THE PROPER COPY

Efforts to make (and keep) knowledge public have provided a powerful counter-model to the recent expansion of exclusive intellectual property rights in such arenas as information technology, digital media, biological research, and pharmaceutical access. While sympathetic to the impulse to counteract the new ‘enclosures’ with knowledge made public, this essay critically interrogates some of the constitutive limits – in fact, the constitutive outsides – to these counter formulations. Paying particular attention to how public domain initiatives, like their strict intellectual property counterparts, also police the line between the proper and the improper copy, I argue that mechanisms for keeping knowledge public do not just circle the wagons against the predations of the Monsantos and Microsofts of the world. In their rhetorical and normative commitments to the proper copy, they also risk reproducing some of the same constrictions and exclusions that we tend to associate with (privatized) acts of enclosure itself. I explore this argument first in reference to creative commons and copyright, which can reproduce a strong ideological commitment to improvement – ‘innovation’ or ‘creativity’ – against the mere copy. What is the cost, I ask, of making the idea of improvement the price of admission not just to intellectual property claims, but to participation in newly ‘democratic’ public and common spaces of knowledge production? Second, I look to global pharmaceutical politics – specifically, regulatory efforts to improve access to cheaper copied and generic drugs in Argentina – to raise questions about the public domain's normative place in the continued expansion and harmonization of intellectual property regimes in the so-called global South. Together, these discussions suggest how the public domain and the commons, like their IP counterparts, can rhetorically and normatively expand and be secured against the improper copy.     

Integrity in UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A comparative study for rural landscapes

Since 2005, Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) is the standard by which United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) evaluates world cultural heritage site suitability. The sites worthy of UNESCO preservation as well as the parameters used to demonstrate OUV are diverse. Our study focused on the uniquely distinguished rural landscape sites and the OUV parameter of integrity. Integrity however, is an elusive concept for which UNESCO provides no definitional protocol, and for which the scientific community objects to a static or pure historical interpretation. Given this, our work aims to analyse the concept of integrity and how it can be used to preserve the heritage of rural landscapes. After reviewing the UNESCO approach, we focused on the international scientific debate on the meaning and application of integrity. We designed and conducted a comparative study of UNESCO rural landscapes selected from the 2011 World Heritage List. Documents describing the historical, rural, and agro-ecological features of each of the fourteen rural sites were analysed. From this, several historical and ecological parameters were chosen as “values to have” and several socio-economic and management parameters were chosen as “values to maintain” to assess the integrity of each landscape. Our results found integrity to be a value of both cultural and natural landscapes and that it is key to site identity. We demonstrated that UNESCO assigns a high value to the following parameters: historical features, traditional crops and local products, land-use and agricultural practice permanence, and the presence of architecture related to agricultural activity. Finally, we found the relationship between culture and nature to characterize best the integrity of a rural landscape, rather than nature or culture alone.     

Keeping things different: coexistence within European markets for cleantech and biofuels

Environmental policy increasingly resorts to market-based instruments in order to meet sustainability objectives. The ‘carbon market’ instituted by the European Emissions Trading directive from 2003 is a canonical example, which has been described, and critiqued, as a delegation of policy objectives to market exchanges. In this paper, we examine the complex ways in which the operationalization of policy objectives and the organization of markets are intertwined, focusing on two other examples of European environmental regulation. The first one is the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control directive from 1996, which defined the ‘best available techniques’ to curb emissions in air, water and soil. The second one is the Renewable Energy Directive from 2009, which introduced criteria for the definition of the sustainability of biofuels. Through the analysis of the design and implementation of these two directives, we identify a central concern for the coexistence of various objects, and various initiatives undertaken by European institutions, member states and private actors. We use the notion of coexistence to describe a European political and economic ordering that is inherently hybrid, and cannot be reduced to a mere delegation of policy objectives to the market, or a legal constraint imposed on all European actors. It grounds its political legitimacy and economic rationality on the distribution of roles and responsibilities across public and private actors, and on the ability to ‘keep things different’ according to local variabilities.     

Organization (Theory) As A Way Of Life

To the extent that ‘classical organization theory’ is seen to possess any enduring interest it is mainly as a historic artefact. The idea that the principles, axioms, adages and devices elaborated by its proponents any longer possess traction in the present is rarely countenanced. In contrast to this customary view, the present article seeks to indicate the continuing significance of classical organization theory, for both analysing and intervening in organizational life. This necessitates a reconstruction of the conventional understanding of this received term, one in which classical organization theory is viewed less as ‘theory’ in the conventional sense, but rather as a geographically dispersed, institutionally disconnected and historically discontinuous ‘stance’, characterized, inter alia, by a pragmatist call to experience, an antithetical attitude to ‘high’ or transcendental theorizing, and, not least, an ethical focus on organizational effectiveness born of a close connection to ‘the work itself’ or ‘the situation at hand’. Deploying the term ‘classic organization theory’ in this way, to refer to a stance, attitude or comportment, and an associated persona that bears it, we are able to highlight the significant differences between this comportment and the increasingly ‘metaphysical’ attitude characterizing many contemporary approaches to organization and organizing, not simply in organization studies, but also more widely in sociology and cultural economy.     

WAGES OF SIN?

The ‘global credit crunch’ is only the latest and most virulent among a series of financial crises stretching back to the 1970s and beyond. Yet, more than any of its predecessors, the current crisis is being presented in apocalyptical libidinal terms. Accounts of the crisis and its aftermath tend to be predicated on a sharp contrast drawn between prudent, conservative, risk averse, sober financial practice and a more exuberant, greedy, hedonistic, risky counterpart.

This kind psychosexual analysis is neither new, nor does it represent an accurate depiction of the dilemmas and challenges posed by modern finance. It tacitly suggests, for example, that a return to ‘traditional financial values’ (akin to repeated calls for returns to ‘family values’) would restore calm and normality to a system undermined by the excesses of the perverse few.

This paper argues that although a return to ‘traditional values’ is unlikely to solve any of the current problems, the representation of the crisis and its aftermath is significant. The crisis and its aftermath are embroiled in a wider fundamentalist and puritanical backlash against ‘hedonistic’ capitalism. It represents not a crisis of capitalism as a whole, but a schism within (predominantly) financial communities over the morality and acceptability of ‘risk’. As such, a strongly libidinal language already common within the markets is being adapted and redeployed to create new divisions and exceptions in the context of crisis.     

Conservation of historical reinforced concrete structures damaged by carbonation induced corrosion by means of electrochemical realkalisation

Electrochemical realkalisation is a technique aimed at stopping rebar corrosion in carbonated concrete. The alkalinity of the concrete around the rebars is restored, and an environment favourable to the passivation of steel is re-created. The technique is based on the application of a DC current from an anode, placed on the external surface of the concrete, and the rebar. The anode is usually embedded in cellulose pulp soaked with a solution of sodium or potassium carbonate. The rebar and the anode are connected to a DC current feeder, the rebar to the negative terminal and the anode to the positive terminal. The applied current produces alkalinity at the surface of the rebar, while the alkaline electrolyte in which the anode is immersed penetrates from the external surface. In this way the concrete is realkalised, its protective characteristics towards the steel are restored and rebars can return to passive conditions. The treatment is temporary: this feature makes it very attractive in the field of historical buildings and cultural heritage, where the conservation of the original materials and surfaces is often a stringent requirement in the design of the repair. This paper shows the advantages of this technique applied to historical structures by describing the application to a bell tower built in the 1920s. The electrochemical realkalisation treatment was applied to eight columns on the bell tower where a traditional repair (based on the substitution of carbonated concrete with a repair mortar) would have been practically impossible. The application of the treatment followed two steps: initially, a trial was made on two sections of two columns, so as to calibrate the process parameters such as current density, time length and type of anode. Subsequently, the treatment was applied to all the columns. The analyses carried out on the concrete after the application of the treatment showed that the protection to the reinforcement was mainly connected to the alkaline layer produced around the steel, which is expected to prevent further corrosion of the steel.     

Lime render layers: An overview of their properties

Lime renders are of great importance not only to enhance the appearance of the buildings, but also to protect and preserve old masonries. They constitute a specialized system, composed of several layers, in which each of them depends on the others and carries out some specific functions in order to assure a suitable performance of the whole. Knowledge of the traditional materials and techniques, as well as the know-how, is one of the key points in the maintenance and conservation of lime renders and, by extension, of our Heritage. However, the promotion of the use of cement and the industrialization process, which in the case of Spain took place about the 1960's, caused lime mortars to fall into disuse. In this article, classical treatises as well as the state-of-the-art researches were analysed to compile the properties of lime render layers, on the whole. The knowledge of these characteristics is essential to maintain and repair the existing renders as well as to formulate new compatible ones, while assuring their durability and appropriate performance. Lime is the selected binder for these recommendations because it was widely used as drawn from the literature.     

Representations of Precarity in Italy

This contribution is focused on collective and individual stories of precarity in Italy. At the present time, when work and the imaginaries socially constructed around it are more and more individualised and fragmented, imaginaries and collective references – whether they be social movements, trade unions or professional groups – have given way to ever more particularistic and singular experiences, which hinder the construction of a coherent identity for workers. In this scenario the question to be asked is then: how is it possible to elaborate a new collective imaginary of precarity and reclaim new rights? After a focus on the phenomenon of precarity in Italy, this contribution move to consider the activities of the network of San Precario, a cultural phenomenon that managed to develop new kinds of social claims based on bottom-up and horizontal practices. It is then discussed that the current return to an almost exclusively individual approach to the question of precarity, which forces subjects to bear the management of their professional life trajectories. Finally, an analysis of social movements' recent efforts of self-organisation and some reflections on the possible role of social sciences in elaborating tools for planning a renewed welfare system are offered.     

Financing the culture in Italy

The paper deals with financing the culture in Italy. The public expenses for the culture are shared as expenses of the government, of the regions, of the provinces and of the municipalities. The relationships of the cultural organisations with the public sector are very strong because they belong to the public sector, or they broadly depend on public funds.A specific attention is devoted to other forms of financing, about the role of the entrance fees and the entrances of the game “Lotto”, which subsidy the cultural goods and the Interministerial Committee for the Economic Planning (CIPE) allocations to the depressed areas. We will also be faced up to the examination of other sources of private financing as the sponsorships, the entrances of collateral services about museum visits (coffee and bookstore) and the supply of banking foundations. The fiscal incentives refer directly to the cultural institution or to the external financing of the nonprofit institutions by donations or sponsorships. Finally, the cultural institutions will have always to operate more and more by a strategic vision of financial and managerial field, on the basis of high qualitative standards. The activities and cultural projects will have to be able to attract additional sources of income in addition to the public one; the search of private financial resources is developed in a situation of increasing competition among the institutions, while tools of innovative finance have to be used to satisfy the increasing demand of culture. It is difficult nevertheless to define the possible best method of public–private financing, if you take consideration of the distinctive features of the different institutions and interests of the operators who are involved: artists, cultural institutions, public bureaucracy, besides the economic effects which follow alternative choices. The recent evolution of the institutional, financial and managerial models of the culture in Italy plans a larger integration between public and private sectors for a great involvement of individuals, enterprises and foundations about the financing of the cultural services offer.     

Cultivation of taste and bounded rationality: Some computer simulations

One can approach the economics of the arts, as any field of applied economics, in either of two ways. First, one can treat economic theory and econometric technique as subjects settled by specialists in those fields, to be used in the ec onomics of the arts as they are given, very much as if one were studying the demand for maize. Alternatively, one can treat the economics of the arts as a field which may need and suggest its own developments in theory and technique, suitable to its spec ial problems and processes, from which general economic theory and econometric theory might in principle learn something. Perhaps this latter view is implausible, given the high state of development of economic theory and econometrics in the modern liter ature. Yet many of the advances embodied in these fields have come from particular areas of application-and the economics of maize has been a particularly fertile field.I am indebted to participants in the Seventh International Conference on Cultural Economics, Fort Worth, Texas, October 1992; to p articipants in the Seminar on the Economics of the Arts, Venice, Italy, December 1992; to participants in the conference of the Pennsylvania Economists' Association, Wiles-Barre, PA, June, 1993; to participants in the second conference on Simulating Soci eties, Siena, Italy, July 1993; to participants in the conference of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics, Rensselaerville, NY, August 1993; and to participants in the Third Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Economics and Manage ment, Portland, OR, August 1993, for useful comments on topics related to the research reported in this paper. Errors and omissions are, of course, attributable to the author.     

Using heritage risk maps as an approach to estimating the threat to materials of traditional buildings in Tainan (Taiwan)

Academic studies concerning how climate influences Asian heritage are rare. The object of this study was to utilize the concept of heritage climatology together with a spatial analysis approach that includes respective climate parameter risks to cultural heritage sites. The study area, Tainan City, Taiwan, is in a subtropical zone south of the Tropic of Cancer. Tainan has nearly 300 hundred years of rich history and a multicultural background. This study used maps to gain information about potential climactic threats to Tainan's cultural-historical legacy. There are four kinds of map that use ArcGIS to analyse and demarcate regions not only by climate parameters but also by risk to heritage. These four types of map are climate maps, heritage climate maps, heritage maps and heritage risk maps. Climate maps give the short- to medium-term general status of the climate in Tainan City and thus served as the foundation of the other maps used in this study. Heritage climate maps give data concerning index factors that influence wood and stone materials. Heritage maps show locations of cultural heritage sites on an administrative map and categorize them according to their historic value. Heritage risk maps use accumulated calculations to superimpose the heritage climate map onto the heritage map in order to evaluate the risks to heritage sites in certain areas and categorize the levels of risk. Heritage sites in mountainous areas generally need to be protected from heavy rain, whereas downtown city environments, due to the urban heat island effect, require better protection against heat and cracking. By comparison of our field study results and climate risk maps, we found that in urban areas wooden materials have a higher risk of structural cracking, colour fading and bio-degradation, while coastal areas have a higher risk of weathering of stone materials.     

Beyond virtual museums: Experiencing immersive virtual reality in real museums

Contemporary museums are much more than places devoted to the placement and the exhibition of collections and artworks; indeed, they are nowadays considered as a privileged means for communication and play a central role in making culture accessible to the mass audience. One of the keys to approach the general public is the use of new technologies and novel interaction paradigms. These means, which bring with them an undeniable appeal, allow curators to modulate the cultural proposal by structuring different courses for different user profiles. Immersive Virtual reality (VR) is probably one of the most appealing and potentially effective technologies to serve this purpose; nevertheless, it is still quite uncommon to find immersive installations in museums. Starting from our 10 years’ experience in this topic, and following an in-depth survey about these technologies and their use in cultural contexts, we propose a classification of VR installations, specifically oriented to cultural heritage applications, based on their features in terms of interaction and immersion. On the basis of this classification, aiming to provide a tool for framing VR systems which would hopefully suggest indications related to costs, usability and quality of the sensorial experience, we analyze a series of live examples of which we point out strengths and weak points. We then summarize the current state and the very next future, identifying the major issues that prevent these technologies from being actually widespread, and outline proposals for a more pervasive and effective use of Immersive VR for cultural purposes.     

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of microclimate for salts crystallization control and artworks conservation

Many deterioration processes are linked to unsuitable microclimatic condition in cultural buildings. One of the most diffused processes is soluble salts crystallization that can be accelerated in masonry structures within specific microclimatic values for different chemical compounds. In this paper, microclimate and efflorescence diffusion were monitored over a one-year period in the Crypt of the Cathedral of Lecce (South Italy). This allowed to relate the microclimate with the efflorescence variation over time. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was then developed to detail the thermo-hygrometric parameters and airflow patterns responsible for salts crystallization and artworks deterioration. Two main conditions were reproduced; one to simulate the current microclimate, which simulations showed to be inadequate for conservation, and the other to search for a more appropriate solution. In both cases, summer and winter conditions were simulated and compared to find a microclimate able to ensure more suitable thermo-hygrometric intervals required by the constituting artworks materials. The results helped to suggest actions to improve maintenance of the Crypt.     

Academics,Cultural Workers and Critical Labour Studies

The aim of this paper is to locate academics within the sights of critical labour studies, and, in particular, the contemporary interest in cultural workers. Despite a growing literature about – and in response to – the transformation of the University there have been few attempts to study academics as workers. This paper argues that there are a number of parallels between academic work and the much more well-documented experiences of work in the cultural and creative industries. The paper examines the increasing experience of precariousness among academics, the intensification and extensification of work, and the new modes of surveillance in the academy and their affective impacts. The aim of the article is to build on the critical lexicon of studies of cultural labour in order to think about academic work as labour and to generate new ways of thinking about power, privilege and exploitation. It argues for the need for a psychosocial perspective that can understand the new labouring subjectivities in academia.     

Facing future uncertainties and risks through personal finance: conventions in financial education

ABSTRACT

A crucial component of the neoliberal regime is the shift of responsibility for individuals’ financial well-being and security from the state and other public bodies to the individuals themselves, who are required to take responsibility for their own financial decisions and their current and future economic situation. This project of responsibilization presumes a world in which calculative subjects can estimate and manage future risks. Nonetheless, compelled to engage with the financial sphere as a key means of assuring their economic security, individuals are exposed in fact to the fundamental uncertainty of financial markets. In this article, we examine conventions formulated and communicated by financial education programs as cognitive devices geared to prompt individuals to imagine and engage with finance as a site of knowable, calculable and manageable risks, rather than as a site of fundamental uncertainty. Aiming to instill among the general public a particular cognitive frame based on the idea that possible futures are assessable and the risks that they carry can be managed through engagement with financial products and services, these conventions contribute to the normalization of financial logics in everyday life and the incorporation of the general population into the process of financialization.     

Working as a real estate agent. Bringing the clients in line with the market

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, this paper examines the market work performed by real estate agents in a residential market. The research explores how agents are engaged in market work to sell themselves, the market and the products in order to sell houses. Agents first invest in the clients by self-presentation techniques (likeability, availability, appearance, taste). They also work to bring the clients in line with the market by making them accept the market and its hierarchies; and finally, they enable clients to conform with the market, by relying on prices as signals and taste hierarchies. They act as market devices contributing to market valuation as they are engaged in making residential choices emerge, balancing the cold reality of the market with warm relationships to foster clients' engagement in transactions.     

Cartographic heritage: Toward unconventional methods for quantitative analysis of pre-geodetic maps

Historical cartography all over the world is a fundamental part of Cultural Heritage, and it needs to be preserved from damage of its analogical support due to ageing. Regeneration of ancient cartography in digital form is an interesting way not only to preserve historical cartographic documents as Cultural Heritage, but also to allow new chances of understanding and using the historical information they record. In such a way, modern digital techniques, in particular study of map deformations and map georeferencing, help in metric analysis of ancient cartography, and at last they appear to be useful for researchers to derive historical information for their studies, for example related to urban development or to geomorphological and environmental topics. The present research would give an example of the usefulness of the digital regeneration of ancient cartography, but also an example of possible difficulties in correctly interpreting information preserved in historical cartography, especially the pre-geodetic one. The study subject consists in three contemporaneous pre-geodetic maps (late 16th century) from the ancient Po river delta area (Italy), by means of which a geometrically correct representation of those parts of the landscape, not preserved today because of sea erosion, was tried. In fact, standard georeferencing methods, that use reference control points to compare historical cartography with the present one, in this specific case demonstrated to be not successful in describing the real location of disappeared landscape details with an adequate level of accuracy. For these reasons, in order to define which map among the others was the most faithful to the contemporaneous physical reality, a compound methodology, consisting of a three-step analytical process, is here applied to the three samples. Starting from measurement of sighting angles and distances applied to a number of landmarks, a splitting of the old maps in sub-areas, probably corresponding to the set of original surveyed zones, was performed. In the area of main concern, the use of absolute measurements was avoided in order to check the level of inner congruence of the representation. Finally, a new specific error index, that can also be applied to maps lacking an explicit graphical scale, is proposed to evaluate the map truthfulness degree. The proposed method can be applied to other similar examples from ancient cartography.     

Superstar Museums: An Economic Analysis

Superstar museums are characterized by (1) great prominence among tourists and world fame among the general population; (2) a large number of visitors; (3) a collection of generally known painters and individual paintings; (4) an exceptional architecture; and (5) a large role of commercialization, including a substantial impact on the local economy. The superstar phenomenon is caused by factors both on the demand and the supply side of the market. Superstar museums are forced to offer total experience to the visitors; they have to relate to events in history, technology, politics, films and TV, and they have to provide for everything from education, food, gifts, shopping to entertainment. The development of superstar status strongly affects museum policy. The strategic orientation emphasizes visitors' demands; the organization has to be decentralized into processes each devoted to particular segments of visitors, to special exhibitions or support activities. There are also major consequences for human resource management, in particular, relating to flexibility and staff composition of paid employees and volunteers.     

Risk assessment: A comparative study of archive storage rooms

The goal of preventive conservation is to provide the correct maintenance of our cultural heritage in order to enrich our future. The Canadian Museum of Nature developed a risk model for preventive conservation that has proven useful in application to a Portuguese archive. This work applies this model to compare the magnitudes of specific risks estimated for this same archive collection when located in either of two pairs of storage rooms. These rooms are in two different parts of this building: two are in an older part and two are in a recent addition. It was, therefore, necessary to assess the building itself, both structurally and environmentally, as well as analyse its common human practices. In terms of the overall risk magnitude, the best room was found to be in the recent building and the worst in the older building. However, risks related to water problems were found to be higher in the new building. In this work cost-free measures and easy to implement recommendations are given in order to improve the quality of the storage rooms. A final comment on the method itself is also given.     

城市公园绿道使用者的游憩动机研究及其价值--以南京市玄武湖公园为例

城市公园内绿道是公园道路的重要组成部分,不仅承载着生态、经济、社会文化、美学功能,还承载着游憩功能。以南京市玄武湖公园绿道为研究对象,对其使用者的游憩动机展开实地访谈和问卷调查。基于spss24.0软件,利用探索性因子分析将众多动机因子降维得到公共游憩动机因子,进一步使用聚类分析,将游憩者划分为五大类,分别是:接近自然型游憩者、多目的型游憩者、无固定目的消遣型游憩者、提升自我型游憩者、情感交流型游憩者,使用交叉分析获取不同游憩动机类型的人口统计学构成特征,探索不同类型游憩者游憩动机的共性和差异。最终根据研究结果与国内外相关文献对比分析获取核心动机要素,分析游憩动机于绿道建设的价值,以期为绿道规划与管理提供改善方向。