When socialists marketize: the case of China’s wind power market sector

This paper analyzes China’s attempt at maintaining and stabilizing the market framing of wind power development as ‘sustainable.’ Drawing on mixed data and new directions in the social studies of marketization, the analysis focuses on the Chinese government’s responses to the ‘quality crisis’ in the wind turbine industry. Employing five types of framing – goods, marketizing agencies, market encounters, price-setting, and market design and maintenance – the paper sheds light on flexible government interventions to steer the socio-technical assemblage around wind power towards a ‘turn to quality.’ In essence, this is a study of market construction in the context of Chinese wind power experiments. The paper contributes to new directions in market studies by (1) demonstrating the importance of attending to the contested algorithmic transformation of wind resources to wind power; (2) taking market studies to a transitional and developmental context, which renders marketization prone to constant overflowing; and (3) elucidating a particular Chinese model of experimental market construction ‘through embracing overflowing.’ The paper proposes new trajectories for future market studies with a focus on non-Western contexts, to reveal the wide variety of how marketization unfolds.     

The Universal Values of Science and China’s Nobel Prize Pursuit

China does not seem to believe the existence of universally acknowledged values in science and fails to promote the observation of such values that also should be applied to every member of the scientific community and at all times. Or, there is a separation between the practice of science in China and the values represented by modern science. In this context, science, including the pursuit of the Nobel Prize, is more a pragmatic means to achieve the end of the political leadership – the national pride in this case – than an institution laden with values that govern its practices. However, it is the recognition and respect of the latter that could lead to achievement of the former, rather than the other way around.     

The power of names in a Chinese Indonesian family’s negotiations of politics,culture, and identities

Based on patterns of naming across four generations in first author Lie’s Chinese Indonesian family, we argue that naming practices are not just a function of personal taste or cultural habit but rather reflect negotiation of larger-scale political and historical conditions. We show that seeming contradictions and puzzles in the names and naming practices in Lie’s family can be explained by the specific social and political challenges faced by members of the family, particularly during the assimilation period of Suharto’s 1966–1998 reign. Both Lie’s family and the Indonesian state have treated names as having a high degree of constitutive power in these negotiations.     

‘The current gold coin of the New Jerusalem’: perception,symbolization, and money in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

ABSTRACT

As an external visual marker of what is supposed by other characters in the novel as its wearer’s ‘internal,’ spiritual state, Hester Prynne’s Scarlet ‘A’ is, among other things, an emblem of a powerful American anxiety regarding the gulf between appearance and reality, symbol and meaning. The desperate and dangerous need for fixed signs and self-evident identities that obsesses Hawthorne’s Puritan-era characters is directly related to the gold-paper money debates that dominated the politics of Hawthorne’s own time, with their concern for issues of ‘character’ and value and what we might now call the gap between the symbolic and the real, or face value and material value.     

The market for paintings in the Venetian Republic from Renaissance to Rococò

We study the art market in the Venetian Republic from 1550 to 1750 analyzing the determinants of the prices (adjusted for the cost of living measured by the price of wheat) of figurative paintings. Reputation of the painters, size of the paintings and other quantifiable factors affect prices as expected. Other relevant factors include the placement of the paintings (on altars, ceilings or walls), whose impact reflects differences in demand elasticities. We find evidence of the law of one price confirming price equalization between high and low demand geographical destinations and between different subjects. Finally, in a Schumpeterian perspective, we relate the temporal trend of the price of a representative painting with waves of artistic innovations, whose peacks were in the 1500s and in the 1700s with a dark Baroque age in the intermediate century.     

Twenty-five years of democracy,twenty-five years of social protest: The role of the carnivalesque in Bulgaria’s 2013 antigovernment protests

This essay examines the role of the carnivalesque in three performances of protest during the antigovernment street protests in Bulgaria in 2013. They represent a form of protest that symbolically inverts the established rituals of a political regime unwilling to recognize the voice of the people in an allegedly democratic nation-state. My analysis intersects scholarship on the rhetoric of social movements, carnivalesque performances of protest, and the rhetorical force of iconic images of protest. Through my analysis I reveal how the carnivalesque allowed activists to move beyond the norms of democratic dissent in their protests against governmental oppression.     

The –ography of markets (or,the responsibilities of market studies)

How should we write about markets? What responsibilities does this writing bring upon us? This paper offers an immanent critique of ‘market studies’ scholarship, and through this a call to reflection and reformed action. Turning the intellectual framework of market studies upon itself, we come to see its texts as performative and agential. We discuss these qualities and the associated responsibilities via a reading of literature from the domain of ethnography. An auto-ethnographic sketch of market writing allows us to consider the problematic nature of expertise for market studies scholars and the agency and power of our texts. We find a dual moment of performativity from which our texts emerge more powerful than their authors. On this basis we offer a vision of critical interventions embedded in our texts, underpinned by the intellectual axioms of the market studies programme.     

The Early History of David Bohm’s Quantum Mechanics Through the Perspective of Ludwik Fleck’s Thought-Collectives

This paper analyses the early history of David Bohm’s mechanics from the perspective of Ludwik Fleck’s thought-collectives and shows how the thought-style of the scientific community limits the possible modes of thinking and what new possibilities for the construction of a new theory arise if these limits are removed.     

China’s “Gene War of the Century” and Its Aftermath: The Contest Goes On

Following the successful cloning of genes for mostly rare genetic diseases in the early 1990s, there was a nearly universal enthusiasm that similar approaches could be employed to hunt down genes predisposing people to complex diseases. Around 1996, several well-funded international gene-hunting teams, enticed by the low cost of collecting biological samples and China’s enormous population, and ushered in by some well-connected Chinese intermediaries, came to China to hunt down disease susceptibility genes. This alarmed and, in some cases, enraged many poorly funded Chinese scientists, who perceived them as formidable competitors. Some depicted foreign gene-hunters as greedy pilferers of the vast Chinese genetic gold mine, comparing it to the plundering of national treasures from China by invaders in the past, and called upon the government and their fellow countrymen to rise up and protect China’s genetic gold mine. Media uproar ensued, proclaiming the imminent “gene war of the century.” This article chronicles the key events surrounding this “war” and its aftermath, exposes some inherent complexities in identifying susceptibility genes for complex diseases, highlights some issues obscured or completely overlooked in the passionate and patriotic rhetoric, and debunks some misconceptions embedded in this conflict. In addition, it argues that during the entire course of this “war,” the public’s interest went conspicuously unmentioned. Finally, it articulates several lessons that can be learned from this conflict, and outlines challenges facing human genetics researchers.     

Photographer’s Memories of VIPs in 16 Years

~~Photographer’s Memories of VIPs in 16 Years     

The law of one price,noise and “irrational exuberance”: the auction market for Picasso prints

We use prices realized for Picasso prints at auctions worldwide, as well as the 100 prints that comprise his Vollard Suite, to test the law of one price: the proposition that identical art objects sold contemporaneously should command the same price regardless of the auction house or geographic region where the sale takes place. Picasso is the most prolific printmaker of the twentieth century and, from 1977 to 2004, his prints appreciated in price significantly faster than the prints of modern masters as a whole. We find that Picasso prints sold in the United States command higher prices than in Europe. However, prices realized at Sotheby’s in New York are no longer higher than at Christie’s in New York, nor at Kornfeld than at other auction houses. We find evidence of “irrational exuberance” in the transitory nature of the extraordinary prices realized for the Picasso prints included in the 1997 sale of the collection of Victor and Sally Ganz at Christie’s in New York. More generally, we find substantial noise in auction outcomes, a result well known to savvy auction goers.