Peak event: the rise,crisis and potential decline of the Olympic Games and the World Cup

This paper tracks the growth of two of the largest tourist events: the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup, drawing on a dataset containing all events between 1964 and 2018. Overall, the size of the three events has grown about 60-fold over the past 50 years, thirteen times faster than world GDP. We identify an S-shaped growth curve and four different growth periods, with an emergent crisis phase in the late 2010s that may have brought us to ‘peak event’ – the point at which these events have reached their largest size. Outlining three different scenarios, we argue that the Olympics and the World Cup are at a critical bifurcation point, which also requires new bidding and hosting policies.     

The New Employment Contract and the “At Risk” Worker

Employees of large blue chip corporations in the 1950s through the mid-1960s demonstrated great loyalty to their employers. In return, those employers provided cradle to grave job security and benefits for their workers. During the 1980s, however, this social contract between employees and employers seems to have undergone a change. The norms of the organization man of the earlier period passed from use and a new normative framework seems to have developed. The norm of loyalty on the part of both parties seems to have passed from practice. Employers would now terminate employees if it was in their short term interest to do so, while employees began to move from company to company, no longer making a career with one employer. Many writers have attributed this new employment relationship to the dynamics of the times, as we move from modern to late modern/early post-modern times. This paper reports the findings of a pilot qualitative study done with graduating seniors from an AACSB accredited business school (n=48). The subjects were asked to write self-reflective essays on the following themes: Given the nature of the new employment contract, are careers a vestige of the past? How do you feel about such concepts as career self reliance and career resiliency? Do you feel “at risk” in the new world of work? If so why, if not why not? If so, how do you plan to deal with it? The paper reports the critical response patterns of these graduating seniors and draws insights and conclusions from the literature illuminating the student reflections.     

Disentangling the paradoxical alliances between art market and art world

The relationship between art and market can be rendered visible only by closely examining the actions of contemporary artists, art critics, and writers, and the efforts of gallery and auction house merchandisers. A market orientation is just one way of evaluating the activities of the art world. Art and market are not reducible to each other, no matter the prevailing ideology. While the market operates on a narrative that valorizes the latest trend in imagemaking, aided by the creation of new technologies, it is neither the only nor the most important arbitrator of value for the viewer. Disentangling the art‐market complex is a necessary first step in reclaiming a holistic view of the consumption of art. We take that step in this paper.     

构建超越现代性的中国经济学

西方主流经济学中存在着五种现代性,中国经济学的构建要超越它们:实现后实证主义的科学哲学基础和知识的实践观;超越理论人本主义的主体间性原则;整体有机的世界观和动态演化的分析框架;对现代化范式、后殖民主义和西方中心主义的超越;超越人类中心主义的后现代生态主义.     

风险社会与科学制度

科学制度既具有正功能、显性功能,也具有反功能和隐性功能。科学制度运转失灵的直接后果是导致技术知识成为现代风险社会的主要“制造者”。在现代风险社会中,以往旧的科学制度已经不适合时代发展的要求了,应该通过反思现代性,重建科学制度,以防范社会风险。为了避免制度创新所产生的风险,国际上通行的做法是构建配套的保障制度,努力降低风险因素。