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The emergence of new media (or digital media, or perhaps even 'the new economy') has certainly had some salutary effects on media studies. The advent of the Web has raised (or re-raised) a whole set of interesting questions for those concerned with researching various aspects of the media from those concerned with political economy and industrial organisation to those concerned with reception, interpretations and texts. Digital media frequently appear, even in the most sober accounts, to be some unstoppable tidal wave of change, a complex and multi-layered landscape moving so fast that researchers can only rush to try to keep up with its myriad implications and perturbations throughout society. This paper is concerned to break down that image, to try to show that its basic categories – digital media, developing quickly, researchers rushing to catch up – are, if not false, at least questionable. What I want to argue is that the researchers do not simply react, belatedly to the emergence of digital media, but that they have an active role in shaping its development. At the end of this essay I want to draw out some of the more practical implications of this point of view.

A review essay on a book by Ulf Hannerz, Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning (NY: U of Columbia Press, 1992 [see listing in IRPS No. 81]). Hannerz adopts a cultural anthropological view of postmodern times in attempting to explain why so many individuals have difficulty in making sense of the contemporary world. This difficulty stems from the time-space compression of postmodernism. Greater & more intense contact between different cultures & perspectives has resulted in cultural complexity of contemporary societies both at the core & at the periphery. This phenomenon is illustrated through discussion of three cities of cultural complexity: Vienna, Austria; Calcutta, India, during the Bengal Renaissance; & San Francisco, CA, of the late 1950s. In response to the postmodern shift to greater cultural complexity, anthropologists must shift their focus from the replication of uniformity to the organization of diversity. 1 Reference. D. Generoli

The formation of the European Community puts pressure on the UK to address questions about the relationship between England & the other UK nations, as well as about general constitutional theory & the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. These national & constitutional issues are linked, since discussion of constitutional issues will bring national issues to the public foreground. A model of a future constitution is emerging wherein Parliament will retain supremacy, but will be rebalanced via proportional representation & institution of an elected second chamber, with extended powers to replace the House of Lords. Difficulties in this proposed constitution with the representation of Scotland & Wales are discussed. Twelve innovations for a written constitution are proposed, based on the assumptions that the present executive is too powerful, & that general decentralization should take place. M. Pflum

This was the RIPA Chairman's address to the Institute's Annual General Meeting held on 4 December 1985.

At the end of his entertaining and thoughtful review [this Journal, iv (1974), 345–69, p. 362], Professor Berrington writes 'if it is lonely at the top it is because it is the lonely who seek to climb'. But this is to miss a point that undermines the significance of Mrs Iremonger's thesis. It is indeed lonely at the top, and men who have already coped with loneliness are peculiarly fitted to bear the burdens of the Prince. Nor is there a contradiction between the public aloofness of prime ministers and their domestic felicity: those who are surrounded by a close and affectionate family and supported by a devoted wife can afford to do without the gratification of friendship in public life. They make good butchers. This suggests that the ideal characteristics required of prime ministers are not those put forward by Mrs Iremonger and apparently accepted by Professor Berrington. I recall, in loose translation, the words of a chronicler on King Stephen: 'He was a mild man and good and did no justice'. The world has need of its bastards.