Search results

Professor Dewey's pragmatism always strikes me as fundamentally ambiguous, oscillating between a conception of knowledge as “technique,” essentially a biological function, and some vague mystical conception of it in terms of “shared life” or “shared experience.”(Knight, 1936, p. 230)

New Towns were exemplars of Utopian social and economic visions allied to Modernist ideas of design and architecture. Initially hailed as the answer to the ailments of the historic European city and the urgent need for housing after the War, they came under considerable scrutiny when the ideas of New Urbanism on design, density and community became one of the most vocal critics on Modernist town planning.

The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council recently funded a New Town Heritage Research Network Project. Drawing on case studies from the network, this chapter will refer to the original questions posed by the above-mentioned network project: How are the Utopian social and economic visions which accompanied the New Town Movement embodied in the masterplanning, urban design and architecture of the New Towns? How can the New Town architectural and urban design heritage be evaluated? How can future planning for these towns accommodate and build on this heritage in a meaningful way, and be integrated into regeneration and growth? How can key stakeholders in New Towns create an identity and pride for their town as well as a sense of belonging, by building cultural capital through their heritage, including architecture, public art and cultural activities?

This chapter will analyse how New Towns and their associated Modernist Heritage have been perceived by different audiences and are positioned in the overall heritage discourse including the question of a shared European Heritage.

The ‘human being’ and ‘humanism’ have become thoroughly contested terms and widely denounced from a range of intellectual positions from behaviorism to post-modernism. After outlining some elements of the anti-humanist critique, the paper attempts to mount a defence. It concludes by suggesting some of the elements for a ‘critical humanism’, and suggests that postmodernism and humanism need not be incompatible.

The fateful question for our time is what comes after post-modernism, what comes after the after? Building upon the insight of Thomas Mann in Dr. Faustus, the great fictional study of the post-modern composer Adrian Leverkuhn, and upon insights of some of the post-modernists themselves, this after hovers as the lingering but ultimately expunged final (dissonant) chord whose uncanny presence in absence turns cosmic emptiness into the cult of memory, ritualized attentiveness to the faded chord that connects us back to a departed world of meaning by a gossamer thread. A vision of this ritual is acted out in the greatest of all works of deconstruction, The Recovery of Lost Time, in which Marcel Proust guards this attenuating thread with his life like the Wichita lineman, for that is his life. The traveler stranded at the beginning of the epic novel can no longer go forward – there is no more track to lay and no destination to lay it toward – only the obscured recesses of a lost world (long ago when the future still existed), now as fugitive as the years.

Modernism and postmodernism may be thought of as either moments or movements. We argue for thinking of them as moments, essentially related to each other, rather than movements that literally have historical specificity. From this perspective what is modern and what is postmodern is always shifting, such that their nature is problematic, essentially contested and shifting. Rather than use contemporary examples to make these points, we prefer to refer to quite historical examples, because the modalities become much sharper and can be seen in clearer focus. Hence, we discuss Machiavelli and Caravaggio as precursors of the postmodern and Hobbes and Boyle as precursors of the modern. Obviously, there is an irony in our intent: given the claims to currency of the debates with which we frame the paper then reference to some classical sources serves to hose down debate and fix it in a sharper, cleaner form. While it will become evident that our sympathies are not with “modernism”, it should become equally clear that we hold much of the representation of “postmodernism” to be as much at error as we do the fixing of the modern in the frame of the empiricist, the positivist, and the scientific. For us, all these terms are equally problematic, and have been so ever since we began to first think we might be modern – whether in art, social science or science. We conclude by addressing why, in the present, these classical debates should have migrated to the study of organizations.

This chapter undertakes one re-evaluation of Louis Althusser’s philosophical legacy for modern Marxism. While Althusser self-consciously undertook to defend the scientific character of Marxism and so permanently establish it on a firm footing, many of his closest followers eventually exited the Marxian paradigm for a post-structuralism post-Marxism. We will argue that this development was rooted in Althusser’s initial procedure as he attempted to ground Marxism’s scientificity in an epistemological argument whose main referent was Marxism itself. This initiated a circularity which was ultimately to prove fatal to Althusser’s project. Less remarked upon, however, is a further legacy of the Althusserian oeuvre, the critical realist conception of Marxism initiated by Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar found part of his inspiration in Althusser’s successful posing of the question of Marx’s science. On the one hand, Althusser’s work can legitimately be seen as a bridge into the post-modern challenge to Marxism. On the other hand, it can be seen as clearing the ground and establishing some of the foundation for critical realism’s successful recuperation of the scientific character of Marxism.

The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

We are in the midst of a refugee crisis, and the ways in which we approach the issue of unprecedented numbers of people crossing borders will shape our world for generations to come. In this chapter, we problematize immunology, capitalism and other lenses through which we construct, label and categorize others and how such constructions and categorizations manifest in educational spheres for migrants, immigrants, refugees and host country nationals. As with access to education, the resources one has also determine one’s ability to migrate and the conditions of one’s resettlement. Therefore, we discuss the ways in which globalization provides greater mobility for those with substantial wealth and how conditions with/in post-modernism serve to create borders between people, their wealth and the social contexts in which they and their wealth reside. We create boxes as labels into which we slot people all too easily. While we critique the discourses and systems that create the socio-political milieu of education for immigrants, migrants and refugees in the US, we also highlight issues abroad, including how language is weaponized in the framing of immigration and those who emigrate.

Purpose – The aim of this chapter is to share our thoughts and observations about some of the ethical issues that arise when researching sport-drinking cultures. In particular, the chapter focuses on what researchers should do when they witness potentially harmful and risky drinking behaviour.

Approach – The chapter is written mainly from an ethics disciplinary background. We use philosophical methods to analyse, evaluate and interrogate certain claims, assumptions and judgements about moral action and inaction in the research context. We employ ethical concepts in general and research ethics concepts in particular to make and defend value judgements about what is reasonable or unreasonable, right or wrong, and good or bad in relation to witnessing risky and harmful behaviour.

Findings – The chapter argues that in some situations there are good and perhaps compelling moral reasons for researchers to take action when they observe certain problematic drinking behaviour. Researchers who fail to notice and/or act may be morally blameworthy and culpable in other ways, e.g. in breach of contract or code of conduct.