The Sinthomosexual's Failed Challenge to (Hetero)sexual Difference

This essay argues that Lee Edelman's 2004 Edelman, L. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] No Future, while most well known for challenging the heteronormative fantasy of reproductive futurism, also performs a systematic critique of Lacanian ‘sexual difference’. This essay tracks that critique, showing its moments of success and of failure, and concludes that Edelman's neologism – the sinthomosexual, whose jouissance he believes to be capable of undoing the symbolic order – in fact supports rather than challenges it.     

Islands of Detroit: Affect,Nostalgia and Whiteness

Abstract

‘Islands of Detroit’ explores the possibilities for an ‘everyday, oppositional whiteness’, a thoughtful randomness, as a corrective to ‘reactionary’ and ‘evasive’ forms of whiteness which often embed themselves in populist media sites for nostalgia. Drawing on the theoretical work of Svetlana Boym, Uday Singh Mehta and Roland Barthes, this essay looks in particular at a coffee table book, The Way it Was (2004 Bulanda, G., ed. 2004. The Way It Was: Glimpses of Detroit’s History from the Pages of Hour Detroit Magazine, Royal Oak, MI: Momentum.  [Google Scholar]), and its generic sentimentalism, to understand how certain white visual representations of Detroit affectively generate nostalgia, which can in turn conceal pasts and racial tensions. Looking at the history of Detroit (with particular attention on how the two infamous race riots are and are not negotiated), Islands examines visual images of the city – as opposed to the city itself – through the discursive lenses of nostalgia, modernity and affect, while positing that the histories and identities of Detroit remain irreducible to the images which attempt to capture them.     

Rational addiction and cultural goods: the case of the Italian theatregoer

This paper tests whether demand for theatre in Italy is consistent with the model of rational addiction presented in Becker and Murphy (J Polit Econ 96(4):675–700, 1988). Data from a novel 34-year panel on regional annual theatre attendance are used to estimate market demand. Four models are applied to investigate the demand function, and all of these also include per capita income and other control variables as regressors. The first two models are estimated to check whether theatregoers are myopically addicted to theatre. The results suggest that the theatre is an addictive good because past consumption (and prices) significantly raises the marginal utility of current consumption. The third model tests the rational addiction hypothesis, which assumes that future attendance also influences current attendance, whilst past and future prices influence current attendance only indirectly through their impact on past and future attendances. However, our most highly specified model, introducing past and future prices, demonstrates that Italian theatregoers are not myopic but fully rational as outlined in Becker and Murphy (1988). The results demonstrate that the rational addiction hypothesis is applicable not only to “harmful” addictions such as alcohol, cigarettes and drug consumption, but also to “beneficial” addictions, such as theatre attendance. This result has important policy implications because theatre is one of the most subsidised performing arts in Italy; if theatregoers are fully rational, policy makers can influence theatre attendance using alternative policy instruments (price and income), thereby reducing government expenditure on theatre subsidies.     

Examining Interprofessional Education Through the Lens of Interdisciplinarity: Power,Knowledge and New Ontological Subjects

Interprofessional education (IPE) – students of different professions learning together, from and about each other – is increasingly common in health professional degrees. Despite its explicit aims of transforming identities, practices and relationships within/across health professions, IPE remains under-theorised sociologically, with most IPE scholarship focussed on evaluating specific interventions. In particular, the significance of a shared knowledge base for shaping professional power and subjectivity in IPE has been overlooked. In this paper we begin to develop a framework for theorising IPE in allied health, by drawing parallels with a cognate area in which there has already been fruitful conceptual development: interdisciplinarity. Specifically, we offer a worked example of how the two areas may be brought into dialogue, by deploying Barry, Born and Weszkalnys’ (2008) conceptualisation of interdisciplinarity as a lens for understanding IPE. Following Barry et al. (2008) we delineate a number of ‘modes’ and ‘logics’ of knowledge-production that emerge both in IPE literature and in our own empirical study of IPE. Our empirical data are drawn from 32 semi-structured interviews with 19 allied health students participating in an IPE curriculum at one Australian university. Findings point to the emergence of interprofessional practitioner identities among students that have the potential to undermine traditional epistemological boundaries and transcend role-based distinctions in future health profession(al)s. We argue that Barry et al.’s ‘logic of ontology’ sheds light on previously unidentified processes of transformation within IPE, and offers a theoretical framework that can explain the importance of a shared pan-professional knowledge base for the reflexive individual construction of new interprofessional ontological subjects.     

A survey of allocation rules for the museum pass problem

In this paper, we consider the problem, introduced by Ginsburgh and Zang (Games Econ Behav 43:322–325, 2003), of sharing the income from the sell of passes that allow the entrance in a set of museums. First, we recall some allocation rules and some properties presented in Ginsburgh and Zang (Mus Manag Curatorship 19:371–383, 2004), Béal and Solal (Rev Econ 61:1099–1109, 2010), Estévez-Fernández et al. (2010), and Casas-Méndez et al. (Eur J Oper Res 215:161–168, 2011). Then, we discuss them, finding the properties satisfied by each allocation rule. The analysis of a real-world example concludes the paper.     

Cross-border circulation of films and cultural diversity in the EU

This paper explores new data sources on multilateral trade in films among EU countries and with the USA in offline cinema and in online video-on-demand distribution. We observe variations in trade patterns across countries and films and explore how they affect cultural diversity. We find that the EU film market is highly fragmented and cross-border film availability in cinema is low. We explore different aspects of the cultural discount hypothesis by means of a standard Helpman and Krugman (Market structure and foreign trade. Increasing returns, imperfect competition, and the international economy, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985) trade model with economies of scale and a two-stage Heckman (Econometrica 47(1):153–161, 1979) estimation procedure. Our results show that cultural distance, success in the home market and the size of the film budget influence trade of films between countries. US films have a lower propensity to get into export markets, relative to their success in the home market. Consumer demand for imported films is relatively smaller in large EU economies, except for films imported from the USA that are only marginally affected. We also show that trade patterns in online film distribution are not fundamentally different. As online distribution occurs downstream from theatrical release, online distributors can benefit from cinema market experience to make a better selection of films. This results in a lower impact of domestic market shares on online trade patterns.     

Moving On? Excurses on Cultural Studies,Phenomenology, Bildung and Kultur

Abstract

This paper takes a meta‐perspective on the theoretical grounding of cultural studies since the late 1970s. It suggests a realisation of the possibilities of both classic phenomenological thought for the field and cultural studies’ continued connections to traditional cultural concepts such as Bildung and Kultur. Of particular importance are relations among cultural studies’ semiotic‐political and economic engagement with culture, phenomenological concepts of Umwelt and historical conceptions of Bildung and Kultur. While arguing that thinking through these relations provides an intellectual route forward for cultural studies, the paper recognises that such intellectual configurations also resonate with earlier models of cultural studies from the 1950s and ’60s.     

Copyright infringement as user innovation

Copyright holders of major manga and anime in Japan have been ignoring copyright infringement by $d{\bar{o}}jinshi$ (or doujinshi), a Japanese word referring to self-published works created predominately by amateurs. Many of $d{\bar{o}}jinshi$ are derivative works of popular anime or manga but are sold without official permissions from the copyright holders. Thus, it is highly possible that the activity of $d{\bar{o}}jinshi$ creators violates Article 28 of the Copyright Law of Japan, which states the rights of original authors in the situation of exploitation by derivative works. We demonstrate that ignoring copyright infringement by a derivative creator can be optimal for the copyright holder based on an economic model that incorporates both positive and negative externalities of derivative work. We also demonstrate that when unauthorized use of the copyrighted work is optimal for the copyright holder, it is also optimal for social welfare although the opposite is not necessarily true.     

Fairness constraints on profit-seeking: evidence from the German club concert industry

Unlike Kahneman et al. (Am Econ Rev 76(4):728–741, 1986) iconic snow shovel, live music is a performance good that fans attach a particular value to. Hence, an artist’s pricing decision might differ from standard rent-seeking behavior. In this paper, I propose a model that incorporates fairness concerns into the pricing decision for concert tickets. The hypotheses derived from this model are tested on data from the German club concert industry. The results are consistent with the model: Although (1) price dispersion is the dominant pricing strategy in the club concert industry and artists prefer to perform on a Friday or Saturday night, (2) artists do not set higher prices on the weekend. These results are consistent with fairness constraints, but are difficult to explain within a standard profit maximization framework. As a third result, (3) the data reveal that ticket prices are positively correlated with a city’s number of inhabitants .     

Balancing the score: the financial impact of resource dependence on symphony orchestras

Expenses in the performing arts have historically increased at a rate faster than earned revenues due to the labour reliance of the sector. Flanagan (The perilous life of symphony orchestras: artistic triumphs and economic challenges. Yale University Press, New York, 2012) found that US symphony orchestras were able to avoid the negative consequences of this earning gap by fostering strong private support. In the present study, we find that, in contexts where private funding is not as readily accessible, like in Canada, arts organizations have more incentive to keep expenses under control. This can be understood in terms of resource dependence where government funding bodies, due to a homogeneous set of demands, put pressure on organizations to control their expenses and reach greater audiences. Using panel data covering a period of 8 years and forty-eight orchestras, the results show that Canadian orchestras, when compared to US ones, achieve a lower rate of expense increases over time and are more reactive to economic downturns.     

Do cultural differences affect the trade of cultural goods? A study in trade of music

This study investigates the impact of cultural differences on trade decision and trade volume of cultural goods, using the data of traded music compact discs (CDs). According to ethnomusicological and civilization classifications, we classify countries into several groups and make novel variables that properly represent the cultural differences. We use the gravity model of trade proposed in Helpman et al. (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(2):441–487, 2008), which is utilized to avoid selection and endogeneity biases of estimation. In addition, we exploit an identifying assumption on the types of consumers, so that one of the cultural variables can satisfy the exclusion restriction in our two-stage estimation procedure. Our empirical hypothesis is that the trade volume of music is larger between two countries with greater cultural familiarity. The empirical results show that cultural differences have significant influences on the trading decision and volume of music traded in addition to the traditional determinants of trade. This finding supports our hypothesis that cultural familiarity promotes the cultural goods trade.     

48 million configurations and counting: platform numbers and their capitalization

Platforms are important actors in contemporary cultural economic processes. They include social network sites, online content management systems, streaming media platforms, mobile communication infrastructures, supply chain logistics solutions, and cryptocurrencies. Analysis of platforms and their capitalization should take into account the ways they structure social practice as assets and the constitutive opacity of platforms as configured realities. It explores capitalization by focusing on the problems of counting people and things on platforms. Via a case study of the software repository platform [Github.com] (https://github.com), it analyzes how 'platform numbers’ participate in capitalization. It describes attempts to enumerate the elements of the platform by counting, mapping or listing them. The paper shows how attempts to enumerate people and things encounter forms of association, duplication, combination, imitation and configuration that are crucial to the ensemble but remain refractory to capitalization. It proposes configurative enumeration of the platform numbers as a way of conceptualizing these un-enacted excesses. In a configurative enumeration, the composition, the rhythms of imitation, variation and commutation, and constant relating, repairing and adjusting of configurations crucial to the ongoing formation of platforms come into view. Configurative enumerations engage the inventive realities of platformization, realities that precede and sometimes overflow their capitalization.     

II President's statement on the “Recruitment and Retention of Minority Group Members on the Faculty at Yale”

Reports and Documents

II President's statement on the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Group Members on the Faculty at YalePresident's statement on the recruitment and retention of minority group members on the faculty at YALE     

The progress of “affirmative action”: Yale declares itself

Reports and Documents

The progress of affirmative action: Yale declares itself     

Trust the artist versus trust the tale: performance implications of talent and self-marketing in folk music

Based on a unique dataset of artists that are active in the German market for folk music—the third largest music genre in terms of popularity and sales—I study what factors determine the artists’ success. Following Rosen (Am Econ Rev 71(5):845–858, 1981), I test if differences in artistic performance have a direct effect on financial rewards as regards physical and digital record sales (“direct superstar effect”). Following Adler (Handbook on the economics of art and culture. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1985), I also study sales effects of a media presence of artists (“classical superstar effect”). Controlling for various contingency factors (e.g., record labels’ support, artists’ socio-demographics), I deal with an economic issue of general interest: Does it pay more to develop your skills in your core business to perfection or to maintain the current level of skills and invest in self-marketing; and do these effects apply to all folk artists alike? Rather contrary to studies on pop and rock genres, I find that higher ability increases artists’ revenues disproportionately, but simultaneously, openly competing for the recognition of one’s talent holds substantial economic risk. I also observe a positive effect of various types of media presence on financial rewards. However, these income determinants have different impacts on sales in physical versus in digital markets, and their effects vary across the success distribution from low- to top-selling artists as well.     

Paul Abraham: A Forgotten Scholar of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Paul Abraham, one of the Berlin Academys most experienced researchers, was deported to Auschwitz in 1943. The fate of this Jewish scholar reveals much about the inner life of the Academy, and its treatment of Jewish staff, during the World War II. This paper describes his life, against a backdrop of war, revolution, and dictatorship, and in the context of one of the Academys most prestigious projects.     

China Looks Abroad: Changing Directions In International Science

This essay describes China’s participation in international science organizations during the past two decades. It argues that, whilst progress has been made, serious problems remain. It concludes that increased attention to communication and exchange, and the creation of a favourable international image in science and technology are important priorities for China.

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Serving Science and the State: Mining Science in France, 1794–1810

The revolutionary period in France marked a turning point in the history of the profession of mining engineering and its relation to the State. This essay outlines the changing requirements of the revolutionary government, and describes the ways in which the State and its engineering professionals responded to the challenge of combining science and practice.

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