Book review: Jiří Přibáň, legal symbolism: on law, time and European identity

This is a book review of Jiří Přibáň, Legal Symbolism: On Law, Time and European Identity, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007, 226 pp, ISBN: 978-0-7546-7073-5

Book review: Philosophy and the city: classic to contemporary writings

Book Review: Philosophy and the City: Classic to Contemporary Writings Sharon M. Meagher (Ed.), 2007 Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 309 pp. US$75.50 hardback; US$24.95 paperback ISBN 978 0 7914 7308 5 paperback; 978 0 7914 7307 8 hardback

In-enviroment of law

A linguistic game of prepositions in order to define the following: (1) What is the Environment? What is 'environment' for environmental law? (2) How does the law react to the complexity of its environment? (3) How to take into account the ecological crisis within a rather narrow, anthropocentric legal frame? (4) How to move away from the hackneyed binarism econcentricity/anthropocentricity and venture a different, de-centred conceptualisation? (5) How can utopia be considered in its potential realisation? The paper is a further investigation of the concept of the paradox in the ecological legal crisis.

On absence: society’s return to barbarians

The problem of social exclusion is dealt here through the lens of a particularly radical social theory, that of autopoietic society by Niklas Luhmann. Here, exclusion is included in society, no longer as an issue for care, integration and therapy, but as a mechanism to show the importance of the visibility of exclusion. The inclusion of exclusion in autopoiesis is a far-reaching step that demands a revisiting of the concept of autopoietic society. This article proposes a radicalization of the concept on the basis of an acknowledgment of the impossibility of communication with the excluded. This acknowledgement conditions society from within. It is built upon the Luhmannian description of Barbarism as the included exclusion, and is further conceptualized as its excess, as a 'space of absence'. Within autopoiesis, absence is described as an aporetic rather than a paradoxical structure, a memento vanitas that irritates the system from within, constantly reminding it of its limitations.

From space immaterial: the invisibility of the lawscape

This article aims to interrogate law's ambivalent relationship with urban space. It deals with the paradoxical relation between law and the city, visibility and invisibility, materiality and abstraction, and polis and metropolis. It builds on previous work on the lawscape, namely the priority of invitation by law or the city to be conditioned by the other, and expands this line of thought towards a more tangible understanding of visibility and its mutual constitution with invisibility. We believe that spatialisation is a relevant avenue for law's (re)conceptualisation because it moves away from a description of humanism based on the universality of subjectivity, and paves the way for a particularised and material description of law's multiplicity that specifically addresses law's social positioning. This inevitably leads to a dematerialisation of space and the reinstatement of circularity between concreteness and abstraction. Inspired by some of the themes addressed by the contributors in this issue, we begin constructing a vocabulary of lawscaping, where law and urban space are brought together in an epistemological embrace that targets and eventually questions the solipsistic way in which the two of them have been conceptualised so far.

Securitisation law: EU and US disclosure regulations

Providing key guidance on the process of securitisation, this comprehensive title explains in detail exactly what practitioners need to know. Featuring the most up-to-date commentary, Securitisation Law and Practice cuts through this complicated process using practical aids such as flow charts and checklists. The book also contains discussion on the latest case law (including case studies) and critical legal issues. The book also features: (1) Analysis of the recent securities regulations regarding asset-backed securities disclosures in the US and EU, providing an understanding of the differences in regulatory reporting requirements between jurisdictions. (2) Discussion of the various types of asset-backed structures that have been created over the last 30 years. (3) Analysis of the major legal decisions in the US and EU regarding securitisation transactions, including such cases as Enron, Parmalat and the recent sub-prime problem.

Taking environmental engineering out of the laboratory

Environmental engineering is a core component of most construction and surveying undergraduate courses. It is generally accepted that students on these courses should have an understanding of thermal comfort, heat transfer, condensation, lighting, noise transmission and acoustics. Experiments are essential in developing students’ awareness and understanding of the underlying physical concepts which drive environmental engineering solutions. Traditionally these experiments have been conducted by students working in small groups in laboratories. However, increasing student numbers and, in particular, the growth in part time study, have placed significant additional demands on limited laboratory resources. The availability of reasonably priced, simple, hand-held equipment has made it possible for students to conduct experiments outside the confines of the laboratory. Furthermore, various professional software packages (some of which are freely available online) enable the resultant data to be further developed and analysed in conjunction with the conventional textbook approach. This paper examines these alternative approaches to the traditional laboratory experiment. An assessment is provided of the types of experiment which are both possible and appropriate, and the efficacy of these approaches is considered.

Moment of stasis: the successful failure of a constitution for Europe

The 2005 French and Dutch negative votes on the Constitution open up a space of conceptualisation, not only of Europe's relation to its demos, but significantly to its failures. Through a critical analysis of mainly Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, the article proposes taking a distance from traditional constitutional dogmatics that are no longer capable of dealing with the paradox of contemporary society, and more specifically with the eventual resurgence of the European project as one of absence and stasis: the two terms are used to explain the need, on the one hand, to maintain the 'absent community' of Europe, and, on the other, to start realising that any conceptualisation of the European project will now have to take place in that space of instability and contingency revealed by the constitutional failure. The relation between law and politics, the location of a constitution, the distinction between social and normative legitimacy, the connection between European identity and demos, and the concept of continuity between constitutional text and context are revisited in an attempt to trace the constitutional failure as the constitutional moment par excellence.

Understanding what drives the purchase decision in pension and investment products

The aims of this paper are to first seek an understanding of consumer decision-making when purchasing pension and investment products, and second to ascertain how this decision-making affects the consumer's choice of distribution route. The study employed both focus groups and postal questionnaire survey methods based on the framework of a classical decision-making model that investigated problem recognition, information search, evaluation tools used and post-purchase. The findings show that the decision-making process experience differed to a lesser or greater degree depending on the distribution route. The majority of respondents had recognised the need to make a purchase decision long before seeking information. Younger respondents on all incomes believed that they must make some pension provision for themselves as opposed to relying on the government's retirement provision. Many changed channels for information searches, but tended to settle with the Independent Financial Adviser (IFA). The two main evaluation tools for pension and investment were found to be the ‘charges’ and ‘historic fund performance’. The vast majority of respondents reiterated their worry that the outcomes would not be known until retirement. In terms of analysis by the level of ‘financial literacy’, respondents who scored in the upper quartile were more inclined to be on a higher income, less inclined to evaluate on charges and more proactive in discussing the investment strategy of their pension fund. Respondents who scored in the lower quartile had opposite results. One of the implications of these findings is that the younger respondents’ recognition of pension savings favours the government's intention to reverse the existing balance of pension distribution. The other main implication is that the findings will be of help to managers in appreciating the dominance of the IFA channel by providing an explanation of why consumers choose this route, and, additionally, can assist direct marketing managers in identifying customers who will be more likely to use multichannel or single-channel shoppers. It can also help the marketing manager increase the usage of different channels by addressing the factors driving the purchase decision and distribution choice.

Knowledge creation: revisiting the 'ba' humbug people and 'latent' knowledge in organizational learning

Knowledge management theory has struggled with the concept of `knowledge creation'. Since the seminal article of Nonaka in 1991, an industry has grown up seeking to capture the knowledge in the heads and hearts of individuals so as to leverage them for organizational learning and growth. But the process of Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization (SECI) outlined by Nonaka and his colleagues has essentially dealt with knowledge transfer rather than knowledge creation. This paper attempts to fill the gap in the process - from Nonaka's own addition of the need for "ba" to Snowden's suggestion of that we consider "Cynefin" as a space for knowledge creation. Drawing upon a much older theoretical frame - work the Johari Window developed in group dynamics, this paper suggests an alternative concept - latent knowledge - and introduces a different model for the process of knowledge creation.