In the microbiology laboratories of many pharmaceutical companies, skilled scientists have been spending considerable time conducting repetitive tasks in the search for new drugs…
Abstract
In the microbiology laboratories of many pharmaceutical companies, skilled scientists have been spending considerable time conducting repetitive tasks in the search for new drugs derived from microbial natural products. In a number of these laboratories PA Consulting Group has been able to free scientists from these procedures by the application of advanced robotics to the plating out and screening of micro‐organisms.
Despite the theoretical shortcomings of recent historical work on social processes, the historical discipline has a role to play in the theorization of social dynamics. As the…
Abstract
Despite the theoretical shortcomings of recent historical work on social processes, the historical discipline has a role to play in the theorization of social dynamics. As the work of the late sociologist Charles Tilly (2008, p. 9) has emphasized, the larger-scale theoretical type of social-process analysis may benefit from a more small-scale historical awareness of “the influence of particular times and places.” In Tilly's view, the sociological accounts of social processes that lack the sense of temporal transitions which characterizes historical analysis will “rarely identify the component mechanisms, much less their combinations and sequences.” By contrast, a historical approach to the “big structures, large processes, huge comparisons” (see Tilly, 1984) of social processes may put forward an analytical program that “couples a search for mechanisms of very general scope with arguments that […] lend themselves to ‘local theory,’ in which the explanatory mechanisms and processes operate quite broadly but combine locally as a function of initial conditions and adjacent processes to produce distinctive trajectories and outcomes.” These local elements of history may aggregate together into a more general pattern of theory: “Mechanisms compound into processes: combinations and sequences of mechanisms that produce some specified outcome at a larger scale than any single mechanism.” The temporal dimension of a historical analysis has a capacity to theorize social processes by telling a story of beginnings that carry forward into points of culmination.
H. Binner, J. Lantairès, B.C. Waterfield, e dr and K.J. Williams
Dates: 29–31 May 1991 Venue: De Doelen Conference Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands The Benelux Chapter of the International Society for Hybrid Microelectronics will be…
Abstract
Dates: 29–31 May 1991 Venue: De Doelen Conference Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands The Benelux Chapter of the International Society for Hybrid Microelectronics will be organising the 8th European Microelectronics Conference. The event will take place at ‘De Doelen’, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1991.
Tom G. Griffiths and Jack Downey
The Australian Radical Education Group (RED G) was created in June 1976, which in turn launched a magazine for radical(ising) teachers, the Radical Education Dossier (RED), that…
Abstract
Purpose
The Australian Radical Education Group (RED G) was created in June 1976, which in turn launched a magazine for radical(ising) teachers, the Radical Education Dossier (RED), that would be published for the next 30 years. The purpose of this paper is to characterise the emergence and first phase of RED’s publication up to its name change in 1984.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw on interviews with key members of the magazine’s editorial collective, and a review of RED’s contents, to identify the major political ambitions as manifest in RED in historical context. The authors contextualise this radical education project in the post-1968 world context of social and political upheaval, rejecting the Cold War options of either Soviet style Communist or US-based capitalist pathways.
Findings
In this context RED generated powerful critiques of dominant educational policy in multiple areas. The critique was part of a project to promote a socialist understanding of mass education, and to promote the transformation of Australian society towards socialism. The authors argue that the debates and struggles within RED in this period, seeking to define and advance a socialist educational project, reflected a broad and consistent critique of progressive educational reforms, rooted in its radical political foundations.
Originality/value
This paper provides an historical review of a 30-year radical education publishing initiative in Australia, about which no accounts have been published. It connects directly with contemporary educational issues, and offers insights for interviews with those directly involved in the historical project.
Details
Keywords
Alongside the ubiquitous computer games apparently the marketing success of the 1992 toy season was a series of 25 year old puppets who had featured in a repeat showing of the…
Abstract
Alongside the ubiquitous computer games apparently the marketing success of the 1992 toy season was a series of 25 year old puppets who had featured in a repeat showing of the orginal ITV series on BBC — Thunderbirds — more than 70 franchises have been sold to sell goods marked with the International Rescue logo and it is alleged that these products are even bigger than the previous smash marketing hit the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, saving thousands of jobs and making substantial profits for the British toy industry. The characters are licensed for right‐owners ITC (originally the international marketing arm of ATV, the ITV company which put out the programme, and now an independent company, ATV having long since lost its ITV franchise) by Copyright Promotions, Europe's largest licensing company (‘Thunderbirds are go to save the toy industry’ Sunday Telegraph 15/11/92).