bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Aging in Indigenous Canada
Authors: Nelson Sarah E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on aging for Indigenous individuals in Canada, which has multiple layers of complexity involving both opportunities and challenges that relate closely to the places in which people live. It discusses 'Indigenous peoples' as an umbrella term that is used internationally to refer to the original peoples of a place, noting that in Canada 'Indigenous peoples' include over 70 distinct language groups and hundreds of different nations. It also refers to the Constitution Act that recognizes three main Indigenous groups: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. The chapter looks at issues for older and aging Indigenous people, which include urbanization and relationships to land, and health disparities and experiences of dementia and memory loss. It also cites the provision of services in culturally appropriate ways that account for the different geographies of Indigenous aging in Canada.
How do family background and shadow education affect academic performance and labour market outcomes in South Korea? Reasons for redistributive social investment
Authors: Kim Yun Young , Choi Young Jun
Published: September 2021

This chapter aims to explore the role of education and social investment, with special attention on the effects of shadow education on social mobility in Korea. It analyses how family background and shadow education influence educational attainment and, subsequently, how educational attainment affects incomes, using data from the Korea Education and Employment Panel (KEEP). Since this 'broken social elevator' is not a problem faced only by Korea — most OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries have 'sticky ceilings' and 'sticky floors' — the chapter then discusses the direction social investment policies should take to reboot social mobility. It argues that in order to minimise the effects of family background on educational attainment and labour market outcomes, social investment policies should actively play a redistributive role.
Employability, higher education and the knowledge economy
Authors: Durazzi Niccolo
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses in particular on the inter-connections between different types of higher education systems (as commonly defined in education literature by the prevalence of vertical or horizontal differentiation), and different types of knowledge economy (with respect to the relative importance attached to advanced manufacturing or dynamic services). It proposes a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between higher education systems and knowledge-based labour markets. The chapter then examines the complementarity — or lack thereof — between higher education systems and national knowledge economies in Britain, South Korea, Germany and the Netherlands, each having a different higher education–knowledge economy combination. Ultimately, the chapter recommends that governments should revive or create a vocational subset of higher education institutions to meet the high-skills demand of labour markets.
The social investment approach and gender division of housework across East Asia and Europe
Authors: Young An Mi
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses the issue of the gender division of housework, focusing on how formal childcare services and parental leave provisions are related to it. It comparatively studies the extent to which family policies are related to housework division in countries in East Asia and Europe. The chapter finds parental leave, which supports women as paid workers, is significant in Europe, but formal childcare services, which support women's deviant gender-roles, are significant when the examination is extended to East Asian countries. Gendered political power relations become significant only when Japan and Korea are added to the analysis. Neither gender-role ideology nor structural constraints, measured as gender wage gap, was an important macro-level factor. Ultimately, the chapter addresses how these results are related to the social investment approach to family and explains why the division of housework in East Asian countries remains highly gendered.
Introductory overview
Authors: Kenny Sue , Ife Jim , Westoby Peter
Published: September 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the issues that the book discusses, as well as the challenges in editing it. The book offers diverse critical perspectives, both international and cross-disciplinary, on the challenge of how to make sense of contemporary forms of populism and also how community development responds to these. It particularly focuses on right-wing populism. How can those committed to community development endeavours respond to populism? When thinking about any community development response to populism, it is important to understand that feelings of alienation and resentment, and concerns about uncertainty and material insecurity, have a rational basis. From this perspective, populism should be viewed as a symptom of underlying factors that have characterised much of the global state of affairs since the last decades of the twentieth century. Taking the viewpoint that populism is a symptom, any response to populism must be cognisant of the underlying conditions in which populism has arisen. The chapter then considers the view that populism is a symptom of the deterioration of the project of democracy.
Critical Realism for Health and Illness Research
Authors: Alderson Priscilla
Published: September 2021

Critical realism, a toolkit of practical ideas, helps researchers to extend, clarify and validate their work. Critical realism resolves problems and contradictions between quantitative factual research and qualitative interpretive approaches. It draws on their strengths, overcomes their limitations, and helps to connect research to policy and practice. To meet growing demand from researchers and students, the book shows how versatile critical realism can be in research across the life course and around the world, from small studies to large trials. Healthcare, health promotion and heath inequalities are all addressed. This book is based on the course at University College London, first taught by Roy Bhaskar the founder of critical realism, and later convened by the author. The aim is to help readers who are new to critical realism, or are in the fairly early stages, with their research across the whole range of health and illness disciplines and professions. Chapters consider relations between structure and agency, facts and values, and between visible evidence and mainly unseen powerful influences on health and illness. Using clear definitions, diagrams and examples, this book enables readers to understand and apply valuable critical realist concepts to health and illness research.
Introduction
Authors: Alderson Priscilla
Published: September 2021

Health and illness affect every interrelated aspect of all our lives. Many causal influences on health are unseen by the naked eye (viruses) but can have immense global effects, which are very varied and partly unpredictable. Health is a process, daily affected by contexts, policies, behaviours and beliefs. Health policies are practical and ethical as well as scientific, and often fail. These views run through the book on how critical realism helps us to understand them more fully. Contradictions between mainstream health research paradigms confuse and undermine the research, and theories for more valid and convincing research are considered. The chapter includes sections on the readership and aims of the book and a summary of all the chapters.
Rethinking theories: the basis of practical research and problems with paradigms
Authors: Alderson Priscilla
Published: September 2021

Chapter 1 reviews: social and biomedical influences through the centuries; positivist health research and then problems with it; interpretive research and some associated problems; differences between positivism and interpretivism; realist evaluation compared and contrasted with critical realism and discourse analysis. The detailed example is an evaluation of a community-based integrated care service. The chapter ends with questioning the present unhealthy state of social health research, which undermines the hope that sociology can be generally respected, convincing and useful in helping to resolve serious global problems of health and illness. This prepares for future chapters that show how critical realism draws on the strengths and overcomes the limitations of these paradigms by combining them into larger analysis.
Introduction: Measuring Sustainable Human Development Across the Life Course
Authors: Banati Prerna
Published: September 2021

It is critical that the wellbeing of society is systematically tracked by indicators that not only give an accurate picture of human life today but also provide a window into the future for all of us.This introduction chapter charts how the book presents impactful findings from international longitudinal studies that respond to the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 commitment to “leave no-one behind”.
Unequal Educational Trajectories: The Case of Ethiopia
Authors: Plavgo Ilze
Published: September 2021

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 has set out targets to improve learning quality and equity at all educational levels. A prerequisite for reaching these targets is to identify the sources and timing of inequality of educational opportunity (IEO). Drawing from the Young Lives Ethiopia longitudinal survey data, this chapter investigates the relationship between early cognitive abilities and later chances to reach higher educational levels, by parental socioeconomic status (SES). Findings point at two sources of IEO. First, poorer children develop lower abilities during childhood which negatively affects their later school transitions. This underlines the need for more policy efforts to equalize early cognitive development through levelling of household living conditions and access to pre-schools. Second, poorer children are considerably less likely to reach post-primary education, also when their abilities are high. This points at a need to reduce existing institutional and financial barriers to transit to post-primary education.
Capturing the Complexities of Adolescent Transitions Through a Mixed Methods Longitudinal Research Design
Authors: Baird Sarah , Jones Nicola , Hamad Bassam Abu , Sultan Maheen , Yadete Workneh
Published: September 2021

Adolescence is a time of rapid change in the lifecycle, with significant shifts in physical, cognitive and psychological competencies, and major changes in social roles and expectations. However, our collective understanding of the patterning of these changes and the types of support young people require to reach their full human capabilities is still limited. Given that multiple Sustainable Development Goals rest on investments in adolescents (from goals on eliminating harmful traditional practices including child marriage and female genital mutilation to ensuring quality secondary, tertiary and technical and vocational education), investing in a more robust evidence base and improved measurement is critical. The Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) research programme is a key initiative aimed at contributing to this evidence and measurement lacuna. This article discusses the design and methodological choices of the GAGE study, which is the largest longitudinal research initiative focused on adolescents (10-19 years) in the Global South, following 18,000 adolescent girls and boys in developmental and humanitarian contexts in sub-Saharan Africa, MENA and South Asia. It includes a discussion in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development commitment to leave no one behind of the programme’s purposeful sampling of advantaged adolescents.
Politics and Devolution in Scotland and Wales, 1999–2007
Authors: Bradbury Jonathan
Published: September 2021

This chapter analyses Scotland and Wales, addressing developments in Scottish politics, the move to further reform of the devolution settlement in Wales in 2006 and the significance of the 2007 elections in both countries. It reconsiders the nature of the territorial strains in Scotland and Wales, the power politics of seeking to gain power and guide devolution in each country. It addresses the approaches of the devolved governments and the UK Labour government in each case to ensure they achieved what they wanted. The chapter explores the extent to which the neo-Bulpittian propositions hold in the practice of devolution. In Wales, there was an opportunity to ensure the constitutional process behind the 2006 Act was more successful in achieving support across the political class than had been the case with the Government of Wales Act 1998. In the second set of elections in 2007, the Scottish National Party (SNP) emerged to form a minority government in Scotland; in Wales, Labour's hold slipped and Plaid Cymru became a coalition partner. The chapter readdresses the sources of the 2007 emergence to power of those who Bulpitt would have called the genuine peripheral dissidents more in terms of an analysis of the effectiveness or not of political management after 1999. It also reassesses the significance of the 2007 election results in practice to local elite assimilation.
Vicarious Warfare
Authors: Waldman Thomas
Published: September 2021

America has been at war for most of the 20th and 21st centuries and during that time has progressively moved towards a vicarious form of warfare, where key tasks are delegated to proxies, the military's exposure to danger is limited, and special forces and covert instruments are on the increase. Important strategic decisions are taken with minimal scrutiny or public engagement. This book charts the historical emergence of this distinctive tradition of war and explains the factors driving its contemporary prominence. It argues that vicarious warfare is an extreme form of strategic alchemy, and contemporary America is its most enthusiastic guild. In simple terms, vicarious warfare refers to the prospect of war on the cheap, fought at a reduced price in blood, treasure or political capital relative to ambition. The book contrasts the tactical advantages of vicarious warfare with its hidden costs and potential to cause significant strategic harm.
Babywearing: Fads, Dangers and Cultural Appropriation
Authors: Hamilton Patricia
Published: September 2021

This chapter describes babywearing as the most mainstream and uncontroversial among the techniques of breastfeeding and bedsharing, which are the most associated with attachment parenting (AP). It explains babywearing as an inoffensively visible marker of the values of bonding and attachment that is unquestioningly accepted in contemporary parenting cultures. It also discusses how the acceptance of babywearing is used in AP as a transition from the fringe parenting style to the normative approach to raising children. The chapter highlights the appearance of babywearing in state-produced parenting advice and in the experiences and ideas of black mothers. It looks at the narratives of women that draw attention to the dangers of babywearing, both in terms of physical safety and cultural relevance.
Phenomenological Criminology
Authors: McGregor Rafe
Published: September 2021

Phenomenological knowledge is knowledge of what a particular lived experience is like. This is sometimes abbreviated as knowledge-what (something is like) and contrasted with both knowledge-that (such and such is so) and knowledge-how (to perform some act). The phenomenological value of an exemplary narrative is the extent to which the narrative representation provides knowledge of the lived experience of perpetrating crime or social harm. This chapter demonstrates that narrative fictions can be valuable to criminology in this way using two case studies: Martin Amis’ (2014) novel, The Zone of Interest, which provides phenomenological knowledge of collaboration in the National Socialist genocide; and Tom King and Mitch Gerads’ (2018) graphic novel, The Sheriff of Baghdad, which provides phenomenological knowledge of collaboration in the Coaluition Forces occupation of Iraq.
Conclusion: Criminology of Narrative Fiction
Authors: McGregor Rafe
Published: September 2021

The purpose of this chapter is to reflect on the development of the argument for a theory of criminological fiction in the previous six chapters. The chapter opens with an extended example, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006), which demonstrates the way in which the three aetiological values – phenomenological, counterfactual, and mimetic – typically interact in a single narrative fiction. The chapter then summarises my literature review (chapters two and three), my argument for the aetiological values of narrative fiction (chapters four, five, and six), and my exploration of the pedagogic value of narrative fiction (chapter seven). The chapter concludes with an account of the omission of videogame narratives from the criminology of narrative fiction, which is identified as an area for further research.
Mediating Across Worldviews
Authors: Seul Jeffrey R.
Published: September 2021

This chapter considers the ways in which liberal institutions and approaches to peace mediation are inadequate for conflicts rooted in competing worldviews. Many of the most persistent and challenging conflicts are, and always have been, propelled by contending worldviews and their normative dictates. Yet peace mediation processes seem inadequately attuned to the drivers of such conflicts, and unresponsive to the core motivations and aspirations of conflict stakeholders. As a result, the default mechanisms, practices and mindsets that have been relied upon for decades in efforts to manage and resolve violent intra state and international conflict, including common modes of peace mediation, may no longer be fully up to the task. The chapter highlights this failure and proposes a strategy for peace mediation practice to engage in a more meaningful way with this tension.
Alternative Comedy and Resistance to ‘Thatcher’s Britain’
Authors: Brassett James
Published: September 2021

This chapter foregrounds a central dilemma between the ‘success’ of alternative comedy in promoting certain values in the mainstream of UK political culture, e.g. equality, political correctness, and a potential for ‘recuperation’ of such resistance as the critical edge is superseded by TV friendly irony. Here comedy takes on an avowed sense of political identity, questioning social attitudes and orienting against neoliberalism.
Collective Access to Justice
Authors: Molavi Michael
Published: September 2021

At a time when the collective redress landscape is undergoing a period of transformative change, this research focuses on class actions in England and Wales. The author provides an objective analysis of the costs and benefits of these proceedings from an access to justice perspective. Aiming to promote accessibility, this pioneering work separates fact from fiction in an easily digestible way, offering progressive solutions for reform. The book begins with a discussion on England and Wales's need for increasing access to justice, given that the capacity of people to access justice is paramount in a democracy governed by the rule of law. The Competition Appeal Tribunal (legislation introduced in Parliament on 23 January 2014) is considered the only area where class actions are available. The book outlines the historical and comparative context of class actions that have developed since their modern origins in the United States, and offers a deeper look into reforms in England and Wales. It concludes that the current landscape of collective claims-making leaves a major access-to-justice gap that demands reform.
Conclusion: Young People in the Work Society
Authors: Farrugia David
Published: September 2021

This chapter summarises the empirical findings of the book and explores the theoretical consequences for studies of youth, work and social inequality. The key argument is that the relationship between youth and work has been transformed by post-Fordism, and that young people have been re-positioned as the ideal post-Fordist subjects through their engagement with the contemporary labour force. In this sense, work has become a site for the production of youth as such – not merely an employment market that young people must ‘transition’ into, but a set of biopolitical practices that constitute the basic conditions for youth identity. In the process, young people’s definitions of themselves have become intertwined with their capacity to produce value at work. Class does not manifest merely in the biographical inequalities that structure youth transitions, or in struggles for status and symbolic value. Instead, class inequalities are manifested in the practices, ethics and forms of selfhood that are mobilised when young people cultivate themselves as subjects of value to the labour force. The book therefore offers a paradigm for understanding the formation of young people as workers, and the production of unique forms of classed identity manifested in the post-Fordist work ethic.
Dynamics of Crisis, Neoliberalisation and Austerity
Authors: Davies Jonathan S.
Published: September 2021

Theodore (2020: 2) argues that since the global financial crisis, “austerity has become the primary means for the further neoliberalisation of inherited arrangements”: neoliberalisation upon earlier waves of neoliberalism. Chapter 2 delves into this proposition. It begins by exploring the impact of the GFC, and its aftermath, in the eight countries and cities studied. It proceeds to examine the interplay of key terms introduced in chapter 1: crisis, austerity and neoliberalisation. The chapter allocates the cities to three groups: those in which austerity is recognized as a central concept or challenge and a warrant for neoliberalisation (Athens, Dublin and Leicester), those in which it is concealed or re-signified within an otherwise vigorous neoliberalisation agenda (Baltimore and Montréal), and those positioning themselves critically or outside it (Barcelona, Dandenong and Nantes). The chapter concludes by discussing theoretical implications of convergence and divergence in the cross-cutting relationships between crisis, austerity and neoliberalisation.
Resisting Austerity: Resonant Solidarities and Small Wins
Authors: Davies Jonathan S.
Published: September 2021

Chapter 6 explores resistance from the perspective of its capacity to deplete the governability of austere neoliberalism, construct solidarities, incubate alternative political economies in local state and civil society, and channel particularistic grievances into a more generalised anti-neoliberal or anti-capitalist politics. It highlights three ways in which resistance to austere neoliberalism acts positively in and against neoliberal regime politics. First, in the specific case of Barcelona, resistance propelled anti-austerity forces into office and consolidated municipalist regime capacity through discourses, practices and mobilisations around international solidarity, anti-racism and feminisation. Second, the chapter discusses numerous instances in which acts of resistance serve to politicize and reconstitute civil society forces organising against austere neoliberalism. Third, it identifies significant trends towards political generalisation, where specific grievances give rise to systemic grievances and critique.
Particularly Universal Encounters: Ethnographic Explorations into a Laboratory of World Society
Authors: Beck Teresa Koloma
Published: September 2021

This chapter reviews an experimental setting that is of major relevance in world politics, particularly international military, and humanitarian interventions in armed conflicts. It defines the laboratories of world society as societies that are subject to intervention. It also talks about the enactment, stabilization, and negotiation of an abstract and global epistemic, and normative and political order in human interaction, which makes them productive fields for the study of social change in world society. The chapter sketches the potential of an approach based on an ethnographic research into the intervention in Afghanistan. It focuses on one field of interventionist politics that has attracted particular attention and controversy: policies to empower women.
From the First Sino-Roman War (That Never Happened) to Modern International-cum-Imperial Relations: Observing International Politics from an Evolution Theory Perspective
Authors: Stetter Stephan
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses how an international political system was eventually established while being theoretically anchored in the world society approaches of modern systems theory. It talks about a system of global reach within which struggles over collectively binding decisions are played out. It also looks at central dynamics that have shaped the evolution of international politics and its imperial underpinnings. The chapter argues that this system allowed a better understanding of what happened after the modern international political system, which became firmly established as a distinct and recognizable social field. It emphasizes that this global system was also the result of social evolution and have been subject to ongoing transformations ever since.
States and Markets: A Global Historical Sociology of Capitalist Governance
Authors: Lawson George
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines the relationship between states and markets over the last century and develops insights from global history into international relations and historical sociology. It borrows a key concept from global history to show how entanglements are patterned through power relations, demonstrating a differentiation and sequencing of state–market complexes. It also identifies several main phases in the modern relationship between states and markets, such as the running from the third quarter of the nineteenth century to World War I that was marked by high flows of capital and finance. The chapter cites the interwar years that were marked by capital controls and a reduction in global transactions. It illustrates the gradual relaxation of capital controls and the partial recovery of financial and capital flows from 1945 to 1973 and the high capital mobility from the early 1970s until the present day.
Technical Internationalism and Global Social Change: A Critical Look at the Historiography of the United Nations
Authors: Chassé Daniel Speich
Published: September 2021

This chapter ventures into the technical basis of global sociability from a historical perspective, which renders the nation an effect of global communication rather than an agent. It examines the global numerical statistics on territories, populations, and economic potentials over the past centuries that have created a vast political space in which the nation features as a result. It also elaborates how numbers rule the world in manifold comparative frameworks by setting norms and designing communicative devices. The chapter suggests the notion of technical internationalism as a general framework for the analysis of certain governing organs. It argues that structural processes of a more anonymous nature constitute a global communicative convergence that concerns social change and were considered agents of change in their own right.
Data Stories
Authors: Kitchin Rob
Published: September 2021

This chapter provides an overview of the sociality of data. Data-driven endeavours are not simply technical systems, but are socio-technical systems. That is, they are as much a result of human values, desires, and social relations as they are scientific principles and technologies. The sociality of data is also evident with respect to how we have come to live with data. The data revolution has been transforming work and the economy, the nature of consumption, the management and governance of society, how we communicate and interact with media and each other, and forms of play and leisure. Indeed, our lives are saturated with digital devices and services that generate, process, and share vast quantities of data. This book reveals the myriad, complex, contested ways in which data are produced and circulated, as well as the consequences of living in a data-driven world.
Blind Data
Authors: Kitchin Rob
Published: September 2021

This chapter details a blind date between two researchers who have very different notions about the nature of data and the ethos and practices of science. One is an electronic engineer, while the other is an anthropologist. The anthropologist studies how digital technology is built and used, examining the politics and praxes of some start-up companies who were developing new apps. Meanwhile, the electronic engineer works on a sound-sensing network for monitoring and modelling background noise across the city. The chapter then looks at their debate on data creation and collection. The anthropologist makes a point about scientific practice, arguing that the electronic engineer is practising mechanical objectivity — trying to minimize biases, errors, calibration issues, and so on — but it is still set up in their vision, based on their education and experience, and compromising for circumstance. Thus, they are still making choices that influence the outcome.
How to Lose (and Regain) 3.6 Billion Euros
Authors: Kitchin Rob
Published: September 2021

This chapter imagines a conversation between two senior civil servants when they realize that the Irish government has lost 3.6 billion euros through a spreadsheet error. The Assistant Secretary of the Department of Finance reports to the General Secretary that the accountant was not sure how to classify a loan to the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) from the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA). They had assumed that it might be adjusted for elsewhere in the General Government Debt calculations, but it was not. As such, the government debt appears twice in the national accounts, once as an asset for the NTMA and once as a liability for the HFA. The General Secretary then asks why the data entry error was not picked up. The Assistant Secretary answers that everybody assumed that somebody else had dealt with it. The accounts got returned, nobody spotted the mistake, and everyone moved onto to other tasks.
Management Through Metrics
Authors: Kitchin Rob
Published: September 2021

This chapter studies how public and private sector organizations are increasingly using key performance indicators (KPIs) and technocratic procedures to manage work and workers and its consequences. Since the 1980s and the introduction of new public management (NPM) — an approach to running public sector institutions in a more business-like way — various kinds of assessment have been introduced to measure and track performance. Usually, these measures are institutionalized through formalized assessment schemes designed to improve efficiency, productivity, and quality. An entire bureaucracy has developed to oversee this datafication, and the management of institutions has transformed to become more instrumental and technocratic, guided by metrics. Decisions concerning individual promotion, departmental staffing and budgets, and strategic investments are informed by KPIs and rankings. In places like the UK and Australia, management through metrics has become deeply ingrained into the working lives of academics and the management of institutions. While Ireland has managed to avoid the worst excesses of management through metrics, it has not been totally immune. KPIs are now a part of the management regime and are used to guide decision-making, but they are used alongside other forms of information rather than narrowly determining outcomes.
Guinea Pigs
Authors: Kitchin Rob
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses the implications for citizens of data-driven management by charting the issues of living in a smart city testbed area, demonstrated through a walking tour for local residents, led by a public official. It was clear to the recently hired community liaison officer for the city's smart docklands team that the key expected outcome was to convince local residents that there was nothing to fear from the trialling of new technologies in their area and to get their buy-in. However, interaction with the local community had been a secondary concern to those establishing initiative. They had been much more focused on the technical and business aspects of building the testbed and securing investment than how it related to those that lived and worked there. Nevertheless, the community liaison officer tries to convince the citizens that they do not collect personal data and that the initiative provides job opportunities.
Black Data Matter
Authors: Kitchin Rob
Published: September 2021

This chapter charts how a group of citizens seek to challenge systemic and institutional racism within their city by building their own datasets and tools. It looks at how some computer programmers created black data — data about the murder of black lives, data about systemic, institutional racism, and data that demands justice. The result is a Mapping Police Violence database. The database maps the deaths of people killed by the police by district, most of which happened in black neighbourhoods. This initiative then grew into a black atlas of the city, incorporating crime data, census data, and some housing and welfare data.
Algorithms and the End of Politics
Authors: Timcke Scott
Published: September 2021

As the United States contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this book considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country's politics and society. The book provides a Marxist analysis of the rise of digital media, social networks and technology giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. It looks at the impact of these new platforms and technologies on their users who have made them among the most valuable firms in the world. The book is concerned with unfreedom and class rule in contemporary American capitalism as seen in the digital realm. Class struggle is the first and last force shaping developments in communication. The book looks at the response of the ruling class to an organic crisis in the United States, and it traces how digital media instruments are used by different factions within the capitalist ruling class to capture and maintain the commanding heights of the American social structure. The book moves on to examine the role of data and whiteness in American social life. It traces the evolving intersection of capital, security and technology to examine the broad trajectory of unfreedom. The book concludes that digital society requires significant restructuring if it is to facilitate greater democratization. Offering bold, new thinking across data politics and digital and economic sociology, this is a powerful demonstration of how algorithms have come to shape everyday life and political legitimacy in the United States and beyond.
Algorithms and the Critical Theory of Technology
Authors: Timcke Scott
Published: September 2021

This chapter argues that the radical critique of computation and calculation must work from the register of capital. Using the example of the automation of control rights, it links 'algorithmic regulation' with mature capitalist logics — where capital dominates the labour–capital antagonism — to show why computation is necessarily a venue for radical political advocacy, an urgent task on the 'hard road to renewal'. The chapter treats 'data politics', or more precisely digitalization as a signature element within late neoliberalism. It uses two case studies involving property rights and differential class power to suggest that there are many good reasons to foreground Marxian-inspired contributions. The chapter attempts to specify a venue and criteria for politically meaningful scholarship. The issue is more than just analytical precision. At stake is the continuing relevance of a critical theory of technology that is politically adequate to understand the latest manoeuvre in the always-ready impulse of value towards the realization of its own totality.
Conclusion: The Fatal Abstractions of Capitalist Rule
Authors: Timcke Scott
Published: September 2021

This chapter concludes that digital society requires significant restructuring if it is to facilitate greater democratization. But unless it is achieved via a path where workers' democracy is entrenched, then whatever social provisions and degree of democracy happens to be attained through concessions, it will always be susceptible to erosion as capitalists reassert themselves at a later date. In many different registers, widespread digital communication is revolutionary. Within four decades the Internet expanded from niche military, government and scientific institutions to being integral to all parts of social life. In providing access to many goods and facilitating the creation of others, it has become a public good in and of itself. This fact has often been construed as a key episode within a triumphant narrative found in the cheerleading technology press as well as large circulation newspapers about the potency for greater communication to yield opportunities for commerce and emancipation. In one way or another, digital utopians have argued that the Internet is, or can be, a great leveller. But the promise of egalitarian liberation is far from materializing. Instead, power has radically concentrated with the ruling class, those that own the means of production. This development should be foremost in any analysis of contemporary social life. Accordingly, the key question should be how does the development, acquisition and deployment of technology reshape the balance of power between governors and the governed.
China Risen?
Authors: Breslin Shaun
Published: September 2021

This book is framed around two very simple and interrelated questions; what is global power and in what ways does China have it? By focussing on political economy and ideational dimensions of global power, it shows how Xi Jinping, whilst building on what came before, has developed a set of strategic strands designed to bring about (global) change. This does not mean that all Chinese international interactions are a direct result of a clearly coordinated and controlled state project; grand strategy and state interest and intent can be (and indeed, often is) assumed when in reality Chinese overseas actors are utilising their ‘bounded autonomy’ to attain other objectives. The changing nature of China’s global economic role – not least the growth of outward investment – might have been enough it itself to shine a new light on the nature of China’s rise. So too might the way that China’s leaders have articulated their global governance reform agenda and used an ‘occidentalism’ to establish China’s leadership credentials. Or the nature of attempts to influence (or even control) the way that China’s rise is discussed and debated across the world. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that while a risen China might have gained followership from some, concern about the consequences of China’s rise has increased quite significantly in places where it was previously viewed with less apprehension.
Why Face-to-Face Still Matters
Authors: Reades Jonathan , Crookston Martin
Published: September 2021

Face-to-Face: The Persistent Power of Cities In a Post-Pandemic Era, is about the way that people and firms are adapting to the world of always-on and everywhere digital access, and what that means for cities and regions. Twenty years after The Death of Distance—and in the midst of a pandemic that has led some to question the future of cities—many people still think that we are on track for ‘business anywhere’. The book shows why that's not the case, and provides a structure for thinking about the next twenty years of social and economic upheaval. It shows how the changing fortunes of cities are tied to the ongoing importance of face-to-face contact to our most valuable industries, and thus why the ‘human touch’ will continue to be crucial in the cities of tomorrow. Drawing on interviews with artists and advertisers, bankers and bakers, software devs and property developers, across some forty interviews we home in on what people actually do and why. ‘Contact’, in all its forms, is shown to still matter hugely to companies and individuals, even in a world with high-quality video conferencing and free online calling. And when the pandemic hit, a further digital survey explored interviewees’ experiences of an ‘e-only’ world, gaining ‘front-line’ insights into the short- and long-terms. The book seeks to provide guidance for city leaders, businesses, policymakers and students of urban and regional planning on how to think about 21st Century urban change.
The Story So Far
Authors: Reades Jonathan , Crookston Martin
Published: September 2021

This introductory chapter sketches the territory to be explored: how ICT is, and is not, changing everything; the continuing importance of face-to-face contact in many sectors; how businesses adapt to this changing and digitally-dominated landscape; and what this all means for cities and towns. It summarises the book’s ‘layered’ structure: starting with the underpinning that infrastructure provides for contact (Chapter 2); explaining how F2F has such an important role to play in making markets and doing deals (Chapters 3 & 4); homing in on the core issue of why firms and workers value face-to-face interaction so highly, and interviewing the people involved about what they actually do day-to-day (Chapters 5 & 6); and finally on to the ‘so what for cities’ conclusions (Chapters 7 & 8). It stresses, too, a view of the coronavirus pandemic as an accelerant to already-existing trends: it may be the petrol, but it is not the fire.
Making Markets
Authors: Reades Jonathan , Crookston Martin
Published: September 2021

We analyse how and why Central Places come to dominate particular markets for goods and services. Goods, labour, skills and data all move in different ways and at different speeds through the networks, with different ‘ranges’: critical in determining how much centrality matters in each sector. This connects to the challenges of risk and uncertainty, and to the patterns of search and signalling which firms and their people deploy in different types of market: vital for the ‘opaque’ markets in the most dynamic sectors of the 21st century economy, where data on its own will not be enough, and where judgement and confidence are crucial. The chapter then homes in on the relationships between access to information, signalling and proximity in helping to acquire certainty and reduce risk. The density of the information ‘surface’ is why cities are so often the key locus of rare skills, of sites for the exchange of complex information, and of high-value markets.
Talking Shop
Authors: Reades Jonathan , Crookston Martin
Published: September 2021

We focus on the people and asks what role does personal choice and interaction play? The key issue here is the role of face-to-face interaction in the transfer of complex, uncertain knowledge. It analyses the different sorts of knowledge and relationships involved in day-to-day exchanges. This leads on to the milieux for such exchange, from meetings to bar-chat to the digital world; and to the need (or not) for frequent access to each other, and thus to the communication networks: digital in all cases, physical to varying degrees in others. This need varies according to the differential importance of knowledge, confidence and judgement across sectors and firms. All of it is more or less amenable to replacement by ICT; the questions explored are: what is the core of irreplaceable contact, to whom does it still matter and, consequently, what are the locational effects for cities and their hinterlands?
And in the End …
Authors: Reades Jonathan , Crookston Martin
Published: September 2021

We draw together the book’s themes. These revolve round the core importance of human contact, with face-to-face ever more important, not less, because when insight and knowledge matter F2F will always have the edge. This is despite the ever-deeper penetration of ICT, which allows more choice, accelerates change and enables unparalleled contact, but doesn’t replace face-to face. The pandemic ran a full-strength test of what an e-only work world could be like. The experience will cement and accelerate certain tendencies that already existed, but will not create fundamentally new ones. The long-run strength of central places is because ‘cities are about uncertainty’ and their offer of proximity, of the ‘buzz’, and of confidence is vital. The potential is great: ‘being there’ is still at the core of the urban experience, and face-to-face contact is what towns and cities do for a living.
Preparation and surface-enhanced Raman scattering properties of GO/Ag/Ta2O5 composite substrates
Authors: Zhang Zhiyuan , Li Zhaoxiang , Wang Luyao , Li Jinmeng , Pan Jie , Wang Shuyun , Zhang Chao , Li Zhen , Peng Qianqian , Xiu Xianwu
Published: September 2021

The composite substrate composed of precious metal, semiconductor and graphene has not only high sensitivity and uniform Raman signal but also stable chemical properties, which is one of the important topics in the field of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). In this paper, a sandwich SERS substrate based on tantalum oxide (Ta2O5) is designed and fabricated. The substrate has high sensitivity, stable performance and high quantification capability. The composite substrate can achieve a high sensitivity Raman detection of crystal violet (CV) with a detection limit of 10−11 M and an enhancement factor of 1.5 × 109. This is the result of the synergistic effect of electromagnetic enhancement and chemical enhancement, in which the chemical enhancement is the cooperative charge transfer in the system composed of probe molecules, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and Ta2O5, and the electromagnetic enhancement comes from the strong local surface plasmon resonance between the adjacent AgNPs. After exposing the composite substrate to the air for one month, the Raman signal did not weaken, indicating that the performance of the composite substrate is stable. In addition, there is an excellent linear relationship between the intensity of Raman characteristic peak and the concentration of probe molecules, which proves that the composite substrate has high quantification capability. In practical application, the composite SERS substrate can be used to detect harmful malachite green quickly and sensitively and has a broad application prospect in the field of food safety and chemical analysis.
Hybrid aperiodic coding for SNR improvement in a BOTDA fiber sensor
Authors: Zhou Yin , Yan Lianshan , Liu Can , He Haijun , Li Zonglei , Qian Heng , Ye Jia , Pan Wei , Luo Bin
Published: September 2021

The measurement accuracy of a Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) fiber sensor is determined by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the received sensing signal. Here, a new hybrid aperiodic coding method is proposed to improve the SNR. In the proposed method, two pre-discovered short seed aperiodic codes (SA-codes) are used to construct a new hybrid aperiodic code (HA-code) in a nested way. The HA-code inherits the good denoising capabilities of the two SA-codes and features a high coding gain. In the proof-of-concept experiment, a SNR improvement up to 8 dB is obtained, which improves the measurement certainty to 1.67 MHz over a 117.46 km sensing range under a spatial resolution of 2.6 m.