David Roberts

Fundamental changes in the world economic system have resulted in a new differentiation, that between centre and periphery, between a global financial market on the one hand and production, services and labour on the other. As modern society has now become financial society, the old distinction between capital and labour has lost its informational value for party politics. The fact that the distinction between centre and periphery cannot be copied into the national political system means that economic policy can no longer be decided through political choice. Politics has the task of coping with the political effects of the global financial market with the result that elections are dependent on the state of the economic cycle. Would a new political alignment involve a centre party of capital and labour against an ecological left and a `law and order' right?

The geography of contemporary bohemia is integral to Richard Florida’s thesis of the rise of a new creative class in the USA. The strong correlation between the presence of bohemians and innovative high-tech industries in a number of American cities stands in sharp contrast to the historical image of a bohemian subculture of artists and intellectuals, defined by their antagonistic relationship to bourgeois society. Rather than a sign of social marginality, bohemian life-styles have now become a marker of the ‘new economy’, variously labeled the creative, the cultural or the aesthetic economy. In my paper I want to compare and contrast these two opposed images of bohemia – the 19th-century idea of bohemia as the libertarian other of liberal-bourgeois society and the new, highly topical economic geography of bohemia – with the following questions in mind: How and why does the 19th-century artistic critique of capitalism mutate into an expression of the new spirit of capitalism? Does this change from an antagonistic to an affirmative relationship signal the emergence of a new spirit of art that can be related to the new spirit of capitalism?

The collapse of the Weimar Republic remains central to the history of the 20th century and to contemporary debates on 'classical modernity' and its Europe-wide crisis in the wake of the First World War. The present issue of Thesis Eleven focuses on three dimensions of the Weimar crisis: the experience of fundamental societal crisis and closure and its diagnostic power in relation to the rise of fascist movements; the cognitive and normative resources that sought to work against this crisis-ridden sense of closure; and third, the degree to which these counter tendencies anticipate postmodern interrogations of the premises of classical modernity.

With a variety of technology-enabled tools and environments to choose from, it is increasingly difficult for educators to ascertain the factors that influence the quality of the students' learning experience and hence make appropriate choices for the use of technology. In this paper, we discuss the role of two technologies — wikis and blogs — in teaching and learning. We provide case studies of two courses at the Open Umiversity, UK and empirical evidence of students' experiences, perceptions, and expectations on these courses. We discuss the context of these courses and the usage of these technologies: The pedagogical underpinnings and the rationale for introducing these technologies; the intended learning outcomes from the usage of these tools; and the extent to which the activities based around these tools have enabled the intended learning and facilitated the learning process. We report on the social, usability, and pedagogical factors that have influenced the quality of students' learning experience. The research reported in this paper aims to provide guidance to course designers and educators for choosing tools, particularly wikis and blogs, for their contexts and for creating value and generating a positive student experience to engender student satisfaction and retention

A comparison of the analyses of West German society in the 1960s in Dahrendorf's Society and Democracy in Germany and in the 1980s in Beck's Risk Society provides the historical frame for a reconsideration of the student movement of the late 1960s in terms not of its own self-understanding but of its place and role in the larger processes of social and cultural change in the Federal Republic. The idea of cultural revolution - one of the central, defining themes of the student movement - and its outcome are examined with reference to Schulze's cultural sociology of postwar German society

Bitterly anti-Marxist though it was, fascism now appears to have been in some sense revolutionary in its own right, but this raises new questions about the meaning of modern revolution. In a recent essay Roger Griffin, a major authority on fascism, challenges Marxists and non-Marxists to engage in a dialogue that would deepen our understanding of the relationship between the Marxist-communist and fascist revolutionary directions. Although he finds openings within the Marxist tradition, Griffin insists that, if such dialogue is to be possible, the Marxists must give up any a priori claim to the unique validity of the Marxist revolutionary project. However, Griffin’s way of framing the issues proves too limited, first because his understanding fascism as revolutionary is not rich enough, but also because he too often forces his argument to make the fascist revolution seem the archetypal 20th-century revolution. The alternative starts with a deeper understanding of the basis of the fascist claim to be spearheading, as Marxism could not, a revolutionary departure appropriate to contemporary challenges and possibilities. In asking about the commonality of the fascist and Marxist revolutions, Griffin convincingly accents a certain mode of historical consciousness that seemed to warrant a totalitarian direction. But the historical sense he draws from Walter Benjamin, and then attributes to Marxism and Leninism, misconstrues the area of commonality. Through a different way of conceiving fascism as revolutionary, and of understanding fascist-communist convergence, we can challenge the Marxists more deeply — but also suggest the basis for a more fruitful mode of dialogue around fascism, Marxism and modern revolution

This article assesses Herman Paul's intellectual biography of Hayden White, the most important figure in the philosophy of history of the past half century. Offering a clear overview of White's career and contribution, Paul's account proceeds chronologically from the 1950s to the present, distinguishing the phases of White's career, but convincingly pinpointing an abiding core of concerns around an existentialist and liberationist humanism. In that light, White sought to show the way beyond historiographical realism to more innovative approaches—ideally to serve progressive politics. Paul notes, however, that White failed to connect with most mainstream historians, and Paul's account is not sufficiently probing and critical to explore the gulf. Indeed, following White, Paul is too prone to take White's particular liberationist agenda as the only alternative to a conservative, passive realism—and thereby to gloss over alternative ways of conceiving the postrealist cultural space. Moreover, Paul fails to note White's tendency sometimes to imply that mainstream history claims more than it does, and sometimes to denigrate prejudicially what it in fact does, or could do. Although much of White's challenge could have been especially salutary, he tended toward mischaracterizations that fostered polarization in the historical discipline and reinforced prejudicial understandings of historiography in the wider culture. Paul's overview provides a useful, and in many ways exemplary, introduction to White's legacy, but it is too deferential to provide a convincing overall critical assessment

Heidegger places Wagner’s will to the total work of art at the centre of the long 19th century. Nietzsche’s and Mallarmé’s responses to Wagner reflect all the ambiguities of modernism’s myth of absolute creation: the dreams of a new mythology and a new community are shadowed by the knowledge that the gods are nothing more than our fictions. Nietzsche and Mallarmé continue and critically interrogate the two distinct lineages of the total work of art deriving from German romanticism and the French Revolution respectively, at the same time as they anticipate the contrary constructions of the sacred in society in Le Bon and Durkheim.

Fundamental changes in the world economic system have resulted in a new differentiation, that between centre and periphery, between a global financial market on the one hand and production, services and labour on the other. As modern society has now become financial society, the old distinction between capital and labour has lost its informational value for party politics. The fact that the distinction between centre and periphery cannot be copied into the national political system means that economic policy can no longer be decided through political choice. Politics has the task of coping with the political effects of the global financial market with the result that elections are dependent on the state of the economic cycle. Would a new political alignment involve a centre party of capital and labour against an ecological left and a `law and order' right?

Fundamental changes in the world economic system have resulted in a new differentiation, that between centre and periphery, between a global financial market on the one hand and production, services and labour on the other. As modern society has now become financial society, the old distinction between capital and labour has lost its informational value for party politics. The fact that the distinction between centre and periphery cannot be copied into the national political system means that economic policy can no longer be decided through political choice. Politics has the task of coping with the political effects of the global financial market with the result that elections are dependent on the state of the economic cycle. Would a new political alignment involve a centre party of capital and labour against an ecological left and a `law and order' right?

With a variety of technology-enabled tools and environments to choose from, it is increasingly difficult for educators to ascertain the factors that influence the quality of the students’ learning experience and hence make appropriate choices for the use of technology. In this paper, we discuss the role of two technologies — wikis and blogs — in teaching and learning. We provide case studies of two courses at the Open Umiversity, UK and empirical evidence of students’ experiences, perceptions, and expectations on these courses. We discuss the context of these courses and the usage of these technologies: The pedagogical underpinnings and the rationale for introducing these technologies; the intended learning outcomes from the usage of these tools; and the extent to which the activities based around these tools have enabled the intended learning and facilitated the learning process. We report on the social, usability, and pedagogical factors that have influenced the quality of students’ learning experience. The research reported in this paper aims to provide guidance to course designers and educators for choosing tools, particularly wikis and blogs, for their contexts and for creating value and generating a positive student experience to engender student satisfaction and retention.

With a variety of technology-enabled tools and environments to choose from, it is increasingly difficult for educators to ascertain the factors that influence the quality of the students' learning experience and hence make appropriate choices for the use of technology. In this paper, we discuss the role of two technologies — wikis and blogs — in teaching and learning. We provide case studies of two courses at the Open Umiversity, UK and empirical evidence of students' experiences, perceptions, and expectations on these courses. We discuss the context of these courses and the usage of these technologies: The pedagogical underpinnings and the rationale for introducing these technologies; the intended learning outcomes from the usage of these tools; and the extent to which the activities based around these tools have enabled the intended learning and facilitated the learning process. We report on the social, usability, and pedagogical factors that have influenced the quality of students' learning experience. The research reported in this paper aims to provide guidance to course designers and educators for choosing tools, particularly wikis and blogs, for their contexts and for creating value and generating a positive student experience to engender student satisfaction and retention.