Georges Bataille's base materialism

Abstract

The French intellectual Georges Bataille (1897–1962) developed base materialism in his work during the late 1920s and early 1930s as an attempt to break with all existing materialism. This essay is an explication of base materialism and its radical implications for contemporary theory. Bataille argues for the concept of an active base matter that disrupts the opposition of high and low and destabilises all foundations. Then he attempts to use this to develop a radical libertarian Marxism, opposed to both Stalinism and fascism. Although it provided a critique of the emphasis in Marxism on production, the active flux of base matter could not be contained in a political discourse. This means that Bataille's thought has an impact beyond the political and into the wider domain of theory. One example of this is the influence of base materialism on Derrida's deconstruction, and both share the attempt to destabilise philosophical oppositions by means of an unstable ‘third term’. This explains why Bataille's materialism does not appear as conventionally materialist, and why it has had little impact within contemporary materialism. Despite attempts to force base materialism into the mold of a new form of materialism it disrupts conventional materialism and the ‘radical’ politics that often goes with it. Bataille destroys the promise of liberated spaces and offers a more radical and disorienting freedom which inscribes instability into all discourses. It is this that defines the importance and necessity of Bataille's base materialism today.     

Point Estimates of Test Sensitivity and Specificity from Sample Means and Variances

In a wide variety of biomedical and clinical research studies, sample statistics from diagnostic marker measurements are presented as a means of distinguishing between two populations, such as with and without disease. Intuitively, a larger difference between the mean values of a marker for the two populations, and a smaller spread of values within each population, should lead to more reliable classification rules based on this marker. We formalize this intuitive notion by deriving practical, new, closed-form expressions for the sensitivity and specificity of three different discriminant tests defined in terms of the sample means and standard deviations of diagnostic marker measurements. The three discriminant tests evaluated are based, respectively, on the Euclidean distance and the Mahalanobis distance between means, and a likelihood ratio analysis. Expressions for the effects of measurement error are also presented. Our final expressions assume that the diagnostic markers follow independent normal distributions for the two populations, although it will be clear that other known distributions may be similarly analyzed. We then discuss applications drawn from the medical literature, although the formalism is clearly not restricted to that application.     

Using GIS in community design charrettes: Lessons from a Japan–U.S. collaboration in earthquake recovery and mitigation planning for Kobe

Charrettes have become popular in the urban design field, especially for use among multidisciplinary teams of professionals and non-professional community stakeholders seeking to incorporate a rich array of expertise in short visioning activities. Geographic Information Systems are among the technologies with potential to provide sophisticated spatial information to charrette participants efficiently. This article reports on a charrette carried out jointly by teams from Kobe University and the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, using GIS to inform urban design in three neighborhoods affected by the Great Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake of 1995 in Kobe, Japan. The article describes the charrette itself, and discusses the utility of GIS, given the challenges of disaster recovery in a context of undeveloped institutions for public participation, and with participants of different linguistic and educational backgrounds. In combination with electronically storable drawing technology, GIS proved useful in enlarging the multidisciplinary and cross-cultural reach of urban design; in incorporating new layers of pre-prepared expert data, and in combining such data with dynamically-generated “advice maps” and design ideas. For GIS-based charrettes to become more widely useful in community-scale design in Japan, however, additional property-scale data need to be available.     

Barriers to the Uptake of Emergency Accommodation by Young Runaways and Thrown‐out children and the Role of the ‘Transitional Person’

Young runaways and thrown‐out children, under‐16, face a number of barriers to accessing safe emergency accommodation. The need for such accommodation is not always apparent because children sometimes make themselves invisible to services through fear of being returned or fear of being removed from inappropriate accommodation. Young people's retrospective accounts of their experiences suggest the importance of a ‘transitional person’, an adult who has a pivotal role in trust‐building and who acts as a conduit to services and helps runaway and thrown‐out children overcome internal and external barriers to uptake of emergency accommodation.     

Toward a model of changing disability identities: a proposed typology and research agenda

In light of recent developments in the field of disability studies, this article is an attempt to update a typology of orientations to disability developed over 20 years ago. The proposed revised typology represents a synthesis of two theoretical strands in sociology: opportunity structure theory and identity theory. The author provides examples from the literature, by and about people with disabilities, to illustrate each proposed type of disability identity. These types include normalisation, crusadership, affirmation, situational identification, resignation, apathy and isolated affirmation. The article suggests that individuals with disabilities may move along a 'career path' from one type to another over time, as they encounter new opportunities and interaction situations. The author proposes a research agenda to refine and establish the validity of the typology, and to determine its applicability to diverse populations of disabled people in the world today.     

Do conditional cash transfers influence migration? A study using experimental data from the Mexican progresa program

Prior research on Mexican migration has shown that social networks and economic incentives play an important role in determining migration outcomes. We use experimental data from PROGRESA, Mexico's primary poverty-reduction program, to evaluate the effects of conditional cash transfers on migration both domestically and to the United States. Our study complements a growing body of literature aimed at overcoming longstanding hurdles to the establishment of causal validity in empirical studies of migration. Analysis based on the data collected before and after the program's onset shows that conditional transfers reduce U.S. migration but not domestic migration. The data also enable us to explore the role of existing family and community migration networks. The results show that migration networks strongly influence migration, but that the effect of conditional transfers on migration is apparently not mediated by existing migration network structures. Our results suggest that conditional transfers may be helpful in managing rural out-migration, particularly to the United States.     

ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION AND THE EXCESS VOLATILITY OF STOCK PRICES

Evidence suggests the volatility of stock prices cannot be accounted for by information about future dividends. We argue that some of the volatility of stock prices in excess of fundamentals results from fluctuations in the amount of public information over time. Our model assumes that dividends and consumption are constant in the aggregate but that there are good firms and bad firms whose identity may be unknown to the public, as in Akerlof's "lemons" problem. In that case, the collective valuation of the constant dividend stream depends on the degree of informational asymmetry.