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How information technology has replaced the work culture of paternalism and standardization with one of isolation and insecurity.
"Throughout this study, idleness is shown to be a key element of self-presentation beginning with the figure of the idle aristocrat. The extravagant display of a life of leisure made Gilles de Rais the icon of aristocratic idleness. But even the hardworking humanist was anxious to assume a studied posture of idleness. If both figures were eager to display idleness, it was because oisivete was an important source of what modern theorists have termed symbolic capital. Finally, the Renaissance also saw the birth of a new figure of the "idler": the consumer of leisure. For it was leisure itself along with chivalric and amorous adventure that was consumed by the readers of the popular Amadis series. At once a commodity and form of capital, idleness (otium) clearly belonged to the realm of social exchanges ostensibly reserved for affairs (negotium)."--BOOK JACKET.
The purpose of this volume, bringing together key actors of the well-being community, including scholars and policy-makers, is to advance the understanding and undertaking of the well-being transition away from growth and toward resilience and sustainability, at a time when this progress has become a vital necessity. A decade after the publication of the Stiglitz Report (2009), alternative visions to GDP and growth, that flourished in the 1970s, have re-emerged from all corners of the world, at all levels of governance. Yet, GDP and growth remain very much dominant in defining public policies, influencing businesses and shaping imaginaries. This book moves forward on two urgent tasks that stand before us in order to make progress in the well-being transition: first, connecting well-being to sustainability in a consistent framework highlighting their complementarity, using health as a pivot; second, operationalizing well-being indicators, i.e. integrating them into policy at all levels of governance.
What Went Wrong: The Big Picture provides an overview of the in-depth analysis of the full book What Went Wrong. Something has gone seriously wrong: The American economy has experienced considerable growth in the last 30 years, but virtually none of this growth has trickled down to the average American. Incomes have been flat since 1985. Inequality has grown, and social mobility has dropped dramatically. Equally troubling, these policies have been devastating to both American productivity and our long-term competitiveness. Many reasons for these failures have been proposed. Globalization. Union greed. Outsourcing. But none of these explanations can address the harsh truth that many countries...
At the risk of sounding frivolous, there is a good case to be made for the argument that women constitute the revolutionary force behind contemporary social and economic transformation. It is in large part the changing role of women that explains the new household structure, our altered demographic behaviour, the growth of the service economy and, as a consequence, the new dilemmas that the advanced societies face. Most European countries have failed to adapt adequately to the novel challenges and the result is an increasingly serious disequilibrium. Women explicitly desire economic independence and the societal collective, too, needs to maximise female employment. And yet, this runs up agai...
Care and Pandemic captures an up-to-the-moment account of COVID-19 and its aftermath by an interdisciplinary network of transatlantic scholars reporting from Brazil, Colombia, and France. Case studies diagnose the problem, revealing socio-demographic dynamics of care labor markets, outlining the impact of online care platforms on the conditions of care work, and providing caring strategies rooted in community solidarity. Creating a robust and more resilient care organization requires a comprehensive understanding of why systems failed to build capacity that can absorb external shocks and address structural changes before, during, and after disasters. Contributors are: Gabriela Alkmin, Marian...
An advisor to Lionel Jospin, this author paints a picture of the messy march toward a unified Europe and calls for a more representative system, starting with a Constitution for al or Europe.
Does labor court uncertainty and judge subjectivity influence firms’ performance? We study the economic consequences of judge decisions by collecting information on more than 145,000 Appeal court rulings, combined with administrative firm-level records covering the whole universe of French firms. The quasi-random assignment of judges to cases reveals that judge bias has statistically significant effects on the survival, employment, and sales of small low-performing firms. However, we find that the uncertainty associated with the actual dispersion of judge bias is small and has a non-significant impact on their average outcomes.