Planned Economy Research Articles

Challenges of transboundary water governance in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has five major river basins which four of them are transboundary and shared with Iran, Pakistan and Central Asian Countries (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan). Transboundary water governance and bilateral or regional agreements and cooperation with riparian countries have always been challenging for Afghanistan. Continuous war and insecurity left a fragile governance system in Afghanistan. Lack of human capacity in terms of policy making and strategic planning and weak economy in one hand and the limited hydro-meteorological data and technical knowledge about Water management on the other hand, alienated Afghanistan from all cooperative frameworks on Amu Darya River and two other its major river basins. In this paper, the initiatives and plans which have been implemented by the Afghan Government and international community for enhancing human capacity and hydro-meteorological data acquisition for developing a suitable mechanism for managing transboundary waters for the purpose of economic growth of Afghanistan and regional cooperation on transboundary water between Afghanistan and riparian countries have been analyzed. However, several challenges still exit in terms of water management in Afghanistan to be tackled in. The challenges which Afghanistan has been experiencing in last forty years in water governance sector based on academic and policy literatures being reviewed and some solutions for overcoming the challenges are provided. In conclusion, steps and measures which further needed to be put forward by the Afghan government and international community to reach a regional cooperation framework on transboundary waters between Afghanistan and other riparian countries are proposed.

The TuS Fortschritt Magdeburg-Neustadt (soccer section) in the GDR – an example of amateur socialist sport

ABSTRACTThe article presents an example of a research project on low-level amateur football league in Communist Germany (GDR). It will be shown what kind of problems the volunteers at the base of sport had to face. The communist economy did not offer modern sport equipment, nor did it provide modern means of transportation or communication. The games had to be organized by sending post cards, and the teams sometimes had to travel to the football fields with the help of a tractor and a trailer.

A Marxist Approach to Communication Freedom

This article is an abridged translation of the section “Produkcija in komuniciranje: nujnost in svoboda” (Production and communication: necessity and freedom) of Slavko Splichal’s book Množično komuniciranje med svobodo in odtujitvijo (Mass Communication between Freedom and Alienation, pp. 123-138), published in Slovene in 1981 after it was defended as a doctoral thesis in 1979. The article, which was among the earliest on its topic, starts with the discussion of Marx’s approach to the freedom of the press in his “Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly”, from the perspective of his later economic critique of capitalism, to show the inherent connection between human communication and work. This indissoluble connection is the starting point of the critique of “critical theories” aiming at “liberating” communication from work and production, exemplified by Habermas’s dualistic conception of work and communication. The concluding part discusses the relationship between communication freedom, rationality, and alienation, arguing that the freedom of communication cannot be founded on its independence from work (material production), but only on the emancipation or disalienation of human labour, and emphasising the danger that, if this does not happen, one-party socialist system with state and social ownership of the means of production and state-controlled economy will deteriorate into a multiparty capitalist system with private ownership and monopolistic economy. The article is followed by an afterword in which the author writes in a retrospect, after 40 years, about political and intellectual circumstances of the self-management socialism, which shaped the development of communication and media studies in “late socialism” – i.e. in the period preceding and heralding the collapse of socialism.

When Racial Inequalities Return: Assessing the Restratification of Cuban Society 60 Years After Revolution

ABSTRACTFew political transformations have attacked social inequalities more thoroughly than the 1959 Cuban Revolution. As the survey data in this article show, however, sixty years on, structural inequalities are returning that echo the prerevolutionary socioethnic hierarchies. While official Cuban statistics are mute about social differences along racial lines, the authors were able to conduct a unique, nationwide survey with more than one thousand respondents that shows the contrary. Amid depressed wages in the state-run economy, access to hard currency has become key. However, racialized migration patterns of the past make for highly unequal access to family remittances, and the gradual opening of private business disfavors Afro- Cubans, due to their lack of access to prerevolutionary property and startup capital. Despite the political continuity of Communist Party rule, a restructuring of Cuban society with a profound racial bias is turning back one of the proudest achievements of the revolution.

An energy storage capacity optimization method based on partition

With the vision of large-scale deployment of grid-connected distributed energy storage system (ESS) in the distribution network, it is necessary to study the capacity optimization of ESS for striking a balance among investment, renewable energy (RE) consumption, power supply security and price arbitrage. In this paper, an ESS partition model based on the improved flame propagation model is proposed. The results of ESS partition are obtained by constructing indexes such as the flammability of nodes, the wind direction of flame propagation, and the speed of flame propagation. Then, an optimization method for ESS capacity in partition is established, which is to maximize the annual net profit and the integer programming method is used to solve the model. Finally, the effectiveness and feasibility of the method are verified by conducting case studies on the IEEE 33 bus distribution network system. The case study results show that the rational configuration of ESS capacity can improve the economy of planning, and the proposed method can improve the Photovoltaic (PV) local consumption ability and power supply reliability of distribution network.

The Utopian Internet, Computing, Communication, and Concrete Utopias: Reading William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and P.M. in the Light of Digital Socialism

This paper asks: What can we learn from literary communist utopias for the creation and organisation of communicative and digital socialist society and a utopian Internet? To provide an answer to this question, the article discusses aspects of technology and communication in utopian-communist writings and reads these literary works in the light of questions concerning digital technologies and 21st-century communication. The selected authors have written some of the most influential literary communist utopias. The utopias presented by these authors are the focus of the reading presented in this paper: William Morris’s (1890/1993) News from Nowhere, Peter Kropotkin’s (1892/1995) The Conquest of Bread, Ursula K. Le Guin’s (1974/2002) The Dispossessed, and P.M.’s (1983/2011; 2009; 2012) bolo’bolo and Kartoffeln und Computer (Potatoes and Computers). These works are the focus of the reading presented in this paper and are read in respect to three themes: general communism, technology and production, communication and culture. The paper recommends features of concrete utopian-communist stories that can inspire contemporary political imagination and socialist consciousness. The themes explored include the role of post-scarcity, decentralised computerised planning, wealth and luxury for all, beauty, creativity, education, democracy, the public sphere, everyday life, transportation, dirt, robots, automation, and communist means of communication (such as the “ansible”) in digital communism. The paper develops a communist allocation algorithm needed in a communist economy for the allocation of goods based on the decentralised satisfaction of needs. Such needs-satisfaction does not require any market. It is argued that socialism/communism is not just a post-scarcity society but also a post-market and post-exchange society.

The theoretical basis of the digital economy in the strategic planning documents

The article analyzes the definitions of the concept "digital economy". The study considers the strategic planning documents of the different states, dedicated to the project of digital economy, as the object of investigation. The subject of research is the interpretation of the category "digital economy". The theoretical and methodological issues in the study of the digital economy are considered. The paper makes an attempt to substantiate the problems that will follow in the implementation of the strategy under the conditions of a weak methodological basis for describing the existing techno-economic picture of the world. Among such problems, we emphasize the lack of attention to the production relations in the presented interpretations. We consider that building a digital economy, as a high-tech production ecosystem, will not do without understanding the essence of a new type of production relations. Without this understanding, it will be problematic to build the institutional basis of the digital economy and to create a regulatory framework to control emerging relationships in the digital economy. The paper critically analyzes the existing interpretations of the digital economy, presented in the strategic planning documents, and reveals the author's understanding of the studied category.

The Intergenerational Persistence of Self-Employment across China’s Planned Economy Era

Children whose parents were self-employed before China’s socialist transformation were more likely to become self-employed after the economic reform, even though they had no direct exposure to thei...

Facilitating Circular Economy in Urban Planning

A shift towards a more Circular Economy is crucial to achieve a more sustainable and inclusive built environment that meets future demands. Circular Economy is a promising concept for industry and society. If implemented well, Circular Economy can deliver environmental benefits and economic advantages for which innovation is essential. To achieve a resource-efficient built environment the Circular Economy should be developed and implemented systemically and on a large scale, going beyond cities. To realise this, local authorities, citizens, and other stakeholders need a collaborative and science-informed decision environment that allows for developing different waste and resource management options, and assessing their impacts on the environment, resilience, spatial quality and quality of life. The articles in this special issue all discuss different aspects of research to deliver solutions and strategies for a circular economy in urban planning throughout Europe, focusing on peri-urban locations. The first rticle introduces Living Labs as a methodology to co-create circular solutions and strategies with local stakeholders. The second article focuses on governance for the shift towards a Circular Economy, unravelling hindrances and revealing objectives, whereas the third article develops a means to transfer circular strategies and solutions from one location to another. The fourth article presents an open-source tool based on the geodesign approach which links the co-creation of design proposals to impact simulations informed by geographic contexts, systems thinking, and digital technology—the Geodesign Decision Support Environment. Finally, the fifth article presents the first results of incorporating the concept of Circular Economy in an integrative manner in urban design and planning courses.

L’Association des États de la Caraïbe et la planification spatiale marine

L’association des Etats de la Caraibe forme un territoire archipelagique ou la mer est consideree comme un patrimoine commun. Les Etats de la Caraibe ont connu une augmentation des activites et des usages en mer, en particulier liee au tourisme, au trafic maritime et a la peche. C’est pourquoi des demarches de protection de l’environnement littoral et maritime ont ete lancees, sous la forme d’Aires marines protegees. Recemment certains Etats ont souhaite s’inscrire dans un mouvement international plus large d’amenagement de l’espace maritime, la Planification spatiale marine. Cet article propose d’analyser les objectifs et les avancees de la mise en œuvre de la Planification spatiale marine dans les Caraibes.

Fine-Resolution Population Mapping from International Space Station Nighttime Photography and Multisource Social Sensing Data Based on Similarity Matching

Previous studies have attempted to disaggregate census data into fine resolution with multisource remote sensing data considering the importance of fine-resolution population distribution in urban planning, environmental protection, resource allocation, and social economy. However, the lack of direct human activity information invariably restricts the accuracy of population mapping and reduces the credibility of the mapping process even when external facility distribution information is adopted. To address these problems, the present study proposed a novel population mapping method by combining International Space Station (ISS) photography nighttime light data, point of interest (POI) data, and location-based social media data. A similarity matching model, consisting of semantic and distance matching models, was established to integrate POI and social media data. Effective information was extracted from the integrated data through principal component analysis and then used along with road density information to train the random forest (RF) model. A comparison with WordPop data proved that our method can generate fine-resolution population distribution with higher accuracy ( R 2 = 0.91 ) than those of previous studies ( R 2 = 0.55 ). To illustrate the advantages of our method, we highlighted the limitations of previous methods that ignore social media data in handling residential regions with similar light intensity. We also discussed the performance of our method in adopting social media data, considering their characteristics, with different volumes and acquisition times. Results showed that social media data acquired between 19:00 and 8:00 with a volume of approximately 300,000 will help our method realize high accuracy with low computation burden. This study showed the great potential of combining social sensing data for disaggregating fine-resolution population.

A new estimate of Lithuanian GDP for 1937: How does interwar Lithuania compare?

Utilizing archival data from the Lithuanian Central Bureau of Statistics, we piece together the most complete gross domestic product (GDP) figure during the interwar period for Lithuania in accordance with the System of National Accounts (SNA 2008). Lithuania and the other Baltic states have largely been ignored by economic historians due to the short time spans of their independence in the interwar period (1918–1940), their relatively small sizes, and the scarcity of data—we attempt to fill this gap in the historical record. As a practical application of our new GDP estimate for 1937, we convert our estimate into 1990 Geary–Khamis dollars so that we can test the hypothesis that Lithuanian economic growth under communism was below average when compared to its European neighbors using data from the Maddison Project. We find that the economic growth rate in Lithuania was above average from 1937 to 1973, even when compared to other communist economies. Alternatively, from 1973 to 1990, growth collapsed and was below average. Using a difference-in-difference strategy we also find a significant GDP per capita penalty for communist countries in Europe over the studied time periods.

The G20’s Future

The Group of Twenty (G20) was created at the ministerial level in response to the global financial crisis that erupted from Asia in 1997, and then at the leaders’ level after the greater crisis from the United States in 2008. These crises called into question the core principles and practices of the dominant liberal order and its core international institutions, based on economic, social and political openness, developed since 1944. The G20 combined all established and emerging countries with high capability and connectivity to operate as equals to fulfill its dual distinctive foundational mission of promoting financial stability and making globalization work for all. Since its first summit in 2008 its performance spiked at Hamburg, Germany in 2017 and remained solid at Buenos Aires in 2018. These latter summits coped well with the new populist, protectionist U.S. president and a UK prime minister withdrawing her country from the European Union. G20-supported initiatives for rules-based open trade, climate change control and security were advanced. No other global summit emerged to govern an increasingly globalized world. With the forces that propelled this rising performance growing, future G20 summits promise to perform well along this proven path. The next summit, in Osaka, Japan on 28-29 July 2019 will be hosted by a country that has never sparked a financial crisis, remains dedicated to the core liberal order and is becoming more economically and even demographically open in response to the growing vulnerabilities it and its G20 partners face. After a test in 2020 when the G20 summit will be hosted in Saudi Arabia - a still closed polity with a single staple, state-controlled economy - G20 stewardship returns to democratic, economically open Italy in 2021 and India in 2022.

Digital planification in maxillar reconstruction for a carcinoma

Digital planification in maxillar reconstruction for a carcinoma

Classification and analysis of social participation initiatives in a post-industrial city – a case study of Pabianice

Abstract This paper deals with the transformations of (post)industrial towns in Poland, which took place during the transition from a centralised communist economy to liberal capitalism. As a consequence, a number of areas became redundant. These malfunctioning spaces represent serious spatial, social and economic problems. The complex multifaceted nature of towns means, however, that there were no simple solutions leading to immediate improvements. Investments focused on particular, isolated areas appeared to be far from sufficient interventions. Therefore, comprehensive programmes aimed at holistic urban regeneration are more common nowadays. Since local community wellbeing is one of the key factors in these renewal schemes, social participation is a crucial part of the process. This allows residents to have an influence on the regeneration of their town, which (if well carried out) is expected to improve space, economy and quality of life. The above-mentioned issues will be analysed on the basis of a case study of Pabianice, a post-industrial town in the province of Lodz. The aim of this study is to examine the social participation initiatives implemented during the preparation of the Regeneration Programme for Pabianice – to classify them and to compare them with models regarding the level of social involvement and power in the urban regeneration process described in the paper.

Władysław Dziadoń, the Kraków ‘King of Shoes’

The Kraków shoemaker Władysław Dziadoń was called the king of shoes among citizens of Kraków. He worked in shoemaking between the years 1920 and 1955. His dream was to create a company of comparable significance to the Czechoslovakian Bata shoe company. During the years of the German occupation in the Second World War, he provided support to the resistance movement, without giving up the business of producing shoes. While he was hopeful that after the war he would be able to realize his dreams and aspirations, the conditions of a totalitarian state and the communist economy meant that these plans were never able to materialize. He was persecuted by the communist state, and in 1955 he had to close his shoe company. In the collections of the National Museum in Kraków there are thirty pairs of shoes made by his company, another three pairs are preserved in a private collection. This high-quality footwear is the only material legacy of Władysław Dziadoń's skills as a producer of shoes. This article illustrates the fate of a shoemaker and entrepreneur in the era of the German occupation (1939–1945) and Stalinism (1945–1955).

La interrelación de las agendas mediática y pública en función del desarrollo social. Un estudio transformativo

Desde 2010 el estudio de las agendas sociales en Cuba -y específicamente de las relaciones entre las agendas de los medios y los temas de interés ciudadano-ha develado profundas divergencias respecto a cómo se involucran estos actores para definir la realidad temática. La emisora Radio Titán, del municipio Mella, en la provincia Santiago de Cuba, es pionera en proponerse transformar la situación descrita a partir dela revisión y renovación de su modelo comunicacional y el modelo comunicacional comunitario. Se persigue lograr mecanismos de interrelación dialógica entre su agenda y la de los habitantes de la comunidad, que permita la acción social y el desarrollo participativo a través de la visibilización y diálogo colectivo sobre los problemas comunitarios. El estudio se desarrolla desde 2015 y contó con una etapa diagnóstica previa. Esta disertación presenta reflexiones teóricas, metodológicas y un sistema de acciones culturales para lograr la interrelación dialógica de las agendas. El método utilizado fue la Investigación Acción Participación y lastécnicas de Matriz DAFO y Taller Participativo. Asimismo, se aplicaron los principios del Desarrollo Organizacional y la Planificación Estratégica.

Development of Clusters in Poland

Similar recent history (former communist economies), geographical position (central Europe), relatively small size (except Poland), political systems (parliamentary democracies) and EU membership define Visegrad countries as the perfect group to compare with Slovenia. When we analyse the stock of inward foreign direct investments (IFDI) in comparison to GDP in Slovenia and all Visegrad countries, noticeable differences appear. With 30.5% (December 2016) the stock of IFDI in Slovenia was much lower than the comparable data for Poland (39.4%), Slovakia (48.8%), Czech Republic (60.0%) and Hungary (64.3%). Also the trend of the IFDI share of GDP shows that the differences between Slovenia and Visegrad countries will not diminish noticeably in the forthcoming years. We try to verify whether the explanation of this phenomenon can be realized with the help of well-known cross-cultural models. In other words, is there a country-specific cultural dimension which influences whether Slovenia receives less IFDI than the Visegrad countries? In what ways is this dimension an influence on Slovenia receiving less IFDI? We conclude that the lack of IFDI has to be attributed to Slovenian particularities rather than significant cross-cultural differences when compared to Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia.

SFS 1-85 (1973-2001) Available

216 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) currency. Sometimes publishers had to pay in foreign currency, which was always scarce in the communist economy; but science-fiction rights were not high on a list of commodities to be bought for hard currency. If Dick had insisted on a payment in dollars, Ubik simply would not have appeared in a Polish translation in 1972. But Lem got enough money from other socialist countries—at official exchange rates. If he traveled to Prague and Bratislava (in the 1950s and 1960s it must have been), it was presumably on shopping sprees. In Poland itself, with its economy of dearth, many things simply were not available. Czechosovlakia was a relatively rich country, its cities had not been destroyed by the war, and stores were well stocked, much better than in Poland; so his Czechoslovak income was valuable there, but pretty worthless in Poland, for lack of goods to be bought. Although printings were large in Communist times, books were cheap, and the money not worth much. And in the 1970s, when Lem’s books took off in the German Federal Republic (where he got more royalties than in the rest of the world combined), he earned millions of German marks, which he could dispose of in Poland at blackmarket rates. Then Lem’s income from Communist countries became simply negligible and irrelevant. In Poland, the US dollar was the unofficial currency; its value was excessively high, and for German marks or dollars you could buy in Poland things that were not available otherwise. In this way, Italian marble intended for the renovation of Wawel Castle turned up in the bathrooms of Lem’s luxurious new house, which he had built in the late 1970s. And with his mounting success abroad (while he was neglected at home), his position became in reality unassailable. If Lem often traveled (in the 1970s and early 1980s) to (West)Berlin, it was because the city could be easily reached by car and the East German border-guards, unlike the Polish ones, knew and liked Lem’s books and did not search his car. In addition, because of the special political status of Berlin, Poles could enter the city without needing visas for the German Federal Republic, so there was no red tape to be overcome.—Franz Rottensteiner, Vienna SFS 1-85 (1973-2001) Available. Here is an opportunity for some lucky SFS reader to acquire all the issues from the first, in 1973, up until the end of 2001. All 85 issues are in at least good condition and almost all of them are like new. The SFS website offers the issues from 1980 on. But 20 numbers from 1980 to 2001 are no longer available there, and all issues prior to that date are sold out. Furthermore, the price at that source is $20 each. At $20 each, my holding would come to $1,700. My price, $475, is therefore less than 30% of what you would have to pay if all 85 issues were available from SFS itself. Moreover, my asking price includes shipping (but only to US and Canadian addresses). I also have a number of post-2001 issues available if you can send me a wantlist at .—RMP Call for Essays on “Intersectional Automations: Robotics, AI, Algorithms, and Equity.” This collection will explore a range of situations where robotics, biotechnological enhancement, artificial intelligence (AI), and algorithmic culture collide with intersectional social-justice issues such as race, class, ...

Lem, Philip K. Dick, and Royalties in the Soviet Era

215 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE Lem, Philip K. Dick, and Royalties in the Soviet Era. Marcin Wo³k’s review essay on “Stanis³aw Lem, Holocaust Survivor” (SFS 45.2 [2018]): 33240 ) offers a balanced review of the books by Agnieszka Gajewska and Wojciech Orliñski, including the fact that Lem’s statements about himself are not to be trusted; yet it also contains mistakes and inaccuracies, supposedly because the reviewer takes Orliñski at face value. In note 13, for instance, Wo³k claims that Lem already foresaw in his Dialogi (1957) that “no totalitarian regime could be sustained in the long run because there would be no positive feedback from society” (339); he is obviously referring to the essay “Cybernetyka stosowana: przyk³ad z diedziny socjologii” [Applied cybernetics: an example from the realm of sociology]. But this was added as “Annex I”—“Dialogi po szesnastu latach” [Dialogues after 16 years]—in the second edition of Dialogi in 1972. In 1957 there could hardly have been published in Poland an essay that opens with the statement that “So far there exists no textbook on the pathology of socialist administration.” This piece is, by the way, Lem’s most open political statement in Communist times, and his best political essay. So much for the increased censorship after 1970! Yet in 1972 it is far less impressive a prophecy than it would have been in 1957. Wo³k argues that “Lem’s letters to his most important translators and publishers (Franz Rottensteiner, Michael Kandel, Wolfgang Thadewald, Virgiljus Èepaitis)” (337) also constitute a significant source. Michael Kandel was of course an important Lem translator, and about the only one with whom he conducted an extensive correspondence. But as far as I can find out, Virgilijus Èepaitis, the Lithuanian translator, publisher, and politician, translated only Lem’s “The Chain of Chance” (into Russian) and never was Lem’s publisher. Wolfgang Thadewald was a German science-fiction fan and Lem’s agent for the German language. Unless one counts my sf fanzine, I was never Lem’s publisher, though I was his literary agent up to 1995 in the West (with the exception of Germany) and a free-lance editor for the Insel/ Suhrkamp group responsible for many of Lem’s German appearances. But I never was a “major” Lem translator. I Englished just a few of Lem’s critical writings from German and translated Lem’s “Mein Leben” into English; it had been commissioned by Gale Research for the first volume of their CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL series. When Lem learned that the fee was $1,000, he wrote the piece at once in German, assuming that I would translate it into English. I did and then sold magazine rights for $10,000 to The New Yorker, where it appeared as “Chance and Order” (30 Jan. 1984). The Gale Research publication, which contains photos, is apparently unknown in Poland. The review claims that “in the socialist economic reality, the royalties from foreign film-makers and publishers had to be collected abroad in person and spent there” (337). This does not apply to Lem, for of course there existed a system for the transfer of royalties among socialist countries. The case of Philip K. Dick is quite different, for Dick had signed a contract specifying payment in Polish zloties. And those zloties were not transferable into hard 216 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) currency. Sometimes publishers had to pay in foreign currency, which was always scarce in the communist economy; but science-fiction rights were not high on a list of commodities to be bought for hard currency. If Dick had insisted on a payment in dollars, Ubik simply would not have appeared in a Polish translation in 1972. But Lem got enough money from other socialist countries—at official exchange rates. If he traveled to Prague and Bratislava (in the 1950s and 1960s it must have been), it was presumably on shopping sprees. In Poland itself, with its economy of dearth, many things simply were not available. Czechosovlakia was a relatively rich country, its cities had not been destroyed by the war, and stores were well stocked, much better than in...