Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Filosofía mención Epistemología. / En la presente tesis se examina una posible relación entre el problema de la Abducción y el del Conocimiento tácito, tal como fueron expuestos por C.S. Peirce y M. Polanyi respectivamente. En el Capítulo I se estudia la idea de abducción basándose en las ideas de C.S. Peirce. La abducción consiste en una regla de inferencia que intenta dar cuenta de la creación de una hipótesis explicativa frente a un "hecho sorprendente" , es decir, un hecho que no es explicado o aparece en contradicción a las teorías existentes para analizar dicho fenómeno.

Alternative food systems (AFSs) are so defined because they purport to challenge a value or ameliorate a negative impact of the dominant conventional food system (CFS). Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are a type of AFS whose alterity is defined by socially proximal economic exchanges that are embedded in and regulated by social relationships. This relational closeness is argued to have benefits with respect to economic, environmental, and social sustainability. However, it would be a mistake to assume that AFSs and CFSs are paradigmatically differentiated or that their structures engender particular outcomes. The first article traces a misguided attempt to find indicators of success for farms participating in short food supply chains. The effort was misguided, because in designing the original study there was an assumption that producers participating in these AFSs shared similar goals, values, and definitions of success. The true diversity of these variables was discovered through the analysis of eighteen semi-structured interviews with Burlington and Montpelier area farmers who participate in SFSCs. This diversity motivated an exploration of the origins, common applications, and recent academic skepticism regarding assumptions of the relationship between certain food systems structures and broader food systems outcomes. The second article undertakes to develop a framework for exploring the actual motivations of SFSCs farmers and challenging common AFS assumptions. A framework that differentiates motivations guided by formal and substantive rationality is used to code the aforementioned data. Common themes amongst the responses are discussed demonstrating that producer motivations for participating in AFSs can be diverse, contradictory, and subject to change.

Countries in southern Africa have been implementing economic liberalisation policies for over two decades, with the aim of reversing years of economic decline. This process of economic liberalisation has been largely been influenced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank policy prescription. While the developed world has been piling pressure on countries in the Sub-Saharan region to integrate their national economies into the global economic, different countries have responded differently in opening up their economies. For some, the new economic policy regime has entailed a shift from a state-run economy and focusing more on a free market economy. While some countries have taken a cautious approaching to economic liberalisation, Zambia went for rapid liberalisation, which has led to negative social consequences on employment and the livelihoods of the working class. Through the adoption and implementation of labour market flexibility policies, Zambia and other countries in the region have seen an upswing in new forms of employment such as casual labour, subcontracting and temporary employment, which have no protection and have exposed workers to exploitation. Employment levels have also dropped as the capitalist investors shed off massive numbers of workers in order to reduce labour costs. Local manufacturing industries, in most cases, have been forced to close down and lay-off workers due to unfair competition with cheap imported goods. Liberalisation in developing countries in general and southern Africa in particular, has entailed weakening the role of the state in national economic management. Governments are increasingly succumbing to the dictates of multinationals and are failing to enforce regulatory measures needed to protect the welfare of workers and their working conditions.

The proposal has been put forward that ecological economics seek to become substantive economics (Gerber and Scheidel 2018). This raises important issues about the content and direction of ecological economics. The division of economics into either substantive or formal derives from the work of Karl Polanyi. In developing his ideas Polanyi employed a definition from Menger and combined this with Tönnies theory of historical evolution. In this paper I explore why the resulting substantive vs. formal dichotomy is problematic. In particular the article exposes the way in which trying to impose this dichotomy on history of economic thought and epistemology leads to further false dichotomies. Besides Polanyi, the positions of other important thinkers informing social ecological economics (SEE) are discussed including Neurath, Kapp and Georgescu-Roegen. The aim is to clarify the future direction of ecological economics and the role, in that future, of ideas raised under the topic of substantive economics. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

A ideia do desenvolvimento por muito tempo esteve associada à expansão das formas capitalistas de produção e às suas consequências em termos do progresso técnico e de acumulação de riquezas. O debate contemporâneo, no entanto, resgata princípios e temas formulados por Karl Polanyi durante e após a segunda guerra mundial, evidenciando a atualidade e a importância da redescoberta de seu pensamento. Este estudo objetiva analisar o desenvolvimento municipal no Brasil a partir da concepção teórica de Karl Polanyi. Para tal, foi feita uma releitura dos princípios de coordenação social evidenciado por Polanyi (1947; 2012a; 2012b) de modo que os princípios passam a ser representados por três dimensões: Estado, mercado, solidariedade e economia familiar, que formam a abordagem multidimensional. Através da abordagem multidimensional foi estruturado o índice de desenvolvimento municipal polanyiano (IDMP), este tem duas finalidades distintas: a) permitir a visualização da organização econômica municipal brasileira, a partir da vertente plural da economia de inspiração teórica polanyiana e; b) verificar como que o índice de desenvolvimento humano municipal (IDHM) se manifesta nos municípios com fortes caraterísticas polanyianas, impressas através das dimensões que compõem a abordagem multidimensional. Os resultados encontrados mostram que: a) de acordo com os conceitos analisados, o desenvolvimento dos municípios brasileiros se mostra bem incipiente; b) e que existe uma relação direta e positiva entre IDMP e o IDHM. Os municípios que atingem as melhores faixas do IDMP apresentam também um IDHM mais fortalecido o que expõem que pluralidade econômica de certo modo influencia em características econômicas e sociais consideradas desejáveis e esperadas do processo de desenvolvimento. / For long, the idea of development had been linked to the expansion of the capitalist ways of production as well as their consequences as to the technical and riches accumulation progress. The contemporaneous debate, however, has rescued Karl Polanyi's principles and themes. This has been done both during and after the second world war, what has evidenced the update and how important the rediscovery of his thought is. This study aims to analyze the city development in Brazil from Karl Polanyi's theoretical conception. To do so, a rereading on the social coordination principles which were evidenced by Polanyi (1947; 2012a; 2012b) has been taken so that these principles become represented by four dimensions: State, market, sympathy and subsistence which form the multidimensional approach. Through the multidimensional approach, the polanyian city development index (PCDI) has been structured. This one has two outstanding aims: a) allowing the visualization on the brazilian city economical organization from the plural perspective on the economy which was inspired by the polanyian theory; b) verifying how the city human development index (CHDI) appears in cities where polanyian features are strong, expressed through the dimensions which form the multidimensional approach. The found results show that: a) according to the analyzed concepts, development in Brazilian cities are quite incipient; b) there is a direct and positive relation between PCDI and CHDI. The cities, where PCDI are better, also show a stronger CHDI, what reveals that economical plurality, somehow, influences social and economical features of the development progress which are wished and hoped.

Renewal of nuclear energy development has been proposed as one viable solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and impacts of climate change. This discussion became concrete as the first uranium mill proposed since the end of the Cold War, the Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill, received state permits in January 2011 to process uranium in southwest Colorado’s Paradox Valley. Though environmental contamination from previous uranium activity caused one local community to be bulldozed to the ground, local support for renewed uranium activity emerges among local residents in communities like Nucla, Naturita, and Bedrock, Colorado. Regionally, however, a coalition of organized, oppositionbased grassroots groups fights the decision to permit the mill. Combined, these events allow social scientists a natural laboratory through which to view social repercussions of nuclear energy development. In this dissertation, I use a Polanyian theoretical framework to analyze social, political-economic, and environmental contexts of social movements surrounding PR Mill. My overarching research problem is: How might Polanyian double movement theory be applied to and made empirically testable within the social and environmental context of uranium development? I intended this analysis to inform energy policy debates regarding renewable energy. In Chapter 1, I found various forms of social dislocation lead to two divergent social movement outcomes. Economic social dislocation led to strong mill support among most local residents, according to archival, in-depth interview, and survey data. On the other hand, residents in regional communities experienced two other types of social dislocation – another kind of economic dislocation, related to concern over boombust economies, and environmental health dislocations related to uranium exposure, creating conditions for a regional movement in opposition to PR Mill. In Chapter 2, I focus on regulations and find that two divergent social movements – a support movement locally and a countermovement against the mill regionally – emerge also as a result of strong faith in regulations, regulators, and Energy Fuels countered by marked distrust in regulations, regulators, and Energy Fuels, respectively. In Chapter 3, I advance Polanyi’s double movement theory by comparing different emergent social movements surrounding uranium, showing that historically different circumstances surrounding uranium can help create conditions for divergent social movements.

Two separate mechanistic kinetic models have been developed for the hydrocracking of complex feedstocks. The first model is targeted for the hydrocracking of vacuum gas oil. The second one addresses specifically the hydrocracking of long-chain paraffins, but at a more fundamental level as compared to the first one. Both models are based on an exhaustive computer generated reaction network of elementary steps. In the first model, the dehydrogenation/hydrogenation steps occurring on the metal sites to generate/consume the reactive olefinic intermediates are assumed to be very fast so that the acid site steps are considered as the rate determining steps. The frequency factors for acid site steps are modeled using the single-event concept and the activation energies based on the nature of the reactant and product carbenium ions. This model utilizes a detailed composition of the vacuum gas oil characterized by 16 different molecular classes up to carbon number 40. These classes are divided into 45 subclasses by distinguishing the isomers of a class according to the number of methyl branches. The kinetic model is plugged into an adiabatic multi-bed trickle flow reactor model. The model contains 33 feedstock and temperature independent parameters which have been estimated from the experimental data. The model has been used to study the effect of the operating conditions on the yield and composition of various products. A sensitivity analysis of the distribution of isomers of a class among its different subclasses has been performed showing that the total conversion increases when the content of isomers with a higher degree of branching is increased in the feed. In the second model, the dehydrogenation/hydrogenation steps on the metal sites are also assumed to be rate determining. The rate coefficients for the dehydrogenation steps are modeled depending on the nature of the carbon atoms forming the double bond. The frequency factors for the acid site steps are modeled using the single-event concept. A more rigorous approach has been selected to model the activation energies of the acid site steps by implementing the Evans-Polanyi relationship. The 14 model parameters, which are independent of the temperature and feedstock composition, have been estimated from the experimental data. The model elucidates the effect of the relative metal/acid activity of the catalyst on the isomerization/cracking selectivities and on the carbon number distribution of the products.

Abstract This essay elaborates the international New Gramscian School, which is one branch of critical theory, through comparing with mainstream international relation theories, limited in Waltz¡¦s structural realism, Gilpin¡¦s theory of hegemonic stability and neoliberal institutionalism Keohane & Nye devised. Meanwhile, this essay is divided into three parts, from lower level of relation between state and society (relation of structure and agent), hegemony and international regime, to higher level of post-Cold War world order, according to the critique Susan Strange refers to the mainstream international studies. Finally, I will make a normative statement about the School and suggestion related to the development of IR discipline. The purpose of this essay is to introduce a new approach that adopts historical materialism and denies the dichotomy of subject and object. Further, it assumes the importance of social science to build up a research method suitable for itself but different with natural science, and reassesses Enlightment Project. In brief, the context of the New Gramscian School could be derived from the following thinking of three scholars, including neo-Marxist Gramsci ¡¦¡¦cultural hegemony¡¦¡¦ which stresses non-material dimension of hegemony, Poulantzas ¡¥¡¦relative autonomy of state¡¦¡¦ and ¡¥¡¦dialectical structural analysis ¡¦¡¦, highlighting non-determinist characteristic of neoMarxism and putting emphases on the functions of anti-hegemonic social movements rather than seizing state machine by forces directly or radical revolutionary path, and Socialist Polanyi ¡¥¡¦double movement¡¦¡¦, which tries to verify that market itself plays only subordinate role in pre-capitalism period and indicate the fallacy of the self-regulating market itself. With these perspectives above, the School develops a quite different historical approach to interpret international phenomenon and tend to transform the given unjust and unfair world order. In sum, though mainstream IR theories are good at prediction of behaviors in few strong states, there are still a lot of questions unsolved and much space left for IR discipline to have a dialogue with competitive theories, especially the Left had been marginalized for a long time. Accordingly, it¡¦s important and constructive to establish a communicative community in the foreseeable future.

This thesis is build up on the idea that state could be described as an institution of the economic process, which imbues it with certain degree of endurance and protects it from the instability and uncertainty of the free markets. If this idea could be proved,then the mainstream tendency to exclude state from the realm of economics and leave the governance of the economic process solely to self-regulating markets will appear to be a fallacy based on the myth of liberalism. Only after this could be achieved, state could get its proper place in the existing economic system and a solution may be found to the impasse into which societies have been dragged by the free market order that is defended jauntily by liberal economists.

Thesis--University of London, 1994. / Bibliogr. p. 289-313.