Going native - Brand New China, Advertising, Media and Commercial Culture, Jing Wang (2008) [Book Review]

Jing Wang's book is confused about its audience and fails to give an adequate account of either the specific knowledge available to advertising research or the nature of Chinese consumption. In addition its critique of cultural studies is misplaced and misguided

We Need to Talk about Cultural Studies

A review of Graeme Turner, What’s Become of Cultural Studies (Sage, London, 2012) and Lawrence Grossberg, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (Duke University Press, Durham, 2010)

In Epistemic Networks, is Less Really More?

We show that previous results from epistemic network models (Zollman, 2007, 2010; Kummerfeld and Zollman, 2015) showing the benefits of decreased connectivity in epistemic networks are not robust across changes in parameter values. Our findings motivate discussion about whether and how such models can inform real-world epistemic communities. As we argue, only robust results from epistemic network models should be used to generate advice for the real-world, and, in particular, decreasing connectivity is a robustly poor recommendation

Experimental Economics for Philosophers

Recently, game theory and evolutionary game theory - mathematical frameworks from economics and biology designed to model and explain interactive behavior - have proved fruitful tools for philosophers in areas such as ethics, philosophy of language, social epistemology, and political philosophy. This methodological osmosis is part of a trend where philosophers have blurred disciplinary lines to import the best epistemic tools available. In this vein, experimental philosophers have drawn on practices from the social sciences, and especially from psychology, to expand philosophy's grasp on issues from morality to consciousness. We argue that the recent prevalence of formal work on human interaction in philosophy opens the door for new methods in experimental philosophy. In particular, we discuss methods from experimental economics, focusing on a small literature we have been developing investigating signaling and communication in humans. We describe results from a novel experiment showing how environmental structure can shape signaling behavior

Characterisation of electroless deposited Cobalt by hard and soft X-ray photoemission spectroscopy

Electroless deposited (ELD) cobalt with palladium as a catalyst, and an underlying self-assembled monolayer (SAM) was investigated for potential use in advanced complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) applications using both hard (HAXPES) and soft (XPS) x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. HAXPES spectra established the uniformity of the deposited Co film and the nature of the buried Co-Si interface ~20nm below the surface. The Pd is seen to diffuse through the Co following thermal annealing. While the deposited Co film is predominantly metallic, Co-silicide forms at the Co-Si interface upon deposition and decomposes with thermal anneal up to 500°C

Longitudinal and transverse spectral functions in the three-dimensional O(4) model

We have performed a high statistics simulation of the O(4) model on a three-dimensional lattice of linear extension L=120 for small external fields H. Using the maximum entropy method we analyze the longitudinal and transverse plane spin correlation functions for T=T_c. In the transverse case we find for all T and H a single sharp peak in the spectral function, whose position defines the transverse mass m_T, the correlator is that of a free particle with mass m_T. In the longitudinal case we find in the very high temperature region also a single sharp peak in the spectrum. On approaching the critical point from above the peak broadens somewhat and at T_c its position m_L is at 2m_T for all our H-values. Below T_c we find still a significant peak at omega=2m_T and at higher omega-values a continuum of states with several smaller peaks with decreasing heights. This finding is in accord with a relation of Patashinskii and Pokrovskii between the longitudinal and the transverse correlation functions. We test this relation in the following. As a by-product we calculate critical exponents and amplitudes and confirm our former results.Comment: 38 pages, 26 figure

Resources of Hope? Creative Economy and Development in the Global South

This paper sets out to challenge the dominant narrative of the creative economy as a new option for developing countries. The much-vaunted growth rates proclaimed by UNCTAD's Creative Economy Programme have slowed, and are seen to apply to a particular kind of manufactured good, as well as being overwhelmingly dominated by Asia, and especially China. This paper tries to unpick the dominant creative economy model of entrepreneurship, creative human capital and open market opportunity and suggests that - other than in East Asia - it is business as usual for the Global North. The creative economy not only fails to deliver its promise of development but has profound consequences for local cultures, caught up in an ever more global web of exploitation driven by the new digital platforms. We need to return to the earlier concerns of 'culture and development' now fully aware of the downsides, as well as the potential, of cultural economies in an uncertain global landscape

The Large N Limit and the High Temperature Phase Transition for the \phi^4 Theory

We study, with various methods (standard large N evaluation of the functional integral for the effective potential, solution of the Schwinger-Dyson equations), the high temperature phase transition for the $N$-component $\phi^4$ theory in the large $N$ limit. Our results fully confirm a previous investigation of the problem, for arbitrary $N$, with the method of the average potential which employs renormalization group ideas. The phase transition is of the second order with an effectively three-dimensional critical behaviour. }Comment: DESY-93-004, 23 pages, 2 figures available by fax upon reques