bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Modern Villagers
Authors: Thomas Marcel 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The first chapter provides an introduction to the postwar remodelling of Neukirch and Ebersbach and examines how this process was informed by shifting notions of what it meant to be rural in postwar society. Rather than understanding ‘rurality’ as an inherent characteristic of localities at the periphery of society, the chapter shows that the remaking of the village in East and West was shaped by a similar chronology of a departure from, and subsequent return to, the rural. In the first two decades after the war, the state as well as local residents in both Germanies primarily envisioned the rural as backwards and in need of modernization. The modernization attempts of planning elites and the belief of villagers in a modern future culminated in the ‘planning euphoria’ of the 1970s. From the end of the decade onwards, however, experiences of crisis and a fading belief in progress led to a rediscovery of the rural in which traditional characteristics of rurality became reconciled with modernity. The chapter thus demonstrates that what it meant to be ‘rural’ became a key question in debates over the direction and outcomes of social and political renewal in both German states. It adds to our understanding of how the establishment of two very different societies in the divided Germany was debated and contested through peculiarly local meanings.
(Un)Making Community
Authors: Thomas Marcel 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Chapter two challenges the traditional narrative that the close-knit rural ‘community’ was swept away by inevitable modernization processes in postwar society. Instead, it demonstrates that the villagers had a much more ambivalent stance towards ‘community’ than often assumed. Analysing the interviewees’ multilayered narratives of the disappearance of the village community, the chapter shows that local residents in both villages increasingly abandoned traditional social networks but instantly lamented their demise when they disappeared from their lives. In the booming and affluent Ebersbach, locals gradually retreated into privacy and withdrew from traditional social spaces in the village, but at the same time began to mourn their loss. In the East, villagers shared this desire for privacy, but the numerous problems of life in a shortage economy made it necessary for them to maintain a range of support networks. Once this pragmatic community unravelled after reunification, the Neukirchers too began to long for the village community of the past which they had just left behind. The chapter thus shows that despite very different circumstances on both sides of the Wall, Germans in East and West shared an ambivalent attitude towards community and redefined communal relationships in the village in similar ways.
The Cold War in the Village
Authors: Thomas Marcel 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter examines in more detail how the inhabitants of the two villages engaged with the other Germany and the division of their nation. The Neukirchers and Ebersbachers lived far away from the inner-German border, but in their everyday lives they nonetheless were forced to confront the impact of division. By analysing everyday practices through which the villagers positioned themselves in the political landscape of the Cold War, the chapter sheds new light on the asymmetry of (be)longing and othering in the divided nation. It demonstrates how the Neukirchers and Ebersbachers constructed their own respective imaginary East and imaginary West shaped by local concerns and searches for identity. In Neukirch, the villagers increasingly built up the West as an object of longing in their attempts to deal with the daily struggles of life in a shortage economy. The Ebersbachers, on the other hand, used the East as a Cold War ‘other’ to express pride in their economic recovery and gain a stronger sense of their own identity in a divided nation. These distorted images of the other Germany led to widespread alienation and misunderstandings in the first German–German encounters in the reunified nation. It was difference, rather than a shared sense of national identity, that dominated the experiences of the Neukirchers and Ebersbachers when the inner-German border disappeared in 1990.
Oblique Strategies and Experimental Fictions
Authors: Jordan Julia 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The writers that are the subject of this book have begun to assume increasing importance, gaining in readership, scholarly attention, and critical significance. Yet it has not so far been possible to understand their tonal and formal particularity in its full relation to late modernism, which has recently been defined less as a periodizing hypothesis and more as a distinctive set of aesthetic and philosophical concerns of its own. In this introductory chapter, Oblique Strategies proposes a new reading of these writers, as not merely defined by certain formal effects, including the self-consciously opaque or abstruse, the non-linear, jump-cut, or typographically virtuosic, but arguing that this particular strain of late modernism is best understood as constituted by their thematic and philosophical concern with accident and indeterminacy. Here the book makes the case for these writers’ collective sense of themselves as writing modernist fiction after modernism, with all the belatedness, uncertainty, and paradoxical urgency—aesthetic, philosophical, and stylistic—that obtains.
Accident as Event
Authors: Jordan Julia 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Dealing with a broad sweep of experimental novels of the period that make accident a central concern, this chapter examines writing by Samuel Beckett, Brigid Brophy, Eva Figes, Gabriel Josipovici, Nicholas Mosley, Muriel Spark, and Stefan Themerson. In these the accident emerges as a thematic motif or philosophical principle: as chronological paralysis, traumatic violence, revelatory or epiphanic understanding, or eroticized encounter with technology. In late modernism, the uneasy mingling of the precariousness induced by an awareness of life as threatened by the atomic as well as constituted by it seems contradictory to an understanding of the accident as inevitable. This is prevalent in Beckett’s invocation of the void as much as in the frantic figurations of a writer like Brophy. The accident then emerges as what reveals the late modernist disposition to passivity, non-mastery, dissolution, and silence, pushing at the limits of what can and cannot be known.
Accident as Critique
Authors: Jordan Julia 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter turns from reading the accidental and uncertain nature of British post-war avant-gardism as constitutive of its status as late, to asking the question, late to whom? Lateness clearly implies a particular relation to history, and assumes an emergence from a particular tradition, in this instance Western and modernist. What does it mean to conceive of this form of writing—the accidental, the experimental, the uncertain—in the period as new, that is, in terms of the anglophone modernist tradition? The particular historical trajectories of Britain’s colonial past, and the dissolution of its empire, combined to mean that in the 1950s and 1960s some of the most innovative writers were migrants. This chapter accordingly asks how this argument thus far might be extended by thinking about how the specifically postcolonial historical moment is illuminated by their (partial, or perceived) refusal of realism, taking as its examples the experimentalists Zulfikar Ghose and Denis Williams.
Indeterminate Brooke-Rose
Authors: Jordan Julia 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Christine Brooke-Rose is more often thought of in terms of constraint than indeterminacy, due to her decision to write most of her novels under certain rules of exclusion or grammatical limitation, a decision which means that her work is often determined, in particular ways, before she starts writing. But it is largely against this notion of constraint that this chapter reads her 1966 novel Such, and her writing more generally, as ‘indeterminate’. This chapter will use this term not only to indicate that Brooke-Rose is engaged with a particular kind of scientific discourse about uncertainty and indeterminacy, but also as a way to read her figurative imagination. Indeterminacy evokes both epistemic ambiguity and a muddy opacity, and Such, without itself being formally indeterminate ‘as such’, offers us a vision of what a sense of unconstraint might do elsewhere: to human relations, to epistemology, and to the human subject.
The Cultural Roots of American Management
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Management by Objectives, formalized by Peter Drucker in the middle of the twentieth century, has since been maintained as an essential reference in the United States and as the core of ‘American-style’ management. Despite the tremendous economic, technological and societal transformations that have taken place in recent decades, it remains the main tool used by managers to delegate and control team members’ work. The persistence of MBO is demonstrated by using three types of data: the introduction to MBO at General Electric in the early 1950s, a field survey in the early 1980s in a Maryland plant and the current policies of American companies considered as innovative in their workforce’s management. The longevity of MBO can be explained by its deep cultural embeddedness in American values. Precisely, its underlying principles stem from the American view of fair regulations of labour relations, which is not necessarily shared abroad.
American Management Put to the Test
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
What happens when the concept of management by objectives (MBO) is introduced into organizations in which employees conceive labour relations differently from their American counterparts? Three case studies, respectively located in Tunisia, France, and Vietnam illustrate the diversity of the interpretations, from one country to another, of each of the key concepts of MBO: what does an objective mean? How are achievements to be measured? How are performances to be recognized or sanctioned? These cases display the various reinterpretations of the MBO which lead to a wide range of behaviours and contrasting outcomes: from terminating the use of the method to the implementation of adaptations that can better make sense in the local universe of meaning and help enhance organizational performance.
Theorizing National Cultures
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
In the field of management, two main strands are currently concerned with cultures: one, originating from social psychology, uses attitude scales to characterize national cultures; the other, sociological and anthropological, considers only small groups. This literature did not provide a theory that would serve to interpret satisfactorily what we were observing. We identified two layers in a culture. A first layer corresponds to the existence of a specific way of giving meaning to situations and events, of experiencing power relations, of deciphering the intentions of others. A deeper layer comes from the existence, in each society, of a specific type of concern. The diversity of cultures is precisely related to the fact that the main fears from which one seeks to be free vary significantly from one society to another; so does the organization of social life which has over the years been developed to ward off those fears.
Leadership
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
It is generally admitted that, in different national contexts, employees expect different behaviours from their managers. This chapter goes further and highlights the diverse culturally rooted conceptions of ‘virtuous authority’ which meets employees’ expectations. It draws upon a comparison between the recommendations on how to develop their leadership addressed to future managers in the United States, Germany, and France. These prescriptions, taken from management consulting sites of the three countries, differ in several respects. The differences relate to the diverse cultural interpretations of the particular social relationship that the hierarchical subordination represents. More precisely, the acceptable ways of exercising hierarchical authority in each country are those that dispel the fears locally associated with subordination. Each way offers counterbalances that, in practice and symbolically, make it possible to rebalance a social relationship that would otherwise be considered too unequal.
Procedures and Control
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The content of expected procedures, their precision, the more or less strict compliance requested, and the way their implementation is audited, depend on cultural contexts. The first part of the chapter depicts a Cameroonian company in which the expectations for detailed procedures manuals to be applied literally are high. Such a use of procedures can be explained by the need to ward off the underlying fear that personal relationships outweigh the objectivity of the rules. Conversely, the second part shows that, in France, detailed operating procedures in the automotive and nuclear sectors contradict the quest for autonomy, associated with the importance of mastering one’s profession. A comparison with the nuclear sector in the United States shows that there the stakes are again different. This chapter deals with the way procedures are articulated with the expectations and fears, specific to each universe of meaning, which are generally ignored.
Decision-making
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Making decisions involves many risks such as ignoring relevant points of view; angering those who are frustrated, inducing them, once the decision has been made, to hinder its implementation. One way to limit these risks is to frame decisions with rituals. However, for a ritual to work, it must appear respectable; and this relies on an eminently cultural interpretation. To understand what is at stake, two aspects of the decision-making process are explored successively. First, a Franco-Dutch case demonstrates how social interactions intervene in the idea selection. Second, examples from Cameroon and Jordan show the suspicions and resentment that any decision is likely to generate among those who suffer from it. However, appropriate procedures are likely to overcome suspicions and to give a sense of fairness.
Industrial Relations
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The institutional mechanisms that regulate labour relations will be all the more effective that they make sense within the cultural universes of meaning of the negotiating partners. This close linkage is illustrated by two contrasting situations. The first, which stands as a counterexample, takes place in a French territory of the South Pacific where transferred institutions induce deep misunderstandings between managers from metropolitan France and Oceanian trade unionists. The second is located in the United States. In that case, the bargaining system fits the American interpretations of labour relations in terms of market relations. This coherence sheds light on the performance and longevity of a bargaining system that is unparalleled in the rest of the world.
Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The variety of values and customs strongly affects the behaviours considered to be morally acceptable, the motivations to behave ethically, and the types of control that a company can legitimately exercise over its employees. This chapter displays the benchmarks within which ethical approaches make sense in different cultures, both for company employees and for external stakeholders. First, the cultural embeddedness of social responsibility issues is examined with a focus on the differences between the approaches that prevail in France and in the United States. In the second part, the question of corruption is addressed through an Argentinian case. It is further developed by scrutinizing the differences between cultures in which an ethic of respect for principles prevails and those in which an ethic of loyalty towards relatives and friends is favoured.
A Company Odyssey in the South
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter recounts the successive reforms experienced over almost thirty years by the Cameroon Electricity Corporation. Its history is emblematic of the issues facing companies in emerging countries. First of all, it illustrates the remarkable permanence, over the long term, of a set of Cameroonian cultural traits. However, these national culture specificities have only been addressed episodically during successive modernizations. The first part summarizes the analyses carried out in the early 1990s on the ‘hyper-centralization’ of the company and the subsequent implementation of a detailed procedures manual to reduce it. The second part displays the disappointing results of the universal management solutions later applied to comply with the privatization recommended by the World Bank. This story shows that changes in corporate culture are possible as long as they are in line with the persistent universes of cultural meanings.
Transferring Management Practices
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Transferring ‘good practices’ and management ‘tools’ is a recurring challenge for companies working internationally, particularly in emerging and developing countries. As regards management tools, distinguishing what is part of universal rationality from what should be adapted to the local universe of meaning is particularly tricky. This chapter discusses two cases of Total Quality implementations which highlight the key influence of cultural contexts. In the first case, a Japanese company failed in transferring their methods in the United States, in the second one, a French multinational company succeeded in transforming the Moroccan subsidiary’s management. Drawing lessons from both examples, the third part provides some clues to significantly improve management practice transfers. While companies are concerned with ‘knowledge management’, they lack an operational method for dealing with cultures. However, scrutinizing successful local practices will reveal the characteristics of the local culture and provide replicable solutions.
Guidelines for Deciphering Cultures
Authors: D’Iribarne Philippe , Chevrier Sylvie , Henry Alain , Segal Jean-Pierre , Tréguer-Felten Geneviève 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
In order to go beyond an oversimplified—even erroneous—interpretation of intercultural situations, the approach developed in this book offers a new avenue to uncover the cultural logics underpinning social intercourse. This chapter expounds on the methodological aspects of our comparative and interpretative approach. It provides readers with practical guidelines to apply this method to new management situations and/or cultural areas. Firstly, it presents the specificities of empirical surveys: how to conduct interviews so as to gather fruitful field data. Secondly, it provides a set of steps and criteria enabling to gradually decipher the universe of meaning of a culture. The seven criteria—Redundancy, Strangeness, Embarrassment, Self-evidence, Opposition, Coherence, Horizontality—are illustrated by examples taken from fieldwork done in France, the USA, Cameroon, and Tunisia. Finally, beyond these isolated examples, the chapter provides an illustrative demonstration of the way the method can be applied to a given management situation.
‘The traveller of taste, … the naturalist, and the antiquary’
Authors: Bainbridge Simon 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter traces mountaineering’s evolution from one-off ascents, usually undertaken for a specific utilitarian purpose, into a leisure pursuit participated in by an increasingly large section of society. It examines how the practice of climbing developed out of three cultures that were well established in late eighteenth-century Britain: scientific research, antiquarianism, and picturesque travel. Investigating a wide range of writing from these three cultures (with key texts including Horace Bénédict de Saussure’s Voyages dans les Alpes, Thomas Pennant’s Journey to Snowdon, and Thomas West’s A Guide to the Lakes), the chapter shows how the summit became appreciated for the role it played in these pursuits, as an elevated viewing station, an observatory, a source of scientific specimens, and even as an outdoor laboratory.
‘Curiosity’, ‘dangerous adventure’, and ‘the perilous point of honour’
Authors: Bainbridge Simon 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter investigates how reaching a mountain summit came to be seen as a meaningful act in the Romantic period. It examines three case studies of texts by pioneering climbers who played significant roles in the development of mountaineering and who can be seen as representatives of different emerging cultures of ascent. Joseph Budworth’s A Fortnight’s Ramble to the Lakes (1792 and 1810) illustrates how mountaineering developed as a ‘curious’ pursuit. William Bingley’s A Tour Round North Wales (1800) and North Wales (1804) reveal how a culture of mountain ‘adventure’ evolved out of the scientific pursuit of botany. John MacCulloch’s The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland (1824) shows the developing conception of mountaineering as a heroic pursuit that enabled those undertaking it to claim a specific identity, articulated particularly through the language of chivalry. The case studies illustrate mountaineering’s development in the Lake District, Snowdonia, and the Scottish Highlands.
‘Master[s] of the prospect’?
Authors: Bainbridge Simon 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter explores how William Wordsworth and John Keats invested their climbing exploits and the mountain-top position with symbolic significance. Placing the poets’ work within the context of the period’s wider mountaineering literature, it examines how the new ways of seeing gained through mountain-climbing became linked to new ways of being. It investigates how elevation was seen to offer self-transformation and place the climber in a position of power, an idea both Wordsworth and Keats called upon in their definitions of poetic identity. The omniscient position of the summit view, with what Wordsworth termed its ‘visual sovereignty’, raised significant questions about the politics of ascent. The chapter argues that even as both poets made mountain ascent crucial to their poetic identities and missions, they came to adopt a more nuanced response to climbing that challenged the simple equation of the summit with a position of unqualified authority.