This article is concerned with a means of naval combat which has been in use for thousands of years: Ships no longer fit for operation are filled with inflammable or explosive material and sent among enemy vessels in order to set them on fire and destroy them. The author begins with a look at the original seventeenth-, eighteenth- and twentieth-century definitions of this practice and touches on related strategies. The primary focus of the discussion is a case that became famous against the background of the Dutch revolution: The Italian engineer Frederico Giannibelli used burning ships against the pontoon bridge set up by the Spanish military and civilian commander Alessandro of Farnese to block the Scheldt during the 1584-85 siege of Antwerp, which at that time was a mercantile centre of global significance. The purpose of the impressively constructed bridge was to keep the city's inhabitants from receiving supplies from the downriver side, as well as to prevent sorties from the besieged city by ship and to help intercept possible relief attacks by Zeelandic river fleets. Although the attack by burning ship was at least partially successful and carried out repeatedly, the employment of this military means was finally rejected due to tactical/ logistic inadequacy on the part of the Dutch "rebels." Following further bloody battles, Antwerp was defeated and remained "Spanish," today Belgian, i.e. not Dutch. In 1795 the great poet Friedrich von Schiller, who held a professorship of history at the University of Jena for a time, wrote a detailed history of the siege of Antwerp and with it Giannibelli's attempt to make tactical use of burning ships. This circumstance provides an occasion not only for the critical assessment of Schiller's painstakingly evaluated (primarily secondary) sources, but also for the quotation of passages describing the technical details of pontoon bridges and burning ships in the literary form of the historical novel. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the English use of burning ships against the Spanish armada in 1588 off Calais - an incident also connected with the name Giannibelli - as well as a naval battle of 1600 on the Scheldt at Antwerp, in which a row galley (called the "black" row galley) participated. At the time of this naval action, Antwerp was already long "Spanish" and the rebels were the aggressors.
Young readers : from blind faith to faithless practice. The longer children go to school, the less they read. The more they are forced to read the classics, the more they prefer Stephen King. Whatever indicator you choose, the decline is clear and no category of pupil is exempt : boys or girls, punctual or tardy, white-collar or blue-collar. Such reluctance to read has no simple explanation. The schools are not the only reason. Yet the fact remains that the way French is taught in the French lycées (high schools) also contributes to this personal rejection of bookreading. The transition from college (middle school) to lycée entails a profound change in reading standards, something that destabilizes most of the students thus obliged to switch from one level to the other. The first level, which we will call «ordinary», is that which is spontaneously adopted by young readers for both school-work and their own purposes. The second, « literary » level, is imposed in high school, where it becomes the legitimate norm. The attitudes and the dispositions towards the principle of reading which were encouraged in middle-school are suddenly disqualified in high school by the imposition of new norms implying that the students undertake a mental conversion for which many of today's high school students are unprepared. The concept of ordinary reading, already used by Robert Darnton, encompasses the space of all reading which explicitly takes the text as an instrument to ends that are external to it. The adjective « ordinary » here means that the book and the uses to which it is put are entirely anchored in immediate, everyday concerns (entertainment, documentation...) and vested with the personal interests of adolescents busy constructing their own identity. The concept of « literary reading » broadly includes ail ways of reading - from esthetic contemplation to structural analysis, by way of reading by literary reference - which make the text (in its meaning, forms, association with an author, or simply in its own value) the only interest and the goal of reading, which thereby becomes an activity that is its own end. The object of this article is to analyse the way these two reading modes are articulated with two separate levels of the school System : collège and lycée, and to analyse the effects this has on the ways young people read.
In: Population and development review, Band 26, Heft 1, S. 145-152
ISSN: 1728-4457
Fertility declined in France earlier than in the rest of Western Europe and remained lower than that of its neighbors throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. France's birth rate in 1900 was around 22 per 1000, compared to about 29 in Britain and 35 in Germany. Worry over depopulation, absolute or relative, has long been a staple element of French population thought. In the late nineteenth century, that concern was expressed in scholarly but vigorous works like Arsène Dumont's Dépopulation et civilisation (1890) and Natalité et démocratic (1898) and in political activism through the National Alliance for the Growth of the French Population. Other population ideas, not always compatible, were current as well—most notably, variants of Malthusianism. This was also a time of ferment in social policy debate over the implications of new ideas about public health and hygiene and about heredity and environment.While supporters and opponents of Malthusian views could often be identified with the political right and left, combating depopulation was the cause of all. Equally, imperial ambition was not confined to one side of politics: few contradictions were seen between socialism at home and colonization abroad. (French territorial ambitions at this time looked particularly to North and West Africa.)Unsurprisingly, many of these themes also cropped up in contemporary novels—among them, those of Emile Zola. Born in 1840 of Italian and French parents, Zola was one of the best‐known writers of his time. His many novels include Nana (1880) and Germinal (1885). He is most celebrated, however, for his passionate open letter J'accuse (1898), denouncing the French high command over the Dreyfus Affair. (Alfred Dreyfus, an army officer, was wrongfully convicted of treason in an atmosphere of anti‐Semitism—a judgment eventually reversed.)Always somewhat of a propagandist, Zola, in temporary exile in the aftermath of this intervention, embarked on a cycle of four novels on the themes of fertility, work, truth, and justice. Fécondité (Paris: Charpentier‐Fasquelle, 1899) was the first of these. Two others were completed: Travail (1901) and Vérité (1903). Justice had barely been begun before his death in 1902. An English translation of Fécondité, by Ernest A. Vizetelly, was published under the euphemistic title Fruitfulness (London: Chatto and Windus; New York: Doubleday, Page, 1900). (Zola often skirted the margins of what was then considered acceptable language and subject matter, and Vizetelly had been jailed in England for an earlier Zola translation.) Fécondité is a didactic moral fable rather than a significant work of fiction. The Fortnightly Review (London) of January 1900 wrote of it: "The tale is a simple one: the cheerful conquest of fortune and the continual birth of offspring." Mathieu and Marianne Froment, the central characters, convey Zola's anti‐Malthusian views through their life story—the meaning of which is underlined in the author's fulsome commentary. At the start of the novel, they are poor but already have four children. By its end, still stalwart and celebrating 70 years of marriage, they have had twelve, seven surviving, together with innumerable grandchildren and great grandchildren. Over the same period, through hard work and prudence, they have gradually amassed a large and highly productive landed estate, Chantebled, much of it acquired from once‐rich but feckless (and unprolific) neighbors whose decline in fortune mirrors the Froments' rise and whose depopulationist views are thereby shown to be groundless. (A fuller précis, also describing the novel's gothic subplots, is given in Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay M. Winter, The Fear of Population Decline (Academic Press, 1985), pp. 25–27.)The excerpts below are taken from the 1900 translation. (The page numbers refer to the more accessible 1925 reprint.) The characters mentioned, aside from Mathieu, are:
Beauchêne, a relative of Marianne, owner of a farm equipment factory Boutan, family physician and friend of Mathieu Moineaud, a mechanic in Beauchêne's factory Santerre, a fashionable novelist Séguin, "a rich, elegant idler" whose estate is gradually lost to the Froments
The absence of a female voice on the matters discussed is faithful to the novel.
SUMMARY: In his article Alexander Etkind scrutinizes the applicability of Said's theory of Orientalism to the history of Russia and, critically revising the basic premises of that theory, suggests an array of political, cultural, and intellectual phenomena in Russian history that could be placed in and interpreted within the perspective of Orientalism. Etkind starts with recapitulation of Said's theory, pointing to the well-known fact that it was based on the specifics of the colonial relationships within the French and British modern empires. He notes that historical Orientalism, alon with postcolonial discourse, tends to reify seemingly discrete entities of the colonizing West and the colonized East, thus obscuring national differences among the modern colonial and semi-colonial powers. Applied to a historical variety of colonial and post colonial situations beyond the realm of typical colonial empires, the thesis of Orientalism reveals its core, which, according to Etkind, is a complex of practices designed to create and manipulate the cultural distance, which can be formulated in geographic, racial, ethnic, religious, and class terms. Marrying Said to Gellner, Etkind states that in a traditional society and on a scarcely populated territory of the Russian empire the colonization and orientalization were directed inward rather than outward; that is, the population of the core of the empire was viewed as culturally different (in case of romanticism, as inferiority or superiority) by the westernized elite and subjected to a civilizing mission of the state. Etkind illustrates this thesis by drawing on an array of examples, including the settlement of foreign colonists, the military colonies during the reign of Alexander I, the historiography of "Russian colonization," and the relationship between external expansion and internal colonization. Tracing the intellectual origins of the thesis on internal colonization, the author turns to Chaadaev and his radical interpretation of the process of Europeanization of Russia as a colonial one. Emphasizing the centrality of intellectual and cultural production for maintaining and manipulating cultural distance, Etkind analyzes the discourse of "the people" as developed both by Russian intelligentsia of the populist creed and in Russian ethnography, suggesting that beginning with the Slavophiles and ending with the collapse of the Ancien Regime in 1917 the educated and political elite of Russia fell under the influence of a postcolonial attitude toward the colonized people, which contributed to the "internal" decolonization of Russia. In conclusion, Etkind argues that colonialism and the associated practices of cultural distancing returned in a cyclical manner during the Soviet period.
In May 1908, one of Flensburg's most important shipowners - Jens Jost (1828-1910) - celebrated his golden wedding anniversary, on which occasion he and his wife received a silver-plated centrepiece in the form of a "cog." This gift was presented them by the Flensburger Schiffergelag (shipowners' and merchants' association founded in 1580) whose chairman Jost remained until his death. Following its transfer from the family estate to the collection of the Flensburg Maritime Museum, the centrepiece was published for the first time in the museum's pictorial guide in 1985 and next mentioned in the 1989 publication Maritimes Silber im Industriezeitalter (maritime silver in the industrial age) by Detlev Ellmers. Its designation as a "cog" was based upon the knowledge which the late nineteenth century possessed about late medieval shipbuilding, and the centrepiece was accordingly anything but a precise model of this ship type. Yet despite the lack of knowledge as to its actual appearance, as a centrepiece in the historicising style the cog was an extremely popular motif in the handicrafts of late nineteenth-century Germany. The examples include many that are indicative of contemporary circumstances in German navigation, readable in the symbolism and allegories of their pictorial programmes. This "Flensburg cog" was made during the phase of history in which Emperor Wilhelm II - and with him the German Reich - were struggling to gain preponderance on the seven seas. Within the context of this vision, the centrepiece reveals itself as a symbol of the claim to power. The depictions on the starboard side of the ship model personify the continents of America, Africa and Asia. In place of the usual personification of the continent of Europe, however, the national symbol - the "Deutscher Michel" - is used in conjunction with his attribute, the head of cabbage. This depiction is to be found on the bow of the ship. The "Deutscher Michel" is conceived of here as the successor to the merchants of the Hanseatic League (Ill. 4), whose member cities comprised the port towns and commercial centres of nearly all the countries of Northern Europe. In the pictorial programme of this cog, "Michel" is seen as the outpost of world-wide trade. The identity of the maker of this silver cog and/or author of its pictorial programme - for which there are no comparable examples - unfortunately remains a mystery. There can be no doubt, however, that the message conveyed by this centrepiece was understood by Jens Jost and his contemporaries.
This article presents a critical review of ideas about time in modern societies & especially in the social sciences. Man in modern society perceives, reflects, & registers time in a series of contexts, whether this involves questions of thought, the physical body, nature, or society. Current studies that address the question of time in many cases do so through a comparison of archaic temporal awareness & modern temporal awareness, & attempt to describe when & how this historical shift came about. According to O. Rammstedt four distinct historical types of understanding time can be distinguished: (1) occasional awareness of time based on a distinction made between 'now' & 'not-now'; (2) cyclical awareness of time; (3) linear awareness of time with a closed future, & (4) linear awareness of time with an open future. In contemporary social sciences four main theoretical perspectives can be observed. The first one assumes that the basic principles of order are or should be considered as unchanging. These principles express themselves as invariants. In the 20th century we can find them in structural linguistics, & in social sciences with a structuralist orientation. The second approach resembles the previous one in that it also considers the existence of unchanging principles of order. However, it differs through the assumption that these principles reveal themselves in time. The third approach can be considered de facto a sort of special degree of the second, ie, closed historical concept. Unlike the teleological character of the latter, however, it considers human intervention as a necessary condition for the achievement of a future aim. The fourth concept is founded on the idea that the basic principles of order can be revealed only in time. Unlike the second, however, it does not consider the main organizing principles to be unchanging, but rather concludes that in each contemporary period they are open to change. This fourth approach, which can be described as 'temporalized sociology' & which is expressed in works of such authors as G. H. Mead, A. Schutz, N. Elias, N. Luhmann, or A. Giddens, stresses a relatively open future, emergence, novelty, & the concept of discontinuity. In the opinion of the author of this study another concept should be added to our understanding of time: ie, 'irreversibility.' It is a feature of those systems that are far from being balanced & in which, in order to be able to predict future states, it is not enough to know the laws & the initial conditions.
This article assesses contending regional perspectives on Pacific‐rim divisions of labour based on a comparative study of production networks organized by three electronics firms (from Japan, the USA and Hong Kong) for manufacturing in the sub‐regional context of Hong Kong and Shenzhen (PRC). The author argues that the flying geese model rightly discerns the possibility of upward mobility of late industrializing countries. This model, in combination with network analyses on the characteristics of Japanese firms, helps distinguish the developmental role of Japanese capital. However, the model has a disregard for the specific roles of US and overseas Chinese capital, and the filling of this gap can benefit from the regional rivalry perspective. The negative impacts of foreign investment are succinctly reflected in the regional dependence argument. Nevertheless, its exogenous bias needs to be avoided and the analysis of the endogenous factors, particularly the role of the state, can draw on the statist approach. As the regional economic reality is changing rapidly, future regional research will need to investigate how governments and firms develop strategies to cope with the continued Asian economic slow‐down and political changes and reshape the regional political economy.—Cet article, basé sur une étude comparative de réseaux de production organisés par trois entreprises d'électronique (du Japon, des États‐Unis et de Hong‐Kong) pour la fabrication dans le contexte sous‐régional de Hong‐Kong et Shenzhen, évalue les différentes perspectives régionales quant à la division du travail sur la bordure du Pacifique. L'auteur soutient que le modèle d''oies volantes' reconnait correctement la possibilité de mobilité sociale vers le haut dans les pays d'industrialisation tardive. Ce modèle, allié aux analyses de réseaux des caractéristiques des firmes japonaises, aide à identifier le rôle du capital japonais dans le développement. Néanmoins, il néglige les rôles spécifiques du capital des États‐Unis et du capital d'outre‐mer chinois. Les perspectives régionales rivales peuvent aider à remédier à cette lacune. Les effets négatifs des investissements étrangers sont reflétés de fa??on concise dans le débat sur la dépendance régionale. Néanmoins, son parti pris exogène doit être évité et l'analyse des facteurs endogènes, en particulier le rôle de l'état, peut faire appel à l'étatisme. La réalitééconomique régionale change rapidement et les recherches régionales devront à l'avenir étudier comment les gouvernements et les entreprises développent des stratégies pour faire face au ralentissement de l'économie et aux changements politiques continus en Asie, et pour remodeler l'économie politique régionale.
Determining the 'tensions, conflicts and social changes' in the city through symbolic configurations and shifting images has been a recent dimension in the study of urban culture. This is the perspective taken in this article. A brief introduction of Turkey and Atatürk is followed by a study of urban symbols. Starting with those of the Ottoman period, these include monuments and statues; the names of city squares, parks and shops; and the street names and official city emblems since the settlement became the capital in 1923. The city itself was the symbol of national independence and the new republic in the 1920s and 1930s. Fluctuations over the years, in the preference for certain names or artefacts, reflect the shifts from nation‐building to clashes of political ideologies and, more recently, an 'identity crisis' that the nation has overtly been experiencing. The study is based on observations that are supported by publications from libraries and private collections, including memoirs. Further material has been provided by informal talks with people from all backgrounds, including the recollections of the author Erdentug, who has lived in the city since 1956, and the reminiscences of her parents commencing twenty years before this date.—Une dimension récente des études de la culture urbaine est la détermination des 'tensions, conflits et changements sociaux' dans la ville par les configurations symboliques et les images changeantes. C'est la perspective adoptée dans cet article. Une introduction rapide de la Turquie et de Ataturk précède une étude des symboles urbains. Commençant par ceux de l'époque ottomane, ils comprennent des monuments et des statues, les noms des places, parcs et magasins, les noms de rues et les emblèmes officiels de la ville depuis qu'elle est devenue la capitale en 1923. La ville elle‐même symbolisait l'indépendance nationale et la nouvelle république dans les années vingt et trente. Au cours des années, les changements de la préference pour certains noms ou articles reflètent les changements allant de la construction de la nation à des conflits d'idéologies politiques et, plus récemment, à une 'crise d'identité' que la nation a éprouvé ouvertement. Cette étude est basée sur des observations supportées par des publications de bibliothèques et de collections privées, y compris des mémoires. D'autres matériels viennent de conversations informelles avec des personnes de tous milieux, y compris les souvenirs de l'auteur Erdentug qui habite dans la ville depuis 1956, et ceux de ses parents qui remontent à vingt ans plus tôt.
There was a famous discussion between Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer in Davos which revealed the lostness and emptiness of this remarkable representative of established academic philosophy to everyone who had eyes. Cassirer had been a pupil of Hermann Cohen, the founder of the neo-Kantian school. Cohen had elaborated a system of philosophy whose center was ethics. Cassirer had transformed Cohen's system into a new system of philosophy in which ethics had completely disappeared. It had been silently dropped: he had not faced the problem. Heidegger had faced the problem. He declared that ethics is impossible, and his whole being was permeated by the awareness that this fact opens up an abyss.... Only a great thinker could help us in our plight. But here is the great trouble: the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger. The only question of importance, of course, is the question whether Heidegger's teaching is true or not. But the very question is deceptive because it is silent about the question of competence—of who is competent to judge. Strauss Heidegger conceals nothing. He does not lie. He says what he really thinks. Janicaud It is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him. Levinas Only once or twice in my thirty to thirty-five years of teaching have I ever spoken about what really matters to me. Heidegger For a long time I have not said what I believed, nor do I ever believe what I say, and if indeed I do happen to tell the truth I hide it among so many lies that it is hard to find. Machiavelli The `doctrine' of a thinker is what is unsaid in his saying, to which man is exposed so that he might expend himself for it. Heidegger But for those on the outside everything is in parables; so that they may see but not perceive, and hearing, they may hear but not understand; lest they should turn, and their sins be forgiven them. Mark 4:12 "Now do you recognize that I am a philosopher?"... "I would have, had you remained silent." Boethius The same goes for Heidegger: It is necessary to know how to listen to the silences of philosophers. These are always eloquent. Althusser
Spiro Munayyer's account begins immediately after the United Nations General Assembly partition resolution of 29 November 1947 and culminates in the cataclysmic four days of Lydda's conquest by the Israeli army (10-14 July 1948) during which 49,000 of Lydda's 50,000 inhabitants ("swollen" with refugees) were forcefully expelled, the author himself being one of those few allowed to remain in his hometown. Although the author was not in a position of political or military responsibility, he was actively involved in Lydda's resistance movement both as the organizer of the telephone network linking up the various sectors of Lydda's front lines and as a volunteer paramedic, in which capacity he accompanied the city's defenders in most of the battles in which they took part. The result is one of the very few detailed eye-witness accounts that exists from the point of view of an ordinary Palestinian layman of one of the most important and tragic episodes of the 1948 war. The conquest of Lydda (and of its neighbor, Ramla, some five kilometers to the south) was the immediate objective of Operation Dani-the major offensive launched by the Israeli army at the order of Ben-Gurion during the so-called "Ten Days" of fighting (8-18 July 1948), between the First Truce (11 June-8 July) and the Second Truce (which started on 18 July and lasted, in theory, until the armistice agreements of 1949). The further objective of Operation Dani was to outflank the Transjordanian Arab Legion positions at Latrun (commanding the defile at Bab al-Wad, where the road from the coast starts climbing toward Jerusalem) in order to penetrate central Palestine and capture Rumallah and Nablus. Lydda and Ramla and the surrounding villages fell within the boundaries of the Arab state according to the UNGA partition resolution. Despite their proximity to Tel Aviv and the fall of many Palestinian towns since April (Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, Acre, and Baysan), they had held out until July even though little help had reached them from the Arab armies entering on 15 May. Their strategic importance was enormous because of their location at the intersection of the country's main north-south and west-east road and rail lines. Palestine's largest British army camp at Sarafand was a few kilometers west of Lydda, its main international airport an equal distance to the north, its central railway junction at Lydda itself. Ras al-Ayn, fifteen kilometers north of Lydda, was the main source of Jerusalem's water supply, while one of the largest British depots was at Bayt Nabala, seven kilometers to its northeast. The Israeli forces assembled for Operation Dani were put under the overall command of Yigal Allon, the Palmach commander. They consisted of the two Palmach brigades (Yiftach and Harel, the latter under the command of Yitzhak Rabin), the Eighth Armored Brigade composed of the Second Tank Battalion and the Ninth Commando Battalion (the former under the command of Yitzhak Sadeh, founder of the Palmach, the latter under that of Moshe Dayan), the Second Battalion Kiryati Brigade, the Third Battalion Alexandroni Brigade, and several units of the Kiryati Garrison Troops (Khayl Matzav). The Eighth Armored Brigade had a high proportion of World War II Jewish veterans volunteering from the United States, Britain, France, and South Africa (under the so-called MAHAL program), while its two battalions also included 700 members of the Irgun Zva'i Le'umi (IZL). The total strength of the Israeli attackers was about 8,000 men. The only regular Arab troops defending Lydda (and Ramla) was a minuscule force of 125 men-the Fifth Infantry Company of the Transjordanian Arab Legion. The defenders of Lydda (and Ramla) were volunteer civilian residents, like the author, under the command of a retired sergeant who had served in the Arab Legion. The reason for the virtual absence of Arab regular troops in the Lydda-Ramla sector was that the Arab armies closest to it (the Egyptian in the south, the Arab Legion in the east, and the Iraqi in the north) were already overstretched. The Egyptian northernmost post was at Isdud, thirty-two kilometers north of Gaza and a like distance southeast of Ramla-Lydda as the crow flies. The Iraqi southernmost post was at Ras al-Ayn, where they were weakest. And although the Arab Legion was in strength some fifteen kilometers due east at Latrun, the decision had been taken not to abandon its positions on the hills between Ras al-Ayn and Latrun for fear of being outflanked and cut off by the superior Israeli forces in the plains where Lydda and Ramla were situated. Indeed, as General Glubb, commander of the Arab Legion, informs us, he had told King Abdallah and the Transjordanian prime minister Tawfiq Abu Huda even before the end of the Mandate on 15 May that the Legion did not have the forces to hold and defend Lydda and Ramla against Israeli attacks despite the fact that these towns were in the area assigned to the Arabs by the UNGA partition resolution. This explains the token force of the Arab Legion-the Fifth Infantry Company. Thus, the fate of Lydda (and Ramla) was sealed the moment Operation Dani was launched. The Israeli forces did not attack Lydda from the west (where Lydda's defenses facing Tel Aviv were strongest), as the garrison commander Sergeant Hamza Subh expected. Instead, they split into two main forces, northern and southern, which were to rendezvous at the Jewish colony of Ben Shemen east of Lydda and then advance on Lydda from there. After capturing Lydda from the east they were to advance on Ramla, attacking it from the north while making feints against it from the west. Operation Dani began on the night of 9-10 July. Simultaneously with the advance of the ground troops, Lydda and Ramla were bombed from the air. In spite of the surprise factor, the defenders in the eastern sector of Lydda put up stout resistance throughout the 10th against vastly superior forces attacking from Ben Shemen in the north and the Arab village of Jimzu to the south. In the afternoon, Dayan rode with his Commando Battalion of jeeps and half-tracks through Lydda in a hit-and-run raid lasting under one hour "shooting up the town and creating confusion and a degree of terror among the population," as the Jewish brothers Jon and David Kimche put it. This discombobulated the defenders, some of whom surrendered. But the following morning (11 July) a small force of three Arab Legion armored cars entered Lydda, their mission being to help in the evacuation of the beleaguered Fifth Infantry Company. Their sudden appearance both panicked the Israeli troops and rallied the defenders who had not surrendered. The Israeli army put down what it subsequently described as the city's "uprising" with utmost brutality, leaving in a matter of hours in the city's streets about 250 civilian dead in an orgy of indiscriminate killing. Resistance continued sporadically during the 12th and 13th of July, its focus being Lydda's police station, which was finally overrun. As of 11 July, the Israeli army began the systematic expulsion of the residents of Lydda and Ramla (the latter having fallen on 12 July) toward the Arab Legion lines in the east. Also expelled were the populations of some twenty-five villages conquered during Operation Dani, making a total of some 80,000 expellees-the largest single instance of deliberate mass expulsion during the 1948 war. Most of the expellees were women, children, and elderly men, most of the able-bodied men having been taken prisoner. Memories of the trek of the Lydda and Ramla refugees is branded in the collective consciousness of the Palestinians. The Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref, who interviewed survivors at the time, estimates that 350 died of thirst and exhaustion in the blazing July sun, when the temperature was one hundred degrees in the shade. The reaction of public opinion in Ramallah and East Jerusalem at the sight of the new arrivals was to turn against the Arab Legion for its failure to help Lydda and Ramla. Arab Legion officers and men were stoned, loudly hissed at and cursed, a not unintended outcome by the person who gave the expulsion order, David Ben-Gurion, and the man who carried it out, Yitzhak Rabin, director of operations for Operation Dani.
A review essay on books by (1) Korwa Gombe Adar & Rok Ajulu (Eds), Globalization and Emerging Trends in African States' Foreign Policymaking Processes: A Comparative Perspective of Southern Africa (London: Ashgate, 2002); (2) Patrick Bond, Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance (Cape Town, South Africa: U Cape Town Press, 2001); (3) Greg Mills, The Wired World: South Africa, Foreign Policy and Globalization (Cape Town, South Africa: Tafelberg for the South African Institute for International Affairs, 2000); (4) Philip Nel, Ian Taylor, & Janis Van Der Westhuizen (Eds), South Africa's Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Change: The Limits of Reformism (London: Ashgate, 2001); & (5) Ian Taylor, Stuck in Middle GEAR: South Africa's Post-Apartheid Foreign Relations (London: Praeger, 2001). The author makes the point that much writing about South Africa is still couched in an outdated theoretical framework, as reflected in these books, & the point that a single "homogenizing idea can set the limits of scholarly imagination" -- in this case, globalization. Mills, who is decidedly pro-globalization, is said to use a narrow conceptual range in discussing South Africa within that context. Further, his book is said to be little more than an updating of his "earlier polemic." Bond has an opposite perspective, as he believes that the dispossessed are agents for social change, & that globalization "brazenly contradicts society's strong motivation for more equitable development to redress the massive disparities of apartheid." Adair & Ajulu's book explores the creation of foreign policy, in different African states, in the context of the effects of globalization. The coverage is reportedly uneven, & there is no chapter on Tanzania, which was so active in the liberation movement. The essays edited by Nel et al explore multilateralism as the focus of foreign policy in post-apartheid South Africa. The editors make the point that South Africa has used its high profile to affect multilateral institutions on behalf of more vulnerable countries in areas such as environmental diplomacy, human rights, debt relief, the reform of international trade, & the global campaign to ban land mines. Taylor explains why the new South Africa has embraced globalization but focuses particularly on why multilateralism is embraced so enthusiastically. He demonstrates the emergence of a neoliberal policy, GEAR (for Growth & Economic Recovery Programme), & asks who is benefiting from South Africa's foreign policy, in a work of "genuine contemporary scholarship." These books are said to represent South Africa's unhappy past, & the reviewer also offers comments about works by Rodney Davenport & Christopher Saunders, Jacqueline A. Kalley, Steven D. Gish, Thomas Koelbe, & A. J. Christopher, which are said to represent more conceptual daring. M. S. Northcutt
Purpose. This article is the fifth in a series of critical reviews of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness studies of comprehensive, multifactorial health promotion and disease management programs conducted in worksites. As with the previous reviews, the purpose of this article is to review and assess the randomized control trials that have focused on both clinical and cost outcomes of worksite health promotion and disease management programs. For this current review, a new category of quasi-experimental studies has been added because this represents a major new trend in such interventions over the last 2 years. Comprehensive worksite programs are those that provide an ongoing, integrated program of health promotion and disease prevention that integrates specific components into a coherent, ongoing program that is consistent with corporate objectives and includes program evaluations of both clinical and cost outcomes. Data Sources. A comprehensive search was conducted using a multistage process that included MEDLINE, ERIC, ADI, EDGAR, CARL, Inform, and Lexis-Nexis databases and direct inquiries to worksite researchers. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria. The search identified 27 new studies to which the following inclusion criteria were applied: research conducted in the United States; results published in English; methodological quality of nonexperimental (pre- and postmeasures but no comparison group); quasi-experimental to randomized control trials; and both clinical and cost outcomes. Exclusion criteria were studies outside of the United States; non-English publications; and clinical or cost outcomes only. Fifteen studies remained for this review. Findings Extraction Methods. Findings extraction and analysis of the 15 studies was done by extracting the relevant population, intervention design, clinical results, and cost outcomes from the published article. As in previous reviews, findings are summarized in a table format that extracts and describes each study by the following: (1) study author(s); (2) corporate site; (3) purpose of the evaluation; (4) employee population; (5) percentage of program participants; (6) number of employees included in the evaluation; (7) brief description of the intervention; (8) evaluation design; (9) evaluation period; (10) outcomes; (11) research rating; and (12) findings. Findings Synthesis. Based on these 15 studies, a methodological critique was conducted with brief reference to appropriate prior studies. Conclusions regarding study quality and new trends over the time period of 1998 to 2000 are discussed. Major Conclusions. Results from randomized clinical trials and quasi-experimental designs suggest that providing individualized risk reduction for high risk employees within the context of comprehensive programming is the critical element of worksite interventions. Despite the many limitations of the current methodologies of the 15 new studies, the vast majority of the research to date indicates positive clinical and cost outcomes.
There is substantive interest in politics and public life. People are well informed but they receive their information in most cases from the electronic mass media, state televison and local radio stations. The positive level of interest is not translated into their political efficacy. A strong majority of the people think that they have no influence on the local or national government. Elections are the major form of collective political participation. In Croatia they had additional importance as the instrument of democratic change. In general electoral participation the turnout is getting smaller. Citizens prefer to observe and vote and are not willing to take part in party campaign activities. Croatian citizens see their problems in the economic area, income, standard of living, unemployment, etc. Political issues are not their priorities. They see the strength of the countr in the people and natural resources, combined with the national values and the independent state. + The author presents the basic findings of the survey on political participation in Croatia. Data presented indicate that Croatian citizens still have rather satisfactory level of political interest and that they do follow the political information in the mass media, specifically on television. On the other hand, they express low levels of political efficacy and believe that there is very little that can be changed by political participation and activism. The formal forms of political participation, like voting, also show the declining rates. Levels of non-satisfaction with the quality of democratic life are high. Major problems in the country are perceived as economic and major strengths are seen in the natural resources and potential of the people. + The areas of possible intervention by strengthening participation and community efforts are human rights and local democracy in general. In these areas there are basic positive conditions for improvement and change in the desired direction. One of the major obstacles to participation is seen by the people in the lack of resources, skills, information, time, and money. Investment in democratic capacity and potential will influence those areas in which citizens today see a limited space for influence (the areas under the strong state regulation). Participation is not only the instrument of democratic change but also has value in itself, and this can have many other positive and unexpected consequences. As an additional form of conclusion I have created the "public participation index" from four data sets: general interest, perception of influence, perception of possible change by political participation and motivation to participate in election campaigns. Used in future surveys it can show the basic trends in the Croatian democratic life. (SOI : PM: S. 10; 22f.)
