Staples Economy and the (Post) Staples State in Historical Perspective
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Article Consumer Databases and The
Consumer Databases and the Commercial Article Mediation of Identity: a medium theory analysis Vincent Manzerolle Sandra Smeltzer University of Western Ontario, Canada. University of Western Ontario, Canada. [email protected] [email protected] Abstract This paper argues that the systemic nature of contemporary consumer surveillance undermines the most fundamental principle of free market economics: consumer sovereignty. Specifically, this paper argues that the rise of an information society in conjunction with neoliberal capitalism has entrenched routine forms of surveillance within commercial strategies by employing networked databases as a primary medium for the articulation of consumer sovereignty. The communicative relationship between consumers and producers within the market involves effectively ‘listening’ (and then responding) to consumer needs and wants in a timely manner. Surveillance is therefore not only necessary for the operation of globalized consumer capitalism, it is also the primary means by which consumers communicate their sovereignty within the marketplace. By turning to the work of Harold Innis and the intellectual tradition known as medium theory, this paper will theorize how consumer databases are used to circumvent the fundamental neutrality of the market, and thus sovereignty, of individual consumers by exploiting individual vulnerabilities through behaviour and profile modelling. Increasingly, vast amounts of personal information are in the hands of third party entities, creating what Innis calls monopolies of knowledge. Drawing on the example of Acxiom, a US-based data collection and management corporation, we highlight how the commercial mediation of identity has become progressively more hidden from view of the consumer and thus the need for greater regulation of this industry. Introduction Personal information is increasingly the basic fuel on which economic activity runs. -
Mcluhan Lecture
MediaTropes eJournal Vol I (2008): 19–41 ISSN 1913-6005 “AGENTS OF AGGRESSIVE ORDER”: LETTERS, HANDS, AND THE GRASPING POWER OF TEETH IN THE EARLY CANADIAN TORTURE NARRATIVE MONIQUE TSCHOFEN Introduction This paper brings together a most fascinating and under-examined body of early New World writing that belong to a genre of writing I call “the torture narrative” with the insights of Marshall McLuhan in order to offer a way of thinking about body parts, especially hands, teeth, tongues, and eyeballs, and their extensions through technologies such as alphabets, manuscripts, books, and weapons. At its core are questions about the nature and effects of the changes wrought by the early-Gutenberg era—a period characterized by vast scientific and technical discoveries, rising nationalisms, explorations, and conquests—in the New World. Rather than explore the ways an early New World print culture reflects or distorts discrete historical or ethnographic facts about colonial contact, I want to probe the ways the torture narrative speaks to the conditions of speaking and writing, and therefore to the discursive and textual production of the New World subject and New World space. My inquiry seeks to understand both the violence in, and the violence of, representation at founding historical moments, but its relevance far exceeds Renaissance or American studies. At stake in this discussion is an appreciation of a mode of intellectual inquiry that is attentive to the relationship between media technologies and the social worlds they reflect and transform. I. McLuhan’s Theories: Break-Boundaries and the Effects of Alphabetization Fascinated by turbulence, over-heating, explosions, implosions, and reversals, Marshall McLuhan is a thinker of boundaries, limits, and all modalities of transformation. -
Fitzgerald and Winseck.Docx
Media Economics: Missed Opportunities, Mischaracterizations Scott Fitzgerald, Curtin Business School, Curtin University, Perth, Australia Dwayne Winseck, School of Journalism and Communication/Institute of Political Economy, Carleton A heightened state of flux is now sweeping the media, creative, telecom and internet industries. In the United States Netflix recently, albeit briefly, surpassed Disney as the country’s largest media company by market capitalization. The just completed mega-merger between AT&T and Time Warner and another prospective one between Disney and 21st Century Fox (or potentially Comcast and 21st Century Fox) are presented as countering the threat posed by Netflix, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google to traditional film and TV businesses. Such developments highlight the issues of competition, market power, consumer welfare and industry evolution. In the latter context, visions of heightened competition, technical innovation and interactivity associated with digital distribution have been recurrent themes in industry analysis since before the US Telecommunications Act of 1996. Media Economics, by Stuart Cunningham, Terry Flew and Adam Swift (2015), takes up the challenge of grappling with new institutional actors and considers how audiences interact with and contribute to the emergent digital media ecology. These leading media studies scholars survey several different schools of thought useful to analysing media industries. They suggest that certain schools of heterodox economics - the ‘new’ institutionalism, evolutionary -
WT/TPR/M/314 19 August 2015 (15-4200) Page
WT/TPR/M/314 19 August 2015 (15-4200) Page: 1/53 Trade Policy Review Body 15 and 17 June 2015 TRADE POLICY REVIEW CANADA MINUTES OF THE MEETING Chairperson: H.E. Mr Atanas Atanassov Paparizov CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY THE CHAIRPERSON ....................................................... 2 2 OPENING STATEMENT BY THE REPRESENTATIVE OF CANADA (HONOURABLE MR CAMERON MACKAY) ................................................................................................... 4 3 STATEMENT BY THE DISCUSSANT ................................................................................ 8 4 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS ........................................................................................ 12 5 REPLIES BY THE REPRESENTATIVE OF CANADA AND ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ......... 47 6 CONCLUDING REMARKS BY THE CHAIRPERSON ......................................................... 52 Note: Advance written questions and additional questions by WTO Members, and the replies provided by Canada are reproduced in document WT/TPR/M/314/Add.1 and will be available online at http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/tpr_e/tp_rep_e.htm. WT/TPR/M/314 • Canada - 2 - 1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY THE CHAIRPERSON 1.1. The tenth Trade Policy Review of Canada was held on 15 and 17 June 2015. The Chairperson H.E. Mr Atanas Atanassov Paparizov (Bulgaria) welcomed the delegation of Canada headed by Honourable Mr Cameron Mackay, Director General, Trade Negotiations, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development; the rest of the delegation, including H.E. Ambassador Jonathan T. Fried, Permanent Representative of Canada to the WTO; other colleagues from the Mission in Geneva; and the discussant, H.E. Ambassador Remigi Winzap (Switzerland). 1.2. The Chairperson recalled the purpose of the Trade Policy Reviews and the main elements of the procedures for the meeting. The report by Canada was contained in document WT/TPR/G/314 and that of the WTO Secretariat in WT/TPR/S/314. -
The Canadian Dollar and the Dutch and Canadian Diseases
Volume 6•Issue 30•October 2013 THE CANADIAN DOLLAR AND THE DUTCH AND CANADIAN DISEASES* Serge Coulombe† Department of Economics, University of Ottawa SUMMARY With the spectacular rise of the dollar, along with rising natural-resource prices during the first decade of the 21st century, Canadians heard a great deal about Dutch disease. Many politicians and pundits blamed the phenomenon — in which a country’s currency, inflated by rising commodity prices, renders manufacturing exports increasingly uncompetitive — for rising unemployment in the Canadian manufacturing industry. But a close look at what happened during that period reveals that the Dutch disease mechanism was only part of the story. The other part, and quantitatively the most important, is an affliction of an altogether different providence: Canadian disease. Canadian disease is the economic trouble that can be caused by Canada’s extraordinarily heavy reliance on the United States as a trading partner. As a consequence, a sudden depreciation of the U.S, dollar will deteriorate the competitiveness of Canadian manufacturing exporters. Such a phenomenon was at work during the “Great Appreciation” of the Canadian dollar between 2002 and 2008 — the largest such appreciation on record in this country. The depreciation of the U.S. dollar is a phenomenon that is independent of the resource boom and the resulting consequences on the Canadian economy cannot be endorsed to a Dutch disease. Almost 2/3 of the employment losses that are exchange rate related in the trade-exposed manufacturers in Canada during the 2002–2008 period could be attributed to the Canadian disease. The Canadian dollar is partly driven by commodity prices, and the appreciation of the Canadian dollar exerts a negative impact on manufacturing industries that are exposed to international competition. -
THE ECONOMY of CANADA in the NINETEENTH CENTURY Marvin Mcinnis
2 THE ECONOMY OF CANADA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY marvin mcinnis FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH- CENTURY CANADIAN ECONOMY For the economy of Canada it can be said that the nineteenth century came to an end in the mid-1890s. There is wide agreement among observers that a fundamental break occurred at about that time and that in the years thereafter Canadian economic development, industrialization, population growth, and territorial expansion quickened markedly. This has led economic historians to put a special emphasis on the particularly rapid economic expansion that occurred in the years after about 1896. That emphasis has been deceptive and has generated a perception that little of consequence was happening before 1896. W. W. Rostow was only reflecting a reasonable reading of what had been written about Canadian economic history when he declared the “take-off” in Canada to have occurred in the years between 1896 and 1913. That was undoubtedly a period of rapid growth and great transformation in the Canadian economy and is best considered as part of the twentieth-century experience. The break is usually thought to have occurred in the mid-1890s, but the most indicative data concerning the end of this period are drawn from the 1891 decennial census. By the time of the next census in 1901, major changes had begun to occur. It fits the available evidence best, then, to think of an early 1890s end to the nineteenth century. Some guidance to our reconsideration of Canadian economic devel- opment prior to the big discontinuity of the 1890s may be given by a brief review of what had been accomplished by the early years of that decade. -
Mass Media and the Transformation of American Politics Kristine A
Marquette Law Review Volume 77 | Issue 2 Article 7 Mass Media and the Transformation of American Politics Kristine A. Oswald Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr Part of the Law Commons Repository Citation Kristine A. Oswald, Mass Media and the Transformation of American Politics, 77 Marq. L. Rev. 385 (2009). Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol77/iss2/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Marquette Law Review by an authorized administrator of Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MASS MEDIA AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS I. INTRODUCTION The importance of the mass media1 in today's society cannot be over- estimated. Especially in the arena of policy-making, the media's influ- ence has helped shape the development of American government. To more fully understand the political decision-making process in this coun- try it is necessary to understand the media's role in the performance of political officials and institutions. The significance of the media's influ- ence was expressed by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "The Press has become the greatest power within Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: '2 By what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?" The importance of the media's power and influence can only be fully appreciated through a complete understanding of who or what the media are. -
The Boston College Economics Department
THE BOSTON COLLEGE BC ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER June, 1992 EC August 1996 Prof. Robert McEwen, S.J. Professor Emeritus Robert J. McEwen of the Society of Jesus died of a heart attack on May 15, 1996 in Cork, Ireland, where he was visiting relatives. He was 79. He had just completed his 50th year of teaching in the Boston College Department of Economics. McEwen received one of the first Ph.D.’s granted in economics at Boston College, and chaired the department from 1957 to 1970, playing a crucial role in its development. His area of expertise was consumer economics–a field in which he received recognition from President Lyndon Johnson and from state leaders. In 1963, he successfully lobbied the Massachu- setts legislature to create the state Consumer Council, and served as its founding chair. The following remembrance of Bob McEwen was written by Prof. Francis McLaughlin, a colleague of Bob’s for many years. A remembrance In mid-May Father Robert J. McEwen died suddenly while visiting relatives in Ireland. He had turned in grades and completed fifty years of teaching economics at BC just a few weeks earlier. Father McEwen was chairman of the department from 1957 to 1970, and a key player in the department's growth and development. In 1957 he received one of the first three Ph.D. degrees in economics awarded by Boston College. His thesis was on the "so- called" fair trade laws. He was "against them" according to Father Seavey Joyce, a member of his thesis committee. The following September Bob became chairman, taking over from Father Joyce. -
Canada's Location in the World System: Reworking
CANADA’S LOCATION IN THE WORLD SYSTEM: REWORKING THE DEBATE IN CANADIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY by WILLIAM BURGESS BA (Hon.), Queens University, 1978 MA (Plan.), University of British Columbia, 1995 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Department of Geography We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA January 2002 © William Burgess, 2002 Abstract Canada is more accurately described as an independent imperialist country than a relatively dependent or foreign-dominated country. This conclusion is reached by examining recent empirical evidence on the extent of inward and outward foreign investment, ownership links between large financial corporations and large industrial corporations, and the size and composition of manufacturing production and trade. -
Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance and You Transcript
Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance and You Transcript Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2010 - 12:00AM Location: Museum of London Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance and You Ian Harris, Z/Yen Group 16/11/2010 Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. I am honoured to have been invited to deliver this third and final guest Gresham Lecture in the "Beyond Crisis" series. This lecture is entitled "Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance & You". Cattle and Pens [SLIDE: OMO VALLEY COMMUNITY SCHOOL] When my partner, Janie, and I travel in the developing world, it has long been our habit to take a healthy supply of basic, ball- point pens with us to give as gifts to children as a small contribution towards their education and therefore development. We are old hands at this now - we learnt many years ago that simply handing pens to children at random is not an educational gift at all, but a gift akin to money. The ball-point pen is a valuable commodity which can be exchanged for other more instantly gratifying items, such as sweets. Or perhaps even cash. In recent years, we have preferred to give the pens through schools, where we are more confident that the teachers will ensure that the children actually use the pens themselves for educational purposes. When we went to Ethiopia a few years ago, we 'struck gold' in a Karo village in the South Omo Valley. The Government had just built the village its first school, which was due to open later that year. But the Government had run out of money for this project before providing consumables for the school. -
Economic Approaches to Language and Bilingualism. New AVAILABLE
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 429 438 FL 025 708 AUTHOR Breton, Albert, Ed. TITLE Economic Approaches to Language and Bilingualism. New Canadian Perspectives. INSTITUTION Canadian Heritage, Ottawa (Ontario). ISBN ISBN-0-662-26885-7 ISSN ISSN-1203-8903 PUB DATE 1998-00-00 NOTE 261p. AVAILABLE FROM Official Languages Support Programs, Department of Canadian Heritage, 15 Eddy, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A-0M5 (Cat. no. CH3-2-7/1998E); Tel: 819-994-2224; Web site: http://www.pch.gc.ca/offlangoff/perspectives/index.htm (free). PUB TYPE Books (010) Collected Works General (020) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC11 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Bilingual Education; *Bilingualism; *Economic Factors; Economics; Foreign Countries; Global Approach; Human Capital; International Trade; *Labor Economics; Language Minorities; *Language Role; *Languages; *Official Languages; Regional Characteristics; Second Language Instruction IDENTIFIERS Acadians; *Canada; New Brunswick ABSTRACT Six essays on the links between official languages and the economy in Canada include: "An Economic Analysis of Language" (Albert Breton); "The Economics of Language in a Virtually Integrated Global Economy" (Richard G. Harris); "Speak and Ye Shall Receive: Language Knowledgeas Human Capital" (Krishna Pendakur, Ravi Pendakur); "Bilingualism and Earnings: A Study Based on 1971, 1981, and 1991 Census Data" (Louis N. Christofides, Robert Swidinsky); "Bilingualism in Employee Recruitment and the Role of Symbolic Analysts in Leading Export-Oriented Firms" (Harold Chorney); and "The Contributions of a Minority to its Region: The Case of the Acadians in New Brunswick's South East" (Maurice Beaudin).(MSE) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** oo en -cr o. A 110 A ISIS MIK MINIM AAs IA 1- . -
CHAPTER 1 GLOBALIZATION, the STATE and SUBSIDIES 1. This Is
Notes CHAPTER 1 GLOBALIZATION, THE STATE AND SUBSIDIES 1. This is an interpretation that stresses developments in the global political economy. Other work on globalization has stressed the compression of time and space, as well as broader sociological aspects (Shaw, 1994; Robertson, 1992). 2. For an extended consideration of these categories see the work of Robert W. Cox (1987; 1986). 3. James Laxer (1987) uses the terms 'enterprise' and 'enterprise-interven tion' to describe similar variations as hyperliberalism and state capitalism. 4. This statement presumes that the interests of domestic societies may not be synonymous with the demands of the international economy as articu lated by hegemonic spokespeople. CHAPTER 2 THE US TRADE LAW SYSTEM 1. This has led one prominent observer (Wolf, 1989: 286) to use 'stupidity' as a possible explanation for trade restrictions! 2. See 'Statement by Forty Economists on American Trade Policy', issued in April 1989 reprinted in The World Economy 12 no. 2 (June 1989: 263-4 and Bovard, 1991). 3. Nelson (1989) terms this a shift from distributional to regulatory politics. 4. C. Michael Aho refers to this practice as 'forum shopping'. See 'Com ments', (Smith, 1987: 44). 5. Public letter accompanying the release of the 1985 Trade Barriers Report (29 October) from United States Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter to Senator Bob Packwood, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance. 6. Belgium also brought in a CVD law at this time. 7. Concerns about the protectionist bias in antidumping cases are outlined in Devalut (1990). 8. Having made this point, it is acknowledged that other laws such as the antidumping provision and Section 301 can also be used to change other government activities.