Space and Identity in Resistance against Neoliberal Urban Planning in Turkey

This article highlights the role of collective identity and space in the emergence of social resistance within a neoliberal context. It argues that the attempted eviction of residents from their established neighbourhoods through public planning projects generates resistance against the reappropriation of these spaces and has encouraged new forms of resistance among inhabitants in several neighbourhoods. I particularly emphasize that planning projects often displace particular populations by force, principally minority communities, in order to confine them to new resettlement areas far from their customary living places, which has a socioeconomic impact on people's identity, everyday life and social solidarity. The article is based on empirical research in two neighbourhoods in Istanbul — 1 May?s and Sulukule — to analyse practices of resistance of inhabitants in everyday life and examine how this resistance shapes their identity and daily life.     

Fear and Loathing (of others): Race,Class and Contestation of Space in Washington,DC

Our article explores the cultural politics of public space and the placemaking politics of urban redevelopment in the Atlas District of Washington, DC, a popular commercial district undergoing rapid gentrification. The major questions we address are, how do race and class impact the ways public space is controlled and/or managed in the context of rapid changes in the built, economic and social environments of the neighborhood? What role do those narratives play in justifying changes in and management of public space? We focus on uses of public space and describe how various forms of power are linked to the control of space in the context of gentrification. Our analysis focuses on designated public space in the Atlas District—the Starburst Plaza. By analyzing everyday practices around community control at the Starburst Plaza, this case study focuses on the discrete methods by which the symbolic and material inequities promulgated by the neoliberal state are reconfigured through struggles to define and manage contested public spaces.     

‘Ruins of Modernity’: The Critical Implications of Unfinished Public Works in Italy

Since the 1950s, the construction of public works has been a significant element of Italy's focus on modernization. Numerous instances of malpractice have resulted in frequent failures of this form of development, with the result that many projects have remained unfinished for decades. In 2007, a group of artists called Alterazioni Video declared these ‘ruins of modernity’ to be a romanticized architectural style; in doing so, their aim is to imbue the sites with new value and dignity. This article uses the artists’ argument as a point of departure to theorize about unfinished public works within the framework of interdisciplinary literatures on modern ruins. In addition, since modern ruins by definition hold a critical meaning––which the artists deliberately excluded from their narrative––the article takes into account the obscure political and economic circumstances causing this phenomenon. After remarking upon specificities and similarities to unfinished neoliberal topographies generated by the 2008 financial crisis, it is concluded that unfinished public works in Italy represent an interesting case serving to enrich debates on incompletion.     

Entrepreneurial Religion in the Age of Neoliberal Urbanism

The introduction to this symposium on entrepreneurial religion and neoliberal urbanism discusses leading scholarly approaches to religion and urban theory, arguing that, despite their merits, these approaches are in need of refinement. Theories on religion and urban theory too often describe religion as a reactionary phenomenon. Religious movements and spaces are generally defined as pockets of resistance and shelter against retreating or failing states under neoliberal restructuring programmes in the shadow of consumption dreams. Although religious actors and ideologies unquestionably form part of urban groups that are denied access to public and private means to wealth and security, the contributors to this symposium argue that within a global, comparative perspective, the entwinement of religion, state and market reveal more complicated configurations. Through a comparison of Islamic gated communities in Istanbul, Pentecostal prayer camps in Lagos and Pentecostal grassroots movements in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, this symposium demonstrates that urban religion should also be regarded as a constitutive force of contemporary capitalism and should therefore be placed at the heart of the neoliberal construction of urban space instead of at its margins.     

Be Berlin! Governing the City through Freedom

In this article, I examine how contemporary Berlin is governed, with a particular focus on the production of urban space. My points of reference are the term ‘government’ (as employed by Foucault) and the field of governmentality studies (where it is applied empirically). Based on a critical discourse and dispositive analysis of the city's current urban development policy, I propose that urban governance in Berlin may be analysed through the lens of three central dispositives: the dispositive of governing through citizenship; the dispositive of the creative city; and the dispositive of the social city. I discuss the characteristics of these dispositives of urban governance, drawing on a number of examples taken from the discipline of urban space production in order to look specifically at the aims and objectives of governance, its subjects and the ways it manifests itself. In conclusion, I suggest that the new forms of governance based on empowerment and cooperation have by no means replaced disciplinary technologies of governance, but are rather embedded within them.     

The Regime of Informality in Neoliberal Times in Turkey: The Case of the Kadifekale Urban Transformation Project

Juxtaposing the empirical findings of a qualitative research study of an urban transformation project in the Kadifekale squatter district of Izmir with the changed nature of urban politics in a neoliberal context, this article aims to trace the manifestations of the regime of informality in Turkey. Ethnographic consideration of the motives behind these projects, the way they have been carried out and their consequences for the lives of the inhabitants points to an extended space for informal politics tactically manoeuvred by state officials of various ranks. Particularly during the last two decades, neoliberal urban policies have triggered an intensification of power discrepancies in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions and a fragmentation of community structure in the localities — mainly along socioeconomic divides. This research reveals a transition from positive/passive to negative/active uses of informality in the disposition of the state towards the urban poor when the fast and efficient conduct of urban transformation projects is in question. The characteristics of the locality as a landslide zone, the already fragmented socioeconomic structure in the neighbourhood and the dense presence of Kurdish immigrants facilitate the putting into practice of informal strategies. The immigrants who cannot define a place for themselves in the simultaneously formal and informal context of the project have been seriously disadvantaged.     

Public procurement for innovation through supplier firms' sustainability lens: A systematic review and research agenda

Public sector purchasing processes are gaining increasing prominence as a demand-side innovation tool for addressing national sustainability challenges. Accordingly, there has been growing research attention to this topic. Prior studies suggest three key rationales that underlie the use of public sector procurement to drive innovation: (i) the buyer–user rationale (for creating new needs); (ii) the market/system failure rationale (for improving suppliers' capacity to innovate); and (iii) the public services rationale (for improving public services). However, operational activities at the upstream supply chain affecting the sustainable innovation capacities of supplier firms appear to be under-researched in the public procurement for innovation (PPI) scholarship, despite knowledge about innovation capacity being critical to successfully implementing PPI. This paper adopts a systematic literature review approach to synthesise existing fragmented literature on sustainability-oriented PPI, focusing on supplier perspectives. Findings from a synthesis of 41 relevant articles suggest, among others conditions, that a procurement framework that maintains a good balance of competition and innovation, builds buyer–supplier relationship and urges strong supply networks, maintains a stable political commitment, offers security for niche markets with effective innovation risk management culture would enhance suppliers' sustainability capacity and propensity to innovate. This paper contributes to the PPI literature and the literature on determinants of sustainable innovation systems from supplier firms' sustainability lens.     

Managing Government Property Assets: International Experiences

Abstract

Policies have been introduced in the public sector to increase efficiency. Following a privatization, there is a split between operational and strategic control. In this study, we explored how a public organization restores its identity after losing its operational structure. Based on a case study of a seaport, we found that when the self-defining properties were lost, the organizational identity dissolved into a managerial public identity. The organizational meaning that provided security and guided behavior was lost and the new identity was unable to serve as a provider of meaning. Implications for new public management policy and practice are discussed.     

Identity in entrepreneurship effectuation theory: a supplementary framework

The article proposes a new framework on identity construction in entrepreneurship that in valuable ways supplements the logic of identity presented in Sarasvathy??s (2001, 2008) popular effectuation theory. Effectuation theory assumes that identity is a given and relative stable precondition of the entrepreneurial process that support the entrepreneur in ordering preferences in the process of effectuating resources, stakeholder commitment, etc.. The article shows that identity construction is an active and integral part of the effectuation process, and it importantly influences the manner in which the entrepreneur acts and makes decisions in the process. The article seeks to challenge and advance effectuation theory??s view on identity based on a narrative study of ten novice student entrepreneurs. The study gives insight into the identity processes involved in becoming a student entrepreneur, and it may serve as a guide to how entrepreneurship educators and counselors can place more emphasis on identity related struggles involved in the entrepreneurial effectuation process.     

New value partnerships: the lessons of Denny's/Save the Children partnership for building high‐yielding cross‐sector alliances

While business and nonprofit organisations have long used alliances within their own sectors to address specific needs, increasingly they are turning to cross‐sector partnerships that benefit both parties while they serve the common good. In the last decade, marketing alliances between businesses and social sector organisations have become increasingly common as ways for companies to achieve business objectives and for social sector organisations to raise their visibility and attract new resources. The alliance between Denny's and Save the Children provides an example of a noteworthy marketing partnership that shows how a cross‐sector alliance can assist a company with a damaged public image to build a new public identity while enabling an international nonprofit organisation to create an ambitious programme for US children. As a new value partnership, a long‐term, high yielding alliance between businesses and social sector organisations, this relationship is characterised by several elements: communication, opportunity, mutuality, multiple levels, open‐endedness, and new value, forming the acronym COMMON. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

The Impact of a Rapidly Expanding Service Sector on Private Office Property: The Case of Hong Kong

Hong Kong's economy has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past two decades. The rapid expansion of the service sector is a major outcome. Within the services sector, the finance, insurance, real estate (FIRE) and business services sub-sector is the most influential and also the major source of generating demand for office space in the economy. This paper examines how the rapid expansion of the FIRE and business service sub-sector influences new office construction. Using the Engle-Granger (1987) methodology for cointegration and error correction mechanism (ECM), the causal relationships between growth of sub-sectors of the services sector and the new office space construction were explored. The FIRE and business services sub-sector growth is shown to be cointegrated with new office space construction. The paper reports empirical findings based on a sample survey on location and quality of space. The study reveals that the growth of the FIRE and business service sector has influenced office space development in terms of location of space, per capita space and the type and quality space during 1981-2000.     

Employee perceptions of performance appraisals: a comparative study on Indian banks

Performance appraisal is the most critical human resource practice and an indispensable part of every organization; however, the practice continues to generate dissatisfaction among employees and is often viewed as unfair and ineffective. Indian banking sector is one of the biggest and fastest growing financial service sectors. The post-liberalization era has witnessed significant changes in the structure and operations of banks operating in India. Arrival of new private and foreign banks has given a cause to public sector banks to be more competitive, effective and innovative in their approach. Past researches have compared public and private sector banks and have indicated that new private sector banks are outscoring public sector banks in terms of technical and economic efficiency parameters. However, no study could be found that compared public and private banks in India on fairness perceptions of performance appraisal system. Therefore, this research studied the differences between public and private sector banks with respect to perception of fairness of the performance appraisal system and performance appraisal satisfaction. Perception of fairness of the performance appraisal system has been studied through nine factors. The study used independent samples t-test and qualitative analysis to study the mean differences between the two banks. Results indicated that private sector bank employees perceive greater fairness and satisfaction with their performance appraisal system as compared to public sector bank employees.     

Glocalizing protest: urban conflicts and the global social movements

The emergence of global social movements is essentially symbolized by the names of cities like Seattle, Genoa or Porto Alegre. This is not accidental, because groups stemming from various parts of the world need places to constitute themselves as movements. But the role of cities in representing great parts of the movements' consciousness also hints at the importance urban struggles have for global protests. The article examines the relationship between urban conflicts and global social movements. By looking for continuities and ruptures between former and current urban conflicts it points out the specificity of the latter: to politicize the contradictions of neoliberal restructuring; to challenge the discursive and institutional terrains of urban politics which were shaped in the 1990s, often with active participation of former movement actors; and, finally, to act simultaneously on various spatial scales. In the last part of the article some examples of ‘glocalized’ urban protests are presented and analysed, pointing out their ambiguities as well as the specific contribution they can make to the strategic orientation of the global social movements: to fight the destructive influences neoliberal globalization exerts on everyday life and, thereby, to develop alternative forms of societalization.     

Why politics needs marketing

This paper examines the survey evidence for the low standing of politics, politicians and political institutions in the mind of the British public, and discusses its consequences. Present public opinion about political parties in Britain, and about politicians in general, is predominantly negative. Politicians are distrusted, to a considerably greater extent than can be explained solely by their bad press. Nor is the public very familiar with politicians or political institutions. Yet it can be shown that in general (and not only in the political field) ‘familiarity breeds favourability, not contempt’. This may be feeding through into hostility towards the entire sector—not only the strictly ‘political’, but other institutions such as public services which the public associates with politics or government. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Understanding wage restraint in the German public sector: does the pattern bargaining hypothesis really hold water?

German public sector wage restraint has been explained through the presence of a specific type of inter-sectoral wage coordination in the industrial relations system—that is, export sector-led pattern bargaining. First, as a literature-assessing exercise, this paper reviews the literature in industrial relations and comparative political economy (CPE) and finds that (i) the origins and mechanics of inter-sectoral wage coordination through pattern bargaining have never been laid out clearly; (ii) that the mechanisms of the pattern bargaining thesis have never been tested empirically; and (iii) that the CPE literature reveals an export-sector bias. Second, as a theory-testing exercise, hoop tests are performed to verify the pattern bargaining hypothesis. The key finding is that Germany cannot be considered a case of export sector-driven pattern bargaining, opening a new research agenda for the study of public sector wage setting centred on public sector employment relations, public finance, public administrations and the politics of fiscal policy.     

Identity work of science-based entrepreneurs in Finland and in Russia

Abstract

This paper investigates the identity work of science-based entrepreneurs in two very different country contexts: Finland and Russia. Building on the literature investigating role identities, we first analyse the identification of individuals with the roles of a scientist and an entrepreneur; and second, how individuals manage the boundary between these two roles. Methodologically, we take a narrative approach, which regards life stories as identity constructions. Our empirical data consist of 23 biographical interviews with science-based entrepreneurs that are inductively analysed. Our findings show that the Russian informants considered being a scientist a salient part of their self-identification, distanced themselves from the role of an entrepreneur, and set discursive boundaries to segment the two roles. For the Finnish informants, identification with the professional roles as a scientist or as an entrepreneur was less salient for the personal identity as they make a clear distinction between ‘what one does’ and ‘who one is’. They also view the two roles as integrated rather than segmented, and have no significant need to justify the border-crossing between them. Our contribution is in demonstrating how science-based entrepreneurs’ identity work is influenced by importance and meanings attached to different work roles, and how these are contextualised.     

Remaking Equality: Community Governance and the Politics of Exclusion in Bogota's Public Spaces

Bogota's public space policy is often credited with promoting inclusionary principles. In this article, I explore critically the content of Bogota's articulation of equality in public space policy. In so doing, I present a critical view of the work Bogota's insistence on equality does to mediate class relations in the city, relying on deeply held conceptions of both social extremes. This results in the construction of a version of social harmony in public space that at once depoliticizes the claims to public space of subjects such as street vendors and the homeless and claims a new role for the middle class in the city. The analysis focuses on two examples of community governance schemes, documenting the logics and methods used by communities to implement official visions of equality and justify the exclusion of street vendors and homeless people from the area. By looking at the articulation of these exclusions in local class politics through seemingly inclusionary rhetoric, the article accounts for ‘post‐revanchist’ turns in contemporary urban policy, while anchoring its production in local processes of community governance.     

The Central Government-Private Sector Wage Differential

Since Ehrenberg and Schwarz (1986) there has been a plethora of articles investigating the relationship between public and private sector wages. This article examines part of this post 1986 literature by reviewing articles that examine central government-private sector wage differentials. In sum, most articles find that there is a premium paid to central government workers, although the premium has declined in recent years. In developing countries, however, the differential is usually negative. Women and minorities tend to do better in the public sector relative to their private sector counterparts. The evidence on union premiums between sectors is mixed, although the premium tends to be higher in the private sector. However public sector union workers do not do much better than private sector union members. The magnitude of all of the wage differentials discussed are sensitive to the estimation technique and data source used. The most common explanation for the public sector wage premium is economic rent accruing to government workers, although the public sector wage determination literature suggests that the differential is due to returns to political and 'vote producing' activities not relevant in the private sector.     

12. Transculture: A Broad Way Between Globalism and Multiculturalism

This paper develops a concept of transculture as a model of cultural development that differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. While culture frees humans from the material dependencies of nature, it also creates new, symbolic dependencies—on customs, traditions, conventions, which a person receives as a member of a certain group and ethnos. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as rights of the individual, there emerges yet another freedom—from one's own culture, in which one was born and educated. Transculture is viewed as the next level of liberation, this time from the "prison house of language," from unconscious predispositions and prejudices of the "native," naturalized cultures. The case of the Japanese poet Araki Yasusada (1903–1972), a survivor of Hiroshima, demonstrates how transcultural creativity, though cast in the form of a literary hoax, can produce an internationally recognized achievement. Transculturalism is especially needed in world politics, where the factor of fixed cultural identity based on race, ethnos, religion, or ideological commitments turned out to be a source of conflict and violence. This paper argues that the categories of opposition and identity do not preclude the significance of the third category, which is difference. The differences complement each other and create a new interpersonal transcultural community to which we belong, not because we are similar but because we are different. The transcultural perspective opens a possibility for globalization not as homogenization but, rather, as further differentiation of cultures and their "dissemination" into transcultural individuals, liberating themselves from their dependence from their native cultures. The global society can be viewed as the space of diversity of free individuals rather than that of fixed groups and cultures. It is an alternative to the clash of civilizations and a hope for lasting peace.     

Determining the influence of national culture: insights into entrepreneurs’ collective identity and effectuation

While prior research demonstrates that an entrepreneur’s behavior and perceptions are essentially shaped by national culture, little is known about how cultural values impact effectual behavior among entrepreneurs. We outline a conceptual model of how entrepreneurs’ effectual behavior is shaped by collective identity under different levels of cultural conditioning (i.e., national cultural values). Based on a survey of 235 Thai and German entrepreneurs we analyze the impact of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, and long-term orientation on the relationship between collective identity and effectuation. Results show that national culture is dispositive for the causal effects of collective identity on effectual behavior. Our findings demonstrate that the entrepreneur’s effectual behavior differs due to their national cultural conditioning.