Expo afterlife: corporate performance and capitalist futurity in the Carousel of Progress

This article discusses a theatrical spectacle created by Walt Disney and General Electric for the 1964 New York World’s Fair that has run for the last five decades: the Carousel of Progress, a history pageant that stages the evolution of domestic technology in the twentieth century. As a spectacle dedicated to celebrating tools that bolster women’s participation in the social reproduction of capitalism, the author argues, the Carousel shows how expos utilize theatricality in order to inscribe industrial technologies within corporate ideologies. By apprehending the Carousel of Progress as a site of corporate performance, the author demonstrates how the Carousel’s afterlife in theme park entertainment has enabled Disney to theatricalize disparate modes of capitalist futurity in response to shifting cultural sensibilities. The author situates the Carousel within an economy that has consistently presented female domestic labor as subordinate to corporate capital, culminating with its late-1990s staging of an illusory prefeminism, which fantasizes a twentieth century in which no feminist movement took place. Engaging with theories of corporate performance, this article takes up the Carousel of Progress’s production history as an indication of theatricality’s longstanding utility to corporate capitalism.     

Scientific capacity building and the ontologies of herbal medicine in Ghana

Abstract

The Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine, a large herbal medicine research center in Ghana, has received important research equipment and training through a transnational research collaboration involving the Japanese International Cooperation Agency. By situating this project in regional debates about traditional medicine research priorities and the ontologies of plant medicine, this article argues that the collaboration had the perceived effect of standardizing research practices oriented toward drug discovery rather than the rationalization of crude drug preparations. This shows that “capacity-building” components of research collaborations should not be taken as the transfer of neutral goods from one location to another. They are charged with the political potential to make crucial decisions about the objects of research in postcolonial Africa.     

The effects of national cultures on two technologically advanced countries: The case of e-leadership in South Korea and the United States

The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has triggered enormous innovation in the public sector and created positive public value at the managerial, delivery of services, and policy levels. However, these positive outcomes do not automatically accrue simply by adoption of ICTs as public leaders can fail to adopt relevant new ICTs, use them poorly, or use them in ways that actually diminish public value, which raises the question of the importance of e-leadership. This article examines e-leadership and innovation capacity at the individual public manager level and fills in some gaps about the practice and implementation of ICTs in the public sector. We explore eight research questions useful in theorizing about e-leadership, develop constructs of e-leadership, and describe the current development of e-leadership. By comparing e-leadership in two country settings (South Korea and the United States), we also overcome the limitations of the existing Western-oriented studies about innovations in the public sector. In addition to the growth of e-leadership use and requirements for a variety of competencies equivalent to, but separate from, traditional communication competences, we find that national cultures exert significant influence on the major constructs of e-leadership, which implies that an effective e-leadership strategy should consider cultural contexts seriously.     

How the West was Won: A Deconstruction of Politicised Colonial Engineering

History has taught us that the Global North's attempts to ‘civilise' the rest of the world's population, both now and in colonial times, have been fraught with difficulty. This paper argues that this difficulty is mainly owing to the political standpoint and positioning of our perceived engineering and technical superiority. A failure to recognise this viewpoint and to change the way in which we work together—in a global sense—to solve issues such as climate change, threatens our ability to survive as a species. Political standpoints on such issues still assume a superiority of governments in the Global North. This paper retraces colonial engineering projects, mainly directed from the UK, that failed to consider the development of other populations in the world, and their needs. It is also posited that our exploitation in the Global North, which assumes historical superiority as a basic premise, will fail in tackling major issues. Change is needed through a decolonisation of engineering projects, and western engineering curricula that are used to train future professionals. Evidence of the impact of decolonisation on the engineering discipline itself is scarce, but nevertheless, a response is needed to ensure that a more inclusive curriculum and narrative is developed.     

利用图书馆资源优势推广农村文化信息化建设

本文在分析利用图书馆资源推进农村文化信息化建设中存在的主要问题的基础上,提出以图书馆现有资源和设施为依托,更新观念,加大投资力度,建立城乡援助模式进行农村文化信息化建设：     

Adoption model to assess the user acceptance of smart card technology

Smart card technology is one of the most recent computer revolutions, making its way world-wide into the hands and wallets of everyone. Today smart cards are used all over the world as personal identification cards for corporate building security systems and personal computer equipment access control. Governments, financial services, transportation, telecommunications, healthcare, education, retail and many other industries are planning to or already using smart cards as a means of providing better security and improved services to its customers and users. Understanding the factors that influence user acceptance of information technology is of interest both to researchers in a variety of fields as well as procurers of technology for large organizations. The purpose of this study is to develop an acceptance model and evaluate the user acceptance of smart card in Iran. A pilot study is conducted and a total of 46 questionnaires were distributed among the master students in field of computer science （information security and software engineering） at University Technology Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. The measurement items in the questionnaire asked about their awareness and acceptance of smart cards, and the initial findings are presented and discussed.     

法益的体系性位置与功能

法益的体系性位置可以从法益与实定法的关系、讨论法益问题的领域两个角度来分析。在不同领域内讨论的法益,有不同的概念选择,发挥不同的功能。犯罪立法概念中的法益只能是宪法性法益,其功能在于为刑事立法者提供适当的刑事政策标准。犯罪司法概念中的法益,在入罪判断时只能是后刑法法益,可以指导解释刑法规定的行为构成;在出罪判断时只能是宪法性法益,通过法益价值的衡量,对符合行为构成的行为进行正当化处理。     

信息技术发展与广播组织权利保护制度的重塑

当代信息技术的飞跃发展使盗播广播节目更加容易,广播组织的邻接权受到了日益严重的侵权威胁,以《罗马公约》为基础的广播组织权利保护制度越来越不能适应信息技术发展的要求。世界知识产权组织主持并拟定了保护广播组织权利的新方案,扩大了广播组织的权利,但该方案也遭到了来自广大发展中国家及一些发达国家政府、企事业单位的强烈批评。我国应当密切关注国际广播组织权利保护的最新动向,对我国著作权法做及时的修改,在保护广播组织权利的同时注意维护社会公众正当的利益。     

善意认定的属性及反推技术

善意是对虚假信息传递途径的不知情,它必然与行为相关联,与恶意存在非此即彼的互异关系。善意的判断与过失的判断是两个不同的问题,但基于利益衡量,行为人的重大过失妨碍其善意的成立。由于善意认定方法的综合判断属性及对客观事实的适度超越性、认定结论的弹性化、非验证性以及很难直接以反证推翻的特征,决定了善意认定的法律判断属性。在具体认定过程中,反推技术是一种便捷且有效的方法。     

基于系统变量改进的产业结构成长对策研究——发达国家的经验借鉴

产业结构的成长是每个发展阶段的国家都会遇到的问题。各种影响因素之间的博弈决定了产业结构成长的未来走向。该文基于系统科学的思想方法,认为产业结构的成长是多要素共同作用的过程,并且是一个快慢变量共同作用的过程,科技进步是产业结构系统中的快变量,而心智模式则是产业机构系统中的慢变量。通过对发达国家的产业结构成长的经验总结发现,以科技进步促进产业转型的同时,还要持续改进产业系统中的序参量,才能够持续推动中国产业结构的健康成长。