BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY STARTUPS The Relationship Economy Terry Mollner — whose Calvert Impact Capital funds are the world’s largest, at $9 billion (or $12 billion, depending on what source you cite) — is one of the great pioneers of a new economy based on meaningful relationshipsand the common good — a conceptual framework that is increasingly called ‘Game B’ these days, as an alternative to the prevailing […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY & WELLNESS What To Do When Life Is On Hold I get it. You have COVID ennui. I do, too, but as long as we have our health and our jobs, both 2020 and 2021 deserve nothing but to be met with gratitude. Not everyone is as lucky. The truth is, until last year sent us hiding, we were all running at full tilt with our default lives, scarcely […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CULTURE EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY Theoretical Perspectives On Culture Music, fashion, technology, and values—all are products of culture. But what do they mean? How do sociologists perceive and interpret culture based on these material and nonmaterial items? Let’s finish our analysis of culture by reviewing them in the context of three theoretical perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. Functionalists view society as a […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK ENTREPRENEURSHIP PSYCHOLOGY & WELLNESS STRATEGY The Case For Bad Ideas I was speaking to a friend this morning about the alarming increase in peanut allergies in certain populations, chiefly the overdeveloped West. For example, they have increased fivefold in the UK in just the past 20 years. The latest science behind the cause stipulates that we are just too clean; and that our avoidance of potential threats — a legume, in this […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK POLITICS The Relevance Of Political Science Political scientists face increasing demands to demonstrate the relevance of their research beyond the academy (the so-called ‘impact agenda’). Matthew Flinders argues that this should be seen less a threat to the discipline’s autonomy than an opportunity to rise to public responsibilities that have always accompanied a political science career The ‘noble science of politics’ has changed […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
JOURNAL & RESEARCH POLITICS The Politics Of Intellectual Property Introduction: This Article argues that we need a politics, or perhaps a political economy, of intellectual property. Using the controversy over copyright on the Net as a case-study and the history of the environmental movement as a comparison, it offers a couple of modest proposals about what such a politics might look like — what theoretical […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY PSYCHOLOGY & WELLNESS STRATEGY The Truth Beneath Our Complexity We are all guilty of it. When we are left to our own devices, we all, with rare exception, build incredibly complex and fictitious self-narratives, as a lens through which to interpret everything in our worlds. The reason we do this is simple: we have built the world around ego, against which we must now buttress our […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ART & DESIGN SOCIOLOGY Art And The Development Of Vibrant Communities There was never a golden age of the arts and humanities. Artists and scholars of the humanities seem to have always struggled for financial support, public prestige, political influence, and that ever-changing, seemingly intangible status . . . relevance. Except for the fortunate few who found generous patrons, artists have scrapped and struggled. Except in the halls […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY The Rise Of The “Useless Class” Today, there is no shortage of crises to fret over. Global politics are fanning the flames of rising extremism and terrorism. A climate crisis not only risks displacing 1.2 billion humans, but is also fueling the planet’s sixth mass extinction. We’ve already destroyed half the life on Earth; and over 100,000 additional species are following suit, right now. COVID-19 is menacing the entire planet, resulting in two million deaths and four hundred million job losses, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK ENTREPRENEURSHIP SOCIOLOGY Polymaths And The Creation Of The World The Austrian satirist Karl Kraus once quipped, “I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.” It’s only funny because of what it reveals to be one of the greatest truths about our world. The most consequential term in Western language is also quite possibly the […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Reality: A Game Of Quantum Mirrors? Imagine you sit down and pick up your favourite book. You look at the image on the front cover, run your fingers across the smooth book sleeve, and smell that familiar book smell as you flick through the pages. To you, the book is made up of a range of sensory appearances. But you also […] Written by The Conversation July 27, 2021July 27, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How Do Olympic Athletes Compare To Insects? Olympians spend years training to be the best of the best. Scientists and sportspeople have spent decades researching the mechanics of the human body to ensure our elite athletes are always reaching higher, faster and stronger. But how do human athletic skills compare with those of insects and arachnids? Once you take the relative sizes […] Written by The Conversation July 27, 2021July 27, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
3 Things Philosophy Can Teach Us About Love Love can seem a primal force, an intoxicating mix of desire, care, ecstasy and jealousy hard-wired into our hearts. The polar opposite of philosophy’s measured rationality and theoretical speculations. Yet if you take any topic in the world, and keeping asking deep questions of it, you will ultimately wind up doing philosophy. Love is no […] Written by The Conversation July 22, 2021July 22, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Tokyo 2021: An Olympics Without Crowds? The Tokyo 2021 Olympics will be the first Games to take place with no spectators. The sight of sparsely populated stadiums and arenas has, of course, become common during the pandemic – and sports economists have studied the impact this has had on athletic performance. But the Olympics are different. For so many athletes, reaching the […] Written by The Conversation July 21, 2021July 21, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Space Tourism: Can It Be More Than ‘Space’ Joyrides For Millionaires? Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson and his team successfully flew to the “edge of space” on the Unity 22 mission aboard a Virgin Galactic plane on July 12. The event was hailed as the start of space tourism, narrowly beating the planned launch on 20 July by fellow billionaire business magnate Jeff Bezos and his firm Blue Origin. But does the 85km (53 miles), the altitude […] Written by The Conversation July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
