The interaction between artists’ professional training and employment in the field of Finnish theatre

This paper deals with the effects of formal training on artists employment situation in the 1990s. The empirical data is based on a survey of theatre and dance artists which was done by the Arts Council of Finland in co-operation with the Finnish Theatre Academy. The survey studied current employment status of theatre artists as well as the effects of formal training on their employment, working conditions and salary. The results of the survey have been published in Finnish by the Arts Council (Karhunen, 1994).     

Artistic styles: revisiting the analysis of modern artists’ careers

This paper is based on a global sample of the 214 most prominent modern visual artists born 1850–1945. Two analytical methods are used to analyse the age at which artists produce their best works—one based on year-of-birth cohorts of modern visual artists and the other on stylistic groups. The cohort-analysis shows that the career patterns develop similarly over time for artists working in the USA and Europe; over time the artists’ peak ages first increase, reach their maximum for artists born between 1890 and 1909, and then decrease again. The study of stylistic groups shows that artists associated with Fauvism, the Nabis and Post-Impressionism experience an early peak, whereas artists associated with Surrealism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Pop Art, Expressionism and Cubism peak later in their careers.

20th century artists’ oil paints: The case of the Olii by Lucio Fontana

During the 20th century, many innovative binders have been rapidly introduced to the art world and soon became popular as artists’ paints and pictorial media. However, despite the advantages that new synthetic materials presented, oil paints have never been entirely substituted. Indeed, this paper focuses on the results provided by the scientific analysis of a group works from the oeuvre of Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), all of which created between 1960 and 1964 using oil-based media, and aims to illustrate how oils contained in the pictorial media have influenced these works’ respective ageing and degradation processes. Despite the apparent coherence in the behaviour of many of Fontana's creations, some artworks revealed discrepancies in terms of the physical and mechanical behaviour of the pictorial films and in alterations resulting from degradation processes. Samples taken from case studies belonging to the Olii and Fine di Dio series were analysed using optical microscopy, X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy in attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR) and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) in order to study and identify the materials employed by the artist and the products of their degradation processes. These analyses gave unexpected but useful results (such as the presence of non-drying or slow-drying oils in the paint formulations) which not only provided us with new insight into the nature of the constituent materials, but also facilitated the elaboration of correct conservation measures and suitable restoration interventions.     

Research Policy In Emerging Economies: Brazil’s Sector Funds

This paper examines Brazil’s Sector Funds, an emerging research and development policy that seeks to increase public-private research collaboration. The first section sets the context of the ‘policy problem’. The second section discusses the policy’s implementation, and discusses its likely implications for Brazil and beyond.     

Photographer’s Memories of VIPs in 16 Years

~~Photographer’s Memories of VIPs in 16 Years     

The Idea of ‘Basic Research’ in Language and Practice

Today, there is increasing concern about the health of basic research, yet considerable disagreement about its definition. This paper examines the way in which the term is used in everyday practice. Drawing upon interviews with British and American scientists and policy-makers, we identify six different definitions currently in use. Given the utility and flexibility of the concept, it is useful to ask what function it serves, and whether we should develop new terminology.     

Revisiting ‘Weinberg’s Choice’: Classic Tensions in the Concept of Scientific Merit

Alvin Weinberg’s classic and much debated two articles in Minerva, “Criteria for Scientific Choice” (1963) and “Criteria for Scientific Choice II – The Two Cultures” (1964), represent two of the first and most important attempts to create a meta-discourse about priority setting in science policy, and many of the points advanced remain relevant. The goal of this paper is to elaborate on the relevance of some of Weinberg’s original arguments to priority setting today. We have singled out four issues for attention: The tension between scientific and institutional choice, the assumptions behind the triad of scientific, technological and social merit, the elusive ‘externality from size’ argument for funding promoted by Weinberg, and finally the problems involved in the idea of basic science as an ‘overhead cost’ for applied science, and applied science as an ‘overhead’ on a sectoral mission. These four issues will be elaborated from a policy perspective and connected to present day challenges for science and technology policy.     

Pandemic Stories: Rhetorical Motifs in Journalists’ Coverage of Biomedical Risk

This paper argues that journalists’ discursive actions in an outbreak context manifest in identifiable rhetorical motifs, which in turn influence the delivery of biomedical information by the media in such a context. Via a critical approach grounded in rhetorical theory, I identified three distinct rhetorical motifs influencing the reportage of health information in the early days of the H1N1 outbreak. A public-health motif was exhibited in texts featuring a particular health official and offering the statements of such an official as a mechanism of reassurance. A concealment-of-information motif was exhibited in texts emphasizing the importance of the transparency of health officials, and in texts demonstrating ambivalence about information provided by socially-sanctioned sources. Finally, in texts mythologizing the outbreak to the exclusion of other functions of the text (e.g., conveying who is at risk, protective behaviours, symptoms), I identified a pandemic motif. Each motif differs in the conclusions it offers to audiences seeking to gauge relative levels of risk, and to receive information about protective behaviours. I suggest that one means of interpreting the manifestation of distinct rhetorical motifs in the context of a high-risk health threat is the certainty that this context alters moral responsibilities, consequently influencing the manifestation of narrative role.

     

Animal Pedagogy: The Origin of ‘Man’ in Rousseau and Herder

Abstract

Animal metaphors and examples in texts of Rousseau and Herder appear as either ideal or abject ancestors and are thereby assimilated into the history of man. In spite of their differences, for both Rousseau and Herder, men become civilised by eating animals. And, their use of animal metaphors and illustrations belie the very distinction between man and animal that their invocation seeks to establish.     

Ethics of Incorporation: (Im)possibility of Accepting Otherness in Kawabata's ‘One Arm’

On touching, an object mediates and equally prevents our contacts with others. But what if one incorporates another's body? Japanese author Kawabata Yasunari, in his ‘One Arm’, describes a peculiar encounter with the other's body: the protagonist replaces his arm with a girl's arm and incorporates it, causing him some spasms, a sense of otherness, and affective as well as repulsive feelings. This replacement of body parts questions the possibility of getting in touch with the other, as well as risky intersections with the other. In considering this (fictional) bodily encounter and the process of being together with another body, I aim to examine the rupture of contact, the (im)possibility of accepting otherness and the ethics of communication in Kawabata, through the phenomenon of incorporation. By examining the under-researched topic of incorporation and touch in Kawabata in dialogue with relevant theories by Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas and Melanie Klein, this paper aims to advance theorisations of touch and incorporation at the intersection of literature and critical theories.     

A test of Rosen’s and Adler’s theories of superstars

This article compares and contrasts Adler and Rosen’s theories regarding the stardom and popularity of musical artists through the impact of local linguistic policies on consumers’ decisions to buy recorded music (CDs). Spain, with local linguistic policies implemented in Catalonia and the Basque Country, serves as an ideal quasi ‘natural experiment’ for testing these theories. The authors’ predictions are addressed within a multilevel regression framework, with two main results: first, contrary to Rosen’s predictions, the impact of local linguistic policies on the probability of buying music CDs is positive; second, local linguistic policies seem to contribute to increasing the production of music CDs in local languages, increasing the popularity of local artists with their audiences.     

The ‘Negotiated Space’ of University Researchers’ Pursuit of a Research Agenda

The paper introduces a concept of a ‘negotiated space’ to describe university researchers’ attempts to balance pragmatically, continually and dynamically over time, their own agency and autonomy in the selection of research topics and pursuit of scientific research to filter out the explicit steering and tacit signals of external research funding agencies and university strategies and policies. We develop this concept to explore the degree of autonomy researchers in fact have in this process and draw on semi-structured interview material with research group leaders in Finland and the UK, in the former in seven research fields, in the latter in two fields. First, the analysis reveals that topic selection is strongly filtered by the intra-scientific factors. In topic selection researchers have more leeway, a broader negotiated space than in research content, that is, in the ways in which they pursue their research, which are more affected by funding opportunities and other contextual matters. Second, the ways which affect researchers’ agency include individual- and more aggregate-level acts and factors: at the individual level, researchers resort to different strategies to create a negotiated space, but at the more aggregate level field-specific factors play a role. In fields with multiple funding opportunities, which we call ‘shopping mall’ fields, researchers can have a broader negotiated space than in fields where funding is more based on ‘lottery’. In the latter, the researchers’ negotiated space is narrow and contingent on the outcome of the funders’ decisions.     

Mission Completed? Changing Visibility of Women’s Colleges in England and Japan and Their Roles in Promoting Gender Equality in Science

The global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology, despite long-held prejudices and the lack of role models. Previously, when equality was not firmly established as a key issue on international or national agendas, women’s colleges played a great role in mentoring female scientists. However, now that a concerted effort has been made by governments, the academic community and the private sector to give women equal opportunities, the raison d’être of women’s universities seems to have become lost. This paper argues otherwise, by demonstrating that women’s universities in Japan became beneficiaries of government initiatives since the early 2000s to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific research. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women’s universities embedded in their institutional foundations, by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. England, as a primary example of a neoliberal welfare regime, with its strong emphasis on equality and diversity, promoted its gender equality policy under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry. By contrast, with a strong emphasis on family values and the male-breadwinner model, the Japanese government carefully treated the goal of supporting female scientists from the perspective of the equal participation of both men and women rather than that of equality. Following this trend, rather contradictorily, women’s universities, with their tradition of fostering a ‘good wife, wise mother’ image, began to be highlighted as potential gender-free institutions that provided role models and mentoring female scientists. By drawing on the cases of England and Japan, this paper demonstrates how the idea of equality can be framed differently, according to wider institutional contexts, and how this idea impacts on gender policies.     

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.     

“Let’s make lots of money”: the determinants of performance in the recorded music sector

This research analyzes the performance of 467 record labels in eight European countries over a period of 13 years (2003–2015). The main goal is to explain a relative measure of profitability in terms of observed variables, although the nature of the dataset also allows us to include non-observed firm and country effects. To this end alternative models are estimated and three main research questions are tested, namely: (1) the effect of the dual structure of the recorded music market, in which a competitive segment and an oligopoly coexist; (2) the extent and source of the volatility of profits in record labels; and (3) the nonlinear impact of size on performance.     

Determinants of sales and price at auction for three Australian Indigenous artists: to pool or not to pool?

Albert Namatjira (1902–1959), Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c1910–1996) and Rover (Julama) Thomas (c1926–1998) are three of Australia’s best-known Indigenous artists. Each is known for one style of painting—Namatjira for watercolor on paper, Kngwarreye for acrylic (synthetic polymer) on canvas and Thomas for natural earth pigments on canvas. We estimate a sample selectivity model using data from the Australian Art Sales Digest to study the determinants of sales and the hammer price of artworks offered at auction from these artists. The results show that pre-sale information on the artwork and auction effects are significant and that the three artists studied are very different from each other. Thus, data should not be pooled when estimating these models.