From Fordism to neoconservatism : free trade and Canadian industrial policy in an era of globalism /

Nothing today affects the lives of people in countries throughout the industrialized and developing world as much as international trade. Nowhere is this more true than in Canada. Canada's involvement in international trade has a long history dating back to 1854 when it was a British colony. As a major trading country, Canada has always adopted a proactive industrial policy which has been largely responsible for its relative economic prosperi ty. But, wi th businesses now free to invest and divest under the terms of the CUFTA and the NAFTA, the most fundamental concerns for Canadians, in a borderless world, are what powers will the Canadian government have to shape industrial policy, and to what extent can Canada continue as a viable nationstate if it can no longer control its national economy? These are important concerns because, in world without borders, the adjustment process becomes more volatile and more difficult to manage. The CUFTA and the NAFTA not only create the rules for conducting trade, but they also establish a set of new rules for the Canadian government that will diminish its power. As a member of a new North American trading bloc, Canada will find itself subject to a set of forces requiring analysis beyond participation in a conventional free trade area. Because many of the traditional levers of government will now be subject to external control imposed by these agreements, Canada will not be able to mount certain policies in the future that it has relied on in the past. This reality limits the pro-active role of the Canadian state to use policies and programmes for the country's immediate national development. What this thesis attempts is an examination of the evolution of Canadian industrial policy, in effect, the transi tion from Fordism to Neoconservatism, and an assessment of Canada's future as a nation-state as it tries to find security and improved access in a free trade arrangement. Unless Canada takes steps to neutralize the asymmetry of power between itself and the United States through adjustment programmes, it is the contention of this thesis that its economic future is anything but stable.

Cultural regionalism and environmental planning and design : charting regionalism in deference to globalism

The last 400 years has witnessed Western colonialism spread across the Asian communities and landscape transforming and re-defining their identity, culture, landscape patterns and meanings, as well as their land ethic. Whilst independence has brought forth robust attempts at nationalism it has been at the deference of regionalism and cultural identity. Instead, modernism, economic regeneration and growth, and attempts to define a nationalist image out of the newly created nations that are often a patchwork quilt of pre-colonial empires, are signalling the demise of critical regionalism and Indigenous knowledge systems. This paper considers the changes and cultural transformations over the last 400 years pointing to key dilemmas in regionalist growth, deterioration and stabilisation that are causing a loss of environmental and cultural values, morals and codes. These are the cultural and planning ‘rules’ that originally structured and guided the sustainable life and spirit of community, land and culture as an integrated whole. Particular attention will be drawn to the Indigenous communities of Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia that are struggling to maintain identity and environmental ethic in the shadow of major disjointed and multi-objectival national and international economic growth and digital transformation advances. Several possible answers or mediated strategies are offered, through a cultural heritage and planning lens, that could afford a respect and creative integration of these Indigenous knowledge systems to better inform regional growth and land management strategies so that it was regionally relevant.

Landscape landscapism

Clearly the world is a different place to what it was 40 years ago, and much of that difference can be characterised as disturbances to the local on the basis of globalism, particularly due to changes in communication and information technology. Like it did to modernism before it, this societal change calls for, or more aptly calls to, designers to reformulate their practices to reflect this significant new paradigm. This is a rationale that has driven much avant-garde activity in the 20th century, and in this case, 'landscape urbanism' in the 21st. In the case of this discussion, it is important to recognise the avant-garde cycle at work in the development of the discipline, not only to contextualise its production, but so that its greatest values can be welcomed: despite the propaganda and arrogance, important revisions occurred to the canons after all the -isms. That said, I do find myself asking: do we need another -ism?

Macroentrepreneurship : an expanded contact for entrepreneurship

The purpose if this paper is to show how entrepreneurial practices can be applied at macro level by industry and government bodies, particularly to identify opportunity areas in target industries and thereby promote new business ventures that best serve the economy and society. A new macro context is argued for entrepreneurial activity based on marketing and entrepreneurship principles, and their specialization areas or social and societal marketing, macromarketing and social entrepreneurship. An example of government and industry involvement in industry opportunity identification is outlines to demonstrate macro level entrepreneurial activity, showing how, in the same way that macromarketing seeks to address the bigger issues and the links between marketing systems and society, so too can entrepreneurship use this perspective to achieve its aims and contribute more effectively to the betterment of society. This paper makes and original contribution by demonstrating a new, expanded context for entrepreneurship's scholarly domain and its practice, showing how its key concepts can be effectively applied at industry level to provide a catalyst for development.

Health Workforce Governance: Improved Access, Good Regulatory Practice, Safer Patients

With increasing recognition of the international market in health professionals and the impact of globalism on regulation, the governance of the health workforce is moving towards greater public engagement and increased transparency. This book discusses the challenges posed by these processes, such as improved access to health services and how structures can be reformed so that good practice is upheld and quality of service and patient safety are ensured.

A critical regionalist approach to housing design in Vietnam : socio-environmental organisation of living spaces in pre- and post-reform houses

Vietnam has a unique culture which is revealed in the way that people have built and designed their traditional housing. Vietnamese dwellings reflect occupants’ activities in their everyday lives, while adapting to tropical climatic conditions impacted by seasoning monsoons. It is said that these characteristics of Vietnamese dwellings have remained unchanged until the economic reform in 1986, when Vietnam experienced an accelerated development based on the market-oriented economy. New housing types, including modern shop-houses, detached houses, and apartments, have been designed in many places, especially satisfying dwellers’ new lifestyles in Vietnamese cities. The contemporary housing, which has been mostly designed by architects, has reflected rules of spatial organisation so that occupants’ social activities are carried out. However, contemporary housing spaces seem unsustainable in relation to socio-cultural values because they has been influenced by globalism that advocates the use of homogeneous spatial patterns, modern technologies, materials and construction methods. This study investigates the rules of spaces in Vietnamese houses that were built before and after the reform to define the socio-cultural implications in Vietnamese housing design. Firstly, it describes occupants’ views of their current dwellings in terms of indoor comfort conditions and social activities in spaces. Then, it examines the use of spaces in pre-reform Vietnamese housing through occupants’ activities and material applications. Finally, it discusses the organisation of spaces in both pre- and post-reform housing to understand how Vietnamese housing has been designed for occupants to live, act, work, and conduct traditional activities. Understanding spatial organisation is a way to identify characteristics of the lived spaces of the occupants created from the conceived space, which is designed by designers. The characteristics of the housing spaces will inform the designers the way to design future Vietnamese housing in response to cultural contexts. The study applied an abductive approach for the investigation of housing spaces. It used a conceptual framework in relation to Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) theory to understand space as the main factor constituting the language of design, and the principles of semiotics to examine spatial structure in housing as a language used in the everyday life. The study involved a door-knocking survey to 350 households in four regional cities of Vietnam for interpretation of occupancy conditions and levels of occupants’ comfort. A statistical analysis was applied to interpret the survey data. The study also required a process of data selection and collection of fourteen cases of housing in three main climatic regions of the country for analysing spatial organisation and housing characteristics. The study found that there has been a shift in the relationship of spaces from the pre- to post-reform Vietnamese housing. It also indentified that the space for guest welcoming and family activity has been the central space of the Vietnamese housing. Based on the relationships of the central space with the others, theoretical models were proposed for three types of contemporary Vietnamese housing. The models will be significant in adapting to Vietnamese conditions to achieve socioenvironmental characteristics for housing design because it was developed from the occupants’ requirements for their social activities. Another contribution of the study is the use of methodological concepts to understand the language of living spaces. Further work will be needed to test future Vietnamese housing designs from the applications of the models.

"What is contemporary art? A review of two books by Terry Smith'

What is contemporary art and what are the key components of contemporary culture? This review demonstrates where Terry Smith provides important answers to this question. The books thus help to improve understanding of how art has changed in recent decades and how a global culture now shapes its parameters. This review does not however concur that Smith provides a convincing case for a complete cultural paradigm transformation.

Educational research and strategies of world-forming: The globe, the unconscious, and the child

The passion to eradicate alterity from the earth is also the passion for the home, the country, the dwelling, that authorizes this desire and rewards it. In its nationalism, parochialism and racism it constitutes a public and private neurosis. So, unwinding the rigid understanding of place that apparently permits me to speak, that guarantees my voice, my power, is not simply to disperse my locality within the wider coordinates of an ultimate planetary context. That would merely absolve me of responsibility in the name of an abstract and generic globalism, permitting my inheritance to continue uninterrupted in the vagaries of a new configuration. There is something altogether more precise and more urgent involved. For in the horror of the unhomely pulses the dread for the dispersal of Western humankind: the dread of a rationality confronted with what exceeds and slips its grasp. (Chambers, 2001, p. 196)

Post-millennial Australian dramaturgies: Changes in Australian dramaturgy and performance since the 2000s

This chapter examines the burgeoning field of dramaturgy in Australian performance and suggests that the growth of the both the profession and the practices of dramaturgy were a result of structural changes arising from the policies of the Howard Government, globalism and economic rationalism, as well as the demographic pressures of generational reform.

The doing and undoing of global literature : myth, microcosm and atopia in triestine writing

La présente étude conduit les traditions fragmentées de la culture littéraire de Trieste vers les préoccupations contemporaines de la littérature mondiale à l’époque actuelle où la mondialisation est largement perçue comme le paradigme historique prédominant de la modernité. Ce que j’appelle la « littérature globalisée » renvoie à la refonte de la Weltliteratur – envisagée par Goethe et traduite comme « world literature » ou la « littérature universelle » – par des discours sur la culture mondiale et le post-nationalisme. Cependant, lorsque les études littéraires posent les questions de la « littérature globalisée », elles sont confrontées à un problème : le passage de l’idée universelle inhérente au paradigme de Goethe entre le Scylla d’un internationalisme relativiste et occidental, et le Charybde d’un mondialisme atopique et déshumanisé. Les spécialistes de la littérature mondiale qui tendent vers la première position acquièrent un fondement institutionnel en travaillant avec l’hypothèse implicite selon laquelle les nations sont fondées sur les langues nationales, ce qui souscrit à la relation entre la littérature mondiale et les littératures nationales. L’universalité de cette hypothèse implicite est réfutée par l’écriture triestine. Dans cette étude, je soutiens que l’écriture triestine du début du XXe siècle agit comme un précurseur de la réflexion sur la culture littéraire globalisée du XXIe siècle. Elle dispose de sa propre économie de sens, de sorte qu’elle n’entre pas dans les nationalismes littéraires, mais elle ne tombe pas non plus dans le mondialisme atopique. Elle n’est pas catégoriquement opposée à la littérature nationale; mais elle ne permet pas aux traditions nationales de prendre racine. Les écrivains de Triestine exprimaient le désir d’un sentiment d’unité et d’appartenance, ainsi que celui d’une conscience critique qui dissout ce désir. Ils résistaient à l’idéalisation de ces particularismes et n’ont jamais réussi à réaliser la coalescence de ses écrits dans une tradition littéraire unifiée. Par conséquent, Trieste a souvent été considérée comme un non-lieu et sa littérature comme une anti-littérature. En contournant les impératifs territoriaux de la tradition nationale italienne – comme il est illustré par le cas de Italo Svevo – l’écriture triestine a été ultérieurement incluse dans les paramètres littéraires et culturels de la Mitteleuropa, où son expression a été imaginée comme un microcosme de la pluralité supranationale de l’ancien Empire des Habsbourg. Toutefois, le macrocosme projeté de Trieste n’est pas une image unifiée, comme le serait un globe; mais il est plutôt une nébuleuse planétaire – selon l’image de Svevo – où aucune idéalisation universalisante ne peut se réaliser. Cette étude interroge l’image de la ville comme un microcosme et comme un non-lieu, comme cela se rapporte au macrocosme des atopies de la mondialisation, afin de démontrer que l’écriture de Trieste est la littérature globalisée avant la lettre. La dialectique non résolue entre faire et défaire la langue littéraire et l’identité à travers l’écriture anime la culture littéraire de Trieste, et son dynamisme contribue aux débats sur la mondialisation et les questions de la culture en découlant. Cette étude de l’écriture triestine offre des perspectives critiques sur l’état des littératures canoniques dans un monde où les frontières disparaissent et les non-lieux se multiplient. L’image de la nébuleuse planétaire devient possiblement celle d’un archétype pour le monde globalisé d’aujourd’hui.

Retos del periodismo ¿en jaque?

Actualmente estamos siendo testigos de una segunda revolución tecnológica, en la que se hace evidente el surgimiento de dos nuevos paradigmas en relación con la entronización del mercado y la tecnología. Estos paradigmas han modificado sustancialmente la esfera de la comunicación y en particular, el ámbito de la información. Estos cambios, rastreables al fenómeno de la globalización, plantean nuevos dilemas que cuestionan la labor y el ejercicio periodístico, lo que forzosamente nos lleva a preguntarnos ¿cuáles son los principales retos del periodista en el contexto actual de la globalización?