Capitalism, money and banking: a critique of recent historical sociology

A conception of money as a 'neutral veil' masking a 'real' economy was adopted by orthodox economic theory after the Methodenstreit, and is also to be found, in a different form, in Marxian political economy. Both derive from an erroneous functionalist and anachronistic 'commodity' theory of money which, as Post-Keynesian economists argue, cannot explain the distinctive form of capitalist credit-money. Orthodox economic theory and classic Marxism have tacitly informed and flawed historical sociology's understanding of money's role in capitalist development. Mann and Runciman, for example, consider the 'economy' exclusively in terms of the social relations of production and imply that money is epiphenomenal and is to be explained as a response to the needs of the 'real' economy. They do not recognize the structural specificity of capitalist money and banking nor its importance. An alternative account of the autonomous historical conditions of existence of the specifically capitalist form of bank and state credit-money and its role in capitalist development is outlined.     

Representing enterprise: The texts of recruitment and change in the UK banking sector

Particularly from the early 1990s onwards, the UK banking sector has seen dramatic and rapid transformation. The logic of enterprise (Du Gay, 1996) with all its various contradictory connotations—the drive for more entrepreneurial forms of work performance particularly from managers, the valorisation of the market leading to tighter cost control, job loss—captures much of the logic of what has been taking place. Work influenced by the thought of Michel Foucault has helped to shed fresh light on recent changes in the management of the employment relationship. A particular achievement has been to highlight and to call into question, as techniques of power (Townley, 1994), an array of everyday human resource practices—from the selection interview to the performance review—and to demonstrate the part these play in sustaining the rationalities or regimes of truth which have come to underpin the organisation of work. To date, little consideration has been given to the role of recruitment practices in this connection and the aim of the paper is to begin to address this gap. Paraphrasing Foucault, the discussion elaborates an expertise of the sign associated with recruitment, further exploring the possibilities of variants of post‐structuralist thought for the analysis of a particular aspect of HRM.     

The cultural-economic model and public relations in the Middle East: An examination of the Islamic banking system in Kuwait

This article adopts the cultural-economic model of public relations practice to analyze the communications through the websites of three prominent Islamic banks in Kuwait. The analysis extrapolates Islamic value orientations including respect for religious authority, affinity with the past, fatalism, communal kinship, attachment to the eternal life and spirituality and idealism. The orientations are then examined relative to public relations practice in the Middle East. The study advances the understanding of Islam and public relations in the Middle East, an understudied region in public relations literature, and illuminates the relationship between religion and public relations. It concludes with observations to guide public relations projects directed toward Muslims in the Middle East for professionals and scholars.     

Cross-border journeys and minority monks: the making of Buddhist places in southwest China

This article investigates the practice and social meanings of cross-border journeys of Dai minority monks, in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China. These journeys play a vital part in Theravada revivalism in this border region. In the early 1990s, the Dai monks left Xishuangbanna to pursue their Buddhist studies in Thailand, thereby experiencing Thai culture and society. I will show not only that transnational networks among the Tai peoples in the upper Mekong region have played a crucial role in this religious movement, but also that the transnational Theravada networks enable and are partly constituted by the cross-border journeys of Dai exiles and minority monks, which strengthen and enhance the Dai ability to persist, revive, and maintain their locality and cultural identity. It is these cultural practices which contribute to and formulate the making of Dai places within the power contexts of state displacement, regional trade and development in Southwest China.     

The state and the development of an information society: Greek policy and experience

The paper looks into the dynamics of information society policy and its implementation in the Greek context. It argues that information society development is a contested process, influenced by pre‐existing state, economy and society relations. Based on this, it looks into the different aspects of the idiosyncratic path which the evolution of the Greek information society has followed, particularly after 2000. Using Bob Jessop's strategic‐relational approach (SRA) to the state as an analytical framework and drawing on a number of in‐depth interviews with relevant political actors, it provides insights into policy implementation by examining: the public management of information technology projects, how such projects were received in bureaucratic structures and practices, as well as the relationship between the state and the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in public procurement processes. The emphasis is on the period 2000–2008, during which a major operational programme on the information society in Greece was put into effect. The paper also touches upon the post‐2008 experience, suggesting that information society developments might include dynamics operating independently and even in contradiction to the state agenda.     

Mapping Global Consciousness: Portuguese Imperialism and the Forging of Modern Global Sensibilities

This article concerns the Portuguese forging of globalization, globality, and forms of global consciousness in the early modern period. In the now voluminous Anglophone literature on globalization, depiction of the Portuguese contribution to such matters is generally muted, if not ignored altogether, in favour of accounts of Columbus's famous voyage and the Spanish conquest of the Americas as the constitutive moments of early modern globalization. The article seeks to rectify the serious neglect of the Portuguese case. It does so by examining how the creation of trans-oceanic networks by the Portuguese made possible new forms of global consciousness. The central arguments forwarded by the article are: that the Portuguese experience is quite as important as the Spanish one in understanding early modern globalization; that early modern globalization was neither unidirectional or inevitable, but rather was shaped in important ways by local and contingent factors operative inside Portugal and within the often tentative expansive endeavours carried out by rival sectors within Portuguese society; that the Portuguese expansion was both made possible by, and further fostered, particular navigational, cartographical, and shipping techniques, which themselves embodied and allowed novel forms of global consciousness; that such forms of consciousness were not only the preserve of elites, but were disseminated throughout all social classes; and that it was through the twin endeavours of the Portuguese and Spanish that a radically new and distinctively ‘modern’ sense of the globe and global space was forged. The article thus seeks to contribute to the emerging literature on the history of globalization, connecting material factors with a cultural-sociological account of the development of new modes of perception and global consciousness.

Este artículo concierne a la creación portuguesa de la globalización, globalidad y formas de conciencia global a comienzos del período moderno. En la actual voluminosa literatura anglófona sobre la globalización, la descripción de la contribución portuguesa a tales asuntos, generalmente es silenciada, si no ignorada por completo, en favor de las cuentas del famoso viaje de Colón y la conquista española de las Américas, como momentos constitutivos de un comienzo de la globalización moderna. El artículo busca rectificar el serio olvido del caso portugués. Lo hace mediante el análisis de cómo la creación de las redes transoceánicas por los portugueses hicieron posibles nuevas formas de consciencia global. Los argumentos centrales propiciados por este artículo son: que la experiencia portuguesa es tan importante como la española para entender el principio de la globalización moderna; que el comienzo de la globalización moderna no era unidireccional o inevitable, pero estaba formada en formas importantes por factores locales y contingentes, que operaban dentro de Portugal y dentro de las frecuentes tentativas de iniciativas expansivas, llevadas a cabo por los sectores rivales dentro de la sociedad portuguesa; que la expansión portuguesa se hacía posible y luego fomentada por técnicas de navegación particular, cartográfica y de transporte marítimo, que por sí mismas incorporaron y permitieron nuevas formas de consciencia global; que tales formas de consciencia eran no sólo para preservar a las élites, pero que fueron diseminadas a todas las clases sociales; y que fue a través de los esfuerzos gemelos de los portugueses y españoles que se forjó un sentido radicalmente nuevo y característicamente ‘moderno’ del globo y del espacio global. Por lo tanto, el artículo busca contribuir a la literatura emergente sobre la historia de la globalización, conectando factores materiales con la cuenta sociológica cultural del desarrollo de nuevos modos de percepción y consciencia global.

本文关注全球化、全球性以及近代早期全球意识形式在葡萄牙的打造。在当代关于全球化的繁多英文著述中,关于葡萄牙人对此贡献的描述默默无闻（如果不是全数忽略的话）,一般偏向于哥伦布的著名航行,以及近代早期全球化形成时期西班牙对美洲的征服。本文力图校正对葡萄牙的严重忽视。它将通过考察由葡萄牙人建立的跨洋网络如何让全球意识的形成变得可能来达到以上目的。文中提出的核心观点主要有：葡萄牙人的经历在理解近代早期全球化上同西班牙人一样相当重要;近代早期的全球化并非单向的或必然的,而是由葡萄牙内部的当地、偶然因素,以及由葡萄牙社会中的对立部门发动的经常是试探性的扩张努力,以重要方式塑造而成的;特定的精确导航、地图绘制、造船等技术既使葡萄牙人的扩张成为可能,也对其加以促进,它们自身就体现并催生了新形式的全球意识;此种新形式的全球意识并非只是精英们所独有,而是扩散到了所有社会阶层;正是通过葡萄牙人和西班牙人的共同努力,才打造成了一种全新而与众不同的关于地球和全球空间的“近代”意识。本文试图对全球化历史方面的新近文献有所贡献,将新认知方式和新全球意识发展的物质因素和文化社会因素结合了起来。     

Media and information praxis of young activists in the Umbrella Movement

Young people were key participants in the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and the media also played an important role in this protest. This study examines how Hong Kong’s young activists developed communication strategies and media practices to mobilize this social movement. A framework termed “media and information praxis of social movements” is proposed for the analysis. The findings showed that in their praxis, the young activists used their media and information literacy skills to initiate, organize, and mobilize collective actions. They not only used social media and mobile networks but also traditional mass media and street booths in a holistic and integrated approach to receive and disseminate information. Hence, these young activists served as agents of mediatization. The results also indicated that the young activists moved away from the traditional movement mode which just tried to motivate a large number of people to protest in the streets. They actively engaged in the new movement mode, which emphasizes the media and information power game. Their praxis in the Umbrella Movement reflects the trend toward the mediatization of social movements in Hong Kong.     

Support,social networks and the family in Portugal: two decades of research

This article presents two major surveys, carried out in Portugal, on the inclusion of families and individuals in social networks of support and affinity. The first, dating from 1999, sought comprehensively to reconstruct families' social networks by mapping effective support relations. The second survey, fielded in 2009–10, followed a family configuration perspective which sought to reconstruct individuals' networks of close relationships, and the issue of informal support only arose as providing further insight into the characteristics of personal networks. Both surveys will be analysed from a comparative perspective which, while stressing their different but connected conceptual orientations, compares each one's methodological strategies and operationalization procedures. Finally, the main results of each survey are outlined, leading to a brief discussion of the ways in which the two surveys complement each other.     

The contribution of the intervention in social networks and community social work at the local level to social and human development

ABSTRACT

The primary task of community social work is building social networks by reinforcing people's resources and those of the different environmental and social contexts from three dimensions: personal development, social development and organisational development. The new information technologies today establish a relationship of communication with local communities and citizens that promotes proximity to social networks. Social intervention is supported by a set of methods from human geography that can be used as tools to create maps of the territory and the networks for planning, diagnosing and classifying the management of community network intervention. In this discussion we set out to analyse the contribution of the intervention in social networks as a means of achieving a new configuration of social networks at the local level. This information is obtained from semi-structured interviews with social workers and other professionals in the social sphere in municipalities with over 100,000 inhabitants in the Madrid region (Spain). The research results show that intervention in social networks locally multiplies the opportunities to enhance the quality of people's social relationships, thus expanding their social support by strengthening their bonds, their personal network and support systems; secondly, it increases empowerment to facilitate a type of intervention to strengthen human potential and to gain autonomy and full citizenship.     

Latino families and the public child welfare system: Examining the role of social support networks

The number of Latino families involved with the public child welfare system has increased exponentially in the last decade. This qualitative study examined one of this population's inherent resources – their social network – and the role it plays when involved with the public child welfare system. Findings reveal that Latino families rely heavily on their network for emotional support, advice/information, and advocacy. Often parents received incorrect or conflicting information or advice grounded on experiences that were very different from the participant's case. In addition, their networks are homophilous; that is, limited to people who are in their same circumstances which limits their ability to access formal sources of advocacy and support. Many parents were also genuinely interested in helping other parents with open cases. Practice recommendations are made as it relates to actively engaging Latino families in their case process and supporting Latino families by incorporating their networks and genuine interest in helping others into child welfare service delivery.     

Norms,status and the dynamics of advice networks: A case study

The issue of the influence of norms on behavior is as old as sociology itself. This paper explores the effect of normative homophily (i.e. “sharing the same normative choices”) on the evolution of the advice network among lay judges in a courthouse. 0020 and 0025 social exchange theory suggests that members select advisors based on the status of the advisor. Additional research shows that members of an organization use similarities with others in ascribed, achieved or inherited characteristics, as well as other kinds of ties, to mitigate the potentially negative effects of this strong status rule. We elaborate and test these theories using data on advisor choice in the Commercial Court of Paris. We use a jurisprudential case about unfair competition (material and “moral” damages), a case that we submitted to all the judges of this court, to test the effect of normative homophily on the selection of advisors, controlling for status effects. Normative homophily is measured by the extent to which two judges are equally “punitive” in awarding damages to plaintiffs. Statistical analyses combine longitudinal advice network data collected among the judges with their normative dispositions. Contrary to what could be expected from conventional sociological theories, we find no pure effect of normative homophily on the choice of advisors. In this case, therefore, sharing the same norms and values does not have, by itself, a mitigating effect and does not contribute to the evolution of the network. We argue that status effects, conformity and alignments on positions of opinion leaders in controversies still provide the best insights into the relationship between norms, structure and behavior.     

Merchants and missionaries: Chinese evangelical networks and the transnational resacralization of European urban spaces

This article sheds new light on the diverse modes in which migration and religion intersect in shaping everyday transnational practices by exploring the articulations of religion and business migration in an emerging Chinese-led transnational mission field. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Wenzhou, Rome and Paris, I show how a large group of transnational Chinese merchants has adopted a vigorous homegrown evangelical Christianity as the spiritual and social anchor of their territorial mercantile culture in diaspora. These merchants have actively engaged in producing religious activities and events that link China to Europe and in resacralizing secular real estate and attaching evangelistic meanings to Europe's historic urban spaces. For rural-originated migrants who embrace a global hierarchy of places, the evangelical discursive distinction between the mundane and the transcendent spheres finds expression in their perceived opposition between the peripheral local and the modern global centre in the global market economy.     

Antenarrative and Transnational Labour Rights Activism: Making Sense of Complexity and Ambiguity in the Interaction between Global Social Movements and Global Corporations

Abstract

This paper draws on antenarrative research and writing techniques to analyse the long-running transnational campaign seeking to improve respect for human rights in the supply chains of Nike and other major sportswear companies. The antenarrative approach challenges scholars to look beyond pre-existing expectations, both in terms of which actors and processes are likely to be most influential and in terms of what is motivating participation in those processes which are significant. In this paper we construct antenarrative accounts of two aspects of the Nike campaign and counterpoint each of our antenarratives with an established scholarly account based on more traditional narrative approaches. We conclude antenarrative analysis can provide useful insights into interaction between global activist networks and global corporations, particularly by drawing attention to the generative possibilities of the complex combination of ordered and disordered processes which often characterise that interaction.     

Because they were there: Access,deliberation, and the mobilization of networks for support

When people need help, what is the process through which they decide whom in their network to turn to? Research on social support has described a process that is deliberative in nature: people determine their needs, assess who in their network has the needed attributes—such as skill, trustworthiness, intimacy, and accessibility—and then activate that tie. Nevertheless, research in behavioral economics and other fields has shown that people make many decisions not deliberatively but intuitively. We examine this possibility in the context of social support by focusing on one factor: accessibility. Although researchers have argued that people weigh the accessibility of potential helpers as they do any other attribute, accessibility may be not only an attribute of the helper but also a condition of the situation. We develop a framework to make this question tractable for survey research and evaluate competing hypotheses using original data on an analytically strategic sample of ∼2000 college students, probing concrete instances of social support. We identify and document not one but three decision processes, reflective, incidental, and spontaneous activation, which differ in the extent to which actors had deliberated on whether to seek help and on whom to approach before activating the tie. We find that while the process was reflective (consistent with existing theory) when skill or trustworthiness played a role, it was significantly less so (consistent with the alternative) when accessibility did. Findings suggest that actors decide whom in their network to mobilize through at least three systematically different processes, two of which are consistent less with either active “mobilization” or explicit “help seeking” than with responsiveness to opportunity and context.     

Staying connected under fire: Effects of individual roles and organizational specialization on the robustness of emergency-phase communication networks

Communication network connectivity is central to organizational performance, but maintaining connectivity can be difficult during periods of disruption. During the World Trade Center (WTC) disaster of September 11th, 2001, both emergency response-specialized organizations and organizations without such specialization forcibly adapted to a radically altered environment. Their dynamic communication networks necessarily entailed trade-offs between competing demands for efficiency and robustness to disruption. Of particular importance is whether organizations concentrated activity within a small number of “hub” nodes, and whether those with existing coordinative roles were critical to maintaining connectivity. We examine these questions by analyzing seventeen organizational communication networks in the WTC disaster. We find that organizations maintain connectivity through relatively small numbers of coordinators, but the realization of institutionalized coordinative roles depends upon organizational context. Further, we find distinct patterns of robustness, with the removal of key players leading to mass isolation in specialist networks versus a gradual pattern of failure in non-specialist networks. These results suggest that organizations responding to disruptions within their usual domain of operations will be more likely to retain institutionalized roles when building emergent networks, although this increases the network's fragility in the event of the loss of one of those coordinators. Organizations responding to novel threats may reconfigure more radically, limiting vulnerability to the loss of institutionalized—but not emergent—coordinators.     

'Laying a foundation of fact': Fabianism and the information society thesis

This article explores affinities between postindustrialism and modes of thinking characteristic of the Fabian Society, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. In the hands of Daniel Bell and others, the information society thesis postulates the coming of a postindustrial society marked by the centrality of information and knowledge. While caveats abound in Bell's version, the thesis has been generally optimistic in outlook, portraying postindustrial society as an advanced level of social development. Interestingly, the Fabian Society, a British-based organization highly influential in the twentieth-century project of social democracy, also emphasized information in its advocacy of social progress: 'laying a foundation of fact', according to one commentator, was a key ingredient of the Fabian approach. Texts by thinkers such as Sidney Webb and H.G. Wells suggest that 'informationalism', a commitment to information in an original sense of hard facts and figures, must indeed be construed as the essence of Fabianism, as that which distinguishes the Fabians from more metaphysical or emotional expressions of socialism. The article traces the link between information-powered politics and the largely successful practice of social engineering in Britain. However, social engineering can, and in the case of some Fabians did, degenerate into a technocratic and even totalitarian mindset. Critiques of Fabianism are therefore also acknowledged here, including those claiming that the Fabian preoccupation with data-gathering and filing, its 'proceduralism', actually constituted a major weakness. However, given its noble informational ideal, Fabianism can, the article concludes, illuminate contemporary information society problems. The Fabian tradition contains suggestive materials on such topical themes as fair access to information, the role of facts in progressive politics, and the prospects for an international institutional order.     

DIGITAL DIVIDES AND CAPITAL CONVERSION: The optimal use of information and communication technology for youth reading achievement

Analysis of a nationally representative survey of 15-year-old Canadian youth indicates how capital can be converted from one form to another by examining the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and reading achievements. Overall there is a negligible linear relationship but a pronounced curvilinear one between these variables, suggesting an optimal level of ICT use. This optimal point varies by gender (males are able to use ICT more before negative effects set in), and by parental education (with girls from highly educated homes gaining more from the use of ICT). Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Analyzing event stream dynamics in two-mode networks: An exploratory analysis of private communication in a question and answer community

Information about social networks can often be collected as event stream data. However, most methods in social network analysis are defined for static network snapshots or for panel data. We propose an actor oriented Markov process framework to analyze the structural dynamics in event streams. Estimated parameters are similar to what is known from exponential random graph models or stochastic actor oriented models as implemented in SIENA. We apply the methodology on a question and answer web community and show how the relevance of different kinds of one- and two-mode network structures can be tested using a new software.     

Rethinking the dynamic of global production networks: Integrate the influence of suppliers and towards a flexible strategy making causal mechanism

The global production network (GPN) 2.0 framework mainly considers the organizational capabilities of lead firms, neglecting the influence of supplier capabilities on the strategic making of lead firms. I argue that the GPN 2.0 framework must integrate the influence of supplier capabilities (both industrial and individual firm levels) to better explain the organization of the global economy. Industrial-level capability determines the possible strategic choices that firms may make under certain dynamic combinations, whereas the individual firm level determines the geographic extension direction of GPNs. Therefore, this study incorporates the influence of suppliers and builds a more flexible strategy-making causal mechanism other than the definitive and limiting causal mechanism in GPN 2.0. I hope this article can promote the further development of GPN 2.0 and convey some valuable concepts to make it perform better in deconstructing the organization of the global economy in the real world.     

Managing our urban future: the role of remote sensing and geographic information systems

Urban growth is inevitable over the next two decades. The bulk of this growth will take place in less developed countries. This presents a formidable challenge for urban planners and managers. With this in mind, this paper considers some of the ways urban planners can make use of recent developments in remote sensing and geographic information systems technology to respond to this challenge. The discussion is divided into four sections. The first of these considers the nature of the tasks involved. The second examines the potential of remote sensing and geographic information systems to assist in these tasks in general terms. The third section presents some of the findings of three case studies of contrasting application areas in the urban planning field which give some insights as to how these tools can be used to respond to this challenge. The final section rounds off the discussion with a vision of sustainable urban development and its implementation at the local level.