Competing Quality Conventions in the French Online Display Advertising Market

This paper builds upon an empirical study of suppliers of online advertising space in France in order to highlight the plurality of quality conventions that organize the activity of market intermediaries. We show that the market is organized around two different quality conventions, the ‘media’ convention and the ‘direct-response’ convention, each equipped with specific efficiency indicators, pricing methods and selling channels. Then we focus on the growing conflict of territory between the two conventions; we analyse the balance of power between the conventions and the arenas where they compete. We observe that the collective action of the defenders of the traditional world is not (yet) sufficient to contain the pervasiveness of the indicators and metrics from the world of direct-response.     

Understanding Hollywood's organization and continuing success

Integrated international marketing of films and related merchandise and close financial ties between distributors and roducers have evolved to cope with the risks of piracy, cost containment, opportunism, and revenue uncertainty. Our reading of the evidence is that this system has dominated because of its efficiency. In search of an explanation of why America remains the centre of this institutional and contractual web, we examine the impact of two world wars, the rapid commercialization of new technologies in the United States by aggressive managers, an open financial system and the ethnic diversity, language homogeneity, and size of the domestic market.We are grateful to Elizabet Filleul, Simon Grant, Peter Harcourt, Ian Jarvie and Janet Staiger for their comments but absolve them of any responsibility for the views presented.     

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.     

First experiments for the use of microblasting technique with powdered cellulose as a new tool for dry cleaning artworks on paper

This research evaluates the use of microblasting technique with powdered cellulose as a new tool for dry cleaning documents. Different cleaning tests were conducted on three documents with different properties following this new approach and the results were compared to those obtained with traditional dry cleaning with erasers. In order to assess changes caused to the supports, the treated documents were examined both before and after cleaning with optical and 3D stereomicroscopy, SEM-EDS and spectrophotometry. The results allow the conclusion that microblasting with powdered cellulose is a feasible technique to remove surface dirt or grime on paper documents. This research proves that the new use of the technique does not entail changes to the surface properties of the treated supports. Moreover, powdered cellulose is chemically stable and compatible with paper documents, preventing negative long-term effects derived from the presence of rubber residues that may remain in paper fibres when using erasers in dry cleaning treatments.     

Euganean trachytes: discrimination of quarried sites by petrographic and chemical parameters and by magnetic susceptibility and its bearing on the provenance of stones of ancient artefacts

This paper reports petrographic and chemical data and magnetic susceptibility values for trachytes of quarries recognizable within the Euganean Hills and sets out diagnostic parameters for these rocks. The diagnostic scheme proposed is basic for the definition of provenance of trachytes used in ancient artefacts spread over northern Italy. Trachytes were extensively used by the Romans for paving Via Aemilia, the most important road in the Po Plains connecting Ariminum (present-day Rimini on the Adriatic sea) to Placentia (present-day Piacenza on the Po river). Remains of the trachytic flagstones (basoli) used for paving segments of Via Aemilia crossing Regium Lepidi (present-day Reggio Emilia) and Bononia (present-day Bologna) have been characterised petrographically, chemically and also using magnetic susceptibility data. The discriminating scheme proposed here for the Euganean trachytes has been applied to the data obtained for basoli and thus the provenance of each investigated block has been inferred. The rocks sampled at Regium Lepidi mostly come from Monselice (only a few blocks from Monte Oliveto and Monte Merlo) and those of Bononia come mostly from Monte Merlo and, subordinately, from Monte Oliveto and Monselice (only one sample from Monte San Daniele). The dominant provenance of blocks, which is different in the two colonies distant by less than 50 km, suggests that the two segments of Via Aemilia were not built simultaneously.     

Governmental Conditions for the Economization of Uncertainty

The central place occupied by actuarial calculation in insurance is usually understood as resulting from the process of bringing the laws of large numbers to bear on archival data in terms of an ‘insurance imaginary’. However, little attention is paid to the political and broader governmental conditions upon which actuarialism rests. Analysis of fire insurance in Australia indicates that despite urgings from other branches of insurance, the industry did not go down this ‘scientific’ track until well into the twentieth century. Instead, it relied on detailed individual inspection by insurance agents and a process of ‘cumulative dangerousness’ – adding up the multiple hazards discovered in each case and using this as a guide to setting premiums. The result was slow, expensive and cumbersome. But the industry was forced to adopt this approach because the built environment in Australian cities was so underregulated that nothing could be taken for granted. Only when adequately designed and enforced government regulations began to appear after the mid-1920s could fire insurance adopt actuarial techniques for economising uncertainty.     

Neoliberalism and Natural Disaster

A substantial recent literature has examined insurance as a mechanism for economizing uncertain but potentially catastrophic events. Less attention has been paid to how insurantial techniques for economizing catastrophe have been deployed as political technologies. Focusing on discussions of US flood policy in the 1960s, the present article examines how insurance was used to forge new articulations and accommodations between political government and processes of rationalization. On the one hand, insurance provided a technical solution to problems that had long confronted US policy-makers: How to reduce losses from floods? How to fully compensate individuals who suffered losses? On the other hand, insurance was a device for reshaping the aims and objects of government, and for reframing questions that are more frequently situated at the level of political philosophy: What are the respective responsibilities of individual citizens and government in providing security? What tradeoffs must be made between the provision of security and economic rationality? What values are relevant in orienting public policy? In examining these issues, the article raises questions about standard narratives about the changing relations among risk, responsibility, and security in recent decades, particularly as they relate to neoliberalism.     

Power and Performativity in the Creation of the UK Fishing-Rights Market

Judith Butler's work on performativity takes an explicitly Foucauldian approach to politics. The economic performativity literature, in comparison, has been criticised for failing to foreground power. This paper uses a case study of market creation in UK marine fisheries to suggest, after Butler, ways in which a Foucauldian analysis of the exercise of power can inform our understanding of economic performativity.     

The Frozen Archive,or Defrosting Derrida

What does freezing human tissue and fluids, or human remains, do to the mobility, temporality, and value of such objects? While Jacques Derrida toward the end of his life considered the consequences for the remainder of burial and cremation, he did not consider freezing, the production of latent or interrupted life. Here I invoke Derrida in discussion of how in the investigation of the fatal brain disease kuru, the partible tissues of the Fore people of Papua New Guinea became frozen spectral commodities in the exchange regimes of modern biomedical science – and how they gained, or retained, value as they were objectified. I follow these Fore – or kuru – valuables into the frozen archive, asking what has become of the remainder, whether it now amounts to anything more than defrosting debris among the postcolonial ruins. I ask what is the value of latent life? Or, rather, who is the value of latent life? This essay therefore serves as a supplement to more economistic estimates of biovalue.     

BECOMING A MEASURING INSTRUMENT

This paper attempts to collapse the oft-reified demarcation between economistic ideologies and personal programs for self-improvement. In doing so, one can see the symbiotic relationship that exists between what are ostensibly distinct and separate social arenas. I argue that the porosity between discourses of self-improvement, religion, and capitalist expansion is achieved largely through techniques of ‘pastoral power’. Foucault conceptualized pastoral power to represent the circulation of productive micro-power among individuals. Pastoral power is especially effective in a neoliberal era marked by the retrenchment of the state apparatus in securing the good and welfare of the citizenry and the emphasis on the individual to secure her own happiness and wellbeing. By examining one specific case, the popular and influential Purpose-Driven Life program, one can see pastoral techniques at work: the valorization of highly individualistic subjects who are desirous of novelty and fulfillment; the tutelage of the good and charitable shepherd who is concerned with the salvation of each individual member of the flock; and the situational context that situates all of them.     

Archaeometric and geological constraints for the provenance of carbonatic breccias used in monumental works along the Flaminia Consular Road (Umbria-Marche, Central Italy)

Along the Umbria-Marche stretch of the Flaminia Consular Road (220 B.C.) several archaeological finds of the most important monumental works, are well preserved. The stones, employed to build many bridges, substructions and sewerages, are represented by carbonatic breccias whose geological environment of formation and source areas had never been established. On the basis of mineralogical, petrographic and micropalaeontological analyses, two groups of these lithotypes employed in Roman age were distinguished: “monogenic carbonatic breccias” only constituted by clasts of the Maiolica Unit (Late Jurassic – Early Cretaceous) and “polygenic carbonatic breccias” made of fragments (in different proportions) of Calcare Massiccio (Early Jurassic), Corniola (Early Jurassic), Maiolica (Late Jurassic – Early Cretaceous) and Scaglia Rossa (Late Cretaceous – Early Paleogene) Units. The possible source areas of the breccias are compatible with stratified slope-waste to scarp-base deposits of periglacial origin belonging to the Upper Pleistocene. In particular, among the seven investigated areas, we pointed out the most probable provenances (Monte Faeto-Colle, Costacciaro, Scirca, Foci, Secchiano) along the flanks of the Apennine Mesozoic chain of the Umbria and Marche regions. Although the Romans could have exploited the whole thickness of some outcrops (now disappeared) of these carbonatic lithotypes at the deepest part of the valleys, we have constrained a local provenance of the breccias so commonly used in the monumental works of the Flaminia.     

A new approach for conservation treatment of a silk textile in Islamic Art Museum, Cairo

The paper presents strategies for the conservation of historical textiles in Egypt that have been in uncontrolled storage and display. The silk textile is highly decorated, multicoloured and dates to the Ottoman period, and was exhibited in case # 12014. The textile has various types of deterioration. An examination and analysis of the textile was undertaken in order to develop a plan of conservation treatment. FTIR was used to identify the kinds of dyes and organic stains, and XR-D was used to identify mordants and dust. Light microscope and SEM were used to identify the kind of fibers, their condition and surface morphology. The effects of cleaning materials on the natural dyes were tested. The researcher designed a new metallic frame support system which has advantages over the wooden frames commonly used in Egypt. This presentation will review the conservation treatment step by step. Poultices were used to remove all the sticking cardboard and adhesive. Old conservation repairs were removed. Separated parts were supported. Cleaning included mechanical and wet cleaning. New silk fabrics dyed with natural dyes were used to complete the missing parts. The textile was supported on new linen fabric which was stretched on a metal frame. The method of exhibition will be discussed. Photographs are included to document the conservation process.     

THE MEANING OF PRICE IN WORLD MARKETS

What is a global price? Studying the making of prices in spot, options and futures markets, the article ethnographically addresses this question by using world cotton trade as its empirical context. It argues that global market prices are not set by the mere coming together of demand and supply, but are produced as mercantile tools. These tools or prosthetic prices are realized by a multiplicity of actors. The article shows that instead of focusing narrowly on price setting, policy makers and researchers should attend to the conditions of price realization. In world and regional markets, prices are realized in multiple forms. Drawing on contemporary economic anthropology and sociology, the article maps the rich world of prices in their multiple manifestations and processes of realization. Price realization in the world cotton market is performed and maintained by constant interventions in the making of the markets and their prices through different forms of perceptions, scientific assumptions, standardizations of the object of exchange, various calculative tools, rumours and indexes. In conclusion, the article hints at the political implications and social scientific consequences of seeing the world price as a mercantile prosthesis.     

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.     

Identity Mobilization Practices of Refugees: The Case of Iraqis in the United States and the War in Iraq

Abstract

This study illustrates the narrative construction of diasporic refugee identities in times of sociopolitical tensions. Specifically, this paper is concerned with how Iraqi refugees living in the United States constituted their identities through narrating in times of the War in Iraq. Gergen's social constructionist approach towards narrating and current theorizing in diaspora studies build the theoretical bases for the analysis. Narratives were collected through participant observations, interviews, and group discussion in the Pacific Northwest of the United States before, during, and after combat operations in Iraq were declared to be over by President Bush. The paper answers three questions. First, which events triggered the construction of Iraqi refugee identities in the United States? Second, what is the role of narrating in constituting Iraqi identities? Third, do the Iraqi narrators construct diasporic imaginations and if so, how? The findings show that the narrative construction of being Iraqi and a refugee was a relational achievement and situated response. The respondents constructed imaginations of transnational communities that included Iraqis in Iraq, Iraqis in refugee camps, and Iraqis in the United States. By integrating their emerging political voices in the United States with their political resistor identities in Iraq, the narrators made salient transnational links between being Iraqi, a displaced person, and a member of U.S. society, disrupted political discourses about Iraqis in the United States, and affirmed moral values.     

Police-Civilian Interaction,Compliance, Accommodation,and Trust in an Intergroup Context: International Data

Abstract

Prior cross-cultural research has produced models of police-civilian interaction that highlight the effect of officers’ communication accommodation and reported trust in police on attitudinal outcomes. The present study, conducted in Korea, Japan, Guam, and Canada and involving 684 university students, continued this program of research by testing a theoretical model exploring the influence of perceived police officer communication accommodation and reported trust in police on attitudes about compliance with police requests. Findings indicated that across study locations perceived police officer communication accommodation predicted trust in police which, in turn, predicted attitudes about compliance with police requests.     

SYMBOLIC PRODUCTION AND VALUE IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES

This article discusses value creation within the fields of cultural production. It departs from Bourdieu's field model, and seeks to develop it to fit unrestricted cultural production, for example television production. Bourdieu for the most part discussed the production of value (or forms of capital) in relation to fields of restricted cultural production, that is, within the fine arts (e.g. art, literature). Although one of his best known works dealt with television, one cannot say that he used the possibilities inherent in his own theory thoroughly enough to analyse this field of mass production. This article builds on recent discussions on the role of field theory in media studies, and seeks to contribute to the development of a theory of value production in fields of large-scale or unrestricted cultural production. It is argued that the conflation of commercial value with other kinds of value is more intense in the subfield of unrestricted cultural production, as production in this part of the field needs to obey outer demand in a way that production at the pole of restricted production does not.     

Ettringite and thaumasite: A chemical route for their removal from cementious artefacts

The present paper reports a new method for converting ettringite and thaumasite in non-expansible and insoluble phases, for its application in the restoration of concrete artefacts subjected to deterioration through sulphate attack. The salts were synthesized by different processes and, after characterization by means of XRD, FT-IR and optical microscopy, were treated with a series of chemicals in order to induce their decomposition. In particular, different solutions containing barium nitrate, barium hydroxide and ammonium oxalate were used to achieve the complete transformation of both phases in barite, witherite, scarbroite and whewellite. Barium hydroxide seemed to be the most appropriate reactant because the others could give rise to efflorescence within the pores of the mortars by leaving free nitrate or sulphate ions inside the materials. The experimental technique was also tested on two concrete samples collected from the bell-tower of St. Nicholas’ Cathedral in Nicosia (Sicily) with encouraging results.     

‘Partnership’ in Action: Contagious Abortion and the Governance of Livestock Disease in Britain, 1885–1921

Most histories of livestock disease in Britain treat the development of control policy as a government responsibility, to which farmers made little constructive contribution. Similarly, farmers rarely appear in accounts of disease research. This paper uses the example of contagious abortion (brucellosis) at the turn of the twentieth century to reveal that state-farming collaboration in research and policy did in fact occur, and that it operated in various ways, with often unexpected outcomes. The collaborative approach to contagious abortion is partly attributed to its clinical and epidemiological features, which made it an unsuitable candidate for the existing, state-led policy of stamping out disease. It is claimed that such collaboration has been overlooked by historians on account of their focus upon diseases that were amenable to stamping out. This focus needs to change if history is to inform present-day disease governance in Britain, which is founded on the concept of ‘partnership’ between farmers and the state.

The Supply of Arts Labour : Towards a Dynamic Approach

Earlier work on the supply of labour of artists has shown that, whenever workers derive satisfaction from the process of work, which is usually the case for artists, some traditional results are reversed. As their proponents make clear this analysis is essentially static, as it does not take into account the intertemporal dimension of the supply of labour. The paper argues that to provide such a dynamic analysis three routes are available: the human capital approach, the household production approach and the evolutionary approach. The paper, therefore, is aimed at discussing the adequacy of various theoretical approaches to the treatment of a specific question.