Translating Expertise across Work Contexts: U.S. Puppeteers Move from Stage to Screen

Expertise is a key currency in today’s knowledge economy. Yet as experts increasingly move across work contexts, how expertise translates across contexts is less well understood. Here, we examine how a shift in context—which reorders the relative attention experts pay to distinct types of audiences—redefines what it means to be an expert. Our study’s setting is an established expertise in the creative industry: puppet manipulation. Through an examination of U.S. puppeteers’ move from stage to screen (i.e., film and television), we show that, although the two settings call on mostly similar techniques, puppeteers on stage ground their claims to expertise in a dialogue with spectators and view expertise as achieving believability; by contrast, puppeteers on screen invoke the need to deliver on cue when dealing with producers, directors, and co-workers and view expertise as achieving task mastery. When moving between stage and screen, puppeteers therefore prioritize the needs of certain audiences over others’ and gradually reshape their own views of expertise. Our findings embed the nature of expertise in experts’ ordering of types of audiences to attend to and provide insights for explaining how expertise can shift and become co-opted by workplaces.

Trade and economic activity of the Rybinsk interdistrict base of Ivanovo regional office of the Torgsin (Trade with Foreigners) in 1933–1935

The article presents the main stages of the organisation of the Rybinsk interdistrict base (the IDB) of Ivanovo regional office Torgsin (Trade with Foreigners) and its further reorganisation. The questions about the evolution of managerial decisions during 1932-1933, sent from higher organisations, are investigated. Attention is paid to the information on the suppliers who served the IDB. Examples of economic and financial violations in the work of the store are given. The information on the key currency values attracted by Rybinsk IDB and its subordinate outlets in 1933-1934 is indicated. The comparison of the financial indicators of Rybinsk Torgsin IDB with the results of other divisions of Ivanovo regional office is carried out. Its contribution to the work of the regional office is noted. The reasons for the change in indicators in different periods have been studied. Particular attention is paid to calculating the weight volume of purchases of gold and silver. The dynamics of changes in indicators of the purchase of household gold and silver, of gold and silver coins, as well as the receipt of foreign currency are shown. The data on the countries from which the transfer operations were most actively carried out are presented. The potential economic effect from the activities of Rybinsk Torgsin IDB is considered. The article draws a conclusion about the role of Torgsin as one of the sources of obtaining currency values.

The Dollar and the United States' Exorbitant Power to Sanction

With the Trump administration's reimposition of financial sanctions on Iran, the power of the weaponized dollar is yet again making headlines—and putting distance between the United States and its allies. The dollar's special status as the world's key currency affords the United States an unrivaled sanctioning power. Because access to dollars is a near-necessity for multinational businesses and financial institutions, the United States can unilaterally impose costly sanctions by denying such access to a target—whether a state, company, or individual. This capability is one form of the “exorbitant privilege” afforded to the United States by the dollar's international role. This essay considers why the dollar's status affords the United States this sanctioning power and how the United States exercises it. I first summarize the nature of the dollar's role. Next, I explain the means by which the United States has weaponized that role, especially through financial sanctions. I conclude by offering some potential limitations on that power and exploring the ways in which other countries might seek to erode it.