The role of the engineer in the late capitalist society of the last half century has been misunderstood at best. The lack of a consistent job description for engineers in various fields, a lack of job security, and a lack of respect from both industry and society have spawned severe angst in the engineering community. A classic remedy for this situation has been the rallying of engineering practitioners under a banner of increased professionalism. If engineers could make themselves more like doctors and lawyers — the respected members of professional society — they would gain similar respect and job satisfaction. This project analyzes current state of engineering practice as revealed in the self-image of the individual engineer. A survey of popular engineering literature is employed in order to develop a composite self-image of the engineer: the technical hired hand of industry. "Professionalization" is then demonstrated to be useless in the improvement of this situation and furthermore, undesirable in the late capitalist social and economic climate of the late twentieth century. Late professionalism—an alternative to a understanding of professionalism—is offered as a means by which to improve the job satisfaction of engineers in contemporary society. Suggesting that each engineer is free to negotiate the terms, conditions, and length of his/her own employment based on a personal understanding of the job requirements, late professionalism empowers the engineer to adopt a comfortable position in the late capitalist economy. A new metaphor—the commissioned engineer—is employed in support of the late professional understanding of the engineer's occupation. / Master of Science

In this paper I offer an analysis of the Adam Smith Problem. This Problem arises from perceived inconsistencies between Smith's economic work, The Wealth of Nations, and his moral theory, the Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that far from being inconsistent with Smith's economic theory, his moral theory serves as a necessary foundation. I suggest that, because he takes humans to be moral by nature, Smith defends social capitalism which requires moral economic agents rather than homo economicus. I then sketch some specific implications for the moral limits of Smithian social systems. / Master of Arts

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2002.

Given the breadth of the concept of new capitalism and possible topics that present themselves here, the main objective of this work is especially presentation of new capitalism as reflected in sociological literature and reference to its highly efficient nature. The work is also a reflection on key topics opened by leading theoreticians of contemporary capitalism. Using Weberian sociology, the work seeks to capture the development of capitalism and to grasp new contemporary capitalism. The development of capitalism is described by the development of three important aspects that appear early in modern capitalism which are important during its whole history up to the present. It is the development of the phenomenon of work, consumption and time. For these three phenomena, the presented work deals in particular with their tendency to become increasingly more efficient. Efficiency is part of the rationalization process; the work uses a more suitable term for contemporary Euro-American society - effectivization (efficiency boost of society), due to its ubiquity and topicality, and also due to the fact that current changes are being legitimized under the designation of efficiency. Where the logic of money takes control (at the market), thinking is being rationalized and resources are being used more...

This dissertation relates the lessons of historical materialism to literary production in nineteenth-century America. In an attempt to refocus discussion of social class in this time period, I argue an emphasis on labor is essential to assess the political and economic understanding of authors writing during the reorganization of laboring life of the Market Revolution. I examine American authors from Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln to Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Frederick Douglass whose interests in the aesthetics and politics of labor underlie the foundations of our understanding of class in nineteenth-century American literature.

From the perspective of the present day, Puritan-inspired capitalism seems to have succeeded globally, including in India. Connected to this, short-term profit-orientation in management seems to constrain the scope of different management approaches in a tight ideological corset. This article discusses the possibility of replacing this Puritan doctrine with the crucial elements of Indian philosophy: Karma and samsara. In doing so, the possibility of revising the guiding principles in capitalist management becomes conceivable, namely the monetary focus of profit-orientation and its short-term orientation. This perspective allows a detachment of the concept of profit from the realm of money, as the seemingly only objectifiable measure of profit. Furthermore it allows a removal of the expectation that every "investment" has to directly "pay off". A karmic view offers management a possible facility for being more caring about the needs and fates of other stakeholders, as profit-orientation would no longer be attached as a factual constraint to merely accumulate money. (author's abstract)

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

This investigation combines contemporary Marxian political economy with Lacanian psychoanalysis to understand the discourse of finance capitalism, and to understand the dialectical seeds of the industry’s eventual destruction that were inherent within the hegemonic commodities of the era. These commodities, which include derivatives, futures, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and subprime mortgage loans, were ideological and communicative as well as profitable, and thus do a double duty under finance capitalism’s dominance. Lacan’s concepts of metaphor, fantasy, the quilting point, and the master signifier are extended in order to understand how subjects come to know themselves and their world through the terms given to them by capital. In addition, the rhetorical interventions of two chief ideologists for finance capitalism in the 1990s, Thomas Friedman and Alan Greenspan, are interrogated as exemplifications of the fantastical nature of late capitalism. / text

This multi-layered case study examines the evolution and operations of one long-lived organized research unit (ORU), the Office of Arid Lands Studies (OALS), at the University of Arizona (UA). The first part includes a history of arid lands research at the UA and the beginning of OALS, a review of the Office's extramural and internal funding since 1964, and a comparison of that data and other performance indicators with other ORUs and, to some extent, with departments. The results are examined in relation to U.S. science policy and the theory of academic capitalism. The second part explores the causes of OALS' 1981 administrative move from the Vice President for Research Office to the College of Agriculture in the context of the University's multiple cultures and institutional and resource dependence theories of organizational change. The final part considers the influence of student workers on faculty supervisors who work as technicians in an OALS lab, and the role of funding agencies in the lab's operations. Theories of power and technology in the workplace provide a frame for the discussion. Findings suggest the placement of this ORU in a college has been beneficial in clarifying research turf, minimizing conflicts, supporting instruction, and in terms of funding. OALS' extramural support has averaged more than four dollars to every one dollar received internally, and OALS faculty compare favorably with other faculty in numbers of publications, and to a certain extent with teaching and advising. While the OALS remote sensing lab does utilize students as sources of cheap labor, the students do have considerable influence over how the lab operates. The only areas of conflict occurred over linking thesis topics to research projects and in meeting funding agency deadlines.

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