Why NBIC? Why human performance enhancement?

A 2001 U.S. workshop with the title “Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science (NBIC): Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance” introduced the convergence of various sciences and technologies based on their nanoscale properties. It highlighted BIC as the science and technologies converging on the nanoscale. However many other sciences and technologies with nanoscale components exist, such as chemistry and material sciences. Furthermore the workshop chose human performance enhancement as its case study of application despite various other possible applications that could have been chosen. This paper addresses the questions why the workshop organizers (a) introduced nanoscale as a convergence concept, (b) chose BIC as the convergence examples and (c) chose human performance enhancement as their application. The paper provides some thoughts as to the success and consequences of that strategy.     

Why populism?

It is a commonplace to observe that we have been living through an extraordinary pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist moment. But do the heterogeneous phenomena lumped under the rubric “populist” in fact belong together? Or is “populism” just a journalistic cliché and political epithet? In the first part of the article, I defend the use of “populism” as an analytic category and the characterization of the last few years as a “populist moment,” and I propose an account of populism as a discursive and stylistic repertoire. In the second part, I specify the structural trends and the conjunctural convergence of a series of crises that jointly explain the clustering in space and time that constitutes the populist moment. The question in my title is thus twofold: it is a question about populism as a term or concept and a question about populism as a phenomenon in the world. The article addresses both the conceptual and the explanatory question, limiting the scope of the explanatory argument to the pan-European and trans-Atlantic populist conjuncture of the last few years.     

Why observe children?

CCETSW have made strenuous efforts to reintroduce child observation as a core area for teaching in DipSW Programmes. The supportive evidence for this trend comes almost exclusively from psychodynamic and child care influences on social work practice (CCETSW, 1991). The individualistic and ‘client’-specific approaches of these theoretical standpoints means that some of the most pressing reasons for making observation a central activity in the development of good social work practice go largely unremarked. This paper redresses that balance by developing the arguments for using observation as a tool for assessing not only individual difference but also the collective experience of all current and prospective service users. Observation is thus argued as a core skill for anti-oppressive practice.     

Why They Travel Alone?

"WHY Chinese Women Travel Alone" was the theme of a special edition of "Truth Talk" a popular talk show on China Central Television (CCTV), which focused on a few middle-aged women from different cultural backgrounds, social classes, and various educational backgrounds who had all branched out on their own for one reason or another. Each woman spoke of her experiences and feelings while travelling alone. They were all     

Why are professors liberal?

The political liberalism of professors—an important occupational group and anomaly according to traditional theories of class politics—has long puzzled sociologists. This article sheds new light on the subject by employing a two-step analytic procedure. In the first step, we assess the explanatory power of the main hypotheses proposed over the last half century to account for professors’ liberal views. To do so, we examine hypothesized predictors of the political gap between professors and other Americans using General Social Survey data pooled from 1974–2008. Results indicate that professors are more liberal than other Americans because a higher proportion possess advanced educational credentials, exhibit a disparity between their levels of education and income, identify as Jewish, non-religious, or non-theologically conservative Protestant, and express greater tolerance for controversial ideas. In the second step of our article, we develop a new theory of professors’ politics on the basis of these findings (though not directly testable with our data) that we think holds more explanatory promise than existing approaches and that sets an agenda for future research.     

Why a fixed workweek?

The main goal of this article is to explain why the fixed workweek appeared. To this purpose we differentiate between “jobs” and “hours per job”. We consider an economy where hours and number of workers are substitutes in production but in which hiring a worker entails a fixed cost plus a variable cost per hour worked. As a consequence, firms would like workers to work as many hours as possible. In an unregulated economy, workers work more hours that they would like to at the on-going wage rate. This situation characterizes the economy of today’s industrialized countries in the 19th century.     

Why does cancer cluster?

What do Florida sunbathers, midwestern farmers, rural black men, and Long Island women have in common? They all have higher-than-average risks for certain cancers. Researchers know that cancer clusters are usually caused by several factors. As cancer becomes America's leading cause of death, the public will be keenly interested in sorting out the causes and reducing the risks.     

Why do spouses hide income?

This paper proposes a simplified model of intrahousehold decision making where cooperative and noncooperative behavior are not mutually exclusive. Individuals choose the optimal share of income they wish to devote towards cooperation, where income is pooled and allocated collectively, and towards noncooperation, where income is allocated independently. Using the example of joint saving as an area of household cooperation, this model shows how limited autonomy and bargaining power can interact to create incentives for individuals to hide income. This result provides theoretical support for the call to collect survey data separately from individuals rather than from household representatives.     

Why one person one vote?

We provide a simple justification as to why the core principal in liberal democracies the one-person-one-vote is desirable. We compare two possible constitutions. In a fixed democracy, each individual has one vote and the same opportunity to propose public projects. In a flexible democracy, those that set the agenda can additionally propose to limit future participation in voting and agenda-setting. We show that a fixed democracy restricts majorities from taxing minorities to a greater extent than a flexible democracy. A flexible democracy may be more suited to enable a polity to undertake public projects. This possible advantage may be too small to outweigh taxation distortions and citizens unanimously favor the one-person-one-vote rule ex ante.I am grateful to Ami Glazer, Ulrich Erlenmaier, Tobias Kleinschmidt, seminar participants in Heidelberg and Konstanz, and in particular to an anonymous referee for valuable suggestions and comments.     

Why Do Aid Agencies Exist?

This article seeks to explain the organisational set‐up of foreign aid delivery from a Coasian perspective: Why are there many and different aid organisations and not just one? Why is foreign aid not transferred directly from donor to beneficiary? With zero transaction costs and fully shared preferences between donors and beneficiaries, there would be no need for aid agencies. Their role is not so much to transfer funds or goods and services to developing countries, but (a) to reduce ex‐ante transaction costs and (b) to mediate between the diverging preferences of donors and recipients, and package aid flows in a contract that reduces ex‐post uncertainties for donors. Outcomes differ according to types of agencies and aid delivery instruments.     

Why is Collective Violence Collective?

A theory of collective violence must explain both why it is collective and why it is violent. Whereas my earlier work addresses the question of why collective violence is violent, here I apply and extend Donald Black's theory of partisanship to the question of why violence collectivizes. I propose in general that the collectivization of violence is a direct function of strong partisanship. Strong partisanship arises when third parties (1) support one side against the other and (2) are solidary among themselves. Such support occurs when third parties are socially close to one side and remote from the other and when one side has more social status than the other. Third parties are solidary when they are intimate, culturally homogeneous, and interdependent. I focus in particular on lynching: Lynching is a joint function of strong partisanship toward the alleged victim and weak partisanship toward the alleged offender. Unequal strong partisanship appears in both classic lynchings (of outsiders) and communal ynchings (of insiders) across societies and history. Where partisanship is weak or strong on both sides, lynching is unlikely to occur. Evidence includes patterns of lynching in various tribal societies, the American South, imperial China, and medieval Europe.     

Why Care about Scientific Controversies?

Since Kuhn claimed that scientific controversies are not always settled by means of rational evaluations of the intrinsic merits of competing theories, the view that the history of science should be recounted by examining the background of scientific controversies and how these controversies came to be settled has become a real heuristic maxim for the historian of science. We take issue with this view by arguing that controversies are not relevant by themselves but only insofar as one can make something out of them. Two important questions then arise: what did one come to learn from a given controversy and what came out of this apprenticeships. We compare Pauline Mazumdar's and Alfred Tauber's approaches to the history of immunology and argue that only the latter addressed these questions. In so doing, he was able to show the extension in which modern immunology is an outcome of Metchnikoff's success in correcting Haeckel's “fundamental biogenetic law”.     

Why not co‐operate?

The circumstances in which social scientists work are, of course, different in many countries. Those countries outside the EU and are not eligible for Framework Programme funding. There are some different intellectual traditions and certainly many different structures and levels of financial support in research funding agencies that need to be examined and understood.     

Why Did Adorno 'Hate' Jazz?

Adorno's jazz essays have attracted considerable notoriety not only for their negative and dismissive evaluation of jazz as music but for their outright dismissal of all the claims made on behalf of jazz by its exponents and admirers, even of claims concerning the black origins of jazz music. This paper offers a critical exposition of Adorno's views on jazz and outlines an alternative theory of the culture industry as the basis of a critique of Adorno's critical theory. Adorno's arguments are discussed in the context of his wider theoretical commitment to a model of structuration—in both musical and social relations—that establishes a dividing line between a moral aesthetic praxis that can be approved as having 'truth-value' and one that betrays and subverts the truth. In Adorno's analysis, jazz finds itself positioned on the wrong side of that line and, accordingly, is condemned. It is argued that it is Adorno's commitment to a formalist model of art works that has been superseded by modern aesthetic practice in both so-called 'serious' art as well as in the works of the culture industries that binds him to a regressive model of aesthetic praxis. An alternative theory of the culture industry is outlined that explores its positive functions in enhancing the resources available for culture creation through its transmission of aesthetic codes, and in mediating relations between so-called high and low art.