Today civil society groups are important actors on the international stage. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have taken roles that traditionally have been the sole province of states or intergovernmental institutions. NGOs are not bound to act in the public interest. Neither are their actions justified by formal democratic procedures, as is the case with states. Therefore, questioning the legitimacy of their actions is a crucial thing to do. This article presents the results of empirical research on the legitimacy of internationally operating (...) NGOs (INGOs). From the interview data seven types of legitimacy are distinguished. These do not give us a comprehensive categorisation of sources of legitimacy; rather they provide tools to counterbalance existing views of legitimacy. The aim is to develop concepts for evaluating the legitimacy of INGO activities which are grounded in theory as well as in practice. Before analysing the empirical results concerning NGO legitimacy, some views on civil society will be discussed with a focus on the problem of legitimacy. (shrink)

In the contemporary western, liberal, constitutional and secularized state, the need is felt for a cohesionconserving force. Human rights and citizenship, assets of Enlightenment and Revolution, prove to be individualizing powers that miss the communitarian inclination of former times. With the rise of violence, crime and other ways of breaking the law the state seems less able to fulfil its role as guardian of assets like freedom and security. The call for a strong state that interferes in people's behavior is (...) often heard nowadays. Is there a way in which the state can promote a certain degree of moral substance without becoming paternalistic or even totalitarian? In this paper it is argued that the political philosophy of John Dewey might provide us with some tools to approach this problem in a refreshing way. (shrink)

This review article engages with a rich field of scholarship on logistics that has gathered momentum over the past decade, focusing on two new publications by Laleh Khalili and Martín Arboleda. It contextualizes how and why logistics is bound up with the militarization of contemporary political and social life. I argue that the later 20th century rise of logistics can be better understood as both a response to and symptom of capitalist crisis and I situate this scholarship (...) on war and logistics in relationship to Giovanni Arrighi’s account of crisis and ‘unravelling hegemony’. I also show how logistics provides essential critical and visual resources that contribute to efforts to map global capitalism and to debates on totality and class composition in contemporary critical theory. Finally, contemporary events such as the ongoing Coronavirus crisis and the reemergence of Black Lives Matter are considered in light of this analysis with reference to the centrality of logistics to racial capitalism. (shrink)

To develop my arguments about this revision of the logistics ofdisappearance, I will turn to several recent Iraq War films, look at thedifferent types of screens they present and investigate their aestheticdimensions and ethical implications. Among the multiple screens present inthese films, the video war diaries made by the soldiers at the front are mostsalient. These diaries will be an important focus of my analysis of acontemporary logistics of perception, which, following the implication ofWeb 2.0 applications, I will (...) call the logistics of perception 2.0. (shrink)

The world currently faces the highest number in recorded history of people fleeing from war and violence. Refugee-hosting countries in the western part of the world experience the effects of global issues more than ever and face dealing with humanitarian logistics for refugees on an unprecedented scale. These countries continuously optimize their policies regarding refugees by navigating between obligations toward the Geneva Refugee Treaty, manageability of the situation, and worries of their citizens voiced through public opinion. The issue can (...) be considered a wicked problem because of its unpredictability, complexity, and global scale. Presuppositions about human flourishing affect the interpretation of well-being in refugee policies. In this article, we reflect on refugees’ experiences with Dutch asylum policies, analyzing these experiences through the theoretical lenses of Abraham Maslow, Manfred Max-Neef, and Herman Dooyeweerd. We learn from Maslow the importance of providing information for the satisfaction of basic needs; from Max-Neef we learn that, with the sole exception of the need for subsistence, all fundamental needs are equally important; and from Dooyeweerd we learn that trust, though often overlooked, is important for refugee well-being. (shrink)

A demonstration of two difficulties, both prevalent, in modeling. The first is scopal errors, which are often hard to detect because of their subtlety. The second is that two equations, though facially identical, are implicitly conjoined to /different/ inequalities, limiting the range of the variables or parameters in the equations, thereby changing the (here, ecological) interpretation of the equation, and thus its meaning, and therefore whether it is or is not an adequate model.

A second demonstration (more powerful because more subtle) of how a prevalent scope error can render a model invalid, and thus how difficult modeling really is. The prevalence indicates the difficulty, as the error is often built-in and very subtle and thus easily escapes notice.

The article starts with a reconstruction of Bernard Bolzano’s aesthetics as a paradigmatic example of the logical-semantic aesthetics tradition following Leibniz, which has been marginalized in Germany. It ends with perspectives for a future reconstruction of post-Hegelian aesthetics in the light of the semantic problem that became virulent in the analytical philosophy of language and in linguistics in the early 20th century. As a result, a continuity becomes visible between the allegedly idealistic 19th century and the theoretical developments in the (...) wake of the linguistic turn that emphasize the irreducible linguistic character and sign structure of semantics. (shrink)

New and highly effective treatments against hepatitis C have come on the market in recent years. Their high cost has sparked vociferous debate concerning drug price control, the state’s responsibility towards infected populations and the power of multinational pharmaceutical companies. One possible way to understand these debates is to take into account the particular effects of pharmaceutical capitalism upon the circulation of commodities. Recent protests related to access to treatment identify circulation of medicines as an increasing site of capital accumulation (...) and conflicts. This article defines the notion of ‘logistic regimes’ and shows how such regimes are contested. It analyzes critical ways of engaging with contemporary pharmaceutical logistics, through variations on medical tourism, critiques of patenting and pricing practices, and organization of alternative supply routes. It further proposes to deepen the notion of diversion as a political concept describing specific forms of opposition to the management practices of logistical capitalism. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking work, Deborah Cowen makes the first book-length critical intervention into the field of business logistics. Tracing the social, spatial and political transformations wrought by the ‘logistics revolution’, Cowen argues that logistical systems have blurred the boundaries between production and circulation, civilian and military life, and geopolitics and geo-economics, constructing an architecture of the supply chain animated by both the art of war and the science of business. This review considers the political stakes of Cowen’s argument (...) that logistics has reconfigured capitalist social relations of production, especially in relation to the securitisation of spatial mobility and the restructuring of the labour process. In particular, Cowen’s wager that logistical supply-chains are characterised by their vulnerability – and that attendant possibilities for building solidarity emerge out of movements that disrupt such flows – is interrogated in order to question whether such interruptions effectively produce challenges to value-in-motion, or actually become integral to processes of value production. (shrink)

Problematic smartphone use is an expanded public health heed that requires more study to clarify the influence elements of different populations. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between smartphone use, and sleep quality, self-perceived health, and exercise participation in university students. A total of 1,575 Taiwanese undergraduate students from 7 universities participated in the study. Three questionnaires were completed by the study individuals. The results show the overall PSU rate was 11.8%. Average smartphone users were more (...) likely to feel in good health, better sleep quality and less unsatisfactory exercise participation than those who were problematic smartphone users. Multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that PSU, low weekly exercise frequency, and poor sleep quality were significant indicators of poor self-perceived health. We concluded that both low physical activity and PSU did have negative impacts on self-perceived health and sleep quality for undergraduate students. (shrink)

Anglo-Swedish scholarly correspondence from the mid-eighteenth century contains repeated mentions of two merchants, Abraham Spalding and Gustavus Brander. The letters describe how these men facilitated the exchange of knowledge over the Baltic Sea and the North Sea by shipping letters, books and other scientific objects, as well as by enabling long-distance financial transactions. Through the case of Spalding and Brander, this article examines the material basis for early modern scholarly exchange. Using the concept of logistics to highlight and relate (...) several mercantile practices, it examines ways of making scholarly knowledge move, and analyses merchants’ potential motives for offering their services to scholarly communities. As logisticians in the Republic of Letters, these merchants could turn their commercial infrastructure into a generator of cultural status valid in both London and Stockholm. Using mercantile services, scholarly knowledge could in turn traverse the region in reliable, cost-effective and secure ways. The case of Spalding and Brander thus highlights how contacts between scholarly communities intersected with other contemporary modes of transnational exchange, and it shows how scholarly exchange relied on relationships based on norms different from the communalism often used to characterize the early modern Republic of Letters. Thus the article suggests new ways of studying early modern scholarly exchange in practice. (shrink)

Infertility is a huge problem nowadays, not only from the medical but also from the social point of view. A key step to improve treatment outcomes is the possibility of effective prediction of treatment result. In a situation when a phenomenon with more than 2 states needs to be explained, e.g. pregnancy, miscarriage, non-pregnancy, the use of multinomial logistic regression is a good solution. The aim of this paper is to select those features that have a significant impact on achieving (...) clinical pregnancy as well as those that determine the occurrence of spontaneous miscarriage. Two multi-factor models were obtained, used in predicting infertility treatment outcomes. One of the models enabled to conclude that the number of follicles and the percentage of retrieved mature oocytes have a significant impact when prediction of treatment outcome is made on the basis of information about oocytes. The other model, built on the basis of information about embryos, showed the significance of the number of fertilized oocytes, the percentage of at least 7-cell embryos on day 3, the percentage of blasts on day 5, and the day of transfer. (shrink)

In this article the key aspects of logistical support of the airline’s innovation activity on the market of air transport services have been defined, the structure of the airline’s innovation system, logistics approach to managing the innovation activity of an airline enterprise have been considered and the main objectives of logistical activity in the context of innovation activity support of airlines have been clarified. The importance and peculiarities of logistical support of the airline’s innovation activity as an innovation flow (...) control system have been studied. The algorithm of formation of the logistical support mechanism for the airline’s innovation activity has been elaborated and specified. The objectives tree for improving the efficiency of logistical support of the airline’s innovation activity has been created. (shrink)

Augustyn Jakubisiak (1884-1945), Polish priest, philosopher and theologian, undertook polemics with Jan Łukasiewicz, whom he knew personally. A dispute concerning the so-called logistics (mathematical logic) and its relationship with philosophy developed between the two. The most important arguments were laid out, primarily in the following works: in the case of Jakubisiak, in the book From Scope to Content and in the case of Łukasiewicz, in the texts Logistics and Philosophy and In the Defense of Logistics. Jakubisiak criticized (...) logistics for its anti-metaphysical, anti-theological and anti-religious attitude, which was based on neo-positivist philosophy, and led, in consequence to atheism. He also claimed that one should focus on what is concrete, avoiding idealization and abstraction (meaning the content of concepts, not their scope). Łukasiewicz defended logistics claiming that it possesses its own methods based on intellect, and is also an area of independent knowledge (but not completely detached) from philosophy, due to the fact it can consider the most important philosophical problems such as finiteness and infinity. This dispute, as the researchers identified, basically concerned the reduction of philosophy to the study of language (analytic philosophy) and initiated one of the most important discussions concerning the relationship between philosophy and logic. This debate was crucial because it also concerned questions related to fundamental metaphysical issues (naturalism – supranaturalism, rationalism – irrationalism) and epistemological issues (realism – idealism, boundaries and structure of cognition). (shrink)

I shall attempt in what follows to show how mereology, taken together with certain topological notions, can yield the basis for future investigations in formal ontology. I shall attempt to show also how the mereological framework here advanced can allow the direct and natural formulation of a series of theses – for example pertaining to the concept of boundary – which can be formulated only indirectly (if at all) in set-theoretic terms.

This paper analyses the logistics of knowledge in eighteenth-century Anglo-Swedish scholarly collaborative relationships. More specifically, it analyses the making of Thomas Mangey’s Philonis Judaei Opera as a long-distance collaborative project between Mangey and the Swedish scholars Jacob Serenius and Erik Benzelius. The early modern Republic of Letters has commonly been characterised as a collaborative communication system upheld by communitarian norms. This description has however been challenged by several recent studies, which have underlined the commercial aspects of early modern scholarly (...) exchange. Building on such studies, this article highlights how negotiations about the logistics of knowledge circulation – of, e.g. shipping and long-distance financing – were an integral part of early modern transnational scholarly relationships. In the correspondence between the three scholars of 1728–42, we find ample practical details of how they struggled with slow and unreliable regional mercantile infrastructures. The strains of these logistical challenges thoroughly shaped the relationships between the three scholars, and would eventually lead to the collapse of their collaboration. (shrink)

Based on the problem of e-commerce logistics and distribution network optimization, this paper summarizes the solution ideas and solutions proposed by domestic and foreign scholars and designs a method to optimize the B2C e-commerce logistics and distribution network by taking into account the special traffic conditions in the city. The logistics network optimization model is established and solved by combining various methods. Taking into account the new target requirements constantly proposed in the modern logistics environment, the (...) vehicle path problem under the generalized objective function is studied, and the multidimensional impact maximization problem in this type of problem is proposed and modeled. The problem follows from the path planning for emergency material delivery. Given locations, roads, and multiple classes of supplies in a map, each road allows vehicles to deliver each class of supplies with a certain probability. The goal of the problem is how to select a finite number of locations in the map as centers of supplies so that the number of locations that can be effectively covered by vehicle paths from them is maximized with the desired probability. For the first time, we used a hybrid genetic algorithm to optimize the e-commerce logistics path, and the optimized results are more reasonable than other algorithms. (shrink)

From the deployment of chatbots as procurement negotiators by corporations such as Walmart to autonomous agents providing ‘differentiated chat’ for managing overbooked flights, synthetic media are making the world of logistics their ‘natural’ habitat. Here, the coordination of commodities, parts and labour design the problems and produce the training sets from which ‘solutions’ can be synthesised. But to what extent might synthetic media, surfacing via platforms such as Midjourney and OpenAI, be understood as logistical media? This paper charts a (...) selective genealogy of synthetic media from early attempts to synthesise human sensory capacities in order to cybernetically integrate them into computational circuits. We see this integration as a pre-emption of their (computational) logistical coordination. It then details media experiments with ‘ChatFOS’, a GPT-based bot tasked with developing a logistics design business. Using its prompt-generated media outputs, we assemble a simulation and parody of AI’s emerging functionalities within logistical worlds. In the process, and with ‘human-in-the-loop’ stitching, we illustrate how large language models become media managers overseeing image prompts, graphical design, website code, promotional copy and investor pitch scenarios. The processes and methods of producing speculative scenarios via ChatFOS lead us to consider how the media of logistics and the logistics of media are increasingly enfolded. We ask: what can a (practice-based) articulation of this double-becoming of logistics and synthetic mediality tell us about the politics and aesthetics of contemporary computation and capital? (shrink)

The advanced donation program was proposed in 2014 to allow an individual to donate a kidney in order to provide a voucher for a kidney in the future for a particular loved one. In this article, we explore the logistical and ethical issues that such a program raises. We argue that such a program is ethical in principle but there are many logistical issues that need to be addressed to ensure that the actual program is fair to both those who (...) do and do not participate in this program. (shrink)

The logistic function now constitutes the most widely used model for there presentation of growth kinetics of the continuous monotonous type in biological systems (populations, organisms, organs, ...). This ubiquity led to consider logistics from a phenomenological rather than mechanistic viewpoint. Whence the question : can logistics be given an interpretation, a signification which confers the rank of an "explicative" model to it? This Note presents some critical comments on the relationships between logistics and three types of (...) biological systems : population demography, environmental resources, autocatalyzed reactions. The so-called functional (in the mathematical meaning) interpretation, which is then discussed, is based upon a variational principle : the occurrence of a minimum of a function associated with the logistic law. Its present limitation to the only simple logistics of Verhulst and the difficulties of its expression in biological terms are then pointed out. (shrink)

The ability to dominate or exercise will in social encounters is often assumed in social theory to define power, but there is another form of power that is often confused with it and rarely analyzed as distinct: logistics or the ability to mobilize the natural world for political effect. I develop this claim through a case study of seventeenthcentury France, where the power of impersonal rule, exercised through logistics, was fundamental to state formation. Logistical activity circumvented patrimonial networks, (...) disempowering the nobility and supporting a new regime of impersonal rule: the modern, territorial state. (shrink)

In the opening passage of the Breviarium of Festus we read the following: ‘… ac morem secutus calculonum, qui ingentes summas aeris breuioribus exprimunt, res gestas signabo, non eloquar. Accipe ergo quod breuiter dictis breuis conputetur …’ The problem that I should like briefly to discuss in the following study is: Who were the calculones, ‘qui ingentes surnmas aeris breuioribus exprimunt’? This term calculo, and indeed the whole problematic clause can, I suggest, only be fully understood and appreciated in the (...) light of monetary developments of the later fourth century. (shrink)