Search Results

Conclusion

Lacy K. Ford, Jr.

in Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South

This chapter discusses the upper and lower South's respective answers to the slavery question, which lay in different ways of reconfiguring the institution. In the upper South, that reconfiguration ... More

This chapter discusses the upper and lower South's respective answers to the slavery question, which lay in different ways of reconfiguring the institution. In the upper South, that reconfiguration was a demographic one. The idea of a demographic reconfiguration of slavery emphasized the gradual whitening of the region and depended heavily on continued lower South demand for slaves and an active internal slave trade. The lower South's reconfiguration was ideological in nature, and it revolved around the embrace of race as the chief justification for slavery, the acceptance of white egalitarianism as the ethos of the region's political culture, and the triumph of paternalism as the lower South's prevailing ideology of slaveholding.Less

Strategy and Strategic Positioning

Roy C. Smith, Ingo Walter, and Gayle Delong

in Global Banking

This chapter summarizes the generic processes and linkages that comprise global financial intermediation, the basic financial “hydraulics” that ultimately drive efficiency in the financial system and ... More

This chapter summarizes the generic processes and linkages that comprise global financial intermediation, the basic financial “hydraulics” that ultimately drive efficiency in the financial system and its impact on real-sector resource allocation and economic growth. Maximum economic welfare demands a high-performance financial system. Some of the structural changes that have occurred in both national and global financial systems are discussed. Sequentially, financial channels that exhibit greater dynamic efficiency have supplanted less effiient ones. Competitive distortions can retard this process, but they usually extract significant economic costs and, at the same time, divert financial flows into other venues, either domestically or elsewhere. Next, the consequences of this process in terms of financial services industry reconfiguration are examined, both within and among the four major segments of the industry—commercial banking, securities and investment banking, insurance, and asset management—as well as within and between national financial systems. Finally, the Client-Arena-Product model is presented, which outlines the strategy of financial firms: How should they decide what to do, for which clients, and in which markets?Less

Belgium: a precursor muddling through?

Johan J. De Deken

in Regulating the Risk of Unemployment: National Adaptations to Post-Industrial Labour Markets in Europe

The Belgian case is hard to fit in the triple integration framework. The country never knew a dualist two-tiered unemployment benefit system, in need of benefit homogenization. The transition to a ... More

The Belgian case is hard to fit in the triple integration framework. The country never knew a dualist two-tiered unemployment benefit system, in need of benefit homogenization. The transition to a service sector economy started early, but did not result in a proliferation of atypical employment. There never was a significant transfer of working-age jobless persons to other working-age benefits, as most were entitled to some kind of unemployment insurance benefit. Even though activation measures propagated, the political dynamics of a central state under devolution prevented an administrative merger, and to some extent even exacerbated institutional fragmentation. Rather than a radical reconfiguration of risks, one can observe a form of institutional layering, whereby the unemployment insurance system is attributed additional functions, such as early retirement to facilitate labour shedding, or career breaks, time credit, and service vouchers to offset the cost disease problems of personal service jobs.Less

Philosophical Thought Experiments, Intuitions, and Cognitive Equilibrium

Tamar Szabó Gendler

in Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology

Drawing on literature from the dual‐processing tradition in psychology, the chapter tries to explain why contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that ... More

Drawing on literature from the dual‐processing tradition in psychology, the chapter tries to explain why contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that differ from those evoked by an abstract description of the same content, and hence, why thought experiments may be effective devices for conceptual reconfiguration. It suggests that by presenting content in a suitably concrete way, thought experiments recruit representational schemas that were otherwise inactive, thereby evoking responses that may run counter to those evoked by alternative presentations of relevantly similar content.Less

Consciousness, Exemplars, and Art

Keith Lehrer

in Art, Self and Knowledge

To understand the exemplar representation of conscious exemplars, we need to examine the character of consciousness. I begin with a theory of the epistemology of consciousness. There are certain ... More

To understand the exemplar representation of conscious exemplars, we need to examine the character of consciousness. I begin with a theory of the epistemology of consciousness. There are certain conscious states, those that most attract our attention, that are immediately known to us. Not all conscious states are immediately known, but all conscious states can be immediately known when attention is directed to them. Aesthetic experience directs attention to the sensory character of experience, to what the artwork is like, effecting exemplar representation. Aesthetic attention makes the conscious state an exhibit of what the artwork is like in exemplarization. The conscious state then becomes part and parcel, vehicle and exhibit, of the content of exemplar representation. The point of art is to absorb your attention in the immediacy of consciousness to obtain the insight and autonomy to remake your world and yourself out of exemplars.Less

Value, Expression, and Globalization

Keith Lehrer

in Art, Self and Knowledge

This chapter exhibits the role of exemplar representation in value, expression, and autonomy in art. The value of an artwork is in the experience of the work in the way in which feelings and emotions ... More

This chapter exhibits the role of exemplar representation in value, expression, and autonomy in art. The value of an artwork is in the experience of the work in the way in which feelings and emotions are in the experience of the medium of the work. You experience the sadness or the terror, the happiness or ecstasy, and merit or value, the demerit or disvalue of the artwork in your conscious experience of the work. As you create exemplar representation, as you use the exemplar to mark a distinction, the exemplar becomes a vehicle of representation of cognitive, affective, and evaluative content. The value of art is inseparable from the autonomy it gives us in how we represent our world and ourselves in terms of our experience.Less

Afterword

in Film, Mobility and Urban Space: A Cinematic Geography of Liverpool

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the cinematographic geography of Liverpool. It shows how cinematic geographies are complicit in the production and expansion of virtual spaces ... More

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the cinematographic geography of Liverpool. It shows how cinematic geographies are complicit in the production and expansion of virtual spaces of the city, and how they both constitute and facilitate forms of urban mediation in which cities may be ‘known’ in more complex ways. The chapter describes the influence of films and cinematographic tourism on the way cities are imagined and on the geographical reconfiguration of material urban landscapes.Less

Introduction: Conceptualizing the Welfare State

Lynne Haney

in Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary

This chapter presents reconfigurations of Hungarian welfare from the earliest years of state socialism in 1948 to 1996. The transformations in state policies and institutional practices of the ... More

This chapter presents reconfigurations of Hungarian welfare from the earliest years of state socialism in 1948 to 1996. The transformations in state policies and institutional practices of the Hungarian welfare system are also presented. The welfare system constructed needs in three different ways: socialized, maternalized, and finally materialized. In the first phase, a mother's needs were conceptualized in societal terms by a welfare system that sought to reconstitute institutional relations. In the second phase, a welfare apparatus that sought to reconstitute the role of a mother materialized needs. Then, in contemporary Hungary, in the last phase, a welfare system aimed at the bureaucratic regulation of poverty needs materialized these women. The needs were collapsed into one, material need; their neediness defined in strictly monetary terms. This shift highlights the shifting conceptions of need embodied in both social policies and institutional practices. Differences in the practices of Hungarian welfare—changes in the size of the welfare apparatus and the structure of welfare institutions are also described.Less

Mechanisms of Reconfiguration: Challenging Policies of Separation

Maia Carter Hallward

in Struggling for a Just Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Activism in the Second Intifada

Despite the challenges of unilateralism and separation and the lack of significant socio-political change, activists continued their struggle for peace and justice in 2008. This chapter discusses how ... More

Despite the challenges of unilateralism and separation and the lack of significant socio-political change, activists continued their struggle for peace and justice in 2008. This chapter discusses how some groups modified their approach to change through the mechanism of reconfiguration, which explicitly targets social and political boundaries that have conventionally divided activist groups. The Alternative Information Center and remnants of Ta'ayush, some of who joined the new umbrella group Hitchabrut-Tarabut, sought to create new spaces for interaction, particularly between different “internal” groups, such as Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews or socioeconomic and political activists within Israel and Palestinians from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel. Sabeel, Rabbis for Human Rights and Tarabut sought to integrate religious and secular activists for peace and social justice. In seeking to overcome the structural violence of the occupation in both Israeli and Palestinian societies, reconfiguration efforts aimed for what Galtung calls structural peace.Less

Gender, Spaces, Changes: Emergent Identities in a Scotland in Transition

Neil Blain and David Hutchison

in The Media in Scotland

The chapter opens by noting two key aspects of the construction of Scottish identity which are problematic for gender representation. These are defined as a return to a static past, and the filmic ... More

The chapter opens by noting two key aspects of the construction of Scottish identity which are problematic for gender representation. These are defined as a return to a static past, and the filmic and wider emphasis on masculinity in defining a national identity. The figuring of Scotland as psychic as well as physical space is emphasized and the chapter proceeds to examine patterns of representing gendered identity in Scotland. This includes analysis of gendered and sexualized elements in the rendition of Scotland's past, not least in the Highlands, in cinema; and of the Scottish version of a general theme of ‘masculinity in crisis’. Television drama and sitcom as well as theatre films are referenced in consideration of this theme, with extended consideration of the work of Bill Douglas, Peter McDougall and Peter Mullan, among others. Landscape and peripherality is discussed with a focus on Trier's Breaking the Waves, and there also follows consideration of urban reconfiguration in film.Less

The chronometrics of task-set control

Stephen Monsell

in Measuring the Mind: Speed, control, and age

This chapter reviews recent research from reaction-time experiments on the control of task-set, especially experiments in which frequent changes of task are required. The focus is on the ... More

This chapter reviews recent research from reaction-time experiments on the control of task-set, especially experiments in which frequent changes of task are required. The focus is on the reaction-time cost of a task switch, and the reduction in cost usually observed when the subject has time to prepare for a stimulus and foreknowledge of the task to be performed. The latter phenomenon has been interpreted as an index of a control process, task-set reconfiguration (TSR), being carried out in preparation for the change of task. The discussion addresses the nature of TSR, arguing that a simple associative conception of performance in task-switching experiments is inadequate, although associative binding between stimuli, responses, cues, contexts, and goals undoubtedly contributes to performance. There is also evidence that the fundamental task-set control network humans share with infra-human species is supplemented in humans by processes of linguistic self-instruction.Less

The Outbreak of the Second Ninth-Century Civil War (861–865)

Andrew Marsham

in Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire

This chapter discusses the accession of al-Muntasir following the assassination of al-Mutawwakil. Upon asserting his right to caliphate, al-Muntasir secured pledges of the leading notables of Samarra ... More

This chapter discusses the accession of al-Muntasir following the assassination of al-Mutawwakil. Upon asserting his right to caliphate, al-Muntasir secured pledges of the leading notables of Samarra and al-Mutawwakkiliyya. Like the accession of his father, the pledge of allegiance and the ritual of al-Muntasir's did not take place in the mosque. The first chapter discusses the deposition of Al-Mu،tazz and al-Mu،ayyad. Following the accession of al-Muntasir, Al-Mu،tazz and al-Mu،ayyad were forced to abdicate their claims to the caliphate in the public ritual at the Ja،fari palace. Their abdication and deposition led to the freedom of those bound to them by pledges of allegiance. The second section focuses on the accession of al-Musta،in, the grandson of al-Muta،sim. The demise of the puppet caliph al-Muntasir prompted the Turkish commanders to name a new caliph. However the accession of al-Musta،in was faced with opposition and tensions between the ruling Turkish commanders and the Arab and Iranian populace of Samarra. This opposition comprised a large opportunistic element, which exploited the conflict between the commanders to extract donative payments for their acquiesence. The final section discusses the accession of al-Mu،tazz. Due to continuing tensions, the clique that installed al-Musta،in to power collapsed and brought reconfiguration of alliances within the caliphal court and civil war between Baghdad and Samarra. With the caliph in exile, al-Mu،tazz was made caliph. However, the legality of his accession was questioned as it was seen as a violation of the covenant of succession.Less

Off-Beat Migrancies Musical Displacements in the Hispanic Caribbean

Yolanda Martínez San Miguel

in Displacements and Transformations in Caribbean Cultures

This chapter provides an examination of the intricate processes and problematic lenses through which different Caribbean groups are represented. The study of Dominican merengue and Cuban nueva trova ... More

This chapter provides an examination of the intricate processes and problematic lenses through which different Caribbean groups are represented. The study of Dominican merengue and Cuban nueva trova presented in this chapter is framed within the theories on the reconfiguration of identities of Stuart Hall.Less

Governing tenants: from dreadful enclosures to dangerous places

Pauline Card

in Housing, urban governance and anti-social behaviour: Perspectives, policy and practice

This chapter describes the different roles that have been assigned to council housing since the 20th century. It is argued that these roles are connected to the changing political rationalities, ... More

This chapter describes the different roles that have been assigned to council housing since the 20th century. It is argued that these roles are connected to the changing political rationalities, where the translation discourses define the behaviour of both council estates and individual tenants as problematic. The discussion reveals how the contemporary problem of ASB is able to represent the latest in a continual reconfiguration of the welfare state. This involves the notions of the deserving and the undeserving, and results in the increasing use of legal measures by the social landlords in order to ‘protect’ communities.Less

Planning and land for housing

Madhu Satsangi, Nick Gallent, and Mark Bevan

in The rural housing question: Community and planning in Britain's countrysides

This chapter examines the policies on regional planning and rural housing, and the outcomes of the said policies at the end of the 2000s. It traces the persistence of debate and its link with ... More

This chapter examines the policies on regional planning and rural housing, and the outcomes of the said policies at the end of the 2000s. It traces the persistence of debate and its link with representations of the countryside since the 1970s. It also considers the latest developments, especially the call for a market perspective and more responsive land release. It is argued that one of the implications of strategic market assessment and the drawing of ‘housing market areas’ — that is, that rural areas have no urgent affordability problem because rural residents are able to buy homes in nearby market towns or comparable centres — is an illusion that serves to perpetuate the social reconfiguration of Britain's countrysides.Less

Managed Cancer Networks: Exemplars of evidence-based governmentality?

Ewan Ferlie, Louise FitzGerald, Gerry McGivern, Sue Dopson, and Chris Bennett

in Making Wicked Problems Governable?: The Case of Managed Networks in Health Care

This chapter discusses Managed Cancer Networks, which we see as ‘high performing’ networks due to their successful brokering of complex evidence-based reconfigurations of services. We examine case ... More

This chapter discusses Managed Cancer Networks, which we see as ‘high performing’ networks due to their successful brokering of complex evidence-based reconfigurations of services. We examine case studies of the ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ cancer networks, using the reconfiguration of urology services as a ‘tracer’. In both cases the networks, led by small mixed teams of hybrid clinical-managers, reconfigured urology services, despite resistance from powerful urologists having no direct statutory, managerial, or financial power over the NHS organizations within them. They ‘influenced’ NHS organizations to reconfigure urology services by persuading people that they would improve patient care by changing how they operated and highlighting national guidance, targets, and local data showing that local organizations were providing less than best clinical practice.Less

Social policy in Central Eastern Europe

Serena Romano

in The political and social construction of poverty: Central and Eastern European countries in transition

Chapter one serves as an introduction to understanding the main analytical categories of the present study. We are going to discuss post-communism as a concept and an attempt will be made to answer ... More

Chapter one serves as an introduction to understanding the main analytical categories of the present study. We are going to discuss post-communism as a concept and an attempt will be made to answer the following question: is there a common post-communist model of welfare state? Then the way in which social policies and anti-poverty measures change over time according to normative, distributive, functional and institutional dynamics of reconfiguration will be examined. After this the main topic of the book will be addressed: the social and political construction of poverty and the main “tools” used to define the functions and the priorities assigned to those programmes: targeting, measurement, and, of course, boundaries separating deserving and undeserving poor people. It will be shown that anti-poverty programmes are never “neutral”, but always subject to the ethical, cultural and political frameworks that are used to decide and legitimise who is going to be regarded as deserving of social protection.Less

Conclusion: The Demands of the Day: An Untimely Accompaniment

Paul Rabinow

in The Accompaniment: Assembling the Contemporary

This book describes experiments that attempt to reconfigure, remediate, and reconstruct the forms of the subject position of individualism in anthropology to create a genre of collaborative work. ... More

This book describes experiments that attempt to reconfigure, remediate, and reconstruct the forms of the subject position of individualism in anthropology to create a genre of collaborative work. This conclusion discusses the concept of each parameter and the metric guiding them.Less

The Creole Capital

Nathalie Dessens

in Creole City: A Chronicle of Early American New Orleans

New Orleans was thus, in the early American era, an extremely cosmopolitan city where racial and ethnic groups met, where new immigrants from Europe cohabited with long-established Louisiana families ... More

New Orleans was thus, in the early American era, an extremely cosmopolitan city where racial and ethnic groups met, where new immigrants from Europe cohabited with long-established Louisiana families and seasoned colonials from Saint-Domingue. Catholics coexisted with Protestants; speakers of French, German, and Spanish lived among Anglophones coming from Europe and Anglo-Saxon North America. Such a variegated juxtaposition of racial and ethnic groups could only be productive of a new society. Showing how diversity made for a specific cultural wealth, but also how reconfigurations occurred among the main groups composing the New Orleans society, and how, through progressively increased interaction and a blurring of cultural segregation, the groups influenced and acculturated each other and produced a unique common cultural blend, chapter 6 reassesses New Orleans's distinctiveness in North America.Less