The new left,Jeremy Corbyn and the war of position: a new coherence or further fragmentation?

ABSTRACT

This article assesses the emergence of the new groups, organizations and protests that have emerged since the financial crisis and asks whether we can understand these as a fresh development where diverse movements fashioned through different ideological departure points have moved towards a form of convergence in which a wider hegemonic project can be fashioned, or whether in fact such proclamations are effectively another form of ‘wishing thinking’ in terms of left-wing renewal is concerned. In line with recently argued work, it suggests that for the left to look to overcome the ideological obstacles that plagued its twentieth century development, it needs to provide a wide/open set of principles that look to contest dominant norms of the neoliberal order that exist at the many levels of civil society. In this way a ‘war of position’ (to borrow from Gramsci) needs to be forged that looks to avoid charges of ‘elitism’ and ‘fragmentation’ that had seen the left to fail as a coherent alternative since the cold war. Whilst the new left has forged forms of contestation at the civil level (for example Occupy and the ESF) and more recently at the Political level (with Sanders, Corbyn and Syriza/Podermos), it has yet to form a consistent and coherent war of position to neoliberal capitalism.     

The Portable Community: Mobility and Modernization in Bluegrass Festival Life

Drawing from six years of ethnographic field research, I examine participants' involvement in bluegrass music and festival culture in the American West. Participants left their community‐starved home neighborhoods to cultivate what I refer to as “portable communities”: temporary forms of mobile gemeinschaft community that participants found in multiple settings. Festivalgoers articulated a consistent vocabulary of intimacy, inclusion, and simplicity when describing their continued involvement in this setting. They described their involvement as driven by a quest for intimate community, open and equal social relations, and simple living, elements they found in short supply in their daily lives. Whereas traditional community forms depend on residential stability, these participants intentionally cultivated and supported alternatives that emerged in response to participants' geographic mobility.     

The marketing approach to purchasing

The determination of supply and demand is a complex problem to which both sides of the equation must contribute. Although marketing departments have organized themselves to provide such a contribution to data, purchasing has done little to promote its contribution to demand forecasting. Until it does the equation will remain not merely complex but insoluble.A continuous inter-change between marketing and purchasing, supplier and customer, is essential for improving the accuracy of longer range forecasting and for logistical co-ordination of investment planning. The corporate plans of manufacturing organizations, at least, should reflect these considerations.     

A Non-radial DEA Index for Peruvian Regional Competitiveness

In this paper, we propose a method to measure competitiveness performance at the subnational level, with an application to Peruvian regions. For this, we propose a benefit-of-the-doubt composite index that summarizes the information of several indicators that characterize competitiveness. It is based on an optimization approach, using data enveloping analysis (DEA) techniques, so that each indicator is weighted in an endogenous way, and each unit is evaluated in the most favourable light. Our proposed index is a non-radial variant of the typical DEA scores, which avoids the traditional pitfalls of DEA-based composite indices, such as unreasonable weights. Additionally, we propose a meta-frontier approach in order to compare the competitiveness performances across different periods of evaluation. Our assessments of the Peruvian regions’ competitiveness performance improve on the results of traditional DEA methods, which award high marks to regions with very heterogeneous performance (i.e., regions with very high scores in some indicators, and very poor in others). Additionally, the comparison of the performance across time shows a general decrease in the average competitiveness between 2008 and 2014 of the Peruvian regions.     

Underprotection of Unpredictable Statistical Lives Compared to Predictable Ones

Existing ethical discussion considers the differences in care for identified versus statistical lives. However, there has been little attention to the different degrees of care that are taken for different kinds of statistical lives. Here we argue that for a given number of statistical lives at stake, there will sometimes be different, and usually greater, care taken to protect predictable statistical lives, in which the number of lives that will be lost can be predicted fairly accurately, than for unpredictable statistical lives, where the lives are at stake because of a low‐probability event, such that most likely no one will be affected by the decision but with low probability some lives will be at stake. One reason for this difference is the statistical challenge of estimating low probabilities, and in particular the tendency of common approaches to underestimate these probabilities. Another is the existence of rational incentives to treat unpredictable risks as if the probabilities were lower than they are. Some of these factors apply outside the pure economic context, to institutions, individuals, and governments. We argue that there is no ethical reason to treat unpredictable statistical lives differently from predictable statistical lives. Moreover, lives that are unpredictable from the perspective of an individual agent may become predictable when aggregated to the level of a societal decision. Underprotection of unpredictable statistical lives is a form of market failure that may need to be corrected by altering regulation, introducing compulsory liability insurance, or other social policies.     

Combining Achievement and Well-Being in the Assessment of Education Systems

Countries’ education systems are often compared using academic achievement measures from large-scale assessments like PISA. These exercises are criticized because achievement is but one of the aims of education and comparisons don’t take into account each country’s socio-demographic composition, cultural and historical background and organizational features. We use data from OECD countries to assess countries that can serve as models for education policy to promote both high mathematics achievement and student well-being. We adopt a novel methodological approach based on imputation methods to simultaneously estimate mathematics achievement and students’ sense of belonging while taking into account countries’ socio-demographic and organizational features. Results indicate that, in general, education systems have been able to organize and use their resources to promote either mathematics performance or student well-being, but not both simultaneously. The East Asian approach to education is successful in promoting student achievement in mathematics while Austria, Norway and Spain have greater success in promoting students’ sense of belonging.     

The VL control measure for symmetric networks

In this paper we measure “control” of nodes in a network by solving an associated optimisation problem. We motivate this so-called VL control measure by giving an interpretation in terms of allocating resources optimally to the nodes in order to maximise some search probability. We determine the VL control measure for various classes of networks. Furthermore, we provide two game theoretic interpretations of this measure. First it turns out that the VL control measure is a particular proper Shapley value of the associated cooperative network game. Secondly, we relate the measure to optimal strategies in an associated matrix search game.     

The Alliance in Relationship Education Programs

Couple relationship education (CRE) programs are associated with positive romantic relationship outcomes; however, the mechanisms by which these gains occur are less understood. The current study (122 couples) utilized actor–partner modeling to examine the association between the therapeutic alliance and dedication and negative and positive communication for racial/ethnic minority couples. Additionally, we examined whether gender and delivery format moderated these relationships. Results demonstrated that both men's and women's alliance scores were significantly related to their own outcomes. Higher ratings of alliance were related to partner outcomes for men only. The association between partners' alliance and dedication outcomes was stronger within the group format as compared to the couple format. Implications for leaders of CRE programs are offered.