Stiglitz’ ‘Globalization’ and Marxian Political Economy: Convergence at Last
THe Journal of Socialist Theory
ALi Lodhi
The Anglosphere's political atmosphere is profuse with bourgeois outrage. In the United States, the so-called ‘liberal’ establishment is of the stubborn opinion that it was robbed by an insurgency of ‘deplorables’, backed by Vladimir Putin's cyber assassins and Facebook's menacing epistemic contortionisms, while in Britain, a terribly incensed bourgeoisie falter in the wake of the Kingdom's departure from that grand bulwark of neoliberal internationalism, the European Union, in favour of an inglorious isolationism. The variety of causal explications is dizzying. The emergent militant parochialism is being scrutinized in a veritable intellectual acrobatics: predominant cultural explanations coexist alongside psychoanalytical investigation, anthropological ethnography, aesthetic sensationalism, and identity-based tribalism. Yet, a certain angle has gone largely unexplored: that of the neoliberal socioeconomic project that has for the past three decades loomed ominously over the greater part of the Western hemisphere—in particular, its encapsulation into a discursively hackneyed regime of ‘free-trade globalization’. It is this lacuna which Joseph Stiglitz so prolifically fills in this crucial update of his 2002 Globalization and its Discontents. Here, we overview the major themes of Stiglitz' argument, paying particular attention to his recurrent lurches, at last, to an interests-based Marxist epistemology. We frame the book in its entirety in Foucauldian terms, affirming its instrumentality in the discursive deconstruction of that now tired neoliberal ‘regime of veridication’ that came to dominate the global polity toward the end of the twentieth century. The conclusion is adduced that in fact what was hailed as ‘free trade’ was in fact a congealed form of class warfare, justified and legitimated by a rhetorical veil of neoclassical theoretical utopianism. A la Stiglitz, neoliberal globalization was “not based on ‘free trade’, but on managed trade—managed for special corporate interests in the United States and other advanced countries”.
ABSTRACT.
Cultivation, Resistance, and Beauty: A Case Study on the Defiant Gardens of the Manzanar Internment Camp During World War II
College Board
Hana Matsudaira
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Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. By 1943, agriculture dominated camp life, especially at the Manzanar Internment Camp in Owens Valley, California. During their internment, the Japanese Americans, unbeknownst to each other, raised a variety of gardens, including traditional Japanese ornamental gardens. The ornamental gardens ranged greatly in size and consisted of raked gravel dry gardens, cactus gardens, showy flower gardens, and ornate rock gardens. In an effort to preserve the history of the near-extinct generation of Japanese Americans, this study seeks to understand the purposes and implications of the ornamental gardens, with a focus on the Manzanar camp. In this qualitative retrospective ethnographic case study, I examine the overarching themes arising from ten interviews with WWII internees who lived at the Manzanar internment camp using the thematic analysis approach. This study found that the Japanese Americans initially raised the ornamental gardens to resist and combat their desolate, harsh environment, but these gardens had unforeseen consequences for the Manzanar community. While the gardens functioned as a pastime, a means to preserve and revive Japanese culture, and, paradoxically, an avenue to strengthen relationships with the War Relocation Authority officials, they also ultimately helped the inmates to conceptualize their highly complex experiences during WWII. This study’s findings, with a deep examination of the Manzanar camp, are aligned with broader environmental studies on the Japanese Americans during WWII, specifically with regard to the gardens functioning as acts of resistance. Looking towards the future, I recommend that further research should examine how defiant gardens throughout history compare with one another and drive the narratives of those involved.
ABSTRACT.
The Modern Mythical Place: San Fransokyo, Hiro, and Hybridity in Disney's Big Hero Six
College Board
Jamie Uy​
Hybridity is defined by seminal postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha as a ‘Third Space’ where cultures converge, combine, and are continuously changing. In postcolonial theory, hybridity is considered a radical re-imagining of racial politics wherein cultures have moved beyond reductive binaristic categories, thus lessening the power struggles inherent in ​those polarities. Therefore, hybrid racial representations are seen as liberal and progressive, with the capacity to empower marginalized ethnicities as opposed to Hollywood traditions that perpetuate existing racial hierarchies, such as Orientalism and tokenism. In this film analysis of the Disney animation feature Big Hero 6 (Don Hall a nd Chris Williams, 2014), I argue that San Fransokyo, the fictional Japanese-American fusion setting, and Hiro, the film’s mixed-race protagonist, are examples of hybrid representation that attempt to break away from these traditions. This paper further examines how, while the film posits itself as a celebratory form of the Bhabhian "Third Space" through its blended Japanese-American aesthetic, hyper-real mise en scène, and the liminality of its main characters, Big Hero 6 ’s agenda to promote hybridity is undermined by latent hierarchies suggested by the process of its world-construction and binary oppositions constraining the development of its secondary characters. The effect of this representation is the creation of a highly realistic yet imaginary world at once both familiar and alien, and neither American nor Japanese, but far from the hybrid utopia San Fransokyo was lauded as in articles following the film’s release. This conclusion has implications for evaluating racial representations in cinema, reminding film scholars that dominant ideologies regarding race are often as naturalized and entrenched in media as they are in society; even within texts that appear on the surface to be progressive or subversive.
ABSTRACT.
Corticosteroid Treatment as a Secondary Measure for Kawasaki's Disease
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
sun Jay yoo
ABSTRACT Unavailable.
Queering Poetics: The Impact of Poetry on LGBT+ Identity in Singaporean Adolescents
Journal of Homosexuality
Priyanka Aiyer
This qualitative study explores identity formation in LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, and how reading, writing, and listening to poetry shapes Singaporean adolescents’ social identities as queer people. Analyzing in-depth interviews with nine LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, four themes were found: (1) LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents interested in poetry believe that reading, writing, and/or listening to poetry has been an integral part of constructing their queer identities; (2) the poems that have impacted LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents’ queer identities the most have been informed by queer sociocultural values; (3) poetry provides validation to LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents that their identities are real and that others before them have experienced the same challenges they are going through; and (4) poetry serves as a third space for LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents to safely construct their growing queer identities. Implications for teachers, counselors, and adult supporters of queer Singaporean adolescents are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.
ABSTRACT.
GROWTH FOR GOOD: HOW PAST EXPERIENCES MOTIVATE EXECUTIVES TO JOIN DOUBLE BOTTOM LINE ORGANIZATIONS IN THE INDIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
College Board
Ansh Prashad
ABSTRACT.
Researcher Anthony Bisconti defines the unorthodox companies called double bottom line (DBL) organizations as businesses which do good for society while earning profit (Bisconti, 2009). Since 2001, the amount of these organizations has started to increase in the Indian construction industry. By thematically analyzing the narratives of eight executives working in Indian construction DBL organizations, I seek to understand the reason for this growth. Specifically, this study looks at important events in an executive's life in order to understand how experiences motivate executives to join Indian DBL organizations within the construction industry. Through interviews with eight executives working in this sector, I collected multiple narratives detailing how past experiences influenced the decision to work with the double bottom line. With a thematic analysis, I drew connections between common themes arising from the narratives in order to find the types of experiences which functioned as motivators to join a DBL organization. Through the research process, however, it was instead revealed that experiences based off a need to self actualize - defined as the desire to use one's skills for social impact rather than profit-related to doing good for society engender the motivation to join a DBL organization. This research indicates that certain experiences do, in fact, play a role in motivating executives to join DBL organizations. Therefore, it can be used in order to understand how to best augment the growth of DBL organizations in the Indian construction industry.
Journal of Yoga and Physical Therapy
Anjali Mehta
ABSTRACT.
As we turn to smartphones for managing our lives, we must ask how our dependence on these devices is affecting our ability to think and function in the world off-screen. The mere presence of these devices occupies our limited attentional resources, thus leaving fewer resources available for the task at hand and ultimately undercutting cognitive performance. As technology diminishes our cognitive capabilities, yoga has proven to be effective for cognitive enhancement.This paper aims to explore the extent of whether meditating for fifteen minutes immediately before a domain-general test increases ninth grade students' ability to maintain their attention on the test while their smartphones are on their desks. The independent variable in this study was simply engaging in the meditation before the test or receiving nothing. The dependent variable was the ability to maintain focus on the working memory task, which was measured using the Automated Operation Span Task (Ospan) which is the most widely used working memory test. Two classes were chosen; one as the experimental and one as the control. On the first day, both classes took the Ospan Task. On the second day, the experimental group engaged in meditation immediately before taking a different version of the Ospan Task. The control group took the Ospan Task without any intervention. After gathering the scores and running a Two Mean T-Test, the low p-value result proved meditations effectiveness as a way to manage smartphone distractions. For students to succeed academically, it is pressing that students use all of their cognitive resources to pay attention and to stay engaged in class. This conclusion has implication for the education sector, as it sheds light on how students can be taught how to cope with smartphone distractions, especially in the classroom.
College Board
Alan Chang
ABSTRACT.
Android is currently the most popular mobile phone operating system worldwide (StatCounter, 2019). How does the system safeguard user private information? It employs a permission system to restrict hardware access and prevent malicious applications from obtaining sensitive data. Previous studies indicate that there may be an increased user awareness of this permission system when downloading mobile applications from 2012 to 2017, yet no existing research has explored this possible trend (Felt, 2012; Alani, 2017). This paper aims to address this gap by investigating how the permission requests of the top 100 google play store Android applications have varied in the United States from 2016 to 2018 via a quantitative analysis. Chart data were extracted from an online database, and processed by a custom program that parsed the values and generated graphs showing the relationship between time and the number of permission requests. This quantitative analysis was performed on overall permission requests, as well as individual requests, creating 193 graphs in total. These graphs were further grouped and the findings were then summarized. The study discovered a negative correlation between time and the total number of permission requests and identified three potential factors that led to this downward trend (user privacy awareness, the evolution of the Android permission system, and the end user demand for new features) by analyzing individual types of permissions. Overall, this study provides evidence for a downward trend of permission requests from Android applications in recent years and sheds lights on the potential contributing factors for this 3 trend. The findings can help application developers to better meet the needs of the end users; system programmers to further perfect the permission system, and researchers to understand and monitor user privacy awareness in a more quantifiable way.