Hard Economic Times Research Articles

Politicizing Solidarity in Times of Crisis: The Politics of Alternative Action Organizations in Greece, Italy, and Spain

Alternative action organizations (AAOs) are collective bodies engaged in carrying out alternatives to dominant socioeconomic and cultural practices through actions that aim to provide people with alternative ways of enduring day-to-day difficulties and challenges in hard economic times. They are often interpreted as merely “philanthropic” actors, although it is not rare to see them go beyond the provision of direct services to people in need and end up pursuing political goals through political means. This article focuses on the process of politicization, that is, the transition of issues from the private to the public sphere and thus the use of public forms of contention (e.g., protest) proposing public solutions at the collective level instead of private solutions at the individual level. We argue for the role of the crisis in the politicization of AAOs. In particular, we show that the appropriation of the context as a context of economic crisis in the discourse of AAOs has a visible effect on their politicization, in terms of both repertoire of actions and goals. Furthermore, we show that social solidarity organizations, those that are not inherently politicized, are the main protagonists of this crisis-triggered transition. The article draws on statistical analysis of the data collected through the coding of AAOs’ websites in Greece, Italy, and Spain.

Capitalist Family Values: Gender, Work, and Corporate Culture at Boeing by Polly Reed Myers

Capitalist Family Values: Gender, Work, and Corporate Culture at Boeing by Polly Reed Myers

The Domestic Politics of Preferential Trade Agreements in Hard Times

AbstractThere is evidence that some countries negotiate trade agreements during economic downturns. Why would a leader do this? We argue that political leaders can gain from such agreements because of the signals they send to their public. The public are less likely to blame leaders for adverse economic conditions when they have implemented sound economic policies, such as signing agreements designed to liberalize trade and prevent a slide into protectionism. In hard economic times, leaders – especially those in democratic environments – may find that trade agreements are a useful way to reassure the public. Since majorities in many countries around the world view trade favorably, leaders may see agreements that prevent them from adopting protectionism as a way to maintain support. We evaluate this argument by analyzing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) formed since 1962. We find that, on average, democratic countries are more likely to form PTAs during hard economic times. We also find that democratic leaders who sign PTAs during downturns enjoy a longer tenure than their counterparts who do not sign such agreements.

How can downsizing organizations strategically create jobs for disabled people?

Countries implement Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) to help employ disabled people, preferably in regular employment. So far, many employers still have not been successful in creating jobs for people with reduced work capacity. An often mentioned reason by employers is that given the current hard economic times, many organizations engage in reducing the number of jobs instead of creating new jobs. There is a tension between desired social policy outcomes (getting people out of social security into regular jobs) and preferred Strategic HRM outcomes (such as being a highly productive, cost-efficient and flexible organization). In this paper we combine insights from Social Policy and Strategic HRM literature to investigate what employer behavior determines the successfulness of ALMP. We investigate this in a special setting: downsizing organizations. We argue that downsizing organizations who do succeed in employing disabled people reflect a true climate of inclusion. We gathered data among eleven downsizing organizations in the financial industry and five public downsizing organizations. Furthermore, the researchers interviewed three experts on this topic. Although all organizations would like to comply with the ALMP, we found some distinctive features of the HR activities of successful versus unsuccessful organizations.

Service Quality, Behavioural Intentions and Lipstick effect. Evidence from a Masstige context

This paper explores the role of the "Lipstick effect" on consumers' decisions, from a managerial perspective. The chosen research context is New Luxury (Silverstein and Fiske, 2003). During hard economic times, people tend to buy less expensive prestige goods. This "Lipstick effect", first observed in cosmetics, has been noticed in major downturns such as the Great Depression, and the 2008 crisis (Hill, 2012). This paper considers masstige goods as a visible market response to the Lipstick effect. To explore the impact of Lipstick effect, this paper uses income as a moderating variable on the linkage between the major components of service quality and behavioural intentions, in a New Luxury context. 488 questionnaires have been collected within stores of an Italian jewellery retail chain. Results show that perception of store atmosphere still appears to be stronger for higher income consumers; lower-income consumers put a greater emphasis on more material attributes of the offering (i.e., staff interaction).

Social Capital, Economic Hardship, and Health: A Test of the Buffering Hypothesis in Transition and Nontransition Countries

ABSTRACTSocial capital is positively associated with a number of health outcomes, and it is theorized that social capital serves as a “buffer” during economic hard times, reducing the negative quality of life impacts of economic hardship. Using self-rated health as the outcome variable, we test whether social capital modifies the effect of economic hardship in a sample of 35 transition and non-transition countries and multilevel ordinal logistic regression models that interact social capital with economic hardship variables. Overall, we find consistent evidence that social capital improves health but our analyses do not suggest that social capital conditions the effect of economic hardship. Hence, social capital does not appear to act as “buffer” during trying economic times. We suggest that more research is needed to truly understand how social capital improves health.

Alternative forms of resilience: a typology of approaches for the study of citizen collective responses in hard economic times

A variety of theoretical and conceptual perspectives have been applied to studying collective citizen initiatives arising in response to hard economic times, such as solidarity-based exchanges and networks, cooperative structures, barter clubs, credit unions, ethical banks, time banks, alternative social currency, citizens' self-help groups, neighbourhood assemblies and social enterprises. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, scholarly attention on novel, alternative, resilient structures has increased, especially in regions that have been most affected. A comprehensive literature review is therefore needed on these initiatives which usually aim to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, health and education at the community level, or build and envision autonomous communities. This paper has four aims. First, it proposes a new, all-encompassing conceptual framework, alternative forms of resilience, to embrace all issues and groups related to such initiatives, during the new millennium and its economic and political challenges, while taking into account the impact of the 2008 crisis. Secondly, it offers a comprehensive literature review on collective citizen initiatives studied through different theoretical, methodological and conceptual understandings. Thirdly, it provides a new typology of several approaches on novel, collective and solidarity-oriented critical resilience initiatives which take into account political issues, be they policy or social-movement related. Finally, it points to future research areas which would aim to systematically address the political and non-political features of citizen-collective responses.

Alternative Forms of Resilience Confronting Hard Economic Times. A South European Perspective

The aim of this special issue is to contribute to the study of alternative forms of resilience, visible in the economic and noneconomic activities of citizens confronting hard economic times and falling rights in Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, since the global financial crisis of 2008. It does so through a set of recent empirical studies which adopt recent theoretical approaches, such as Social Innovation or Sustainable Community Movement Organizations, and offer new evidence on solidarity oriented practices, including their links to social movement activism. The authors of this special issue contribute to the existing recent debates by highlighting key features of alternative forms of resilience, their links to social movements and theoretical orientations influenced by social movement and resilience studies in four Southern European countries and regions.

Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for America's Food by Camille Bégin

Reviewed by: Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for America's Food by Camille Bégin Holly Allen Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for America's Food. By Camille Bégin. Studies in Sensory History. ( Urbana and other cities: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 223. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-0-252-08170-5; cloth, $95.00, ISBN 978-0-252-04025-2.) Each year sees the publication of multiple New Deal monographs, yet few promise to be as expansive in their appeal as Camille Bégin's Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for America's Food. At its narrowest, Bégin's subject is America Eats, a project launched by the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) in the late 1930s and revived in 1941. Though the onset of World War II prevented the publication of a volume of regional food essays, workers on the America Eats project documented the nation's culinary traditions at a time when American foodways—like so many folk practices—were being displaced by modern industrial processes. Food scholars will be fascinated by Bégin's account of the "expansive body of culinary knowledge, sensory information, and cultural attitudes woven around food" that the FWP staff compiled (p. 3). Writers who locate the origins of American food writing in the 1990s will be pleasantly surprised to learn that such a vast collection of New Deal–era food writing exists. Scholars of the New Deal, regionalism, and U.S. social and cultural history will also find much to admire in this book's pages. Certainly, food deprivation was central to American politics and culture during the Great Depression—images of breadlines and hungry migrant families populated the Depression-era cultural landscape. Bégin argues that New Deal food writers constructed a "counter-narrative … aimed at boosting morale and nationalist sentiment" that was "filled with reassuring images of traditional regional food" prepared at community picnics, festivals, and suppers (pp. 4–5). Bégin's project also adds a rich, sensory perspective to our understanding of the Depression and New Deal policies. While other scholars have addressed the revival of regionalism in this period, the author frames that revival as a dialectic "between regional and national cuisines" (p. 5). Historians of gender and race will also find much to appreciate in Bégin's sensory approach to the New Deal. She emphasizes that in embracing traditional foods, New Deal food writers also embraced women's traditional domestic roles, scorning convenient processed foods that wage-earning women relied on. According to Bégin, New Deal food writers coded gustatory preferences in gendered and racial terms. For example, some writers depicted white women as timid eaters but celebrated the virility of white men who courageously sampled strongly flavored ethnic foods. Throughout Taste of the Nation, Bégin explores how New Deal food writers advanced ideologies of racism and settler colonialism, even as they celebrated authentic racial cuisines. Chapters on southern and southwestern cuisine are particularly valuable; each chapter shows how racial differences were reified in New Deal food writing. Bégin notes that traditional African American cuisine, [End Page 1007] while generally celebrated, carried different and unequal meanings for black people, poor white people, and elite white people in the South as well as for black southerners who migrated to northern cities. While African American foods were celebrated, black people suffered disproportionately from hunger, unemployment, and other forms of racial discrimination. Likewise, even as New Deal food writers celebrated southwestern ethnic dishes such as tacos and chili as authentic American cuisine, white people's hostility toward Mexican Americans and people indigenous to the Southwest worsened during economic hard times. Overall, Taste of the Nation offers fascinating insights into how regional culinary traditions were incorporated into the New Deal's nation-building project. While I love the brevity, liveliness, and focus of Bégin's book, she could have done more to address the organizational challenges inherent in a project that included national and regional editors and a diverse range of project writers and field workers. Given Bégin's careful attention to the racial and gendered meanings encoded in New Deal...

Lincoln’s Two-Faced Hatchet Man

Lincoln’s Two-Faced Hatchet Man Michael Thomas Smith (bio) William Marvel. Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. xvii + 611 pp. Maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00. William Marvel, the author of many books about the American Civil War, in this new biography examines the life and career of Edwin M. Stanton, whose work as Secretary of War in the Lincoln administration led some to hail him as “the organizer of victory” for the Union (p. xv). Marvel finds Stanton to be much overrated by his admirers, both during his own lifetime and in much subsequent historiography. He particularly finds the 1962 biography of Stanton by Benjamin H. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman to be much too favorable. Although conceding that Stanton possessed substantial legal knowledge and administrative ability and was able to manage the War Department far more efficiently than his corrupt, incompetent predecessor Simon Cameron, Marvel for the most part finds little to praise in Stanton’s career and, especially, little to admire in his character. Marvel argues that Stanton consistently and habitually thrived on self-interested deceit and duplicity throughout his life and career. Stanton would tell his powerful legal and political cronies whatever they wanted to hear and assure them that he shared their principles and ideas, presenting himself as a paragon of rectitude and virtue; meanwhile, he shamelessly participating in various behind-the-scenes political cabals aimed primarily at advancing his own interests. Marvel finds that Stanton’s disloyal scheming and intriguing unfairly hurt the reputation of all three presidents in whose cabinets he served. Stanton served as Attorney General in the last days of the James Buchanan presidency, and Marvel contends that he spread exaggerated stories of his own firmness and Buchanan’s cowardice during the secession crisis, which resulted in Buchanan’s competence and integrity being judged even more unfavorably than he deserved. The author finds Stanton to be largely responsible for the wartime civilian arrests and suppression of the antiwar press, actions that mar Lincoln’s record on civil liberties. And he suggests that Stanton’s collusion with and encouragement of unconstitutional tactics by the Congressional Radical Republicans drove a wedge between them and Andrew Johnson, reducing the [End Page 249] likelihood that the president could find an effective way to work with them and contributing to the period’s bitter political polarization. Marvel finds the root of some of Stanton’s character flaws in his childhood and family experiences. He grew up under “the shadow of genteel poverty” in Ohio (p. 5). His father was a physician with a struggling practice during the economic hard times following the Panic of 1819, which left Stanton obsessed with money and status, and willing to do or say virtually whatever it took to acquire and keep both. The author also finds episodes from Stanton’s early forays into politics and a lucrative legal career to be strongly suggestive of his two-faced amorality. Stanton sought favor with rising Ohio political star Salmon P. Chase, assuring the abolitionist leader that he shared his moral abhorrence toward slavery even though a variety of temporizing reasons prevented him from publicly announcing this position. Marvel also examines Stanton’s famous defense of Tammany Hall politician and future Union general Daniel Sickles on murder charges stemming from the fatal shooting of his wife’s lover, Philip Barton Keyes. Although often remembered as an innovative early use of the insanity defense, the jury’s acquittal of Sickles, Marvel convincingly argues, was due to Stanton’s blunt, unapologetic emphasis on male privilege—that a husband’s ownership of his wife’s body implied the right to defend possession of it with lethal force. He finds these episodes to reveal a man far less honest and guided by idealism than he and his supporters contended, despite his widespread reputation for forthright honesty and integrity and for the possession of sincere Christian faith. Stanton was a prewar Democrat, though his political positions tended to be—probably intentionally—vague. Despite his assurances to Chase of his antislavery principles, he did not publicly endorse Republican presidential candidate Lincoln in 1860, and several of...

Good times, bad times: Taxation and electoral accountability

In this article we address two important and related questions. First, do economic hard times make defeat inevitable for any incumbent? And, second, do voters sanction incumbents for a poor economy whatever the economic policy pursued? To answer these questions, we propose a new theory about the ways in which taxation policies, clarity of responsibility, government ideology, and economic conditions come together to shape election outcomes. We address these questions with a new set of data collected on elections, government policies, and economic measures before and during the current economic crisis. Our findings indicate that taxation policies have effects on incumbent electoral patterns net of economic performance measures, but that these effects differ in theoretically-expected fashions depending on clarity of responsibility, government ideology, and whether or not there has been a recession in the year before an election is held.

Exploration of cloud computing practices in university libraries in Kenya

Purpose Modern technological solutions are rapidly changing the information landscape in library and information establishments. One such innovative solution that is gaining momentum in information centers is cloud computing. The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare opportunities and challenges of “cloud computing paradigm” in handling and supporting delivery of information services in university libraries in the face of the present hard economic situation and limited financial budgets. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on current academic literature, document analysis, several editorials and articles on the potential and challenges of cloud computing paradigm in university library and information centers. Findings Cloud computing is proving as the best management practice of salvaging information services in university libraries due to numerous competing challenges and issues in institutions of higher education. University libraries in developing countries face many challenges of inadequate information infrastructure, limited financial budgets, manpower issues and rapid changes in technological systems. In the context of hard economic times, cloud computing is critical in adding value as well as advancing the goals and objectives of modern university libraries. Cloud computing is the “best technology practice” that is poised to play crucial roles in enhancing quality provision and delivery of information services in university library and information centers. There are many competing challenges and claims, but potential benefits count more. Research limitations/implications The study is based on the ideas of cloud services conceptualized from reading academic literature, document analysis, several editorials, articles and professional work experience. The paper identifies that cloud computing paradigm is useful in achieving the goals and objectives of university libraries in this hard economic situation facing institutions of higher learning. Practical implications The paper provides practical insights that cloud computing is the “must have technology” for modern university library and information centers already burdened with the demand to develop effective and efficient technological solutions due to subsequent changing needs of the digital information environment. This study is useful for university libraries, information professionals, information communication technology professionals and university management. Social implications Cloud computing paradigm provides university libraries with the business opportunity to use comprehensive technological solutions with reduced capital expenditure and safe methods of data storage. This eases the inconveniences normally caused by the need to develop and own such comprehensive technological solutions. Originality/value This research looks at the potential of the emerging trend of “cloud computing paradigm” in enhancing quality provision and delivery of information services in university library and information centers in the context of limited financial budgets. Cloud computing has been gaining momentum in Kenya, especially in business organizations as compared to library and information establishments.

Representing the national economic agenda in Latin America: Variation by fat and lean times and party brands

Representation is greater when legislators and voters agree on the national agenda. Under what conditions are higher degrees of “issue priority representation” more likely? Our answer focuses on economic conditions and party branding dynamics, and the case of Latin America. With mass and elite survey data we show that economic hard times and left-leaning preferences increase the prioritization of economic issues. We likewise document fairly high levels of economic issue priority representation in most of Latin America. From the perspective of democratic quality, evidence of representation in this domain is good news; yet, variation does exist. Consistent with our argument that party branding dynamics matter, we find that leftist and centrist parties tend to over-prioritize economic issues relative to their supporters, and the reverse for rightist parties. Further, we find a significant interaction between economic conditions and the ideological brand of parties: in economic downturns the left and the center are more likely to express a strong commitment to economic performance, whereas the right is less responsive to lean times.

A multimodal analysis of storyline in ‘The Chinese Professor’ political advertisement: narrative construction and positioning in economic hard times

This article analyzes a political advertisement known as ‘The Chinese Professor’ and related artifacts from popular culture and news media. This advertisement aired in the midst of the worst economic downturn the US had experienced since the 1930s. The advertisement is set 20 years in the future and uses a fictional Chinese professor to deliver a lecture about the reasons why the US became a fallen empire. Using perspectives from social semiotics, multimodality, and positioning theory, the authors identify five storylines indicative of the ideologies that frame the advertisement and several forms of positioning. The authors demonstrate how micro level design choices position viewers within aesthetic experiences across these storylines and ultimately reflect the macro discourses framing ‘The Chinese Professor’. The authors conclude that these structures work together to create a ‘malignant positioning’ between viewers and ‘The Chinese Professor’.

From Afterthought to Staple: Expanding use of pulses as food ingredient in U.S. diets

From Afterthought to Staple: Expanding use of pulses as food ingredient in U.S. diets

Practical Reason in Hard Times: The Effects of Economic Crisis on the Kinds of Lives People in the UK Have Reason to Value

The capabilities approach (CA) was developed partly in response to the problem of adaptive preferences, which is considered by many to be a fatal flaw in utilitarian approaches to well-being. However, an important critique of the CA is that it is subject to an analogous problem of adaptation to deprivation: if well-being is defined as the capability to live the kind of life one has reason to value, but conceptions of value are conditioned by external circumstances or subject to adaptation, evaluations of well-being in the capability space may suffer similar distortions. This paper investigates the effects of the recent economic crisis in the UK on practical reasoning—on people's conceptions of the good and their freedom to deliberate about the planning of their lives. Using data from the European Social Survey and an Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling approach, it is shown that hard economic times did cause adaptation in conceptions of value, with particularly large effects among the economically vulnerable and the youngest generation. It is concluded that conceptions of value should be included in the definition of capability, and that this strategy can enhance the analytical power of the CA.

Doing good when times are bad: volunteering behaviour in economic hard times.

This paper examines how the 2008-9 recession has affected volunteering behaviours in the UK. Using a large survey dataset, we assess the recession effects on both formal volunteering and informal helping behaviours. Whilst both formal volunteering and informal helping have been in decline in the UK since 2008, the size of the decline is significantly larger for informal helping than for formal volunteering. The decline is more salient in regions that experienced a higher level of unemployment during the recession and also in socially and economically disadvantaged communities. However, we find that a growing number of people who personally experienced financial insecurity and hardship do not explain the decline. We argue that the decline has more to do with community-level factors such as civic organizational infrastructure and cultural norms of trust and engagement than personal experiences of economic hardship.

Libraries in Moldova: The Road to Renewal in Hard Economic Times

The transition from a communist to a democratic society has affected the entire social map of Moldova, including the library network. For over two and a half decades, Moldovan libraries have undergone major changes and reforms: from closed- to open-access stacks; from ideological institutions serving political platforms to public squares in support of democracy; from repositories of propaganda books to information centers serving the information needs of the communities they serve. This paper examines the changes in, and challenges faced by, Moldova’s libraries from 1991, the year that marks the country’s independence, to the present. Various projects—government-sponsored or assisted by international organizations, such as the Open Society Institute and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—are featured.

No end to hard times?

Everyone is agreed that the momentum must continue, despite the well-documented pressures. Underfunding has been reported by the NDNA in its six successive surveys over the last four years. Despite providers’ rising costs, funding paid to them by local authorities is flat. It seems the long-term problems of under-funding are now compounded by the fall-out of recent, hard economic times, which is something of a double whammy.

Government Responses to Foreign Worker Demand During Economic Crises

With the aim of developing existing theories of labour immigration policy, I focus on the question of persisting demand for foreign workers during economic downturns and how governments attempt to respond to this. The argument is that, apart from turning a blind eye to irregular labour migration, there are two ways in which governments respond to demand for migrant labour during economic hard times. First, despite a rhetorical emphasis on restricting labour immigration, they continue to facilitate the entry of highly skilled labour migrants and the employment of migrants who enter a country with a non-economic motive. Second, they encourage resident workers to take up jobs in occupations where migrant workers are concentrated. This hypothesis is borne out in my exploration of French and British government responses to foreign labour demand between 2008 and 2013.