Charles Sheeler's imprecise precisionism

Abstract

In this article I address the significance of a series of images of New York skyscrapers fundamental to the work of American modernist painter and photographer Charles Sheeler (1883–1965). The article examines three works – a photograph, a drawing and a painting – produced between 1919–23 of the same scene: the rear of the Park Row Building, Manhattan. I argue that these images introduce imprecisions that disrupt the notion of Sheeler as the pre-eminent Precisionist artist. Following aspects of Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, I suggest that Sheeler's works adopt the language of rationalization whilst remaining critical of it. As such, the more positive conceptions of Sheeler's skyscraper works are juxtaposed against the actuality of the imprecision in the works, a dialectical move that unveils a negative critique of the rationalized culture of American modernity.     

The Price of 'Free' Trade: NAFTA and the Economies of Border Crossing in George Rabasa's The Floating Kingdom and Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead

Abstract

Under contemporary US immigration policy, the US-Mexico border has become a new 'American Frontier', a 'Tortilla Curtain' that marks the edges of nation and of national knowledge. As a result of such US policies and the increased cultural and political tensions in the area that result from them, the border region has more clearly emerged imaginatively and culturally as, in Gloria Anzaldúa's terms, a 'third country'. This paper analyses that 'third country' and its relationship to an arbitrarily imposed and emphatically enforced political and cultural border in the work of the Chicano writer George Rabasa and the Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko. Both Rabasa and Silko actively map a wide variety of ethnicities and cultures into the physical border region itself, engaging with the complex relationships between culture and nature, community and place. Both also emphasise an increasingly transgressive and transnational perspective. In this context, both writers highlight and expose the indeterminacy, fragility and permeability of borders of all kinds.     

A STUDY OF THE UTILIZATION OF CAPACITY CONSTRAINED RESOURCES IN DRUM‐BUFFER‐ROPE SYSTEMS*

Goldratt, the originator of the Theory of Constraints (TOC), maintains that only the system's primary resource constraint(s) should be scheduled at 100% of capacity. All other resources should have excess capacity. This paper presents the results of a simulation experiment that studies how changes in the capacity utilization of a systems two most heavily utilized resources affect the performance of a drum‐buffer‐rope (DBR)scheduling system. The research demonstrates that 100% utilization of the primary constraint is not optimal. It also shows that DBR responds well to relatively low levels of increased capacity at the operations second most heavily utilized resource. This research also highlights several other issues related to capacity utilization that need further investigation.     

World Cities and Global Commodity Chains: an introduction

The purpose of this special anniversary issue is to assess the possible cross-fertilization between two prominent analytical frameworks: the World City Network framework, in which researchers have studied the emergence of a globalized urban system for the provision of a host of advanced corporate services; and the Global Commodity Chain framework, in which researchers have scrutinized the interconnected functions, operations and transactions through which specific commodities are produced, distributed and consumed in a globalized economy. These two approaches have developed in parallel but have rarely been brought together. This introductory essay identifies the common roots and recent history of these two frameworks, and outlines how the six articles contribute to their theoretical and empirical cross-fertilization.     

When do value chains go global? A theory of the spatialization of global value chains

In this article, I synthesize and extend the theoretical literature on global commodity chain (GCC) and global value chain (GVC) governance to generate a theory of the ‘globalness’ of value chains and the spatialization of value chain linkages. Drawing from the original GCC dichotomy of buyer/producer‐driven commodity chains, I emphasize the height of entry barriers to manufacturing and supplier capability differentials across the North–South divide as determinants of the amount and geographic extent of global offshoring behaviour. Using a novel empirical approach to the measurement of global offshoring behaviour at the global industry level, the article shows that the original GCC governance scheme successfully predicts the levels, rates and timing of global production fragmentation across three networked industries. Combining the original GCC governance scheme with the more recent GVC governance types, the theory leads to predictions about the specific types of GVC linkages that might occur given the drivenness of a chain and the geographical location of lead firms and their suppliers. I conclude by drawing out the theory's implications for our understanding of the link between value chain formation and economic development in the global South and suggesting areas for future research.     

LOOKING AHEAD BY LOOKING BACK: SWIFT,EVEN FLOW IN THE HISTORY OF MANUFACTURING

Manufacturing history is too often neglected in operations management and its lessons lost. Its usefulness for testing theory is under-appreciated. This paper uses critical aspects of the history of manufacturing to provide support for the Theory of Swift, Even Flow as an explanation of productivity gain. The rise of Britain in the Industrial Revolution and the rapid overtaking of Britain by the United States and Germany are argued to be thoroughly consistent with Swift, Even Flow, thereby vindicating both theory and the usefulness of history.     

Student Perspectives on Homelessness: Contact Is Related to Helpful Attitudes

Abstract

Research in the U.S. population shows that contact with homelessness, like exposure to social diversity, is associated with more helpful attitudes, promoting greater social responsibility and civic engagement. This article empirically examines the theory that students who have greater contact with homelessness through the media, schooling, and direct experiences also have more helpful attitudes about homelessness. Survey data support hypotheses to show that students who have more contact with or exposure to homelessness are significantly more accepting of structural explanations of homelessness and poverty, less likely to consider homelessness a community burden, and more willing to help reduce homelessness. Including homelessness in educational curricula helps increase student contact with homelessness, building structural explanations and promoting more helpful attitudes towards homelessness. Teaching and learning about homelessness can help students and teachers fulfill ethical obligations to engage with communities, take civic responsibilities, and improve society.     

'I know for certain . . . that these are bad people': The Intractable Problem of Guantánamo

Abstract

In 2003 George W. Bush offered a black and white depiction of the detainees held within Guantánamo Bay. Having removed all their legal and constitutional protections and imposed an absolute executive authority, Bush baldly asserted that they were 'bad people'. Yet, ironically, by taking these measures, Bush also visited upon the US problems and threats that Barack Obama still struggles to resolve. Bush's solution created a new set of dilemmas, since the detainees, cast into the position of 'bare life', in Giorgio Agamben's phrase, stripped of their legal rights, were in a situation where they also collectively situated the Guantánamo Bay camps as a hub at the centre of a hybrid network — one arguably possessing both weak ties and 'small world' hub-centeredness. This hub has weak ties, in that the network has been randomized in the node's multinational assemblage of detainees, linking all over the world, so generating a network which has the potential for high connectivity, yet it is also a network that has the robust compactness of a small world network, in that it is defined around the GiTMO camps. This makes it a particularly potent source of networked resistance to the camps and of terrorist collaboration via a process of network densification.