Suchergebnisse

Theoretical development in the field of public administration is impaired by its implicit, unacknowledged commitment to the incompatible ontology of economics. This ontological commitment restricts the possibility for defining the role of the public bureaucrat to that of being no more than a technically proficient of services, a definition that the field has long sought to escape. A psychoanalytic perspective, especially the one formulated by the French theorist Jacques Lacan, can help this problem. The aspects of Lacan's psychoanalytic model relevant to this issue are explicated. It is then argued that the model holds major implications for public administration, among which are (a) a radical change in its epistemology, (b) a complete reassessment of the function of the human ego in social life, (c) an ontological rationale for moving beyond the instrumental goal attainment schema for administrative action, and (d) a venue for public administration to move past its anachronistic modernist conceptual framework and into a more appropriate postmodern manner of thinking about its identity.

For a quarter of a century we have lived not in but with the "German home town." For it was in 1971 that Mack Walker published his remarkable book,German Home Towns: Community, State and General Estate, 1648–1871. I well recall my own excitement when I first read this book, just as I was completing a dissertation on the social history of a German town in the seventeenth century. Not only wasGerman Home Townsoriginal and provocative, but it seemed by its very nature to validate the importance of studying early modern German cities. My own enthusiasm for this book has been echoedby that of numerous other historians, especially historians outside Germany itself. This is evident, for example, in James Sheehan's major survey of German history from 1770 to 1866, which repeatedly turns to Mack Walker—"the home towns' eloquent historian"—for the telling phrase or pregnant concept that best encapsulates some aspect of urban life or mentality. Walker's book is routinely cited in bibliographies as one of the most important works in the field.

Considers the assumption that subjects (Ss) become empowered when inhabiting the space of virtual reality, drawing on a reading of the virtual reality literature. It is shown that, for many commentators, virtual reality constitutes a radical break wtih contemporary modes of being that promises to unleash human capacities for imagination & creativity. This commentary is taken to undergird the ideologies that currently underpin the social formation of late capitalism. Moreover, it is argued that this discourse also articulates anxieties & fantasies of the postmodern S's desire for mastery of her or his own experiences. This discourse is described as naively assuming that Ss can enter virtual reality without themselves being changed by the experience. Further, it is charged with denying the positive aspects of prior modes of subjectivity. It is concluded that, in the struggle over cultural meanings of virtual reality, it is necessary to preserve practices that defy reification so that multiple subjective experiences may unfold within & outside the virtual reality domain. 25 References. D. Ryfe

Examines how Western politicians speak about racial & ethnic relations, drawing on an analysis of 1980s-early 1990s parliamentary debates in the Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, the UK, & the US (House of Representatives). It is found that conservative discourse on Others most often positioned minorities as a threat to a way of life or culture. Cultural differences between a dominant & subordinate group were exaggerated, while differences in the dominant group were ignored; this tendency was also apparent in liberal rhetoric, though to a lesser degree. Further, US politicians were more apt to admit the fact of racism, but still engaged in similar racist rhetoric. The overall strategy of Western politicians is deemed to have been a form of covert racism that ignored subordinate views while couching its own rhetoric in the guise of "tradition." The effect of this discourse went beyond persuasion to become embedded in legislation on issues affecting all aspects of political & social life. 35 References. D. M. Smith

This paper examines the political economy and policy environment of forestry production in northern Mexico. The objective is to review the multiple policy issues that impact forestry production and act together as articulatory mechanisms to move capital from periphery to core. The policies examined that affect forestry emanate from international, national, and state levels.The main point made is that a single event or activity cannot account for existing conditions of forestry in the Sierra Madre Occidental. The purpose is to analyze, perhaps well-known facts by mapping the policy terrain in the context of articulation theory to help scholars and policy makers gain a better understanding of linked social and historical conditions that maintain a political economy. The unique aspect of this presentation is that it brings a political economic, historical, and holistic framework to bear on the problem of policy analyses. Thus, policy formation is viewed from a perspective that considers power interrelations among policies and policy makersKey words: policy, forestry, Mexico, political economy

Public reaction to chemical technologies has included a perception that chemical exposure is a contributor to human health problems. Though these perceptions sometimes correspond with technical assessments of chemical risks, at other times they do not. This paper presents a descriptive model of the relationship between perception of one's health status and a set of factors that are used by individuals as part of causal reasoning about the meaning of somatic change. The model incorporates both personal events and experiences associated with somatic change (e.g., stress, sensory cues), as well as aspects of an individual's social context in which perceptions of chemical risks serve as a powerful framework for attributing meaning to chemical exposure. Within this model, the causal inferences that people make about the effects of chemical exposure on symptomatology are viewed as part of a natural, psychological adaptation in which the individual seeks to decrease their uncertainty about the factors or conditions that cause them to feel as they do.

What aspects of national trade-union movements systematically affect national policy making and economic performance? While there is general agreement that union density, the proportion of the workforce organized in unions, is an important element of union strength, social scientists are only beginning to identify the other critical elements. That union density is not the whole story can quickly be appreciated by comparing the influence of unions in Britain and Germany. For much of the post-war period, union density has been higher in Britain than Germany, although German unions have sustained at least as important a political and economic role as British unions. An influential theory of group-government relations directed our attention to the degree of hierarchy and monopoly present in an interest structure and to the degree of institutionalized access to policy-making circles, wrapping these characteristics together in the concept of corporatism. Yet there is a developing interest, particularly in the analysis of labour movements, in disaggregating corporatism as part of an effort to understand the specific characteristics that produce political and economic influence.

Cross dressing is about deliberately traversing meaningful boundaries. The cultural critic, Marjorie Garber, argues that Western civilization has long been obsessed with transvestite behavior. Garber's wide-ranging analysis (from Shakespeare to Madonna) stresses the disruptive aspect of the phenomenon, which, she claims, precipitates a "category crisis" by exposing the futility of all binary oppositions, including those of gender. Could cross dressing ever have been a commonplace part of the notoriously cautious bourgeois culture of nineteenth-century France? The very idea seems implausible on the surface, but in fact the mainstream stage presented the opportunity to see an enormous amount of transvestite performance (travesti). It consisted not simply of plays within which characters disguise themselves as the other sex. In hundreds of French plays before and after the Revolution, actresses assumed male roles, and, to a more limited extent, actors took female parts. Playwrights and producers, more concerned with fame and success than with social commentary, turned out a stream of such transvestite spectacles.

Previous reception analytic research has tended to either neglect identity construction or portray it as some form of distortion which obscures the real opinions and behaviours of the participants. The current study draws upon the work of both Bakhtin and Billig to suggest that identity construction is a crucial aspect of interview discourse and that participants define self in the midst of meeting interactional requirements. Thirteen interviews were conducted with a total of 19 participants, each of whom watched a video segment of the Nine O' Clock News. Analysis of the interviews demonstrates that claims about the consumption of politics on television, awareness of bias and impressionability were found to vary within individual participants according to the immediate dialogic context. Rather than being understood as obfuscating `real' activity, identity construction within the current research has been thought of as demonstrating an important social practice in which participants accomplish identity in the act of fulfilling the immediate, linguistically created, interactive requirements.

This paper examines the political economy and policy environment of forestry production in northern Mexico. The objective is to review the multiple policy issues that impact forestry production and act together as articulatory mechanisms to move capital from periphery to core. The policies examined that affect forestry emanate from international, national, and state levels.The main point made is that a single event or activity cannot account for existing conditions of forestry in the Sierra Madre Occidental. The purpose is to analyze, perhaps well-known facts by mapping the policy terrain in the context of articulation theory to help scholars and policy makers gain a better understanding of linked social and historical conditions that maintain a political economy. The unique aspect of this presentation is that it brings a political economic, historical, and holistic framework to bear on the problem of policy analyses. Thus, policy formation is viewed from a perspective that considers power interrelations among policies and policy makersKey words: policy, forestry, Mexico, political economy

A review essay on a book by Franco Ferrarotti, The Temptation to Forget: Racism, Anti-Semitism, Neo-Nazism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994). This book investigates the nature of collective memory through the prism of remembrance of the Holocaust. Among the themes discussed are the significance of attempts to deny the Holocaust, the writing of the Holocaust into official history, comparison of the Holocaust with other such tragedies, & the problem of narrative in relation to memory & history. A significant distinction to emerge from the work is that between folk & authorized narratives. Within this framework, official narratives act as gatekeepers, which for the most part, deny narratives' admission into the official canon, but can, under particular conditions, allow some aspect of the folk perspective into an elevated status. A key question evoked is whether official narratives should assume responsibility for addressing the damages to group identity & social esteem done by past authorized accounts. D. M. Smith

Many years ago Melville Herskovits argued that music has a special use in the study of cultural contact in the diasporan situation. Herskovits was much involved in exploring African retentions in the New World. He believed that "[t]he peculiar value of studying music ... is that, even more than other aspects of culture, its patterns tend to lodge on the unconscious level" (19). Put another way, "Music is particularly stable in the contact situation because it is carried subliminally, thus making it resistant to direct attack" (Merriam 306). We need not necessarily accept this explanation, couched as it is in terms of unconscious or subliminal processes, but the idea that music can serve as a particularly sensitive sociocultural indicator in diasporan studies merits continued consideration. In order to justify "the peculiar value of studying music," we need to show that music reveals more than we would otherwise know about social, cultural, economic or political dynamics in the society in question, and tells us not just about music making itself.

Examines the notion of legality from the standpoints of three different types of professional involvement -- legislation, lawyers' practices, & legal scholarship -- & a lay perspective. The perception of legality is less a function of doctrinal positions than of one's professional practices & responsibilities. Legislatures offer the most easily grasped sense of legality through originating, debating publicly, & publishing legislation. Judges, as the most ceremonial & symbolic interpreters of law, are revered as heroic figures, but in reality it is complexity that is the most obvious aspect of juridical technique. The manipulation of the fundamentals of law in existing provisions is used to achieve desired outcomes. Legal scholarship, in turn, is understood to be a cohort of professions dedicated to the claim that reason is the basis of law. Finally, the folk understanding of law is an artifact of historical & social existence. What is legal in the lay understanding is that which gives collective existence a nonarbitrary permanence & stability. Of the four, only the judicial brings the ideal of objective legality into daily life. 48 References. J. Cowie

In this wide-ranging historiographical introduction to his thesis on the Oise peasantry from 1760 to the Year II of the Revolution, the author gives an inventory on the question of rural popular movements. After the initial disrepute in which they were held at the beginning of the 19th century, - they benefited from various "timid" attempts at rehabilitation. The outlines of a social history of the peasantry under the French Revolution emerged with the Third Republic (Jaurès) and the Russian school (Kropotkine). In spite of Georges Lefebvre's priceless contribution on "the autonomous peasant revolution", village communities and their relationships with seigniories are still in the shadows. Beyond "revisionist" or "marxist" interpretations (the "transition"), new researches focus on the egalitarian aspect of the peasant movement (Ado) or on the "moral economy" (Thompson, Gauthier, Ikni). The history of the peasantry must thus come ever closer to an unreachable "total history" by cross-using studies of the field and of its representations.