Rigid Hierarchy Research Articles

Be Gay Do Crime

This essay deals with queer theory and how it applies to the videogame Cloudpunk and the comic series Motor Crush. Both of these texts use cyberpunk settings to tell stories about finding hope in community. Each text features protagonists trying to navigate worlds where legal success is highly competitive and practically impossible. They must therefore turn to community building, mutual aid, and criminal activity to find happiness. This analysis views the texts through the lens of queer time and queer space making practices as outlined by J Jack Halberstam and Jose Esteban Muñoz. Central to this article’s exploration of these texts is the characters inability and/or refusal to fit neatly into the worlds they inhabit, and how they must therefore find success outside of accepted channels. Success is only found by these characters through an attitude that can be summarised by the queer anarchist meme “be gay, do crime”, which connotes a sense of mischief, solidarity, and standing up to authority. The rigid social hierarchies that are built into the dystopian worlds is reflected in the infrastructure of the cities, which do not account for anyone living outside of an accepted norm. It is therefore considered an act of radical solidarity to break the rules if it is in support of others.

Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830, ed. Marc C. Wallace and Jane Rendell

<i>Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830</i>, ed. Marc C. Wallace and Jane Rendell

A Little Outpost

This article explores the short life of the Ballarat Spiritualist Fellowship and the Spiritualist history of its founder, Lorraine Culross (b. 1952), to offer both a “wide-angle” and “up-close” account of Australian Spiritualism and the fortunes of its churches, especially in the postwar era. Spiritualism first came to Australia in the nineteenth century, in the form of public lectures, stage demonstrations, and private séances. A church movement quickly appeared, and dozens of congregations opened in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Today, only a handful of these “legacy” churches still run, fortunate to own a dedicated building. Beyond that, many other tiny churches, like the Ballarat Spiritualist Fellowship, have come and gone across many decades. These churches could open easily because of the commitment of enthusiastic Spiritualists, an absence of a rigid ecclesiastical hierarchy, and charismatic forms of social organization. However, as the case of Ballarat shows, these same characteristics mean that most churches have a precarious existence. This mutability characterizes Spiritualism’s story as one of Australia’s longest lasting and most durable alternative spiritual movements. Australian Spiritualism has evolved, changed, and survives, despite the travails of many church closures.

Caudillos y plebeyos: La construcción social del estado en América del Sur (Argentina, Perú, Chile 1830–1860)

Caudillos y plebeyos: La construcción social del estado en América del Sur (Argentina, Perú, Chile 1830–1860)

On the Debate Between the Paulines and the Rabbis in Late Antiquity Around the Body and Sexuality and Its Significance to the Present Day, Through D. Boyarin’s Postmodern View

The goal of the present paper is to formulate a concise framework for part of Daniel Boyarin’s work which he is most known for, namely his analysis of sexuality in late antiquity Judaism and the critique of contemporary culture he eventually derived from it, above all his objections to the idea of the Jewish nation-state. Within the brief scope here I intend to provide the reader with a simple roadmap for orienting oneself in Boyarin’s relevant literature. Boyarin, a Jewish-American scholar, traces rabbinic, Jewish-Hellenic, and Pauline texts that he believes were part of one arc of Jewish culture in Palestine of late antiquity, and reveals the discourse that was at the center of this one Jewish culture, namely that the famous debate between Judaism and Christianity was essentially over the interpretation of the physical body and sexuality in the Bible, a debate during which critical cultural decisions were made that still have an impact on Western society today in the realms of gender and identity. Through his original “cultural reading” that employs critical current postmodern methods, Boyarin demonstrates that both have complex ethical and political issues, such as rigid hierarchies, colonialism, and racism, but they also have a lot of promise, namely that by examining them side by side, the possibility of finding a more just alternative for our present and future is increased, through mutual correction of each other.

PRIORITIES OF THE STATE POLICY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE CONDITIONS OF RESOURCE LIMITATIONS

Ukraine’s economic growth is characterized by significant instability and excessive dependence on external factors, and the state’s economic policy is not based on an appropriate resource-based model of economic development. At the same time, the quality of Ukraine’s resource potential (labor, material and technical, natural, etc.) is deteriorating. All this significantly hinders further economic growth of the country and increases the urgency of substantiating goals and developing conceptual foundations of economic development based on a critical assessment and use of available limited resources. Factors that prevent sustainable economic growth of Ukraine include: constant and systematic politicization of the state’s actions in the field of economic policy, lack of heredity and alternative strategic planning of the state’s economic development; low level of economic security of entrepreneurship and lack of state guarantees of ownership rights; high level of monopolization of socio-economic life in the state; excessive administrative and financial centralization of power and rigid administrative hierarchy; inefficient use of state budget funds; lack of stable «rules of the game»; low culture and distorted nature of socio-economic morality; strengthening of structural deformations in the national economy. The existing inconsistency, non-systematic state economic policy and lack of modeling of economic growth of Ukraine are already a threat to the economic security of the state. State authorities are invited to implement measures aimed at ensuring a mandatory alternative to the strategic planning of the country’s economic development; formation in society of the ideology of «transition» to another quality of economic growth; creation of a system of incentives for social legitimization of shadow income and property, ensuring investments in innovative, scientific and technical development, education and the social sphere; recognition by all socio-political groups of common system-forming principles and priorities of economic growth; ensuring the liberalization of the state’s economic policy.

The secret service of renaissance venice: intelligence organisation in the sixteenth century

ABSTRACT Contrary to more rudimentary espionage networks created by rulers (and their rivals) in various parts of early modern Europe, by the sixteenth century, early modern Venice had created a remarkable, centrally organised state intelligence organisation, the Venetian secret service. This was built on a rigid organisational hierarchy and branched out into distinct communication networks. This article describes, in detail, the structure and function of the Venetian secret service, dwelling on how it was administered and managed by the Council of Ten, Venice’s infamous spy chiefs. To explore the early modern organisational and managerial practices on which this service was premised, the article borrows theoretical concepts deriving from the disciplines of Intelligence Studies, Sociology, Organisation Studies, and Management, which it weaves together with archival sources and relevant literature. In doing so, the article explores some of the methodological challenges of studying the phenomenon of early modern intelligence organisation. Ultimately, the article puts forth the argument that systematised intelligence and espionage are not ‘modern’ phenomena, as conventional wisdom dictates, but date back to the early modern era.

Blackpill Science: Involuntary Celibacy, Rational Technique, and Economic Existence under Neoliberalism

Background: This article explores the “scientific blackpill,” used by those in contemporary digital incel communities to describe living as involuntarily celibate. To take the scientific blackpill is to both see and develop a rigid social hierarchy that attempts to explains the incel’s sexual and social lacks. Analysis: Through a discourse analysis of the largest web forum for self-identified “incels,” this article finds that the “scientific blackpill” acts as a Foucauldian “technology of the self,” designed to both explain and reverse the incel’s perceived social oppressions. Conclusion and Implications: Designed in an attempt to emulate the objectifying behaviour of masculinity under neoliberalism, the blackpill legitimates the very social behaviours that devalue the incel’s social existence.

The Added Value of Knowledge Management in the Operation of Public Organizations

This paper attempts to outline the role of knowledge management in the public sector and the way it contributes to its operation, creating added value. Modern public organizations face significant challenges in the knowledge economy and must constantly adapt to the economic, social, and cultural changes of the environment. In this context, they must adopt new standards, that put the management of their intangible assets at the core of their strategies. Recognizing the vital role of knowledge resources in guiding public organizations can lead to better performance. The peculiar nature of these organizations, however, seems to create obstacles to knowledge management efforts, as these organizations tend to be highly bureaucratic and trapped in rigid hierarchies, and require knowledge management strategies that are able to deal with this situation. The conclusions of this paper are based on the results of secondary research conducted through an extensive review of international and Greek literature and articles, as well as research in digital sources of information, and highlight the added value of knowledge management in the public sector.

Interracial Sex as Taboo: The New Imperialism, Christian Victorian Values, Nationalism, and the Legacies of Intimacy in the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1861–1914

ABSTRACT This article examines the dynamics of interracial sexual relationships in the Colony of Sierra Leone during the era of the new imperialism between 1870 and 1914. Although British anxieties about interracial sexual relationships and mixed-race progeny were evident before the era of the new imperialism, it was in the late nineteenth century that British imperial and colonial authorities created more rigid racial hierarchies that hardened the delineations between colonisers, intermediary proxy groups, and the colonised. However, it was not only Europeans who disapproved of interracial sex during the new imperialism, and the adoption of a Victorian sexual ethos and cultural nationalism among the Creole population contributed to their social disapproval of interracial sex. These attitudes had an impact on race relations that resulted in the clandestine nature of interracial sex in colonial Sierra Leone from the late nineteenth century and the shame attached to mixed-race ancestry in colonial society. This article examines the shifting attitudes of social disapproval towards interracial sexual relationships displayed by both Europeans and Creoles in colonial Sierra Leone and analyses the impact these attitudes had on the dynamics of interracial sexual relationships and on the mixed-race heritage of the Creole ethnic group during the era of the new imperialism.

Unit’s Heterogeneity and System Differentiation: The Logic of U.S.-China Relations' Transition

In this paper, Unit Heterogeneity and the Degree of system differentiation are considered as the independent variables to explain the differential characteristics of the international structure, which lead to a differentiated interaction mode between hegemon and other rising powers. Then the paper further argues that globalization and nuclear deterrence lead to dynamic changes in system differentiation, and the heterogeneity between rising power and hegemonic power in geographical objectives, strategic culture, ideology, and polity are the conditions that hegemon must refer to when positioning the nature of rising power and interacting with rising power. However, the logic of power distribution is implied in the degree of system differentiation, and the author finds that in the process of globalization promoted by the hegemon if the relative power of rising powers becomes unconstrained, the hegemon will slow down globalization and suppress rising powers instead. The degree of urgency relates not only to power distribution but also to unit heterogeneity. Therefore, the paper distinguished four patterns in terms of great powers’ competition: duopoly competition in orderly anarchy status, alliance management in rigid hierarchy status, the dual-track embedded competition in loose hierarchy status, and quasi-perfect competition in chaotic anarchy status. In the end, the article verified the common modes of great power interaction, which are reflected in the competition between the U.S. and the USSR, differing interests between hegemon and allies inside the hegemon alliance, and U.S.-China competition.

Brain cancer stem cells: resilience through adaptive plasticity and hierarchical heterogeneity.

Malignant brain tumours are complex ecosystems containing neoplastic and stromal components that generate adaptive and evolutionarily driven aberrant tissues in the central nervous system. Brain cancers are cultivated by a dynamic population of stem-like cells that enforce intratumoural heterogeneity and respond to intrinsic microenvironment or therapeutically guided insults through proliferation, plasticity and restructuring of neoplastic and stromal components. Far from a rigid hierarchy, heterogeneous neoplastic populations transition between cellular states with differential self-renewal capacities, endowing them with powerful resilience. Here we review the biological machinery used by brain tumour stem cells to commandeer tissues in the intracranial space, evade immune responses and resist chemoradiotherapy. Through recent advances in single-cell sequencing, improved models to investigate the role of the tumour microenvironment and a deeper understanding of the fundamental role of the immune system in cancer biology, we are now better equipped to explore mechanisms by which these processes can be exploited for therapeutic benefit.

Beyond words: Going off script in Theravada Southeast Asia

Accounts of Buddhism in Thailand, Burma and Cambodia offer detailed descriptions of ‘the power attributed to inscribed amulets, tattoos, and related forms of writing’ (p. 8). But earlier scholarship on Southeast Asia ‘often looked down on non-literary uses of script’, treating it as either a ‘non-Buddhist “cultural” accretion or the ignoble trappings of popular superstition’ (p. 8). Such judgements were based on an idealised conception of Buddhism that focused on canonical scripture, and congealed under colonial rule. Where Richard Fox finds a fruitful ‘indeterminacy’ in theaksaraof Bali, colonial scholarship tended towards overdetermination, creating a rigid hierarchy of Buddhist scriptural forms. Pali, the language in which generations of monks had chanted, thought and wrote, was deemed ‘less than’ Sanskrit, but ‘more than’ the plethora of indigenous languages of the region.

Energopower, statecraft and political legitimacy

This paper draws on the notion of energopower ( Boyer 2014 ) to show the foundational role of electricity in the (re)production of political power in Australia. I show how conflicts surrounding electricity have reconstituted state-market-society relations and rescaled governance. I study a series of notable national-scale interventions and argue that, through the contingent and chaotic play of events in the political sphere, market-oriented governance regimes for electricity have been weakened, and the issue of electricity decarbonisation has become ‘weaponised’ for electoral benefit. I explain how national political leadership in Australia has stepped in from a constitutionally-weak position to govern electricity under pressure for environmentally-driven adaptation. I show four statecraft techniques that reconstitute electricity in new ways: discursively linking electricity governance to socio-environmental futures; national interest framings that are weaponized for electoral gain; tactical governance through parliamentary compromise and appeasement; and jettisoning market logics in favour of state intervention. This study recognises the limits of centralized state-making under a Federalist system but shows the potential for statecraft to reshape scalar-territorial relations and strengthen the role of the central state vis-à-vis the market. Vital resources like electricity are not just struggled over but, under the right conditions, can come to shape political power. There is neither infinite potential for state rescaling through the performance of legitimacy, nor do rigid scalar hierarchies simply block reconfigurations of state power. To understand the potential for resource struggles to re-scale state power attention must be paid to the techniques of statecraft that support and undermine legitimacy.

European Union in Promotion of Global Governance in the UN System

Having evolved since the 1990s into a political and ideological concept, global governance has become one of the priorities of the program documents of EU states and institutions, today formulated as “rules-based order”. A distinctive feature of this concept is the “blurring” of interstate interaction on the world stage in favor of non-state and supranational interaction. Under global governance, there is allegedly no hierarchy between state actors and nonstate or supra-state actors. This article critically examines this thesis with the help of the sociological theory of diff erentiation. According to diff erentiation theory, the state does not remain on the sidelines of global governance but takes the lead in the hierarchy of levels of world politics. The fi nal part of the article deals with the principles of EU coordination in the UN system. To promote ideas of global governance, the EU aims at major reform of the UN through intertwining intergovernmental interaction with nongovernmental interaction. This model is used especially often when non-core issues (e.g., human rights or climate in the Security Council) are considered in a UN body, allowing for broader participation in negotiations and, from a strategic perspective, a revision of the UN Charter. The main conclusion of the article is that the EU’s actions in the UN system refute the position of global governance that there is no hierarchy between the interstate and supranational levels of world politics. Despite the active promotion of global governance by the EU states, the EU itself is based on interstate coordination and a rigid hierarchy among states, as well as between states and nongovernmental actors.

“Am I Your Coequal?!”: Memes and Changing Meanings in the Digital Subversion of Ghanaian Hierarchies

Capturing the zeitgeist of youthful challenges to the status quo in Ghana, a video of an anonymous young person challenging an older politician with a derisive call of “Tweaa!” went viral in 2014. Reentextualizations of the encounter were soon circulating online in the form of memes, songs, and hashtags and offline in joking exchanges everywhere from vegetable markets to parliament. This article traces the many ironic reembeddings of the tweaa clip across these contexts, as young people used tweaa to subvert and interrogate Ghana’s rigid social hierarchies—ultimately producing an enduring shift in the vocabulary of protest in Ghana. Tweaa, once a casual interjection of disapproval, is now explicitly seen as iconic of the disenfranchised challenging those in power: a verb meaning “to protest inept authority.” This case study of memetic circulation suggests that memes not only discursively produce publics but can effect seismic semiotic shifts in everyday language.

“Honor List” and “Shame Roll”: Quasi-Experimental Evidence of the Effect of Performance Feedback under Political Control

Abstract This article examines how the use of an “honor list” and “shame roll” as a means of performance feedback can influence governments’ future performance improvement, focusing on a prominent performance management reform implemented in Chinese local governments. We draw upon classic behavioral theories of organizations to propose testable hypotheses. The empirical analyses use 3,300 observations based on the 333 grassroots governments of the capital city of China as the unit of analysis. Regression discontinuity design estimations show that entering the honor list reduces governments’ performance improvement in the next period, while entering the shame roll helps governments improve their performance. Moreover, the level of performance improvement is higher at the cutoff for both the honor list and shame roll if governments rely more on the higher authority’s fiscal resources. This study advances a more nuanced understanding of the performance feedback effect under political control and a rigid administrative hierarchy.

Education, Sexuality, and Marriageability: Overlapping Tropes in the Lives of Adolescent Girls in Haryana, India

PurposeGirls’ education is a critical pathway to delay early marriage. We examine the symbolic and apparent value of girls’ education as a transitional moment to their marriage and a de facto space to control their sexuality. MethodsThis paper draws on qualitative analysis from an impact evaluation of a Conditional Cash Transfer scheme, Apni Beti Apna Dhan (implemented between 1994-1998), designed to enhance girls’ value and delay early marriage, in Haryana, India. The research was conducted in 2010–2015, using a quasi-experimental study design, with about 10,000 beneficiary and eligible nonbeneficiary girls, 18 years after the first set of beneficiaries enrolled in the Conditional Cash Transfer could encash the benefit, if they had remained unmarried. The qualitative analysis covered 124 girls and their mothers, to understand the gendered context of their lives and aspirations around education and marriage. The study was conducted by team of researchers from International Center for Research on Women, including the authors. ResultsEducation is considered key to enhance girls' prospects for marriage. The intrinsic benefits of education may enable some girls to chart better life trajectories, though its value is largely understood within a bounded space of girls’ marriageability. The persistent focus on marriage, structures girls' daily school routines bounded by strict restrictions and scrutiny around their mobility, sexuality, and conduct. ConclusionsThe potential for girls to explore new freedoms and opportunities through education is curtailed by unyielding gendered restrictions and rigid social hierarchies. A nuanced understanding of educations and its role in girls’ marriage is key to reshaping educational programs for girls’ empowerment.

Capturing Difference: The Wurstelprater Photobook in Turn-of-the-Century Vienna

Abstract Published in 1911 Vienna, the Wurstelprater photobook offered a very different image of the city from the one people were used to finding in postcards. The book toured readers through the Wurstelprater, the amusement section of the larger Prater park, focusing on its eclectic attractions and diverse crowds. Wurstelprater combined text written by future Bambi author Felix Salten with 75 pictures by photographer Emil Mayer. Those words and images had appeared earlier in separate forms, but the photobook brought them together for the first time. While many saw the Prater as a space of blight, Salten and Mayer cherished its distinctiveness from the rest of the city. The Prater had a special significance for Vienna’s Jews. It was not only a place of entertainment, but also a space where rigid Viennese social hierarchies could be suspended. Scholars have detailed Jewish involvement in the production of spaces, performances, and literatures in ‘Vienna 1900’. The emergence of the photobook as a medium of Jewish difference has, however, remained underexplored. This article analyses how Wurstelprater fused two Jewish genres, the feuilleton and street photography, making the experience of a disappearing Prater durable and portable. Assembling words and images in an unprecedented format, Wurstelprater constructed a sense of movement, nostalgia, and outsiderness. It presaged what most associate with interwar photojournalism and photo essays. Wurstelprater also became a tool of history. In the 1960s, those who rediscovered Wurstelprater treated it as evidence of what the late Habsburg empire had been. Originally conceived by outsiders, the photobook came to be a mainstream historical record.

‘One foot in the grave’: pregnancy and folk culture in recent Russian films

ABSTRACT This article focuses on two recent Russian films – Vasilii Sigarev’s Living (2012) and Natasha Merkulova and Aleksei Chupov’s The Man who Surprised Everyone (2018) – that exploit the multivalent potential of the pregnant body. Both films enlist the symbolism with which Russian traditional culture has infused that body to create complex, nuanced cinematic depictions of the porousness between the realm of the living and that of the dead. The folk symbolism of pregnancy facilitates the directors’ subtle critiques of contemporary Russian society, including its cynicism; casual, ubiquitous violence; and rigid gender hierarchies. These films highlight the pregnant woman’s destabilising potential, one that challenges the Russian state’s increasingly fervent incursion into the intimate realm separating life and death. They also prompt us to recall that feminist thinkers have turned to the pregnant body as a source of insight. With her challenge to the notion of a singular, unified body, the pregnant woman points to new philosophical models of the self – possibilities that have yet to be explored fully on screen, but towards which the two contemporary Russian films discussed in this essay may point.