Talks on tracks - debating urban infrastructure projects ∗

This paper retraces and analyzes the debate around a major infrastructure project in central Stockholm, the construction of a third railroad track over the islet of Riddarholm. Using the analytical framework of the New Rhetoric (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958), it shows that the debate is not only a matter of diverging views about the necessity or the impact of the project but, as well, a matter of epistemology. Whereas both sides tend to refer to similar values and make use of matching rhetorical devices, they differ quite radically as to which knowledge they regard as valid and as to how they have organized their approach to the debate. Demonstration faces argumentation, the New Rhetoric suggests, as its contribution to our understanding of the genesis of urban projects.     

Becoming Global (Un)Civil Society: Counter-Hegemonic Struggle and the Indymedia Network

In this article we ask how ‘civil society’ actors and organizations can become constructed and treated as ‘uncivil society’. We contest the notion that ‘uncivil’ necessarily equates with the dark qualities of violence and organized criminality. Instead, we take a Gramscian perspective in suggesting that what becomes ‘uncivil’ is any practice and organization that substantially contests the structuring enclosures of hegemonic order, of which civil society is a necessary part. To trace this, we consider ways in which a global grass-roots media network called Indymedia has established and maintained itself as a counter-hegemonic media-producing organization. In this case, a conscious positioning and self-identification as counter-hegemonic has been accompanied by the framing and sometimes violent policing of nodes and practices of this network as ‘uncivil’ by cooperating state authorities. This is in the absence of association of this network with organized violence or crime. We intend our reflections to contribute to a deepening theorization of the terms ‘civil’ and ‘uncivil’ as they are becoming used in social movement and globalization studies.

En este artículo preguntamos cómo pueden los actores de la ‘sociedad civil’ y las organizaciones llegar a configurarse y ser tratados como ‘sociedad incivil’. Nosotros refutamos la noción de que lo ‘incivil’ necesariamente equivale a las características oscuras de violencia y criminalidad organizada. En cambio, tomamos una perspectiva de Gramscian, sugiriendo que lo que se vuelve ‘incivil’ es cualquier práctica y organización que refuta sustancialmente los confinamientos estructurados del orden hegemónico, del cual la sociedad civil es una parte necesaria. Para rastrear esto, nosotros consideramos las formas en que una red de medios de base popular llamada Indymedia se ha establecido y mantenido a sí misma como una organización contrahegemónica de producción de medios. En este caso, un posicionamiento consciente y de autoidentificación como contrahegemónica, ha sido acompañado por la configuración y a veces por vigilancia violenta de nodos y prácticas de esta red como ‘incivil’ al cooperar con las autoridades estatales. Esto es en ausencia de una asociación de esta red con la violencia o la delincuencia. Nosotros pretendemos que nuestras reflexiones contribuyan a profundizar la teorización de los términos ‘civil’ e ‘incivil’ en la medida en que se están usando en los estudios sobre movimientos sociales y globalización.

在本文中我们设问“公民社会”的行为者和组织如何被建构并被视作一个“非公民社会”。本文对“非公民”必然等同于暴力和有组织犯罪的黑暗性质这一概念提出质疑。本文取而代之采用一种葛兰西式的分析,即认为造成“非公民”的是本质上挑战霸权秩序（公民社会是其必要部分）的任何行动或组织。为了求证,我们考察一家叫“独立媒体”的全球草根媒体网络确立并维护其作为一个反霸权媒体生产组织的方式。其中,伴随着一种反霸权的刻意定位和自我认同的,是与之合作的国家当局形塑甚至有时狂暴地管束这一网络的节点和实践,视其为“非公民”。这表明该网络和有组织暴力或犯罪之间缺乏关联。本文意在当“公民的”及“非公民的”概念被用于社会运动和全球化研究时,使我们的反思在能有助于加深这两个术语的理论化。     

Are organizations bicycles? On hosophobia and neo‐gnosticism in organizational thought

Organization has a very complex relationship with contamination in the sense that they both need and fear it. We define this ambivalent or paradoxical characteristic of organization as hosophobic and argue that some forms of contamination are deemed to be dangerous whereas other forms, most notably the contamination of people, are considered as more than welcome. Using some philosophical sources (Deleuze, Sloterdijk, pataphysics, neognosis), we explore the organizational ambivalence towards contamination and ask whether other, new, unexpected forms of contamination are imaginable in organizations. We claim that the hosophobic nature of organizations should be understood within the broader context of a cultural ambivalence in our society towards dirt, hygiene, infection, and immunity.     

Spatial Distribution of Knowledge-Intensive Industries in Hungary

Knowledge-intensive industries have attracted a great attention nowadays in researches because of its contribution to the development of knowledge-driven economy. They generate positive effects on the regional economy and have increasingly high importance in less developed regions, like Hungary. The identification of spatial distribution, the geographical co-location of knowledge-intensive economic activities is substantial to define potential leading industrial branches in regions. This paper aims to identify the spatial coherence and concentration of knowledge-intensive industries nationwide in Hungary at subregional level, and presents results using Ellison-Glaeser geographic concentration index and the measure of spatial autocorrelation with Moran index.     

Who will give effect to the ILO's Maritime Labour Convention, 2006?

The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, which takes effect on 20 August 2013, consolidates dozens of ILO standards adopted since the 1920s. It has been described as the “fourth pillar” of the international maritime regulatory regime, alongside three major IMO Conventions on safety at sea and marine pollution control. The challenge, the authors argue, will be to enforce it within the existing inspection frameworks of flag State implementation and “port State control”. Technically, the responsibility rests on the former, but the proliferation of flags of convenience suggests that the latter will have a crucial part to play too, as will, in either case, inspector training.     

Liberal approaches to ranking infinite utility streams: when can we avoid interference?

In this work we analyse social welfare relations on sets of finite and infinite utility streams that satisfy various types of liberal non-interference principles. Earlier contributions have established that (finitely) anonymous and strongly Paretian quasiorderings exist that verify non-interference axioms together with weak preference continuity and further consistency. Nevertheless Mariotti and Veneziani (2011) prove that a fully liberal non-interfering view of a finite society leads to dictatorship if the weak Pareto principle is imposed. We first prove that this impossibility result vanishes when we extend the horizon to infinity. Then we investigate a related problem: namely, the possibility of combining “standard” semicontinuity with efficiency in the presence of non-interference. We provide several impossibility results that prove that there is a generalised incompatibility between relaxed forms of continuity and non-interference principles, both under ordinal and cardinal views of the problem.     

Un análisis de la relación entre ambiente familiar y delincuencia juvenil

Resumen

En este trabajo se analiza la relación entre las interacciones afectivas y normativas del ambiente familiar, y la conducta delictiva de los adolescentes varones. La muestra del estudio estaba compuesta por tres grupos de adolescentes: no delincuentes, delincuentes no detectados y delincuentes detectados (institucionalizados). Los resultados de los análisis realizados ponen de manifiesto la existencia de diferencias significativas entre las características familiares de delincuentes y no delincuentes. Concretamente, los datos del estudio permiten afirmar que: 1) las variables afectivas parecen más importantes que las referidas a los aspectos normativos para discriminar entre los grupos de sujetos, y 2) entre las variables afectivas serían el apego del hijo hacia los padres y el conflicto familiar las que aparecen como especialmente relevantes para discriminar entre delincuentes y no delincuentes, asociándose un alto nivel de apego/bajo nivel de conflicto con no delincuencia, y un bajo nivel de apego/alto nivel de conflicto con delincuencia.     

Using hybrid models to support the development of organizational evaluation capacity: a case narrative

The ongoing need for public sector organizations to enhance their internal evaluation capacity is increasingly resulting in the use of hybrid evaluation project models, where internal evaluators work with external contracted evaluators to complete evaluative work. This paper first seeks to identify what is currently known about internal evaluation through a synthesis of the literature in this area. It then presents a case narrative illustrating how internal and external evaluation approaches may be used together to strengthen an evaluation project and to develop the evaluation capacity of the organization. Lessons learned include the need to integrate internal and external resources throughout the evaluation and to clarify expectations at the outset of the project.