1,720,974 research outputs found
Markets everywhere: the Washington Consensus and the sociology of global institutional change
No full textThe dominance of free markets around the world is the defining feature of contemporary globalization. This current state of affairs is historically linked to the Washington Consensus, a coordinated campaign for the global diffusion of market-oriented policies that started more than 30 years ago. In this article, we review scholarship from multiple fields to assess the origins, evolution, and current status of the Washington Consensus: Where did it come from, how did it become dominant, and what happened to it? After laying out historical background, we present three alternative perspectives on the Washington Consensus: its organizational dimension, its ideational aspects, and its relationship to a historical moment of American dominance in world affairs. We then consider current debates on what has happened to the Washington Consensus. Finally, we lay out three directions for future sociological research on global institutional change, before making our concluding observations
The making of neoliberal globalization: norm substitution and the politics of clandestine institutional change
No full textSince the 1980s, neoliberal policies have been diffused around the world by international institutions established to support a very different world order. This article examines the repurposing of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to become the world’s leading promoter of free markets. Social scientists commonly point to two modes of global-level institutional change: formal and fundamental transformations, like renegotiated treaties, or informal and incremental changes of a modest nature. The case of the IMF fits neither of these molds: it underwent a major transformation but without change in its formal foundations. Relying on archival material and interviews, the authors show that fundamental-yet-informal change was effected through a process of norm substitution—the alteration of everyday assumptions about the appropriateness of a set of activities. This transformation was led by the United States and rested on three pillars: mobilization of resources and allies, normalization of new practices, and symbolic work to stabilize the new modus operandi. This account denaturalizes neoliberal globalization and illuminates the clandestine politics behind its rise
International financial institutions: forms, functions, and controversies
No full textHaving sizeable lending capacity and unparalleled epistemic power, international financial institutions (IFIs) are the world’s most powerful international organizations. One class of IFIs is primarily focused on lending for development projects, and commands portfolios of hundreds of millions of dollars that can transform infrastructure and social services in low- and middle-income countries. Another class is geared toward providing financial assistance to countries in economic crisis and has an active role in shaping their policy environments. Through these activities, IFIs alter the development trajectories of borrowing countries, for better or for worse. This article reviews these debates. We first map IFI forms and functions and examine their governance structures. Subsequently, we examine two of the leading controversies surrounding IFI activities: the problematic impact of these activities on social and environmental outcomes; and the charge that they impinge on developing countries’ policy sovereignty. We conclude by outlining fruitful directions for future research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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