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1

Isaac, Joe. "Australian Labour Market Issues: an Historical Perspective." Journal of Industrial Relations 40, no. 4 (December 1998): 690–715. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002218569804000410.

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This paper provides an historical perspective on topics related to recent developments in the Australian industrial relations system discussed in this issue of the Journal— the 'living wage' concept and the safety net, 'fairness' in relative wages, women's wages, the Accord, labour market decentralisation and the role of trade unions. It concludes that recent legislation was not necessary to facilitate increased productivity because the prevailing system had shown sufficient responsiveness to the needs of the economy, both macro and micro. By limiting the jurisdiction of the AIRC and reducing the power of the weaker unions, recent legislation bas created a dual system with a less equitable pay structure and an institutional arrangement less able to deal with wage inflation under more buoyant economic conditions.
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Bögenhold, Dieter, and Uwe Fachinger. "Micro-Firms and the Margins of Entrepreneurship." International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 8, no. 4 (November 2007): 281–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.5367/000000007782433169.

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This paper deals with the margins of entrepreneurship at which small business owners are working almost on their own with no or very few employees, and where some work for low returns and run firms that lack stability and/or prosperous dynamics. However, even the area of ‘entrepreneurship at the margins’ is a wide field, embracing not only the broad margins of entrepreneurship but also the fluid borders between entrepreneurship and the informal sector on the one side and the labour market system on the other. New firms – even those that are ultimately very successful – may be more or less created in an experimental market and product testing phase, in which business founders are still employed or registered as unemployed before becoming self-employed. In such cases, the practical starting-point of an entrepreneurial existence is part of a fluent continuum of different activities closely connected to the entrepreneur's sphere of dependent work as an employee or job-seeking during a period of unemployment. The paper addresses this area of entrepreneurship within an integrated framework, which combines entrepreneurship analysis with labour market research and studies on social stratification and social mobility. It contributes to the debate on entrepreneurship at the margins by combining selected empirical information on the case of Germany with conceptual ideas of a labour market perspective. The integrated approach highlights some key issues and raises further questions about the field of entrepreneurship.
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Sayım, Kadire Zeynep. "Policy transfer from advanced to less-advanced institutional environments: Labour market orientations of US MNEs in Turkey." Human Relations 64, no. 4 (March 8, 2011): 573–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726710396247.

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The extant research on policy transfer insufficiently addresses two issues. First, transfer to less-advanced countries. Second, micro-institutional pressures on subsidiaries, particularly the role of local partners in joint ventures (JVs). This study investigates the transfer of labour market orientations by American multinational enterprises to their Turkish subsidiaries by focusing on the influences of macro- and micro-institutional factors when the ‘transferor’ is an advanced and ‘transferee’ is a less-advanced economy, ‘dominance effects’, and the role of local JV partners. Case study findings provide evidence for ‘smooth’ transfer of the policy. This uncommon finding is discussed as a result of ‘ideal combination’ of ‘encouraging pressures’ at the macro- and micro-institutional levels, including role of local JV partners and the nature of the policy transferred.
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Keman, Hans. "INTRODUCTION The Politics of Unemployment." Journal of Public Policy 7, no. 3 (July 1987): 219–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0143814x00004426.

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One may wonder why political scientists would bother about the analysis of questions relating to rates of unemployment. In effect, should not this be part of economic science? Economists are generally seen as better equipped with theories on the micro and macro level to deal with issues regarding labour market performance, the development of employment and the explanation of volatile rates of unemployment and inflation. This view is held by the majority of the economic science guild and by many policy-makers.
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DRUZHYNINA, Viktoriia, Yuliia VIEDIENINA, Lesia SAKUN, and Ganna LIKHONOSOVA. "Creative Analysis of Innovation as a Catalizer of Socialization of Structural Change." European Journal of Sustainable Development 9, no. 2 (June 1, 2020): 349–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.14207/ejsd.2020.v9n2p349.

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The multiple analysis of rate of dependency between innovative processes and structural labour market changes in the form of evolution in sector of employment was exposed in the article. It has been proved that the impact of innovations on the labour market can be considered, on the one hand, as a part of multi-factor socio-economic macro-, meso-, micro-level systems, which makes a direct or indirect impact on state of other elements of system and which is under its influence at this time; on the other hand, as an open, dynamic, flexible system, functioning of which leads to socio-economic resources development. The definition of labour market has been suggested as a system of socio-economic relations between workers, employers and society (organizations and institutes) for realization of ability to work, supporting social guarantees, approximation of parties’ interests of labour relations, state`s interests, legal control of terms of employment etc. The analysis of structural changes, which take place in the labour market of different levels administrative territorial state`s structure by means of innovations, covers the period 2012-2017. The impact of innovations on employment is associated with `creative destruction` where innovations, on the one hand, ruin current workplaces and, on the other hand, create new ones. Analysis has demonstrated that employment increasing and related structural improvements are determined by kind of incorporated innovations. Organizational innovations have more impact on size and structure of employment, than technological ones. The practical importance of the research involves developing of methodological and practical aspects of choosing multiple approach in relation to innovation analysis as a determinant of structural labour market changes. The originality of the research is reflected in the comprehensive creative analysis of innovations from the point of view of activation of the youth labour market in Ukraine. The key factors of the low level of involvement of young citizens in the country's economy and society are identified. The authors have suggested the prospects for the development of the youth labour market, the elimination of youth unemployment, which are conditioned by the peculiarities of the social condition and employment behaviour of young people. The need to study the experience of European countries is emphasized, where training in the working professions is well organized and the youth unemployment rate is the lowest in Europe. Distinctiveness. Conducted researches let to confirm attained results in relation to choosing implements for coping with current troubles and disproportions in society. Implementation of multiply approach of analysis and diagnostics of correlation of innovations and employment will make a direct impact on supporting living standards and progressive socio-economic state`s development. The monitoring of solidarity of actions of public communities, government agencies, enterprise structures will ensure attainment of active increasing of innovation technologies, high living standards level, that will offer some new opportunities for business environment in relation to labour productiveness maintaining method and equivalent income level from enterprise activity, will solve the unemployment and labour migration issues, create some new flexible forms of employment, increase the level of state`s competitiveness in global economy facilities. Key Words: creative analysing, diagnostics, employment of population, innovations, multiple approach
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Gunter, Barrie, Nelya Koteyko, and Dimitrinka Atanasova. "Sentiment Analysis: A Market-Relevant and Reliable Measure of Public Feeling?" International Journal of Market Research 56, no. 2 (March 2014): 231–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.2501/ijmr-2014-014.

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This paper critically examines emergent research with sentiment analysis tools to assess their current status and relevance to applied opinion and behaviour measurement. The rapid spread of online news and online chatter in blogs, micro-blogs and social media sites has created a potentially rich source of public opinion. Waves of public feeling are vented spontaneously on a wide range of issues on a minute-by-minute basis in the online world. These online discourses are continually being refreshed, and businesses and advertisers, governments and policy makers have woken up to the fact that this universe of self-perpetuating human sentiment could represent a valuable resource to guide political and business decisions. The massive size of this repository of emotional content renders manual analysis of it feasible only for tiny portions of its totality, and even then can be labour intensive. Computer scientists have however produced software tools that can apply linguistic rules to provide electronic readings of meanings and emotions. These tools are now being utilised by applied social science and market researchers to yield sentiment profiles from online discourses created within specific platforms that purport to represent reliable substitutes for more traditional, offline measures of public opinion. This paper considers what these tools have demonstrated so far and where caution in their application is still called for.
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7

Grady, Jo. "The state, employment, and regulation: making work not pay." Employee Relations 39, no. 3 (April 3, 2017): 274–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/er-03-2016-0059.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of specific active labour market policies (ALMP) and increased use of zero hour contracts (ZHCs) in creating an environment in which low-wage jobs flourish. Alongside these, it examines the role of financialization over the last 30 years in fostering the nuturalization of policies that institutionalize low wages and deregulate the economy in favour of big business. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws upon academic literature, official statistics, and analyses via the concept of neoliberalism. Findings This paper demonstrates that via a set of interconnected macro and micro factors low pay is set to remain entrenched in the UK. It has demonstrated that this is not the result of some natural response to labour market demands. Far from it, it has argued that these policy choices are neoliberal in motivation and the outcome of establishing low pay and insecure employment is a significant character of the contemporary labour market is deliberate. Research limitations/implications This paper encourages a re-think of how the authors address this issue of low pay in the UK by highlighting alternative forms of understanding the causes of low pay. Practical implications It presents an alternative analysis of low pay in the UK which allows us to understand and call into question the low-pay economy. In doing so it demonstrates that crucial to this understanding is state regulation. Social implications This paper allows for a more nuanced understanding of the economic conditions of the inequality caused by low pay, and provides an argument as to alternative ways in which this can be addressed. Originality/value The paper examines the relationship between the rise of neoliberalism and finance capital, the subsequent emergence of the neoliberal organization, the associated proliferation of ALMP and ZHCs, and the impact of these on creating a low-wage economy. It makes the argument that the UK’s low-wage economy is the result of regulatory choices influenced by a political preference for financialization, even if such choices are presented as not being so. Thus, the contribution of this paper is that it brings together distinct and important contemporary issues for scholars of employee relations, but connects them to the role of the state and neoliberal regulation.
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Kift, Sally. "Foreward." Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability 12, no. 1 (February 5, 2021): i—v. http://dx.doi.org/10.21153/jtlge2021vol12no1art1015.

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This Special Issue, devoted to micro-credentials and qualifications for future work and learning in a disrupted world, is a welcome and critically timed contribution to educational theorising and practice internationally. COVID-19 has accelerated Industry 4.0’s pervasive labour market disruption. Digitisation’s efficiencies have been rapidly embraced and broadly up-scaled as a matter of necessity. Many industries and professions have fast tracked digitalisation to transform pre-pandemic business models for current and future sustainability. We have seen all education sectors – Kindergarten to Year 12 (K-12), vocational education and training/ further education (VET/FE) and higher education (HE) – digitise and digitalise to varying degrees in their rapid move to emergency remote teaching (Hodges et al., 2020). Robust evaluation will be needed to assess the efficacy of that pedagogical triaging – our well-intentioned ‘panic-gogy’ (Kamenetz, 2020) – to inform the quality and fitness-for-future-purpose of that online pivot. In the meantime, HE’s students and graduates emerge from 2020 wanting to support and apply their studies in a challenging job market that was already weakening pre-pandemic and has now worsened (for example in the Australian context, Social Research Centre, 2020), especially for young people. If that was not enough, significant and underlying issues of climate change, reconciliation with First Nations, demographic change and globalisation continue to have implications for equal and equitable participation in the full range of life opportunities, including in meaningful paid work. In brief, the context for this Special Issue is an international grand challenge writ very large.
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Małecka, Joanna. "PLACE OF CANTILLON THEORIES IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES." Horyzonty Polityki 11, no. 36 (December 2, 2020): 139–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.35765/hp.1999.

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RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: “Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général”, published in 1730, became the basis for formulating economic theories of Hume, Smith and the physiocrats, as well as for the works of Knight and Mises. The aim of the article is to present the economic issues touch on in the essay against the background of the review of the relevant literature in the field of economic theory, as well as the possibility of transforming economic models into practical structures shaping the economic views of future generations. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Theoretical issues were confronted with economic knowledge among sample N=600 in 2016-2020. The chi-square (χ2) test was used to test the existence of statistical significance between gender and the understanding of the importance of economic issues. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The sample has shown lack of basic knowledge in the economic filed in the aspect of university economic courses. At the same time, only those surveyed who are active on the labour market as entrepreneurs, perceive the need to raise qualifications and make complete knowledge in the examined subject. RESEARCH RESULTS: Cantillon in his essay focuses on the "economic aspects of human action”. The results of studies conducted at the university have shown, that their basic knowledge in the field of economic sciences is at an unsatisfactory level. CONCLUSION, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMENDATIONS: Contemporary economics omits the entrepreneur in economic models and in the relevant literature. However, it is a key link, directly affecting both, micro and macroeconomic indicators. The connections and mutual influences described by Cantillon are favourable to thoroughly understanding of economic phenomena in real, economies world. This knowledge should be disseminated not only for better economic estimation, but also for a better understanding of events occurring in the world and the results of their implications.
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Scoppola, Margherita. "Agriculture, food and global value chains: issues, methods and challenges." Bio-based and Applied Economics 11, no. 2 (August 30, 2022): 91–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.36253/bae-13517.

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About one-third of trade in food and agriculture takes place within global value chains (GVC). Coffee, palm oil or biofuels production are examples of the modern organization of agri-food production through GVC (de Becker, Miroudot, 2014; Greenville et al., 2016; Baliè et al., 2019). Agricultural raw materials nowadays may cross borders many times before reaching the final consumers, as they are embedded in intermediate and processed goods which are produced in different countries. Agri-food GVC are typically characterized by a strong coordination between farmers, food processors or traders, and between processors and retailers. Value chain coordination can be initiated by downstream buyers, such as supermarkets and food processors, or by upstream suppliers including farmers or farmer cooperatives (Swinnen and Maertens, 2007; Reardon et al 2007). In a number of cases, a group of “lead firms” plays a critical role by defining the terms of supply chain membership and whom the value is added (Scoppola, 2021). The growth of the agri-food GVC raises new issues for the agricultural and food sectors. Participating to the GVC is expected to have several positive effects, both for countries and farmers, in terms of technology and knowledge spillovers, increased productivity, growth, employment opportunities, and ultimately increase of farmers’ income. On the other hand, market concentration in agri-food GVC raises concerns related to the emergence of market power (Swinnen, Vandeplas, 2014). Further, there are concerns that producing for agri-food GVC may result in the intensification of agricultural production, with negative environmental effects in terms of deployment of natural resources and water stress. Sound knowledge and evidence about the nature and implications of modern agri-food GVC are relevant for policymaker, firms and civil society. The economic analysis of agri-food GVC challenges agricultural and food economists in several respects. The complex nature of GVC and of the issues they raise makes it essential the use of new and multiple lens of analysis (World Bank, 2020). Country-level (macro) approaches to GVC are needed to investigate the drivers of the world-wide fragmentation of agri-food production and the welfare implications of countries participating to GVC. Recent progresses in the empirical trade analysis of GVC are certainly fundamental to the understanding of agri-food GVC. Industry level (meso) approaches are needed to investigate the relationship among the various stages of the GVC. Analytical tools and approaches from the industrial organization literature are to be used to investigate issues such the price transmission along the agri-food GVC, the drivers of vertical coordination or the distributions of benefits along the GVC. A firm level approach (micro) is needed to investigate the implications of the participation to GVC for farmers. The 10th AIEAA Annual Conference contributes to this debate, by putting together different disciplines and approaches to the analysis of agri-food GVC and of their implications in terms of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Three keynotes explore these issues from different perspectives. The keynotes by Silvia Nenci Ilaria Fusacchia, Anna Giunta, Pierluigi Montalbano and Carlo Pietrobelli entitled Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food (Nenci et al., 2022) reviews key methods and data issues arising in country-level analyses of GVC. They overall conclude that improvements in GVC measurements and mapping are currently still severely limited by data availability. Empirical literature to date mostly uses global Input-Output matrices and aggregate trade data to map and measure GVCs; however, sectoral and country coverage remains rather weak. They further review recent evidence about trends of GVC, by using the GVC participation indicator and the upstreamness positioning indicator (measuring the distance of the sector from final demand in terms of the number of production stages) for two sectors, that is “Agriculture” and “Food and Beverages”. They show that at the country level, GVC participation is globally around 30-35 percent for both agriculture and food and beverages; while GVC linkages in agriculture are mostly forward linked, food and beverages are much more in the middle and at the end of a value chain. Furthermore, they show that, unsurprisingly, agriculture has a higher score on upstreamness with respect to the food and beverages sector. They conclude by discussing some critical issues faced by agriculture and food GVC concerning trade policies, technological innovation and the COVID crises. The keynote by Tim Lloyd entitled “Price transmission and imperfect competition in the food industry” aims at providing insights on how information is conveyed by means of prices between food consumers and agricultural producers along the agri-food value chains. After presenting some basic insights from theory, the keynote addresses the issue of how to detect the degree of market power by reviewing theory-consistent empirical models as well as the approaches developed in the New Empirical Industrial Organisation literature. The increased use of highly detailed retail (‘scanner’) data reveals that the food industry (retailing, manufacturing, and processing) is a major source of the price changes and that it also mediates price signals originating in other parts of the food chain in increasingly nuanced ways; the author concludes that agricultural and food economists should be wary of inferring too much about the competitive setting based on prices alone. The keynote by Miet Maertens entitled “A review of global and local food value chains in Africa: Supply chain linkages and sustainability” highlights the expansion of agri-food GVC in low- and middle-income countries and how GVC are modernizing rapidly through institutional, technical, and commercial innovations. While a large body of literature focusses on the development implications of participation in GVC, the development of local food supply chains in low- and middle-income countries has received less attention. The review assesses potential linkages between global and local value chains in African countries, and the sustainability outcomes of supply chain innovations. The keynotes emphasizes that market competition as well competition for land, labour, water, and other resources may create negative linkages between the development of global and local food value chains. Spill-over effects, such as investment, technical or institutional spillovers, may create positive linkages and complementarities in the process of supply chain development. The existence of such linkages importantly depends on the type of crop and the structure and organisation of supply chains and entail important consequences towards socio-economic and environmental sustainability.
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Bila, Svitlana. "Strategic priorities of social production digitalization: world experience." University Economic Bulletin, no. 48 (March 30, 2021): 40–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.31470/2306-546x-2021-48-40-55.

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Actual importance of study. At the beginning of the 2020s developed world countries and countries which are the leaders of world economic development faced up the challenges of radical structural reformation of social production (from industry to service system) which is based on digitalization. Digital technologies in world science and business practice are considered essential part of a complex technological phenomenon like ‘Industry 4.0’. Digitalization should cover development of all business processes and management processes at micro-, meso- and microlevels, processes of social production management at national and world economy levels. In general, in the 21st century world is shifting rapidly to the strategies of digital technologies application. The countries which introduce these strategies will gain guaranteed competitive advantages: from reducing production costs and improved quality of goods and services to developing new sales market and making guaranteed super-profits. The countries which stand aside from digitalization processes are at risk of being among the outsiders of socio-economic development. Such problem statement highlights the actual importance of determining the directions, trends and strategic priorities of social production digitalization. This issue is really crucial for all world countries, including Ukraine which is in midst of profound structural reformation of all national production system. Problem statement. Digital economy shapes the ground for ‘Industry 4.0’, information, It technologies and large databases become the key technologies. The main asset of ‘Industry 4.0’ is information, the major tool of production is cyberphysical systems that lead to formation the single unified highly productive environmental system of collecting, analyzing and applying data to production and other processes. Cyberphysical systems provides ‘smart machines’ (productive machines, tools and equipment which are programmed) integration via their connection to the Internet, or creation special network, ‘Industrial Internet’ (IIoT) which is regarded as a productive analogue of ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) that is focused on the consumers. ‘Internet of Things’ can be connected with ‘smart factories’ which use ‘Industrial Internet’ to adjust production processes quickly turning into account the changes in costs and availability of resources as well as demand for production made. One of the most essential tasks for current economics and researchers of systems and processes of organization future maintenance of world production is to determine the main strategic priorities of social production digitalization. Analysis of latest studies and publications. Valuable contribution to the study of the core and directions of strategic priorities concerning social production digitalization was made by such foreign scientists as the Canadian researcher Tapscott D [1], foreigners Sun, L., Zhao, L [2], Mcdowell, M. [3] and others. Yet, the study of issues concerning social production digitalization are mainly done by the team of authors as such issues are complicated and multihierarchical. Furthermore, the problem of social production digitalization is closely linked to the transition to sustainable development, which is reflected in the works by Ukrainian scholars like Khrapkin V., Ustimenko V., Kudrin O., Sagirov A. and others in the monograph “Determinants of sustainable economy development” [4]. The edition of the first in Ukraine inter-disciplinary textbook on Internet economy by a group of scientists like Tatomyr I., Kvasniy L., Poyda S. and others [5] should also be mentioned. But the challenges of social production digitalization are constantly focused on by theoretical scientists, analytics and practitioners of these processes. Determining unexplored parts of general problem. Defining strategic priorities of social production digitalization requires clear understanding of prospective spheres of their application, economic advantages and risks which mass transition of social production from traditional (industrial and post-industrial)to digital technologies bear. A new system of technological equipment (production digitalization, Internet-economy, technology ‘Industry 4.0’, NBIC- technologies and circular economy) has a number of economic advantages for commodity producers and countries, as well as leads to dramatical changes in the whole social security system, changes at labour market and reformation the integral system of social relations in the society. Tasks and objectives of the study. The objective of the study is to highlight the core and define the main strategic priorities of social production digitalization, as they cause the process of radical structural reformation of industrial production, services and social spheres of national economy of world countries and world economy in general. To achieve the objective set in the article the following tasks are determined and solved: - to define the main priorities of digital technologies development, which is radically modify all social production business processes; - to study the essence and the role of circular economy for transition to sustainable development taken EU countries as an example; - to identify the strategic priorities of robotization of production processes and priority spheres of industrial and service robots application; - to define the role of NBIC-technologies in the process of social production structural reformation and its transition to new digital technologies in the 21st century. Method and methodology of the study. While studying strategic priorities of social production digitalization theoretical and empirical methods of study are used, such as historical and logical, analysis and synthesis, abstract and specific, casual (cause-and-effect) ones. All of them helped to keep the track of digital technologies evolution and its impact on structural reformation of social production. Synergetic approach, method of expert estimates and casual methods are applied to ground system influence of digital technologies, ‘Industry 4.0’ and their materialization as ‘circular economy’ on the whole complicated and multihierarchical system of social production in general. Basic material (the results of the study). Digital economy, i.e. economy where it is virtual but not material or physical assets and transactions are of the greatest value, institutional environment in which business processes as well as all managerial processes are developed on the basis of digital computer technologies and information and communication technologies (ICT), lies as the ground for social production digitalization. ICT sphere involves production of electronic equipment, computing, hardware,.software and services. It also provides various information sevices. Information Technology serves as a material basis for digital economy and digital technologies development. Among the basic digital technologies the following ones play the profound role: technology ‘Blockchain’, 3D priniting, unmanned aerial vehicles and flying drones, virtual reality (VR). Augmented reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Internet of Value (IoV) which is founded on IT and blockchain technology, Internet of Everything (IoE), Artificial Intelligence (AI), neuron networks and robots. These basic digital technologies in business processes and management practices are applied in synergy, complexity and system but not in a single way. System combination of digital technologies gives maximal economic effect from their practical application in all spheres of social production-from industry to all kinds of services. For instance, in education digital technologies promote illustrating and virtual supplement of study materials; in tourism trade they promote engagement of virtual guides, transport and logistics security of tourist routes, virtual adverts and trips arrangements, virtual guidebooks, virtual demonstration of services and IT brochures and leaflets. Digital technologies radically change gambling and show businesses, in particular, they provide virtual games with ‘being there’ effect. Digital technologies drastically modify the retail trade sphere, advertisement and publishing, management and marketing, as well as provide a lot of opportunities for collecting unbiased data concerning changes in market conditions in real time. Digital technologies lie as the basis for ‘circular economy’, whose essence rests with non-linear, secondary, circular use of all existing natural and material resources to provide the production and consumption without loss of quality and availability of goods and services developed on the grounds of innovations, IT-technology application and ‘Industry 4.0’. Among priorities of circular economy potential applications the following ones should be mentioned: municipal services, solid household wastes management and their recycling, mass transition to smart houses and smart towns, circular agriculture development, circular and renewable energy, The potential of circular economy fully and equally corresponds to the demands for energy efficiency and rational consumption of limited natural resources, so it is widely applied in EU countries while transiting to sustainable development. In the 21st century processes of social production robotization draw the maximal attention of the society. There is a division between industrial and service robots which combine artificial intelligence and other various digital technologies in synergy. Industrial robots are widely used in production, including automotive industry, processing industry, energetic, construction sectors and agriculture Services are applied in all other spheres and sectors of national and world economies –from military-industrial complex (for instance, for mining and demining the areas, military drones) to robots-cleaners (robots-vacuum cleaners), robots-taxis, robots engaged in health care service and served as nurses (provide the ill person with water, tidy up, bring meals). Social production robotization is proceeding apace. According to “World Robotic Report 2020”, within 2014 – 2019 the total quantity of industrial robots increased by 85 %. By 2020 in the world the share of robots in the sphere of automated industrial production had comprised 34 %, in electronics – 25%, in metallurgy – 10 %. These indicators are constantly growing which results in structural reformation of the whole system of economic and industrial processes, radical changes in world labour market and the social sphere of world economy in general. Alongside with generally recognized types of digital technologies and robotization processes, an innovation segment of digital economy – NBIC – technologies (Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology, Cognitive Science) are rapidly spread. Among the priorities of NBIC-technologies development the special place belongs to interaction between information and cognitive technologies. As a material basis for its synergy in NBIC-technologies creation of neuron networks, artificial intelligence, artificial cyber brain for robots are applied. It is estimated as one of the most prospective and important achievements of digital economy which determines basic, innovational vector of social production structural reformations in the 21st century. The sphere of results application. International economic relations and world economy, development of competitive strategies of national and social production digitalization of world economy in general. Conclusions. Digital technologies radically change all spheres of social production and social life, including business and managerial processes at all levels. Digital technologies are constantly developing and modifying, that promotes emergence of new spheres and new business activities and management. 21st century witnessed establishing digital economy, smart economy, circular economy, green economy and other various arrangements of social production which are based on digital technologies. Social production digitalization and innovative digital technologies promotes business with flexible systems of arrangement and management, production and sales grounded on processing large Big Data permanently, on the basis of online monitoring in real time. Grounded on digital technologies business in real time mode processes a massive Big Data and on their results makes smart decisions in all business spheres and business processes management. Radical shifts in social production digitalization provides businesses of the states which in practice introduce digital technologies with significant competitive advantages - from decrease in goods and services production cost to targeted meeting of specific needs of consumers. Whereas, rapid introduction of digital technologies in the countries-leaders of world economic development results in a set of system socio-economic and socio-political challenges, including the following: crucial reformatting the world labour market and rise in mass unemployment, shift from traditional export developing countries’ specialization, breakups of traditional production networks being in force since the end of the 20th century, so called ‘chains of additional value shaping’, breakups of traditional cooperation links among world countries and shaping the new ones based on ‘Industry 4.0’ and ‘Industrial Internet’. Socio-economic and political consequences of radical structural reformation of all spheres in national and world economy in the 21st century, undoubtedly, will be stipulated with the processes of social production digitalization. It will require further systemic and fundamental scientific studies on this complicated and multi hierarchical process.
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AKINKUGBE, Oluyele, and Karl WOHLMUTH. "MIDDLE CLASS GROWTH AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA – MEASUREMENT, CAUSALITY, INTERACTIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS." JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN ECONOMY, Vol 18, No 1 (2019) (2019): 94–139. http://dx.doi.org/10.35774/jee2019.01.094.

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The paper is about the role of the African middle class as a base for entrepreneurship development. The key question is what the growth of the African middle class means for the emergence of an entrepreneurial class in Africa. In this context, the «missing middle» in Africa, the gap in small and medium sized companies between microenterprises and large companies, is of interest. So far the theoretical work and the empirical evidence on the relation between middle class growth and entrepreneurship development are quite scarce. First, the main concepts of defining and measuring the African middle class - via income and consumption, assets, vulnerability, and livelihoods - will be discussed. These differences in definition and measurement have implications for the assumed developmental implications of the growth of the African middle class and the growth of an entrepreneurial class. There are so many statements in the literature about the developmental potentials and the impacts of the African middle class. It is argued that the African middle class is a seedbed of entrepreneurship and management staff; a base for start-ups and high tech companies; that it has an impact on market competition and labour mobility; an impact on level and structure of consumption and marketing, on housing, car and finance markets; an impact on local saving, local investment and on a more long-term investment behaviour; a role in developing a new consumer society based on higher quality and branded goods; a role in participation, empowerment and the formation of economic interest groups; a role in the redistribution of income, assets and economic power; that it leads to a widespread use of new technologies and has a tremendous role in technology diffusion; that it is creating space for upward mobility and societal change; that it pushes the transition from survival firms to growth-oriented firms; that it has a role in pushing for more rational economic policies and that it is also demanding public goods and fair taxation; and that it is providing stability to the political regime, etc. Most of these arguments lack so far empirical evidence, and there is tremendous speculation and experimentation based on the way of defining and measuring the African middle class and the entrepreneurial class which is coming forth on this basis. A main instrument used for this endeavour is aggregation of some few data over Africa; but this is not enough to draw strong conclusions. Second, the scarce evidence on the assumed role of the African middle class as a seedbed of entrepreneurship and managerial competencies is discussed and evaluated. The main issue is the role of the African middle class in overcoming the «missing middle» of small and medium sized companies. There is a general discussion about Africa’s «missing middle», the assumed gap in terms of small and medium sized companies between the many mostly informal microenterprises and the large public and private companies. It is argued that the concepts of the African middle class used in the literature and the ways of defining and measuring it do not allow a deep investigation of entrepreneurship development and the identification of a growing entrepreneurial class in Africa. The main reason is that the economic lives of the various segments of the African middle class are so different. Also, the poor and the rich classes in Africa have distinct economic lives which partly overlap with those of lower and upper segments of the African middle class. Third, there is a lack of differentiating the African middle class with regard of the potential for entrepreneurship development, the establishment of entrepreneurial value systems (education, health, saving and investing), and the role in developing local industries (based on increasing middle class consumption). Any change towards the development of growth oriented small and medium-sized enterprises - between survival and micro enterprises at the lower end and large capitalist and conglomerate enterprises at the upper end - is of interest. Most important is to know more about the role of the African middle class in developing growth-oriented enterprises. It is also of interest to see how governments in Africa can support entrepreneurship and management competences based on specific African middle class segments, along with strategies to use the entrepreneurial potential of the poor and the rich classes. The purpose of the paper is to give evidence on the developmental role of the African Middle Class, by focussing on the «missing middle» of enterprises in Africa and the types of entrepreneurship being associated with the growth of the middle class. After the Introduction in Section 1 there is in Section 2 a discussion on Defining and Measuring the African Middle Class: What about Developmental Implications and Prospects? In Section 3 is a presentation on Africa’s Middle Class and the «Missing Middle» of Enterprises: New Potentials for the Growth of Enterprises? In Section 4 there are Conclusions and Policy Recommendations. This is an economists’ view, but much more interdisciplinary work is needed to cover the issues (and this is done in the collection of essays by Henning Melber, Editor, 2016).
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Mufidah, Ainin Nur, Hammis Syafaq, and Ana Toni Roby Candra Yudha. "INTEGRATED ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT: EVIDENCE IN THE RELIGIOUS AREA OF GUSDUR'S TOMB." Jurnal Ekonomi Syariah Teori dan Terapan 8, no. 6 (December 5, 2021): 785. http://dx.doi.org/10.20473/vol8iss20216pp785-796.

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ABSTRAKSaat ini wisata syariah yang biasa dikenal dengan wisata religi sedang menjamur, khususnya di Jawa Timur. Sosok yang dianggap wali oleh sebagian orang itu berada di Surabaya, Gresik, dan Tuban, namun saat ini berkembang di kabupaten Jombang, yakni makam Presiden ke-4 Abdurrahman Wahid yang disebut Gus Dur. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pemahaman masyarakat dalam memanfaatkan peluang wisata religi makam Gus Dur dalam meningkatkan perekonomian masyarakat sekitar pondok pesantren Tebuireng khususnya di dusun Jalan Seblak gang III. Penelitian ini dapat dicermati melalui perubahan kehidupan ekonomi, pemanfaatan peluang usaha dan faktor penghambat bagi kepentingan usaha. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif dengan teknik pengumpulan data wawancara dan dokumentasi. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa masyarakat setempat mengalami perubahan ekonomi dengan memanfaatkan peluang untuk membangun warung di atas tanah mereka dan menyewakannya kepada pedagang luar. Ini memberikan nilai ekonomi tambahan. Namun, penjualan warung-warung tersebut dinilai tidak mencukupi, sehingga mengharuskan mereka untuk membuka usaha sampingan. Terdapat peluang yang sangat baik bagi masyarakat untuk memilih menyewakan lapaknya karena faktor penghambat yaitu keluarga, tenaga kerja, permodalan, dan rasa empati yang tinggi terhadap pedagang pendatang. Saran bagi Pemerintah Kabupaten Jombang adalah memfasilitasi masyarakat dengan pengetahuan kewirausahaan dengan mengadakan seminar agar memiliki pengetahuan dan motivasi yang tinggi untuk menjalankan bisnis.Kata Kunci: Wisata Religi Makam Gus Dur, Peningkatan Ekonomi, Peluang Usaha. ABSTRACTCurrently, sharia tourism, commonly known as religious-friendly tourism is proliferating, especially in East Java. The figure, who is considered a guardian by some people, is located in Surabaya, Gresik, and Tuban but currently developing in the Jombang district, namely the tomb of the 4th President Abdurrahman Wahid, who is called Gus Dur. This study aims to determine the understanding of the community in taking advantage of religious tourism opportunities in Gus Dur's tomb in improving the community's economy around the Tebuireng Islamic boarding school, especially in the hamlet of Street Seblak street alley III. This study can be observed through changes in economic life, utilization of business opportunities and inhibiting factors for business interests. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method with interview and documentation data collection techniques. The results of this study show that the local community is experiencing economic changes by taking advantage of the opportunity to build a warung on their land and rent it out to outside traders. It provides added economic value. However, the sales of the stalls are considered insufficient, so they require them to open a side business. There is an excellent opportunity for the community to choose to rent out their stalls because of the inhibiting factors, namely family, labour, capital, and a high sense of empathy for migrant traders. The suggestion for the Jombang Regency Government is to facilitate the community with entrepreneurial knowledge by holding seminars to have high knowledge and motivation for business interests.Keywords: Religion Tourism of Gus Dur Tomb, Economic Improvement, Business Opportunity. REFERENCESAbdi, M. K., & Febriyanti, N. (2020). Penyusunan strategi pemasaran islam dalam berwirausaha di sektor ekonomi kreatif pada masa pandemi covid-19. El Qist - Journal of Islamic Economics and Business, 10(2), 160–179.Abduh, M. (2019). The role of Islamic social finance in achieving SDG Number 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. 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Development of waqf based microfinance and its impact in alleviating the poverty. Ihtifaz: Journal of Islamic Economics, Finance, and Banking, 2(2), 107. https://doi.org/10.12928/ijiefb.v2i2.879Djawahir, A. U. (2018). Teknologi-layanan keuangan, literasi-inklusi keuangan, dan value pada fintech syariah di Indonesia: Perspektif S-O-R (Stimulus-organism-response) model. 2nd Proceedings Annual Conference for Muslim Scholars, April 2018, 439–448.Fatmawati, A., Yudha, A. T. R. C., & Syafaq, H. (2020). Kontrak kerja dan kesejahteraan ABK nelayan perspektif etika bisnis Islam di Sarangmerduro, Jawa Tengah. Nukhbatul ’Ulum: Jurnal Bidang Kajian Islam, 6(2), 298–313.Fitriani, H. (2018). Proyeksi potensi pengembangan pariwisata perhotelan dengan konsep syariah. Muslim Heritage, 3(1), . https://doi.org/10.21154/muslimheritage.v3i1.1257Indrawati, S. M., Diop, N., Ikhsan, M., & Kacaribu, F. (2020). Enhancing resilience to turbulent global financial markets: An Indonesian experience. 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T. S., & Khoirudin, R. (2020). Analisis determinan PAD sub-sektor pariwisata di DIY tahun 2012-2017. Journal of Economics Development Issues (JEDI), 3(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.33005/jedi.v3i01.45Rijal, A. (2018). Pengetahuan konsumen terhadap IB Hasanah Card Bank BNI Syariah Cabang Surabaya. Adilla: Jurnal Ilmiah Ekonomi Syari'ah, 1(1), 117–139.Ryandono, M. N. H. (2018). FinTech waqaf : Solusi permodalan perusahaan startup wirausaha muda, 7(2), 111–121. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/studipemudaugm.39347Standard, D. (2019). State of the global islamic economy report 2019/20. Dubai International Financial Centre, 1–174. https://haladinar.io/hdn/doc/report2018.pdfSukoco, A., Anshori, Y., & Yudha, A. T. R. C. (2020). Strategies to increase market share for histopatological equipment products (Brand Sakura): Case Study in management of a sole agent company. SINERGI, 10(2), 19–26.Usman, H., Sobari, N., & Sari, L. E. (2019). Sharia motivation in Muslim tourism definition, is it matter? Journal of Islamic Marketing, 10(3), 709–723. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIMA-01-2018-0015Wahyu Puspitasari, A. (2017). Optimizing productive land waqf towards farmers prosperity. Journal of Indonesian Applied Economics, 7(1), 103–112. https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.jiae.2017.007.01.7Yalina, N., Kartika, A. P., & Yudha, A. T. R. C. (2020). Impact analysis of digital divide on food security and poverty in Indonesiain 2015-2017. Jurnal Manajemen Teknologi, 19(2), 145–158. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.12695/jmt.2020.19.2.3Yudha, A. T. R. C., Harisah, Santoso, I. R., Mukr, S. G., Zibbri, M., Firdaus, N. N., Hidayatullah, A., Hasani, J. E., Adam, M., Hamzah, M. M., Dian, C., Wijayanti, D. M., Fahrurrozi, & Zaini, M. (2020). Bisnis, Keuangan, Ekonomika Islam dan Covid-19: Merumuskan teori dan model bisnis, keuangan dan ekonomika islam dalam mengatasi krisis ekonomi akibat pandemi Covid-19. Jakarta: Kementerian Keuangan RI.Yudha, A. T. R. C., & Lathifah, N. (2018). Productive zakat as a fiscal element for the development and empowerment of micro enterprises in East Java Province. International Conference of Zakat. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37706/iconz.2018.123Yudha, A. T. R. C., & Muizz, A. (2020). Optimalisasi potensi lahan pertanian untuk ketahanan pangan di Kecamatan Panceng, Gresik, Jawa Timur. Journals of Economics Development Issues ( JEDI ), 3(2), 297–308. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.33005/jedi.v3i2.55Yudha, A. T. R. C., Pauzi, N. S., & Azli, R. binti M. (2020). The Synergy Model for Strengthening the Productivity of Indonesian Halal Industry. Al-Uqud: Journal of Islamic Economics, 4(2), 186–199. https://doi.org/10.26740/al-uqud.v4n2.p186-199Yudha, A. T. R. C., Ryandono, M. N. H., Rijal, A., & Wijayanti, I. (2020). Financing model to develop local commodity business of East Java in Maqashid Syariah perspective. 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14

Ferguson, Hazel. "Building Online Academic Community: Reputation Work on Twitter." M/C Journal 20, no. 2 (April 26, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1196.

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Introduction In an era of upheaval and uncertainty for higher education institutions around the world, scholars, like those in many in other professions, are increasingly using social media to build communities around mutual support and professional development. These communities appear to offer opportunities for participants to exert more positive influence over the types of interactions they engage in with colleagues, in many cases being valued as more altruistic, transformational, or supportive than established academic structures (Gibson, and Gibbs; Mewburn, and Thomson; Maitzen). What has been described as ‘digital scholarship’ applies social media to “different facets of scholarly activity in a helpful and productive way” (Carrigan 5), with online scholarly communities being likened to evolutions of face-to-face practices including peer mentoring (Ferguson, and Wheat) or a “virtual staffroom” (Mewburn, and Thomson). To a large extent, these accounts of scholarly practice adapted for digital media have resonance. From writing groups (O’Dwyer, McDonough, Jefferson, Goff, and Redman-MacLaren) to conference attendance (Spilker, Silva, and Morgado) and funding (Osimo, Priego, and Vuorikari), the transformational possibilities of social media have been applied to almost every facet of existing academic practices. These practices have increasingly attracted scrutiny from higher education institutions, with social media profiles of staff both a potential asset and risk to institutions’ brands. Around the world, institutions use social media for marketing, student recruitment, student support and alumni communication (Palmer). As such, social media policies have emerged in recent years in attempts to ensure staff engage in ways that align with the interests of their employers (Solberg; Carrigan). However, engagement via social media is also still largely considered “supplementary to ‘real’ scholarly work” (Mussell 347).Paralleling this trend, guides to effectively managing an online profile as a component of professional reputation have also become increasingly common (e.g. Carrigan). While public relations and management literatures have approached reputation management in terms of how an organisation is regarded by its multiple stakeholders (Fombrun) this is increasingly being applied to individuals on social media. According to Gandini a “reputation economy” (22) has come to function for knowledge workers who seek to cultivate a reputation as a good community member through sociality in order to secure more (or better) work.The popularity of professional social media communities and scrutiny of participants raises questions about the work involved in building and participating in them. This article explores these questions through analysis of tweets from the first year of #ECRchat, a Twitter group for early career researchers (ECRs). The group was established in 2012 to provide an opportunity for ECRs (typically within five years of PhD completion) to discuss career-related issues. Since it was founded, the group has been administered through partnerships between early career scholars using a Twitter account (@ECRchat) and a blog. Tweets, the posts of 140 characters or fewer, which appear on a user’s profile and in followers’ feeds (Twitter) are organised into a ‘chat’ by participants through the use of the hashtag ‘#ECRchat’. Participants vote on chat topics and take on the role of hosting on a volunteer basis. The explicit career focus of this group provides an ideal case study to explore how work is represented in an online professionally-focused community, in order to reflect on what this might mean for the norms of knowledge work.Digital Labour The impact of Internet Communication Technologies (ICT), including social media, on the lives of workers has long been a source of both concern and hope. Mobile devices, wireless Internet and associated communications software enable increasing numbers of people to take work home. This flexibility has been welcomed as the means by which workers might more successfully access jobs and manage competing commitments (Raja, Imaizumi, Kelly, Narimatsu, and Paradi-Guilford). However, hours worked from home are often unpaid and carry with them a strong likelihood of interfering with rest, recreation and family time (Pocock and Skinner). Melissa Gregg describes this as “presence bleed” (2): the dilutions of focus from everyday activities as workers increasingly use electronic devices to ‘check in’ during non-work time. Moving beyond the limitations of this work-life balance approach, which tends to over-state divisions between employment and other everyday life practices, a growing literature seeks to address work in online environments by analysing the types of labour being practiced, rather than seeing such practices as adjunct to physical workplaces. Responding to claims that digital communication heralds a new age of greater freedom, creativity and democratic participation, this work draws attention to the reliance of such networks on unpaid labour (e.g. Hearn; Hesmondhalgh) with ratings, reviews and relationship maintenance serving business’ economic ends alongside the individual interests which motivate participants. The immaterial, affective, and often precarious labour that has been observed is “simultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited” (Terranova). This work builds particularly on feminist analysis of work (see McRobbie for a discussion of this), with behind the scenes moderator, convenor, and community builder roles largely female and largely unrecognised, be they activist (Gleeson), creative (Duffy) or consumer (Arcy) groups. For some, this suggests the emergence of a new ‘women’s work’ of affective immaterial labour which goes into building transformational communities (Jarrett). Yet, digital labour has not yet been foregrounded within research into higher education, where it is largely practiced in the messy intersections of employment, unpaid professional development, and leisure. Joyce Goggin argues that convergence of these spheres is a feature of digital labour. Consequently, this article seeks to add a consideration of digital labour, specifically the cultural politics of work that emerge in these spaces, to the literature on digital practices as a translation of existing academic responsibilities online. In the context of widespread concerns over academic workload and job market (Bentley, Coates, Dobson, Goedegebuure, and Meek) and the growing international engagement and impact agenda (Priem, Piwowar, and Hemminger), it raises questions about the implications of these practices. Researching Twitter Communities This article analyses tweets from the publicly available Twitter timeline, containing the hashtag #ECRchat, during scheduled chats, from 1 July 2012 to 31 July 2013 (the first year of operation). Initially, all tweets in this time period were analysed in anonymised form to determine the most commonly mentioned topics during chats. This content analysis removed the most common English language words, such as: the; it; I; and RT (which stands for retweet), which would otherwise appear as top results in almost any content analysis regardless of the community of interest. This was followed by qualitative analysis of tweets, to explore in more depth how important issues were articulated and rationalised within the group. This draws on Catherine Driscoll’s and Melissa Gregg’s idea of “sympathetic online cultural studies” which seeks to explore online communities first and foremost as communities rather than as exemplars of online communications (15-20). Here, a narrative approach was undertaken to analyse how participants curated, made sense of, and explained their own career stories (drawing on Pamphilon). Although I do not claim that participants are representative of all ECRs, or that the ideas given the most attention during chats are representative of the experiences of all participants, representations of work articulated here are suggestive of the kinds of public utterances that were considered reasonable within this open online space. Participants are identified according to the twitter handle and user name they had chosen to use for the chats being analysed. This is because the practical infeasibility of guaranteeing online anonymity (readers need only to Google the text of any tweet to associate it with a particular user, in most cases) and the importance of actively involving participants as agents in the research process, in part by identifying them as authors of their own stories, rather than informants (e.g. Butz; Evans; Svalastog and Eriksson).Representations of Work in #ECRchat The co-creation of the #ECRchat community through participant hosts and community votes on chat topics gave rise to a discussion group that was heavily focused on ‘the work’ of academia, including its importance in the lives of participants, relative appeal over other options, and negative effects on leisure time. I was clear that participants regarded participation as serving their professional interests, despite participation not being paid or formally recognised by employers. With the exception of two discussions focused on making decisions about the future of the group, #ECRchat discussions during the year of analysis focused on topics designed to help participants succeed at work such as “career progression and planning”, “different routes to postdoc funding”, and “collaboration”. At a micro-level, ‘work’ (and related terms) was the most frequently used term in #ECRchat, with its total number of uses (1372) almost double that of research (700), the next most used term. Comments during the chats reiterated this emphasis: “It’s all about the work. Be decent to people and jump through the hoops you need to, but always keep your eyes on the work” (Magennis).The depth of participants’ commitment comes through strongly in discussions comparing academic work with other options: “pretty much everyone I know with ‘real jobs’ hates their work. I feel truly lucky to say that I love mine #ECRchat” (McGettigan). This was seen in particular in the discussion about ‘careers outside academia’. Hashtags such as #altac (referring to alternative-academic careers such as university research support or learning and teaching administration roles) and #postac (referring to PhD holders working outside of universities in research or non-research roles) used both alongside the #ECRchat hashtag and separately, provide an ongoing site of these kinds of representations. While participants in #ECRchat sought to shift this perception and were critically aware that it could lead to undesirable outcomes: “PhDs and ECRs in Humanities don’t seem to consider working outside of academia – that limits their engagement with training #ECRchat” (Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester), such discussions frequently describe alternative academic careers as a ‘backup plan’, should academic employment not be found. Additionally, many participants suggested that their working hours were excessive, extending the professional into personal spaces and times in ways that they did not see as positive. This was often described as the only way to achieve success: “I hate to say it, but one of the best ways to improve track record is to work 70+ hours a week, every week. Forever. #ecrchat” (Dunn). One of the key examples of this dynamic was the scheduling of the chat itself. When founded in 2012, #ECRchat ran in the Australian evening and UK morning, eliding the personal/work distinction for both its coordinators and participants. While considerable discussion was concerned with scheduling the chat during times when a large number of international participants could attend, this discussion centred on waking rather than working hours. The use of scheduled tweets and shared work between convenors in different time zones (Australia and the United Kingdom) maintained an around the clock online presence, extending well beyond the ordinary working hours of any individual participant.Personal Disclosure The norms that were articulated in #ECRchat are perhaps not surprising for a group of participants seeking to establish themselves in a profession where a long-hours culture and work-life interference are common (Bentley, Coates, Dobson, Goedegebuure, and Meek). However, what is notable is that participation frequently involved the extension of the personal into the professional and in support of professional aims. In the chat’s first year, an element of personal disclosure and support for others became key to acting as a good community member. Beyond the well-established norms of white collar workers demonstrating professionalism by deploying “courtesy, helpfulness, and kindness” (Mills xvii), this community building relied on personal disclosure which to some extent collapsed personal and professional boundaries.By disclosing individual struggles, anxieties, and past experiences participants contributed to a culture of support. This largely functioned through discussions of work stress rather than leisure: “I definitely don’t have [work-life balance]. I think it’s because I don’t have a routine so work and home constantly blend into one another” (Feely). Arising from these discussions, ideas to help participants better navigate and build academic careers was one of the main ways this community support and concern was practiced: “I think I’m often more productive and less anxious if I'm working on a couple of things in parallel, too #ecrchat” (Brian).Activities such as preparing meals, caring for family, and leisure activities, became part of the discussion. “@snarkyphd Sorry, late, had to deal with toddler. Also new; currently doing casual teaching/industry work & applying for postdocs #ecrchat” (Ronald). Exclusively professional profiles were considered less engaging than the combination of personal and professional that most participants adopted: “@jeanmadams I’ve answered a few queries on ResearchGate, but agree lack of non-work opinions / personality makes them dull #ecrchat” (Tennant). However, this is not to suggest that these networks become indistinguishable from more informal, personal, or leisurely uses of social media: “@networkedres My ‘professional’ online identity is slightly more guarded than my ‘facebook’ id which is for friends and family #ECRchat” (Wheat). Instead, disclosure of certain kinds of work struggles came to function as a positive contribution to a more reflexive professionalism. In the context of work-focused discussion, #ECRchat opens important spaces for scholars to question norms they considered damaging or at least make these tacit norms explicit and receive support to manage them. Affective Labour The professional goals and focus of #ECRchat, combined with the personal support and disclosure that forms the basis for the supportive elements in this group is arguably one of its strongest and most important elements. Mark Carrigan suggests that the practices of revealing something of the struggles we experience could form the basis for a new collegiality, where common experiences which had previously not been discussed publicly are for the first time recognised as systemic, not individual challenges. However, there is work required to provide context and support for these emotional experiences which is largely invisible here, as has typically been the case in other communities. Such ‘affective labour’ “involves the production and manipulation of affect and requires (virtual or actual) human contact, labour in the bodily mode … the labour is immaterial, even if it is corporeal and affective, in the sense that its products are intangible, a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement or passion” (Hardt, and Negri 292). In #ECRchat, this ranges from managing the schedule and organising discussions – which involves following up offers to help, assisting people to understand the task, and then ensuring things go ahead as planned –to support offered by members of the group within discussions. This occurs in the overlaps between personal and professional representations, taking a variety of forms from everyday reassurance, affirmation, and patience: “Sorry to hear - hang in there. Hope you have a good support network. #ECRchat” (Galea) to empathy often articulated alongside the disclosure discussed earlier: “The feeling of guilt over not working sounds VERY familiar! #ecrchat” (Vredeveldt).The point here is not to suggest that this work is not sufficiently valued by participants, or that it does not parallel the kinds of work undertaken in more formal job roles, including in academia, where management, conference convening or participation in professional societies, and teaching, as just a few examples, involve degrees of affective labour. However, as a consequence of the (semi)public nature of these groups, the interactions observed here appear to represent a new inflection of professional reputation work, where, in building online professional communities, individuals peg their professional reputations to these forms of affective labour. Importantly, given the explicitly professional nature of the group, these efforts are not counted as part of the formal workload of those involved, be they employed (temporarily or more securely) inside or outside universities, or not in the paid workforce. Conclusion A growing body of literature demonstrates that online academic communities can provide opportunities for collegiality, professional development, and support: particularly among emerging scholars. These accounts demonstrate the value of digital scholarly practices across a range of academic work. However, this article’s discussion of the work undertaken to build and maintain #ECRchat in its first year suggests that these practices at the messy intersections of employment, unpaid professional development, and leisure constitute a new inflection of professional reputation and service work. This work involves publicly building a reputation as a good community member through a combination of personal disclosure and affective labour.In the context of growing emphasis on the economic, social, and other impacts of academic research and concerns over work intensification, this raises questions about possible scope for, and impact of, formal recognition of digital academic labour. While institutions’ work planning and promotion processes may provide opportunities to recognise work developing professional societies or conferences as a leadership or service to a discipline, this new digital service work remains outside the purview of such recognition and reward systems. Further research into the relationships between academic reputation and digital labour will be needed to explore the implications of this for institutions and academics alike. AcknowledgementsI would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions and support of everyone who participated in developing and sustaining #ECRchat. Both online and offline, this paper and the community itself would not have been possible without many generous contributions of time, understanding and thoughtful discussion. In particular, I would like to thank Katherine L. Wheat, co-founder and convenor, as well as Beth Montague-Hellen, Ellie Mackin, and Motje Wolf, who have taken on convening the group in the years since my involvement. ReferencesArcy, Jacquelyn. “Emotion Work: Considering Gender in Digital Labor.” Feminist Media Studies 16.2 (2016): 365-68.Bentley, Peter, Hamish Coates, Ian Dobson, Leo Goedegebuure, and Lynn Meek. Job Satisfaction around the Academic World. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. Brian, Deborah (@deborahbrian). “I think I’m often more productive and less anxious if I’m working on a couple of things in parallel, too #ecrchat” (11 April 2013, 10:25). 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Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012.Duffy, Brooke. “The Romance of Work: Gender and Aspirational Labour in the Digital Culture Industries.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 19.4 (2015): 441-57.Dunn, Adam (@AdamGDunn). “I hate to say it, but one of the best ways to improve track record is to work 70+ hours a week, every week. Forever. #ecrchat.” (14 Mar. 2013, 10:54). Tweet.Evans, Mike. “Ethics, Anonymity, and Authorship on Community Centred Research or Anonymity and the Island Cache.” Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health 2 (2004): 59-76.Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester (@HumsResearchers). “PhDs and ECRs in Humanities don't seem to consider working outside of academia - that limits their engagement with training #ECRchat” (2 Aug. 2012, 10:14). Tweet.Feely, Cath (@cathfeely). “I definitely don’t have [work-life balance]. 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New York: Oxford UP, 1951/1973.Mussell, James. “Social Media.” Journal of Victorian Culture 17.3 (2012): 347-47.O’Dwyer, Siobhan, Sharon McDonough, Rebecca Jefferson, Jennifer Ann Goff, and Michelle Redman-MacLaren. “Writing Groups in the Digital Age: A Case Study Analysis of Shut Up and Write Tuesdays.” Research 2.0 and the Impact of Digital Technologies on Scholarly Inquiry. Ed. Antonella Esposito. Pennsylvania: IGI Global, 2016. 249-69.Osimo, David, Pujol Priego Laia, and Vuorikari Riina. “Alternative Research Funding Mechanisms: Make Funding Fit for Science 2.0.” Research 2.0 and the Impact of Digital Technologies on Scholarly Inquiry. Ed. Antonella Esposito. Pennsylvania: IGI Global, 2016. 53-67. 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15

Paull, John. "Beyond Equal: From Same But Different to the Doctrine of Substantial Equivalence." M/C Journal 11, no. 2 (June 1, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.36.

Full text
Abstract:
A same-but-different dichotomy has recently been encapsulated within the US Food and Drug Administration’s ill-defined concept of “substantial equivalence” (USFDA, FDA). By invoking this concept the genetically modified organism (GMO) industry has escaped the rigors of safety testing that might otherwise apply. The curious concept of “substantial equivalence” grants a presumption of safety to GMO food. This presumption has yet to be earned, and has been used to constrain labelling of both GMO and non-GMO food. It is an idea that well serves corporatism. It enables the claim of difference to secure patent protection, while upholding the contrary claim of sameness to avoid labelling and safety scrutiny. It offers the best of both worlds for corporate food entrepreneurs, and delivers the worst of both worlds to consumers. The term “substantial equivalence” has established its currency within the GMO discourse. As the opportunities for patenting food technologies expand, the GMO recruitment of this concept will likely be a dress rehearsal for the developing debates on the labelling and testing of other techno-foods – including nano-foods and clone-foods. “Substantial Equivalence” “Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?” asks Clover in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. By way of response, Benjamin “read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran: ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS”. After this reductionist revelation, further novel and curious events at Manor Farm, “did not seem strange” (Orwell, ch. X). Equality is a concept at the very core of mathematics, but beyond the domain of logic, equality becomes a hotly contested notion – and the domain of food is no exception. A novel food has a regulatory advantage if it can claim to be the same as an established food – a food that has proven its worth over centuries, perhaps even millennia – and thus does not trigger new, perhaps costly and onerous, testing, compliance, and even new and burdensome regulations. On the other hand, such a novel food has an intellectual property (IP) advantage only in terms of its difference. And thus there is an entrenched dissonance for newly technologised foods, between claiming sameness, and claiming difference. The same/different dilemma is erased, so some would have it, by appeal to the curious new dualist doctrine of “substantial equivalence” whereby sameness and difference are claimed simultaneously, thereby creating a win/win for corporatism, and a loss/loss for consumerism. This ground has been pioneered, and to some extent conquered, by the GMO industry. The conquest has ramifications for other cryptic food technologies, that is technologies that are invisible to the consumer and that are not evident to the consumer other than via labelling. Cryptic technologies pertaining to food include GMOs, pesticides, hormone treatments, irradiation and, most recently, manufactured nano-particles introduced into the food production and delivery stream. Genetic modification of plants was reported as early as 1984 by Horsch et al. The case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty resulted in a US Supreme Court decision that upheld the prior decision of the US Court of Customs and Patent Appeal that “the fact that micro-organisms are alive is without legal significance for purposes of the patent law”, and ruled that the “respondent’s micro-organism plainly qualifies as patentable subject matter”. This was a majority decision of nine judges, with four judges dissenting (Burger). It was this Chakrabarty judgement that has seriously opened the Pandora’s box of GMOs because patenting rights makes GMOs an attractive corporate proposition by offering potentially unique monopoly rights over food. The rear guard action against GMOs has most often focussed on health repercussions (Smith, Genetic), food security issues, and also the potential for corporate malfeasance to hide behind a cloak of secrecy citing commercial confidentiality (Smith, Seeds). Others have tilted at the foundational plank on which the economics of the GMO industry sits: “I suggest that the main concern is that we do not want a single molecule of anything we eat to contribute to, or be patented and owned by, a reckless, ruthless chemical organisation” (Grist 22). The GMO industry exhibits bipolar behaviour, invoking the concept of “substantial difference” to claim patent rights by way of “novelty”, and then claiming “substantial equivalence” when dealing with other regulatory authorities including food, drug and pesticide agencies; a case of “having their cake and eating it too” (Engdahl 8). This is a clever slight-of-rhetoric, laying claim to the best of both worlds for corporations, and the worst of both worlds for consumers. Corporations achieve patent protection and no concomitant specific regulatory oversight; while consumers pay the cost of patent monopolization, and are not necessarily apprised, by way of labelling or otherwise, that they are purchasing and eating GMOs, and thereby financing the GMO industry. The lemma of “substantial equivalence” does not bear close scrutiny. It is a fuzzy concept that lacks a tight testable definition. It is exactly this fuzziness that allows lots of wriggle room to keep GMOs out of rigorous testing regimes. Millstone et al. argue that “substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgement masquerading as if it is scientific. It is moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests. It therefore serves to discourage and inhibit informative scientific research” (526). “Substantial equivalence” grants GMOs the benefit of the doubt regarding safety, and thereby leaves unexamined the ramifications for human consumer health, for farm labourer and food-processor health, for the welfare of farm animals fed a diet of GMO grain, and for the well-being of the ecosystem, both in general and in its particularities. “Substantial equivalence” was introduced into the food discourse by an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report: “safety evaluation of foods derived by modern biotechnology: concepts and principles”. It is from this document that the ongoing mantra of assumed safety of GMOs derives: “modern biotechnology … does not inherently lead to foods that are less safe … . Therefore evaluation of foods and food components obtained from organisms developed by the application of the newer techniques does not necessitate a fundamental change in established principles, nor does it require a different standard of safety” (OECD, “Safety” 10). This was at the time, and remains, an act of faith, a pro-corporatist and a post-cautionary approach. The OECD motto reveals where their priorities lean: “for a better world economy” (OECD, “Better”). The term “substantial equivalence” was preceded by the 1992 USFDA concept of “substantial similarity” (Levidow, Murphy and Carr) and was adopted from a prior usage by the US Food and Drug Agency (USFDA) where it was used pertaining to medical devices (Miller). Even GMO proponents accept that “Substantial equivalence is not intended to be a scientific formulation; it is a conceptual tool for food producers and government regulators” (Miller 1043). And there’s the rub – there is no scientific definition of “substantial equivalence”, no scientific test of proof of concept, and nor is there likely to be, since this is a ‘spinmeister’ term. And yet this is the cornerstone on which rests the presumption of safety of GMOs. Absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absence. History suggests that this is a fraught presumption. By way of contrast, the patenting of GMOs depends on the antithesis of assumed ‘sameness’. Patenting rests on proven, scrutinised, challengeable and robust tests of difference and novelty. Lightfoot et al. report that transgenic plants exhibit “unexpected changes [that] challenge the usual assumptions of GMO equivalence and suggest genomic, proteomic and metanomic characterization of transgenics is advisable” (1). GMO Milk and Contested Labelling Pesticide company Monsanto markets the genetically engineered hormone rBST (recombinant Bovine Somatotropin; also known as: rbST; rBGH, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone; and the brand name Prosilac) to dairy farmers who inject it into their cows to increase milk production. This product is not approved for use in many jurisdictions, including Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan. Even Monsanto accepts that rBST leads to mastitis (inflammation and pus in the udder) and other “cow health problems”, however, it maintains that “these problems did not occur at rates that would prohibit the use of Prosilac” (Monsanto). A European Union study identified an extensive list of health concerns of rBST use (European Commission). The US Dairy Export Council however entertain no doubt. In their background document they ask “is milk from cows treated with rBST safe?” and answer “Absolutely” (USDEC). Meanwhile, Monsanto’s website raises and answers the question: “Is the milk from cows treated with rbST any different from milk from untreated cows? No” (Monsanto). Injecting cows with genetically modified hormones to boost their milk production remains a contested practice, banned in many countries. It is the claimed equivalence that has kept consumers of US dairy products in the dark, shielded rBST dairy farmers from having to declare that their milk production is GMO-enhanced, and has inhibited non-GMO producers from declaring their milk as non-GMO, non rBST, or not hormone enhanced. This is a battle that has simmered, and sometimes raged, for a decade in the US. Finally there is a modest victory for consumers: the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) requires all labels used on milk products to be approved in advance by the department. The standard issued in October 2007 (PDA, “Standards”) signalled to producers that any milk labels claiming rBST-free status would be rejected. This advice was rescinded in January 2008 with new, specific, department-approved textual constructions allowed, and ensuring that any “no rBST” style claim was paired with a PDA-prescribed disclaimer (PDA, “Revised Standards”). However, parsimonious labelling is prohibited: No labeling may contain references such as ‘No Hormones’, ‘Hormone Free’, ‘Free of Hormones’, ‘No BST’, ‘Free of BST’, ‘BST Free’,’No added BST’, or any statement which indicates, implies or could be construed to mean that no natural bovine somatotropin (BST) or synthetic bovine somatotropin (rBST) are contained in or added to the product. (PDA, “Revised Standards” 3) Difference claims are prohibited: In no instance shall any label state or imply that milk from cows not treated with recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST, rbST, RBST or rbst) differs in composition from milk or products made with milk from treated cows, or that rBST is not contained in or added to the product. If a product is represented as, or intended to be represented to consumers as, containing or produced from milk from cows not treated with rBST any labeling information must convey only a difference in farming practices or dairy herd management methods. (PDA, “Revised Standards” 3) The PDA-approved labelling text for non-GMO dairy farmers is specified as follows: ‘From cows not treated with rBST. No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows’ or a substantial equivalent. Hereinafter, the first sentence shall be referred to as the ‘Claim’, and the second sentence shall be referred to as the ‘Disclaimer’. (PDA, “Revised Standards” 4) It is onto the non-GMO dairy farmer alone, that the costs of compliance fall. These costs include label preparation and approval, proving non-usage of GMOs, and of creating and maintaining an audit trail. In nearby Ohio a similar consumer versus corporatist pantomime is playing out. This time with the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) calling the shots, and again serving the GMO industry. The ODA prescribed text allowed to non-GMO dairy farmers is “from cows not supplemented with rbST” and this is to be conjoined with the mandatory disclaimer “no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST-supplemented and non-rbST supplemented cows” (Curet). These are “emergency rules”: they apply for 90 days, and are proposed as permanent. Once again, the onus is on the non-GMO dairy farmers to document and prove their claims. GMO dairy farmers face no such governmental requirements, including no disclosure requirement, and thus an asymmetric regulatory impost is placed on the non-GMO farmer which opens up new opportunities for administrative demands and technocratic harassment. Levidow et al. argue, somewhat Eurocentrically, that from its 1990s adoption “as the basis for a harmonized science-based approach to risk assessment” (26) the concept of “substantial equivalence” has “been recast in at least three ways” (58). It is true that the GMO debate has evolved differently in the US and Europe, and with other jurisdictions usually adopting intermediate positions, yet the concept persists. Levidow et al. nominate their three recastings as: firstly an “implicit redefinition” by the appending of “extra phrases in official documents”; secondly, “it has been reinterpreted, as risk assessment processes have … required more evidence of safety than before, especially in Europe”; and thirdly, “it has been demoted in the European Union regulatory procedures so that it can no longer be used to justify the claim that a risk assessment is unnecessary” (58). Romeis et al. have proposed a decision tree approach to GMO risks based on cascading tiers of risk assessment. However what remains is that the defects of the concept of “substantial equivalence” persist. Schauzu identified that: such decisions are a matter of “opinion”; that there is “no clear definition of the term ‘substantial’”; that because genetic modification “is aimed at introducing new traits into organisms, the result will always be a different combination of genes and proteins”; and that “there is no general checklist that could be followed by those who are responsible for allowing a product to be placed on the market” (2). Benchmark for Further Food Novelties? The discourse, contestation, and debate about “substantial equivalence” have largely focussed on the introduction of GMOs into food production processes. GM can best be regarded as the test case, and proof of concept, for establishing “substantial equivalence” as a benchmark for evaluating new and forthcoming food technologies. This is of concern, because the concept of “substantial equivalence” is scientific hokum, and yet its persistence, even entrenchment, within regulatory agencies may be a harbinger of forthcoming same-but-different debates for nanotechnology and other future bioengineering. The appeal of “substantial equivalence” has been a brake on the creation of GMO-specific regulations and on rigorous GMO testing. The food nanotechnology industry can be expected to look to the precedent of the GMO debate to head off specific nano-regulations and nano-testing. As cloning becomes economically viable, then this may be another wave of food innovation that muddies the regulatory waters with the confused – and ultimately self-contradictory – concept of “substantial equivalence”. Nanotechnology engineers particles in the size range 1 to 100 nanometres – a nanometre is one billionth of a metre. This is interesting for manufacturers because at this size chemicals behave differently, or as the Australian Office of Nanotechnology expresses it, “new functionalities are obtained” (AON). Globally, government expenditure on nanotechnology research reached US$4.6 billion in 2006 (Roco 3.12). While there are now many patents (ETC Group; Roco), regulation specific to nanoparticles is lacking (Bowman and Hodge; Miller and Senjen). The USFDA advises that nano-manufacturers “must show a reasonable assurance of safety … or substantial equivalence” (FDA). A recent inventory of nano-products already on the market identified 580 products. Of these 11.4% were categorised as “Food and Beverage” (WWICS). This is at a time when public confidence in regulatory bodies is declining (HRA). In an Australian consumer survey on nanotechnology, 65% of respondents indicated they were concerned about “unknown and long term side effects”, and 71% agreed that it is important “to know if products are made with nanotechnology” (MARS 22). Cloned animals are currently more expensive to produce than traditional animal progeny. In the course of 678 pages, the USFDA Animal Cloning: A Draft Risk Assessment has not a single mention of “substantial equivalence”. However the Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS) in its single page “Statement in Support of USFDA’s Risk Assessment Conclusion That Food from Cloned Animals Is Safe for Human Consumption” states that “FASS endorses the use of this comparative evaluation process as the foundation of establishing substantial equivalence of any food being evaluated. It must be emphasized that it is the food product itself that should be the focus of the evaluation rather than the technology used to generate cloned animals” (FASS 1). Contrary to the FASS derogation of the importance of process in food production, for consumers both the process and provenance of production is an important and integral aspect of a food product’s value and identity. Some consumers will legitimately insist that their Kalamata olives are from Greece, or their balsamic vinegar is from Modena. It was the British public’s growing awareness that their sugar was being produced by slave labour that enabled the boycotting of the product, and ultimately the outlawing of slavery (Hochschild). When consumers boycott Nestle, because of past or present marketing practices, or boycott produce of USA because of, for example, US foreign policy or animal welfare concerns, they are distinguishing the food based on the narrative of the food, the production process and/or production context which are a part of the identity of the food. Consumers attribute value to food based on production process and provenance information (Paull). Products produced by slave labour, by child labour, by political prisoners, by means of torture, theft, immoral, unethical or unsustainable practices are different from their alternatives. The process of production is a part of the identity of a product and consumers are increasingly interested in food narrative. It requires vigilance to ensure that these narratives are delivered with the product to the consumer, and are neither lost nor suppressed. Throughout the GM debate, the organic sector has successfully skirted the “substantial equivalence” debate by excluding GMOs from the certified organic food production process. This GMO-exclusion from the organic food stream is the one reprieve available to consumers worldwide who are keen to avoid GMOs in their diet. The organic industry carries the expectation of providing food produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and by extension, without GMOs. Most recently, the Soil Association, the leading organic certifier in the UK, claims to be the first organisation in the world to exclude manufactured nonoparticles from their products (Soil Association). There has been the call that engineered nanoparticles be excluded from organic standards worldwide, given that there is no mandatory safety testing and no compulsory labelling in place (Paull and Lyons). The twisted rhetoric of oxymorons does not make the ideal foundation for policy. Setting food policy on the shifting sands of “substantial equivalence” seems foolhardy when we consider the potentially profound ramifications of globally mass marketing a dysfunctional food. If there is a 2×2 matrix of terms – “substantial equivalence”, substantial difference, insubstantial equivalence, insubstantial difference – while only one corner of this matrix is engaged for food policy, and while the elements remain matters of opinion rather than being testable by science, or by some other regime, then the public is the dupe, and potentially the victim. “Substantial equivalence” has served the GMO corporates well and the public poorly, and this asymmetry is slated to escalate if nano-food and clone-food are also folded into the “substantial equivalence” paradigm. Only in Orwellian Newspeak is war peace, or is same different. It is time to jettison the pseudo-scientific doctrine of “substantial equivalence”, as a convenient oxymoron, and embrace full disclosure of provenance, process and difference, so that consumers are not collateral in a continuing asymmetric knowledge war. References Australian Office of Nanotechnology (AON). Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR) 6 Aug. 2007. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/Innovation/Pages/ AustralianOfficeofNanotechnology.aspx >.Bowman, Diana, and Graeme Hodge. “A Small Matter of Regulation: An International Review of Nanotechnology Regulation.” Columbia Science and Technology Law Review 8 (2007): 1-32.Burger, Warren. “Sidney A. Diamond, Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks v. Ananda M. Chakrabarty, et al.” Supreme Court of the United States, decided 16 June 1980. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=447&invol=303 >.Curet, Monique. “New Rules Allow Dairy-Product Labels to Include Hormone Info.” The Columbus Dispatch 7 Feb. 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2008/02/07/dairy.html >.Engdahl, F. William. Seeds of Destruction. Montréal: Global Research, 2007.ETC Group. Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-Scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture. 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Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. "Hearth and Hotmail." M/C Journal 10, no. 4 (August 1, 2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2696.

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Abstract:
Introduction It has frequently been noted that ICTs and social networking applications have blurred the once-clear boundary between work, leisure and entertainment, just as they have collapsed the distinction between public and private space. While each individual has a sense of what “home” means, both in terms of personal experience and more conceptually, the following three examples of online interaction (based on participants’ interest, or involvement, in activities traditionally associated with the home: pet care, craft and cooking) suggest that the utilisation of online communication technologies can lead to refined and extended definitions of what “home” is. These examples show how online communication can assist in meeting the basic human needs for love, companionship, shelter and food – needs traditionally supplied by the home environment. They also provide individuals with a considerably expanded range of opportunities for personal expression and emotional connection, as well as creative and commercial production, than that provided by the purely physical (and, no doubt, sometimes isolated and isolating) domestic environment. In this way, these case studies demonstrate the interplay and melding of physical and virtual “home” as domestic practices leach from the most private spaces of the physical home into the public space of the Internet (for discussion, see Gorman-Murray, Moss, and Rose). At the same time, online interaction can assert an influence on activity within the physical space of the home, through the sharing of advice about, and modeling of, domestic practices and processes. A Dog’s (Virtual) Life The first case study primarily explores the role of online communities in the formation and expression of affective values and personal identity – as traditionally happens in the domestic environment. Garber described the 1990s as “the decade of the dog” (20), citing a spate of “new anthropomorphic” (22) dog books, Internet “dog chat” sites, remakes of popular classics such as Lassie Come Home, dog friendly urban amenities, and the meteoric rise of services for pampered pets (28-9). Loving pets has become a lifestyle and culture, witnessed and commodified in Pet Superstores as well as in dog collectables and antiques boutiques, and in publications like The Bark (“the New Yorker of Dog Magazines”) and Clean Run, the international agility magazine, Website, online book store and information gateway for agility products and services. Available online resources for dog lovers have similarly increased rapidly during the decade since Garber’s book was published, with the virtual world now catering for serious hobby trainers, exhibitors and professionals as well as the home-based pet lover. At a recent survey, Yahoo Groups – a personal communication portal that facilitates social networking, in this case enabling users to set up electronic mailing lists and Internet forums – boasted just over 9,600 groups servicing dog fanciers and enthusiasts. The list Dogtalk is now an announcement only mailing list, but was a vigorous discussion forum until mid-2006. Members of Dogtalk were Australian-based “clicker-trainers”, serious hobbyist dog trainers, many of whom operated micro-businesses providing dog training or other pet-related services. They shared an online community, but could also engage in “flesh-meets” at seminars, conferences and competitive dog sport meets. An author of this paper (Rutherford) joined this group two years ago because of her interest in clicker training. Clicker training is based on an application of animal learning theory, particularly psychologist E. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning, so called because of the trademark use of a distinctive “click” sound to mark a desired behaviour that is then rewarded. Clicker trainers tend to dismiss anthropomorphic pack theory that positions the human animal as fundamentally opposed to non-human animals and, thus, foster a partnership (rather than a dominator) mode of social and learning relationships. Partnership and nurturance are common themes within the clicker community (as well as in more traditional “home” locations); as is recognising and valuing the specific otherness of other species. Typically, members regard their pets as affective equals or near-equals to the human animals that are recognised members of their kinship networks. A significant function of the episodic biographical narratives and responses posted to this list was thus to affirm and legitimate this intra-specific kinship as part of normative social relationship – a perspective that is not usually validated in the general population. One of the more interesting nexus that evolved within Dogtalk links the narrativisation of the pet in the domestic sphere with the pictorial genre of the family album. Emergent technologies, such as digital cameras together with Web-based image manipulation software and hosting (as provided by portals like Photobucket and Flickr ) democratise high quality image creation and facilitate the sharing of these images. Increasingly, the Dogtalk list linked to images uploaded to free online galleries, discussed digital image composition and aesthetics, and shared technical information about cameras and online image distribution. Much of this cultural production and circulation was concerned with digitally inscribing particular relationships with individual animals into cultural memory: a form of family group biography (for a discussion of the family photograph as a display of extended domestic space, see Rose). The other major non-training thread of the community involves the sharing and witnessing of the trauma suffered due to the illness and loss of pets. While mourning for human family members is supported in the off-line world – with social infrastructure, such as compassionate leave and/or bereavement counselling, part of professional entitlements – public mourning for pets is not similarly supported. Yet, both cultural studies (in its emphasis on cultural memory) and trauma theory have highlighted the importance of social witnessing, whereby traumatic memories must be narratively integrated into memory and legitimised by the presence of a witness in order to loosen their debilitating hold (Felman and Laub 57). Postings on the progress of a beloved animal’s illness or other misfortune and death were thus witnessed and affirmed by other Dogtalk list members – the sick or deceased pet becoming, in the process, a feature of community memory, not simply an individual loss. In terms of such biographical narratives, memory and history are not identical: “Any memories capable of being formed, retained or articulated by an individual are always a function of socially constituted forms, narratives and relations … Memory is always subject to active social manipulation and revision” (Halbwachs qtd. in Crewe 75). In this way, emergent technologies and social software provide sites, akin to that of physical homes, for family members to process individual memories into cultural memory. Dogzonline, the Australian Gateway site for purebred dog enthusiasts, has a forum entitled “Rainbow Bridge” devoted to textual and pictorial memorialisation of deceased pet dogs. Dogster hosts the For the Love of Dogs Weblog, in which images and tributes can be posted, and also provides links to other dog oriented Weblogs and Websites. An interesting combination of both therapeutic narrative and the commodification of affect is found in Lightning Strike Pet Loss Support which, while a memorial and support site, also provides links to the emerging profession of pet bereavement counselling and to suppliers of monuments and tributary urns for home or other use. loobylu and Narratives of Everyday Life The second case study focuses on online interactions between craft enthusiasts who are committed to the production of distinctive objects to decorate and provide comfort in the home, often using traditional methods. In the case of some popular craft Weblogs, online conversations about craft are interspersed with, or become secondary to, the narration of details of family life, the exploration of important life events or the recording of personal histories. As in the previous examples, the offering of advice and encouragement, and expressions of empathy and support, often characterise these interactions. The loobylu Weblog was launched in 2001 by illustrator and domestic crafts enthusiast Claire Robertson. Robertson is a toy maker and illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia, whose clients have included prominent publishing houses, magazines and the New York Public Library (Robertson “Recent Client List” online). She has achieved a measure of public recognition: her loobylu Weblog has won awards and been favourably commented upon in the Australian press (see Robertson “Press for loobylu” online). In 2005, an article in The Age placed Robertson in the context of a contemporary “craft revolution”, reporting her view that this “revolution” is in “reaction to mass consumerism” (Atkinson online). The hand-made craft objects featured in Robertson’s Weblogs certainly do suggest engagement with labour-intensive pursuits and the construction of unique objects that reject processes of mass production and consumption. In this context, loobylu is a vehicle for the display and promotion of Robertson’s work as an illustrator and as a craft practitioner. While skills-based, it also, however, promotes a family-centred lifestyle; it advocates the construction by hand of objects designed to enhance the appearance of the family home and the comfort of its inhabitants. Its specific subject matter extends to related aspects of home and family as, in addition to instructions, ideas and patterns for craft, the Weblog features information on commercially available products for home and family, recipes, child rearing advice and links to 27 other craft and other sites (including Nigella Lawson’s, discussed below). The primary member of its target community is clearly the traditional homemaker – the mother – as well as those who may aspire to this role. Robertson does not have the “celebrity” status of Lawson and Jamie Oliver (discussed below), nor has she achieved their market saturation. Indeed, Robertson’s online presence suggests a modest level of engagement that is placed firmly behind other commitments: in February 2007, she announced an indefinite suspension of her blog postings so that she could spend more time with her family (Robertson loobylu 17 February 2007). Yet, like Lawson and Oliver, Robertson has exploited forms of domestic competence traditionally associated with women and the home, and the non-traditional medium of the Internet has been central to her endeavours. The content of the loobylu blog is, unsurprisingly, embedded in, or an accessory to, a unifying running commentary on Robertson’s domestic life as a parent. Miles, who has described Weblogs as “distributed documentaries of the everyday” (66) sums this up neatly: “the weblogs’ governing discursive quality is the manner in which it is embodied within the life world of its author” (67). Landmark family events are narrated on loobylu and some attract deluges of responses: the 19 June 2006 posting announcing the birth of Robertson’s daughter Lily, for example, drew 478 responses; five days later, one describing the difficult circumstances of her birth drew 232 comments. All of these comments are pithy, with many being simple empathetic expressions or brief autobiographically based commentaries on these events. Robertson’s news of her temporary retirement from her blog elicited 176 comments that both supported her decision and also expressed a sense of loss. Frequent exclamation marks attest visually to the emotional intensity of the responses. By narrating aspects of major life events to which the target audience can relate, the postings represent a form of affective mass production and consumption: they are triggers for a collective outpouring of largely homogeneous emotional reaction (joy, in the case of Lily’s birth). As collections of texts, they can be read as auto/biographic records, arranged thematically, that operate at both the individual and the community levels. Readers of the family narratives and the affirming responses to them engage in a form of mass affirmation and consumerism of domestic experience that is easy, immediate, attractive and free of charge. These personal discourses blend fluidly with those of a commercial nature. Some three weeks after loobylu announced the birth of her daughter, Robertson shared on her Weblog news of her mastitis, Lily’s first smile and the family’s favourite television programs at the time, information that many of us would consider to be quite private details of family life. Three days later, she posted a photograph of a sleeping baby with a caption that skilfully (and negatively) links it to her daughter: “Firstly – I should mention that this is not a photo of Lily”. The accompanying text points out that it is a photo of a baby with the “Zaky Infant Sleeping Pillow” and provides a link to the online pregnancystore.com, from which it can be purchased. A quotation from the manufacturer describing the merits of the pillow follows. Robertson then makes a light-hearted comment on her experiences of baby-induced sleep-deprivation, and the possible consequences of possessing the pillow. Comments from readers also similarly alternate between the personal (sharing of experiences) to the commercial (comments on the product itself). One offshoot of loobylu suggests that the original community grew to an extent that it could support specialised groups within its boundaries. A Month of Softies began in November 2004, describing itself as “a group craft project which takes place every month” and an activity that “might give you a sense of community and kinship with other similar minded crafty types across the Internet and around the world” (Robertson A Month of Softies online). Robertson gave each month a particular theme, and readers were invited to upload a photograph of a craft object they had made that fitted the theme, with a caption. These were then included in the site’s gallery, in the order in which they were received. Added to the majority of captions was also a link to the site (often a business) of the creator of the object; another linking of the personal and the commercial in the home-based “cottage industry” sense. From July 2005, A Month of Softies operated through a Flickr site. Participants continued to submit photos of their craft objects (with captions), but also had access to a group photograph pool and public discussion board. This extension simulates (albeit in an entirely visual way) the often home-based physical meetings of craft enthusiasts that in contemporary Australia take the form of knitting, quilting, weaving or other groups. Chatting with, and about, Celebrity Chefs The previous studies have shown how the Internet has broken down many barriers between what could be understood as the separate spheres of emotional (that is, home-based private) and commercial (public) life. The online environment similarly enables the formation and development of fan communities by facilitating communication between those fans and, sometimes, between fans and the objects of their admiration. The term “fan” is used here in the broadest sense, referring to “a person with enduring involvement with some subject or object, often a celebrity, a sport, TV show, etc.” (Thorne and Bruner 52) rather than focusing on the more obsessive and, indeed, more “fanatical” aspects of such involvement, behaviour which is, increasingly understood as a subculture of more variously constituted fandoms (Jenson 9-29). Our specific interest in fandom in relation to this discussion is how, while marketers and consumer behaviourists study online fan communities for clues on how to more successfully market consumer goods and services to these groups (see, for example, Kozinets, “I Want to Believe” 470-5; “Utopian Enterprise” 67-88; Algesheimer et al. 19-34), fans regularly subvert the efforts of those urging consumer consumption to utilise even the most profit-driven Websites for non-commercial home-based and personal activities. While it is obvious that celebrities use the media to promote themselves, a number of contemporary celebrity chefs employ the media to construct and market widely recognisable personas based on their own, often domestically based, life stories. As examples, Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson’s printed books and mass periodical articles, television series and other performances across a range of media continuously draw on, elaborate upon, and ultimately construct their own lives as the major theme of these works. In this, these – as many other – celebrity chefs draw upon this revelation of their private lives to lend authenticity to their cooking, to the point where their work (whether cookbook, television show, advertisement or live chat room session with their fans) could be described as “memoir-illustrated-with-recipes” (Brien and Williamson). This generic tendency influences these celebrities’ communities, to the point where a number of Websites devoted to marketing celebrity chefs as product brands also enable their fans to share their own life stories with large readerships. Oliver and Lawson’s official Websites confirm the privileging of autobiographical and biographical information, but vary in tone and approach. Each is, for instance, deliberately gendered (see Hollows’ articles for a rich exploration of gender, Oliver and Lawson). Oliver’s hip, boyish, friendly, almost frantic site includes the what are purported-to-be self-revelatory “Diary” and “About me” sections, a selection of captioned photographs of the chef, his family, friends, co-workers and sponsors, and his Weblog as well as footage streamed “live from Jamie’s phone”. This self-revelation – which includes significant details about Oliver’s childhood and his domestic life with his “lovely girls, Jools [wife Juliette Norton], Poppy and Daisy” – completely blurs the line between private life and the “Jamie Oliver” brand. While such revelation has been normalised in contemporary culture, this practice stands in great contrast to that of renowned chefs and food writers such as Elizabeth David, Julia Child, James Beard and Margaret Fulton, whose work across various media has largely concentrated on food, cooking and writing about cooking. The difference here is because Oliver’s (supposedly private) life is the brand, used to sell “Jamie Oliver restaurant owner and chef”, “Jamie Oliver cookbook author and TV star”, “Jamie Oliver advertising spokesperson for Sainsbury’s supermarket” (from which he earns an estimated £1.2 million annually) (Meller online) and “Jamie Oliver social activist” (made MBE in 2003 after his first Fifteen restaurant initiative, Oliver was named “Most inspiring political figure” in the 2006 Channel 4 Political Awards for his intervention into the provision of nutritious British school lunches) (see biographies by Hildred and Ewbank, and Smith). Lawson’s site has a more refined, feminine appearance and layout and is more mature in presentation and tone, featuring updates on her (private and public) “News” and forthcoming public appearances, a glamorous selection of photographs of herself from the past 20 years, and a series of print and audio interviews. Although Lawson’s children have featured in some of her television programs and her personal misfortunes are well known and regularly commented upon by both herself and journalists (her mother, sister and husband died of cancer) discussions of these tragedies, and other widely known aspects of her private life such as her second marriage to advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, is not as overt as on Oliver’s site, and the user must delve to find it. The use of Lawson’s personal memoir, as sales tool, is thus both present and controlled. This is in keeping with Lawson’s professional experience prior to becoming the “domestic goddess” (Lawson 2000) as an Oxford graduated journalist on the Spectator and deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times. Both Lawson’s and Oliver’s Websites offer readers various ways to interact with them “personally”. Visitors to Oliver’s site can ask him questions and can access a frequently asked question area, while Lawson holds (once monthly, now irregularly) a question and answer forum. In contrast to this information about, and access to, Oliver and Lawson’s lives, neither of their Websites includes many recipes or other food and cooking focussed information – although there is detailed information profiling their significant number of bestselling cookbooks (Oliver has published 8 cookbooks since 1998, Lawson 5 since 1999), DVDs and videos of their television series and one-off programs, and their name branded product lines of domestic kitchenware (Oliver and Lawson) and foodstuffs (Oliver). Instruction on how to purchase these items is also featured. Both these sites, like Robertson’s, provide various online discussion fora, allowing members to comment upon these chefs’ lives and work, and also to connect with each other through posted texts and images. Oliver’s discussion forum section notes “this is the place for you all to chat to each other, exchange recipe ideas and maybe even help each other out with any problems you might have in the kitchen area”. Lawson’s front page listing states: “You will also find a moderated discussion forum, called Your Page, where our registered members can swap ideas and interact with each other”. The community participants around these celebrity chefs can be, as is the case with loobylu, divided into two groups. The first is “foodie (in Robertson’s case, craft) fans” who appear to largely engage with these Websites to gain, and to share, food, cooking and craft-related information. Such fans on Oliver and Lawson’s discussion lists most frequently discuss these chefs’ television programs and books and the recipes presented therein. They test recipes at home and discuss the results achieved, any problems encountered and possible changes. They also post queries and share information about other recipes, ingredients, utensils, techniques, menus and a wide range of food and cookery-related matters. The second group consists of “celebrity fans” who are attracted to the chefs (as to Robertson as craft maker) as personalities. These fans seek and share biographical information about Oliver and Lawson, their activities and their families. These two areas of fan interest (food/cooking/craft and the personal) are not necessarily or always separated, and individuals can be active members of both types of fandoms. Less foodie-orientated users, however (like users of Dogtalk and loobylu), also frequently post their own auto/biographical narratives to these lists. These narratives, albeit often fragmented, may begin with recipes and cooking queries or issues, but veer off into personal stories that possess only minimal or no relationship to culinary matters. These members also return to the boards to discuss their own revealed life stories with others who have commented on these narratives. Although research into this aspect is in its early stages, it appears that the amount of public personal revelation either encouraged, or allowed, is in direct proportion to the “open” friendliness of these sites. More thus are located in Oliver’s and less in Lawson’s, and – as a kind of “control” in this case study, but not otherwise discussed – none in that of Australian chef Neil Perry, whose coolly sophisticated Website perfectly complements Perry’s professional persona as the epitome of the refined, sophisticated and, importantly in this case, unapproachable, high-end restaurant chef. Moreover, non-cuisine related postings are made despite clear directions to the contrary – Lawson’s site stating: “We ask that postings are restricted to topics relating to food, cooking, the kitchen and, of course, Nigella!” and Oliver making the plea, noted above, for participants to keep their discussions “in the kitchen area”. Of course, all such contemporary celebrity chefs are supported by teams of media specialists who selectively construct the lives that these celebrities share with the public and the postings about others’ lives that are allowed to remain on their discussion lists. The intersection of the findings reported above with the earlier case studies suggests, however, that even these most commercially-oriented sites can provide a fruitful data regarding their function as home-like spaces where domestic practices and processes can be refined, and emotional relationships formed and fostered. In Summary As convergence results in what Turow and Kavanaugh call “the wired homestead”, our case studies show that physically home-based domestic interests and practices – what could be called “home truths” – are also contributing to a refiguration of the private/public interplay of domestic activities through online dialogue. In the case of Dogtalk, domestic space is reconstituted through virtual spaces to include new definitions of family and memory. In the case of loobylu, the virtual interaction facilitates a development of craft-based domestic practices within the physical space of the home, thus transforming domestic routines. Jamie Oliver’s and Nigella Lawson’s sites facilitate development of both skills and gendered identities by means of a bi-directional nexus between domestic practices, sites of home labour/identity production and public media spaces. As participants modify and redefine these online communities to best suit their own needs and desires, even if this is contrary to the stated purposes for which the community was instituted, online communities can be seen to be domesticated, but, equally, these modifications demonstrate that the activities and relationships that have traditionally defined the home are not limited to the physical space of the house. While virtual communities are “passage points for collections of common beliefs and practices that united people who were physically separated” (Stone qtd in Jones 19), these interactions can lead to shared beliefs, for example, through advice about pet-keeping, craft and cooking, that can significantly modify practices and routines in the physical home. Acknowledgments An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Association of Internet Researchers’ International Conference, Brisbane, 27-30 September 2006. 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The Wired Homestead: An MIT Press Sourcebook on the Internet and the Family. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>. APA Style Brien, D., L. Rutherford, and R. Williamson. (Aug. 2007) "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>.
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17

Acland, Charles. "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends." M/C Journal 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2000). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1824.

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Abstract:
Newspapers and the 7:15 Showing Cinemagoing involves planning. Even in the most impromptu instances, one has to consider meeting places, line-ups and competing responsibilities. One arranges child care, postpones household chores, or rushes to finish meals. One must organise transportation and think about routes, traffic, parking or public transit. And during the course of making plans for a trip to the cinema, whether alone or in the company of others, typically one turns to locate a recent newspaper. Consulting its printed page lets us ascertain locations, a selection of film titles and their corresponding show times. In preparing to feed a cinema craving, we burrow through a newspaper to an entertainment section, finding a tableau of information and promotional appeals. Such sections compile the mini-posters of movie advertisements, with their truncated credits, as well as various reviews and entertainment news. We see names of shopping malls doubling as names of theatres. We read celebrity gossip that may or may not pertain to the film selected for that occasion. We informally rank viewing priorities ranging from essential theatrical experiences to those that can wait for the videotape release. We attempt to assess our own mood and the taste of our filmgoing companions, matching up what we suppose are appropriate selections. Certainly, other media vie to supplant the newspaper's role in cinemagoing; many now access on-line sources and telephone services that offer the crucial details about start times. Nonetheless, as a campaign by the Newspaper Association of America in Variety aimed to remind film marketers, 80% of cinemagoers refer to newspaper listings for times and locations before heading out. The accuracy of that association's statistics notwithstanding, for the moment, the local daily or weekly newspaper has a secure place in the routines of cinematic life. A basic impetus for the newspaper's role is its presentation of a schedule of show times. Whatever the venue -- published, phone or on-line -- it strikes me as especially telling that schedules are part of the ordinariness of cinemagoing. To be sure, there are those who decide what film to see on site. Anecdotally, I have had several people comment recently that they no longer decide what movie to see, but where to see a (any) movie. Regardless, the schedule, coupled with the theatre's location, figures as a point of coordination for travel through community space to a site of film consumption. The choice of show time is governed by countless demands of everyday life. How often has the timing of a film -- not the film itself, the theatre at which it's playing, nor one's financial situation --determined one's attendance? How familiar is the assessment that show times are such that one cannot make it, that the film begins a bit too earlier, that it will run too late for whatever reason, and that other tasks intervene to take precedence? I want to make several observations related to the scheduling of film exhibition. Most generally, it makes manifest that cinemagoing involves an exercise in the application of cinema knowledge -- that is, minute, everyday facilities and familiarities that help orchestrate the ordinariness of cultural life. Such knowledge informs what Michel de Certeau characterises as "the procedures of everyday creativity" (xiv). Far from random, the unexceptional decisions and actions involved with cinemagoing bear an ordering and a predictability. Novelty in audience activity appears, but it is alongside fairly exact expectations about the event. The schedule of start times is essential to the routinisation of filmgoing. Displaying a Fordist logic of streamlining commodity distribution and the time management of consumption, audiences circulate through a machine that shapes their constituency, providing a set time for seating, departure, snack purchases and socialising. Even with the staggered times offered by multiplex cinemas, schedules still lay down a fixed template around which other activities have to be arrayed by the patron. As audiences move to and through the theatre, the schedule endeavours to regulate practice, making us the subjects of a temporal grid, a city context, a cinema space, as well as of the film itself. To be sure, one can arrive late and leave early, confounding the schedule's disciplining force. Most importantly, with or without such forms of evasion, it channels the actions of audiences in ways that consideration of the gaze cannot address. Taking account of the scheduling of cinema culture, and its implication of adjunct procedures of everyday life, points to dimensions of subjectivity neglected by dominant theories of spectatorship. To be the subject of a cinema schedule is to understand one assemblage of the parameters of everyday creativity. It would be foolish to see cinema audiences as cattle, herded and processed alone, in some crude Gustave LeBon fashion. It would be equally foolish not to recognise the manner in which film distribution and exhibition operates precisely by constructing images of the activity of people as demographic clusters and generalised cultural consumers. The ordinary tactics of filmgoing are supplemental to, and run alongside, a set of industrial structures and practices. While there is a correlation between a culture industry's imagined audience and the life that ensues around its offerings, we cannot neglect that, as attention to film scheduling alerts us, audiences are subjects of an institutional apparatus, brought into being for the reproduction of an industrial edifice. Streamline Audiences In this, film is no different from any culture industry. Film exhibition and distribution relies on an understanding of both the market and the product or service being sold at any given point in time. Operations respond to economic conditions, competing companies, and alternative activities. Economic rationality in this strategic process, however, only explains so much. This is especially true for an industry that must continually predict, and arguably give shape to, the "mood" and predilections of disparate and distant audiences. Producers, distributors and exhibitors assess which films will "work", to whom they will be marketed, as well as establish the very terms of success. Without a doubt, much of the film industry's attentions act to reduce this uncertainty; here, one need only think of the various forms of textual continuity (genre films, star performances, etc.) and the economies of mass advertising as ways to ensure box office receipts. Yet, at the core of the operations of film exhibition remains a number of flexible assumptions about audience activity, taste and desire. These assumptions emerge from a variety of sources to form a brand of temporary industry "commonsense", and as such are harbingers of an industrial logic. Ien Ang has usefully pursued this view in her comparative analysis of three national television structures and their operating assumptions about audiences. Broadcasters streamline and discipline audiences as part of their organisational procedures, with the consequence of shaping ideas about consumers as well as assuring the reproduction of the industrial structure itself. She writes, "institutional knowledge is driven toward making the audience visible in such a way that it helps the institutions to increase their power to get their relationship with the audience under control, and this can only be done by symbolically constructing 'television audience' as an objectified category of others that can be controlled, that is, contained in the interest of a predetermined institutional goal" (7). Ang demonstrates, in particular, how various industrially sanctioned programming strategies (programme strips, "hammocking" new shows between successful ones, and counter-programming to a competitor's strengths) and modes of audience measurement grow out of, and invariably support, those institutional goals. And, most crucially, her approach is not an effort to ascertain the empirical certainty of "actual" audiences; instead, it charts the discursive terrain in which the abstract concept of audience becomes material for the continuation of industry practices. Ang's work tenders special insight to film culture. In fact, television scholarship has taken full advantage of exploring the routine nature of that medium, the best of which deploys its findings to lay bare configurations of power in domestic contexts. One aspect has been television time and schedules. For example, David Morley points to the role of television in structuring everyday life, discussing a range of research that emphasises the temporal dimension. Alerting us to the non- necessary determination of television's temporal structure, he comments that we "need to maintain a sensitivity to these micro-levels of division and differentiation while we attend to the macro-questions of the media's own role in the social structuring of time" (265). As such, the negotiation of temporal structures implies that schedules are not monolithic impositions of order. Indeed, as Morley puts it, they "must be seen as both entering into already constructed, historically specific divisions of space and time, and also as transforming those pre-existing division" (266). Television's temporal grid has been address by others as well. Paddy Scannell characterises scheduling and continuity techniques, which link programmes, as a standardisation of use, making radio and television predictable, 'user friendly' media (9). John Caughie refers to the organization of flow as a way to talk about the national particularities of British and American television (49-50). All, while making their own contributions, appeal to a detailing of viewing context as part of any study of audience, consumption or experience; uncovering the practices of television programmers as they attempt to apprehend and create viewing conditions for their audiences is a first step in this detailing. Why has a similar conceptual framework not been applied with the same rigour to film? Certainly the history of film and television's association with different, at times divergent, disciplinary formations helps us appreciate such theoretical disparities. I would like to mention one less conspicuous explanation. It occurs to me that one frequently sees a collapse in the distinction between the everyday and the domestic; in much scholarship, the latter term appears as a powerful trope of the former. The consequence has been the absenting of a myriad of other -- if you will, non-domestic -- manifestations of everyday-ness, unfortunately encouraging a rather literal understanding of the everyday. The impression is that the abstractions of the everyday are reduced to daily occurrences. Simply put, my minor appeal is for the extension of this vein of television scholarship to out-of-home technologies and cultural forms, that is, other sites and locations of the everyday. In so doing, we pay attention to extra-textual structures of cinematic life; other regimes of knowledge, power, subjectivity and practice appear. Film audiences require a discussion about the ordinary, the calculated and the casual practices of cinematic engagement. Such a discussion would chart institutional knowledge, identifying operating strategies and recognising the creativity and multidimensionality of cinemagoing. What are the discursive parameters in which the film industry imagines cinema audiences? What are the related implications for the structures in which the practice of cinemagoing occurs? Vectors of Exhibition Time One set of those structures of audience and industry practice involves the temporal dimension of film exhibition. In what follows, I want to speculate on three vectors of the temporality of cinema spaces (meaning that I will not address issues of diegetic time). Note further that my observations emerge from a close study of industrial discourse in the U.S. and Canada. I would be interested to hear how they are manifest in other continental contexts. First, the running times of films encourage turnovers of the audience during the course of a single day at each screen. The special event of lengthy anomalies has helped mark the epic, and the historic, from standard fare. As discussed above, show times coordinate cinemagoing and regulate leisure time. Knowing the codes of screenings means participating in an extension of the industrial model of labour and service management. Running times incorporate more texts than the feature presentation alone. Besides the history of double features, there are now advertisements, trailers for coming attractions, trailers for films now playing in neighbouring auditoriums, promotional shorts demonstrating new sound systems, public service announcements, reminders to turn off cell phones and pagers, and the exhibitor's own signature clips. A growing focal point for filmgoing, these introductory texts received a boost in 1990, when the Motion Picture Association of America changed its standards for the length of trailers, boosting it from 90 seconds to a full two minutes (Brookman). This intertextuality needs to be supplemented by a consideration of inter- media appeals. For example, advertisements for television began appearing in theatres in the 1990s. And many lobbies of multiplex cinemas now offer a range of media forms, including video previews, magazines, arcades and virtual reality games. Implied here is that motion pictures are not the only media audiences experience in cinemas and that there is an explicit attempt to integrate a cinema's texts with those at other sites and locations. Thus, an exhibitor's schedule accommodates an intertextual strip, offering a limited parallel to Raymond Williams's concept of "flow", which he characterised by stating -- quite erroneously -- "in all communication systems before broadcasting the essential items were discrete" (86-7). Certainly, the flow between trailers, advertisements and feature presentations is not identical to that of the endless, ongoing text of television. There are not the same possibilities for "interruption" that Williams emphasises with respect to broadcasting flow. Further, in theatrical exhibition, there is an end-time, a time at which there is a public acknowledgement of the completion of the projected performance, one that necessitates vacating the cinema. This end-time is a moment at which the "rental" of the space has come due; and it harkens a return to the street, to the negotiation of city space, to modes of public transit and the mobile privatisation of cars. Nonetheless, a schedule constructs a temporal boundary in which audiences encounter a range of texts and media in what might be seen as limited flow. Second, the ephemerality of audiences -- moving to the cinema, consuming its texts, then passing the seat on to someone else -- is matched by the ephemerality of the features themselves. Distributors' demand for increasing numbers of screens necessary for massive, saturation openings has meant that films now replace one another more rapidly than in the past. Films that may have run for months now expect weeks, with fewer exceptions. Wider openings and shorter runs have created a cinemagoing culture characterised by flux. The acceleration of the turnover of films has been made possible by the expansion of various secondary markets for distribution, most importantly videotape, splintering where we might find audiences and multiplying viewing contexts. Speeding up the popular in this fashion means that the influence of individual texts can only be truly gauged via cross-media scrutiny. Short theatrical runs are not axiomatically designed for cinemagoers anymore; they can also be intended to attract the attention of video renters, purchasers and retailers. Independent video distributors, especially, "view theatrical release as a marketing expense, not a profit center" (Hindes & Roman 16). In this respect, we might think of such theatrical runs as "trailers" or "loss leaders" for the video release, with selected locations for a film's release potentially providing visibility, even prestige, in certain city markets or neighbourhoods. Distributors are able to count on some promotion through popular consumer- guide reviews, usually accompanying theatrical release as opposed to the passing critical attention given to video release. Consequently, this shapes the kinds of uses an assessment of the current cinema is put to; acknowledging that new releases function as a resource for cinema knowledge highlights the way audiences choose between and determine big screen and small screen films. Taken in this manner, popular audiences see the current cinema as largely a rough catalogue to future cultural consumption. Third, motion picture release is part of the structure of memories and activities over the course of a year. New films appear in an informal and ever-fluctuating structure of seasons. The concepts of summer movies and Christmas films, or the opening weekends that are marked by a holiday, sets up a fit between cinemagoing and other activities -- family gatherings, celebrations, etc. Further, this fit is presumably resonant for both the industry and popular audiences alike, though certainly for different reasons. The concentration of new films around visible holiday periods results in a temporally defined dearth of cinemas; an inordinate focus upon three periods in the year in the U.S. and Canada -- the last weekend in May, June/July/August and December -- creates seasonal shortages of screens (Rice-Barker 20). In fact, the boom in theatre construction through the latter half of the 1990s was, in part, to deal with those short-term shortages and not some year-round inadequate seating. Configurations of releasing colour a calendar with the tactical manoeuvres of distributors and exhibitors. Releasing provides a particular shape to the "current cinema", a term I employ to refer to a temporally designated slate of cinematic texts characterised most prominently by their newness. Television arranges programmes to capitalise on flow, to carry forward audiences and to counter-programme competitors' simultaneous offerings. Similarly, distributors jostle with each other, with their films and with certain key dates, for the limited weekends available, hoping to match a competitor's film intended for one audience with one intended for another. Industry reporter Leonard Klady sketched some of the contemporary truisms of releasing based upon the experience of 1997. He remarks upon the success of moving Liar, Liar (Tom Shadyac, 1997) to a March opening and the early May openings of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) and Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow, 1997), generally seen as not desirable times of the year for premieres. He cautions against opening two films the same weekend, and thus competing with yourself, using the example of Fox's Soul Food (George Tillman, Jr., 1997) and The Edge (Lee Tamahori, 1997). While distributors seek out weekends clear of films that would threaten to overshadow their own, Klady points to the exception of two hits opening on the same date of December 19, 1997 -- Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997) and Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Though but a single opinion, Klady's observations are a peek into a conventional strain of strategising among distributors and exhibitors. Such planning for the timing and appearance of films is akin to the programming decisions of network executives. And I would hazard to say that digital cinema, reportedly -- though unlikely -- just on the horizon and in which texts will be beamed to cinemas via satellite rather than circulated in prints, will only augment this comparison; releasing will become that much more like programming, or at least will be conceptualised as such. To summarize, the first vector of exhibition temporality is the scheduling and running time; the second is the theatrical run; the third is the idea of seasons and the "programming" of openings. These are just some of the forces streamlining filmgoers; the temporal structuring of screenings, runs and film seasons provides a material contour to the abstraction of audience. Here, what I have delineated are components of an industrial logic about popular and public entertainment, one that offers a certain controlled knowledge about and for cinemagoing audiences. Shifting Conceptual Frameworks A note of caution is in order. I emphatically resist an interpretation that we are witnessing the becoming-film of television and the becoming-tv of film. Underneath the "inversion" argument is a weak brand of technological determinism, as though each asserts its own essential qualities. Such a pat declaration seems more in line with the mythos of convergence, and its quasi-Darwinian "natural" collapse of technologies. Instead, my point here is quite the opposite, that there is nothing essential or unique about the scheduling or flow of television; indeed, one does not have to look far to find examples of less schedule-dependent television. What I want to highlight is that application of any term of distinction -- event/flow, gaze/glance, public/private, and so on -- has more to do with our thinking, with the core discursive arrangements that have made film and television, and their audiences, available to us as knowable and different. So, using empirical evidence to slide one term over to the other is a strategy intended to supplement and destabilise the manner in which we draw conclusions, and even pose questions, of each. What this proposes is, again following the contributions of Ien Ang, that we need to see cinemagoing in its institutional formation, rather than some stable technological, textual or experiential apparatus. The activity is not only a function of a constraining industrial practice or of wildly creative patrons, but of a complex inter-determination between the two. Cinemagoing is an organisational entity harbouring, reviving and constituting knowledge and commonsense about film commodities, audiences and everyday life. An event of cinema begins well before the dimming of an auditorium's lights. The moment a newspaper is consulted, with its local representation of an internationally circulating current cinema, its listings belie a scheduling, an orderliness, to the possible projections in a given location. As audiences are formed as subjects of the current cinema, we are also agents in the continuation of a set of institutions as well. References Ang, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. New York: Routledge, 1991. Brookman, Faye. "Trailers: The Big Business of Drawing Crowds." Variety 13 June 1990: 48. Caughie, John. "Playing at Being American: Games and Tactics." Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Ed. Patricia Mellencamp. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steve Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Hindes, Andrew, and Monica Roman. "Video Titles Do Pitstops on Screens." Variety 16-22 Sep. 1996: 11+. Klady, Leonard. "Hitting and Missing the Market: Studios Show Savvy -- or Just Luck -- with Pic Release Strategies." Variety 19-25 Jan. 1998: 18. Morley, David. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992. Newspaper Association of America. "Before They See It Here..." Advertisement. Variety 22-28 Nov. 1999: 38. Rice-Barker, Leo. "Industry Banks on New Technology, Expanded Slates." Playback 6 May 1996: 19-20. Scannell, Paddy. Radio, Television and Modern Life. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken, 1975. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Charles Acland. "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php>. Chicago style: Charles Acland, "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Charles Acland. (2000) Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]).
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