Social Responsibility in the Concept of the Social Enterprise as a Cognitive System

Abstract

The new concept of social responsibility is strongly linked to the idea of the social enterprise as a living system, that is, a system capable of regenerating itself by producing “knowledge” and “trust” resources. Nevertheless, these resources can only spring from a tight relationship with the reference environment in which the enterprise operates. This paper aims at making some first considerations on the relationship between social responsibility and the environment, and upon how the environment may develop in symbiosis with the “living company.”     

当代资本主义新科技革命论要

二战结束以来发生于发达资本主义国家的新科技革命，是诸多社会历史条件综合作用的结果，表现了政府的主动性、进程的持续性、发展的加速性、内容的综合性、活动的国际性等特点，既推动了经济发展和社会进步，又暴露出它必然具有的局限性。     

Dispossession and disalienation: The fulfillment of life in Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed

For Caleb

In The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin imagines a non‐authoritarian society that privileges freedom and centers the individual's realization of her creative potentials in social context as the means to achieve the highest functioning, least repressive society. The concept central to this imagination of freedom and the ‘good life’ as expressed in her anarchic vision is that of disalienation, in the Marxist sense. In theorizing an anarchic society, whether or not a particular aspect of social organization is disalienating becomes for LeGuin the key criterion for assessing and determining the human efficacy of, in particular: the organization of work; the relationship between self, society, and nature; and the distribution of both social responsibilities and resources. This paper explores how LeGuin measures the alienating effects of a range of socio‐economic institutions, practices, and bodies of knowledge—from how we organize work, to how we establish the state and its governing power, to how we think about time—highlighting her critique of the alienating structures of our culture and the way they curtail human creativity and disarm individuals from developing freely and fully, that is, in a way that would benefit society as a whole and promote individual happiness.     

A Review of: “Mike Davis. Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb”

Lenin allegedly referred to the thinkers and activists ready to cover up for his crimes against his own people as “useful idiots.” Today, some intellectuals sacrifice their integrity as intellectuals not for a professedly progressive egalitarian movement, but in order to protect radical Islam, one of the most regressive and authoritarian movements imaginable. This article refers to such people as “useful infidels,” showing how their excessive self-criticism is exploited by Islamists to incriminate the West in the evils of modernity. The result is a perversion of human rights discourse and a marriage of pre-modern sadism and post-modern masochism.     

自我防卫机制研究的回顾与展望

本文概述了三种典型的自我防卫机制（认知失调、社会比较和自我肯定）及它们的可替代性，自我防卫机制研究方法的变迁、原因及解决方法，自我防卫机制与相关变量的研究成果，以及我对这个领域今后研究的几点思考。     

论评价的心理机制——兼论情感和认知的内在关系

王智认为,人有两种不同的心理评价手段,一是情感的评价,一是认识的或理智的评价。两者皆可以独立地发挥评价的作用,二者之间的差异是"各有所长",可以在解决评价问题时"互相补充"。作者对王智的理论主张从理论依据上以及现实生活评价活动的发生与发展上加以分析评价,认为评价活动从其发展之初,就是由情感与认识活动的协同活动来实现的,根本不存在人生之初时的单独情感评价的阶段。以后评价活动的发展,也会在两方的协同作用下得以实现。在此分析探讨的基础上,作者得出了评价活动永远是情感与认知协同作用下实现的结论,否定了把情感与理智当做两种独立评价手段的主张。此外,还进一步提出了情感和认知关系的观点,认为二者之间任何一方的活动和作用都不可能离开对方的影响的结论。     

The prospects of egalitarian capitalism in the global South: Turkish social neoliberalism in comparative perspective

Abstract

This paper studies the transformation of economic and social policy in Turkey during the 2000s. The policy mix that has emerged can be usefully conceptualized as social neoliberalism, combining relatively orthodox neoliberal economic policies and retrenchment of the protective welfare state (e.g. labour market institutions) with a significant expansion, both in terms of public spending and population coverage, of the productive welfare state (e.g. public health care). Therefore, social neoliberalism as a development model is distinct both from social democracy and orthodox neoliberalism. Its rise in Turkey during the 2000s is arguably best understood with reference to the interests of the AKP's support coalition, the salience of inequalities in access to public services, and the disconnect of social policy-making from civil society mobilization. Turkey's experience with social neoliberalism provides an important reference point for theorizing the ‘social turn’ that since the 2000s has occurred in many late-developing countries with now maturing welfare states, including Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Chile.     

High-frequency trading: networks of wealth and the concentration of power

The development of high-frequency trading (HFT) – automated trading of stocks, as well as bonds, options, and other investment instruments – provides a signal example of the political effects of computerization on a discrete social sphere. Despite the widespread rhetoric that computerization inherently democratizes, the consequences of the introduction of HFT are widely acknowledged to be new concentrations of wealth and power, opacity rather than transparency of information flows, and structural resistance to democratic oversight and control. Even as computerized tools undoubtedly provide individual investors with more power relative to what they had before, they also provide powerful actors with relatively more power as well, in some cases effectively excluding the majority of individuals from insight or meaningful participation whatsoever, especially with regard to the political impacts of market activities. Reports on recent financial crises, and the 2011 film Margin Call provide narrow windows into the operations of HFT and the challenges it poses to democracy; these in turn raise significant problems for the view that computerization inherently democratizes.     

Deconstructing myth: low-carbon sustainability

Informed by a semiotics that directs attention to the context of the message, this paper contributes to work on the meanings of terms such as “low-carbon”, “green”, and “sustainability”. Interview-based evidence and printed material are used to assess the interest of hundreds of financial institutions in data on carbon emissions levels and environmental projects. The collection of such data is where for most interviewees its usefulness stopped. Such is typical of myth. By collecting carbon data, financial institutions can connote they are doing something about addressing the risks posed by global warming, without actually describing what it is they are doing.     

甲基苯丙胺对大鼠认知和脑电图的影响

目的研究甲基苯丙胺（methamphetamine,MA）对脑功能的影响机制,实验设计观察慢性反复使用MA是否同时对大鼠认知行为和脑电活动产生影响。方法 14只雄性SD大鼠（180～200g）随机分为生理盐水注射组（对照组）和MA注射组（实验组5mg/kg体重）每天一次腹腔注射。连续注射7d后进行被动避暗回避行为测试和脑电图检测。结果与对照组相比,实验组大鼠表现为被动避暗回避行为的潜伏期延长,脑电图频谱分析显示δ波相对功率值减小,β波相对功率值增大,差异有统计学意义（P〈0.05）。结论慢性反复使用MA对大鼠被动回避行为和脑电活动均有影响,说明MA滥用造成的认知行为改变与中枢神经系统电生理活性改变有关。