the continuing embedded nature of trust existing within these networks, which cut across transnational spaces. We show how forms of social capital based on Russian language use and legacies of a shared Soviet past, are just as important as the role of ‘co‐ethnics’ and ‘co‐migrants’ in facilitating business development. In doing so, we present a more nuanced understanding of the role that symbolic capital plays in migrant entrepreneurial journeys and its multifaceted nature.     

MASTERING THE ART OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Online communication has become a central part in the communication repertoires of political actors in Western mass democracies. In Switzerland, where broadband, internet use, and media literacy are amongst the highest in the world, all major political parties run their own website and are active on social media. This article seeks to show how Swiss political parties deal with social media, how they implement it and how they use social media. The study builds on empirical data from a structural analysis of party websites, the official Facebook sites, and Twitter feeds. These social media sites were analysed for their resonance, update frequency, and thematic clusters focusing on information, mobilization, and participation. A weekly assessment of the user numbers illustrates the development of user resonance throughout the 2011 election year. While political parties claim to appreciate the dialogue and mobilization potentials of social media, they mainly use social media as an additional channel to spread information and electoral propaganda. The overall resonance is still on a very low level. The data seem to sustain the normalization hypothesis, as larger parties with more resources and voters are better able to generate effective communication and to mobilize online than small and marginal parties.     

NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,POPULISM AND THE POLITICS OF THE LIFEWORLD

Since the 1960s, New Social Movements (NSMs) have been prominent as new actors on the political scene. But, by comparison with other radical political agents, they have made a relatively poor showing in mainstream political theory. Habermas, for example, criticizes NSMs, including second-wave feminism, for merely masquerading as new forms of radical political agency. By introducing some ideas from Laclau, I show how to counter Habermas's criticism. I then rethink NSMs as a new post-liberal form of democratic-emancipatory political agency, which by contrast with the politics of the public sphere that Habermas champions, is anchored in the less organized reaches of the lifeworld.     

HETEROGENEOUS FIRMS AND THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION

Firms in the same industry exhibit systematic differences in the organization of production and the structure of employment. Entrepreneurial ability is the specific scarce input that limits the size of a firm. This input must be allocated to two activities, coordinating production and monitoring workers. Able entrepreneurs can convert calendar time into larger supplies of coordinating effort that enable them to assemble large firms. Greater ability implies a higher shadow price of time which increases the implicit costs of monitoring. A dispersion of entrepreneurial abilities generates an equilibrium size distribution of firms. Differences in monitoring costs affect the choice of worker productivities, the design of products, and the organization of production. The monitoring cost hypothesis advanced in this paper goes a long way in explaining the equilibrium of an industry containing heterogeneous firms that differ in size and behavior.     

PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

When considering how to allocate scarce resources for the development of public infrastructure, many countries have a tendency to neglect maintenance in favor of new infrastructure investment projects. We examine the role of maintenance expenditures on output and on the distribution of wealth in a heterogeneous agents model. In our model, maintenance affects the quality of existing infrastructure and thus the flow of services derived from it. Furthermore, maintenance expenditures also affect the depreciation rates of both public infrastructure and private capital. We calibrate our model to Mexico and consider several policies that increase the flow of resources to infrastructure and find that a policy that allocates all additional resources to new investment is dominated by policies that allocate at least some of the additional resources to maintenance. Specifically, focusing all additional resources on maintenance is shown to generate the largest reduction in inequality, while a more balanced policy that increases both investment and maintenance maximizes output growth. (JEL E00, E62, H54)     

Central bank independence, economic freedom, and inflation rates

Measures of central bank independence combine many attributes that may or may not affect inflation. Central bank attributes are chosen as a result of political calculations over the distribution of resources between competing interest groups. Simultaneity bias results from regressions of central bank independence or of economic and political freedom on inflation or growth. Our estimates demonstrate the connections between economic and political freedom and central bank attributes that lead to inflation. Countries showing high degrees of economic freedom adopt structures that lead to lower inflation; those that show high degrees of political freedom do not adopt inflation-reducing institutional structures.     

THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY IN NAVIGATING POLITICAL INCORPORATION: Defining a Niche for Human Relations in Orange County, California, 1971–2000

Political incorporation represents an important and complex trajectory for social movements. Whether that trajectory leads to favorable substantive outcomes or merely to formalistic representation within the polity depends in part on the strategic decisions made by leaders. We have few frameworks, however, for understanding their role in navigating incorporation. This research presents a "niche definition" framework emphasizing strategic differentiation and articulation across political actors in distinct institutional locations sharing common goals. It focuses attention on leaders' efforts to identify and exploit unique resources and leverage made available through incorporation. Overall, the framework emphasizes the potential for collective strategy and cooperative interorganizational dynamics, thereby expanding possibilities for favorable outcomes of political incorporation. The framework is illustrated through a case study of the Orange County (California) Human Relations Commission from its creation in 1971 to 2001. I trace the long-term challenges and consequences of incorporation through leaders' definition of successive niches.     

BUSINESS RESOURCES AND TAXATION: A CROSS-SECTIONAL EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION AND PUBLIC POLICY

Many writers have speculated about the connection between economic resources of corporations and their ability to dominate politics in democratic societies with advanced capitalist economies. Using a cross-sectional analysis of business taxes in the American states, this study examines the political impact of four economic resources that are plausibly related to heightened business political influence. With seven factors held constant, I find that states with larger enterprises are most likely to have lower taxes on manufacturing, but concentrated sales do not have any effect on these taxes. The degree to which the organizational efforts of firms are handicapped because industry products are diverse also has an independent relationship with state and local taxes paid by manufacturers, but this relationship does not hold when the least industrial states are excluded from the equations. I also find that where competition between political parties is most intense, tax policies will be less likely to favor business interests. It follows that the evidence in this study is consistent with a hypothesis that firms can translate their formidable economic resources into political influence at the state and local level.     

Entrepreneurs in the rural environment

Change in rural activities is frequently seen as: (1) reaction to changes in other areas and sectors, and (2) negative. This downplays the role and importance of entrepreneurs, both farm and non-farm, in sustaining the vitality of rural areas. The notion of entrepreneur can be extended to entrepreneurial activity by other people, e.g. local government activity, which is an integral part of rural community economic development. Both the entrepreneur and the quasi-entrepreneur in local government are critical leaders in urban fringes and other rural areas alike. Their activity in an area is partly dependent upon the broader political, social and economic environment which influences: (1) the need to change and (2) whether any “benefit” can be derived from entrepreneurial activity. A framework is presented in this paper to place entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial activity into the context first, of decision-taking generally in the rural environment, and second, of the broader “enabling” environment. It is argued that constraints originating in this broader environment are often necessary, but they may have unforeseen side-effects in discouraging innovation. Changes in such constraints or in the manner in which they are implemented may be a necessary ingredient to maintain rural vitality through encouraging entrepreneurial activity.     

VICTIMHOOD,IDENTITY, AND AGENCY IN THE EARLY PHASE OF THE TROUBLES IN NORTHERN IRELAND

This article explores the representation of victimhood in political discourse and the relation between victimhood, identity, and political agency. The empirical material is drawn from the early days of the Northern Ireland conflict and covers the debate on internment that was in operation from August 1971 until December 1975. Both those supporting and those opposing internment drew on images of victimhood—images that were vital in the construction of legitimacy and political agency. First, the rendering of detailed stories of individual suffering and victimhood produced compassion and empathy—features legitimising the different approaches. Second, the construction of victimhood involved mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, creating “we-them” dichotomies, producing “collectives of victimhood,” which in many cases worked as a platform from which political agency could be voiced. And third, the construction of victimhood produced political truths. The victim was given a particular status embodying a particular moral integrity to determine the truths about “what had really happened,” a status that made the victim a vital agent in the political battle for “the hearts and minds.” The article stresses the importance of studying the representation of victimhood within particular historical contexts and demonstrates the complex and ambiguous effects of the representations of victimhood in violent political conflicts. The examination shows that victimhood has both humanising and dehumanising effects and, depending on the contextual framework, victimhood can create confidence, empowerment, and agency, but also disempowerment and passivity.     

The Gendered State of Business: Gender,Enterprises and State in Israeli Society

Whether the state provides different entrepreneurial opportunities for women and men and how is an issue rarely discussed in the growing literature concerning gender and organizations. Integrating gender and organization literature with political theories of the state, this paper compares women's entrepreneurship in one setting (Israeli society) across two time periods: before and after the foundation of a sovereign state. Our analysis identifies three manifestations of the gendering state through which it moulds business opportunities of men and women entrepreneurs. We examine how these manifestations: the delegation of economic actors, managing interactions between individuals and institutions, and administering a bureaucracy, shape access to capital and the structure of networks. The article contributes to the existing scholarship by extending the understanding of direct and indirect influence of the state on the reproduction of the image of the ideal entrepreneur and on gender differences in entrepreneurial activity.     

Entrepreneurial development for U.S. minority homeless and unstably housed youth: A qualitative inquiry on value,barriers, and impact on health

BackgroundHomeless and unstably housed youth in the U.S. have high rates of unemployment and often rely on survival strategies that negatively impact their economic, emotional, and physical health. While integrated health and entrepreneurial development initiatives targeting the poor have been successfully implemented in developing countries, little is known regarding interests in similar initiatives among vulnerable U.S. youth, particularly racial minorities who are disproportionately impacted by poverty and homelessness. This study examined African-American homeless and unstably housed youth's interests in entrepreneurial development programming to enhance economic self-sufficiency and health-related outcomes.MethodsQualitative methods using nine focus groups and one in-depth interview were conducted from December 2013 to March 2014 with 52 purposively-selected youth, aged 15 to 24, who had experienced homelessness within the prior 18 months in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. An emergent, open-ended topic guide was used to examine reasons why youth may want to participate in entrepreneurial development initiatives, what barriers they anticipated in becoming an entrepreneur, and how engaging in entrepreneurial and other economic empowerment activities might impact their physical and emotional well-being. All focus groups and interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed.ResultsThe majority of youth were unemployed in the formal sector, but actively engaged in income generating activities in the informal sector. Four themes related to youth's interest in entrepreneurial development initiatives: the perceived inadequacy of traditional income and educational pathways, wanting to be one's own boss, desires for alternatives to joblessness and illicit income risks, and interests in building on current entrepreneurial activities. Commonly perceived barriers were lack of business mentors and opportunities, not knowing “what was possible”, difficulty in changing prior mindsets, and anticipated negative reactions from peers. Youth envisioned entrepreneurial development activities would inspire a range of health protective behaviors by minimizing poverty-related depression, hopelessness, and anxiety.ConclusionThis study underscores the need to address the intersection of poverty and health outcomes. Integrated health and entrepreneurial development programs should target low-income U.S. minority youth, particularly those with the greatest housing, health, and economic needs. More research is needed in understanding the behavioral dynamics between economic empowerment and health risk reduction among disadvantaged youth.     

THE BRIDLED BRIDE OF PALESTINE: ORIENTALISM,ZIONISM, AND THE TROUBLED URBAN IMAGINATION

Through ethnographic and archival research centered in Jaffa, this article analyzes how the image of the Jewish-Arab mixed city has been represented and (re)produced in the Zionist historical imagination since the establishment of the state of Israel to the present. Vacillating between romantic historicity and political violence, the image of Jaffa poses a political and hermeneutic challenge to the territorial project of urban Judaization, which ultimately failed to define and establish the national-cum-cultural identity of this “New-Old” city. This failure, I argue, results in a persistent pattern of semiotic ambivalence which, from the Jewish-Israeli point of view, positions Jaffa both as a source of identity and longing (in the distant past) as well as a symbol of alterity and enmity (in the recent past)— an object of desire and fear alike. As such, Jaffa and other ethnically mixed towns (including Ramle, Lydda, Haifa, and Acre) occupy a problematic place in Israeli and Palestinian political and cultural imagination. A bi-national borderland in which Arabs and Jews live de facto together, these cities bring to the fore, on the one hand, the paradox of Palestinian citizens in a fundamentally Jewish state, while simultaneously suggesting, by the very spatial and social realization of “mixed-ness,” the potential imaginary of its solution. Unfolding through four distinct historical modalities of urban Orientalism, this article historicizes the highly politicized image of the Jewish-Arab city and the discourse on its future. These discursive formations reconfigured the public space that enabled, paradoxically since the October 2000 events, new political claims for equal citizenship, bi-national cooperation, and Palestinian presence.