Search Results

Europe's No Fly Zone? Rights, Obligations, and Liberalization in Practic e

Lisa Conant

in The State of the European Union, 6: Law, Politics, and Society

Conant's analysis of the air transport sector suggests how and why the European Court of Justice (ECJ) litigation strategy is not always successful for the individual claimant. In particular, the ... More

Conant's analysis of the air transport sector suggests how and why the European Court of Justice (ECJ) litigation strategy is not always successful for the individual claimant. In particular, the analysis demonstrates that despite the critical role of ECJ air transport litigation brought by individuals throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it was only the legal challenges of EU organizations and major airline carriers, and political mobilization of national executives that ultimately led to liberalization. The first section of the chapter briefly describes the traditionally protected air transport regime in Europe and then identifies legal challenges to restrictions that surfaced during the 1970s and 1980s, traces the evolution of interests in the air transport sector in the 1980s and 1990s, and demonstrates that a shift in political interests was a key component of legal and political pressure for liberalization and institutionalization of the air transport regime at the EU level. The second section assesses the extent to which the air transport market has liberalized and realized the potential benefits of competition, and the third concludes with an evaluation of the relationship between individual action, institutions, and organizations in this sector and other areas of EU law.Less

Artist Activism: Building Occupational Communities in Risky Times

Daniel B. Cornfield

in Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Community in Nashville

This chapter presents a new sociological theory of artist activism that addresses the question of how artist activists fashion their roles as artist activists. Specifically, the theory addresses how ... More

This chapter presents a new sociological theory of artist activism that addresses the question of how artist activists fashion their roles as artist activists. Specifically, the theory addresses how individual subjective orientations shape the repertoire of individual and collective actions and roles assumed and enacted by artist activists. The theory attributes individual variations in role assumption and enactment to artist orientations toward success, audience, risk, and career inspiration. This is a theory-building project of the new sociology of work. Research in the new sociology of work has addressed individual risk-management strategies for advancing individual careers and social mobility of free agents. In contrast, the sociological theory of artist activism presented here addresses how artist activists build a peer community for sustaining the livelihoods of individuals and the whole occupation.Less

Plans and Decisions

John L. Pollock

in Thinking about Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision Making

This chapter turns to difficulties that finally discredit the optimality prescription altogether. These turn upon the fact that actions cannot be evaluated or chosen in isolation. In the general ... More

This chapter turns to difficulties that finally discredit the optimality prescription altogether. These turn upon the fact that actions cannot be evaluated or chosen in isolation. In the general case, the proper objects of decision-theoretic evaluation turn out to be plans rather than individual actions. Although plans are evaluated in terms of their expected utilities, they cannot be chosen on the basis of a pairwise comparison because plans can differ in scope. This chapter proposes an alternative picture, called “locally global planning”, according to which plans are evaluated in terms of their contribution to the agent's “master plan”. However, when engaging in locally global planning, there is always a potentially infinite number of plans that compete with a given plan. The agent must then search for good solutions, and when better solutions arise, use them to replace solutions adopted earlier.Less

Self-contained, Self-expression: The Transformative Generation of Enterprising Artists

Daniel B. Cornfield

in Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Community in Nashville

This chapter examines the subjective orientations and pathways of an earlier generation of Nashville artists who helped shape the community of Nashville's increasingly entrepreneurial, popular-music ... More

This chapter examines the subjective orientations and pathways of an earlier generation of Nashville artists who helped shape the community of Nashville's increasingly entrepreneurial, popular-music musicians. As an artistrtist activist engaged primarily in individual action, the enterprising artist thrives on self-expression, continuous self-instruction in a widening skill portfolio of artistic and support functions, self-promotion, and on maintaining mutually beneficial relations with colleagues. Enterprising artists sustain their ongoing relations with colleagues, as the profiles in this chapter show, by maintaining trusting and equitable, collegial relations, relations that may succumb to interpersonal animosity, rivalry, jealousy, and betrayal. Sociologically, this chapter depicts the subjective orientations toward success, audience, and risk and the career pathways taken by four individual representatives of what is here referred to as the “transformative generation of enterprising artists” of the changing Nashville music scene.Less

Eastern Institutions and the English Trade

Emily Erikson

in Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600-1757

This chapter presents systematic evidence that decentralized, commercially sophisticated ports were preferred by the English Company. The data on Company trading voyages show that they spent more ... More

This chapter presents systematic evidence that decentralized, commercially sophisticated ports were preferred by the English Company. The data on Company trading voyages show that they spent more time in and had longer trading partnerships with ports that were already set up to accommodate the commercial interests of both the Company and employees. These data also cast doubt upon theories that English trade patterns in Asia were driven by the presence of other Europeans. The central finding, however, is that Asian merchants and the commercial institutions they had created before the arrival of the British played a vital role in the expansion of England into the East through their support of decentralized market exchange. Thus the institutional context of the organization in the societies with which it came into contact must also be considered in order to understand the full range of options for individual-level actions.Less

Fixing Britain's ‘broken’ society: from the Third Way to Big Society

Irene Hardill and Susan Baines

in Enterprising care?: Unpaid voluntary action in the 21st century

This chapter presents the objectives of this book whereby it specifically seeks to offer a theoretically nuanced understanding of voluntary work in the 21st century in liberal democracies by linking ... More

This chapter presents the objectives of this book whereby it specifically seeks to offer a theoretically nuanced understanding of voluntary work in the 21st century in liberal democracies by linking three key social science concepts: the ‘sociology of work’, the ‘ethic of care’, and ‘enterprises/entrepreneurial behaviour’. It seeks to contribute to knowledge by offering a feminist-inflected understanding of individual action in that part of the economy that is beyond the state and the market. It notes that it offers a conceptualization of volunteering at three spatial scales: the individual (and their household), the organisation, and the community.Less

The individual approach in activation policy in the Czech Republic1

Tomáš Sirovátka

in Making it personal: Individualising activation services in the EU

This chapter evaluates the activation strategies that are applied in the labour market of the Czech Republic. It studies the role of the individual approach within activation policies, before looking ... More

This chapter evaluates the activation strategies that are applied in the labour market of the Czech Republic. It studies the role of the individual approach within activation policies, before looking at the implementation of individualised activation strategy. This strategy is determined to be in the form of Individual Action Plans (IAPs), which were implemented by employment offices. It then analyses the extent to which the implementation of plans is influenced by the specific notion and discourses of activation strategies.Less

Individualising citizenship

Asmund W. Born and Per H. Jensen

in The changing face of welfare: Consequences and outcomes from a citizenship perspective

This chapter aims to fill a gap in the understanding of the implementation of activation policies. More specifically, it presents reflections concerning the so-called ‘individual action plan’ (IAP) ... More

This chapter aims to fill a gap in the understanding of the implementation of activation policies. More specifically, it presents reflections concerning the so-called ‘individual action plan’ (IAP) that serves as an instrument in the activation efforts in countries such as Denmark. Activation in Denmark is not allowed to proceed in an abstract, unstructured manner. Prior to being activated, an IAP has to be drawn up. It explicitly has to account for the content and purpose of the activation; that is, the means of activation which are employed (such as education or job training) have to be tailored to fit a well-defined ultimate objective. The client has to engage in dialogue with a social worker to negotiate the IAP. This dialogue must be built on the basic understanding that the unemployed person is genuinely interested in becoming integrated in the labour market. Subsequently, another basic premise for this dialogue is that the IAP embodies an attempt at balancing the wishes of the individual with the needs of the labour market. Mutual rights and obligations must be specified in the negotiations and, by signing an IAP, unemployed individuals are obliged to act in the manner agreed.Less

The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State: (1968/1969)

Hans Blumenberg

in History, Metaphors, Fables: A Hans Blumenberg Reader

This chapter focuses on Hans Blumenberg's text, “The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State,” which applies the concept of reality to political theory. The relationship of the state to the ... More

This chapter focuses on Hans Blumenberg's text, “The Concept of Reality and the Theory of the State,” which applies the concept of reality to political theory. The relationship of the state to the norm of peace is conditioned by its reference to reality in a twofold sense: first, to that reality the state claims for itself and manifests in political actions, and second, to that reality it grants to that which it itself is not. The concept of reality is a contrastive concept; it evades definition, for “only that which has no history is definable.” How reality is understood is part of “what is involved in the notion of a form of life,” from which can be understood the complex of actions of an individual or a society — beyond the assumption that there are only responses to stimuli — as the unity of a behavior toward reality that gives itself rules or at least can be reduced to rules. It is the concept of reality toward which theoretical and practical attitudes converge.Less

Pogo: “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us”

Finis Dunaway

in Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images

This chapter considers the origins, meanings, and circulation of the most popular environmental quote to emerge during the period surrounding Earth Day 1970: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” ... More

This chapter considers the origins, meanings, and circulation of the most popular environmental quote to emerge during the period surrounding Earth Day 1970: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Created by the cartoonist Walt Kelly and featured in a poster and his Pogo comic strip, the statement tapped into an important strand of U.S. environmentalism—the emphasis placed upon individual action. At the very moment that the state expanded its role to protect the citizenry from environmental danger, Pogo and other media texts imagined politics in an individualist frame by stressing the personal dimensions of environmental citizenship. Pogo helped popularize environmental guilt, making this emotion central to mainstream framings of the environmental cause. While gas masks conveyed the idea of universal vulnerability, Pogo evoked the notion of universal responsibility, a perspective that ignored the systemic causes of the environmental crisis and constrained the meanings of environmental citizenship.Less

Network Aesthetics: Juliana Spahr’s The Transformation and Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social

Sianne Ngai

in American Literature's Aesthetic Dimensions

This chapter examines two twenty-first-century texts committed to a “philosophy of connection”—one literary, the other sociological—that explicitly take up the challenge posed by the network as form ... More

This chapter examines two twenty-first-century texts committed to a “philosophy of connection”—one literary, the other sociological—that explicitly take up the challenge posed by the network as form and in a way that directly links it to the challenge of creating a more lucid representation of individual and collective action. The first is Bruno Latour's Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005), which Latour explicitly invites us to read as a literary as well as methodological treatise. The second text is American poet Juliana Spahr's The Transformation (2007), a generically ambiguous prose narrative featuring a radically heterogeneous collective protagonist. Read together, these two texts give a sense of what an aesthetics or discourse of pleasure and evaluation based on networks might look and feel like, as well as a sense of the poetics of connectionism's limits.Less

What Can Be Done by Individuals, Associations, and Governments: Time to End the Pied Piper Scenario

Barbara Demeneix

in Losing Our Minds: Effects of Chemical Pollution on the Intellectual Capacity and Mental Health of Future Generations

The tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is well known for its final imagery of a town losing its children as they are led away by a musician clad in multicolored clothes. What is less often recalled is ... More

The tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is well known for its final imagery of a town losing its children as they are led away by a musician clad in multicolored clothes. What is less often recalled is that the cause was the council’s attempts to save money. Children were sacrificed for financial gain. This final chapter argues that actions by individuals in their daily lives, but also within associations and as electors, can be significant and worthwhile. Individual action and lifestyle choices can, to some extent, limit exposure to certain chemical categories. Clearly, pregnant women and nursing mothers need to be informed of potential risks so they can take precautionary action, and the medical profession needs to be trained to help. Ensuring that women do not enter pregnancy in a state of even mild iodine lack is a first inexpensive requirement with immense cost benefit.Less

Sartre and the Phenomenological Gaze: Théâtre Antoine, Paris, April 2, 1948

in Language of the Gun: Youth, Crime, and Public Policy

This chapter begins with an analysis of the phenomenological approach embodied in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre's play Les mains sales offers an illustration of this approach. It represents ... More

This chapter begins with an analysis of the phenomenological approach embodied in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre's play Les mains sales offers an illustration of this approach. It represents one specific manifestation of the phenomenological that shares with other versions, such as rational action theory, game theory, or theories of emotions, an intense focus on individual decision making—on the deeply internal mental processes that dissect motivations, reasons, and desires and produce individual action.Less

Microfoundations in Strategy: Content, Current Status, and Future Prospects

Nicolai J. Foss

in Strategic Management: State of the Field and Its Future

Microfoundations have been one of the key themes in strategy research over the last decade or so. Fundamentally, microfoundations seek to understand collective (e.g., firm)-level constructs in terms ... More

Microfoundations have been one of the key themes in strategy research over the last decade or so. Fundamentally, microfoundations seek to understand collective (e.g., firm)-level constructs in terms of the actions and interactions of individuals. This chapter briefly discusses the nature of microfoundations, provides an exposition of the microfoundational currents in contemporary strategy thinking, and discusses the key challenges that need to be addressed to advance microfoundational research. Chief among these challenges are the development and application of proper empirical methods and developing models of decision-making that are particularly relevant in a strategy context. The latter task involves going beyond expected utility or bounded rationality models and developing models that can address genuine (“deep”) uncertainty.Less

Understanding Environmental Behavior

Elizabeth R. DeSombre

in Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things

This chapter introduces the entire book, which is about what social science can tell us about the causes of environmental behavior and about how to change this behavior. In addition to an overview of ... More

This chapter introduces the entire book, which is about what social science can tell us about the causes of environmental behavior and about how to change this behavior. In addition to an overview of the topics of each chapter, this introduction argues that individual behavior is worth examining: even though each act is in itself an unimaginably small contribution to any given environmental problem, individual behavior aggregates, and collectively these individual behaviors have enormous global effect. Nevertheless the argument of the book is not that we should persuade people individually to change their behavior: doing so is inefficient and ineffective, for reasons elaborated throughout the book. Instead, the focus should be on institutions and on incentives that affect in a larger way the behavior of individuals.Less

Implicit versus Deliberate Control and Its Implications for Awareness

Chris Blais

in Effortless Attention: A New Perspective in the Cognitive Science of Attention and Action

This chapter, which examines the concepts of implicit and deliberate control and their implications for awareness, shows that the effect considered, being associated with strategic control, is more ... More

This chapter, which examines the concepts of implicit and deliberate control and their implications for awareness, shows that the effect considered, being associated with strategic control, is more accurately described by implicit control. This suggests that deliberate control needs to be applied as an explanation after implicit control loses its ability to accurately describe the given data. Implicit control describes those forms of learning or memory to which the learner has no access; implicit learning is compared with the explicit form whereby control assures the learner that he or she controls individual actions. Most of the actions and tasks are governed by both implicit and deliberate control, the only difference being the awareness of actions in deliberate control and inaccessible actions in implicit control.Less

Rethinking Anonymity: Problems and Solutions

Matt Carlson

in On the Condition of Anonymity: Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism

This chapter draws together major themes that persist across the previous chapters. Journalists responded to the struggle over unnamed sources as victims of structural hindrances they encountered in ... More

This chapter draws together major themes that persist across the previous chapters. Journalists responded to the struggle over unnamed sources as victims of structural hindrances they encountered in their work. While contemporary journalism does face complex problems, the chapter argues that we cannot account for controversies over unnamed sources solely through this frame. Such a perspective ignores the relationship between unnamed sources and the status needs of elite journalists and their news outlets. This combination of media structure and individual action complicates efforts to repair journalism. The culture of unnamed sources as it exists benefits sources and journalists—while often ignoring the public interest.Less

Politics of Prayer: Christianity and the Decriminalization of Cocaine in Guatemala

Kevin Lewis O’Neill

in The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism

This chapter analyzes formations of citizenship among Guatemalan Pentecostals, notably in relation to a particular cause—the decriminalization of drugs. It recounts how this cause was championed by ... More

This chapter analyzes formations of citizenship among Guatemalan Pentecostals, notably in relation to a particular cause—the decriminalization of drugs. It recounts how this cause was championed by Harold Caballeros, a former foreign minister and one of Guatemala's leading Pentecostal politicians. This was an extension of the prayer campaigns he had led against drug trafficking in Guatemala. In this connection, churches such as the Guatemala City megachurch El Shaddai provide a body of literature that instructs members on how to win back the capital as well as the country from the Devil. Through field research, this chapter illustrates how interceding in a spiritual war was primarily enacted as a private and personal activity, with prayer sheets kept at bedsides and workplaces and in individual Bibles, rather than used in public spaces.Less

Executory Contracts

Bob Wessels and Stephan Madaus (eds)

in Rescue of Business in Europe: A European Law Institute Instrument

The viability of a business depends on the continuation of its essential contracts at least as much as on a successful business idea. Without an essential licence, without energy and goods supply, ... More

The viability of a business depends on the continuation of its essential contracts at least as much as on a successful business idea. Without an essential licence, without energy and goods supply, without a work force, or a lease, the debtors’ business simply cannot continue. Without the prospect of contract continuation (in whatever form), any option to restructure, but also any value maximizing going-concern sale in a liquidation, is off the table. The termination of contracts—by force of law or based on a contractual clause—due to the commencement of restructuring or insolvency proceedings must, therefore, be carefully considered. Less