Journal articles: 'Washington (State). Office of Small Business' – Grafiati (2024)

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Hyder Lakhani and Bruce D. Phillips are respectively vice-president, EEE Research, Fairfax, Virginia, USA, and senior economist, Office of Advocacy, United States Small Business Administration, Washington DC. This paper is based on research contract No. SBA-7177-AER-83 to EEE Research from the Office of Advocacy of the SBA. The authors are grateful to Thomas Gray and Raymond Marchikitus of the SBA for their valuable comments. The views and errors are those of the authors and not of the SBA. The objective of this paper is to analyse the economic impact of fuel costs and non-fuel costs on profits and sales of small business firms in ten Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the US. The review of the literature (in Section 1) concludes that existing studies use industry aggregates from Census of Manufacturing data which exclude 80 percent of small firms so that the impact on small firms cannot be determined. Also, the studies fail to analyse the impact of fuel costs on profits and sales and arrive at contradictory conclusions. The authors develop an econometric model of the impact of energy costs on profits and sales in Section 2. The data on small business firms are developed from a survey report completed for the SBA (Section 3). Empirical estimates reveal that a one percentage point increase in fuel costs tends to reduce profits in the range of 0.009 to 0.07 percent and sales in the range of 0.01 to 0.06 percent. Increases in payroll and operating costs are correlated with increases in profits and sales because of labour- intensiveness of the small firms in the sample (Section 4). Policy implications of this paper are that small firms have not fully adjusted to the 1979 increase in fuel prices, or cannot adjust any further. Further, small firms must increasingly substitute non- fuel for fuel inputs or if that is not possible, then purchases of the least energy- intensive plant and equipment should be made, including energy conservation devices.

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Over the past several years, the State of Washington has invested substantial time and energy to streamline the environmental regulatory and permit process. The creation of the Multi-Agency Permitting Team (MAP team) pilot is one such strategic investment. The concept is based on the idea that an interagency team composed of diverse disciplines, located within one office, will experience enhanced communication, coordination, and higher-quality, more timely permit decisions. Currently, the MAP team consists of staff from five government agencies: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington State Department of Ecology, Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington State Department of Transportation, and King County Department of Development and Environmental Services. Fifty-two transportation projects are assigned to the team. After initially defining how to work together, the team began communications with their customer base in an attempt to make permitting processes more consistent and predictable. The team has been using this feedback to initiate streamlining opportunities to define complete applications, to create early project coordination and MAP team permit processes, to identify improvement opportunities within each agency, and to create model business practices that will use existing project experiences to deliver future projects. These investments in early project coordination are being tracked through eight performance measures. The MAP team pilot sunsets on June 30, 2005, and, if successful, Washington State may institute the MAP team concept as a permanent business practice with the potential for growth in other transportation, intergovernmental, and private venture applications.

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The present research paper highlights small-scale business leadership in Ethiopia to assess the financial bureau in Yayu Woreda of Ilu Abba Bora Zone of Oromia regional state of Ethiopia. The other allied purpose relates to evaluating the budgetary performance of the Yayo Woreda finance office in the Ilu Abba Bora Zone. The sampling technique is based on simple random sampling, and scientifically there were 100 samples of respondents taken from approximately one thousand and three hundred and seventy-three employees in the woreda. The representative samples were included one head office person, the council head of the budget and finance committee, plus the committee members from the Audit Office, Auditor general, deputy auditor general, Audit manager, and the audit team of consolidated financial statements. Additionally, three employees were also included from each sector, such as planners, accountants, and internal auditors, to control appropriate utilization of limited resources and auditing performance for the allocated budget at the woreda finance office. The descriptive survey design was employed in this study, and appropriate data collection methods were used through questionnaires and interviews. However, the secondary data is extracted from the final report and oversight of the written books and brochures. The data were analyzed and interpreted while using an appropriate methodology of concurrent concern. The study established that the budget implementation and its performance have a negative relationship to some extent. It is recommended that the woreda must have to enhance its manpower, particularly in the budget process, to improve budgetary performance, particularly in the aspect of small-scale business leadership.

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is two-fold: to examine the relationship between social support and social entrepreneurial intentions and to test the moderating roles of entrepreneurial education and physical proximity to the office of the US Small Business Administration.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a quantitative methodological approach. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 1,245 respondents who intend to start a business in the state of Florida. Factor analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to identify the relationship between social support and social entrepreneurial intentions.FindingsThe hypotheses are supported by the results. The study found a positive and significant relation between social support and social entrepreneurial intentions. It also establishes the moderating effects of entrepreneurial education and proximity to office of the US Small Business Administration on the relationship between social support and social entrepreneurial intentions, i.e. our results show not only that higher levels of social support are associated with higher entrepreneurial intentions but that this association becomes stronger with entrepreneurial education and proximity to the office of the US Small Business Administration.Originality/valueThis is the first empirical study that highlights the role of entrepreneurial education and physical proximity to the US Small Business Administration in moderating the relations between social support and social entrepreneurial intentions. The study contributes to the understanding of factors that influence social entrepreneurial intentions.

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With the social development and progress, fire institutions, including colleges and universities, including office automation platform, which the functions needed to support the business more and more, need to use multilevel menu for management platform. In addition, with the rapid development of mobile Internet technology, people access to office automation platform approach is also increasingly diverse, due to the hardware and software configuration of various access devices larger difference, which requires multi-level menu office automation platform consumes fewer resources simple operation, good scalability. Now, we use the idea of finite state machines to achieve a small footprint, scalability, simple switching office automation platform colleges Fire multi-level menu management system.

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Traditional student/professor interaction involves office visits or telephone calls. Both modes require the participants to occupy similar space and time. Two relatively new modes of communication are now available to academia which are free of these geographic constraints: voice and electronic mail. A small study was made in the College of Business and Industry at Mississippi State University to see what benefits could be achieved if the traditional modes of communication were augmented by the use of voice and electronic mail messages.

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The State of Washington, USA, has set a goal to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the year around which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommended we must limit global warming to 1.5 °C above that of pre-industrial times or face catastrophic changes. We employed existing approaches to calculate the potential for a suite of Natural Climate Solution (NCS) pathways to reduce Washington’s net emissions under three implementation scenarios: Limited, Moderate, and Ambitious. We found that NCS could reduce emissions between 4.3 and 8.8 MMT CO2eyr−1 in thirty-one years, accounting for 4% to 9% of the State’s net zero goal. These potential reductions largely rely on changing forest management practices on portions of private and public timber lands. We also mapped the distribution of each pathway’s Ambitious potential emissions reductions by county, revealing spatial clustering of high potential reductions in three regions closely tied to major business sectors: private industrial forestry in southwestern coastal forests, cropland agriculture in the Columbia Basin, and urban and rural development in the Puget Trough. Overall, potential emissions reductions are provided largely by a single pathway, Extended Timber Harvest Rotations, which mostly clusters in southwestern counties. However, mapping distribution of each of the other pathways reveals wider distribution of each pathway’s unique geographic relevance to support fair, just, and efficient deployment. Although the relative potential for a single pathway to contribute to statewide emissions reductions may be small, they could provide co-benefits to people, communities, economies, and nature for adaptation and resiliency across the state.

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The article is devoted to the study of theoretical and legal principles of protection of business entities from raids in Ukraine due to the low level of quality of the system of protection of private property rights in the state. It is stated that for small enterprises the lack of financial resources and the risk of illegal seizure or takeover, ie "raiding", is a more common problem, but large enterprises are also subject to raids. It was found that raiding is a real threat to the integrity of enterprises, stable economic development and information security of the state, its danger is confirmed by data on the number of raider seizures of property in Ukraine. It is noted that one of the areas of counteraction to raiding is the consolidation at the legislative level of a common understanding of this concept, but the Civil Code of Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine "On Joint Stock Companies" deals only with certain aspects of raiding. Features of "white", "gray", "black" raiding are revealed. There are two ways to warn and protect businesses from raiding: the use of government tools and self-preventive protection of the enterprise. The state instruments of warning and protection of enterprises from raids include: legislative guarantees of inviolability of property and protection of property rights of enterprises in case of violation, criminal liability for misappropriation of property, the procedure of state registration of property rights, the right to apply for protection of rights and interests to the court and the Office for Combating Raiding at the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. It is emphasized that only 20% of enterprises independently protect themselves from raider encroachment, which explains the large number of raider seizures in Ukraine. Among the methods of such protection, emphasis is placed on creating a reliable system of protection of information about the company, ensuring timely and full payment of dividends to shareholders, preventing the mass purchase of shares and monitoring the current situation. It is concluded that it is expedient to develop and consolidate at the legislative level a common understanding of the concept of "raiding", guarantees of warning and protection of business entities from raiding in Ukraine, improving the powers of courts and the Office for Combating Raiding in Ukraine to consider issues of registration of property rights of enterprises.

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Abstract One Micro-enterprises can benefit from state aid only when they demonstrate that, at the time of the on-line completion of the business plan, they meet cumulatively the eligibility criteria imposed by the funding authority. These criteria are minimal and binding for fund applicants and are conditioned as micro-enterprises: 1. to be organized either according to the Law on Commercial Companies no. 31/1990 or according to Law on co-operation no. 1/2005, republished; 2. are small and medium-sized enterprises; 3. are registered at the national trade registry office; 3. have integral private share capital; 4. have their registered office and / or working place; 5. the subject-matter of the activity is authorized and eligible according to the requirements of the aid scheme at the time of submitting the request for reimbursem*nt; 6. the activity takes place in Romania; 7. does not have obligations to the consolidated budget of the state; 8. is not in bankruptcy, is not in dissolution, is not in judicial reorganization, is not in liquidation, is not subject to forced execution, is not in insolvency or bankruptcy, does not have temporary suspended activity or has operational closure.

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The authors propose a new Bayesian synthetic control framework to overcome limitations of extant synthetic control methods (SCMs). The proposed Bayesian synthetic control methods (BSCMs) do not impose any restrictive constraints on the parameter space a priori. Moreover, they provide statistical inference in a straightforward manner as well as a natural mechanism to deal with the “large p, small n” and sparsity problems through Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures. Using simulations, the authors find that for a variety of data-generating processes, the proposed BSCMs almost always provide better predictive accuracy and parameter precision than extant SCMs. They demonstrate an application of the proposed BSCMs to a real-world context of a tax imposed on soda sales in Washington state in 2010. As in the simulations, the proposed models outperform extant models, as measured by predictive accuracy in the posttreatment periods. The authors find that the tax led to an increase of 5.7% in retail price and a decrease of 5.5%∼5.8% in sales. They also find that retailers in Washington overshifted the tax to consumers, leading to a pass-through rate of approximately 121%.

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Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are expected to be able to contribute to state revenue through tax sectors. The purpose of this study is to determine a profile of poultry business, meaning of tax compliance for poultry business owners, tax avoidance of poultry business owners, and to determine efforts to overcome tax avoidance behavior in poultry business owners in the regency of Blitar. The nature of this study is a qualitative or naturalistic paradigm with a phenomenological approach; Hussrel's transcendental phenomenology involving three interviews. We also interviewed with one tax officer from the tax office. The data were collected from interviews, participant observation, and documentation study. The data were analyzed by descriptions with Hussrel's transcendental phenomenological approach, namely Intentional Analysis, Epoche, and Eidetic Reduction. Data validation was carried out by several triangulation techniques. The results show that the poultry businesses are MSMEs that fall into the medium business category and are the main source of income for the owners. Though they are aware of tax and their obligations, their level of tax compliance remains low. The business owners are aware of tax avoidance, even doing so by reducing the tax payments through tax planning. Thus, efforts should be made to discourage tax avoidance.

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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyze the increasingly congenial relationship between business and government that developed in the immediate post Second World War period. This study explores the subtle, but systematic, uses of advertising for propaganda purposes to secure American political and commercial world dominance. It locates the relationship between the US Government and the Advertising Council as key components in a strategy to blur the lines between political and commercial messages. In addition to study the relationship between the two stakeholders, the study identifies some of the implications for both. Design/methodology/approachScholarship on the government’s postwar relationships with other organizations is relatively scant and few other scholars have focused on the advertising industry’s role in this transformation. This paper draws on trade periodicals and newspaper accounts, and relies on archival material from the Arthur W Page and the Thomas D’Arcy Brophy collections at the Wisconsin State Historical Society and the Advertising Council’s papers at the University of Illinois. Charles W. Jackson papers, located at the Harry S. Truman Library, and the papers of Office of War Mobilization and Re-conversion, deposited at the National Archives, have also been consulted. FindingsThe Advertising Council’s “Peace” and “World Trade and Travel” demonstrate an acceleration of collaboration between business and government that continued into the postwar era. It shows the government’s willingness to trade on the Advertising Council’s goodwill and to blur the lines between political and commercial messages, in what can accurately be characterized as a duplicitous manner. Key conclusion includes a willingness among Washington’s policymakers to propagandize its own citizens, a strategy that it commonly, and disparagingly, ascribed to the Soviet Union, and a Council so willing to appease Washington, that it was putting its own reputation at considerable risk. Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is based on a study of two campaigns (“Peace” and “World Trade and Travel”) that the Advertising Council conducted in collaboration with the US State Department. While these were the first campaigns of this nature, they were not the only ones. Additional studies of similar campaigns may add new insights. Social implicationsRecent political events have brought propaganda and government collusion back on the public agenda. In an era of declining journalism credibility, rising social media and unprecedented government and commercial surveillance, it is argued that propaganda demands scholarly attention more than ever and that a historical study of how the US Government collaborated with private industry and used advertising as a propaganda smokescreen is particularly timely. Originality/valueThis study adds to the scholarship on advertising, PR and propaganda in several ways. First, it contributes to the understanding of the advertising industry’s important role in the planning of US international policy after the Second World War. Second, it demonstrates the increasingly congenial relationship between business and the US Government that emerged as a result. Third, it provides excellent insights into the Adverting Council’s transition from war to peacetime. The heavy reliance on archival material also brings originality and value to the study.

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ABSTRACT The Columbia River Estuary lies along the Washington-Oregon state boundary on the west coast of the United States. The entire area is environmentally very sensitive with numerous large, shallow bays, exposed mud flats, wetland areas, and central channels having maximum currents of three to four knots. These features make the area very difficult to protect from an oil spill. Spill response is further complicated because of the many different state, federal, and local jurisdictions with mandated responsibilities in oil spill response and environmental protection. Under the leadership of the U. S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Portland, Oregon, a steering group was established to guide the development of a response plan for the Columbia River Estuary. A concerted effort was made to include representatives from response organizations, natural resource agencies, and resource users from federal, state, and local governments, and commercial sectors in the planning process. The first draft of an operational response plan was completed the summer of 1992 through a combination of technical workshops, field trips, and small working groups meeting with local communities. The Columbia River Estuary Response Plan prioritizes areas to protect; identifies specific response strategies for protecting these areas; and outlines the logistics needed to implement these strategies, including equipment needs, the location of staging areas, and the identification of pre-designated command posts. The local spill response cooperative and oil transportation industry are using the plan to coordinate the purchase of response equipment and the staging of this equipment at numerous locations along the river. Key to the success of the plan is ensuring that all the groups responding to an event participate in the planning process together. This process has worked well for the Columbia River Estuary and will serve as a model for response planning for other environmentally sensitive areas along the Columbia River and coastal areas of Washington and Oregon.

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Purpose Close to half of all privately held companies in the USA are owned by baby boomers, meaning 2.7m American businesses are owned by someone age 55 or older. In the coming decades, all of these businesses will either change owners or disappear. The median state has 34,000 businesses approaching an ownership transition. The effects of this generational shift will be felt in cities, small towns and rural areas. At the same time, state governments are struggling with the challenge of preserving jobs and stimulating local economies buffeted by larger economic trends. States currently spend an estimated $45bn to $70bn a year on efforts to attract and retain jobs. If even a fraction of these exiting owners pursued an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) as their business exit strategy, the potential positive impact on workers, communities and state economies would be substantial. Yet, many business owners are not even aware of ESOPs as an option. In light of this knowledge gap, many of these businesses will instead shut down or sell to outside investors who may not be interested in preserving and growing local jobs. This paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Review of state information and statistics on employee ownership. Findings Currently, there are around 6,660 ESOPs in the USA holding total assets of nearly $1.4 trillion. These plans cover 14.2m participants. The Midwest is home to the greatest number of ESOPs, followed by the South. There is a least one ESOP headquartered in 4,131 distinct zip codes. Practical implications In order to increase the effectiveness and penetration of local outreach and education, states can: create an office of employee ownership with a dedicated staff person. The office could exist within a state agency or as a nonprofit receiving state funding; provide grants to one or more nonprofits to run an outreach program; hold seminars statewide in conjunction with professional, business, and trade publications and organizations; publish and disseminate brochures and other material; and work with the media to encourage stories on local ESOP companies. In order to promote ESOPs as an attractive alternative to private equity, outside competitors, and other potential purchasers of the business, ESOP outreach should: focus on business owners who are approaching retirement or a liquidity event, as opposed to start-ups or businesses who are interested in progressive management. Focus on the human side and emotional impact of employee ownership. Videos and other personal testimonials contrasting the storylines of a company that becomes employee-owned vs one that becomes owned by an outside investor can be powerful. Take advantage of the ESOP community by facilitating peer-to-peer connections, where company leaders talk with their peers who have sold to an ESOP. These connections are usually fostered based on location or industry. Take care to ensure that the center is seen as providing objective information as opposed to being perceived as trying to “sell” owners on the idea. Originality/value This is the first published review of ESOPs in the states.

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Introduction. In domestic historiography for many decades personal subsidiary plots were viewed as some rudiment of a non-socialist form of farming in the country’s agricultural sector. In accordance with the political principles of party ideologists, most researchers in every possible way emphasized the futility of the personal subsidiary plots and the inevitability of their soon withering away. And at the beginning of the XXI century they re-main a kind of “islands” of small business in the countryside and the main form of earnings for the total mass of rural workers. The main objective of this study is a comprehensive analysis of the current state of personal subsidiary plots of the rural population of Tatarstan in the context of determining the main socio-economic indicators in relation to the study area; identification of the most important development parameters of this form of small business. Materials and Methods. The scientific study is based on source materials from various government departments (including the Tatarstan Statistical Office), newspaper and journal periodicals, as well as data from historical, economic and sociological literature. When writing the article, the author was guided by the principles of historicism, complexity and objectivity. The research is based on the methods of historical science: problem-chronological, comparative-historical, systemic, etc. Results. During the study, the current state and indicators of the development of personal subsidiary plots of the rural population of the Republic of Tatarstan were systematically reviewed, in particular, their participation in the structure of regional gross income. It has been established that the main branches of economic activity of peasant farmsteads are vegetable growing and productive animal husbandry. It is proved that the strengthening of the positions of large investors in the village led to the curtailment of certain branches of production of personal subsidiary plots and their transition to a consumer rate of management. Discussion and Conclusion. The intensive development of various forms of small business in the post-perestroika period, including personal subsidiary plots of the population, intensified the market diversification of the economy of the agricultural sector in general and of high-quality peasant farmsteads in particular. During the forced dismantling of the collective farm and state farm management systems and the formation of new forms of entrepreneurship, peas-ant farmsteads became not only the economic basis for the existence of the rural population, but also a form of self-preservation of many settlements.

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The Guinness Book of Records once claimed that the number π to a million decimal places, printed in full and bound in book form, was the Most Boring Book in the World. To the uninitiated, the Department of Trade Returns of U.K. life offices must seem to be in the same class, and when I chose the topic I wondered if this might affect the welcome which this paper would receive. For anyone with a professional interest in life offices, however, the Returns are too important to ignore. They contain the greatest amount of published data on the U.K. life assurance industry, they form an essential prop of our liberal supervisory system and they ought to be a line of defence against tighter controls.Life assurance has always been unusual in attracting long term contractual savings in large amounts. This was even more true a century ago than it is today, as there were no great pension funds or unit trusts. Human nature being what it is, this led some to view life assurance with more enthusiasm than sense. The mid-nineteenth century saw numerous small life offices set up, many of which were soon in trouble and it became common for such offices to be taken over by others. This was not so bad when the business was transferred to a larger, sounder office but quite often the new proprietor was an office in no better state than that taken over.

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Self assessment system of Indonesian taxation demands high level of taxpayers’ awareness and compliance in fulfilling tax liabilities in order to increase state revenue from taxation sector. The level of compliance could be increased through providing better service quality by the taxation office, which includes safety, comfort, and quick services, as well as law enforcement. This study is to determine whether there is influence understanding of tax laws, the tax rate and the principle of fairness on tax compliance, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises after the enactment of Government Regulation No. 46 Year 2013. Information and Communication Technology Utilization is influential to or delivered an impact on the increase of taxpayers’ obedience. this study uses descriptive types of qualitative research. Data has obtained by the interview for extensification and counseling, practitioners and tax academy as well as Business Development Service (BDS) participants in Kantor Pelayanan Pajak Pratama Pondok Aren. The result of this research indicates that the taxpayers’ awareness does not significantly influence on taxpayers’ compliance. Knowledge of taxation significantly affects on taxpayers’ compliance. Taxpayers’ attitudes significantly affect on taxpayers’ compliance.

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Difficult geopolitical circ*mstances and natural resources scarcity laid down the vector of science and technology development of Israel. The only “natural resource” that was and still is in plenty — high-qualified human resource. As for today, Israel takes the first place in the world having its state support of public R&D as a per cent of GDP (4.5 per cent), the number of startup companies concerning population and quantity of researchers. Russia is interested in Israeli experience in the formation of a national innovation system (NIS) because of the same high state influence on the economics in this country. Powers of the state in Israel through the agency of the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) stimulate a wide variety of applied R&D and upon that do not prescribe the market how to develop but use targeted funding and state programs to reward the development of priority branches. In Russia, as opposed to Israel, the powers of state aim to play a vital role in chosen market segments, therefore suppressing the development of small enterprises. If in Israeli innovation economics the central place is occupied by the startup companies, in Russia, in the opposite, at the innovation market dominate the massive state-owned enterprises, restraining innovation processes that shift into low gear without business initiative. Israeli experience can be used in such innovation economics’ sectors as state support of innovations; technology transfer organization; commercialization of technologies, elaborated in Research and Development Establishment and universities; formation of international scientific and technological cooperation system; using of dual technologies; training of innovation managers.

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The purpose of this study was to analyze: 1) The implementation of the Deed of Establishment of Cooperative manufacture in Rembang. 2) The role of the Notary as the maker of the Deed of Establishment of Cooperative Enterprises. 3) Barriers and solutions in the Deed of Establishment of Cooperative Development in Rembang.The approach method in this research is juridical empirical, data sources used are primary and secondary data obtained through interviews and literature study, performed data analysis by descriptive analytic.Results of the research results can be concluded: 1) Implementation of Creation Deed of Establishment of Cooperative in Rembang which starts with the preparation stage of formation, preparation stage meetings of formation, stage meetings of formation, stage request for approval rights of legal entities cooperatives, and the stage of issuance of the deed pendiiran and 2) As the role of Notary Deed of establishment of cooperative enterprises in Rembang is as maker deed of cooperative efforts. Notaries have the right authority / legal standing in a deed of incorporation of cooperatives. 3). Obstacles and solutions in the Deed of Establishment of Cooperative Development in Rembang of the cooperative is a member of the cooperative awareness level is still low, less managerial capacity, and limited capital resources. Barriers of Notary Public Notary is still much limited knowledge of Notary Deed Official Cooperation (PPAK) and the low interest of the Notary Deed Cooperative (NPAK) in Rembang district were registered for the Legal Entity Administration System Cooperative (SISMINBHKOP). With the state of a society, then the Office of Industry Trade Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Rembang should seek to build cooperation between the Notary in Rembang with the Agency's own cooperative.Keywords: Deed of Establishment of Cooperative; PPAK; SISMINBHKOP

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As society has moved past the initial phase of the COVID-19 crisis that relied on broad-spectrum shutdowns as a stopgap method, industries and institutions have faced the daunting question of how to return to a stabilized state of activities and more fully reopen the economy. A core problem is how to return people to their workplaces and educational institutions in a manner that is safe, ethical, grounded in science, and takes into account the unique factors and needs of each organization and community. In this paper, we introduce an epidemiological model (the “Community-Workplace” model) that accounts for SARS-CoV-2 transmission within the workplace, within the surrounding community, and between them. We use this multi-group deterministic compartmental model to consider various testing strategies that, together with symptom screening, exposure tracking, and nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as mask wearing and physical distancing, aim to reduce disease spread in the workplace. Our framework is designed to be adaptable to a variety of specific workplace environments to support planning efforts as reopenings continue. Using this model, we consider a number of case studies, including an office workplace, a factory floor, and a university campus. Analysis of these cases illustrates that continuous testing can help a workplace avoid an outbreak by reducing undetected infectiousness even in high-contact environments. We find that a university setting, where individuals spend more time on campus and have a higher contact load, requires more testing to remain safe, compared to a factory or office setting. Under the modeling assumptions, we find that maintaining a prevalence below 3% can be achieved in an office setting by testing its workforce every two weeks, whereas achieving this same goal for a university could require as much as fourfold more testing (i.e., testing the entire campus population twice a week). Our model also simulates the dynamics of reduced spread that result from the introduction of mitigation measures when test results reveal the early stages of a workplace outbreak. We use this to show that a vigilant university that has the ability to quickly react to outbreaks can be justified in implementing testing at the same rate as a lower-risk office workplace. Finally, we quantify the devastating impact that an outbreak in a small-town college could have on the surrounding community, which supports the notion that communities can be better protected by supporting their local places of business in preventing onsite spread of disease.

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The objective of this panel is to provide attendees with the opportunity to learn about what they always wanted to know about the wide world of human factors consulting, but were afraid to ask (or didn’t know to ask). This session should be of interest to meeting attendees at any stage of their career, including students and those who might be considering a career change or branching out. These panelists, together, have experience over a wide range of consulting domains, as well as being individuals who are at different stages in their consulting careers. As such, the panel session will provide attendees with multiple perspectives on select topics and on responses to attendees’ questions. Sheree Gibson, PE, CPE is President of Ergonomic Applications, a small industrial ergonomics consulting firm in South Carolina. She has been a consultant for most of her professional life, working for a forensic consulting firm as well as an in-house ergonomics consultant for Michelin Tire before setting out on her own. She has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a M.S.E. in Applied Ergonomics, both from West Virginia University. She is active in the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the American Society of Safety Engineers and HFES. Sheree is also Vice-President of the Foundation for Professional Ergonomics. Richard Kelly, PhD earned his doctorate in Engineering Psychology from New Mexico State University and went on to work as an engineering psychologist for the Army at White Sands and then for the Navy at SPAWAR in San Diego. After about 10 years supporting large and small RDT&E programs and leading teams of scientists and engineers, he left the government to start Pacific Science & Engineering (PSE). Over the past 34 years, PSE has grown steadily from 2 to 50 employees and has been a prime contractor, subcontractor, and consultant on hundreds of projects in many different domains, including military, intelligence, industrial process, commercial, medical, education, autonomous vehicles, and more. PSE remains an independent, employee-owned company entirely focused on human performance in complex systems. The technical staff have received numerous recognitions from clients and professional groups for their outstanding work that makes a real difference for our users. Dee Miller, PhD works at Dell, Inc. in the Business Transformation Office as the Senior Principal UX & Service Design Engineer building relationships and appropriately influencing relevant internal teams and direct business contacts in the adoption of a human-centered approach to designing internal systems and processes and delivering services related to Order Experience Life Cycle. She recently started an independent consultancy called Dawn Specialty Consulting. One of the first projects of the new consultancy is consulting with a local non-profit and a police department on applying design thinking to community policing initiatives. Dee has prior experience consulting with state and federal government agencies on matters pertaining to transportation and healthcare. Tom Albin, PE, CPE, PhD is a licensed professional engineer and a certified professional ergonomist. He holds a PhD from the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. Currently the principal of High Plains Ergonomics Service, Tom has been engaged in ergonomics consulting since 2001. He has extensive experience as a researcher, a corporate ergonomist and as a product developer. He is active in the US and International Standards community, chairing the ANSI/HFES 100 computer workstation standard and serving as an accredited US expert on several ISO committees. He was Executive Director of the Office Ergonomics Research Committee from 2007 until retiring in 2018. Tom’s consulting work has been principally concerned with physical ergonomics issues in office and industrial settings. Current projects deal with evaluation of injury risk during push and pull tasks and with applied anthropometry. Topics Panelists will each be given time to introduce themselves at the beginning of the session. Each will speak for 7-10 minutes about their career path, ‘what I like best about consulting’, and ‘3-5 things I wish I had known before I started consulting’. The panel will also address the following topics: ethics, running a business (business plans, financing, insurance, legalities, managing employees, marketing, building relationships with clients, and writing contracts), and work/life balance. These topics will be introduced, in the form of questions from the moderator if/when questions from the audience are exhausted.

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AbstractThis article makes use of a recently unearthed archive in Sweden, complemented by research in the India Office Records and Maharashtra State Archives, to explore the business networks of the small-scale railway contractor in 1860s Bombay Presidency. The argument centres on the career of one individual, comparing him with several contemporaries. In contrast to their civilian colleagues, freebooting engineers have been a somewhat understudied group. Sometimes lacking formal technical training, and without an official position in colonial India, they were distrusted as profiteering, even corrupt, opportunists. This article will present them instead as a diverse professional class, incorporating Parsis alongside various European nationalities, who became specialists in local milieux, sourcing timber and stone at the lowest prices and retaining the loyalty of itinerant labourers. It will propose that the 1860s cotton boom in western India provided them with a short-lived window of opportunity in which to flourish, and to diversify into a variety of speculative enterprises including cotton trading, land reclamation, and explosives. The accidents and bridge collapses of the 1867 monsoon, and subsequent public outcry, will be identified as a watershed after which that window of opportunity begins to shut. The article's concluding section analyses the contractors’ relationship with their labour force and its intermediary representatives, and strategies for defusing strikes. Ultimately, small independent contractors were agents of modernity not formally affiliated with the imperial project, and forced to bargain with merchants and strikers without official backing. Theirs is a record of complex negotiations at the local level, carried out in the immediate post-Mutiny settlement.

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Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the early stage of development of a cluster. The literature on early stage of cluster development shows that there are often random effects such as an entrepreneur and spin-off companies, and in this study, a coordinated approach for cluster development is described. Design/methodology/approach – A single exploratory case study approach is followed. The aerospace cluster in the Spokane region, State of Washington, is described. Data from a variety of sources are triangulated to enhance the credibility of the case study findings. Findings – It was found that although there are many types of collaborations occurring in the region, which involve policy and government organizations, the main driver of the early-stage cluster development is manufacturers-led coordinating mechanism. Individual manufacturers are too small to be successful in the aerospace industry, and they are collaborating to present a united “front” to out-of-the-region customers. Once customers place an order, then within this coordinating mechanism, the work is divided among different manufacturers. Research limitations/implications – The research has two main limitations. First, it is a single case study, and therefore, the results may not be generalizable. Second, the cluster is in an early stage of development, so it is not (yet) clear whether this manufacturers-led coordinated approach will have long-term success. Practical implications – The studies offer potential for cluster development that go beyond relying on a single entrepreneur or on mostly government- or policy-driven initiatives. Instead, this is an approach that can be used by industry to lift the overall competitiveness of their region. Social implications – This cluster development approach offers potential for economic development of smaller regions which mainly consist of small- and medium-sized companies without endowment benefits or a large local customer base. Originality/value – This study adds to the existing knowledge on clusters and cluster types. The identified cluster approach does not fit with the main types of clusters that have been identified in the literature. The companies involved are mainly small- to medium-sized companies, but by coordinating their capabilities, they are able to present core capabilities in a much more attractive manner to customers. This cluster development approach is not driven by or achieved through advantages in innovation, vertical or horizontal supply chain competition and advantages, creation of spin-off firms, or a regional demand base as customers are located outside the region. It deviates in terms of the types of companies involved and, mostly, in a sense that it acts as one unit to customers who are located outside the region.

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The article deals with the history of the first series of the archaeographic expeditions of the Russian Academy of Sciences to Buryatia, carried out in the late 1950s – early 1960s on the initiative of the academician M. N. Tikhomirov, in accordance with the resolution of the Department of Historical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. They are known to have proved the prospects of further archaeographic work in Siberia. Six letters of the participants of the expeditions to Buryatia in 1959–1962 V. B. Pavlov-Silvansky and A. I. Rogov to the Chairman of the Archaeographic Commission academician M. N. Tikhomirov, preserved in the collection of the latter, are published. They are classified as semi-business: the style of correspondents is mostly informal, the features required for office documentation are absent, and the main content is purely business in its nature. The letters contain important data on the history and character of the expedition itself, on the relationship with the Moscow and Ulan-Ude colleagues, on the old believers – the keepers and owners of priceless pieces of ancient Russian writing and printing, cooperation with which remains the most important direction of the archaeographic research work also at the present stage. As a result of the expeditions, a small collection of handwritten and early printed books of the 16th – early 20th centuries was formed. At first, the acquired items were accumulated in the scientific library of the Archaeographic Commission, where they were initially examined. Brief descriptions of the book acquisitions were published in the Archaeographic yearbooks. Later, it was decided to transfer this collection of manuscripts and books to the Siberian Department of the Archaeographic Commission (Novosibirsk) and add it to the Trans-Baikal regional collection of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of the SB RAS (SPSTL SB RAS). The Appendix presents the information on the findings of these expeditions, provides inventory numbers and storage ciphers of SPSTL SB RAS based on the selected data from the descriptions of the Archaeographic yearbooks.

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While we are struggling for energy independence and solving issues related to reducing heat loss, practical Europeans make full use of the biomaterial at hand to heat their own homes, office buildings, and even small businesses. For heating, fuel briquettes are used, which many Ukrainians still call «Eurodrova». Today, the production of fuel briquettes is a good profitable business, which you can do not only in the heating season, but throughout the calendar year. There is one positive feature in fuel briquettes, due to which more and more customers will appear every day: at a relatively low cost (wood waste is used), briquettes give a heat transfer of 19 MJ / kg, while firewood gives only 10 MJ / kg . With this calorific value, customers will need much less fuel to heat. At present, due to the difficult financial situation in the state, the undesirable vegetation in the form of shrubs that have flooded villages, fields and highways has become a big problem for society. Thus, the high-quality removal of unwanted vegetation is a relevant topic today. Felling shrubs and green spaces is a necessity that often occurs when “modernizing” a garden, putting in order on abandoned sites, clearing the area for construction, proper maintenance near roads and plantings in parks and botanical gardens, and also when landscaping in large cities and suburbs. For this purpose, a machine for cutting and chopping wood pulp was developed, with a trailed and mounted unit, which will allow collecting raw materials for wood chips, which can be used in the production of fuel briquettes, pallets for burning in boilers.

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While the imposition of neoliberal policies by Western development institutions has been widely criticized, the ways in which such policies have found allies in the Third World have not received the same attention. This article focuses on India's cooperative dairying program in order to trace its transformation from an organization seeking to protect small-scale dairy producers against foreign dairy interests to current shifts in favor of the privatization of the dairy sector. The story of how India averted neocolonial dependence in its (dairy) White Revolution merits consideration now, when the global percentage of people in food poverty is again increasing. For decades, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank enforced the Washington consensus demanding that developing countries adopt structural adjustment programs including privatization of state services, subsidy cuts to indigenous farmers and consumers, and the opening of markets to (often subsidized) food imports from rich countries. Neoliberal policies are implicated in rural poverty, hunger, and migration to sprawling megacities. Given this, it is important to focus on struggles against the possible loss of cooperative institutions and thus build a broader understanding of the ways in which neoliberal policies spawn rural conflicts. This article is divided into three main sections. In the first section, the growth of dairy productivity in India under the cooperative dairying program is traced from the 1970s onwards, beginning with its ability to utilize EEC food aid for the growth of the national dairy sector in a program called Operation Flood. A large part of the credit for this creative use of monetized food aid is usually attributed to Verghese Kurien, who has been associated with cooperative dairying from its beginnings in the small town of Anand, Gujarat, and whose pro-cooperative philosophy guided national dairy development organizations till recently. The second section of the article focuses on the institutional politics of dairy development, taking as its point of entry the replacement of Kurien by officials who are less likely to be oppositional to the privatization of the dairy sector. The departure of Kurien thus marks a key moment in the neoliberalisation of the cooperative dairying sector. The third section focuses on the wider politics of the state of Gujarat within which the ‘Anand pattern’ of cooperative dairying was established. Here, the pro-business policies of Chief Minister Narendra Modi have been focused on attracting foreign investment to the state, leading to accelerated, but not equitable, economic growth. The ways in which agrarian interests have both clashed and intersected with Modi's vision of development provides an understanding of the transformed political economy within which cooperative dairying now has to function. Overall, the politics of cooperative dairying in India provides an insight into the place-based nature of neoliberal experiences, and can serve as an illustration of impending rural struggles across the world.

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Today, the hotel and restaurant industry has become an integral part of the national economies of most countries of the world. The hotel and restaurant industry attracts attention as an independent component of the structure of the national economy. This industry is a locomotive of Ukraine's economic development and can provide significant technical, commercial and social benefits. In this regard, the priority is to determine the current trends in the hotel and restaurant industry, which is important for the effective functioning of the national economy of Ukraine. In a context of currency devaluation, and due to its rich cultural and recreational potential, Ukraine can become an attractive destination for foreign tourists at low prices. All this has a positive impact on the hotel market. In Ukraine, the volume of investment in the tourism industry has halved since 2010 and today accounts for up to 2% of total investment, which is significantly lower than in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. For most countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the annual volume of investment in the tourist industry has remained unchanged since 2010. Poland (+23%), Czech Republic (+22%) and Romania (+22%) showed the largest increase in investments. In terms of investment, the hotel market is significantly different from other segments of commercial real estate. So, if for rental income owners of office and shopping centers sign medium-term and long-term contracts (at least 1 year), the receipt of income from operating activities of hotels is related to the daily strategy of the owner to attract and retain the hotel guests and find a healthy balance between revenues from rooms, cafes and restaurants, as well as other services offered by the hotel and expenses for them. As it is known, capital investment is the cost of acquiring new ones (as well as those that were in use), self-made for the own use of tangible and intangible assets; the cost of major repairs and upgrades. The development of capital investment in the hotel and restaurant industry in January-December 2017 increased compared to the same period in 2016. The main source of financing capital investments remains the own funds of enterprises and organizations, which accounts for 69.9% of the total volume. It is in view of the fact that for the effective management of the hotel necessary specific knowledge, as well as because the operating parameters of the hotel depend on many difficult predicted factors, the expected profitability of hotels is always 1-1,5% higher than for the best office or commercial centers. Almost complete absence of transactions in the segment of hotel real estate in Ukraine testifies to differences of expectations of owners and investors. Unfortunately, in most cases, in the process of formation of the price, the owners reset from the incurred funds, and not from the results of operating activities of hotels, which in turn does not suit potential investors. The indicator of profitability in the sphere of hotel and restaurant economy characterizes the attractiveness of business in this area for entrepreneurs. This indicator is one of the main criteria for assessing the efficiency of the enterprise. Between 2014 and 2016, the profitability of the enterprises of the hotel and restaurant business in Ukraine increased from -25.8% to -0.8%. In Kyiv among the analyzed cities, the lowest occupancy rate is 45.3%. At the same time, the average actual value of the highest number among the countries analyzed is 92.7 €, which indicates the imbalance of supply in the Ukrainian hotel services market. Political and economic instability in recent years, along with a significant increase in the number of offers, exert significant pressure on tariffs, while the hotel's occupancy rate and the current crisis did not exceed 60%. The bulk of the demand for hotel services is formed at the expense of representatives of the business segment (about 80% of them come from abroad, the remaining 20% – from regions of Ukraine). Their share is on average 65-80%, representatives of group and individual tourism form the rest. The negative impact on hotel business is also due to the fact that in the global booking systems Ukraine has been designated as a country whose entry is not recommended in terms of security, similar information is also available on the embassies' websites of some countries. Also, the low renting rooms in hotels can be explained not only by the unstable situation in the country, but also by the fact that in Ukraine the market of shadow services has been actively developing for several years now. Owners of apartments will specially equip them for the reception of foreign tourists for a short term. As a rule, private traders provide guests with a full range of additional services: they provide their transport, translator (if required), meals and other services. With low fixed costs and, often without paying taxes, "shadow" people receive sufficient working capital to maintain high quality services and expand business. In addition, the shady hotel business has the ability to flexibly operate prices depending on the demand and the season, it is beyond the scope of state regulation, so it does not face additional costs. In order to accelerate the development of the hotel and restaurant industry in Ukraine, the state should: provide tourists with comfortable and safe conditions for their arrival in Ukraine; to carry out an effective policy of development of mass tourism, to work out the corresponding concept; reduce hotel fees; to take measures to improve the state of monuments and create new objects of mass tourism; to make changes to land use laws, to the rules for issuing relevant permits to related industries, in order to attract investment in opening new recreational centers; create opportunities for the construction and operation of small motels and family-friendly hotels, which will provide jobs for the population and can be a source of foreign exchange earnings.

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Introduction. The effectiveness of market processes in one of the leading regions of the Russian Federation – the Republic of Tatarstan is determined by the level of development of various forms of entrepreneurship and their competitiveness. The increased responsibility of the Tatarstan leadership for the results of regional socio-economic development stimulates the desire to strengthen and expand the position of small and medium businesses, encourages regional authorities to pay special attention to the accelerated institutionalization of peasant (farmer) farms as one of the promising models of transformation of the agricultural sector of the Republic. The Institute of peasant (farmer) farms is the result of post-perestroika Russian reforms, the degree of its rationality and efficiency depends not so much on the scientific and practical elaboration of the legislative and institutional-market foundations, but on the depth of understanding of the state structures and the rural majority of the need and specificity of these economic entities. In this regard, the main purpose of this work is the scientific and practical analysis of the formation and development of peasant (farmer) farms in Tatarstan in the context of determining the main socio-economic indicators in relation to the study area; identify the parameters of statistical analysis and description of industries that design this form of management. Materials and Methods. The content of the scientific article is based on the materials of current sources coming from various departments and periodicals, consolidated data of publications of the statistical office of Tatarstan, as well as on the literature of historical and economic nature. The research is based on traditional methods of Russian historical science: problem-chronological, comparative-historical and systemic. These methods have been successfully tested in the process of determining the regional characteristics of the development of peasant (farm) farms. When processing quantitative data the statistical method is used; for a more detailed immersion in the subject of the study used micro-historical approach. Results. The study of agrarian sector of economy of Tatarstan 1990–2010 given the historical and economic characteristics of the process of institutionalization of the peasant (farmer) farms. In particular, in a comparative perspective, the share of peasant (farm) farms in the structure of regional gross income is considered. It is established that the main branches of economic activity of Tatarstan farming were crop and livestock, and the latter direction was more promising. Discussion and Conclusion. The level of development of small business in Tatarstan, including peasant (farmer) farms, currently provides an opportunity to diversify, focusing on the market and conditions of production and sales. In conditions of latent developing degradation of rural areas (disappearance of villages, aging and reduction of the rural population, destruction of socio-cultural infrastructure, etc.), peasant (farmer) farms, along with personal subsidiary farms of the population, become a kind of means of increasing interest in various forms of small business, as well as contribute to the growth of village-forming potential in the agricultural socio-cultural space of Tatarstan. At the same time, despite the regional authorities understanding of the importance of the final goals and development strategy of farming, there is no system-forming form of support for peasant (farmer) farms in the Republic. Moreover, the creation of an image of the attractiveness of peasant farming is mainly associated with individual activities or PR campaigns to create a favorable investment image, climate. The results obtained in the course of this study are prerequisites for further historical reconstruction of farm daily life in the context of deepening the study of the experience of individual Russian regions, its applied analysis.

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The formation of the patent-licensing system of Ukraine during the second half of the XX century is investigated. It is established that the first funds of technical literature, which was necessary for patent work, were created in the departments of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in the first postwar years. For example, the fund of scientific and technical literature, documentation, patents and inventions began to form in the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the USSR. It was established in 1944. But various special centers for providing information support for the development of the patent and license business were organized a somewhat later. In particular, at the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR only 20 years later in 1964. Employees were making a preliminary examination of applications for inventions and expanding the funds of scientific and technical documentation, were completing foreign patent documentation from foreign countries. A network of special Patent Departments was created on the basis of the higher technical institutions. A small group for the systematization of patent information was created at the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute in 1967. In 1971, the patent office was also established at the Odessa Polytechnic Institute. In 1974, at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute an organizational and analytical department was created, it contributed to the development of inventive activities of the Institute. The intensification of inventive search occurred in the 1980s and was aimed at improving quality, which contributed to the creation of prospective, competitive world-class developments and their introduction into industry. During this period, the vast majority of scientists took part in patent and licensing activities, a large number of patents were obtained and scientific and technical cooperation was started on a commercial basis with the conclusion of licensing agreements. A number of devices were patented in the following countries: Spain, Italy, England, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and others. In the early 1990s, the situation with inventive and patent licensing activities changed. A significant reduction in the number of inventions demonstrated the general state of scientific research in the country.

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Purpose Firms increasingly diversify their technological competencies to achieve different strategic objectives. This study aims to explore the impacts of technological knowledge characteristics on patenting choices for inventions created by subsidiaries in an uncertain and fast changing environment. Design/methodology/approach The data used in this study are patents granted to the world largest firms by the USPTO for inventions attributable to their subsidiaries in China between 1996 and 2005. In addition, the patent data from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China are used for the matching in terms of filing patent applications in both USA and China for a same piece of technology. A discrete Logit model is used to examine the effects of technological distance and categories on Chinese patent application and international priority. Findings The findings suggest that firms have priority to seek international patent protection, instead of host country protection, for valuable subsidiary inventions in their background and marginal technological fields. In addition, a firm may seek host country legal protection simultaneously for inventions built upon knowledge from technologically distant fields. Research limitations/implications As we are more interested in protecting technological knowledge, the protection of other types of knowledge, such as organizational knowledge, deserves further research attentions. Moreover, future research may expand current study by including small and medium firms, as well as firms in other developing economies. Practical implications While the economic and legal environment in China may have evolved since studied period, the results have practical implications for firms in other developing countries that are at an early stage of catching-up or those in a host location featuring a similar uncertain and fast changing environment. In particular, the study suggests that foreign firm managers would have more strategic choices of patenting than local firms in the host country. For strategically important inventions bridging complex knowledge from different technological areas, firms could seek protection in multiple countries simultaneously, including both home country and other major markets. Furthermore, managers could choose whether or not to protect a particular category of technologies in host country depending on value of the technology to the firm and the IPR protection of host country. Finally, the approach of looking at knowledge-level characteristics, which can be easily measured through readily available intra-firm information, provides managers with a practical and useful tool to make these strategic decisions. Originality/value This study represents an effort to extend the understanding on how foreign MNCs could generate and appropriate valuable technologies in an uncertain and fast-changing environment. In particular, the authors focus on how MNCs could use different international patenting patterns to benefit from subsidiary inventions. Whereas previous literature mainly focuses on country-level and firm-level determinants, this study approaches the topic through the lens of knowledge-level factors. By studying how knowledge characteristics determine firm strategic behaviors, the authors offer additional justifications of the knowledge-based view of the firm. Meanwhile, the findings enrich our understanding of an important component of MNC’s global strategies in managing their technologies through selectively patenting in different locations. Firms pursue diversified technologies for different strategic objectives. As subsidiary inventions become a very important source of firm competitiveness, MNCs have to face the trade-off between higher patenting costs and the appropriability of subsidiary generated knowledge. The findings suggest that it is not necessary for MNCs to protect all subsidiary inventions in host countries.

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e4139111This article features schools and school districts with successful induction programs, all easily replicable. Increasingly, research confirms that teacher and teaching quality are the most powerful predictors of student success. In short, principals ensure higher student achievement by assuring better teaching. To do this, effective administrators have a new teacher induction program available for all newly hired teachers, which then seamlessly becomes part of the lifelong, sustained professional development program for the district or school. What keeps a good teacher are structured, sustained, intensive professional development programs that allow new teachers to observe others, to be observed by others, and to be part of networks or study groups where all teachers share together, grow together, and learn to respect each other’s work.ResumoEste artigo apresenta escolas e distritos escolares com programas bem sucedidos de indução, todos facilmente replicáveis. Cada vez mais, a pesquisa confirma que o professor e a qualidade do ensino são os mais poderosos preditores do sucesso do aluno. Em suma, os diretores garantem maior desempenho dos alunos, garantindo melhor ensino. Para fazer isso, os administradores eficazes têm um novo programa de indução de professores disponível para todos os professores recém-contratados, que então se torna parte do programa de desenvolvimento profissional sustentado ao longo da vida para o distrito ou escola. O que mantém um bom professor são programas estruturados, constantes e intensivos de desenvolvimento profissional que permitem que os novos professores observem outros, sejam observados por outros e façam parte de redes ou grupos de estudo onde todos os professores compartilham juntos, crescem juntos e aprendem a respeitar o trabalho um do outro.Tradução do original WONG, Harry K. “Induction Programs That Keep New Teachers Teaching and Improving”. NASSP Bulletin – Vol. 88 No 638 March 2004. © Harry K. Wong Publications, Inc. por Adriana Teixeira Reis.Palavras-chave: Programas de indução, Professor iniciante, Desenvolvimento profissional docente.Keywords: Induction programs, Beginner teacher, Teacher professional development.ReferencesALLINGTON, R. (2003). The six ts of effective elementary literacy instruction. Retrieved from www.readingrockets.org / article.php?ID=413.BREAUX, A., & WONG, H. (2003). New teacher induction: How to train, support, and retain new teachers. Mountain View, CA: Harry K. Wong Publications.BRITTON, E., PAINE, L., PIMM, D., & RAIZEN, S. (Eds.). (2003). Comprehensive teacher induction: Systems for early career learning. State: Kluwer Academic Publishers and WestEd.CROSS, C. T., & RIGDEN, D. W. (2002, April). Improving teacher quality [Electronic version]. American School Board Journal, 189(4), 24–27.DARLING-HAMMOND, L., & SYKES, G. (2003). Wanted: A national teacher sup- ply policy for education: The right way to meet the “highly qualified teacher” challenge. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 11(33). Retrieved from http: // epaa.asu.edu / epaa / v11n33 /DARLING-HAMMOND, L., & YOUNGS, P. (2002). Defining “highly qualified teachers”: What does scientifically-based research actually tell us? Educational Researcher, 31(9), 13–25.DEPAUL, A. (2000). Survival guide for new teachers: How new teachers can work effec- tively with veteran teachers, parents, principals, and teacher educators. Jessup, MD: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement.DRUMMOND, S. (2002, April 18). What will it take to hold onto the next gen- eration of teachers? Harvard Graduate School of Education News. Retrieved from www.gse.harvard.edu / news / features / ngt04182002.htmlELMORE, R. (2002, January/ February). The limits of “change.” Harvard Education Letter. Retrieved from www.edletter.org / past / issues / 2002-jf / limitsofchange.shtmlFEIMAN-NEMSER, S. (1996). Teacher mentoring: A critical review. Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Teaching and Teacher Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED397060)FULLAN, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.FULLAN, M. (2003). Change forces with a vengeance. London: Routledge Falmer.GARET, M., Porter, A., DESMOINE, L., BIRMAn, B., & KWANG, S. K. (2001). What makes professional development effective? American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915–946.GREENWALD, R., HEDGES, L., & LAINE, R. (1996). The effect of school resources on student achievement. Review of Educational Research, 66(3), 361–396.HANUSHEK, E. A., KAIN, J. F., & RIVKIN, S. G. (2001). Why public schools lose teachers (NBER Working Paper No. 8599). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.HARE, D., & HEAP, J. (2001). Effective teacher recruitment and retention strategies in the Midwest. Naperville, IL: North Central Regional Laboratory. Re- trieved June 26, 2002, from www.ncrel.org / policy/ pubs / html / strategy/ index.htmlHASSEL, E. (1999). Professional development: Learning from the best. Naperville, IL: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.HIEBERT, H., GALLIMORE, R., & STIGLER, J. (2002). A knowledge base for the teaching profession: What would it look like and how can we get one? Educational Researcher, 31(5), 3–15.JOHNSON, S., & BIRKELAND, S. (2003). Pursuing a sense of success: New teach- ers explain their career decisions. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 581–617.JOHNSON, S. M., & KARDOS, S. M. (2002). Keeping new teachers in mind. Educational Leadership, 59(6), 13–16.KARDOS, S. (2003, April). Integrated professional culture: Exploring new teachers’ experiences in 4 states. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.LEHMAN, P. (2003, November 26). Ten steps to school reform at bargain prices. Education Week, 23(13), 36, 28.LIU, E. (2003, April). New teachers’ experiences of hiring: Preliminary findings from a 4-state study. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.MARTIN, S. (2003, March). From the ground up: Building your own university. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development, San Francisco, CA.NORTH CAROLINA TEACHING FELLOWS COMMISSION. (1995). Keeping talented teach- ers. Raleigh, NC: Public School Forum of North Carolina.PALOMBO, M. (2003). A network that puts the net to work. Journal of Staff Development, 24(1), 24–28.ROTHMAN, R. (2002 / 2003). Transforming high schools into small learning communities. Challenge Journal, 6(2), 1–8.SANDERS, W. (1996). Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future student academic achievement. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research & Assessment Center.SAPHIER, J., FREEDMAN, S., & ASCHHEIM, B. (2001). Beyond mentoring: How to nurture, support, and retain new teachers. Newton, MA: Teachers21.SCHLAGER, M., FUSCO, J., KOCH, M., CRAWFORD, V., & PHILLIPS, M. (2003, July). Designing equity and diversity into online strategies to support new teachers. Paper presented at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), Seattle, WA.SERPELL, Z., & BOZEMAN, L. (1999). Beginning teacher induction: A report of beginning teacher effectiveness and retention. Washington, DC: National Partnership for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching.WONG, H. (2001, August 8). Mentoring can’t do it all. Education Week, 20(43), pp. 46, 50.WONG, H. (2002a). Induction: The best form of professional development. Educational Leadership, 59(6), 52–55.WONG, H. (2002b). Play for keeps. Principal Leadership, 3(1), 55–58.WONG, H. (2003a). Collaborating with colleagues to improve student learn- ing. ENC Focus, 11(6), 9.WONG, H. (2003b, October). Induction: How to train, support, and retain new teachers. Paper presented at the conference of the National Staff Development Council.WONG, H. (2003c). Induction programs that keep working. In M. Scherer (Ed.), Keeping good teachers ( pp. 42–49). Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.WONG, H., & ASQUITH, C. (2002). Supporting new teachers. American School Board Journal, 189(12), p. 22.YOUNGS, P. (2003). State and district policies related to mentoring and new teacher induction in Connecticut. New York: National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

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The article analyzes the world experience of developing business incubators as a part of the innovation infrastructure. The problem of assessing the commercial and budgetary effectiveness of the business incubator project is currently not sufficiently developed. The attention of researchers is mainly focused on studying foreign and domestic experience and analyzing the forms of state support. The project of creating a business incubator has the following specific feature: several participants, including the state, use different resources in the course of the project implementation and strive to achieve different goals. Efficiency assessment is based on two principles stated due to the feature mentioned above: a principle of accounting for opportunity costs in terms of assessment of commercial effectiveness; a principle of assessing efficiency of all the participants of a project Following these principles, the assessment should be carried out in two stages: 1) to assess the effectiveness of the project as a whole; 2) to assess the effectiveness of the project for each participant. At the first stage, the main economic parameters of the project are defined: state subsidies for the construction or repair of industrial and office premises of a business incubator, production equipment, office equipment, reimbursem*nt of current expenses; current income and expenses of the managing organization; taxes to the budget. The methodology for calculating net cash flow, net discounted income, profitability index, internal rate of return and payback period for the project as a whole is proposed. The second stage is based on the principle of accounting for opportunity costs. The commercial efficiency of the project implementation for the managing organization, small business entities located in the business incubator and the budget efficiency of the project are estimated.

Abstract:

Policymakers increasingly develop initiatives to influence business and consumer behavior. Among the initiatives to increase the compliance of food establishments to hygiene standards is the public disclosure of hygiene inspection scores. In this study, we analyze the impact of the 2017 law change in King County (Washington state, USA) mandating the presentation of hygiene inspection scores at the front door using an emoji-based display with information about the food establishment’s relative performance to other food establishments in the zip code area. Based on information from 82,545 food inspections in 8,010 food establishments in the period August 2014 to May 2019, we find that the rolling implementation of these displays had a small but meaningful impact on food inspection scores and hygiene violations. As a result of the new display, hygiene scores improved and the odds of failing inspection declined.

Abstract:

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Abstract:

Entrepreneurial activities are important factors in creating and increasing employment opportunities and fuelling economic growth. Entrepreneurship is an important source of job creation and opening career opportunities for both women and men. However, women are less likely to have successful enterprises or businesses than men. This paper is aimed at assessing women entrepreneurship in Nigeria: their present state of involvement in comparison to the male entrepreneurs, their challenges, contributions and performance in the formal and informal business sector of the economy. The paper employed the descriptive method of analysis. An inductive methodology involving observation, collection of secondary data and the analysis of such data was employed. To this end, a lot was devoted to the presentation and analysis of data obtained from the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics and the Federal Office of Statistics. It was discovered that women participate more in the micro business (informal sector) constituting 42.1% of the ownership structure. Their performance constitutes 13.57% in the formal sector as against the male entrepreneurs at 86.43%. Their poor performance and contribution are a result of the constraints they face. It was also discovered that their performance was higher in the Trade and Agricultural Sector in 1997 but higher in the Education and Service Sector by 2012. Among others, it is recommended that good practice in supporting women entrepreneurship should be initiated by the government in the form of training courses, advisory services or creating awareness campaigns.

Abstract:

The author researches and substantiates by generalizing the scientific points of view improving the legal regulation of the created science parks on the initiative of higher education institutions and / or research institutions, taking into account the economic and legal prospect of intensifying their activities. National and foreign experience of scienceparks activity is considered. The content of using the founding agreement on creation of a science park and the agreement on partnership of business entities with a science park is provided. Problems that have not yet been resolved in the process of creating science parks and using innovative developments are noted. The classical content of entrepreneurship in innovation is provided and considered from thestandpoint of clarifying the content of the innovation structure, which is based on the commercialization of intellectual property rights by their types, which is a part of the intellectual capital cycle with a corresponding effective result. There is substantiated the procedure of formation of the statutory capital of the science park, to which higher educational institutions and / or scientific institutions cannot use intellectual property rights to the objects, created at the expense of budgetary funds, but can only under the conclusion of a license agreement with business entity,having non-state and state form of ownership as transferred assets, which does not require the alienation of the object of intellectual property rights as part of intangible assets. It is proposed to use the target budget funds as the initial start-up capital, which is provided on reverse terms to the state budget in case of closure (liquidation) of the science park by the decision of the founders or on the basis of a court decision. Alternatively, in the absence of target budget funds, it is proposed as a source of money to contribute to the statutory capital of the science park as a start-up capital to send part of the special fund of the state budget. It is justified the creation of a technology transfer office, which will be a structural unit of higher education institutions and / or research institutions, which will deal with the process of filing and reviewing a patent application and subsequent licensing. It is noted that the science park can be the founder (co-founder) of small innovative enterprises and enter into partnership agreements with them for the implementation of certain innovative projects.

Abstract:

Swine semantics erupted into a linguistic battle between the two U.S. presidential candidates in the 2008 campaign over a lesser-known colloquialism “lipstick on a pig” reference in a speech by then Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. This resulted in the Republicans sparring with the Democrats over the identification of the “swine” in question, claiming “sexism” and demanding an apology on behalf of then Governor Sarah Palin, the first female Republican vice presidential candidate. The Republican Party, fearful of being criticised for its own sexist and racist views (Kuhn par. 1), seized the opportunity to attack the Democrats with a proactive media campaign that made the lipstick comment a lead story in the media during a critical time less than two months before the election, derailing more serious campaign issues and focusing attention on Palin, who had just made her national political debut and whose level of experience was widely debated. Leskovec, Backstrom, and Kleinberg conducted a meme-tracking study for analysing news-cycle phrases in approximately 90 million stories from 1.6 million online sites spanning mainstream news to blogs during the final three months of the U.S. presidential election (1). They discovered that “lipstick on a pig” was “stickier” than other phrases and received “unexpectedly high popularity” (4). A simple Google search of “lipstick on a pig” resulted in 244,000 results, with more than half originating in 2008. Obama’s “Lipstick on a Pig” Reference During the final rounds of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s words at a widely televised campaign stop in Lebanon, Virginia, on 9 September, sparked a linguistic debate between the two major American political parties 56 days before Election Day. Obama attempted to debunk McCain’s strategy about change in the following statement:John McCain says he’s about change, too. [...] And so I guess his whole angle is, watch out, George Bush. Except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics [...] That’s not change. That’s just calling some—the same thing, something different. But you know [...] you can put [...] lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig (“Obama’s Take”).A reporter from The New York Times commented that it was clear to the audience that Obama’s “lipstick” phrase was a direct reference to McCain’s policies (Zeleny par. 5). Known as a well-educated, articulate speaker, perhaps one considered too professorial for mainstream America, Obama attempted to inject more folksy language and humour into his dialogue with the public. However, the Republicans interpreted the metaphor quite differently. Republicans Claim “Sexism” from a “Male Chauvinist Pig” The Republican contender John McCain and his entourage immediately took offence, claiming that the “pig” in question was a sexist comment referring to Palin, who was introduced on 29 August as the first female vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket (“VP Pick”). A Republican National Committee spokeswoman quickly told the media, “Sarah Palin’s maverick record of reform doesn’t need any ‘dressing up,’ but the Obama campaign’s condescending commentary deserves some dressing down” (Chozick par. 8). McCain’s camp formed the Palin Truth Squad with 54 Republican women, primarily lawyers and politicians, on the same day as the metaphor was used, to counter negative media and Internet commentary about Palin (Harper A13). Almost immediately after Obama’s “lipstick” comment, McCain’s camp conducted a conference call with journalists and former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, a Republican and chair of the Palin Truth Squad, who stated the lipstick comment referred to Palin, “the only one of the four—the presidential and vice presidential candidates—who wears lipstick” (Kornblut and Shear par. 12). Another member of the Squad, Thelma Drake, then a Republican Representative from Virginia, said that “it’s hard for Barack Obama to paint himself as the agent of change if he harbors the same mindset that Palin and millions of women just like her, have been fighting against their whole lives” (Applegate par. 8). Swift and others also claimed Obama was referring to Palin since she had herself used a lipstick metaphor during her Republican National Convention speech, 3 Sepember: “I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick” (“Palin’s Speech” par. 26). The Republicans also created an anti-Obama Web ad with the theme, “Ready to Lead? No. Ready to Smear? Yes,“ (Weisman and Slevin A01) with a compilation of video clips of Palin’s “lipstick” joke, followed by the latter part of Obama's “lipstick” speech, and CBS News anchorwoman, Katie Couric, talking about “sexism” in politics, that latter of which referred to an older clip referring to Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the White House. Both clips on Obama and Couric were taken out of context. CBS retaliated and released a statement that the network “does not endorse any candidate” and that “any use of CBS personnel in political advertising that suggests the contrary is misleading” (Silva par. 8). YouTube pulled the Republican Web ads stating that the cause was “due to a copyright claim” (Silva par. 7). Another porcine phrase became linked to Obama—“male chauvinist pig”—an expression that evolved as an outgrowth of the feminist movement in the 1960s and first appeared with the third word, “pig,” in the media in 1970 (Mansbridge and Flaster 261). BlogHer, a blog for women, posted “Liberal Chauvinist Pigs,” on the same day as Obama's speech, asking: “Does the expression male chauvinist pig come to mind?” (Leary par. 5) Other conservative blogs also reflected on this question, painting Obama as a male chauvinist pig, and chastising both the liberal media and the Democrats for questioning Palin’s credentials as a viable vice presidential candidate. Obama “Sexist Pig Gear” protest tee-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers were sold online by Zazzle.com. Democratic Response to “Controversy” During a campaign stop in Norfolk, Virginia, the day after his “lipstick” comment, Obama called the Republican backlash the “latest made-up controversy by the John McCain campaign” and appealed for a return to more serious topics with “enough” of “foolish diversions” (“Obama Hits”). He stated that the Republicans “seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad, because they know it’s catnip for the news media” (“Obama Hits”). Obama also referred to the situation as the “silly season of politics” in media interviews (James par. 8). Obama’s spokespeople rallied claiming that McCain played the “gender card about the use of a common analogy” (Kornblut and Shear par. 6). An Obama campaign spokesman distributed to the media copies of articles from a Chicago Tribune story in 2007 in which McCain applied the lipstick analogy about the healthcare strategy of Hillary Clinton, a previous female Democratic presidential contender (Chozick 11). Another Obama spokeswoman said that the porcine expression “was older than my grandfather’s grandfather,” (Zimmer par. 1) which also inspired the media and linguists to further investigate this claim. Evolution of “Lipstick on a Pig” This particular colloquial use of a “pig” evolved from a long history of porcine expressions in American politics. American political discourse has been rich with cultural references to porcine idioms with negative connotations. Pork barrels were common 19th-century household items used to store salt pork, and some plantation owners doled out the large barrels as rewards to slaves who then had to compete with each other to grab a portion (Maxey 693). In post-Civil War America, “pork barrel” became a political term for legislative bills “loaded with special projects for Members of Congress to distribute to their constituents back home as an act of largesse, courtesy of the federal taxpayer” (“Pork Barrel Legislation”). Today, “pork barrel” is widely used in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and other countries (“Definition Pork Barrel”) to refer to “government projects or appropriations yielding rich patronage benefits” (“Pork Barrel”). Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh coined the term, “porkulus,” as another expression for “pork barrel” by merging the words “pork and “stimulus,” while discussing President Obama’s economic stimulus package in January 2009 (Kuntz par. 1). Ben Zimmer, an American lexicologist, explained that “many porcine proverbs describe vain attempts at converting something from ugly to pretty, or from useless to useful” (par. 2). Zimmer and other writers investigated the heritage of “lipstick on a pig” over the past 500 years from “you can't make a silk purse from a sow’s ear,” “a hog in armour is still a hog,” and “a hog in a silk waistcoat is still a hog.” Zimmer connected the dots between the words “lipstick,” a 19th-century invention, and “pig” to a Los Angeles Times editor in 1926 who wrote: “Most of us know as much of history as a pig does of lipsticks” (par. 3). American Politicians Who Have Smeared “Lipstick on a Pig” Which American politicians had used “lipstick on a pig” before Obama? Both Democrats and Republicans have coloured their speech with this colloquialism to refer to specific issues, not specific people. In 2008, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential hopeful John Edwards, used the porcine expression about McCain’s healthcare proposals at a Democratic campaign event and House Minority Leader John Boehner, a Republican, about weak Republican fundraising efforts during the same month (Covington and Curry par. 7-8). McCain ironically used the term twice to criticise Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposals as “lipstick on a pig,” while they were both campaigning in 2007 (Covington and Curry par. 6). His statement received limited attention at the time. During a telephone interview in 2007, Obama also had used the pig analogy when referring to an “impossible assignment” George W. Bush gave to General Petraeus, who was then serving as the Multinational Forces Iraq Commander (Tapper par. 15). In 2004, Republican Vice President Richard Cheney applied a regional slant: “As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig, but at the end of the day it's still a pig,” about the national defence record of John Kerry, then a Democratic presidential nominee (Covington and Curry par. 4). A few months earlier that year, John Edwards, Democratic vice presidential candidate, scolded the Bush administration for putting “lipstick on a pig” on “lackluster job-creation numbers” (Covington and Curry par. 3). Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat, identified the “pig” as a tax bill the same year (Siegel par. 15-16). In 1992, the late Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, a Democrat, who was known for colourful phrases, gave the pig a name when she said: “You can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it is still a pig,” referring to the Republican administration for deploying warships to protect oil tankers in the Middle East, effectively subsidizing foreign oil (Zimmer par. 4). A year earlier, when she introduced her first budget for Texas, she said: “This is not another one of those deals where you put lipstick on a hog and call it a princess” (Zimmer par. 4). The earliest reputed recorded use of an American politician using the phrase was Texas Democrat Jim Hightower, who applied it to depict the reorganisation of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet in 1986 (Macintyre 16). Time magazine reporters (Covington and Curry par. 2) and Zimmer (par. 3) claimed that a San Francisco radio personality, Ron Lyons, was one of the earliest quoted in print with “lipstick on a pig” about renovation plans for a local park in November 1985 in the Washington Post. Author of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, Grant Barrett, uncovered a 1980 article from a small Washington state newspaper as the earliest written record with an article that stated: “You can clean up a pig, put a ribbon on it’s [sic] tail, spray it with perfume, but it is still a pig” (Guzman par. 7). A book on communication also adopted the pig metaphor in its title in 2006, Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game, by Torie Clarke, who previously served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under Donald Rumsfield during the early years of the G.W. Bush Administration. Media Commentary According to The New York Times (Leibovich and Barrett), “lipstick on a pig” was one of the most popular political buzzwords and phrases of 2008, along with others directly referring to Palin, “Caribou Barbie” and “Hockey Mom,” as well as “Maverick,” a popular term used by both McCain and Palin. Many journalists played on the metaphor to express disdain for negative political campaigns. A Wall Street Journal article asked: “What's the difference between a more hopeful kind of politics and old-fashioned attacks? Lipstick” (Chozick par. 1). International media also covered the Obama-McCain lipstick wars. The Economist, for example, wrote that the “descent of American politics into pig wrestling has dismayed America’s best friends abroad” (“Endless Culture War” par. 6). Bloggers claimed that Obama’s “lipstick” speech was influenced by copy and imagery from two leading American cartoonists. The Free Republic, self-acclaimed to be “the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism” (Freerepublic.com), claimed that Obama plagiarized almost verbatim the language leading into the “pig” comment from a Tom Toles cartoon that ran in the Washington Post on 5 Sepember (see fig. 1).Fig. 1. Toles, Tom. Cartoon. Washington Post. 5 Sep. 2008. 30 July 2010 Another cartoon by R. J. Matson appeared in the St. Louis Post Dispatch (see fig. 2) four days before Obama’s speech that depicted Palin not just as a pig wearing lipstick, but as one using pork barrel funding. The cartoon’s caption provides an interpretation of Palin's lipstick analogy: “Question: What’s the Difference Between a Hockey Mom Reformer and a Business-As-Usual Pork Barrel-Spending Politician? Answer: Lipstick.” Newsbusters.org blogger stated: “It’s not too far-fetched to say Team Obama is cribbing his stump speech laugh lines from the liberal funnies” (Shepherd par. 3). Fig 2. Matson, R. J. Cartoon. St. Louis Post Dispatch. 5 Sep. 2008. 30 July 2010 . A porcine American character known for heavy makeup and a starring role as one of the Muppets created by puppeteer Jim Henson in the 1970s, Miss Piggy still remains an American icon. She commented on the situation during an interview on the set of “Today,” an American television program. When the interviewer asked, “Were you surprised by all the hubbub this election season over your lipstick practices?,” Miss Piggy’s response was “Moi will not dignify that with a response” (Raphael par. 6-7). Concluding Comments The 2008 U.S. presidential election presented new players in the arena: the first African-American in a leading party and the first female Republican. During a major election, words used by candidates are widely scrutinised and, in this case, the “lipstick on a pig” phrase was misconstrued by the opposing party, known for conservative values, that latched onto the opportunity to level a charge of sexism against the more liberal party. Vocabulary about gender, like language about race, can become a “minefield” (Givhan M01). With today’s 24/7 news cycle and the blogosphere, the perceived significance of a political comment, whether innocent or not, is magnified through repeated analysis and commentary. The meme-tracking study by Leskovec, Backstrom, and Kleinberg observed that 2.5 hours was the typical time lag between stories originating in mainstream media and reaching the blogosphere (8); whereas only 3.5 percent of the stories began in blogs and later permeated into traditional media (9). An English author of the history of clichés and language, Julia Cresswell, stated that the “lipstick” term “seems to be another candidate for clichéhood” (61). Although usage of clichés can prove to cause complications as in the case of Obama’s lipstick reference, Obama was able to diffuse the Republican backlash quickly and make a plea to return to serious issues affecting voters. David Greenberg analysed Obama’s presidential win and explained: And although other factors, especially the tanking economy, obviously contributed more directly to his November victory, it would be a mistake to overlook the importance of his skill at mastering the politics of negative attacks. When Obama went negative against others, he carefully singled out aspects of his opponents’ characters that, he argued, American politics itself had to transcend; he associated his foes with the worst of the old politics and himself with the best of the new. When others fired at him, in contrast, he was almost always able to turn the criticisms back upon them—through feigned outrage, among other tactics—as perpetuating those selfsame blights on our politics (70). References Applegate, Aaron. “Rep. Drake Criticizes Obama for ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Remark.” Virginia Pilot 10 Sep. 2008. 28 Jul. 2010. Chozick, Amy. “Obama Puts Different Twist on Lipstick.” Wall Street Journal 9 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010. Covington, Marti, and Maya Curry. “A Brief History of: ‘Putting Lipstick on a Pig.’” Time 11 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010. Cresswell, Julia. “Let’s Hear it for the Cliché.” British Journalism Review 19.57 (2008): 57-61. “Endless Culture War.” The Economist 4 Oct. 2008: ABI/INFORM Global, ProQuest. 30 Jul. 2010. “Definition Pork Barrel.” Webster’s Online Dictionary. 30 Jul. 2010. freerepublic.com. “Welcome to Free Republic.” Free Republic 2009. 30 Jul. 2010. Givhan, Robin. “On the Subject of Race, Words Get in the Way.” Washington Post 20 Jan. 2008: M01. Greenberg, David. “Accentuating the Negative.” Dissent 56.2 (2009): 70-75. Guzman, Monica. “‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Finds Origin in Tiny State Newspaper.” Seattlepi.com 10 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010. Harper, Jennifer. “Obama Comment Offends GOP Women; ‘Palin Truth Squad’ Sent Out to Counter ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Remark.” Washington Times 10 Sep. 2008: A13. Huston, Warner Todd. “Did Obama Steal His Lip Stick on a Pig From a Political Cartoon?” Newsbusters.org 10 Sep. 2008. 15 Jul. 2010 . James, Frank. “Barack Obama on David Letterman.” Chicago Tribune 11 Sep. 2008. 15 Jul. 2010 http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/09/barack_obama_on_david_letterma.html>. Kornblut, Anne E., and Michael D. Shear. “McCain Camp Sees an Insult in a Saying.” Washington Post 10 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010 AR2008090903531.html>. Kuhn, David P. “GOP Fears Charges of Racism, Sexism.” Politico.com 23 Feb. 2008. 4 Oct. 2010. Kuntz, Tom. “Porkulus.” NYTimes.com 8 Feb. 2009. 30 Jul. 2010. Leary, Anne. “Liberal Chauvinist Pigs.” BlogHer 9 Sep. 2008. 2 Oct. 2010. Leibovich, Mark, and Grant Barrett. “The Buzzwords of 2008.” New York Times 21 Dec. 2008. 29 Jul. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/ref/weekinreview/buzzwords2008.html>. Leskovec, Jure, Lars Backstrom, and Jon Kleinberg. “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle.” ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Paris, 28 Jun. 2009. 30 Jul. 2010 . Macintyre, Ben. “US Politics is Littered with Dawgs, Crawdaddys and Pigs in Lipstick.” The Times [London] 27 Sep. 2008: 16. Mansbridge, Jane, and Katherine Flaster. “Male Chauvinist, Feminist, Sexist, and Sexual Harassment: Different Trajectories in Feminist Linguistic Innovation.” American Speech 80.3 (Fall 2005): 256-279. Maxey, Chester Collins. “A Little History of Pork.” National Municipal Review, Volume VIII. Concord: Rumford Press, 1919. Google Books. 30 Jul. 2010. “Obama Hits Back Against McCain Campaign.” MSNBC 10 Sep. 2008. Televised Speech. 18 May 2010. “Obama’s Take on McCain's Version of Change.” CNN 9 Sep. 2009. YouTube.com. 17 May 2010. “Palin’s Speech at the Republican National Convention.” New York Times 3 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010. “Pork Barrel.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary 2010. 30 Jul. 2010. “Pork Barrel Legislation.” C-SPAN Congressional Glossary. c-span.org. 17 May 2010. Raphael, Rina. “Miss Piggy: Obama Should Make Poodle First Pet” Today 13 Nov. 2008. MSNBC.com. 29 Jul. 2010. Shepherd, Ken. “Palin Shown As Lipsticked Pig in Cartoon Days Before Obama Remark.” NewsBusters.org 11 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010 . Siegel, Robert. “Putting Lipstick on a Pig.” National Public Radio 10 Sep. 2008. 16 Jul. 2010. Silva, Mark. “Katie Couric's 'Lipstick' Rescue: CBS.” Chicago Tribune 11 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010. Tapper, Jack. “A Piggish Debate: Power, Pop, and Probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper.” ABC News 9 Sep. 2008. 29 Jul. 2010. “VP Pick Palin Makes Appeal to Women Voters.” NBC News, msnbc.com, and Associated Press 28 Aug. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010. Weisman, Jonathan, and Peter Slevin. “McCain Camp Hits Obama on More Than One Front.” Washington Post 11 Sep. 2008: A04. Zeleny, Jeff. “Feeling a Challenge, Obama Sharpens His Silver Tongue.” New York Times 10 Sep. 2008. 27 Jul. 2010. Zimmer, Ben. “Who First Put ‘Lipstick on a Pig’?” The Slate 10 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010.

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Abstract: Nowadays, Vietnamese women are participating actively in parts of the economy that were previously deemed male domain. Women are involved in business activities at all levels in Vietnam, making significant contributions to the economic development of the country. By December 2011, there were 81,226 small and medium enterprises headed by women, accounting for 25% of the total number of enterprises in the country (GSO, 2013). In Vietnam, despite recent economic development, socio-cultural and legal barriers are still very difficult for women since the general perception in society is that a woman’s main duty is to be a good housewife and mother and they are also often perceived as weak, passive and irrational (VWEC, 2007). Even though the studies related to women entrepreneurship development are quite extensive, amongst them only a limited number of researches on the role of legal and socio - cultural barriers on women entrepreneurs in the context of Vietnam have been investigated. Thus, supported by the World Trade Institute (WTI) in Bern, Switzerland, the researchers have chosen this as the subject of this study. Based on a quantitative survey of 110 companies in Hanoi and adjacent areas, the research has taken legal and socio - cultural barriers and explored their effect on the development of women entrepreneurship in the context of Vietnam in order to indicate how women entrepreneurs perceive the impact of socio-cultural factors, economic impacts, and policy reforms on their entrepreneurial situations and initiatives, and to then provide policy implications for promoting women’s entrepreneurship and gender equality in Vietnam. Keywords Entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurs, gender equality, Vietnam References Acs, Z. & Varga, A. (2005) ‘Entrepreneurship, agglomeration and technological change’, Small Business Economics, 24, 323---334. Avin, R.M & Kinney, L.P (2014). Trends in Female Entrepreneurship in Vietnam Preliminary paper presented at the 23th Annual Conference on Feminist Economics sponsored by IAFFE, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana, June 27-29, 2014.Avin, R.-M., & Kinney, L. P. (2014) ‘Trends in Women entrepreneurship in Vietnam’, 23rd Annual Conference on Feminist Economics, Ghana: 27 – 29 June.Bruton, G. D., Ahlstrom, D., & Obloj, K. (2008). Entrepreneurship in emerging economies: where are we today and where should the research go in the future. Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 32(1), 1–14.Bunck, J. M. 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Vietnam: Food and Agricultural Organisation and United Nations Development Programme. Available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/ac685e/ac685e00.htm [Accessed 7 December 2015].Fuentelsaz, L., González, C., Maícas, J., & Montero, J. (2015). ‘How different formal institutions affect opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship’. Business Research Quarterly, 18(4), 246-258. Gallup, J (2004) The wage labor market and inequality in Vietnam. In Economic growth, poverty, and household welfare in Vietnam edited by Paul Glewwe, Nisha Agrawal, and David Dollar. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO) (2014), Population and employment Report 2014Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. (2013). Vietnam report 2013. United Kingdom. Retrieved from: www.gemconsortium.orgHampel-Milagrosa, A., Pham, H., Nguyen, Q., and Nguyen, T. (2010) ‘Gender-Related Obstacles to Vietnamese Women Entrepreneurs’. Vietnam: United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Available at: http://www.un.org.vn/en/publications/publications-by-agency/doc_details/294-gender-related-obstacles-to-vietnamese-women-entrepreneurs. html [Accessed 7 December 2015].Hang, T.T.T. (2008), “Women’s leadership in Vietnam: opportunities and challenges”, Signs, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 16-21. Hirschman, C. and V. M. Loi (1996) Family and Household Structure in Vietnam: Some glimpses from a recent survey, Pacific Affairs Vol 69 (No. 2 (Summer 1996)): 229-249Hoang, B.T. (2010), “Rural employment and life: challenges to gender roles in Vietnam’s agriculture at present”, paper presented at the FAO-IFAD-ILO Workshop on Gaps, Trends and Current Research in Gender Dimensions of Agricultural and Rural Employment: Differentiated Pathways Out of Poverty Rome, 31 March-2 April 2009, available at: www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/Papers/16_march/Thinh_final.pdf Hoang, C., Hoang, C.L.T.S, Nguyen, T.P.C, Ngo, T.P.L, Tran, T.N, Vu, T.L (2013), The women’s access to land in contemporary Vietnam. UNDP Report 2013Hoskisson, R. E., Eden, L., Lau, C.M., &Wright, M. (2000). Strategy in emerging economies. Academy of Management Journal, 43(3), 249–267.ILO (2011) ‘Creation of an enabling environment for women entrepreneur in Vietnam: Mainstreaming gender issues in government policy on enterprise development’, Hanoi.International Finance Corporation (2006) A National Survey of Women Business Owners in Vietnam. Joint survey with Gender and Entrepreneurship Markets (GEM) and the Mekong Private Sector Development Facility (MPDF), Washington, DC, IFCInternational Labour Organisation (2007) ‘Women’s Entrepreneurship Development in Vietnam’. Vietnam: International Labour Organisation.International Labour Organization and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs of Vietnam (2010), The Informal Economy in Vietnam, ILO/MOLISA, Hanoi.Kibria, N. (1990) Power Patriarchy and Gender Conflict in the Vietnamese Immigrant Community, Gender and Society Vol 4 (No 1 (March 1990)): 9-24 Luke, N. , S. R. Schuler , B. T. T. Mai , P. V. Thien and T. H. Minh (2007) Exploring Couple Attributes and Attitudes and Marital Violence in Vietnam, New York, Sage PublicationsMai thi Thanh Thai, Nguyen Hoang Anh (2016): The impact of culture on the creation of enterprises (2016), Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development, Vol.9, No.1, pp.1 – 22McChesney, F. (1987) Rent extraction and rent creation in the economic theory of regulation, Journal of Legal Studies 16 de Soto, H. (2000) The Mystery of Capital: Why capitalism Triumphs in the west and Fails everywhere Else, New York, Basic BooksMinniti, M. (2010) ‘Women entrepreneurship and Economic Activity’, European Journal of Development Research, 22, pp. 294 – 312.Nguyen, B. (2011) ‘The Changes of Women’s Position: The Vietnam Case’, International Journal of Innovative Interdisciplinary Research, 1, pp. 126 – 138.Nguyen, B. (2012) ‘Abortion in Present Day Vietnam’, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2 (1), pp. 56 – 61.Nguyen, C., Frederick, H., & Nguyen, H. (2014). Female entrepreneurship in rural Vietnam: An exploratory study. International Journal Of Gender And Entrepreneurship, 6(1), 50-67. Nijssen, E.J. (2014), Entrepreneurial Marketing: An Effectual Approach, Routledge, New York, NY.Raven, P., & Le, Q. (2015). Teaching business skills to women: Impact of business training on women’s microenterprise owners in Vietnam. International Journal Of Entrepreneurial Behaviour And Research, 21(4), 622-641. Rubio-Bañón, A., & Esteban-Lloret, N. (2015). Research article: Cultural factors and gender role in female entrepreneurship. Suma De Negocios Terrell, K., and Troilo, M. (2010) ‘Values and Women entrepreneurship’, International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 2 (3), pp. 260 – 286.Thanh, H.X., Anh, D.N. and Tacoli, C. (2005), “Livelihood diversification and rural-urban linkages in Vietnam’s red river delta”, Discussion Paper No. 193, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), available at: http://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/fcnddp/193.htmlThe World Economic Forum (2015) ‘The Global Gender Gap Report 2015’. Switzerland: The World Economic Forum. Available at: http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/ [Accessed 8 December 2015].Thi, L. (1995) Doi Moi and female workers: a case study of Ha Noi, in: V. M. Moghadam (ed.), Economic reforms, women's employment and social politics, Helsinki, World Institute for Development Research Tien, P. N. (2010) Overarching view of Gender Equality in Vietnam”, 2010, Conference on Commemoration of International Women’s Day 2010, “Beijing + 15, Looking back, reaching forward, Gender Equality and Women Empowerment 15 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women, Ha Noi, 12 March 2010.United Nations Development Programme (2012) ‘Women’s Representation in Leadership in Vietnam’. Vietnam: United Nations Development Programme.United Nations Development Programme (2015) ‘Human Development Report 2014’. USA: United Nations Development Programme. Available at: http://hdr.undp. org/en/content/human-development-report-2014 [Accessed 10 December 2015].United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). (2010). Gender related obstacles to Vietnamese Women Entrepreneurs. Vienna, Austria.Vietnam Women Entrepreneurs Council (2007) Women’s entrepreneurship development in Vietnam. International Labor Organization, Vietnam.Vuong, H., and Tran, D. (2009) ‘The Cultural Dimensions of the Vietnamese Private Entrepreneurship’, The IUP Journal of Entrepreneurship Development, 6 (3 & 4), pp. 54 – 78.VWEC (2007), Women’s Entrepreneurship Development in Vietnam, Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) Report, Vietnam Women Entrepreneurs Council, available at: www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@asia/@ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_100456.pdf Williamson, O. (2000) ‘The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking ahead’, Economic Literature, 38, pp. 595 – 693.World Bank (2011a) ‘Vietnam Country Gender Assessment’. USA: World Bank. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2011/11/15470188/vietnam-country-gender-assessment [Accessed 7 December 2015]. World Bank (2011b). Vietnam development report 2012: Market economy for a middle- income Vietnam, Washington DC: The World Bank.World Bank (2012), Vietnam Country Gender Assessment, World Bank Country Office, HanoiWorld Bank (2015), World Bank Database, Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/country/vietnam [Accessed 9 December 2015].World Development Indicators (WDI) (2012), The World Bank, Washington, DC.Zhu, L., Kara, O., Chu, H.M.,Chu, A. (2015), ‘Women entrepreneurship: Evidence from Vietnam’, Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 103-128 lity in Vietnam.

Abstract:

Study level/applicability This case can be used in the core course on entrepreneurship for Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and Master of Business Administration/Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA/PGDM) students. It will help them to understand the motivations and challenges of women entrepreneurs, strategies to manage challenges, interactive style of leadership and their contribution to the economic growth of the country. Subject area Entrepreneurship. Case overview Roopa Rani, co-founded a digital design company, DesignTheme Innoventics (DTI), with her husband Yoganand, in November 2007, on the first floor of their residence. Yoganand’s creativity and Roopa’s determination made them bootstrap, scale slow and steady. As a novice to the industry, the initial days posed many challenges. Roopa hired artists to be appointed as designers, which gave them a unique selling preposition. They progressed slowly from a team of 2 to 20, with a revenue of INR 0.3M per annum to INR 12M per annum. As the company grew, Roopa wanted Yoganand’s support in handling the responsibilities, and hence, converted DTI into a limited liability partnership in 2013 and the couple were directors. As the client base improved, the need for shifting to a bigger space became more evident. A calculative risk-taker, Roopa, was forced to move DTI to a bigger office space end 2017, with a rent of INR60,000 per month. Meanwhile, they became a team of 20, with revenue of INR12m. The shift from no rent to a rented space made DTI slip to break-even. However, after two years, they moved into a smaller space and it coincided with the COVID-19 outbreak. Although the backlog orders were processed during the first quarter of 2020–2021, the business for the next quarter was affected. Social distancing norms created a shift in the way of doing business, which was a boon for a designing company like DTI. Now, the task before this self-made woman entrepreneur was to formulate strategies to scale up the business. Expected learning outcomes After analysing the case, the students will be able to: i. Value the contribution of women entrepreneurs towards the economy. ii. Examine the motivational factors and challenges of women entrepreneurs. iii. Understand the importance of networking. iv. Appraise the socio-cultural factors in a patriarchal society and their impact on the work-life balance of a woman entrepreneur. v. Appreciate the interactive leadership style of women entrepreneurs. vi. Formulate strategies to scale up the business. Supplementary materials • Agarwal, S., & Lenka, U. (2015). Study on work-life balance of women entrepreneurs – review and research agenda. Industrial and Commercial Training, 47(7), 356–362. doi:10.1108/ict-01–2015-0006 • Amit, R., & Muller, E. (1995). “Push” And “Pull” Entrepreneurship. Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, 12(4), 64–80. doi:10.1080/08276331.1995.10600505 • Buttner, E. H. (2001). Examining Female Entrepreneurs' Management Style: An Application of a Relational Frame. Journal of Business Ethics, 29(3), 253–269. doi:10.1023/a:1026460615436 • Carter, S.C. (1997). E. Holly Buttner and Dorothy P. Moore (1997), ‘Women’s Organisational Exodus to Entrepreneurship: Self-reported Motivations and Correlates with Success', Journal of Small Business Management, January, pp34-47. • Cohoon, J. McGrath and Wadhwa, Vivek and Mitchell, Lesa, Are Successful Women Entrepreneurs Different from Men? (May 11, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract = 1604653 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1604653 •Fletcher, J. (1998), Relational Practice: A Feminist Reconstruction of Work, Journal of Management Inquiry, 7(2), 163-186. • Kirkwood, J. (2009). Motivational factors in a push‐pull theory of entrepreneurship. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 24(5), 346–364. doi:10.1108/17542410910968805. • Malyadri, G., Dr. (2012). Role of women Entrepreneurs in the Economic Development of India. Paripex – Indian Journal of Research, 3(3), 104–105. doi: 10.15373/22501991/mar2014/36. Pal, N. (2016). Women Entrepreneurship in India: Important for Economic Growth. International Journal of Pure and Applied Researches, 4(1), 55–64. Pugazhendhi, D. P. (2019). Problems, Challenges and Development of Women Entrepreneurs. Emperor Journal of Economics and Social Science Research, 1(4), 48–53. doi:10.35338/ejessr.2019.1407. Shastri, S., Shastri, S., & Pareek, A. (2019). Motivations and challenges of women entrepreneurs. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 39(5/6), 338–355. doi:10.1108/ijssp-09–2018-0146. Tende, S.B. (2016). The Impact of Women Entrepreneurs towards National Development: Selected Study on Taraba State. Information and Knowledge Management, 6, 30–43. Xheneti, M., Karki, S. T., & Madden, A. (2018). Negotiating business and family demands within a patriarchal society – the case of women entrepreneurs in the Nepalese context. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 31(3–4), 259–278. doi:10.1080/08985626.2018.1551792 Subject code CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Abstract:

IntroductionFor over five years, Romanians have been using their bodies in public spaces to challenge politicians’ disregard for the average citizen. In a region low in standards of civic engagement, such as voter turnout and petition signing, Romanian people’s “citizenship of the streets” has stopped environmentally destructive mining in 2013, ousted a corrupt cabinet in 2015, and blocked legislation legalising abuse of public office in 2017 (Solnit 214). This article explores the democratic affordances of collective resistive walking, by focusing on Romania’s capital, Bucharest. I illustrate how walking in protest of political corruption cultivates a democratic public and reconfigures city spaces as spaces of democratic engagement, in the context of increased illiberalism in the region. I examine two sites of protest: the Parliament Palace and Victoriei Square. The former is a construction emblematic of communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and symbol of an authoritarian regime, whose surrounding area protestors reclaim as a civic space. The latter—a central part of the city bustling with the life of cafes, museums, bike lanes, and nearby parks—hosts the Government and has become an iconic site for pro-democratic movements. Spaces of Democracy: The Performativity of Public Assemblies Democracies are active achievements, dependent not only on the solidity of institutions —e.g., a free press and a constitution—but on people’s ability and desire to communicate about issues of concern and to occupy public space. Communicative approaches to democratic theory, formulated as inquiries into the public sphere and the plurality and evolution of publics, often return to establish the significance of public spaces and of bodies in the maintenance of our “rhetorical democracies” (Hauser). Speech and assembly, voice and space are sides of the same coin. In John Dewey’s work, communication is the main “loyalty” of democracy: the heart and final guarantee of democracy is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street corner to discuss back and forth what is read in the uncensored news of the day, and in gatherings of friends in the living rooms of houses and apartments to converse freely with one another. (Dewey qtd. in Asen 197, emphasis added) Dewey asserts the centrality of communication in the same breath that he affirms the spatial infrastructure supporting it.Historically, Richard Sennett explains, Athenian democracy has been organised around two “spaces of democracy” where people assembled: the agora or town square and the theatre or Pnyx. While the theatre has endured as the symbol of democratic communication, with its ideal of concentrated attention on the argument of one speaker, Sennett illuminates the square as an equally important space, one without which deliberation in the Pnyx would be impossible. In the agora, citizens cultivate an ability to see, expect, and think through difference. In its open architecture and inclusiveness, Sennett explains, the agora affords the walker and dweller a public space to experience, in a quick, fragmentary, and embodied way, the differences and divergences in fellow citizens. Through visual scrutiny and embodied exposure, the square thus cultivates “an outlook favorable to discussion of differing views and conflicting interests”, useful for deliberation in the Pnyx, and the capacity to recognise strangers as part of the imagined democratic community (19). Also stressing the importance of spaces for assembly, Jürgen Habermas’s historical theorisation of the bourgeois public sphere moves the functions of the agora to the modern “third places” (Oldenburg) of the civic society emerging in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe: coffee houses, salons, and clubs. While Habermas’ conceptualization of a unified bourgeois public has been criticised for its class and gender exclusivism, and for its normative model of deliberation and consensus, such criticism has also opened paths of inquiry into the rhetorical pluralism of publics and into the democratic affordances of embodied performativity. Thus, unlike Habermas’s assumption of a single bourgeois public, work on twentieth and twenty-first century publics has attended to their wide variety in post-modern societies (e.g., Bruce; Butler; Delicath and DeLuca; Fraser; Harold and DeLuca; Hauser; Lewis; Mckinnon et al.; Pezzullo; Rai; Tabako). In contrast to the Habermasian close attention to verbal argumentation, such criticism prioritizes the embodied (performative, aesthetic, and material) ways in which publics manifest their attention to common issues. From suffragists to environmentalists and, most recently, anti-precarity movements across the globe, publics assemble and move through shared space, seeking to break hegemonies of media representation by creating media events of their own. In the process, Judith Butler explains, such embodied assemblies accomplish much more. They disrupt prevalent logics and dominant feelings of disposability, precarity, and anxiety, at the same time that they (re)constitute subjects and increasingly privatised spaces into citizens and public places of democracy, respectively. Butler proposes that to best understand recent protests we need to read collective assembly in the current political moment of “accelerating precarity” and responsibilisation (10). Globally, increasingly larger populations are exposed to economic insecurity and precarity through government withdrawal from labor protections and the diminishment of social services, to the profit of increasingly monopolistic business. A logic of self-investment and personal responsibility accompanies such structural changes, as people understand themselves as individual market actors in competition with other market actors rather than as citizens and community members (Brown). In this context, public assembly would enact an alternative, insisting on interdependency. Bodies, in such assemblies, signify both symbolically (their will to speak against power) and indexically. As Butler describes, “it is this body, and these bodies, that require employment, shelter, health care, and food, as well as a sense of a future that is not the future of unpayable debt” (10). Butler describes the function of these protests more fully:[P]lural enactments […] make manifest the understanding that a situation is shared, contesting the individualizing morality that makes a moral norm of economic self-sufficiency precisely […] when self-sufficiency is becoming increasingly unrealizable. Showing up, standing, breathing, moving, standing still, speech, and silence are all aspects of a sudden assembly, an unforeseen form of political performativity that puts livable life at the forefront of politics […] [T]he bodies assembled ‘say’ we are not disposable, even if they stand silently. (18)Though Romania is not included in her account of contemporary protest movements, Butler’s theoretical account aptly describes both the structural and ideological conditions, and the performativity of Romanian protestors. In Romania, citizens have started to assemble in the streets against austerity measures (2012), environmental destruction (2013), fatal infrastructures (2015) and against the government’s corruption and attempts to undermine the Judiciary (from February 2017 onward). While, as scholars have argued (Olteanu and Beyerle; Gubernat and Rammelt), political corruption has gradually crystallised into the dominant and enduring framework for the assembled publics, post-communist corruption has been part and parcel of the neoliberalisation of Central and Eastern-European societies after the fall of communism. In the region, Leslie Holmes explains, former communist elites or the nomenklatura, have remained the majority political class after 1989. With political power and under the shelter of political immunity, nomenklatura politicians “were able to take ethically questionable advantage in various ways […] of the sell-off of previously state-owned enterprises” (Holmes 12). The process through which the established political class became owners of a previously state-owned economy is known as “nomenklatura privatization”, a common form of political corruption in the region, Holmes explains (12). Such practices were common knowledge among a cynical population through most of the 1990s and the 2000s. They were not broadly challenged in an ideological milieu attached, as Mihaela Miroiu, Isabela Preoteasa, and Jerzy Szacki argued, to extreme forms of liberalism and neoliberalism, ideologies perceived by people just coming out of communism as anti-ideology. Almost three decades since the fall of communism, in the face of unyielding levels of poverty (Zaharia; Marin), the decaying state of healthcare and education (Bilefsky; “Education”), and migration rates second only to war-torn Syria (Deletant), Romanian protestors have come to attribute the diminution of life in post-communism to the political corruption of the established political class (“Romania Corruption Report”; “Corruption Perceptions”). Following systematic attempts by the nomenklatura-heavy governing coalition to undermine the judiciary and institutionalise de facto corruption of public officials (Deletant), protestors have been returning to public spaces on a weekly basis, de-normalising the political cynicism and isolation serving the established political class. Mothers Walking: Resignifying Communist Spaces, Imagining the New DemosOn 11 July 2018, a protest of mothers was streamed live by Corruption Kills (Corupția ucide), a Facebook group started by activist Florin Bădiță after a deadly nightclub fire attributed to the corruption of public servants, in 2015 (Commander). Organized protests at the time pressured the Social-Democratic cabinet into resignation. Corruption Kills has remained a key activist platform, organising assemblies, streaming live from demonstrations, and sharing personal acts of dissent, thus extending the life of embodied assemblies. In the mothers’ protest video, women carrying babies in body-wraps and strollers walk across the intersection leading to the Parliament Palace, while police direct traffic and ensure their safety (“Civil Disobedience”). This was an unusual scene for many reasons. Walkers met at the entrance to the Parliament Palace, an area most emblematic of the former regime. Built by Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu and inspired by Kim Il-sung’s North Korean architecture, the current Parliament building and its surrounding plaza remain, in the words of Renata Salecl, “one of the most traumatic remnants of the communist regime” (90). The construction is the second largest administrative building in the world, after the Pentagon, a size matching the ambitions of the dictator. It bears witness to the personal and cultural sacrifices the construction and its surrounded plaza required: the displacement of some 40,000 people from old neighbourhood Uranus, the death of reportedly thousands of workers, and the flattening of churches, monasteries, hospitals, schools (Parliament Palace). This arbitrary construction carved out of the old city remains a symbol of an authoritarian relation with the nation. As Salecl puts it, Ceaușescu’s project tried to realise the utopia of a new communist “centre” and created an artificial space as removed from the rest of the city as the leader himself was from the needs of his people. Twenty-nine years after the fall of communism, the plaza of the Parliament Palace remains as suspended from the life of the city as it was during the 1980s. The trees lining the boulevard have grown slightly and bike lanes are painted over decaying stones. Still, only few people walk by the neo-classical apartment buildings now discoloured and stained by weather and time. Salecl remarks on the panoptic experience of the Parliament Palace: “observed from the avenue, [the palace] appears to have no entrance; there are only numerous windows, which give the impression of an omnipresent gaze” (95). The building embodies, for Salecl, the logic of surveillance of the communist regime, which “created the impression of omnipresence” through a secret police that rallied members among regular citizens and inspired fear by striking randomly (95).Against this geography steeped in collective memories of fear and exposure to the gaze of the state, women turn their children’s bodies and their own into performances of resistance that draw on the rhetorical force of communist gender politics. Both motherhood and childhood were heavily regulated roles under Ceaușescu’s nationalist-socialist politics of forced birth, despite the official idealisation of both. Producing children for the nationalist-communist state was women’s mandated expression of citizenship. Declaring the foetus “the socialist property of the whole society”, in 1966 Ceaușescu criminalised abortion for women of reproductive ages who had fewer than four children, and, starting 1985, less than five children (Ceaușescu qtd. in Verdery). What followed was “a national tragedy”: illegal abortions became the leading cause of death for fertile women, children were abandoned into inhumane conditions in the infamous orphanages, and mothers experienced the everyday drama of caring for families in an economy of shortages (Kligman 364). The communist politicisation of natality during communist Romania exemplifies one of the worst manifestations of the political as biopolitical. The current maternal bodies and children’s bodies circulating in the communist-iconic plaza articulate past and present for Romanians, redeploying a traumatic collective memory to challenge increasingly authoritarian ambitions of the governing Social Democratic Party. The images of caring mothers walking in protest with their babies furthers the claims that anti-corruption publics have made in other venues: that the government, in their indifference and corruption, is driving millions of people, usually young, out of the country, in a braindrain of unprecedented proportions (Ursu; Deletant; #vavedemdinSibiu). In their determination to walk during the gruelling temperatures of mid-July, in their youth and their babies’ youth, the mothers’ walk performs the contrast between their generation of engaged, persistent, and caring citizens and the docile abused subject of a past indexed by the Ceaușescu-era architecture. In addition to performing a new caring imagined community (Anderson), women’s silent, resolute walk on the crosswalk turns a lifeless geography, heavy with the architectural traces of authoritarian history, into a public space that holds democratic protest. By inhabiting the cultural role of mothers, protestors disarmed state authorities: instead of the militarised gendarmerie usually policing protestors the Victoriei Square, only traffic police were called for the mothers’ protest. The police choreographed cars and people, as protestors walked across the intersection leading to the Parliament. Drivers, usually aggressive and insouciant, now moved in concert with the protestors. The mothers’ walk, immediately modeled by people in other cities (Cluj-Napoca), reconfigured a car-dominated geography and an unreliable, driver-friendly police, into a civic space that is struggling to facilitate the citizens’ peaceful disobedience. The walkers’ assembly thus begins to constitute the civic character of the plaza, collecting “the space itself […] the pavement and […] the architecture [to produce] the public character of that material environment” (Butler 71). It demonstrates the possibility of a new imagined community of caring and persistent citizens, one significantly different from the cynical, disconnected, and survivalist subjects that the nomenklatura politicians, nested in the Panoptic Parliament nearby, would prefer.Persisting in the Victoriei Square In addition to strenuous physical walking to reclaim city spaces, such as the mothers’ walking, the anti-corruption public also practices walking and gathering in less taxing environments. The Victoriei Square is such a place, a central plaza that connects major boulevards with large sidewalks, functional bike lanes, and old trees. The square is the architectural meeting point of old and new, where communist apartments meet late nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture, in a privileged neighbourhood of villas, museums, and foreign consulates. One of these 1930s constructions is the Government building, hosting the Prime Minister’s cabinet. Demonstrators gathered here during the major protests of 2015 and 2017, and have walked, stood, and wandered in the square almost weekly since (“Past Events”). On 24 June 2018, I arrive in the Victoriei Square to participate in the protest announced on social media by Corruption Kills. There is room to move, to pause, and rest. In some pockets, people assemble to pay attention to impromptu speakers who come onto a small platform to share their ideas. Occasionally someone starts chanting “We See You!” and “Down with Corruption!” and almost everyone joins the chant. A few young people circulate petitions. But there is little exultation in the group as a whole, shared mostly among those taking up the stage or waving flags. Throughout the square, groups of familiars stop to chat. Couples and families walk their bikes, strolling slowly through the crowds, seemingly heading to or coming from the nearby park on a summer evening. Small kids play together, drawing with chalk on the pavement, or greeting dogs while parents greet each other. Older children race one another, picking up on the sense of freedom and de-centred but still purposeful engagement. The openness of the space allows one to meander and observe all these groups, performing the function of the Ancient agora: making visible the strangers who are part of the polis. The overwhelming feeling is one of solidarity. This comes partly from the possibilities of collective agency and the feeling of comfortably taking up space and having your embodiment respected, otherwise hard to come by in other spaces of the city. Everyday walking in the streets of Romanian cities is usually an exercise in hypervigilant physical prowess and self-preserving numbness. You keep your eyes on the ground to not stumble on broken pavement. You watch ahead for unmarked construction work. You live with other people’s sweat on the hot buses. You hop among cars parked on sidewalks and listen keenly for when others may zoom by. In one of the last post-socialist states to join the European Union, living with generalised poverty means walking in cities where your senses must be dulled to manage the heat, the dust, the smells, and the waiting, irresponsive to beauty and to amiable sociality. The euphemistic vocabulary of neoliberalism may describe everyday walking through individualistic terms such as “grit” or “resilience.” And while people are called to effort, creativity, and endurance not needed in more functional states, what one experiences is the gradual diminution of one’s lives under a political regime where illiberalism keeps a citizen-serving democracy at bay. By contrast, the Victoriei Square holds bodies whose comfort in each other’s presence allow us to imagine a political community where survivalism, or what Lauren Berlant calls “lateral agency”, are no longer the norm. In “showing up, standing, breathing, moving, standing still […] an unforeseen form of political performativity that puts livable life at the forefront of politics” is enacted (Butler 18). In arriving to Victoriei Square repeatedly, Romanians demonstrate that there is room to breathe more easily, to engage with civility, and to trust the strangers in their country. They assert that they are not disposable, even if a neoliberal corrupt post-communist regime would have them otherwise.ConclusionBecoming a public, as Michael Warner proposes, is an ongoing process of attention to an issue, through the circulation of discourse and self-organisation with strangers. For the anti-corruption public of Romania’s past years, such ongoing work is accompanied by persistent, civil, embodied collective assembly, in an articulation of claims, bodies, and spaces that promotes a material agency that reconfigures the city and the imagined Romanian community into a more democratic one. The Romanian citizenship of the streets is particularly significant in the current geopolitical and ideological moment. In the region, increasing authoritarianism meets the alienating logics of neoliberalism, both trying to reduce citizens to disposable, self-reliant, and disconnected market actors. Populist autocrats—Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, the Peace and Justice Party in Poland, and recently E.U.-penalized Victor Orban, in Hungary—are dismantling the system of checks and balances, and posing threats to a European Union already challenged by refugee debates and Donald Trump’s unreliable alliance against authoritarianism. In such a moment, the Romanian anti-corruption public performs within the geographies of their city solidarity and commitment to democracy, demonstrating an alternative to the submissive and disconnected subjects preferred by authoritarianism and neoliberalism.Author's NoteIn addition to the anonymous reviewers, the author would like to thank Mary Tuominen and Jesse Schlotterbeck for their helpful comments on this essay.ReferencesAnderson, Benedict R. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2016.Asen, Robert. “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.2 (2004): 189-211. 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Abstract:

Gilinsky's letter to the editor was published in the New York Review of Books on 4 May. Notes have been deleted for space. Walid Khalidi wrote the following introduction for JPS: When Avner Cohen, an Israeli living in the United States, published his Israel and the Bomb in 1998, a Ha'Aretz reviewer described the book as a ““bombshell,”” while the Israeli historian Tom Segev declared that it would necessitate ““the rewriting of Israeli history.”” Although the book was based on documents mostly in the public domain in the United States, Israeli intelligence was so angered by Cohen's defiance of its taboo on matters nuclear that it subjected him to fifty hours of interrogation upon his first visit to Israel following publication. Cohen's book has now come out in a paperback edition, reviewed by Israeli writer Amos Elon in the New York Review of Books (15 January 2004). This review elicited, in its turn, the letter published here by Victor Gilinsky, formerly both a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and head of the physical sciences department at Rand Corporation. Those who have not read Cohen's book may want to know what it contained, despite the significant omissions pointed out in Gilinsky's letter. Basically, Israel and the Bomb tells how, with the exception of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, Israel was able to win the acquiescence of successive U.S. administrations to Israel's introduction into the Middle East of nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which according to recent estimates now comprise up to two hundred nuclear bombs and thirty-five tactical thermonuclear devices with the long-range missiles to deliver them. Already by 1960 (thanks to French help, in retaliation for Egyptian president Gamal `Abd al-Nasser's support of the Algerian revolution) Israel was well on its way to nuclear weapons capacity. Christian Herter, secretary of state in the outgoing Eisenhower administration, briefed John Kennedy on the subject on his first day in office in 1961. An interesting tidbit in Cohen's book is that Israel's nuclear program in the 1960s was common knowledge in Israeli and American Jewish business circles——Israeli businessmen having been solicited for funds for the Dimona reactor, with American Jews led by Abe Feinberg, a Democratic activist (chairman of the America Bank and Trust Co. and a trustee of the Weizmann Institute of Science), lending a hand. For the first two years after Kennedy was inaugurated, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion successfully stalled increasingly persistent U.S. demands that Dimona undergo twice yearly inspections——then deemed the minimum for meaningful inspection. By May 1963, Kennedy's patience was running out, and he sent Ben-Gurion a sharp letter warning that U.S. commitment to Israel would be ““seriously jeopardized”” unless Israel was more forthcoming on the nuclear issue. One month later, Ben-Gurion resigned his premiership, handing it over to the more pliant Levi Eshkol whom he despised and expected to give in to Kennedy. In November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated. Ironically, it was Kennedy who authorized the first U.S. delivery of heavy weapons——the Hawk missiles——to Israel, and these ended up deployed around the Dimona reactor. Thenceforth, it was plain sailing for Israel——Lyndon Johnson not being too particular about nuclear (especially Israeli) proliferation. Presently the regulating doctrine in U.S.-Israeli nuclear discourse became that of ““ambiguity”” or ““opacity,”” whereby Israel declares it will not be the ““first”” to introduce nuclear WMDs in the Middle East, even though both Tel Aviv and Washington know only too well that it has already done so. In return for this Israeli stance, the United States provides Israel with massive infusions of conventional weapons to ““dissuade”” it from resorting to its nuclear arsenal——an idyllic case for Israel of having its cake and eating it too. This charade continues to this day, even as the United States went into Iraq to prevent its acquisition of WMDs and is breathing fire and brimstone against Iran's nuclear intentions——themselves a response to Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Abstract:

IntroductionThis paper is concerned with recent attempts to develop the creative economy in rural Scotland. Research shows that the creative economy is far from self-organising, and that an appropriate institutional landscape is important to its development (Andersson and Henrekson). In Scotland, there is a proliferation of support mechanisms – from those designed to help creative entrepreneurs improve their business, management, or technical expertise, to infrastructure projects, to collective capacity-building. In rural Scotland, this support landscape is particularly cluttered. This article tackles the question: How do rural creative entrepreneurs negotiate this complex funding and support landscape, and how do they aid the development of the rural creative economy ‘from below’? From Creative Industries to the Creative EconomyThe creative industries have been central to the UK’s economic growth strategy since the 1990s. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research the creative industries contributed £5.9bn to the economy in 2013 (CEBR 17). In the last five years there have been significant improvements in ICTs, leading to growth in digital creative production, distribution, and consumption. The established creative industries, along with the nascent ‘digital industries’ are often grouped together as a separate economic sector – the ‘creative economy’ (Nesta A Manifesto for the Creative Economy).Given its close association with creative city discourses (see Florida 2002), research on the creative economy remains overwhelmingly urban-focused. As a result of this urban bias, the rural creative economy is under-researched. Bell and Jayne (209) note that in the last decade a small body of academic work on the rural creative economy has emerged (Harvey et al.; White). In particular, the Australian context has generated a wealth of discussion as regards national and regional attempts to develop the rural creative economy, the contribution of ‘creativity’ to rural economic and social development, sustainability and resilience, and the role that individual creative practitioners play in developing the rural creative economy (see Argent et al.; Gibson, Gibson and Connell; Waitt and Gibson).In the absence of suitable infrastructure, such as: adequate transport infrastructure, broadband and mobile phone connectivity, workspaces and business support, it often falls to rural creative practitioners themselves to ‘patch the gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure. This paper is concerned with the ways in which rural creative practitioners attempt to contribute to the development of the creative economy ‘from below’. ICTs have great potential to benefit rural areas in this respect, by “connecting people and places, businesses and services” (Townsend et al. Enhanced Broadband Access 581).The Scottish InfrastructureSince 1998, cultural policy has been devolved to Scotland, and has fallen under the control of the Scottish Government and Parliament. In an earlier examination of a Scottish creative business support agency, I noted that the Scottish Government has adopted a creative industries development strategy broadly in line with that coming out of Westminster, and subsequently taken up worldwide, and that the Scottish institutional infrastructure is extremely complex (Schlesinger et al.). Crucially, the idea of ‘intervention’, or, the availability of a draw-down programme of funding and support that will help creative practitioners develop a business from their talent, is key (Schlesinger).The main funder for Scottish artists and creative practitioners is Creative Scotland, who distribute money from the Scottish Government and the National Lottery. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) also offer funding and support for creative practitioners working in the Highlands and Islands region. Further general business support may be drawn down from Business Gateway (who work Scotland-wide but are not creative-industries specific), or Scottish Enterprise (who work Scotland-wide, are not creative-industries specific, and are concerned with businesses turning over more than £250,000 p.a.). Additionally, creative-sector specific advice and support may be sought from Cultural Enterprise Office (based in Glasgow and primarily serving the Central Belt), Creative Edinburgh, Dundee or Stirling (creative networks that serve their respective cities), the Creative Arts and Business Network (based in Dumfries, serving the Borders), and Emergents (based in Inverness, dealing with rural craftspeople and authors).MethodologyThe article draws on material gathered as part of three research projects, all concerned with the current support landscape for creative practitioners in Scotland. The first, ‘Supporting Creative Business’ was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the second, ‘Towards a model of support for the rural creative industries’ was funded by the University of Glasgow and the third, ‘The effects of improved communications technology of rural creative entrepreneurs’ funded by CREATe, the Research Council's UK Centre for the Study of Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy.In all three cases, the research was theoretically and practically informed by the multi-sited ethnographies of cultural, creative and media work conducted by Moeran (Ethnography at Work, The Business of Ethnography) and Mould et al. Whilst the methodology for all three of my projects was ethnography, the methods utilised included interviews (n=23) – with interviewees drawn from across rural Scotland – participant and non-participant observation, and media and document analysis. Interviewees and study sites were accessed via snowball sampling, which was enabled by the measure of continuity between the three projects. This paper draws primarily on interview material and ethnographic ‘vignettes’. All individuals cited in the paper are anonymised in line with the University of Glasgow’s ethics guidelines.Cities, Creativity, and ‘Buzz’As noted earlier, cities are seen as the driving force behind the creative industries; and accordingly, much of the institutional infrastructure that supports the rural creative industries is modelled on urban systems of intervention. Cities are seen as breeding grounds for creativity by virtue of what Storper and Venables call their ‘buzz’ – consider, for example, the sheer numbers of creative practitioners that congregate in cities, the presence of art schools, work spaces and so on. Several of the creative practitioners I spoke to identified the lack of ‘buzz’ as one key difference between working in cities and working from rural places:It can be isolating out here. There are days when I miss art school, and my peers. I really valued their support and just the general chit chat and news. […] And having everything on your doorstep. (Visual artist, Argyll)Of course, rural creatives didn’t equate the ‘buzz’ of activity in cities with personal or professional creative success. Rather, they felt that developing a creative business was made easier by the fact that most funders and support agencies were based in Scotland’s Central Belt. The creatives resident there were able to take advantage of that proximity and the relationships that it enabled them to build, but also, the institutional landscape was supplemented by the creative ‘buzz’, which was difficult to quantify and impossible to replicate in rural areas.Negotiating the Funding and Support LandscapeI spoke to rural creative practitioners about whether the institutional infrastructure – in this case, relevant policy at national and UK level, funding and support agencies, membership bodies etcetera – was adequate. A common perspective was that the institutional infrastructure was extremely complex, which acted as a barrier for creatives seeking funding and support:Everything works ok, the problem is that there’s so many different places to go to for advice, and so many different criteria that you have to meet if you wanted funding, and what’s your first port of call, and it’s just too complicated. I feel that as a rural artist I fall between the cracks […] am I a creative business, a rural creative business, or just a rural business? (Craftsperson, Shetland) Interviewees suggested that there were ‘gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure, caused not by the lack of appropriate policy, funders, or support agencies but rather by their proliferation and a sense of confusion about who to approach. Furthermore, funding agencies such as Creative Scotland have, in recent years, come under fire for the complexity of their funding and support systems:They have simplified their application process, but I just can’t be bothered trying to get anything out of Creative Scotland at the moment. I don’t find their support that useful and they directed me to Cultural Enterprise Office when I asked for advice on filling in the form and tailoring the application, and CEO were just so pushed for time, I couldn’t get a Skype with them. The issue with getting funding from anywhere is the teeny tiny likelihood of getting money, coupled with how time-consuming the application process is. So for now, I’m just trying to be self-sufficient without asking for any development funds. But I am not sure how sustainable that is. (Craftsperson, Skye, interview) There was a sense that ‘what works’ to enable urban creative practitioners to develop their practice is not necessarily sufficient to help rural creatives. Because most policymakers, funders and support bodies are based in the Central Belt, rural creatives feel that the challenges they face are poorly understood. One arts administrator summed up why, statingthe problem is that people in the Central Belt don’t get what we’re dealing with up here, unless they’ve actually lived here. The remoteness, poor transport links, internet and mobile access […] it impacts on your ability to develop your business. If I want to attend a course, some organisations will pay travel and accommodation. But they don’t account for the fact that if I travel from Eigg, I’ll need to work around the ferry times, which might mean two extra nights’ accommodation plus the cost of travel … we’re excluded from opportunities because of our location. (Arts administrator, the Small Isles) A further issue identified by several participants in this research is that funding and support agencies Scotland-wide tend to work to standardised definitions of the creative industries that privilege high-growth sectors (see Luckman). This led to many heritage and craft businesses feeling excluded. One local authority stakeholder told me,exactly what the creative industries are, well that might be obvious on paper but real life is a bit more complicated. Where do we put a craftsperson whose craft work is done in her spare time but pays just enough to stop her needing a second job? How do we tell people like this, who say they are in the creative industries, that they aren’t actually according to this criteria or that criteria? (Local authority stakeholder, Shetland, interview)Creating Virtual ‘Buzz’? The Potential of ICTsAccording to 2015 OFCOM figures (10-12), in rural Scotland 85.9% of households can receive broadband, and 6.3% can receive superfast. The Scottish Government’s ambition is to deliver superfast broadband to up to 90 per cent of premises in Scotland by March 2016, and to extend this to 95 per cent by 2017. Whilst the current landscape as regards broadband provision is far from ideal, there are signs that improved provision is profoundly affecting the way that rural creatives develop their practice, and the way they engage with the institutional infrastructure set up to support them.At an industry event run by HIE in July 2015, a diverse panel of rural creatives spoke of how they exploited the possibilities associated with improved ICTs in order to offset some of the aforementioned problems of working from rural and remote areas. As the event was conducted under Chatham House rules, the following is adapted from field notes,It was clear from the panel and the Q&A that followed that improved ICTs meant that creatives could access training and support in new ways–online courses and training materials, webinars, and one-on-one Skype coaching, training and mentoring. Whilst of course most people would prefer face-to-face contact in this respect, the willingness of training providers to offer online solutions was appreciated, and most of the creatives on the panel (and many in the audience) had taken advantage of these partial solutions. The rural creatives on the panel also detailed the tactics that they used in order to ‘patch the gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure:There were four things that emerged from the panel discussion, Q&A and subsequent conversations I had on how technology benefited rural creatives: peer support, proximity to decision-makers, marketing and sales, and heritage and provenance.In terms of peer support, the panel felt that improved connectivity allowed them to access ‘virtual’ peer support through the internet. This was particularly important in terms of seeking advice regarding funding, business support and training, generating new creative ideas, and seeking emotional support from others who were familiar with the strains of running a creative business.Rural creatives found that social media (in particular) meant that they had a closer relationship with ‘distant’ decision-makers. They felt able to join events via livestreaming, and took advantage of hash tagging to take part in events, ‘policy hacks’ and consultations. Attendees I spoke to also mentioned that prominent Government ministers and other decision-makers had a strong Twitter presence and made it clear that they were at times ‘open’ to direct communication. In this way, rural creatives felt that they could ‘make their voices heard’ in new ways.In terms of marketing and sales, panel members found social media invaluable in terms of building online ‘presence’. All of the panel members sold services and products through dedicated websites (and noted that improved broadband speeds and 3G meant that these websites were increasingly sophisticated, allowing them to upload photographs and video clips, or act as client ‘portals’), however they also sought out other local creatives, or creatives working in the same sector in order to build visible networks on social media such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. This echoes an interview I conducted with a designer from Orkney, who suggested that these online networks allowed designers to build a rapport with customers, but also to showcase their products and build virtual ‘buzz’ around their work (and the work of others) in the hope their designs would be picked up by bloggers, the fashion press and stylists.The designer on the panel also noted that social media allowed her to showcase the provenance of her products. As she spoke I checked her Twitter and Instagram feeds, as well as the feeds of other designers she was linked to; a large part of their ‘advertising’ through these channels entailed giving followers an insight into life on the islands. The visual nature of these media also allowed them to document how local histories of making had influenced their practice, and how their rural location had influenced their work. It struck me that this was a really effective way to capture consumers’ imaginations. As we can see, improved ICTs had a substantial impact on rural creatives’ practice. Not only did several of the panel members suggest that improved ICTs changed the nature of the products that they could produce (by enabling them to buy in different materials and tools, and cultivate longer and more complex supply chains), they also noted that improved ICTs enabled them to cultivate new markets, to build stronger networks and to participate more fully in discussions with ‘distant’ policymakers and decision makers. Furthermore, ICTs were seen as acting as a proxy for ‘buzz’ for rural creatives, that is, face-to-face communication was still preferred, but savvy use of ICTs went some way to mitigating the problems of a rural location. This extends Storper and Venables’s conceptualisation of the idea, which understands ‘buzz’ as the often-intangible benefits of face-to-face contact.Problematically however, as Townsend et al. state, “rural isolation is amplified by the technological landscape, with rural communities facing problems both in terms of broadband access technologies and willingness or ability of residents to adopt these” (Enhanced Broadband Access 5). As such, the development activities of rural creatives are hampered by poor provision and a slow ‘roll out’ of broadband and mobile coverage. ConclusionsThis paper is concerned with recent attempts to develop the rural creative economy in Scotland. The paper can be read in relation to a small but expanding body of work that seeks to understand the distinctive formation of the rural creative industries across Europe and elsewhere (Bell and Jayne), and how these can best be developed and supported (White). Recent, targeted intervention in the rural creative industries speaks to concerns about the emergence of a ‘two tier’ Europe, with remote and sparsely-populated rural regions with narrow economic bases falling behind more resilient cities and city-regions (Markusen and Gadwa; Wiggering et al.), yet exactly how the rural creative industries function and can be further developed is an underdeveloped research area.In order to contribute to this body of work, this paper has sketched out some of the problems associated with recent attempts to develop the creative economy in rural Scotland. On a Scotland-wide scale, there is a proliferation of policies, funding bodies, and support agencies designed to organise and regulate the creative economy. In rural areas, there is also an ‘overlap’ between Scotland-wide bodies and rural-specific bodies, meaning that many rural creatives feel as if they ‘fall through the cracks’ in terms of funding and support. Additionally, rural creatives noted that Central Belt-based funders and support agencies struggled to fully understand the difficulties associated with making a living from a rural location.The sense of being distant from decision makers and isolated in terms of practice meant that many rural creatives took it upon themselves to develop the creative economy ‘from below’. The creatives that I spoke to had an array of ‘tactics’ that they used, some of which I have detailed here. In this short paper I have focused on one issue articulated within interviews – the idea of exploiting ICTs in order to build stronger networks between creatives and between creatives and decision makers within funding bodies and support agencies. Problematically, however, it was recognised that these creative-led initiatives could only do so much to mitigate the effects of a cluttered, piecemeal funding and support landscape.My research suggests that as it stands, ‘importing’ models from urban contexts is alienating and frustrating for rural creatives and targeted, rural-specific intervention is required. Research demonstrates that creative practitioners often seek to bring about social and cultural impact through their work, rather than engaging in creative activities merely for economic gain (McRobbie Be Creative, Rethinking Creative Economies; Waitt and Gibson). Whilst this is true of creatives in both urban and rural areas, my research suggests that this is particularly important to rural creatives, who see themselves as contributing economically, social and culturally to the development of the communities within which they are embedded (see Duxbury and Campbell; Harvey et al.). ‘Joined up’ support for this broad-based set of aims would greatly benefit rural creatives and maximise the potential of the rural creative industries.ReferencesAndersson, Martin, and Magnus Henrekson. "Local Competiveness Fostered through Local Institutions for Entrepreneurship." Research Institute on Industrial Economics Work Paper Series (2014), 0-57. Argent, Neil, Matthew Tonts, Roy Jones and John Holmes. “A Creativity-Led Rural Renaissance? Amenity-Led Migration, the Creative Turn and the Uneven Development of Rural Australia.” Applied Geography 44 (2013): 88-98.Bell, David, and Mark Jayne. "The Creative Countryside: Policy and Practice in the UK Rural Cultural Economy." Journal of Rural Studies 26.3 (2010): 209-18.Centre for Economic and Business Research. The Contribution of the Arts and Culture to the National Economy. London: CEBR, 2013. 1-13.Duxbury, Nancy, and Heather Campbell. “Developing and Revitalizing Rural Communities through Arts and Culture.” Small Cities Imprint 3.1 (2011): 1-7.Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. London: Basic Books, 2002.Gibson, Chris. “Cultural Economy: Achievements, Divergences, Future Prospects.” Geographical Research 50.3 (2012): 282-290.Gibson, Chris, and Jason Connell. “The Role of Festivals in Drought-Affected Australian Communities.” Event Management 19.4 (2015): 445-459.Harvey, David, Harriet Hawkins, and Nicola Thomas. "Thinking Creative Clusters beyond the City: People, Places and Networks." Geoforum 43.3 (2012): 529-39.Luckman, Susan. Locating Cultural Work: The Politics and Poetics of Rural, Regional and Remote Creativity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.McRobbie, Angela. Be Creative! London: Polity, 2016.———. “Rethinking Creative Economies as Radical Social Enterprise.” Variant 41 (2011): 32–33 Moeran, Brian. Ethnography at Work. London: A&C Black, 2007.———. The Business of Ethnography. London: Berg, 2005.Mould, Oliver, Tim Vorley, and Kai Liu. “Invisible Creativity? Highlighting the Hidden Impact of Freelancing in London's Creative Industries.” European Planning Studies 12 (2014): 2436-55.Nesta. Creative Industries and Rural Innovation. London: Nesta, 2007.———. A Manifesto for the Creative Economy. London: Nesta, 2013.Oakley, Kate. "Good Work? Rethinking Cultural Entrepreneurship." Handbook of Management and Creativity (2014): 145-59.O'Brien, Dave, and Peter Matthews. After Urban Regeneration: Communities, Policy and Place. London: Policy Press, 2015.Office of the Communications Regulator. Communications Market Report 2015. London: OFCOM, 2015. i-431.Schlesinger, Philip. “Foreword.” In Bob Last, Creativity, Value and Money. Glasgow: Cultural Enterprise Office, forthcoming 2016. 1-2.Schlesinger, Philip, Melanie Selfe, and Ealasaid Munro. Curators of Cultural Enterprise: A Critical Analysis of a Creative Business Intermediary. London: Springer, 2015. 1-134.Storper, Michael, and Anthony J. Venables. "Buzz: Face-to-Face Contact and the Urban Economy." Journal of Economic Geography 4.4 (2004): 351-70.Townsend, Leanne, Arjun Sathiaseelan, Gorry Fairhurst, and Claire Wallace. "Enhanced Broadband Access as a Solution to the Social and Economic Problems of the Rural Digital Divide." Local Economy 28.6 (2013): 580-95.Townsend, Leanne, Claire Wallace, Alison Smart, and Timothy Norman. “Building Virtual Bridges: How Rural Micro-Enterprises Develop Social Capital in Online and Face-to-Face Settings.” Sociologia Ruralis 56.1 (2016): 29-47.Waitt, Gordon, and Chris Gibson. “The Spiral Gallery: Non-Market Creativity and Belonging in an Australian Country Town.” Journal of Rural Studies 30 (2013): 75-85.White, Pauline. "Creative Industries in a Rural Region: Creative West: The Creative Sector in the Western Region of Ireland." Creative Industries Journal 3.1 (2010): 79-88.

Abstract:

Innovation in family firms is still a controversial issue within the academic community and poses some unique challenges for family business owners and managers. This special issue on innovation in family firms results from the cooperation of both academic and business guest editors, in a pioneering initiative that is not usual in academic journals. Indeed, a key feature of this Special Issue has been the collaboration with two family business leaders, who have been involved in the editorial process together with the academics. The two business editors that we involved are Antonio Gallardo, Vicepresident of Almiralland former director of FBN-Family Business Network,andIgnacio Osborne, CEO of the Osborne Groupand Chairman of the Spanish Family Firm Institute. In order to introduce the six papers that make up this special issue on innovation in family firms, we as academic editors are pleased to include some comments from the business editors that emerged during our interactions with the aim to make a step forward toward bridging the gap between research and practice on family business innovation, acknowledging the different perspectives and approaches adopted by academics and practitioners. As the business editor Mr. Osborne points: “Innovation issues in family firms are nowadays more important than ever, due to the rapid developments that are occurring in the business world and its corresponding technologies”. Despite being a topic analyzed by a number of authors over time (Feranita, Kotlar and De Massis, 2017; Aparicio, Iturralde and Sánchez-Famoso, 2020 in this issue; Chrisman, Chua, De Massis, Frattini and Wright, 2015), the study of innovation in family business still requires a greater volume of research to provide answers to the needs of family businesses. The distinctive nature of family firms results in a complex influence on the innovation process (De Massis, Frattini and Lichtenthaler, 2013), which is reflected in mixed research findings. For instance, the conclusions of the published research offer sometimes contradictory results, since family businesses can be considered innovative (Aronoff, 1998; Craig and Moores, 2006) or conservative (Sharma, Chrisman, y Chua, 1997; Zahra, Hayton y Salvato, 2004; Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007), with several studies that can support whatever of the two options. Family businesses present a number of characteristics that, a priori, seem to favor innovation, such as long-term orientation (Tagiuri and Davis, 1996; Ward and Aronoff, 1994), the desire for continuity through the following generations (Miroshnychenko et al., 2020; Gallo, 1995), patient capital (De Massis, Audretsch, Uhlaner and Kammerlander, 2018; Sirmon and Hitt, 2003), and the long tenure of their main leaders (Lorenzo, 2020). The replacement of the prior generation by the next generation implies the access of younger people to the leadership of the company, who also often present a greater level of qualification (De Massis et al., 2008; Cabrera-Suárez, 2011). Young and qualified leaders would provide a new momentum to the firm, by means of the renewal of the firm (Núñez-Cacho and Lorenzo, 2020). Likewise, the successors receive an important legacy by means of the values of the family business (Erdogan et al., 2020), such as effort, perseverance, austerity, excellence, long-term orientation and entrepreneurial spirit, as basic foundations of their way of understanding business activity (Bermejo, 2008). Accordingly, the new generation managers could be in the best conditions to reinvent the company, since they know the business from within and they also provide the new vision of a person with a working life ahead. Another factor that favors the renewal impulse of the next generation is the familial support to carry out a prolonged tenure over time, which will not be as conditioned by short-term results as in other types of companies, by the so-called patient capital (Sirmon and Hitt, 2003) of the family business (Lorenzo, 2020). But, even if these ideal conditions are met in a specific family firm, it is not guaranteed that the company realizes the innovation it needs. Therefore, it is needed to shed more light about the determinants and conditions for innovation. The editors of this special issue selected a number of papers to reflect the state-of-the-art on this topic, indicating some of the most promising research lines on innovation. According to the business editor Mr. Gallardo, “A very important aspect emerging from this special issue is that the papers published in it reveal that external contributions to the internal know-how of the family and the business are often vital to help produce the changes needed by a family firm for innovation to take place”. Innovation in the family business has been a phenomenon of great interest to researchers, especially in the last decade. This is highlighted in the article that opens this special issue by presenting a complete bibliometric review of the literature on innovation in family businesses. Generally, researchers have noted that the influence of the family is the factor that makes this type of businesses different from the other ones (Habbershon and Williams, 1999; Lorenzo and Núñez-Cacho, 2012). However, in order to conclude that this is really true, it is necessary to identify the nature of these differences and determine how and why they affect the innovative behavior of the family business. The paper Innovation on family businesses: A holistic bibliometric(Aparicio, Iturralde and Sánchez-Famoso, 2020) offers an overview of the research field through an analysis of 207 articles that were published between 1994 and 2017. The authors complement other recent reviews such as those by Feranita, Kotlar and De Massis (2017) and Calabrò, Vecchiarini, Gast, Campopiano, De Massis and Kraus (2019), and reflect about the take-off of research on innovation that takes place since 2009. In the study two differentiated periods are highlighted: An initial one that covers the years 1994 to 2009, and one of expansion from 2010 to 2017. In addition, they identify the most influential journals, the most referenced articles, the most productive scholars -namely, De Massis, Frattini, Craig, Chrisman, Fang, Kotlar and Nordqvist appear as the most productive and referenced ones- and the main lines of research developed, providing a clear and synthetic map of innovation research in family businesses today. This paper approaches innovation from a more theoretical perspective, and also presents the lines of research that are currently being developed. These lines include the internal factors of the family business and its influence on innovation, as well as external factors, among others advances in research in the subject. The paper An Analysis of Open Innovation Determinants: The Case Study of Singapore based Family owned Enterprises, by Koh, Kong and Timperio (2020, this issue) analyzes the drivers of open innovation by studying cases of family businesses in Singapore. The authors highlight the external determinants and catalysts of innovation projects, such as family and business culture, access to external funds, government support for initiatives, market dynamics and partnership between companies. In addition to these six external determinants, there are two other factors that have a great influence on open innovation. First, family capital, which is the main source of financing for innovative initiatives. Second, a strong external network, supported by Singapore's legal and regulatory framework that fosters innovation, promotes the development of an enabling business environment so that the spirit of innovation can truly thrive. Most of the surveyed companies’ managers mentioned process innovation as the most critical aspect, and also organizational innovation. Process innovation is considered superior by the companies included in the sample due to their capabilities to drive product innovation, marketing and organizational structure (and people). Organizational innovation is also considered of utmost importance, due to the need to adopt technologies such as digitalization, robotics or automation, which require an adequate organizational structure. Some ideas from the surveyed managers highlight these statements, like: "The correct processes create the necessary conditions to shape the products, as well as the marketing and organization structures," as well as "Having cutting-edge processes underway is a key differentiator." This study also reflects the need to establish new financing mechanisms adapted to the peculiarities of innovation processes. External capital injection and stimulus policies are necessary, although not sufficient, since they must be combined with the determinants of the internal functioning of family businesses. The relevance of the external network is also highlighted in the paper Collaborative innovation in the family SME: conceptualization, goals, and success factors, by Arzubiaga, Maseda, Uribarri and Palma Ruiz (2020, this issue), which analyzes the strategy of collaborative innovation that seeks the creation of knowledge, new product designs and Improving the efficiency of the production process. Among the conditions of collaborative innovation, four groups stand out: The composition of the management team (in terms of family members percentage and number of generations involved in management), abilities (cognitive factors, absorption capacity and trajectory in innovation), attitudes, and legacy preservation, (referring to socio-emotional wealth and internal behavior). These factors of small and medium family businesses play a crucial role in the successful design and implementation of collaborative innovation. The main contributions of this paper can be summarized in the need for establish solid bases to deepen in the future the study of collaborative innovation. Moreover, a second contribution refers to the identification of the distinguishing characteristics of family SMEs. Arzubiaga, Maseda, Uribarri and Palma Ruiz (2020, this issue) also propose the analysis of the possible moderating effects of firm size and the sector to refine the impact of the variables in this model, looking to achieve excellence in collaborative innovation. As business reviewer, Mr. Osbornehave highlighted collaborative innovation as one of the relevant issues in order to reinforce the role of innovation in their companies. Absorptive capacity is another aspect of great interest to researchers. There are numerous factors that condition it, some of them are features of the family character that make the behavior of family businesses paradoxical (Kotlar et al. 2020). The paper titled A mediating model of innovative capacity between absorptive capacity and family business performanceby Hernández-Perlines, Ariza-Montes and Araya-Castillo (2020, this issue) addresses the issue about absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity is related to the identification, assimilation and exploitation of new knowledge by the company. Those family businesses that have these capabilities improve their performance. In addition, this effect is enhanced by the innovative capacity of the company, which acts as a mediator between absorption capacity and the company's performance, reinforcing this relationship. Thus, family business managers should focus their efforts on providing their organizations with the necessary skills to absorb and exploit knowledge. This will be easier if the company has developed innovative capabilities. In this sense, the business editor Mr. Gallardo points that: “There is also the possibility of establishing an advisory council with external collaborators that serves as a contrast to the company's board, in which oftentimes the weight of the family is too decisive.” The last two papers in this special issue address the role of family involvement in relation to innovation. Does too much love hinder innovation? Family involvement and firms' innovativeness in family-owned Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), by Filippo Ferrari (2020, this issue) reflects on the role of family cohesion and its flexibility in the process of innovation, drawing upon the Olson Circumplex model (Olson, 2000) which is applied in a sample of Italian family businesses. The study indicates that unbalanced families show the lowest levels of innovation, although family cohesion and flexibility do not show a significant correlation with the overall level of organizational innovation. Flexibility shows a positive correlation with the process and behavioral innovation, which can be explained by the demand for new forms and organizational routines to deal with process innovation. Here the author suggests some human resources practices that promote flexibility, such as labor rotation (Ortega, 2001), or the development of a horizontal internal career (Ichniowsky et al. 1996, 1997, 1999). Families that lack cohesion show a negative correlation with strategic innovation and process innovation. Ferrari (2020, this issue) considers as disconnected family systems those in which family members are not cohesive and have little family loyalty. On the other hand, innovation in processes is encouraged with new ideas through contributions in terms of new ways of doing things. According to the authors, the Olson Circumplex model (Olson, 2000) offers a framework that can diagnose the extent to which family systems are balanced and how the effects of balanced or unbalanced family dynamics can affect the family business (Daspit et al. 2018). Business reviewers were especially interested on the conclusions of this paper, and also pointed that it would be necessary more research on that kind of negative influences stemmed from lack of cohesion within the business family. Entrepreneurial orientation and product innovation: The moderating role of family involvement in management, by Fredyma, Ruiz Palomo and Diéguez (2020, this issue) addresses a classic concept closely linked to the study of innovation such as entrepreneurial orientation. The relationships between this variable and product innovation, incremental innovation and radical innovation are examined. The influence of family performance on the company is also analyzed. In their conclusions, Fredyma, Ruiz Palomo and Diéguez (2020, this issue) point out that family involvement weakens the positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation in product innovation, especially in case of radical innovation. Therefore, the family business must be aware of these weaknesses to correct them, professionalizing with non-family managers and including their participation in innovation decisions. This conclusion is stressed by both business editors, Mr. Osborne and Mr. Gallardo, who point out that: “Having a network of external collaborators, some of them generalists and others specialized in specific problems, is nowadays practically indispensable.” Finally, the academic editors sincerely appreciate the contributions of two prominent Spanish businessmen, who have contributed to enrich this special issue with a business perspective, which helps to overcome the division that is sometimes perceived between the academic world and the business one. Both Antonio Gallardo and Ignacio Osborne represent the entrepreneurial vision that they have been able to maintain in their families and in their companies for generations. We all know how challenging it is for a family business to be entrepreneurial across generations (e.g., De Massis, Eddleston and Rovelli, 2020). Last but now least, we want to express our gratitude to the editor of the European Journal of Family Business, Professor Vanesa Guzmán for her collaboration and contributions. The Osborne Group, founded in 1772, is one of the oldest family businesses in Europe. The group evolved from the original business of raising and exporting wines from Jerez to a wider food and beverage group which includes quality wines from various Spanish designations of origin, premium spirits, and products derived from Iberian pork, with a growing international acceptance, entering markets as demanding as China. Ignacio Osborne, a member of the sixth family generation, is the current president of the company since 2017, after 21 years as CEO. The company has been especially innovative in marketing, creating the symbol of the bull in the 50s, which has become a symbol that identifies the Spanish, transcending its initial origin as a reference for the winery. Almirallis a pharmaceutical company founded in 1943. It is currently run by the second generation, which are giving way to the third. Although innovation is an essential requirement to compete in pharmaceutics, Almirall has managed to develop some well-known products in Spain, as Almax and Cleboril, becoming one of most innovative companies in the industry. Antonio Gallardo is honorary vice president of his company, which he chaired for 26 years. In addition, he was also president of the Family Council and the Family Office, as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the Family Business Network and vice president of the Family Business Institute.

Abstract:

In recent years ecological thinking has been applied to a range of social, cultural, and aesthetic systems, including performing arts as a living system of policy makers, producers, organisations, artists, and audiences. Ecological thinking is systems-based thinking which allows us to see the performing arts as a complex and protean ecosystem; to explain how elements in this system act and interact; and to evaluate its effects on Australia’s social fabric over time. According to Gallasch, ecological thinking is “what we desperately need for the arts.” It enables us to “defeat the fragmentary and utilitarian view of the arts that dominates, to make connections, to establish overviews of the arts that can be shared and debated” (Gallasch NP). The ecological metaphor has featured in debates about the performing arts in Brisbane, Australia, in the last two or three years. A growing state capital on Australia’s eastern seaboard, Brisbane is proud of its performing arts culture. Its main theatre organisations include the state flagship Queensland Theatre Company; the second major presenter of adapted and new text-based performances La Boite Theatre Company; venues which support local and touring performances such as the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Brisbane Powerhouse; emerging talent incubator Metro Arts; indigenous companies like Kooemba Jdarra; independent physical theatre and circus companies such as Zen Zen Zo and Circa; and contemporary play-producing company 23rd Productions (cf. Baylis 3). Brisbane aspires to be a cultural capital in Australia, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific (Gill). Compared to Australia’s southern capitals Sydney and Melbourne, however, Brisbane does have a relatively low level of performing arts activity across traditional and contemporary theatre, contemporary performance, musicals, circus, and other genres of performance. It has at times been cast as a piecemeal, potentially unsustainable arts centre prone to losing talent to other states. In 2009, John Baylis took up these issues in Mapping Queensland Theatre, an Arts Queensland-funded survey designed to map practices in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly, and to provide a platform to support future policy-making. This report excited debate amongst artists who, whilst accepting the tenor of Baylis’s criticisms, also lamented the lack of nuanced detail and contextualised relationships its map of Queensland theatre provided. In this paper we propose a new approach to mapping Brisbane’s and Queensland’s theatre that extends Baylis’s “value chain” into a “value ecology” that provides a more textured picture of players, patterns, relationships, and activity levels. A “value chain” approach emphasises linear relationships and gaps between production, distribution, and consumption in a specific sector of the economy. A “value ecology” approach goes further by examining a complex range of rhizomatic relationships between production, distribution, and consumption infrastructure and how they influence each other within a sector of the economy such as the performing arts. Our approach uses a “value ecology” model adapted from Hearn et al. and Cherbo et al. to map and interpret information from the AusStage performing arts database, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and other sources such as previews, reviews, and an ongoing local blogosphere debate. Building upon Baylis’s work, our approach produces literal and conceptual maps of Queensland’s performing arts as they change over time, with analysis of support, infrastructure, and relationships amongst government, arts organisations, artists, and audiences. As debate on Mapping Queensland Theatre gives way to more considered reflection, and as Baylis develops a follow-up report, our approach captures snapshots of Queensland’s performing arts before, during, and after such policy interventions. It supports debate about how Queensland artists might manage their own sustainability, their own ability to balance artistic, cultural, and economic factors that influence their work in a way that allows them to survive long term, and allows policy makers, producers, and other players to better understand, articulate, assess, and address criticisms. The Ecological Metaphor In recent years a number of commentators have understood the performing arts as an “ecology,” a system characterised by interacting elements, engagements, flows, blockages, breaks, and breakthroughs whose “health” (synonymous in this context with sustainability) depends on relationships between players within and without the system. Traditionally, performing arts policies in Australia have concentrated on singular elements in a system. They have, as Hunt and Shaw argue, “concentrate[d] on individual companies or an individual artist’s practice rather than the sector as a whole” (5, cf. 43). The focus has been on how to structure, support, and measure the success—the aesthetic and social benefits—of individual training institutions, artists, administrators, and arts organisations. The “health” of singular elements has been taken as a sign of the “health” of the system. An ecologies approach, by contrast, concentrates on engagements, energies, and flows as signs of health, and thus sustainability, in a system. Ecological thinking enables policy makers, practitioners, and scholars to go beyond debate about the presence of activity, the volume of activity, and the fate of individual agents as signs of the health or non-health of a system. In an ecologies context, level of activity is not the only indicator of health, and low activity does not necessarily equate with instability or unsustainability. An ecological approach is critical in Brisbane, and in Queensland more broadly, where attempts to replicate the nature or level of activity in southern capitals are not necessarily the best way to shore up the “health” of our performing arts system in our own unique environment. As the locus of our study Queensland is unique. While Queensland has 20% of Australia’s population (OESR; ABS ‘ Population Projections’), and is regularly recognised as a rapidly growing “lifestyle superstate” which values innovation, creativity, and cultural infrastructure (Cunningham), it is still home to significantly less than 20% of Australia’s performing arts producers, and many talented people continue to migrate to the south to pursue career opportunities (Baylis 4, 28). An ecologies approach can break into oft-cited anxieties about artist, activity, and audience levels in Brisbane, and in Queensland, and create new ideas about what a “healthy” local performing arts sector might look like. This might start to infuse some of the social media commentary that currently tends to emphasise the gaps in the sector. Ecologies are complex systems. So, as Costanza says, when we consider ecosystem health, we must consider the overall performance of the system, including its ability to deal with “external stress” (240) from macro-level political, legal, social, cultural, economic, or technological currents that change the broader society this particular sector or ecosystem sits within. In Brisbane, there is a growing population and a desire to pursue a cultural capital tag, but the distinctive geographic, demographic, and behavioural characteristics of Brisbane’s population—and the associated ‘stresses’, conditions, or constraints—mean that striving to replicate patterns of activity seen in Sydney or Melbourne may not be the straightest path to a “healthy” or “sustainable” sector here. The attitudes of the players and the pressures influencing the system are different, so this may be like comparing rainforests with deserts (Costanza), and forgetting that different elements and engagements are in fact “healthy” in different ecosystems. From an ecologies point of view, policy makers and practitioners in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly might be well advised to stop trying to match Sydney or Melbourne, and to instead acknowledge that a “healthy” ecosystem here may look different, and so generate policy, subsidy, and production systems to support this. An ecological approach can help determine how much activity is in fact necessary to ensure a healthy and sustainable local performing arts sector. It can, in other words, provide a fresh approach that inspires new ideas and strategies for sector sustainability. Brisbane, Baylis and the Blogosphere Debate The ecological metaphor has clearly captured the interest of policy makers as they consider how to make Queensland’s performing arts more sustainable and successful. For Arts Queensland: The view of the sector as a complex and interdependent ‘ecosystem’ is forging new thinking, new practices and new business models. Individual practitioners and organisations are rethinking where they sit within the broader ecology, and what they contribute to the health and vitality of the sector, and how they might address the gaps in services and skills (12). This view informed the commissioning of Mapping Queensland Theatre, an assessment of Queensland’s theatre sector which offers a framework for allocation of resources under the Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. It also offers a framework for negotiation with funded organisations to ensure “their activities and focus support a harmonious ecology” (Baylis 3) in which all types and levels of practice (emerging, established, touring, and so on) are functioning well and are well represented within the overall mix of activities. Utilising primary and secondary survey sources, Mapping Queensland Theatre seeks: to map individuals, institutions, and organisations who have a stake in developing Queensland’s professional theatre sector; and to apply a “value chain” model of production from supply (training, creation, presentation, and distribution) to demand (audiences) to identify problems and gaps in Queensland’s professional theatre sector and recommend actions to address them. The report is critical of the sector. Baylis argues that “the context for great theatre is not yet in place in Queensland … therefore works of outstandingly high quality will be rare” (28).Whilst acknowledging a lack of ready answers about how much activity is required in a vibrant theatre culture, Baylis argues that “comparisons are possible” (27) and he uses various data sets to compare numbers of new Australian productions in different states. He finds that “despite having 20% of the Australian population, [Queensland] generates a dramatically lower amount of theatre activity” (4, cf. 28). The reason, according to Baylis (20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 40-41, 44), is that there are gaps in the “value chain” of Queensland theatre, specifically in: Support for the current wave of emerging and independent artistsSpace for experimentation Connections between artists, companies, venues and festivals, between and within regional centres, and between Queensland companies and their (inter)national peers Professional development for producers to address the issue of market distributionAudience development “Queensland lacks a critical mass of theatre activity to develop a sustainable theatre culture” (48), and the main gap is in pathways for independent artists. Quality new work does not emerge, energy dissipates, and artists move on. The solution, for Baylis, is to increase support for independent companies (especially via co-productions with mainstage companies), to improve (inter)national touring, and to encourage investment in audience development. Naturally, Queensland’s theatre makers responded to this report. Responses were given, for example, in inaugural speeches by new Queensland Theatre Company director Wesley Enoch and new La Boite Theatre Company director David Berthold, in the media, and in blogosphere commentary on a range of articles on Brisbane performing arts in 2010. The blogosphere debate in particular raged for months and warrants more detailed analysis elsewhere. For the purposes of this paper, though, it is sufficient to note that blogosphere debate about the health of Queensland theatre culture acknowledged many of the deficits Baylis identified and called for: More leadershipMore government supportMore venuesMore diversityMore audience, especially for risky work, and better audience engagementMore jobs and retention of artists Whilst these responses endorse Baylis’s findings and companies have since conceived programs that address Baylis’s criticisms (QTC’s introduction of a Studio Season and La Boite’s introduction of an Indie program in 2010 for example) a sense of frustration also emerged. Some, like former QTC Chair Kate Foy, felt that “what’s really needed in the theatre is a discussion that breaks out from the old themes and encourages fresh ideas—approaches to solving whatever problems are perceived to exist in ‘the system’.” For commentators like Foy the blogosphere debate enacted a kind of ritual rehearsal of an all-too-familiar set of concerns: inadequate and ill-deployed funding, insufficient venues, talent drain, and an impoverished local culture of theatre going. “Value Chains” versus “Value Ecologies” Why did responses to this report demand more artists, more arts organisations, more venues, and more activities? Why did they repeat demands for more government-subsidised venues, platforms, and support rather than drive toward new seed- or non- subsidised initiatives? At one level, this is to do with the report’s claims: it is natural for artists who have been told quality work is “rare” amongst them to point to lack of support to achieve success. At another level, though, this is because—as useful as it has been for local theatre makers—Baylis’s map is premised on a linear chain from training, to first productions, to further developed productions (involving established writers, directors, designers and performers), to opportunities to tour (inter)nationally, etc. It provides a linear image of a local performing arts sector in which there are individuals and institutions with potential, but specific gaps in the production-distribution-consumption chain that make it difficult to deliver work to target markets. It emphasises gaps in the linear pathway towards “stability” of financial, venue, and audience support and thus “sustainability” over a whole career for independent artists and the audiences they attract. Accordingly, asking government to plug the gaps through elements added to the system (venues, co-production platforms, producer hubs, subsidy, and entrepreneurial endeavours) seems like a logical solution. Whilst this is true, it does not tell the whole story. To generate a wider story, we need to consider: What the expected elements in a “healthy” ecosystem would be (e.g. more versus alternative activity);What other aesthetic, cultural, or economic pressures affect the “health” of an ecosystem;Why practices might need to cycle, ebb, and flow over time in a “healthy” ecosystem. A look at the way La Boite works before, during, and after Baylis’s analysis of Brisbane theatre illustrates why attention to these elements is necessary. A long-running company which has made the transition from amateur to professional to being a primary developer of new Australian work in its distinctive in-the-round space, La Boite has recently shifted its strategic position. A focus on text-based Australian plays has given way to adapted, contemporary, and new work in a range of genres; regular co-productions with companies in Brisbane and beyond; and an “Indie” program that offers other companies a venue. This could be read as a response to Baylis’s recommendation: the production-distribution-consumption chain gap for Brisbane’s independents is plugged, the problem is solved, the recommendation has led to the desired result. Such a reading might, though, overlook the range of pressures beyond Brisbane, beyond Queensland, and beyond the Baylis report that drive—and thus help, hinder, or otherwise effect—the shift in La Boite’s program strategies. The fact that La Boite recently lost its Australia Council funding, or that La Boite like all theatre companies needs co-productions to keep its venue running as costs increase, or that La Boite has rebranded to appeal to younger audiences interested in postdramatic, do-it-your-self or junkyard style aesthetics. These factors all influence what La Boite might do to sustain itself, and more importantly, what its long-term impact on Brisbane’s theatre ecology will be. To grasp what is happening here, and get beyond repetitive responses to anxieties about Brisbane’s theatre ecology, detail is required not simply on whether programs like La Boite’s “plugged the gap” for independent artists, but on how they had both predicted and unpredicted effects, and how other factors influenced the effects. What is needed is to extend mapping from a “value chain” to a full ”value ecology”? This is something Hearn et al. have called for. A value chain suggests a “single linear process with one stage leading to the next” (5). It ignores the environment and other external enablers and disregards a product’s relationship to other systems or products. In response they prefer a “value creating ecology” in which the “constellation of firms are [sic] dynamic and value flow is multi-directional and works through clusters of networks” (6). Whilst Hearn et al. emphasise “firms” or companies in their value creating ecology, a range of elements—government, arts organisations, artists, audiences, and the media as well as the aesthetic, social, and economic forces that influence them—needs to be mapped in the value creating ecology of the performing arts. Cherbo et al. provide a system of elements or components which, adapted for a local context like Brisbane or Queensland, can better form the basis of a value ecology approach to the way a specific performing arts community works, adapts, changes, breaks down, or breaks through over time. Figure 1 – Performing Arts Sector Map (adapted from Cherbo et. al. 14) Here, the performing arts sector is understood in terms of core artistic workers, companies, a constellation of generic and sector specific support systems, and wider social contexts (Cherbo et al. 15). Together, the shift from “value chain” to “value ecology” that Hearn et al. advocate, and the constellation of ecology elements that Cherbo et al. emphasise, bring a more detailed, dynamic range of relations into play. These include “upstream” production infrastructure (education, suppliers, sponsors), “downstream” distribution infrastructure (venues, outlets, agents), and overall public infrastructure. As a framework for mapping “value ecology” this model offers a more nuanced perspective on production, distribution, and consumption elements in an ecology. It allows for analysis of impact of interventions in dozens of different areas, from dozens of perspectives, and thus provides a more detailed picture of players, relationships, and results to support both practice and policy making around practice. An Aus-e-Stage Value Ecology To provide the more detailed, dynamic image of local theatre culture that a value ecology approach demands—to show players, relations between players, and context in all their complexity—we use the Aus-e-Stage Mapping Service, an online application that maps data about artists, arts organisations, and audiences across cityscapes/landscapes. We use Aus-e-Stage with data drawn from three sources: the AusStage database of over 50,000 entries on Australian performing arts venues, productions, artists, and reviews; the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on population; and the Local Government Area (LGA) maps the ABS uses to cluster populations. Figure 2 – Using AusStage Interface Figure 3 – AusStage data on theatre venues laid over ABS Local Government Area Map Figure 4 – Using Aus-e-Stage / AusStage to zoom in on Australia, Queensland, Brisbane and La Boite Theatre Company, and generate a list of productions, dates and details Aus-e-Stage produces not just single maps, but a sequential series of snapshots of production ecologies, which visually track who does what when, where, with whom, and for whom. Its sequences can show: The way artists, companies, venues, and audiences relate to each other;The way artists’ relationship to companies, venues, and audiences changes over time;The way “external stressors” changes such as policy, industrial, or population changes affect the elements, roles, and relationships in the ecology from that point forward. Though it can be used in combination with other data sources such as interviews, the advantage of AusStage data is that maps of moving ecologies of practice are based not on descriptions coloured by memory but clear, accurate program, preview, and review data. This allows it to show how factors in the environment—population, policy, infrastructure, or program shifts—effect the ecology, effect players in the ecology, and prompt players to adapt their type, level, or intensity of practice. It extends Baylis’s value chain into a full value ecology that shows the detail on how an ecology works, going beyond demands that government plug perceived gaps and moving towards data- and history- based decisions, ideas and innovation based on what works in Brisbane’s performing arts ecology. Our Aus-e-Stage mapping shows this approach can do a number of useful things. It can create sequences showing breaks, blockages, and absences in an individual or company’s effort to move from emerging to established (e.g. in a sudden burst of activity followed by nothing). It can create sequences showing an individual or company’s moves to other parts of Australia (e.g. to tour or to pursue more permanent work). It can show surprising spaces, relations, and sources of support artists use to further their career (e.g. use of an amateur theatre outside the city such as Brisbane Arts Theatre). It can capture data about venues, programs, or co-production networks that are more or less effective in opening up new opportunities for artists (e.g. moving small-scale experiments in Metro Arts’ “Independents” program to full scale independent productions in La Boite’s “Indie” program, its mainstage program, other mainstage programs, and beyond). It can link to program information, documentation, or commentary to compare anticipated and actual effects. It can lay the map dates and movements across significant policy, infrastructure, or production climate shifts. In the example below, for instance, Aus-e-Stage represents the tour of La Boite’s popular production of a new Australian work Zig Zag Street, based on the Brisbane-focused novel by Nick Earls about a single, twentysomething man’s struggles with life, love, and work. Figure 5 – Zig Zag Street Tour Map In the example below, Aus-e-Stage represents the movements not of a play but of a performer—in this case Christopher Sommers—who has been able to balance employment with new work incubator Metro Arts, mainstage and indie producer La Boite, and stage theatre company QTC with his role with independent theatre company 23rd Productions to create something more protean, more portfolio-based or boundary-less than a traditional linear career trajectory. Figure 6 – Christopher Sommers Network Map and Travel Map This value of this approach, and this technology, is clear. Which independents participate in La Boite Indie (or QTC’s “Studio” or “Greenroom” new work programs, or Metro’s emerging work programs, or others)? What benefits does it bring for artists, for independent companies, or for mainstage companies like La Boite? Is this a launching pad leading to ongoing, sustainable production practices? What do artists, audiences or others say about these launching pads in previews, programs, or reviews? Using Aus-e-Stage as part of a value ecology approach answers these questions. It provides a more detailed picture of what happens, what effect it has on local theatre ecology, and exactly which influences enabled this effect: precisely the data needed to generate informed debate, ideas, and decision making. Conclusion Our ecological approach provides images of a local performing arts ecology in action, drawing out filtered data on different players, relationships, and influencing factors, and thus extending examination of Brisbane’s and Queensland’s performing arts sector into useful new areas. It offers three main advances—first, it adopts a value ecology approach (Hearn et al.), second, it adapts this value ecology approach to include not just companies by all up- and down- stream players, supporters and infrastructure (Cherbo et. al.), and, thirdly, it uses the wealth of data available via Aus-e-Stage maps to fill out and filter images of local theatre ecology. It allows us to develop detailed, meaningful data to support discussion, debate, and development of ideas that is less likely to get bogged down in old, outdated, or inaccurate assumptions about how the sector works. Indeed, our data lends itself to additional analysis in a number of ways, from economic analysis of how shifts in policy influence productivity to sociological analysis of the way practitioners or practices acquire status and cultural capital (Bourdieu) in the field. Whilst descriptions offered here demonstrate the potential of this approach, this is by no means a finished exercise. Indeed, because this approach is about analysing how elements, roles, and relationships in an ecology shift over time, it is an ever-unfinished exercise. As Fortin and Dale argue, ecological studies of this sort are necessarily iterative, with each iteration providing new insights and raising further questions into processes and patterns (3). Given the number of local performing arts producers who have changed their practices significantly since Baylis’s Mapping Queensland Theatre report, and the fact that Baylis is producing a follow-up report, the next step will be to use this approach and the Aus-e-Stage technology that supports it to trace how ongoing shifts impact on Brisbane’s ambitions to become a cultural capital. This process is underway, and promises to open still more new perspectives by understanding anxieties about local theatre culture in terms of ecologies and exploring them cartographically. References Arts Queensland. Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2010. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Population Projections, Australia, 2006 to 2101.” Canberra: ABS (2008). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3222.0Main+Features12006%20to%202101?OpenDocument›. ——-. “Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2008-2009: Queensland.” Canberra: ABS (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3218.0Main%20Features62008-09?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3218.0&issue=2008-09&num=&view=›. Baylis, John. Mapping Queensland Theatre. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2009. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Ed. John G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood, 1986.241-58. Cherbo, Joni M., Harold Vogel, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski. “Towards an Arts and Creative Sector.” Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States. Ed. Joni M. Cherbo, Ruth A. Stewart and Margaret J. Wyszomirski. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 32-60. Costanza, Robert. “Toward an Operational Definition of Ecosystem Health”. Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management. Eds. Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton and Benjamin D. Haskell. Washington: Island Press, 1992. 239-56. Cunningham, Stuart. “Keeping Artistic Tempers Balanced.” The Courier Mail, 4 August (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/keeping-artistic-tempers-balanced/story-e6frerc6-1225901295328›. Gallasch, Keith. “The ABC and the Arts: The Arts Ecologically.” RealTime 61 (2004). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/61/7436›. Gill, Raymond. “Is Brisbane Australia’s New Cultural Capital?” Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/is-brisbane-australias-new-cultural-capital-20101015-16np5.html›. Fortin, Marie-Josée and Dale, Mark R.T. Spatial Analysis: A Guide for Ecologists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Foy, Kate. “Is There Anything Right with the Theatre?” Groundling. 10 January (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://katefoy.com/2010/01/is-there-anything-right-with-the-theatre/›. Hearn, Gregory N., Simon C. Roodhouse, and Julie M. Blakey. ‘From Value Chain to Value Creating Ecology: Implications for Creative Industries Development Policy.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 13 (2007). 20 June 2011 ‹http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15026/›. Hunt, Cathy and Phyllida Shaw. A Sustainable Arts Sector: What Will It Take? Strawberry Hills: Currency House, 2007. Knell, John. Theatre’s New Rules of Evolution. Available from Intelligence Agency, 2008. Office of Economic and Statistical Research. “Information Brief: Australian Demographic Statistics June Quarter 2009.” Canberra: OESR (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/queensland-by-theme/demography/briefs/aust-demographic-stats/aust-demographic-stats-200906.pdf›.

Abstract:

All we hear is radio gaga, radio googoo, radio blahblah Radio, what’s new? Radio, someone still loves you Queen, “Radio Gaga” Someone still loves radio—and more people are beginning to discover its online form, Webcasting, as an alternative to terrestrial radio stations. Online radio allows listeners to swap local radio fare for more exotic programming, turning everyday PCs into world receivers, and offers a large variety of special-interest Webcasts catering to very genre-specific tastes. (Spinner.com, one of the largest commercial Webcasters, offers some 175 channels from Abstract Beats to Zydeco, for example.) For independent music labels whose content would never be played on mainstream terrestrial radio, Webcasting has become a major source of exposure. Unlike filesharing, however, Webcasts remain largely ephemeral: no permanent copy of radio content can be created on the user’s computer unless authorised by the Webcaster, or unless users specifically seek out software like Streambox VCR which circumvents such restrictions. Yet in the U.S. the year 2002 saw a protracted battle for the future of webcasting, waged between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its royalty collection agency SoundExchange on one side, and a loose coalition of Webcasters on the other. Mirroring the sustained attack on filesharing services, the battle over Webcasting demonstrates once again the hardline position the RIAA has adopted in its dealings with new media music services. In the filesharing arena, we have seen the demise of early services such as Napster and their replacement with deliberately crippled, recording industry-run alternatives or more powerful underground services. In its approach to Webcasting, the RIAA similarly attempted to push through a solution that would have made Internet radio unaffordable to any but the major players in the industry. Its involvement in this fight provides a useful illustration of the shortcomings of the music industry’s strategy for dealing with new, Internet-based media. Casus Belli Prior to 2002, the battlelines had been drawn already. When the grandly named Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) became law in the U.S. in late October 1998, it introduced a requirement for royalties to be paid by online stations. Rates for such fees were to be determined according to a ‘willing buyer/willing seller’ model—in other words, they were expected to reflect what would be ‘standard’ fees in an established digital media market, as determined by an independent Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP). Once set, royalties dating back to the date of passage of the DMCA were then to be paid retroactively by Webcasters. While agreements over performing rights (royalties due to the authors of copyrighted material) resulted in a requirement for Webcasters to pay an average rate of around 3% of their annual revenue, no decision had yet been made about royalties for sound recordings (due to the actual performers of a specific piece) as late as 2001, raising fears of a significant backlog of accumulated fees for at least three years suddenly burdening an industry which had yet to prove its profitability. Some Webcasters even pre-emptively began pulling the plug on their channels (see e.g. Borland). The Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) on Webcasting held its deliberations on a royalty fee structure during the second half of 2001, with submissions by the key parties. The RIAA demanded a payment of around 0.4¢ per song/ per listener. By contrast the Digital Media Association, on behalf of Webcasters, offered 0.14¢ per song/per hour (regardless of the number of listeners). The CARP recommendation markedly reduced the RIAA’s proposed fees, but retained the suggested per song/per listener royalty structure. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington rejected this recommendation but replaced it with a virtually identical model of 0.07¢ per song/per listener for commercial Webcasters, or about 18% of the original RIAA rate (Copyright Office). This still meant significant royalty fees for Webcasters: assuming an average of 10 songs per hour and 100 listeners per channel at any one time, Webcasters broadcasting only one channel, 24 hours a day, would have to pay around $6,100 per year (and this retroactively back to 1998), even though this small audience would be unlikely to generate any income. This fee punished stations for becoming moderately popular, as increasing average audience to 1000 would increase payable royalties to $61,000, while profit might still prove elusive. This was prohibitively expensive for smaller, start-up players, and contributed to a growing list of Webcasters switching off their streams in the belief that they had lost their fight for survival. By contrast U.S. terrestrial radio stations are exempt altogether from paying any royalties to the RIAA because their work is seen as providing a ‘promotional service’ to the music industry. Examining the RIAA Strategy and Its Motives Any negotiator worth their salt will make an opening offer aimed at maximising the eventual outcome of the negotiation, so the initial RIAA demand of 0.4¢ per song/per listener should perhaps be seen as ambitious. Nonetheless, the RIAA’s entire strategy in this conflict seemed geared more towards the terminal frustration of hopeful Webcaster aspirations. The strongest evidence to suggest that the RIAA never negotiated in good faith stems from June 2002 comments by erstwhile Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban, who in 1999 was involved in negotiating a deal between his company (then newly acquired by Yahoo!) and the RIAA to set royalty rates for Broadcast.com streams. Cuban revealed that buyer and seller in this case were willing first and foremost to price out of the market any potential competition to Broadcast.com from smaller, start-up Webcast operators—this was the reason for choosing the per-song/per-listener fee structure over a percentage-of-revenue approach: I hated the [per-song/listener] price points and explained why they were too high. HOWEVER, … I, as Broadcast.com, didn’t want percent-of-revenue pricing. Why? Because it meant every “Tom, Dick, and Harry” webcaster could come in and undercut our pricing because we had revenue and they didn’t. … The Yahoo! deal I worked on, if it resembles the deal the CARP ruling was built on, was designed so that there would be less competition, and so that small webcasters who needed to live off of a “percentage-of-revenue” to survive, couldn’t. (qtd. in Maloney & Hanson) Therefore, the RIAA consciously presented to the CARP a pricing structure which was not representative of an agreement between willing buyer and seller, but rather an agreement designed to achieve specific objectives: to punish very small operators for becoming more popular, hence discouraging hobbyists from turning professional; make Webcasting unaffordable for independent, small to medium operations; open the market only to major players with significant revenue streams; encourage amalgamation of independent stations into larger networks, and incorporate networks into the bigger media organisations. Indeed, Levy cites the “testimony of an RIAA-backed economist who told the government fee panel [CARP] that a dramatic shakeout in Webcasting is ‘inevitable and desirable because it will bring about market consolidation’”—and ‘consolidation’ (thus excluding small business from the Webcasting market) was clearly the underlying motive of RIAA strategy during the fights of 2002. Reasons for such anti-competitive policies are speculative but the conduct suggests that it represents the interests of an oligopoly of major entertainment producers, defending their interests from independent and alternative upstarts emerging with the information age, whilst claiming to protect the entire music community from exploitation by digital media operators. For three years running music industry sales have been in decline, and “forecasts see sales sliding another six percent in 2003—a fall felt most by the big five music giants—Universal, Sony, Warner, EMI and BMG—which account for 70 percent of sales” (Warner & Marr). The transnationals have consistently attributed this decline to the impact of CD burning, filesharing and other Internet technologies for music transmission. Yet the RIAA was successful in shutting down Napster, and there are a host of other reasons for the downturn: There have been no major musical trends to emerge as major drivers of music sales since the advent of grunge in the early 1990s--“while record sales are dropping, they are also spreading into diverse genres” (Childress), Western economies have continued to skirt recession with a marked decrease in consumer spending, 15 years after the introduction of the CD medium, the initial waves of listeners replacing their vinyl records with CD re-releases and remasters (once a major source of income for labels) have subsided, CD prices remain high, even compared to DVD movie releases, and There is a growing backlash against the practices of an “industry founded on exploitation, oiled by deceit, riven with theft and fuelled by greed” (Fripp 9) and there are calls to boycott major labels altogether, and increased political scrutiny. Hence some observers have read the RIAA’s attacks on filesharing and Webcasts as the actions of an industry fighting for its own survival. Wired quotes former Billboard editor Timothy White as saying that 2003 “could determine whether the music business as we know it survives” (reported in Maloney, “Wired”), and this sentiment is echoed in other reports on the state of the music industry. Alternatively, analysts have noted “the industry released around 27,000 titles in 2001, down from a peak of 38,900 in 1999. Since year-on-year unit sales have dropped a mere 10.3 per cent, it’s clear that demand has held up extremely well: despite higher prices, consumers retain the CD buying habit” (Orlowski). Whether signs of an industry in decline or not, the RIAA’s uncompromising policies in its fight against unpoliced Internet music technologies have caused headaches amongst its own supporters. (A recent Wired article speaks of “civil war inside Sony” over such issues—see Rose.) The Time-Warner-Netscape-AOL conglomerate might find the benefits from its support of the RIAA will be negated by the new royalty fees required of Spinner.com in its new incarnation as ‘Radio@Netscape Plus’, or by the downturn in AOL Broadband’s ability to sign up customers as incentives such as access to filesharing and Web radio dry up. Postscript: Conflict Resolution in the Webcast Wars (?) Without significant policy shifts by the RIAA it has fallen to U.S. politicians to force an uneasy truce in the Webcast conflict. This intervention was prompted by dissatisfaction with the industry’s disregard for the stated aim of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to cultivate not hinder business in new Internet technologies and the view that CARP had been tricked into accepting a flawed Yahoo!/RIAA deal as the basis for its fee structure recommendations. Following several attempts at legislation and emergency negotiations small Webcasters won a reprieve from the per song/per listener royalty structure which they had been threatened with, and will now pay a percentage of their revenue. This agreement is built on the “Small Webcaster Settlement Act,” which acknowledges that small Webcasters “have expressed their desire for a fee based on a percentage of revenue,” it rejects the CARP recommendations and the Librarian’s rulings as unsuitable for small operators, and instead requires the RIAA and small commercial Webcasters to develop their own structures in the spirit of this bill. While this solution generates division of the Webcast market into smaller and larger operators (and possibly makes the move from the first to the second group, who do pay per song/per listener royalties, all the more daunting), the new structure should be able to ensure its aim of protecting content diversity in Webcasting. 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MLA Style Bruns, Axel. "Fight for Survival" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/07-fightforsurvival.php>. APA Style Bruns, A., (2003, Feb 26). Fight for Survival. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/07-fightforsurvival.html

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Abstract:

By the time you read this, it will be wrong. Things seemed to be moving so fast in these first days after airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania earth. Each certainty is as carelessly dropped as it was once carelessly assumed. The sounds of lower Manhattan that used to serve as white noise for residents—sirens, screeches, screams—are no longer signs without a referent. Instead, they make folks stare and stop, hurry and hustle, wondering whether the noises we know so well are in fact, this time, coefficients of a new reality. At the time of writing, the events themselves are also signs without referents—there has been no direct claim of responsibility, and little proof offered by accusers since the 11th. But it has been assumed that there is a link to US foreign policy, its military and economic presence in the Arab world, and opposition to it that seeks revenge. In the intervening weeks the US media and the war planners have supplied their own narrow frameworks, making New York’s “ground zero” into the starting point for a new escalation of global violence. We want to write here about the combination of sources and sensations that came that day, and the jumble of knowledges and emotions that filled our minds. Working late the night before, Toby was awoken in the morning by one of the planes right overhead. That happens sometimes. I have long expected a crash when I’ve heard the roar of jet engines so close—but I didn’t this time. Often when that sound hits me, I get up and go for a run down by the water, just near Wall Street. Something kept me back that day. Instead, I headed for my laptop. Because I cannot rely on local media to tell me very much about the role of the US in world affairs, I was reading the British newspaper The Guardian on-line when it flashed a two-line report about the planes. I looked up at the calendar above my desk to see whether it was April 1st. Truly. Then I got off-line and turned on the TV to watch CNN. That second, the phone rang. My quasi-ex-girlfriend I’m still in love with called from the mid-West. She was due to leave that day for the Bay Area. Was I alright? We spoke for a bit. She said my cell phone was out, and indeed it was for the remainder of the day. As I hung up from her, my friend Ana rang, tearful and concerned. Her husband, Patrick, had left an hour before for work in New Jersey, and it seemed like a dangerous separation. All separations were potentially fatal that day. You wanted to know where everyone was, every minute. She told me she had been trying to contact Palestinian friends who worked and attended school near the event—their ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds made for real poignancy, as we both thought of the prejudice they would (probably) face, regardless of the eventual who/what/when/where/how of these events. We agreed to meet at Bruno’s, a bakery on La Guardia Place. For some reason I really took my time, though, before getting to Ana. I shampooed and shaved under the shower. This was a horror, and I needed to look my best, even as men and women were losing and risking their lives. I can only interpret what I did as an attempt to impose normalcy and control on the situation, on my environment. When I finally made it down there, she’d located our friends. They were safe. We stood in the street and watched the Towers. Horrified by the sight of human beings tumbling to their deaths, we turned to buy a tea/coffee—again some ludicrous normalization—but were drawn back by chilling screams from the street. Racing outside, we saw the second Tower collapse, and clutched at each other. People were streaming towards us from further downtown. We decided to be with our Palestinian friends in their apartment. When we arrived, we learnt that Mark had been four minutes away from the WTC when the first plane hit. I tried to call my daughter in London and my father in Canberra, but to no avail. I rang the mid-West, and asked my maybe-former novia to call England and Australia to report in on me. Our friend Jenine got through to relatives on the West Bank. Israeli tanks had commenced a bombardment there, right after the planes had struck New York. Family members spoke to her from under the kitchen table, where they were taking refuge from the shelling of their house. Then we gave ourselves over to television, like so many others around the world, even though these events were happening only a mile away. We wanted to hear official word, but there was just a huge absence—Bush was busy learning to read in Florida, then leading from the front in Louisiana and Nebraska. As the day wore on, we split up and regrouped, meeting folks. One guy was in the subway when smoke filled the car. Noone could breathe properly, people were screaming, and his only thought was for his dog DeNiro back in Brooklyn. From the panic of the train, he managed to call his mom on a cell to ask her to feed “DeNiro” that night, because it looked like he wouldn’t get home. A pregnant woman feared for her unborn as she fled the blasts, pushing the stroller with her baby in it as she did so. Away from these heart-rending tales from strangers, there was the fear: good grief, what horrible price would the US Government extract for this, and who would be the overt and covert agents and targets of that suffering? What blood-lust would this generate? What would be the pattern of retaliation and counter-retaliation? What would become of civil rights and cultural inclusiveness? So a jumble of emotions came forward, I assume in all of us. Anger was not there for me, just intense sorrow, shock, and fear, and the desire for intimacy. Network television appeared to offer me that, but in an ultimately unsatisfactory way. For I think I saw the end-result of reality TV that day. I have since decided to call this ‘emotionalization’—network TV’s tendency to substitute analysis of US politics and economics with a stress on feelings. Of course, powerful emotions have been engaged by this horror, and there is value in addressing that fact and letting out the pain. I certainly needed to do so. But on that day and subsequent ones, I looked to the networks, traditional sources of current-affairs knowledge, for just that—informed, multi-perspectival journalism that would allow me to make sense of my feelings, and come to a just and reasoned decision about how the US should respond. I waited in vain. No such commentary came forward. Just a lot of asinine inquiries from reporters that were identical to those they pose to basketballers after a game: Question—‘How do you feel now?’ Answer—‘God was with me today.’ For the networks were insistent on asking everyone in sight how they felt about the end of las torres gemelas. In this case, we heard the feelings of survivors, firefighters, viewers, media mavens, Republican and Democrat hacks, and vacuous Beltway state-of-the-nation pundits. But learning of the military-political economy, global inequality, and ideologies and organizations that made for our grief and loss—for that, there was no space. TV had forgotten how to do it. My principal feeling soon became one of frustration. So I headed back to where I began the day—The Guardian web site, where I was given insightful analysis of the messy factors of history, religion, economics, and politics that had created this situation. As I dealt with the tragedy of folks whose lives had been so cruelly lost, I pondered what it would take for this to stop. Or whether this was just the beginning. I knew one thing—the answers wouldn’t come from mainstream US television, no matter how full of feelings it was. And that made Toby anxious. And afraid. He still is. And so the dreams come. In one, I am suddenly furloughed from my job with an orchestra, as audience numbers tumble. I make my evening-wear way to my locker along with the other players, emptying it of bubble gum and instrument. The next night, I see a gigantic, fifty-feet high wave heading for the city beach where I’ve come to swim. Somehow I am sheltered behind a huge wall, as all the people around me die. Dripping, I turn to find myself in a media-stereotype “crack house” of the early ’90s—desperate-looking black men, endless doorways, sudden police arrival, and my earnest search for a passport that will explain away my presence. I awake in horror, to the realization that the passport was already open and stamped—racialization at work for Toby, every day and in every way, as a white man in New York City. Ana’s husband, Patrick, was at work ten miles from Manhattan when “it” happened. In the hallway, I overheard some talk about two planes crashing, but went to teach anyway in my usual morning stupor. This was just the usual chatter of disaster junkies. I didn’t hear the words, “World Trade Center” until ten thirty, at the end of the class at the college I teach at in New Jersey, across the Hudson river. A friend and colleague walked in and told me the news of the attack, to which I replied “You must be f*cking joking.” He was a little offended. Students were milling haphazardly on the campus in the late summer weather, some looking panicked like me. My first thought was of some general failure of the air-traffic control system. There must be planes falling out of the sky all over the country. Then the height of the towers: how far towards our apartment in Greenwich Village would the towers fall? Neither of us worked in the financial district a mile downtown, but was Ana safe? Where on the college campus could I see what was happening? I recognized the same physical sensation I had felt the morning after Hurricane Andrew in Miami seeing at a distance the wreckage of our shattered apartment across a suburban golf course strewn with debris and flattened power lines. Now I was trapped in the suburbs again at an unbridgeable distance from my wife and friends who were witnessing the attacks first hand. Were they safe? What on earth was going on? This feeling of being cut off, my path to the familiar places of home blocked, remained for weeks my dominant experience of the disaster. In my office, phone calls to the city didn’t work. There were six voice-mail messages from my teenaged brother Alex in small-town England giving a running commentary on the attack and its aftermath that he was witnessing live on television while I dutifully taught my writing class. “Hello, Patrick, where are you? Oh my god, another plane just hit the towers. Where are you?” The web was choked: no access to newspapers online. Email worked, but no one was wasting time writing. My office window looked out over a soccer field to the still woodlands of western New Jersey: behind me to the east the disaster must be unfolding. Finally I found a website with a live stream from ABC television, which I watched flickering and stilted on the tiny screen. It had all already happened: both towers already collapsed, the Pentagon attacked, another plane shot down over Pennsylvania, unconfirmed reports said, there were other hijacked aircraft still out there unaccounted for. Manhattan was sealed off. George Washington Bridge, Lincoln and Holland tunnels, all the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey I used to mock shut down. Police actions sealed off the highways into “the city.” The city I liked to think of as the capital of the world was cut off completely from the outside, suddenly vulnerable and under siege. There was no way to get home. The phone rang abruptly and Alex, three thousand miles away, told me he had spoken to Ana earlier and she was safe. After a dozen tries, I managed to get through and spoke to her, learning that she and Toby had seen people jumping and then the second tower fall. Other friends had been even closer. Everyone was safe, we thought. I sat for another couple of hours in my office uselessly. The news was incoherent, stories contradictory, loops of the planes hitting the towers only just ready for recycling. The attacks were already being transformed into “the World Trade Center Disaster,” not yet the ahistorical singularity of the emergency “nine one one.” Stranded, I had to spend the night in New Jersey at my boss’s house, reminded again of the boundless generosity of Americans to relative strangers. In an effort to protect his young son from the as yet unfiltered images saturating cable and Internet, my friend’s TV set was turned off and we did our best to reassure. We listened surreptitiously to news bulletins on AM radio, hoping that the roads would open. Walking the dog with my friend’s wife and son we crossed a park on the ridge on which Upper Montclair sits. Ten miles away a huge column of smoke was rising from lower Manhattan, where the stunning absence of the towers was clearly visible. The summer evening was unnervingly still. We kicked a soccer ball around on the front lawn and a woman walked distracted by, shocked and pale up the tree-lined suburban street, suffering her own wordless trauma. I remembered that though most of my students were ordinary working people, Montclair is a well-off dormitory for the financial sector and high rises of Wall Street and Midtown. For the time being, this was a white-collar disaster. I slept a short night in my friend’s house, waking to hope I had dreamed it all, and took the commuter train in with shell-shocked bankers and corporate types. All men, all looking nervously across the river toward glimpses of the Manhattan skyline as the train neared Hoboken. “I can’t believe they’re making us go in,” one guy had repeated on the station platform. He had watched the attacks from his office in Midtown, “The whole thing.” Inside the train we all sat in silence. Up from the PATH train station on 9th street I came onto a carless 6th Avenue. At 14th street barricades now sealed off downtown from the rest of the world. I walked down the middle of the avenue to a newspaper stand; the Indian proprietor shrugged “No deliveries below 14th.” I had not realized that the closer to the disaster you came, the less information would be available. Except, I assumed, for the evidence of my senses. But at 8 am the Village was eerily still, few people about, nothing in the sky, including the twin towers. I walked to Houston Street, which was full of trucks and police vehicles. Tractor trailers sat carrying concrete barriers. Below Houston, each street into Soho was barricaded and manned by huddles of cops. I had walked effortlessly up into the “lockdown,” but this was the “frozen zone.” There was no going further south towards the towers. I walked the few blocks home, found my wife sleeping, and climbed into bed, still in my clothes from the day before. “Your heart is racing,” she said. I realized that I hadn’t known if I would get back, and now I never wanted to leave again; it was still only eight thirty am. Lying there, I felt the terrible wonder of a distant bystander for the first-hand witness. Ana’s face couldn’t tell me what she had seen. I felt I needed to know more, to see and understand. Even though I knew the effort was useless: I could never bridge that gap that had trapped me ten miles away, my back turned to the unfolding disaster. The television was useless: we don’t have cable, and the mast on top of the North Tower, which Ana had watched fall, had relayed all the network channels. I knew I had to go down and see the wreckage. Later I would realize how lucky I had been not to suffer from “disaster envy.” Unbelievably, in retrospect, I commuted into work the second day after the attack, dogged by the same unnerving sensation that I would not get back—to the wounded, humbled former center of the world. My students were uneasy, all talked out. I was a novelty, a New Yorker living in the Village a mile from the towers, but I was forty-eight hours late. Out of place in both places. I felt torn up, but not angry. Back in the city at night, people were eating and drinking with a vengeance, the air filled with acrid sicklysweet smoke from the burning wreckage. Eyes stang and nose ran with a bitter acrid taste. Who knows what we’re breathing in, we joked nervously. A friend’s wife had fallen out with him for refusing to wear a protective mask in the house. He shrugged a wordlessly reassuring smile. What could any of us do? I walked with Ana down to the top of West Broadway from where the towers had commanded the skyline over SoHo; downtown dense smoke blocked the view to the disaster. A crowd of onlookers pushed up against the barricades all day, some weeping, others gawping. A tall guy was filming the grieving faces with a video camera, which was somehow the worst thing of all, the first sign of the disaster tourism that was already mushrooming downtown. Across the street an Asian artist sat painting the street scene in streaky black and white; he had scrubbed out two white columns where the towers would have been. “That’s the first thing I’ve seen that’s made me feel any better,” Ana said. We thanked him, but he shrugged blankly, still in shock I supposed. On the Friday, the clampdown. I watched the Mayor and Police Chief hold a press conference in which they angrily told the stream of volunteers to “ground zero” that they weren’t needed. “We can handle this ourselves. We thank you. But we don’t need your help,” Commissioner Kerik said. After the free-for-all of the first couple of days, with its amazing spontaneities and common gestures of goodwill, the clampdown was going into effect. I decided to go down to Canal Street and see if it was true that no one was welcome anymore. So many paths through the city were blocked now. “Lock down, frozen zone, war zone, the site, combat zone, ground zero, state troopers, secured perimeter, national guard, humvees, family center”: a disturbing new vocabulary that seemed to stamp the logic of Giuliani’s sanitized and over-policed Manhattan onto the wounded hulk of the city. The Mayor had been magnificent in the heat of the crisis; Churchillian, many were saying—and indeed, Giuliani quickly appeared on the cover of Cigar Afficionado, complete with wing collar and the misquotation from Kipling, “Captain Courageous.” Churchill had not believed in peacetime politics either, and he never got over losing his empire. Now the regime of command and control over New York’s citizens and its economy was being stabilized and reimposed. The sealed-off, disfigured, and newly militarized spaces of the New York through which I have always loved to wander at all hours seemed to have been put beyond reach for the duration. And, in the new post-“9/11” post-history, the duration could last forever. The violence of the attacks seemed to have elicited a heavy-handed official reaction that sought to contain and constrict the best qualities of New York. I felt more anger at the clampdown than I did at the demolition of the towers. I knew this was unreasonable, but I feared the reaction, the spread of the racial harassment and racial profiling that I had already heard of from my students in New Jersey. This militarizing of the urban landscape seemed to negate the sprawling, freewheeling, boundless largesse and tolerance on which New York had complacently claimed a monopoly. For many the towers stood for that as well, not just as the monumental outposts of global finance that had been attacked. Could the American flag mean something different? For a few days, perhaps—on the helmets of firemen and construction workers. But not for long. On the Saturday, I found an unmanned barricade way east along Canal Street and rode my bike past throngs of Chinatown residents, by the Federal jail block where prisoners from the first World Trade Center bombing were still being held. I headed south and west towards Tribeca; below the barricades in the frozen zone, you could roam freely, the cops and soldiers assuming you belonged there. I felt uneasy, doubting my own motives for being there, feeling the blood drain from my head in the same numbing shock I’d felt every time I headed downtown towards the site. I looped towards Greenwich Avenue, passing an abandoned bank full of emergency supplies and boxes of protective masks. Crushed cars still smeared with pulverized concrete and encrusted with paperwork strewn by the blast sat on the street near the disabled telephone exchange. On one side of the avenue stood a horde of onlookers, on the other television crews, all looking two blocks south towards a colossal pile of twisted and smoking steel, seven stories high. We were told to stay off the street by long-suffering national guardsmen and women with southern accents, kids. Nothing happening, just the aftermath. The TV crews were interviewing worn-out, dust-covered volunteers and firemen who sat quietly leaning against the railings of a park filled with scraps of paper. Out on the West Side highway, a high-tech truck was offering free cellular phone calls. The six lanes by the river were full of construction machinery and military vehicles. Ambulances rolled slowly uptown, bodies inside? I locked my bike redundantly to a lamppost and crossed under the hostile gaze of plainclothes police to another media encampment. On the path by the river, two camera crews were complaining bitterly in the heat. “After five days of this I’ve had enough.” They weren’t talking about the trauma, bodies, or the wreckage, but censorship. “Any blue light special gets to roll right down there, but they see your press pass and it’s get outta here. I’ve had enough.” I fronted out the surly cops and ducked under the tape onto the path, walking onto a Pier on which we’d spent many lazy afternoons watching the river at sunset. Dust everywhere, police boats docked and waiting, a crane ominously dredging mud into a barge. I walked back past the camera operators onto the highway and walked up to an interview in process. Perfectly composed, a fire chief and his crew from some small town in upstate New York were politely declining to give details about what they’d seen at “ground zero.” The men’s faces were dust streaked, their eyes slightly dazed with the shock of a horror previously unimaginable to most Americans. They were here to help the best they could, now they’d done as much as anyone could. “It’s time for us to go home.” The chief was eloquent, almost rehearsed in his precision. It was like a Magnum press photo. But he was refusing to cooperate with the media’s obsessive emotionalism. I walked down the highway, joining construction workers, volunteers, police, and firemen in their hundreds at Chambers Street. No one paid me any attention; it was absurd. I joined several other watchers on the stairs by Stuyvesant High School, which was now the headquarters for the recovery crews. Just two or three blocks away, the huge jagged teeth of the towers’ beautiful tracery lurched out onto the highway above huge mounds of debris. The TV images of the shattered scene made sense as I placed them into what was left of a familiar Sunday afternoon geography of bike rides and walks by the river, picnics in the park lying on the grass and gazing up at the infinite solidity of the towers. Demolished. It was breathtaking. If “they” could do that, they could do anything. Across the street at tables military policeman were checking credentials of the milling volunteers and issuing the pink and orange tags that gave access to ground zero. Without warning, there was a sudden stampede running full pelt up from the disaster site, men and women in fatigues, burly construction workers, firemen in bunker gear. I ran a few yards then stopped. Other people milled around idly, ignoring the panic, smoking and talking in low voices. It was a mainly white, blue-collar scene. All these men wearing flags and carrying crowbars and flashlights. In their company, the intolerance and rage I associated with flags and construction sites was nowhere to be seen. They were dealing with a torn and twisted otherness that dwarfed machismo or bigotry. I talked to a moustachioed, pony-tailed construction worker who’d hitched a ride from the mid-west to “come and help out.” He was staying at the Y, he said, it was kind of rough. “Have you been down there?” he asked, pointing towards the wreckage. “You’re British, you weren’t in World War Two were you?” I replied in the negative. “It’s worse ’n that. I went down last night and you can’t imagine it. You don’t want to see it if you don’t have to.” Did I know any welcoming ladies? he asked. The Y was kind of tough. When I saw TV images of President Bush speaking to the recovery crews and steelworkers at “ground zero” a couple of days later, shouting through a bullhorn to chants of “USA, USA” I knew nothing had changed. New York’s suffering was subject to a second hijacking by the brokers of national unity. New York had never been America, and now its terrible human loss and its great humanity were redesignated in the name of the nation, of the coming war. The signs without a referent were being forcibly appropriated, locked into an impoverished patriotic framework, interpreted for “us” by a compliant media and an opportunistic regime eager to reign in civil liberties, to unloose its war machine and tighten its grip on the Muslim world. That day, drawn to the river again, I had watched F18 fighter jets flying patterns over Manhattan as Bush’s helicopters came in across the river. Otherwise empty of air traffic, “our” skies were being torn up by the military jets: it was somehow the worst sight yet, worse than the wreckage or the bands of disaster tourists on Canal Street, a sign of further violence yet to come. There was a carrier out there beyond New York harbor, there to protect us: the bruising, blustering city once open to all comers. That felt worst of all. In the intervening weeks, we have seen other, more unstable ways of interpreting the signs of September 11 and its aftermath. Many have circulated on the Internet, past the blockages and blockades placed on urban spaces and intellectual life. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s work was banished (at least temporarily) from the canon of avant-garde electronic music when he described the attack on las torres gemelas as akin to a work of art. If Jacques Derrida had described it as an act of deconstruction (turning technological modernity literally in on itself), or Jean Baudrillard had announced that the event was so thick with mediation it had not truly taken place, something similar would have happened to them (and still may). This is because, as Don DeLillo so eloquently put it in implicit reaction to the plaintive cry “Why do they hate us?”: “it is the power of American culture to penetrate every wall, home, life and mind”—whether via military action or cultural iconography. All these positions are correct, however grisly and annoying they may be. What GK Chesterton called the “flints and tiles” of nineteenth-century European urban existence were rent asunder like so many victims of high-altitude US bombing raids. As a First-World disaster, it became knowable as the first-ever US “ground zero” such precisely through the high premium immediately set on the lives of Manhattan residents and the rarefied discussion of how to commemorate the high-altitude towers. When, a few weeks later, an American Airlines plane crashed on take-off from Queens, that borough was left open to all comers. Manhattan was locked down, flown over by “friendly” bombers. In stark contrast to the open if desperate faces on the street of 11 September, people went about their business with heads bowed even lower than is customary. Contradictory deconstructions and valuations of Manhattan lives mean that September 11 will live in infamy and hyper-knowability. The vengeful United States government and population continue on their way. Local residents must ponder insurance claims, real-estate values, children’s terrors, and their own roles in something beyond their ken. New York had been forced beyond being the center of the financial world. It had become a military target, a place that was receiving as well as dispatching the slings and arrows of global fortune. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php>. Chicago Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby, "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. (2002) A Day That Will Live In … ?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

IntroductionFirmly located within the discourse of visible culture as the lofty preserve of art exhibitions and museum artefacts, the noun “curate” has gradually transformed into the verb “to curate”. Williams writes that “curate” has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded to describe a creative activity. Designers no longer simply sell clothes; they “curate” merchandise. Chefs no longer only make food; they also “curate” meals. Chosen for their keen eye for a particular style or a precise shade, it is their knowledge of their craft, their reputation, and their sheer ability to choose among countless objects which make the creative process a creative activity in itself. Writing from within the framework of “curate” as a creative process, this article discusses how the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, hosted by Irish President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in May 2011, was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity. The paper will focus in particular on how the menu for the banquet was created and how the banquet’s brief, “Ireland on a Plate”, was fulfilled.History and BackgroundFood has been used by nations for centuries to display wealth, cement alliances, and impress foreign visitors. Since the feasts of the Numidian kings (circa 340 BC), culinary staging and presentation has belonged to “a long, multifaceted and multicultural history of diplomatic practices” (IEHCA 5). According to the works of Baughman, Young, and Albala, food has defined the social, cultural, and political position of a nation’s leaders throughout history.In early 2011, Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant in Dublin, was asked by the Irish Food Board, Bord Bía, if he would be available to create a menu for a high-profile banquet (Mahon 112). The name of the guest of honour was divulged several weeks later after vetting by the protocol and security divisions of the Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Lewis was informed that the menu was for the state banquet to be hosted by President Mary McAleese at Dublin Castle in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Ireland the following May.Hosting a formal banquet for a visiting head of state is a key feature in the statecraft of international and diplomatic relations. Food is the societal common denominator that links all human beings, regardless of culture (Pliner and Rozin 19). When world leaders publicly share a meal, that meal is laden with symbolism, illuminating each diner’s position “in social networks and social systems” (Sobal, Bove, and Rauschenbach 378). The public nature of the meal signifies status and symbolic kinship and that “guest and host are on par in terms of their personal or official attributes” (Morgan 149). While the field of academic scholarship on diplomatic dining might be young, there is little doubt of the value ascribed to the semiotics of diplomatic gastronomy in modern power structures (Morgan 150; De Vooght and Scholliers 12; Chapple-Sokol 162), for, as Firth explains, symbols are malleable and perfectly suited to exploitation by all parties (427).Political DiplomacyWhen Ireland gained independence in December 1921, it marked the end of eight centuries of British rule. The outbreak of “The Troubles” in 1969 in Northern Ireland upset the gradually improving environment of British–Irish relations, and it would be some time before a state visit became a possibility. Beginning with the peace process in the 1990s, the IRA ceasefire of 1994, and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, a state visit was firmly set in motion by the visit of Irish President Mary Robinson to Buckingham Palace in 1993, followed by the unofficial visit of the Prince of Wales to Ireland in 1995, and the visit of Irish President Mary McAleese to Buckingham Palace in 1999. An official invitation to Queen Elizabeth from President Mary McAleese in March 2011 was accepted, and the visit was scheduled for mid-May of the same year.The visit was a highly performative occasion, orchestrated and ordained in great detail, displaying all the necessary protocol associated with the state visit of one head of state to another: inspection of the military, a courtesy visit to the nation’s head of state on arrival, the laying of a wreath at the nation’s war memorial, and a state banquet.These aspects of protocol between Britain and Ireland were particularly symbolic. By inspecting the military on arrival, the existence of which is a key indicator of independence, Queen Elizabeth effectively demonstrated her recognition of Ireland’s national sovereignty. On making the customary courtesy call to the head of state, the Queen was received by President McAleese at her official residence Áras an Uachtaráin (The President’s House), which had formerly been the residence of the British monarch’s representative in Ireland (Robbins 66). The state banquet was held in Dublin Castle, once the headquarters of British rule where the Viceroy, the representative of Britain’s Court of St James, had maintained court (McDowell 1).Cultural DiplomacyThe state banquet provided an exceptional showcase of Irish culture and design and generated a level of preparation previously unseen among Dublin Castle staff, who described it as “the most stage managed state event” they had ever witnessed (Mahon 129).The castle was cleaned from top to bottom, and inventories were taken of the furniture and fittings. The Waterford Crystal chandeliers were painstakingly taken down, cleaned, and reassembled; the Killybegs carpets and rugs of Irish lamb’s wool were cleaned and repaired. A special edition Newbridge Silverware pen was commissioned for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to sign the newly ordered Irish leather-bound visitors’ book. A new set of state tableware was ordered for the President’s table. Irish manufacturers of household goods necessary for the guest rooms, such as towels and soaps, hand creams and body lotions, candle holders and scent diffusers, were sought. Members of Her Majesty’s staff conducted a “walk-through” several weeks in advance of the visit to ensure that the Queen’s wardrobe would not clash with the surroundings (Mahon 129–32).The promotion of Irish manufacture is a constant thread throughout history. Irish linen, writes Kane, enjoyed a reputation as far afield as the Netherlands and Italy in the 15th century, and archival documents from the Vaucluse attest to the purchase of Irish cloth in Avignon in 1432 (249–50). Support for Irish-made goods was raised in 1720 by Jonathan Swift, and by the 18th century, writes Foster, Dublin had become an important centre for luxury goods (44–51).It has been Irish government policy since the late 1940s to use Irish-manufactured goods for state entertaining, so the material culture of the banquet was distinctly Irish: Arklow Pottery plates, Newbridge Silverware cutlery, Waterford Crystal glassware, and Irish linen tablecloths. In order to decide upon the table setting for the banquet, four tables were laid in the King’s Bedroom in Dublin Castle. The Executive Chef responsible for the banquet menu, and certain key personnel, helped determine which setting would facilitate serving the food within the time schedule allowed (Mahon 128–29). The style of service would be service à la russe, so widespread in restaurants today as to seem unremarkable. Each plate is prepared in the kitchen by the chef and then served to each individual guest at table. In the mid-19th century, this style of service replaced service à la française, in which guests typically entered the dining room after the first course had been laid on the table and selected food from the choice of dishes displayed around them (Kaufman 126).The guest list was compiled by government and embassy officials on both sides and was a roll call of Irish and British life. At the President’s table, 10 guests would be served by a team of 10 staff in Dorchester livery. The remaining tables would each seat 12 guests, served by 12 liveried staff. The staff practiced for several days prior to the banquet to make sure that service would proceed smoothly within the time frame allowed. The team of waiters, each carrying a plate, would emerge from the kitchen in single file. They would then take up positions around the table, each waiter standing to the left of the guest they would serve. On receipt of a discreet signal, each plate would be laid in front of each guest at precisely the same moment, after which the waiters would then about foot and return to the kitchen in single file (Mahon 130).Post-prandial entertainment featured distinctive styles of performance and instruments associated with Irish traditional music. These included reels, hornpipes, and slipjigs, voice and harp, sean-nόs (old style) singing, and performances by established Irish artists on the fiddle, bouzouki, flute, and uilleann pipes (Office of Public Works).Culinary Diplomacy: Ireland on a PlateLewis was given the following brief: the menu had to be Irish, the main course must be beef, and the meal should represent the very best of Irish ingredients. There were no restrictions on menu design. There were no dietary requirements or specific requests from the Queen’s representatives, although Lewis was informed that shellfish is excluded de facto from Irish state banquets as a precautionary measure. The meal was to be four courses long and had to be served to 170 diners within exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes (Mahon 112). A small army of 16 chefs and 4 kitchen porters would prepare the food in the kitchen of Dublin Castle under tight security. The dishes would be served on state tableware by 40 waiters, 6 restaurant managers, a banqueting manager and a sommélier. Lewis would be at the helm of the operation as Executive Chef (Mahon 112–13).Lewis started by drawing up “a patchwork quilt” of the products he most wanted to use and built the menu around it. The choice of suppliers was based on experience but also on a supplier’s ability to deliver perfectly ripe goods in mid-May, a typically black spot in the Irish fruit and vegetable growing calendar as it sits between the end of one season and the beginning of another. Lewis consulted the Queen’s itinerary and the menus to be served so as to avoid repetitions. He had to discard his initial plan to feature lobster in the starter and rhubarb in the dessert—the former for the precautionary reasons mentioned above, and the latter because it featured on the Queen’s lunch menu on the day of the banquet (Mahon 112–13).Once the ingredients had been selected, the menu design focused on creating tastes, flavours and textures. Several draft menus were drawn up and myriad dishes were tasted and discussed in the kitchen of Lewis’s own restaurant. Various wines were paired and tasted with the different courses, the final choice being a Château Lynch-Bages 1998 red and a Château de Fieuzal 2005 white, both from French Bordeaux estates with an Irish connection (Kellaghan 3). Two months and two menu sittings later, the final menu was confirmed and signed off by state and embassy officials (Mahon 112–16).The StarterThe banquet’s starter featured organic Clare Island salmon cured in a sweet brine, laid on top of a salmon cream combining wild smoked salmon from the Burren and Cork’s Glenilen Farm crème fraîche, set over a lemon balm jelly from the Tannery Cookery School Gardens, Waterford. Garnished with horseradish cream, wild watercress, and chive flowers from Wicklow, the dish was finished with rapeseed oil from Kilkenny and a little sea salt from West Cork (Mahon 114). Main CourseA main course of Irish beef featured as the pièce de résistance of the menu. A rib of beef from Wexford’s Slaney Valley was provided by Kettyle Irish Foods in Fermanagh and served with ox cheek and tongue from Rathcoole, County Dublin. From along the eastern coastline came the ingredients for the traditional Irish dish of smoked champ: cabbage from Wicklow combined with potatoes and spring onions grown in Dublin. The new season’s broad beans and carrots were served with wild garlic leaf, which adorned the dish (Mahon 113). Cheese CourseThe cheese course was made up of Knockdrinna, a Tomme style goat’s milk cheese from Kilkenny; Milleens, a Munster style cow’s milk cheese produced in Cork; Cashel Blue, a cow’s milk blue cheese from Tipperary; and Glebe Brethan, a Comté style cheese from raw cow’s milk from Louth. Ditty’s Oatmeal Biscuits from Belfast accompanied the course.DessertLewis chose to feature Irish strawberries in the dessert. Pat Clarke guaranteed delivery of ripe strawberries on the day of the banquet. They married perfectly with cream and yoghurt from Glenilen Farm in Cork. The cream was set with Irish Carrageen moss, overlaid with strawberry jelly and sauce, and garnished with meringues made with Irish apple balsamic vinegar from Lusk in North Dublin, yoghurt mousse, and Irish soda bread tuiles made with wholemeal flour from the Mosse family mill in Kilkenny (Mahon 113).The following day, President McAleese telephoned Lewis, saying of the banquet “Ní hé go raibh sé go maith, ach go raibh sé míle uair níos fearr ná sin” (“It’s not that it was good but that it was a thousand times better”). The President observed that the menu was not only delicious but that it was “amazingly articulate in terms of the story that it told about Ireland and Irish food.” The Queen had particularly enjoyed the stuffed cabbage leaf of tongue, cheek and smoked colcannon (a traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes with curly kale or green cabbage) and had noted the diverse selection of Irish ingredients from Irish artisans (Mahon 116). Irish CuisineWhen the topic of food is explored in Irish historiography, the focus tends to be on the consequences of the Great Famine (1845–49) which left the country “socially and emotionally scarred for well over a century” (Mac Con Iomaire and Gallagher 161). Some commentators consider the term “Irish cuisine” oxymoronic, according to Mac Con Iomaire and Maher (3). As Goldstein observes, Ireland has suffered twice—once from its food deprivation and second because these deprivations present an obstacle for the exploration of Irish foodways (xii). Writing about Italian, Irish, and Jewish migration to America, Diner states that the Irish did not have a food culture to speak of and that Irish writers “rarely included the details of food in describing daily life” (85). Mac Con Iomaire and Maher note that Diner’s methodology overlooks a centuries-long tradition of hospitality in Ireland such as that described by Simms (68) and shows an unfamiliarity with the wealth of food related sources in the Irish language, as highlighted by Mac Con Iomaire (“Exploring” 1–23).Recent scholarship on Ireland’s culinary past is unearthing a fascinating story of a much more nuanced culinary heritage than has been previously understood. This is clearly demonstrated in the research of Cullen, Cashman, Deleuze, Kellaghan, Kelly, Kennedy, Legg, Mac Con Iomaire, Mahon, O’Sullivan, Richman Kenneally, Sexton, and Stanley, Danaher, and Eogan.In 1996 Ireland was described by McKenna as having the most dynamic cuisine in any European country, a place where in the last decade “a vibrant almost unlikely style of cooking has emerged” (qtd. in Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 136). By 2014, there were nine restaurants in Dublin which had been awarded Michelin stars or Red Ms (Mac Con Iomaire “Jammet’s” 137). Ross Lewis, Chef Patron of Chapter One Restaurant, who would be chosen to create the menu for the state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II, has maintained a Michelin star since 2008 (Mac Con Iomaire, “Jammet’s” 138). Most recently the current strength of Irish gastronomy is globally apparent in Mark Moriarty’s award as San Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 (McQuillan). As Deleuze succinctly states: “Ireland has gone mad about food” (143).This article is part of a research project into Irish diplomatic dining, and the author is part of a research cluster into Ireland’s culinary heritage within the Dublin Institute of Technology. The aim of the research is to add to the growing body of scholarship on Irish gastronomic history and, ultimately, to contribute to the discourse on the existence of a national cuisine. If, as Zubaida says, “a nation’s cuisine is its court’s cuisine,” then it is time for Ireland to “research the feasts as well as the famines” (Mac Con Iomaire and Cashman 97).ConclusionThe Irish state banquet for Queen Elizabeth II in May 2011 was a highly orchestrated and formalised process. From the menu, material culture, entertainment, and level of consultation in the creative content, it is evident that the banquet was carefully curated to represent Ireland’s diplomatic, cultural, and culinary identity.The effects of the visit appear to have been felt in the years which have followed. Hennessy wrote in the Irish Times newspaper that Queen Elizabeth is privately said to regard her visit to Ireland as the most significant of the trips she has made during her 60-year reign. British Prime Minister David Cameron is noted to mention the visit before every Irish audience he encounters, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague has spoken in particular of the impact the state banquet in Dublin Castle made upon him. Hennessy points out that one of the most significant indicators of the peaceful relationship which exists between the two countries nowadays was the subsequent state visit by Irish President Michael D. Higgins to Britain in 2013. This was the first state visit to the United Kingdom by a President of Ireland and would have been unimaginable 25 years ago. The fact that the President and his wife stayed at Windsor Castle and that the attendant state banquet was held there instead of Buckingham Palace were both deemed to be marks of special favour and directly attributed to the success of Her Majesty’s 2011 visit to Ireland.As the research demonstrates, eating together unites rather than separates, gathers rather than divides, diffuses political tensions, and confirms alliances. It might be said then that the 2011 state banquet hosted by President Mary McAleese in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, curated by Ross Lewis, gives particular meaning to the axiom “to eat together is to eat in peace” (Taliano des Garets 160).AcknowledgementsSupervisors: Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire (Dublin Institute of Technology) and Dr Michael Kennedy (Royal Irish Academy)Fáilte IrelandPhotos of the banquet dishes supplied and permission to reproduce them for this article kindly granted by Ross Lewis, Chef Patron, Chapter One Restaurant ‹http://www.chapteronerestaurant.com/›.Illustration ‘Ireland on a Plate’ © Jesse Campbell BrownRemerciementsThe author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.ReferencesAlbala, Ken. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe. 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Abstract:

The popular view of the geography of urban employment is that the great bulk of jobs – and certainly virtually all "good" jobs[1] – is located in the CBD. This is an understandable view given the spatial distribution of employment density in Melbourne shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Density of employment in one km wide circular bands by distance from CBD, 2006 (jobs/km2) It shows the density of jobs in the Central Business District (CBD) of Melbourne – the first one km radius ring around the town hall[2] – is an order of magnitude higher than anywhere else in the metropolitan area. It closely aligns with the cluster of high rise office buildings that define the CBD in the popular imagination. This purpose of this paper is to ask if this is an adequate representation of the geography of employment in Australia’s larger cities. Using Melbourne as a case study, the paper examines how jobs are distributed spatially and what implications that has for policy. Figure 2 highlights that density is not the same as the number of jobs. It shows how employment is really distributed within Melbourne. The CBD is easily the largest single concentration of employment, but it nevertheless has only 15% of all metropolitan jobs. In fact only 28% of metropolitan jobs are located in the inner city – i.e. lie within a 5 km radius of the town hall – and 50% are located within 13 km radius. Figure 2: Share of metropolitan employment in one km wide circular bands by distance from CBD, 2006 (%)This dispersed pattern is not recent. Melbourne was compact and dense up until the end of the nineteenth century when the appearance of mechanised transport – primarily trams and trains – enabled middle class residents to escape the crowding and congestion of the centre for the space and amenity of the suburbs[3]. This trend was boosted dramatically after WW2 when increasingly widespread car ownership democratised access to affordable land on the urban fringe. Firms followed a similar pattern. Initially, manufacturing and distribution firms moved to the outer suburbs so they could escape congestion in the inner city, exploit space-intensive horizontal production methods, and be closer to the suburbanising workforce. The suburban population generated increasing numbers of jobs to service its consumption needs, amplified by the increasing level of outsourcing from the home. More recently, some higher order activities have moved from the CBD to near-CBD and inner city locations and some back office functions have moved to the suburbs. By 1981, only 35% of Melbourne’s jobs were located within 5 km of the centre. Figure 3 shows the "average job"[4] was 12.4 km from the centre and the "centre of mass"[5] of employment was 5.9 km away. The trend to the suburbs was very strong over the succeeding 25 years. By 2006 just 28% of jobs were within 5 km radius and the ‘average job’ was now 15.6 km from the centre. The centre of mass had moved 2 km further outwards to the vicinity of Tooronga, 7.9 km from the CBD. Figure 3: Distance of employment from CBD, 1981 and 2006 (km) Figure 4 shows that this pattern of dispersal held for all industry sectors with one significant exception. While over 80% of Retail and Manufacturing jobs were located more than 5 km from the centre, Commercial Services jobs were split roughly 50/50 between the inner city and the suburbs. This sector consists mainly of finance, insurance, business services and property services jobs. Those located in the CBD and inner city include major financial institutions and-high level producer services jobs servicing corporate clients. Those in the suburbs however tend to service the resident population, for example, real estate agents and personal financial advisers[6]. Figure 4: Proportion of jobs in each industry sector located in suburbs vs inner city, 2006 (%)The net result, as Figure 5 illustrates, is that the industry composition of the suburbs and the inner city are quite different. While they have much the same proportions of Community Services jobs, the suburbs have a significantly higher proportion of Manufacturing & Transport and Retail jobs. The inner city, on the other hand, is dominated by the Commercial Services sector – it accounts for nearly half of all jobs.Figure 5: Sectoral composition of jobs in inner city vs suburbs, 2006 (%)It may surprise, but Figure 6 shows that most high human capital jobs – that is jobs filled by a worker with a Bachelor’s Degree or higher – are located in the suburbs. The inner city has a higher density of graduate jobs, but the sheer size of the suburban job market means that in absolute terms it has more jobs filled by graduates. These high human capital jobs are located in suburban hospitals, universities, schools, local government administration and increasingly, in manufacturing and warehousing. Commercial Services is the exception – two thirds of the high skilled workers in this sector work in the inner city. Figure 6: Proportion of jobs in inner city vs suburbs occupied by a graduate or higher, 2006 (%) With 28% of all metropolitan employment in 2006, the inner city was an important job market for residents living in the central municipalities of Melbourne, Yarra and Port Phillip. However the inner city accounted for less than 10% of the metropolitan population, with the other 90% living in the suburbs. Figure 7 shows only around 25% of workers who lived in the middle suburbs commuted to the inner city. It also shows that less than 10% of outer suburban workers commuted to the inner city. Clearly, the great bulk of workers in Melbourne work in the suburbs. Figure 7: Share of commuters by metropolitan sub region who work in the inner city, 2006 (%)After a period of long decline, job numbers started to grow vigorously in absolute terms in the CBD and inner city from around the middle of the 1990s. Averaged over the period 1996 to 2006, inner city jobs grew at much the same pace as suburban jobs, meaning that the relative share of metropolitan jobs claimed by the inner city and suburbs did not change. While the great bulk of Melbourne’s jobs are in the suburbs, most of them are dispersed rather than located within major centres. Figure 8 shows there were 31 major activity centres[7] in Melbourne’s suburbs in 2006, which collectively accounted for only 20% of all suburban jobs. Some of these centres cover a substantial geographical area – they are spread out "blobs" of moderate density rather than sharp "points" with a small footprint and high density. Figure 8: Major suburban centres defined by number of jobs and density of jobs, 2006 None of the centres approach the CBD in either size or density. It can be seen from Figure 9 that apart from the top four – which together account for more than half of all jobs in suburban centres – most are in fact relatively small. The smallest centre has around 2,500 jobs. Figure 9: Suburban activity centres by size (proportion of all jobs in suburban centres), 2006 (%) Of the 31 major activity centres, 30 are specialised in at least one industry sector and many have multiple specialisations. Commercial Services is the only sector in which no suburban centre specialises – that is the domain of the inner city and especially the CBD. Specialisation suggests that firms seek to avoid the burden of size and/or density associated with diverse centres, instead preferring lower cost centres with the sorts of firms with which they do business. This brief review of the geography of employment in Melbourne provides insights that are relevant to policy. It is clear that most jobs are in the suburbs and so are most industry sectors. Moreover most of Melbourne’s high human capital jobs are also now located in the suburbs. Most suburban jobs aren’t located in major activity centres, rather they’re at low densities in smaller centres or in stand-alone developments. Suburban centres are themselves relatively low density areas when compared to the CBD. Finally, centres tend to specialise in a limited number of industries because most suburban firms incur higher costs but no benefit from locating with unrelated firms. Thus the suburbs are the major job arena in Melbourne. This is also true of other Australian cities like Sydney although there are local variations between cities (e.g. Parolin and Kamara). Density is not a strong locational driver of most suburban firms. This is partly because motorised transport enables firms in a suburban setting to enjoy the benefits of agglomeration without high density. It is also partly because many suburban firms serve consumers directly (rather than other firms as is more likely the case in the CBD) and thus prefer relatively small centres which are easily accessible to their customers. The key challenge for policy suggested by this analysis is how to provide efficient and sustainable mobility for workers and businesses in a low density environment. The suburban geography favours private transport over public transport. Priority in transport policy therefore needs to be given to making private vehicles more efficient and sustainable. This suggests policies like pricing road space and pricing carbon.ReferencesB.P. Parolin and S. Kamara. “Spatial Patterns and Functions of Employment Centres in Metropolitan Sydney, 1981-1996.” Presented at the State of Australian Cities National Conference, 2003. [1] The data on employment in this paper is drawn from the 1981 and 2006 Census [2] The location of jobs in 1981 and 2006 is captured in 1,000 traffic zones [3] The suburbs are defined as that part of Melbourne lying more than 5 km radius from the CBD. The inner city is that area lying within 5 km radius [4] The ‘average job’ is estimated by weighting the straight line distance of each of 1,000 traffic zones by the number of jobs in each zone [5] The ‘centre of mass’ is estimated by weighting the coordinates of each of 1,000 traffic zones by the number of jobs in each zone [6] Legend for tables is: CML – Commercial Services; HOS – Hospitality; CMY – Community Services; RET – Retail, WHL – Wholesale; MAN – Manufacturing & Transport; OTH – Other. [7] Centres are defined by their absolute level of employment and job density, based on 1,950 traffic zones. The thresholds for each zone are Z Scores of zero for both employment and density. Contiguous zones are aggregated to form a single centre