Google: The World’s First Information Utility?

In only ten years, Google has achieved remarkable success from online search-based advertising. Its search engine is dominant, and its IT infrastructure is the most powerful computing system in the world running on over one million computers and serving more than one billion users globally. Google makes money by using its search engine to deliver online advertising alongside responses to user searches for information, goods, maps, directions, and a host of other services. Its capabilities make it likely to become the world’s first information utility – a concept similar to electric utilities that provide services to many corporations and individuals alike. Constant innovation is the key to Google’s success and offers lessons for other companies: hire talented people, have them work in small teams, and give them freedom to excel, but use a rigorous data-based approach to evaluating results and making course adjustments.

A Honey‐Sealed Alliance: Mayan Beekeepers in the Yucatan Peninsula versus Transgenic Soybeans in Mexico's Last Tropical Forest

The peasant economy of the Yucatan Peninsula is sustained by agriculture and beekeeping. Honey production has great economic importance, given that it represents the main source of income for Mayan rural families. Furthermore, Mexico is the world's fourth‐largest exporter of honey. The honey comes from jungle that covers the peninsular territory and forms part of a production system that broadly utilizes forestry resources. Two new situations emerged in 2011 that detonated social mobilization to defend beekeeping: the Mexican government authorized the planting of transgenic soybeans, while the European Union announced that honey that originated from transgenic pollen would have to be labelled (‘contains transgenics’), whereas honey importers demand transgenic‐free honey. The introduction of transgenic soybeans in the Yucatan Peninsula is part of the modern, industrial agricultural impetus in the region, which is entering into conflict with the Mayan peasant agriculture and threatens the survival of the most important Mexican tropical forest. A movement alliance was built among different social actors, including Mayan communities, beekeeper and civil‐society organizations, universities and honey‐exporting entrepreneurs, who developed an opposition and a resistance strategy to the cultivation of transgenic soybeans. Their repertoire has included collective legal, educational and organizational action, scientific research, mobilization, information, a media presence and lobbying. This mobilization has yielded results, as in 2015 the judiciary power invalidated the authorization of the cultivation of transgenic soybeans.     

Environmental Injustice in Argentina: Struggles against Genetically Modified Soy

This paper explores the unequal distribution of the environmental and social costs and benefits of the genetically modified (GM) soy model in Argentina and its impact on grievance formation and the emergence of contestation. In the 1990s, Argentina transitioned into a neoliberal agro‐industrial model based on producing GM soy for export. Though celebrated as a success, the expansion of GM soy monocultures has brought widespread socio‐ecological disruption. Various social actors have started to mobilize against the resulting environmental injustice. I focus on the peasant–indigenous movement in the north of the country, which is struggling for land rights, and the movements against agrochemical spraying in the central Pampas region. These groups, which are relatively powerless to control resources where they live, and that experience little or no benefit from GM soy production, nevertheless bear most of its social and ecological costs. These struggles link environmental and social well‐being, becoming struggles for ecological sustainability as well as social justice and equity.     

Poisoned,Dispossessed and Excluded: A Critique of the Neoliberal Soy Regime in Paraguay

This paper challenges the recent hailing of agricultural biotechnology as a panacea for food insecurity and rural poverty in countries of the global South. Based on an empirical investigation of the neoliberal soy regime in Paraguay, I document how the profound transformation of this country's agricultural mode of production over the past two decades, spurred by the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture and the biorevolution, has jeopardized rural livelihoods. In particular, I demonstrate how the transgenic soyization of Paraguay's agriculture has led to an increased concentration of landholdings, as well as the displacement and disempowerment of peasants and rural labourers who have been rendered surplus to the requirements of agribusiness capital. At the same time, the consolidation of this new agro‐industrial model has fostered a growing dependence on agrochemicals that compromise environmental quality and human health. Thus, I argue, a development policy based on industrial monocropping of genetically modified (GM) soy is inappropriate, unsustainable and unethical.     

中国与国际秩序的再思考:一种政治社会学的视角

借鉴政治社会学有关抗争艺术的理论模式,作者尝试对中国在西方主导的国际秩序中的战略行为和思维做了新的理论概括。中国在单极体系下的抗争艺术可以分为两个层面:作为战略行为在现有秩序中的依法抗争以及作为战略思维对现有秩序进行反思的日常抗争。重新思考中国与国际秩序的关系,应该超越维持现状和修正主义二分法。中国学习和接受既有国际规范只是社会化的一个方面,中国如何影响国际规范的演变则是社会化过程中尚待理论化的另一方面。中国正积极探索未来国际秩序的若干模式,其中,协商秩序作为一种国际秩序的理想模式具有重要的理论和实践意义。     

批判建构主义视角下的国际秩序研究

现实主义均势秩序的规律性和自由主义宪政秩序的正义性不断遭到质疑,而既有国际秩序的建构主义分析框架只是阐述了秩序与规则、知识的关系,没有回答在多元价值体系中哪种价值观具有优先性,会成为建构国际规则和规范的核心知识这一问题。作者借鉴了批判建构主义的主要理论,提出当代国际体系的知识是权力建构的结果。在国际体系中,霸权推动其私有知识成为体系的共有知识,并在此基础上建构体系内部秩序,学界有必要对构成国际秩序的知识进行重建。当体系的权力结构处于一种相对平衡的状态且任何一个国家都没有足够的能力独自应对国际社会所面临的共同挑战时,国家间通过沟通行动,可以对知识进行重建,进而在更为合理的知识基础上构建国际新秩序。     

Regional service clusters and networks. Two approaches to empirical identification and development: the case of logistics in the German port city‐states Hamburg and Bremen

This article discusses two approaches to the identification and measurement of regional clusters and its networks in ‘cross‐sectoral’ services which are not available through official industrial statistics. The first approach is a ‘secondary‐statistical’ one consisting of a firm‐based blending of two separate official statistical data‐sets, industrial and ‘functional’ (that is, the professions practised within firms). Thus, a service ‘cross‐sector’ is identified across manufacturing and service industries. In the matrices resulting, weights are attached in an expert survey to the numbers of employees to aggregate the ‘real’ logistics ‘cross‐sector’. This is applied to the two German port city‐states, Hamburg and Bremen. The second approach is ‘primary‐statistical’, based on a small firms survey which generated data on ‘functional’ supplier relations (the cluster) and on project‐based ‘strategic’ cooperations (the networks within that cluster). This follows a two‐stage model of emerging clusters and ‘its’ networks. This data‐set is combined with the firms’ affiliations to branches, firm size, age and sales growth classes, in order to connect information with the industry statistics. Also, the net densities and centrality structures are calculated. The combined information provides indications of the relevance of the service cluster and its networks as factors of future regional development. The latter approach is applied to the State of Bremen only. Two results appear to be transferable beyond the German cases: first, the two approaches improve the knowledge about policy‐relevant ‘cross‐sectors’, clusters and networks; and second our knowledge about service, namely logistics, clusters and networks (for which port regions are prominent nodes) is improved. Finally, some implications for regional cluster strategies are discussed.     

Rallying the Troops or Beating the Horses? How Project‐Related Demands Can Lead to Either High‐Performance or Abusive Supervision

In today's high‐pressure work environment, project managers are often forced to “do more with less.” We argue that this imperative can lead project managers to engage in either high‐performance or abusive supervision behaviors. To understand this process, we develop a model and associated propositions linking a project manager's cognitive appraisal of project‐related demands to high‐performance work practices versus abusive supervision behaviors—both of which impact three project outcomes: stakeholder relationships, people‐related project success factors, and employee well‐being. We propose that the choice between high‐performance work practices and abusive supervision behaviors is moderated by a project manager's personal resources (psychological capital, emotional intelligence, and dark triad personality).