Colouring East Asian Sovereign Wealth Funds with Walter Benjamin: Dialectical Images and Presence of Mind in 'Building for the Future' in China and Singapore

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson Ng ◽  
declan j scully
2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soung-Hoo Jeon

An allergic reaction to mosquitoes can result in severe or abnormal local or systemic reactions such as anaphylaxis, angioedema, and general urticarial or wheezing. The aim of this review is to provide information on mosquito saliva allergens that can support the production of highly specific recombinant saliva allergens. In particular, candidate allergens of mosquitoes that are well suited to the ecology of mosquitoes that occur mainly in East Asia will be identified and introduced. By doing so, the diagnosis and treatment of patients with severe sensitivity to mosquito allergy will be improved by predicting the characteristics of East Asian mosquito allergy, presenting the future direction of production of recombinant allergens, and understanding the difference between East and West.


2016 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judit K. Szabo ◽  
Phil F. Battley ◽  
Katherine L. Buchanan ◽  
Danny I. Rogers
Keyword(s):  

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS SPINA ◽  
DOH C. SHIN ◽  
DANA CHA

AbstractThe debate over the future of East Asian democracy centers largely on the fit between democratic values and the Confucian way of life. Some interpret Confucianism's hierarchical, communitarian, and anti-pluralistic values as a roadblock to democratic consolidation. Others interpret the Confucian traditions of dissent and accountability as comparable to liberal institutions. This article surveys this scholarly debate by dividing the literature into three theoretical camps: compatibility, incompatibility, and convergence. Additionally, the few available empirical works on the Confucian-democratic dynamic are discussed and the findings are applied to the three categorizations. This review article maintains that a consensus on the relationship between Confucianism and democracy remains elusive due to the divergent conceptualizations and operationalizations of the two doctrines.


2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong-il Kim

The total factor productivity (TFP) growth controversy and the recent economic crisis raise many questions about the future growth of East Asia. Our analysis of historical experiences shows that low TFP growth in the East Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs) is a natural pattern of growth at the initial phase of industrialization. Empirical evidence shows that East Asian NIEs in recent decades have been proceeding toward an efficiency-based growth as developed countries did some time ago. The history of Latin America, however, indicates that the reform of old-fashioned institutions is needed if East Asia is to follow the path of the developed countries.


Author(s):  
Gordon L. Clark ◽  
Adam D. Dixon ◽  
Ashby H. B. Monk

During the financial crisis, a number of East Asian sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) acted as insurers of last resort for their nation-states, underwriting financial stability and social welfare. This chapter explains how and why this role came to pass, arguing that it serves to sustain the legitimacy of the nation-state as well as justify the separation of SWF assets from the public interest in current consumption and spending. Focusing on the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), it suggests that the prospect of recurrent financial crises was an important prompt for its establishment in 1981, reinforced by the experience of many East Asian countries in the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The chapter explains the formal constitution of the GIC, the mechanisms by which its reserves are returned to the government in crisis, and the role of different sections of the political elite in managing those assets. Referencing the principles of best-practice fund governance and the Santiago Principles underwriting the legitimacy of SWFs, it also considers the governance of the GIC, especially in regard to its investment processes.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanja Bahun

Writing in a Paris rife with war-anxieties, refugees and political plots, a stateless individual by the name of Walter Benjamin recorded on 11 January 1940: “Every line that we succeed in publishing today - given the uncertainty of the future to which we consign it - is a victory wrested from the power of darkness.” The fusion of desperation and mystical activism in the face of historical horror, expressed in Benjamin's last letter to Gershom Scholem, was echoed across the Channel. Only ten days later, Virginia Woolf - assailed by a mixture of historical, financial, creative and publishing worries - responded to a commission to write about peace by stating that the “views on peace […] spring from views on war.”


Author(s):  
Robert S. Lehman

The Introduction examines three moments that have proven foundational for the fraught relationship between poetry and history. The first occurs in the fourth century B. C. in Aristotle’s Poetics, the earliest attempt to provide a systematic definition of the structure and effects of poetry and, consequently, the origin of all later crises of verse. The second appears in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire, a text that offers a complicated poetic response to a moment of crisis in Marx’s own historical method. The third appears in the early writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, where, against the onset of the nineteenth-century science of history, the demand to see history become poetry is made explicit. Focusing on these three moments, the Introduction establishes the intellectual-historical coordinates of the poetico-historical problem that T. S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin inherit.


Author(s):  
Piotr Wiśniewski

This chapter examines the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) activity of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) from two perspectives: CEE-based SWFs operating internationally and CEE as hosts to international SWF investments. The scales of both activities are marginal in global terms, yet the SWF footprint can be significant in isolated CEE industries or investment targets. While new SWFs are unlikely to emerge in CEE, the scale of global SWF allocation to the region is set to expand in line with diversification and growth opportunities. CEE should strive to improve its investment climate, including competitiveness of financial industries. The existing CEE-based (Russian) SWFs would benefit from deregulation, transparency and commitment to performance metrics, yet they remain a hostage to the future shape of Russian, and world macroeconomic policy.


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