Search Results

The Long Road to Collective Skill Formation in the Netherlands

Karen M. Anderson and Dennie Oude Nijhuis

in The Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation

The current vocational education and training (VET) system in the Netherlands originated in the training initiatives undertaken by private actors in the artisan and industrial sectors in the ... More

The current vocational education and training (VET) system in the Netherlands originated in the training initiatives undertaken by private actors in the artisan and industrial sectors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its central features are corporatist administration, significant state involvement, and the dominance of school-based training. Since World War II, the state has played a more active role in VET, and the general education component of VET has increased. The 1980s saw a return to a clearer focus on the needs of the labor market. By the early 1980s, VET was seen as the mutual responsibility of the state, the social partners, and educational institutions. A major reform in 1994 reorganized and streamlined the system of vocational schools and vocational training, increasing cooperation between industry and the VET system.Less

Building the “Detroit-Windsor Funnel”: Tourism, Prohibition, and Border Politics before World War II

Holly M. Karibo

in Sin City North: Sex, Drugs, and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland

Between 1900 and 1939, industrial growth radically transformed the Detroit-Windsor region. This chapter examines the impact that formal industries, particularly the auto industry and tourism, had on ... More

Between 1900 and 1939, industrial growth radically transformed the Detroit-Windsor region. This chapter examines the impact that formal industries, particularly the auto industry and tourism, had on legal policies governing border-crossing. While more stringent policies developed to control the flow of people and goods by the 1920s, illegal industries also developed in order to subvert customs agents and border-crossing requirements. The smuggling of illegal liquor during Prohibition in particular brought a considerable amount of capital into Detroit and Windsor, and helped gain the region national reputations as cities rampant with sin and vice. The rise of illegal cross-border economies at a time when the Canadian and American national governments were attempting to more fully control their national boundaries demonstrates the limitations to border enforcement during the first half of the twentieth century.Less

Early Problems

Lawrence W. R. Mills

in Protecting Free Trade: The Hong Kong Paradox, 1947–97

This chapter introduces Hong Kong in the aftermath of World War II – a time of upheaval, reconstruction and industrialisation. The author recalls his early years as an executive officer in the ... More

This chapter introduces Hong Kong in the aftermath of World War II – a time of upheaval, reconstruction and industrialisation. The author recalls his early years as an executive officer in the colonial government’s Commerce and Industry Department in the late 1950s. The chapter discusses small-scale industry and entrepreneurialism in the 1950s and 1960s.Less

The ‘post-medieval’ Islamic world

Marcus Milwright

in An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology

This chapter assesses the archaeological evidence from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries, focusing upon the political, economic, and social changes occurring within the Islamic world. ... More

This chapter assesses the archaeological evidence from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries, focusing upon the political, economic, and social changes occurring within the Islamic world. The first section looks at the appearance of two new commodities, coffee and tobacco, and their impact upon material culture in urban and rural areas. This section also deals with the growing influence of European industrially manufactured goods upon the economy and craft sector of the Middle East. The second section considers the archaeology of colonialism with case studies devoted to Portuguese colonies in Morocco and Bahrain, and Ottoman expansion into Greece and the Balkans. This evidence is compared to archaeological studies concerned with Frankish occupation of rural areas of Greater Syria during the Crusader period.Less

An industrious world

I. G. Simmons

in Global Environmental History: 10,000 BC to AD 2000

The technological ability to release the energy embedded in fossil fuels has transformed every aspect of the globe. The starting date is about 1750 and the initial fuel was coal but the addition of ... More

The technological ability to release the energy embedded in fossil fuels has transformed every aspect of the globe. The starting date is about 1750 and the initial fuel was coal but the addition of oil and natural as to the energy repertory has enhanced all forms of impact. Again, scale is important since there can be a drastic transformation of the biophysical environment locally but slighter more insidious effects at a distance. A power station obliterates the farmland under its footprint and also contributes to medium-range acidification of rainfall and planet-wide increases in the concentration of carbon dioxide. The power conferred by access to such concentrated but not renewable stores of energy can be used to equip armies and send them round the world quickly and so enforce imperialism. It can equally be applied to medicine and reduce death rates. Then the knowledge gained by scientific procedures is in a race with the expansion of population. The whole acts as a confirmation of concepts of human conquest of nature experienced at the local level by the substitution of mechanical effort for human labour.Less

The Modern Foundations of Brazilian Cinema

Maite Conde

in Foundational Films: Early Cinema and Modernity in Brazil

The introductory chapter outlines a theory of early cinema in Brazil and its relationship to the country’s invention of modernity. Theories and examinations of early film’s relationship to modernity ... More

The introductory chapter outlines a theory of early cinema in Brazil and its relationship to the country’s invention of modernity. Theories and examinations of early film’s relationship to modernity have by and large focused on the medium’s links to changes and transformations wrought by the advent of industrialization. Noting that such transformations were not present in Brazil, the introduction outlines how early film in Brazil—that is, its arrival and dissemination—were linked instead to a political project impelled by the first Republican regime, one that sought to transform the country into modern nation-state of order and progress. The chapter maps ways in which this imbrication between film and this project laid the foundations for the birth Brazilian cinema and modernity in Brazil. In doing so, it provides an alternative modernity of early cinema.Less

Dragonomics: An Internationalized Development Strategy

Carol Wise

in Dragonomics: How Latin America Is Maximizing (or Missing Out on) China's International Development Strategy

This chapter argues that China’s incorporation of Latin America into its internationalized development strategy stems from China’s need for resources from emerging economies to sustain its domestic ... More

This chapter argues that China’s incorporation of Latin America into its internationalized development strategy stems from China’s need for resources from emerging economies to sustain its domestic development, but this has highlighted the stark differences in institutional strength between LAC countries. To bear this claim out, the author examines the history of China-LAC commercial relations, as well as the similarities and differences between China’s developmental path and that of other East Asian Developmental States. Based upon three developmental themes, the author delineates six of China’s strategic partners in the region into three case studies: first, the free trade agreements pursued by Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru; second, the institutional resource curse suffered by Argentina and Brazil; and finally, the FDI export–led industrialization strategy adopted by Mexico. The countries in the first two case studies have built tighter economic ties with China, opening up more space for policymaking and innovation, while Mexico in the final case study has had less export-led trade with China and comparatively weaker economic growth.Less

From State to Market: A Fork in the Reform Road

Carol Wise

in Dragonomics: How Latin America Is Maximizing (or Missing Out on) China's International Development Strategy

This chapter undertakes a cross-regional comparison of the developmental paths of China and the Latin American countries of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru (LAC 5). It traces the economic ... More

This chapter undertakes a cross-regional comparison of the developmental paths of China and the Latin American countries of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru (LAC 5). It traces the economic histories and policies implemented within the LAC-5 from the 1950s until the 1980s before turning to China to do the same from the 1980s onward. The author argues that the contrasting underlying logic between the Washington Consensus and the Beijing Consensus can explain the widely divergent outcomes in the development of Latin America and China.Less

Ratcheting Down the Industrial Ladder in Mexico

Carol Wise

in Dragonomics: How Latin America Is Maximizing (or Missing Out on) China's International Development Strategy

This chapter analyses Mexico’s deteriorating economic relationship with China, tracing its reform trajectory from the adoption of NAFTA in the 1990s, to China’s WTO entrance, and to the ways China’s ... More

This chapter analyses Mexico’s deteriorating economic relationship with China, tracing its reform trajectory from the adoption of NAFTA in the 1990s, to China’s WTO entrance, and to the ways China’s rise is exacerbating tensions between Mexico and the US today. The author argues that Mexico failed to implement public policies and institutional reforms to bolster companies and position them to perform successfully under NAFTA. Instead, elite policymakers chose to rely on a neoliberal hands-off industrial development strategy, effectively kicking away the ladder of state guidance for industrial promotion, reducing such tools as public credit, tax breaks, trade tariffs, and so on. This led to Mexico’s incorporation into China’s internationalized development strategy as an importer of Chinese goods, which has left it with a massive trade deficit with China over the past twenty-five years.Less

The Islamization of the Iranian Revolution

Manlio Graziano

in Holy Wars and Holy Alliance: The Return of Religion to the Global Political Stage

This chapter explains the likely reasons for the ayatollahs' victory in Iran in 1979

Introduction

David Nasaw

in Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States

A history of American public schooling reduced to graphs would tell a simple story of almost continuous growth. In every category, the graphs would incline upwards, recording a steady rise in the ... More

A history of American public schooling reduced to graphs would tell a simple story of almost continuous growth. In every category, the graphs would incline upwards, recording a steady rise in the number of students in school, the time they spent there, the teachers who taught them, the schools that housed them, and the dollars expended. The upward trend would continue unbroken from the 1820s until the 1970s. We cannot, at this time, chart the downward course that has commenced (if only temporarily) in the mid-1970s. We know only that that part of the American public that votes on school bond issues and makes its opinions known to professional pollsters is no longer willing to spend as much money or place as much trust in public schooling as it once was. It is too soon to predict the future course of public schooling in America, but a good time to reconsider the past. To understand why Americans have grown disillusioned with their public schools we must look beyond the immediate present to the larger history of the United States and its public schools. The public schools of this country—elementary, secondary, and higher—were not conceived full-blown. They have a history, and it is the social history of the United States. This essay will not attempt to present that history in its entirety but will focus instead on three specific periods decisive for the social history of this society and its public schools: the decades before the Civil War, in which the elementary or “common schools” were reformed; the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, in which the secondary schools “welcomed” the “children of the plain people”; and the post-World War II decades, which found the public colleges and universities “overwhelmed” by a “tidal wave” of “non-traditional” students— those traditionally excluded from higher education by sex, race, and class. In each of these periods, the quantitative expansion of the student population was matched by a qualitative transformation of the enlarged institutions. Less

Evolution of State Capitals to the 1950s: The “Purgatory Years”

Christian Montès

in American Capitals: A Historical Geography

This chapter begins to try and explain state capitals place in the American territorial construction and their position in the urban system. To address the developmental delay of many of them, it ... More

This chapter begins to try and explain state capitals place in the American territorial construction and their position in the urban system. To address the developmental delay of many of them, it deals with what could be called the “Purgatory years” of state capitals, up to the 1950s when a majority experienced a slow demographic and economic growth in a fast growing nation and suffered a “Babylonian” image. Capitals often experienced a difficult economic start after having been selected, although they soon became social capitals. They then were mostly ignored by the modernization processes (railroads and industrialization) that reached their fullest extent between 1880 and 1930. Being capital could only boost an existing good or rather good situation and proved unable to create an important economic basis by itself. State boundaries and economic influence are based on two different logics.Less

Remapping Production, Rethinking Monopolies

Jonathan Eacott

in Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830

At the same time as the tensions between Britain and its thirteen colonies led to the American Revolutionary War, the development of industrial cotton cloth manufacturing in Britain made possible ... More

At the same time as the tensions between Britain and its thirteen colonies led to the American Revolutionary War, the development of industrial cotton cloth manufacturing in Britain made possible older hopes of imperial control and monopoly. British innovations in production processes and product development were extended to emulate and reinvent a range of other Indian goods, from hookah pipes to palanquins, which had no markets in Britain but growing markets in India. Nevertheless, British production did not necessarily domesticate such goods, and people in Britain and the United States instead adopted other goods manufactured and fashionable in India. Old economic and fashion patterns continued even as major shifts began in the global geography of production. Once again, the British government needed to craft a regulatory compromise amongst interests in Britain, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.Less

The French Wars and the Refashioning of Empire

Jonathan Eacott

in Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British and American codependence in the India trade heightened, and so too did codependence in British industrial production and American cotton ... More

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British and American codependence in the India trade heightened, and so too did codependence in British industrial production and American cotton cultivation. American ships and merchants provided ready access for British Indian goods into Napoleon’s Europe, and they supplied Britain with raw cotton from the southern U.S. states. Yet the French Wars also reignited conflict between Britain and the United States, and the resulting embargoes and the War of 1812 magnified the dangers of British dependence on American cotton. By the time of the East India Company’s charter renewal in 1813, British production of India goods and the demand for India’s raw materials had eliminated the benefits believed to have come from the Company’s monopoly.Less

Power and Persistence along a Changing River: Industrial Transformations, Ceremonial Landscapes, and Contemporary Reconciliations

Christine M. DeLucia

in Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast

This chapter follows the evolution of the Great River valley in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, an era when industrialization and modernization created anxieties among many Euro-American ... More

This chapter follows the evolution of the Great River valley in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, an era when industrialization and modernization created anxieties among many Euro-American populations, as well as opportunities for enduring Native communities. It accounts for the emergence of Turners Falls as a planned industrial community that harnessed the current of the river for hydropower, and provided an impetus for conservative place-marking efforts among area antiquarians. The chapter takes up a resurgence of efforts by northeast tribes and organizations endeavouring to protect and reinterpret key areas along the river, including a “reconciliation” staged in the early 2000s between Natives and non-Natives, and debates over the treatment of “ceremonial landscapes” in the face of infrastructure development. It considers the nature of monuments that have been rethought by poets as well as local residents, and the implications of critical “graffiti” on these stones.Less

The Concrete Dodecahedron: The Political Economy of Coal, Design, and the Landscape

Lino Camprubí

in Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime

The chapter revolves around a silo destined for coal storage, made of concrete and shaped as a dodecahedron. Eduardo Torroja designed it for the entrance to the new structural and engineering ... More

The chapter revolves around a silo destined for coal storage, made of concrete and shaped as a dodecahedron. Eduardo Torroja designed it for the entrance to the new structural and engineering laboratory, which was built in Madrid between 1952 and 1954 for the Technical Institute for Construction and Cement, which he directed.The chapter explores the economic and aesthetic values behind the silo's striking shape. In doing so, it discovers a project for transforming the Spanish political economy – a project around which much of the scientific and technical research in early Franco's Spain revolved. The chapter utilizes this to delve into the political economy of national raw materials and industrialization. This illuminates the role of the laboratory in retooling the Spanish landscape through water reservoirs and cheap houses.Less

Conclusion

Lino Camprubí

in Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime

The conclusion restates and sharpens the main thesis of the book – Francoist scientists’ and engineers’ active participation in state building. While it points to new areas of analysis to be explored ... More

The conclusion restates and sharpens the main thesis of the book – Francoist scientists’ and engineers’ active participation in state building. While it points to new areas of analysis to be explored by future research, it questions the ‘distorsionist’ approach to Francoist science and technology and proposes to shift the focus toward the coevolution of science, technology, and the state. It points to some similarities and unique features of the Francoist case vis-à-vis other authoritarian and democratic regimes. It reflects on the issue of the moral and political value of science and technology both in historical research and in contemporary debate. Finally, and always from the point of view of technical objects, it points to continuations between the Francoist regime and the subsequent democratic Spain.Less

Gunpowder, Militarization, and Threshold Ecologies in Henry IV Part Two and Macbeth

Randall Martin

in Shakespeare and Ecology

The disputed land-uses and cultivation practices represented in As You Like It responded to unprecedented changes in Elizabethan climate, population, and economic relations. Traditional modes of ... More

The disputed land-uses and cultivation practices represented in As You Like It responded to unprecedented changes in Elizabethan climate, population, and economic relations. Traditional modes of rural dwelling were no longer protected by virtue of their rural isolation or autonomy, but were becoming inescapably tied to national and global orders of competitive growth and resource exploitation. Perhaps the most disruptive of these modernizing turns was the development of gunpowder technologies and the armament industry. As in other western European countries, military culture became ubiquitous in England by the late sixteenth century as a result of innovations in gunpowder weapons and the formation of national armies. During the Middle Ages, low-tech weaponry and feudal mobilization had limited the social and environmental impacts of war. This situation began to change from the fifteenth century onwards with the development of far more deadly cannons, mines, and firearms. Influenced partly by the Erasmian ethics of his Humanist education (like Queen Elizabeth and King James in their attitudes to war), Shakespeare drew attention to gunpowder’s devastating effects on human and non-human animals and their environments in virtually all his history plays and several of his tragedies, even thoughmost of these references were anachronistic. By layering historical and contemporary viewpoints he registered changing material realities and cultural assumptions about the ecology of war: from self-regulating cycles of martial destruction and agrarian regeneration, to incremental technological mastery reliant on ever-increasing resource consumption. Traditional ideas about redeeming war through cultivation are captured by the Virgilian image of beating swords into ploughshares. It suggests that peacetime cultivation will heal wartime damage, and that periods of war and peace routinely alternate. The swordsinto-ploughshares trope also encodes temporal assumptions that the arc of catastrophe, in its political, ecological, and dramatic senses, is limited in scope and ultimately reversible. In this chapter I want to examine the emerging gunpowder regime putting pressure on this paradigm, and replacing it with modern structures of recoiling environmental risk and planetary push-back, represented in Henry IV Part Two and Macbeth respectively. Less