Business schools,the anxiety of finance,and the order of the ‘middle tier’

Financial imagination plays a fundamental, yet ambivalent role in the establishment of hierarchies within and between business schools, and in business life at large. This study examines this process in the ‘middle tier’ of business education: that is, in the social space in which students and instructors understand themselves to occupy a ‘mid-range’ position within an order of excellence and success. Largely articulated through business school rankings, this order strongly relies on the centrality of the financial curriculum, proficiency in which is understood as both a proxy for smartness and a sign of moneymaking capacity. In the ‘middle tier’, this order manifests in the form of an anxiety: an order that, though legitimate, is thought not to be attained, or hardly attainable. The study draws from ethnographic investigation in a ‘middle tier’ business school with attention to how finance is made sense of in relation to an alternative curriculum, and in connection with the aim of ‘making it to the top’. A comparison with a ‘top tier’ business school allows furthering understanding of how the order of business schools relies on the anxiety of finance in order to reproduce an acquiescence to dominant financial imagination.     

“The Ennobling Unity of Science and Technology”: Materials Sciences and Engineering, the Department of Energy, and the Nanotechnology Enigma

The ambiguous material identity of nanotechnology is a minor mystery of the history of contemporary science. This paper argues that nanotechnology functioned primarily in discourses of social, not physical or biological science, the problematic knowledge at stake concerning the economic value of state-supported basic science. The politics of taxonomy in the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the 1990s reveals how scientists invoked the term as one of several competing and equally valid candidates for reframing materials sciences in ways believed consonant with the political tenor of the time. The resulting loss of conceptual clarity in the sociology of science traces ultimately to the struggle to bridge the disjunction between the promissory economy of federal basic science and the industrial economy, manifested in attempts to reconcile the precepts of linearity and interdisciplinarity in changing socio-economic conditions over a half century.     

Beyond the “STEM Pipeline”: Expertise,Careers, and Lifelong Learning

Minerva - Studies of education and careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) commonly use a pipeline metaphor to conceptualize forward movement and persistence. However, the...     

Modelling and the Nation: Institutionalising Climate Prediction in the UK, 1988–92

Minerva - How climate models came to gain and exercise epistemic authority has been a key concern of recent climate change historiography. Using newly released archival materials and recently...     

Science and Engineering Doctoral Student Socialization,Logics, and the National Economic Agenda: Alignment or Disconnect?

This study explores the institutional logics and socialization experiences of STEM doctoral students in the context of the current American economic narrative that is specific to science and technology. Data from qualitative interviews with 36 students at three research universities first reveals a disconnect between a well-established national science and technology policy narrative that is market-oriented and the training, experiences, and perspectives of science and engineering doctoral students. Findings also indicate science and engineering doctoral students mostly understand entrepreneurship and innovation in the contexts of funding research activities and creating social impact, which parallel rather than oppose dominant academic values and norms. Based on the findings, we contend that it is both possible and prudent for universities and graduate programs to pursue strategies that align science and engineering doctoral education with the current national economic agenda and support the personal, professional values and perspectives of students without coming in conflict with the scientific core of the academy.     

The Philippine–American War and the American Debates about the Necessity and Legality of the “Water Cure,” 1901–1903

Abstract

This essay provides a critical genealogical study of the “water cure” controversies that took place during the Philippine–American War. The author extends the work of Foucault and Agamben to argue that a biopolitical review of this controversy illustrates how many of the legal and cultural arguments used to legitimate the water cure have resurfaced in contemporary debates about waterboarding and enhanced interrogations techniques. The essay also illustrates how anti-imperialists and other critics of Theodore Roosevelt's administration tried to use these water-cure debates as discursive vehicles for complaining about the systematic abuse of Filipinos during the Philippine “Insurrection.”     

Gown and Town: The University and the City in Europe, 1200–2000

The paper explores town-gown relations in Europe across thecenturies from the point of view of the university. It arguesthat the history of their relationship can be largely dividedinto two distinctive periods: one, in the period 1200–1800, whenthe University was in the town, but not of it; the other,post-1800, when the two were much more closely connected. Italso briefly examines the influence of the American campus modelon the European university system.     

Balfour’s Mission to Palestine: Science,Strategy, and the Inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

In 1925, A.J. Balfour, first Earl Balfour and author of the famous ‘Balfour Declaration’, attended the inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His education and experience of foreign policy equipped him to take a prominent role. However, the conditions of strife-torn Palestine weighed heavily upon him, and raised wider interests of imperial concern. This essay recounts the circumstances leading to his visit, and suggests that, whatever the region’s political destiny, Balfour’s vision of science-based economic development would play an essential role in crafting its future.

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The Pumpkin or the Tiger? Michael Polanyi,Frederick Soddy,and Anticipating Emerging Technologies

Imagine putting together a jigsaw puzzle that works like the board game in the movie “Jumanji”: When you finish, whatever the puzzle portrays becomes real. The children playing “Jumanji” learn to prepare for the reality that emerges from the next throw of the dice. But how would this work for the puzzle of scientific research? How do you prepare for unlocking the secrets of the atom, or assembling from the bottom-up nanotechnologies with unforeseen properties – especially when completion of such puzzles lies decades after the first scattered pieces are tentatively assembled? In the inaugural issue of this journal, Michael Polanyi argued that because the progress of science is unpredictable, society must only move forward with solving the puzzle until the picture completes itself. Decades earlier, Frederick Soddy argued that once the potential for danger reveals itself, one must reorient the whole of one’s work to avoid it. While both scientists stake out extreme positions, Soddy’s approach – together with the action taken by the like-minded Leo Szilard – provides a foundation for the anticipatory governance of emerging technologies. This paper narrates the intertwining stories of Polanyi, Soddy and Szilard, revealing how anticipation influenced governance in the case of atomic weapons and how Polanyi’s claim in “The Republic of Science” of an unpredictable and hence ungovernable science is faulty on multiple levels.     

A Perfect Marriage of the Soundless and the Sound

Gao Nianhua as a specialist in ancient architecture and Chen Hongbing as an opera singer are well known in Hangzhou. But few local people know they are husband and wife, for they seldom appear together in news stories.How they knew each other and how they got married was a delightful anecdote. Gao and Chen's elder brother were good buddies in their early youth. Chen's family knew him well. Years later, a close friend of Chen Hongbing arranged a blind date     

The Simon Mann Trial,the Demise of the “Dogs of War,” and the Discursive Legitimation of “Humanitarian” Private Security Companies in Africa

The essay provides a critical intercultural analysis of the 2008 trial of the “mercenary” Simon Mann, accused of instigating an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. The author argues that Equatorial Guinean President, Teodoro Obiang, tried to turn this trial into a tactical, neocolonial critique of mercenary activities that were allegedly supported by the United Kingdom, Spain, and other Western powers. Unfortunately, he was only partially successful. The growing influence of private security corporations and the suasory power of new military “rescue” tales meant that there were no shortage of defenders of these types of coups. This study demonstrates how certain actions can, at times, be simultaneously characterized as dominant strategies and subaltern tactics.     

Old Men and the Memorial Hall

At 9 o'clock on the morning of October 4th 1940, a Japanese plane approached to Quzhou City at an altitude of 300 meters. It dropped a great number of wheat kernel, soybean, millet, rag, cotton, small paper bags (each contained about 10 fleas), and flyers. From October 10, residents in the city proper found many dead mice. The plague strangled the city. In 1941, Japanese planes dropped bombs on Quzhou City day and night, driving residents to countryside. The plague had spread to rural areas     

It’s not the economy, stupid! External effects on the supply and demand of cinema entertainment

The paper addresses whether the state of the economy impacts the supply of and demand for cinema entertainment. A literature review on the drivers of cinema supply and demand is provided, and two competing hypotheses are extracted. Economic downturns could either lead to a sober mood and drive the interest in serious genres or drive the need for distraction leading to an increased interest in feel-good or action movies. However, characteristics of the movie industry suggest that economic key factors have only limited effects on supply and demand. A time series analysis of supply and demand in three major European markets indicate that demand is unrelated to the state of the economy. In aggregate, the demand does not instruct supply. Fluctuations in individual movie quality superpose potential effects of the economic context on the aggregated demand. Simultaneously, a focus on film as art superposes potential effects of the economic context on the supply.     

Academic Reform in Fractured Disciplines – On the Interaction of Bologna,New-Public-Management and the Dynamics of Disciplinary Development

Minerva - At the intersection of science studies and higher education research, this contribution looks at the way in which the requirements of universities as organizations release development...     

Serving Science and the State: Mining Science in France, 1794–1810

The revolutionary period in France marked a turning point in the history of the profession of mining engineering and its relation to the State. This essay outlines the changing requirements of the revolutionary government, and describes the ways in which the State and its engineering professionals responded to the challenge of combining science and practice.

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The ‘Economy of Memory’: Publications, Citations, and the Paradox of Effective Research Governance

More recent advancements in digital technologies have significantly alleviated the dissemination of new scientific ideas as well as the storing, searching and retrieval of large amounts of published research findings. While not denying the benefits of this novel ‘economy of memory,’ this paper endeavors to shed light on the ways in which the use of digital technologies may be linked to a distortion of the system of formal publications that facilitates the effective dissemination and collaborative building of scientific knowledge. Through combining three different strands of discussion that are often left separate – those pertaining to the cognitive effects of new technological memory systems, those pertaining to citation and publishing practices, and those regarding the effects of formalizing modes of research governance – it is also shown that this distortion is not merely a consequence of technological developments alone. Rather, such a distortion is inseparable from and potentially aggravated by the spreading of increasingly dysfunctional, formalizing research governance mechanisms. It is argued that these mechanisms run the risk of fostering the proliferation of knowledge practices that are characterized by an increasing degree of superficiality as well as the strategic publication of research that is of a decreasing degree of originality. If left unaddressed, this may pose a serious threat to the efficiency and effectiveness of the formal record of scientific knowledge as a tool for the dissemination of original research. By extension, this may in the long run seriously undermine the capacity of the publicly funded research system more generally.