Political Machines : Governing a Technological Society

2001 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Technological Society ◽  
Political Machines

‘Machinic Desire’: Wyndham Lewis, Masculinity and the Sublime Horror of Technological War

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-514
Author(s):  
Udith Dematagoda
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
World War ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his varied artistic output. It interrogates how Lewis's initial ambivalence towards an emergent technological society shifted through direct encounters with mechanized warfare, and speculates on the effect of these upon his post-war writing and criticism. By contrasting Lewis's thought against that of his Italian Futurist contemporaries, I will demonstrate the centrality of their divergent conceptions of masculinity in accounting for this opposition – and how Lewis's critique of technological society prefigures contemporary opposition towards the post-humanist philosophy of Accelerationism.

Localization of Ethnic Groups in the Regions as a Factor in Cross-Regional Variations in Voting for United Russia

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-153
Author(s):  
Eleonora Minaeva ◽  
Petr Panov
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Regional Variations ◽  
Political Machines ◽  
Ethnic Networks ◽  
Electoral Authoritarianism ◽  
Administrative Unit ◽  
The Russian Federation

Abstract In the context of electoral authoritarianism, political mobilization is likely to be a more reasonable explanation of cross-regional variations in voting for the party of power than the diversity of the regions’ policy preferences. In the Russian Federation, the political machines which coordinate various activities aimed at mobilizing people to vote for United Russia demonstrate different degrees of effectiveness. This article examines the structural factors that facilitate machine politics focusing on ethnic networks. Although strong ethnic networks are more likely to arise if the members of an ethnic group live close to each other, and at the same time separately from other ethnic groups, so far researchers have neglected to consider the localization of ethnic groups within the territory of an administrative unit as a factor. In order to fill the gap, we have created an original geo-referenced dataset of the localization of non-Russian ethnic groups within every region of the Russian Federation, and developed special GIS (geographic information systems) techniques and tools to measure them in relation to the Russian population. This has made it possible to include the localization of ethnic groups as a variable in the study of cross-regional differences in voting for United Russia. Our analysis finds that the effect of non-Russians’ share of the population on voting for UR increases significantly if non-Russian groups are at least partially geographically segregated from Russians within a region.

Bastions of Tradition: The Ethnic Factor and Political Machines in Russian Regions

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-111
Author(s):  
Stanislav Shkel
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Komi Republic ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Political Machines ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Republic Of Bashkortostan ◽  
Chuvash Republic ◽  
Material Benefits ◽  
The Republic

The regional machines created by the Russian governors in the mid-1990s turned out to be most effective in the ethnic republics. This phenomenon is supported by several facts, with the primary as follows: the density of the patronage networks among the rural ethnic minorities, and the economic heritage of the Soviet period and ethnical institutionalization. These factors allowed regional elites to integrate ethnic minorities into the clientelism structure to distribute symbolic and material benefits in exchange for their electoral support. However, at present, the federal authorities have considerably reduced the autonomy of the ethnic republics and deprived them of many ethnic preferences. Basing on the analysis of the electoral statistics from the Russian Presidential Election of 2018, this article researches the political consequences caused by the changed relationship between the center and the regions, as well as the changes in functioning of regional political machines in the circumstances where the governors’ institutional and resource autonomy has been reduced. The data analysis allowed for the discovery of the diversified electoral behavior of ethnic minorities in different republics. The reasons for the above diversification have been explained based on a comparative analysis of five case studies (the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Komi Republic, the Chuvash Republic, and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)).

The commodification of personality: Human enhancement and market society

Human Affairs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-45
Author(s):  
Leandro Gaitán
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
The Self ◽  
Market Society ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Technological Tools

Abstract In a future highly technological society it will be possible to modify the personality using different kinds of technological tools. Consequently, we could become buyers and consumers of personality. As such, personality, which is a core aspect of the self, could turn into a commodity. This article intends to address the following questions: 1) How can new technologies modify personality? 2) Why might personality become a commodity? 3) What is wrong with turning personality into commodity?

scholarly journals Religion and Reform in the City: The Re-Thinking Chicago Movement of the 1930s

1986 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-337
Author(s):  
Jacob H. Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Machines ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Leaders ◽  
First World ◽  
Urban Civilization

Historians have produced a rich and sophisticated literature on urban reform in the progressive era before the First World War. It includes numerous studies of individual cities, biographies of urban leaders, and analyses of particular movements and organizations. This literature illuminates important variations among reformers and their achievements, the relationships between urban growth and reform, and the functional role of the old-style political machines against which progressives battled. Similarly, there are many examinations of progressive-era reformers' ideas about and attitudes toward the burgeoning industrial cities that had come into being with disquieting rapidity during their own lifetimes. Some of these works go well beyond the controversial conclusions of Morton and Lucia White in The Intellectual Versus the City (1964) to find more complex—and sometimes more positive—assessments of the new urban civilization.

City Management and the Emerging Welfare State: Evolution of City Budgets and Civic Responsibilities in Montreal, 1931–1951

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Collin
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
Political Life ◽  
City Management ◽  
Political Machines ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
State Evolution ◽  
The City

The Great Depression of the 1930s transformed municipal political life in Montreal, as it did that in other major cities in North America. For one thing, the debate between populists and reformers was revived as the electoral scene underwent fundamental changes. In many cities, political machines running on patronage became more influential as the middle class began to desert the city for the suburbs. At the same time, the margin of budgetary maneuvering available to cities was shrinking, and local public finances were reduced. Municipalities that had been obliged to borrow to meet social needs resulting from the depression were faced with a prolonged fiscal crisis, which for many of them resulted in bankruptcy and trusteeship. This was Montreal's fate in 1940.

Does Art have Selective Value?

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Dissanayake
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Concept Art ◽  
Modern Sense

In the absence of satisfactory accounts by evolutionary biologists to explain the ubiquity and persistence of art in all human societies, a number of reasons offered by other writers for the existence and effects of art are critically examined for their evolutionary plausibility. These are found to be inadequate because they are only partial and because their “selective value” is more parsimoniously attributed to other behaviors and attributes which art resembles (e.g., play, ritual, fantasy, ordering, and so forth). The necessity for invoking a concept “art” at all is questioned. Instead it is posited that a universal human behavior, “making special,” from which art in the modern sense is derived had evolutionary value because it reinforced the adoption of other selectively-valuable behaviors. Aesthetic ingredients and responses can be called enabling mechanisms to this end. A concluding section discusses peculiarities of advanced technological society that contribute to modern confusion about art and its place — necessary or unnecessary — in human life.

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