Critic power or star power? The influence of hallmarks of quality of motion pictures: an experimental approach

Most research into the film industry focuses on aggregate level market analysis of a range of devices used by the industry to ensure the success of its films. In contrast, in this paper, we experimentally test how individual cinema-goers are influenced by two variables that have aroused considerable interest in the literature: critical reviews and the role of box office stars. As regards the former, the results of our experiment indicate that negative reviews by film critics are cues that affect cinema-goers’ pre-film assessment of a film yet fail to exert any effect on post-film assessment. As regards the latter, a cast of box office stars is not seen to be an indication of quality per se for our experimental subjects. Nor do box office stars help to mitigate the potential effects of negative reviews.     

‘Beasts of Burden’: Productive Tensions between Haraway and Radical Animal Rights Activism

Coming from a critical animal studies perspective, this essay develops an urgent challenge to what Zipporah Weisberg describes as the ‘largely depoliticized approach within animal studies’ (2009: 5), with a focus on the work of Donna Haraway. Drawing on grassroots activist literature and practice, the essay analyses some productive tensions between animal rights perspectives and the work of Haraway, which centre on their different strategies for challenging the symbolic and material role of animals within biocapitalism. This approach reinstates the value of activist praxis to animal studies, arguing that it has the capacity to unsettle the positioning of animals as biocapital more successfully than Haraway's own ethical project. Due to being at the heart of debates between Haraway and theorists from within critical animal studies, vegan activism illustrates an animal rights practice that can work to undermine the structures that render animals ‘legitimately’ exploitable: despite Haraway's arguments to the contrary. The work of activists involved in the Hori-zone, a temporary eco-village established as a protest camp near the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles, is used to explore how veganism can be used as a micro-sociological tactic to challenge the exploitation that pervades everyday life.     

The noise of thoughts: The turbulent (sound‐)worlds of Jean‐Luc Godard

This article examines the role of noise in various aspects of Jean‐Luc Godard's filmmaking practice. Beginning with an analysis of 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1966), it suggests that the loud noise on the soundtrack functions to disrupt the search for meaning in this film that is precisely about knowledge and cognition, providing an image of thought as an unpredictable and uncontrollable process. The influence of 1970s theoretical biology and information theory is analysed in Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1979) which applies Henri Atlan's ‘order from noise’ principle to the composition of shots, the construction of scenes and the development of narrative. Finally Godard's presentation of a complex, deterritorialised capitalist economy is considered in Nouvelle Vague (1990), and it is suggested that Godard's creation of aesthetic events – both through editing and through sound design – implies a different conception of temporality to the sequential logic of financial speculation and risk management.     

The university world turned upside down: does confidentiality of assessment by peers guarantee the quality of academic appointment?

Reports and Documents

The university world turned upside down: does confidentiality of assessment by peers guarantee the quality of academic appointment?     

“Selling less of more?” The impact of digitization on record companies

In this paper, we use data from a survey of 151 French record companies to test the “long-tail” hypothesis at the level of the firm. More specifically, we test whether, following the “selling less of more” principle coined by Anderson (2006), record companies that have adapted to digitization (at various levels: artists’ scouting, distribution, and promotion) release more new albums without having higher overall sales. We construct a production function in which the output is produced from conventional inputs of labor and capital, as well as inputs that are more specific to the recorded music industry. We consider two types of output: a commercial output (albums sales) and a creative output (number of new albums released). We show that labels that have adapted to digitization are more efficient in respect of creative output, but that there is no effect of adaptation to digitization on the commercial output, which is consistent with the predictions of the long-tail hypothesis.     

Science on the Periphery. The spanish Reception of Nuclear Energy: an Attempt at Modernity?

During the Cold War, Franco’s dictatorship attempted to use technological transfer and nuclear technology to strengthen the geopolitical influence of his Government in Spain. This paper studies this process, with particular reference to the role played by German scientists as advisers to the Spanish nuclear project.     

The war of the words: The rhetoric of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ (an informal survey)

The political, military and media rhetoric of the March–April 2003 invasion of Iraq is interpreted as a phenomenon of power in relation to an understanding of culture as a site of denegation. Patterns of tautology, euphemism and equivocation are identified and their rhetorical appeal analysed in terms of the denegational structure of each of these figures. The essay is thus governed by an understanding of figuration as instrumental, not ornamental; it shows how rhetoric can be studied as a cultural phenomenon and argues by example that a pragmatics of troping is crucial to such a study.     

“Innovation Studies”: The Invention of a Specialty

Innovation has become a very popular concept over the twentieth century. However, few have stopped to study the origins of the category and to critically examine the studies produced on innovation. This paper conducts such an analysis on one type of innovation, namely technological innovation. The study of technological innovation is over one hundred years old. From the early 1900s onward, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and economists began theorizing about technological innovation, each from his own respective disciplinary framework. However, in the last forty years an economic and ??dominant?? understanding of technological innovation has developed: technological innovation defined as commercialized invention. This paper documents the origins of this representation and the tradition of research to which it gave rise: ??innovation studies.?? More specifically, it analyzes what distinguishes this tradition from that concerned with technological change as the use of inventions in industrial production, and looks at why such a tradition originated in Europe.