Browsing Department of Intercultural Communication and Management (ICM/IKL) by Title
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Csaba, Fabian Faurholt (, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This study first addresses some of the key definitional, conceptual and moral issues arising in the analysis of luxury. It points to the challenges of even defining luxury, and instead adopts and extends a flexible scheme for conceptualizing luxury. This provides a framework for investigation the consumption and management of luxury today. We then examine contemporary luxury through different perspectives on “new luxury” and the related issue of the rise of Asia as the world’s primary market for luxury. While the paper does aim to give a sense of the characteristics of the present-day luxury scene, the central focus of the study is on discourses on luxury. We consider to what extent and in which ways luxury is being redefined – by “new luxury” and Asia’s ascent. Finally the paper suggest themes and pointers for further research. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7765 Files in this item: 1
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Leander, Anna (København, 2006)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper focuses on the way PMCs shape security policies and more generally political priorities. Linking up with classical thinking about "civil-military relations", it suggests that preoccupation with security professionals’ role in shaping politics is as important when these professionals are privately organised in PMCs as it is when they are enrolled in public armed forces. The paper shows that existing regulation has not been adjusted to account for this fact and that the significance of regulating PMCs’ role in shaping politics is profoundly underestimated. It therefore argues that putting the issue of regulating "civil-PMCs relations" on the agenda is essential. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7019 Files in this item: 1
pmc_regulation_working_paper-2.pdf (238.0Kb) -
Lange, Dr. Bastian (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The paper aims at discussing the issue of governance in respect to creative scenes, a central structural element of the creative economy, exemplifying the case of Berlin. Berlin has a fast growing creative industry that has become the object of the city’s development policies and place marketing. The core question is: What are the spatial-organizational driving forces of creativity in Berlin - can they be steered by public administration? I am using Berlin as a reference case to articulate the gap between ‘state-led planning’ on the one hand and the organisational practices of self-governed creative scenes on the other. I attempt to demonstrate why a perspective change in terms of re-scaling is necessary, in order to respond to the particular practices of emerging industries and their societal form “scenes”. By re-scaling I mean the conceptualization of governance in different non-hierarchical organisational as well as spatial scales, based on the observation that scenes are considered to be a central element of the functionality of creative industries. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7981 Files in this item: 1
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Skov, Lise; Melchior, Marie Riegels (, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Dress and fashion are rich and varied fields of study. Some scholars refer to them as ‘hybrid subjects’ because they bring together different conceptual frameworks and disciplinary approaches, including those from anthropology, art history, cultural studies, design studies, economics, history, literature, semiotics, sociology, visual culture and business studies. Invariably, such a pervasive phenomenon as dress has always been the subject of much commentary. Since the late 19th century, there has been no scarcity of research, but studies have been somewhat sporadic and tended to stay within these bounds of their own disciplines. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the leading educational institutions with words like dress and fashion in their titles, were, firstly, design schools and technical training institutions, servicing the industry, and secondly, institutes devoted to the study of dress history, directed as museums. It was only in the last decades of the 20th century that various approaches were integrated across disciplines and institutions so that it became possible to talk about something like ‘fashion studies’, reflected by the emergence of research centres, academic journals and graduate programmes with such heading. However, both the term, and what it is perceived to represent, is contested; while some scholars and institutions endorse ‘fashion studies’, others reject it or distance themselves from it. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7766 Files in this item: 1
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A critical political economy perspectiveBuch-Hansen, Hubert (København, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The focus of this thesis is one "component” of EC competition regulation, namely that of merger control. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7729 Files in this item: 1
hubert_buch-hansen.pdf (2.956Mb) -
The Case of the CIA “Killing Program”Leander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: “Risk” has become a major theme in the social sciences over the past two decades. It has been argued to reshape social and political life not only by placing new issues on the agenda but also by generating new “governmental rationalities”. These debates have in various forms also began to influence international studies. It has already been shown that the introduction of risk has altered strategic rationality. An uncertain imagined future of Rumsfeldian “unknown unknowns” has become integral to military strategic thinking. In the process technologies used to wage war and the actors involved have also evolved. Continuing the discussion, this article moves on to look at the implications of these changes for legal and political boundaries in one specific area of international politics; it traces the link between the spread of risk rationality (or governance through risk) and the development of apolitical and unaccountable military markets. Risk rationality creates what I will tentatively term a preventive imperative that tends to spread across areas and is assisted in the process by the rapidly expanding ranks of risk professionals. The preventive imperative is key to the rapid growth of private military markets as well as to the difficulty of politicizing—in the sense of creating a critical public debate—about the market as opposed to about the a given scandal (e.g. Nisour Square incident) or firm (e.g. Blackwater). The difficulty of politicizing the market has strong implications for the (non-)working of accountability. It creates what I will dub an accountability paradox where the way accountability is pursued reinforces the impunity of markets and of specific market actors. The reason is that it pre-empts serious consideration of the public/private enmeshment which is the “blind spot” of present legal instruments and it positively reaffirms existing “regulation” in all its defectiveness. Neither security professionals nor lawyers are susceptible to resolve this paradox. Reference to the CIA “Killing Program” anchors and illustrates the argument. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7965 Files in this item: 1
Risk_working_paper.pdf (145.5Kb) -
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Abstract: The paper looks at initiatives taken by the Mexican Employers’ Confederation (COPARMEX) aimed at promoting collaboration among civil society associations around the issue of public safety. Insecurity in the form of robbery, assault and kidnapping causes huge losses to business in Mexico. It is argued that business leaders are seeking to create consensus and form alliances among civil society around the topic of insecurity, both to combat crime but also as a strategy to strengthen links with civil society and improve the image of business, which has suffered due to the increasing resonance of anti-capital and anti-globalisation discourses in the region. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7040 Files in this item: 1
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CPH Kids and Danish Children's FashionCsaba, Fabian Faurholt; Larsen, Frederik (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: During the Copenhagen Fashion Week A/W 2010, CPH Kids opened as the first independent trade fair for children’s clothing. Despite considerable resistance, the fair managed to establish itself and challenge the established order by providing a venue devoted fully to children’s clothing and luring away exhibitors and visitors looking for change. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic development and distinctive traits of the children’s clothing sector symbolized at the new fair. Our study contributes to inquiry into the role of fairs and festivals in the creative industries by examining the special case of coinciding, competing trade fairs. We introduce and build on three closely related, but in our view complementary, concepts applied and developed in analyses of festivals, trade shows and other kinds of temporary, usually competitive events, namely tournament rituals, field configuring events and tournaments of value. We establish the common ground of the three approaches, particular their assertion of the rich research potential and vital significance of festivals, fairs and similar events for many fields, whether deemed creative or not. We also single out particular strengths of each approach, which inform our inquiry. They review of theory, points to how existing work has explored fairs as arenas of conflict between exhibitors as well as the rivalry between events separated in time and/or place. In our case, we demonstrate how the emergence of a rival fair both incites and exposes division or segmentation of a field. This observation in our view, challenges prevailing understandings of the relationship between fields and the events, we assume represent and shape them. We argue that it is more complicated than extant theory suggests, and this has implications for the analysis of the fairs and to their role in configuring field. We raise questions about the precise manner in and extent to which events configure field, and point to the agency of event organizers, the fair context and the fair as medium as factors that need to be factored in. The reflections on the field configuring capacity of fairs and similar event, inform our explorations of Danish childrenswear. Following the tournament of value-approach, we place values – more specifically how different values are affirmed and negotiated at the fairs – at the center of our analysis. The approach suggests, that symbolic value, and ultimately the (economic) value exchange value, of cultural products are established through judgments of their technical/material, social, situational, appreciative and utility values. However, we do not focus as much on specific evaluative practices in the field, as the cultural values and norms around which childhood is constructed. These values are vital for the field of children’s clothing, so we address contemporary concerns about childhood placing a particular emphasis on the Nordic context with its the notion of “the competent child”. While our analysis only offers only selected snapshots of the many activities at the two fairs, we have pointed to some of the ways in which positions are staked, values are addressed, forms of capital built and exchanged, and different field configuring mechanisms operate. We conclude, that while further research is required to gauge the field configuring impact of CPH Kids and explore the values, identities and structures of Danish children’s fashion in more depth, our investigation points to the field dividing impact that fairs might have. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8254 Files in this item: 1
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CPH Kids and Danish Children’s FashionCsaba, Fabian Faurholt; Larsen, Frederik (Frederiksberg, 2010)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: During the Copenhagen Fashion Week A/W 2010, CPH Kids opened as the first independent trade fair for children’s clothing. Despite considerable resistance, the fair managed to establish itself and challenge the established order by providing a venue devoted fully to children’s clothing and luring away exhibitors and visitors looking for change. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic development and distinctive traits of the children’s clothing sector symbolized at the new fair. Our study contributes to inquiry into the role of fairs and festivals in the creative industries by examining the special case of coinciding, competing trade fairs. We introduce and build on three closely related, but in our view complementary, concepts applied and developed in analyses of festivals, trade shows and other kinds of temporary, usually competitive events, namely tournament rituals, field configuring events and tournaments of value. We establish the common ground of the three approaches, particular their assertion of the rich research potential and vital significance of festivals, fairs and similar events for many fields, whether deemed creative or not. We also single out particular strengths of each approach, which inform our inquiry.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8238 Files in this item: 1
FaurholtCsaba__Larsen_paper1.pdf (325.2Kb) -
Leander, Anna (København, 2007)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: On September 16 2007 the employees of the U.S. security firm Blackwater became involved in a shooting incidence in the Nisour Square in Baghdad. They were escorting a U.S. State Department delegation, which according to the firm, came under attack. According to by-standers, the Blackwater employees opened fire unprovoked, shooting in all directions and seemingly at anyone moving, including those trying to flee or help those wounded. 17 Iraqis civilians died in the incidence and at least twice as many were wounded. President Al-Maliki immediately came out to "revoke Blackwater’s license” for operating in Iraq and Iraqi authorities engaged the process of ending contractor impunity in their country. However, it soon became clear that there was no license to revoke and that the Iraqi government may not have the authority to deny Blackwater the right to operate in Iraq, let alone decide the fate of private contractors more generally. On their part, the U.S. authorities promised to open their own investigation and expressed regret at the civilian casualties but did not end their contracts with Blackwater in Iraq or elsewhere. The incapacity of the Iraqi government to impose its authority and right to control the use of force on its territory, to hold Blackwater and/or its employees accountable for the incidence, made Jeremy Scahill conclude that: "nothing gives a more clear indication to the Iraqis that they don’t have a sovereign government” (2007). Scahill is right in pointing to the limitations of the Iraqi government’s role as the ultimate authority deciding on laws on Iraqi territory. However, it does not follow that the Mansour incidence is illustrative of the extent to which the private markets for force have undermined sovereignty generally. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7033 Files in this item: 1
wp 2007-5.pdf (162.5Kb) -
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Abstract: This paper argues that security belongs to a specific category of commodities: “contested commodities” around which there is an ongoing and unsettled symbolic struggle over whether or not they can and should be though of as commodities (section 1). The contested nature of commodification has implications for how markets function; market practices tend to be defined and organized in ways that minimize their contentiousness and obfuscate their expansion. The paper looks at the implications of this argument for the conceptualization of the security. It focuses on the three central articulations of contestation: the discussion about whether the use of force can be left to the market, whether it can be so in the international realm and the discussion about whether or not markets trigger increased insecurity. It shows how this specific articulation of contestation has produced markets where the practice/definition of security is as public rather than private (section 2), as inside rather than outside (section 3) and as a responsible reaction to a threat rather than as something contributing to the constitution of threats (section 4). Conceptualizations of private security consequently have to be devised to capture these practical consequences of contested commodification; they need to capture the private in the public, the inside in the outside and the securitizing in the response to threats. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7964 Files in this item: 1
Contested_Commodity_working_paper.pdf (152.8Kb) -
on the art of duality in learning partnershipsMorsing, Mette; Vendelø, Morten (København, 1995)[More information][Less information]
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An implementation and evaluationHalskov, Jakob (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: The research object of this thesis is the so-called knowledge patterns and their usefulness in automatically extracting specic semantic relations from unannotated and uncategorized text on the WWW so as to facilitate semi-automatic updating and extension of existing ontological and terminological resources. The main contribution of the thesis is the implementation of a com- plete ontology extension framework called WWW2REL which is 100% based on a knowledge-poor, domain-independent processing of WWW text snippets and includes the three stages of pattern discovery, pattern ltering and relation instance ranking. Unlike most comparable systems WWW2REL is special in that it is both highly portable, can be applied to any semantic relation type and operates directly on uncategorized WWW text snippets. The system is tested on the biomedical UMLS Metathesaurus for four dierent relation types and manually evaluated by four domain experts. It is demonstrated that high precision in the task of knowledge discovery from a noisy text source can be achieved using a very simple instance relevance measure and two ranking heuristics. In contrast, many comparable systems operate on richly annotated academic text and tend to apply heuristics which are custom-tailored to a specic domain and/or relation type. When selecting the overall best ranking scheme, average system performance across all four relation types ranges between 70% to 65% of the maximum possible F-score by top 10 and top 50 relation instances, respectively. Finally, the thesis experiments also examine the portability of individ- ual knowledge patterns and of the ranking heuristics. It is concluded that synonymy KPs are the most domain independent closely followed by ISA KPs, whereas patterns for "may_prevent" and especially "induces" are more dependent on the domain. Empirical experiments also suggest that a ranking heuristic which penalizes relation instances whose arguments occur frequently in a general language corpus can be highly eective, but may need to be adapted to the domain in question. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7731 Files in this item: 1
jacob_halskov.pdf (1.810Mb) -
a narrative approach to the study of international acquisitionsSøderberg, Anne-Marie (København, 2003)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Most studies of mergers and acquisitions have a managerial tilt and are founded on short visits to the companies investigated. This essay is based on a longitudinal study of a company that experiences a series of international acquisitions, giving voice to a wide range of organizational actors at different hierarchical levels, interviewed at different points of time over a period of six years. The collected narrative interviews are viewed as retrospective interpretations of change processes in the acquired company, made by organizational actors as parts of the plots they are continually constructing and revising to make sense of the course of organizational actions and events. Greimas’ actantial model is used to systematize the different plots that can be seen as results of both individual and collective processes of selection, hierarchization and sequencing of organizational actions and events. It is argued that a narrative approach is well suited to clarify changing patterns of identification and justification and to display different modes of storytelling. The narratological analyses moreover illustrate that even central actors within an acquired company often have such different work-views and world-views that it may be problematic or even counterproductive if upper-level management introduces corporate storytelling through conscious efforts without any negotiation of the different versions of stories told by the employees. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6962 Files in this item: 1
wp67.pdf (333.5Kb) -
A Reflection on Historical Sociology and IRLeander, Anna (Frederiksberg, 2009)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In 2004 I published an argument to the effect that “taking Tilly seriously” could help International Relations (IR) scholars understand some of the processes and mechanisms involved in state-building (Leander, 2004: the chapter is pasted in at the end of this statement). This short statement is a reflection on why, if I were to write that piece today, it would be written differently. I would still argue that we should all engage the Historical Sociology of State-Building (HSS) in a serious way (go beyond the folklore as I termed it in 2004) but my inclination today would be to be far more explicit about to the pitfalls of not going beyond the folklore as well as about the importance of studies of practices (in anthropology, ethnography, geography, regional/area studies or even IR, sic!) in signposting these pitfalls. This change in tone has less to do with any particular idea or argument in historical sociology, and even less with the work of any particular historical sociologist (seen the focus of this workshop Tilly will figure as the recurring reference point) than it does with the way the HSS is read, feeds into and shapes IR discussions (section 1). The way HSS has been integrated into IR has led scholars deeper into the pitfalls which hamper their understanding of contemporary state-building. More specifically it has perpetuated a misconstrued understanding of the inside/outside, it has obscured the nature and role of the private/public, and that it has devalued contextually specific articulations of politics and governance (sections 2-4). This “misunderstanding” is not only a scholastic matter as it translates into policies that are ineffective, inadequate not to say positively harmful (section 5). As the statement concludes, the implication is that IR scholars who decide to walk the terrain chartered by HSS would do well to observe the warning signposts set up by observers of political practices around these pitfalls. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7968 Files in this item: 1
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Leander, Anna (København, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper analyses one influential Hollywood documentary, Edward Zwick’s movie Blood Diamond as if it were an advertising campaign. Drawing on a business school textbook: Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising, it poses the kinds of question an advertiser would: namely how the brand image is established, how it is made superior to other images and how good it is at capturing would-be-consumers. The paper suggests that Blood Diamond fares well on all three accounts and it traces why this is so. Specifically, it emphasizes the extent to which the film has contributed to establish and solidify the link between blood and diamonds in a process of "cultural cannibalism”. Second, it underlines role of "Hollywood authenticity” in establishing its very particular picture of politics as superior to alternatives. This certainly is more an unintended "collateral damage” than a part the producers’/directors’ intention. Finally, the last section suggests that Blood Diamond effectively captures the spectator by the reassuring, but illusive, plurality of images and by its visual fetichism. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7031 Files in this item: 1
wp 2008-1.pdf (207.4Kb) -
analysed through costume and movement in Crouching Tiger, Hidden DragonSkov, Lise (, 2008)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In this essay, I wish to examine the relation between body, movement and costume in Chinese martial arts film. I propose to see fight choreography as dance, and I rush to say that this is a totally unoriginal claim on my part; practically any book or commentary on the martial arts genre will use the word dance, either literally or evocatively. There are good reasons for this, as I will discuss below. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7778 Files in this item: 1
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Enhancing Social Entrepreneurship and Stakeholder TheoryDacanay, Marie Lisa (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This thesis develops a framework for understanding how social enterprises engage the poor and address poverty, a pressing global problem of the 21st century. Using casebased theory building, it studies a theoretical sample of three pairs of Philippine-based social enterprises, where the poor were suppliers, workers, and customers. In half of the cases, the poor were also owners. The research studies the roles and role changes of the poor in these social enterprises, how and why these roles changed, or did not change, and the impact of the roles and role changes, if any, on the social enterprises and the poor. Data for the research was gathered mainly from key informant interviews, published and unpublished organizational documents as well as previous studies done by external consultants on the case subjects. Based on a cross case analysis of the data from the theoretical sample, the thesis develops three models of stakeholder engagement among social enterprises with the poor as primary stakeholders or SEPPS, namely: control, collaboration and empowerment. This thesis provides insights and develops propositions about the importance of stakeholder engagement and the power and limitations of these three models in bringing about social inclusion and poverty reduction. These propositions are suggested to be applicable in countries in the South other than the Philippines where systemic poverty and inequality are exacerbated by the failure of state and market institutions to address the needs of the poor. This thesis makes a contribution to social entrepreneurship and stakeholder theory. It does so by sharing a perspective from the South and giving a voice to the poor as stakeholders. The researcher notes that overall, the poor and the South are under-represented in these discourses. On the whole, social entrepreneurship theorizing has been characterized as embryonic as a topic of academic inquiry. Stakeholder engagement is considered an under-theorized area in stakeholder theory. In developing a framework for understanding stakeholder engagement models involving the poor, this thesis makes a first step towards applying and extending stakeholder theory in SEPPS. The thesis likewise enriches social entrepreneurship theory by conceiving of SEPPS as a global social enterprise model that catalyzes South-North cooperation to address poverty and inequality. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8513 Files in this item: 1
Marie_Lisa_Dacanay.pdf (2.477Mb)