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Contemporary comparative pedagogical discourses are becoming increasingly popular and strongly modify the policy and practice of education worldwide. Intensification of empirical studies naturally leads to the decrease of the research interest in purely methodological issues that stand apart from practical application of comparative analysis and comparative method. This chapter attempts to fill in the methodological lacuna in the study of comparative method and its potential when doing research determined by the ideological context. The authors state two main research questions, the first one concerning the potential of comparative analysis for the detection of the technologies and facts of ideological indoctrination and the second one focusing on its functional possibilities in revealing the transformations in the vision of pedagogical reality by the theorist under the influence of the complete change of the state’s ideology. Statistical analysis of the units, content and comparative analysis, quantification, interpretation, and analogy were used for the comprehensive comparative study of the small volume of text by A. S. Makarenko Beseda s rabochim aktivom na zavode ‘Sharikopodshipnik’ (Conversation with Working Active Members at the Plant ‘Ball-bearing’) with comments published in Russian and its analogue issued in German by Makarenko-Referat laboratory and two text versions of “Zadachi i metody narodnoj shkoly” (“Objectives and Methods of National School”) by P. P. Blonsky issued under the same title in 1916 and 1917. General outcomes of the research vividly demonstrate how micro- and macro contexts may widen the horizons of the comparative method and significantly differentiate comparative research schemes.

The chapter is based on the Social Foundation project: ‘Digital Pathways to Growth: Competency’ conducted in the region of Zealand in Denmark. The process of creating a multifunctional semantic – a competency model – is unfolded. Informed by social system theory the semantic required to enable dialogue in a polycentric network is analysed. The participants are various small and medium-sized enterprises, across many occupations and tasks, different types of educational and training organisations as well as process consultants from various knowledge institutions, labour unions and industrial interest organisations. The model is designed through a participatory process to help this polycentric network of organisations to build competencies for the digitalisation ahead.

We argue that design thinking and engaged scholarship in the construction of a multifunctional semantics – such as the competency model – is useful both as a practical method and as a semantic research strategy informed by social system theory. The role played by design thinking when developing the competency model as a multifunctional semantic is concluded and the future research outlined.

The research generates knowledge of practical value for networked collaboration in educational ‘ecologies’ as the need increases for stronger links between education, business and research, as well as the involvement of social partners and civil society to increase Europe’s innovation capacity as advised by both the OECD and the EU.

One of the most neglected sources of energy loss is streetlights that generate too much light in areas where it is not required. Energy waste has enormous economic and environmental effects. In addition, due to the conventional manual nature of operation, streetlights are frequently seen being turned ‘ON’ during the day and ‘OFF’ in the evening, which is regrettable even in the twenty-first century. These issues require automated streetlight control in order to be resolved. This study aims to develop a novel streetlight controlling method by combining a smart transport monitoring system powered by computer vision technology with a closed circuit television (CCTV) camera that allows the light-emitting diode (LED) streetlight to automatically light up with the appropriate brightness by detecting the presence of pedestrians or vehicles and dimming the streetlight in their absence using semantic image segmentation from the CCTV video streaming. Consequently, our model distinguishes daylight and nighttime, which made it feasible to automate the process of turning the streetlight ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’ to save energy consumption costs. According to the aforementioned approach, geo-location sensor data could be utilised to make more informed streetlight management decisions. To complete the tasks, we consider training the U-net model with ResNet-34 as its backbone. Validity of the models is guaranteed with the use of assessment matrices. The suggested concept is straightforward, economical, energy-efficient, long-lasting and more resilient than conventional alternatives.

The labor theory of value (LTV) offers a lucid and forceful example of a “theory” thought to stand outside “history.” Considered as an “objective” form of theorizing, the LTV seeks transhistorical truths about the relationship between humans and nature – whereby, as everyone knows, value in the world is produced by the fundamental force of human labor power. Marx is typically taken to have subscribed to some form of the LTV, and thus to have signed on to this form of theorizing. This article refuses to treat Marx as an analytic, ahistorical theorist who would either affirm or deny the LTV. Rather, I read Marx as a genealogist who excavates the story of labor and value within the specific historical context of an emerging capitalist social formation. This genealogical approach to Marx, and particularly to his less-often-discussed, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, shows plainly that Marx never subscribed to the LTV, but more importantly that he eschewed the form of theory that the LTV presumes. Rather than seeking to make transhistorical theoretical claims about the relation between labor and value, Marx meant to demonstrate to his readers something about the way in which a definite and concrete (historically situated) capitalist social formation establishes value. A capitalist social formation establishes its own specific value relations, by first constituting, and then dissimulating, a link between labor and value.

Philosophical reflection is a reflection of a school’s organizational structure. This study employs formal and computational methods to examine closely the culture/structure duality in the Frankfurt School’s formation and fragmentation over several decades by examining the homology between its social and conceptual networks.

On the one side, I produce social structural data from archival research on the Frankfurt School’s set of social relations. On the other side, I use computer-assisted textual analysis to produce concept maps of key texts by the same thinkers. Analyzing these networks jointly, I then investigate the dyadic social and cultural processes that contributed to the school’s fragmentation and show that:

1. The Frankfurt School’s social structure and idea structure were positively correlated over three decades as the school moved from an era of social and intellectual coherence to an era of fragmentation.

2. While we normally imagine the duality of structure and culture as a positive correlation between social and cultural relations, it can also appear as a strong negative correlation. Leo Löwenthal’s expulsion from the school is such a case. As a peripheral member, Löwenthal’s attempt to engage more strongly with the school’s core ideas was interpreted as presumptuous and low quality by core members who strictly policed the social and intellectual structure of the school. As a result of his ambition, Löwenthal was expelled.

The Frankfurt School’s social structure and idea structure were positively correlated over three decades as the school moved from an era of social and intellectual coherence to an era of fragmentation.

While we normally imagine the duality of structure and culture as a positive correlation between social and cultural relations, it can also appear as a strong negative correlation. Leo Löwenthal’s expulsion from the school is such a case. As a peripheral member, Löwenthal’s attempt to engage more strongly with the school’s core ideas was interpreted as presumptuous and low quality by core members who strictly policed the social and intellectual structure of the school. As a result of his ambition, Löwenthal was expelled.

This paper develops a semantic network approach to analyzing the relation between structural and cultural ties while illustrating the complex ways in which cultural and structural facets of a philosophical school develop in a duality.

The conception of markets as interfaces connecting semi-autonomous systems of producers and customers has led to an extensive use of social network analysis. So far, the network focus has been on connections among people, paying less attention to the crucial role played by connections between cultural elements (e.g., concepts, representations, ideas) in the way markets are formed and sustained. Such connections constitute “semantic networks” and are the focus of the present article. We attend to them by developing a network view of the cultural dimension of markets and apply it in an empirical setting where culture plays a crucial role – luxury watchmaking – to illustrate the impact of market semantic networks on a major outcome: price.