Arenas Of Power Research Articles

Fear and Loathing in Paris: The Reception of Opinion Polling in France, 1938-1977

In 1978, some 40 years after the practice of opinion polling first arrived in France, the country’s newspapers and magazines informed their readers that 76% of the French approved of Charles de Gaulle’s role in World War II, that 77% did not consider the pope’s moral instructions binding, that 83% never participated in winter sports, and that 36% thought Michel Rocard would be a good finance minister. Anyone who could not remember those findings for long might be forgiven, for they were but drops in an ocean of polling data, a tidal wave of information that swept over France each year. For many, this onslaught of polling data is deeply disturbing, given their belief that opinion polls have undermined elected representatives’ ability to use their judgment in making political decisions and have silenced other, more authentic expressions of popular opinion (for example, see Champagne 1990). Even those who welcomed les sondages d’opinion as a new means of bringing the people’s voice into arenas of power might still have felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of them published in France by that time–well over 500 in a typical year, according to one 1984 estimate–and many began to characterize the country’s apparently insatiable appetite for polls as sondomanie, or “poll mania” ( Jaffre 1985). Perhaps it was only to be expected that France, one of the pioneers in the creation of modern democracy, would be among the countriesmost interested in using polls to proclaim the will of the people to the humble and the powerful alike.

The Governance of Universities: What Is the Role of the University in the Knowledge Society?

Introduction The question of the governability of science cannot be posed in isolation from the question of the governance of the university. In recent times there has been a tremendous change in the nature of governance in society more generally and within the institution of the university the nature of governance has also undergone considerable transformation. The twin pillars of modernity, the university and parliament, today exist in very different circumstances. Governance has become increasingly more complex, multi-levelled and shared as more and more actors are drawn into the arenas of power. Along with these changes there has also occurred a tremendous transformation in the nature, status and function of knowledge in society. Knowledge is no longer incidental to the economy and state but has become an integral part of what is now in effect a scientized society. As science become more and more subject to demands for governance, the university as one of the principal knowledge producing institutions inevitably comes under the scrutiny of the state and its regulatory agencies. The governance of universities has thus become a topical issue today. In the UK the Dearing Report on the restructuring of British higher education speaks of a new 'social contract' between the university, the state, industry and families (Dearing, 1997). But more fundamental than this tendential crisis of legitimacy that comes with the societal question of how universities should be governed is the question of how universities govern themselves. What does the future hold for academic self-governance? The western university, it should be recalled, was itself one of the most important innovators in self-governance. Universities have always been based on some degree of academic governance, which has been the institutional expression of the 'republican' principle of the autonomy of knowledge in modernity and which goes back to the medieval origins of the university as a corporate organization modelled on the medieval guilds. The two main models of academic governance were professorial self-governance and, from the 1960s as a result of student power, shared governance. Even in the very much changed circumstances of the present time, most universities are still run on some degree of academic self-governance in which professors and students have a dominant voice in the governance of the university. However, on the one side this is very much diminished as a result of neo-managerialism which has undermined academic self-governance and, on the other side, the external environment is imposing new demands on the univ ersity to be more accountable. The result is that academic self-governance is mostly ceremonial, lacking any real basis. The question of governance in fact arises in the context of a crisis of legitimacy for the university. For the first time academic freedom in the university is in question as is in society more generally the autonomy of science. To what extent is academic self-governance an anachronistic myth inappropriate to the knowledge society and mass democracies? Is the freedom of science an illusion that is better given up in view of the emergence of new cultures of knowledge which cannot be left to scientists and academics? Has the age of the university passed with the demise of the promises of universalistic conceptions of knowledge? In the following I shall attempt to deal with some of these questions. Firstly, I look at the university as a site of governance. Secondly, I discuss the question of the alleged crisis of the university. The third section moves onto the question of the changing nature of governance of universities. In the fourth section I consider the possibility of a new model of governance for the university. By way of conclusion, some remarks are made on the idea of technological citizenship as a task for the university to realize. University and Self-Governance The university has always been linked to the governance of knowledge. …

Fear and Loathing in Paris

In 1978, some 40 years after the practice of opinion polling first arrived in France, the country’s newspapers and magazines informed their readers that 76% of the French approved of Charles de Gaulle’s role in World War II, that 77% did not consider the pope’s moral instructions binding, that 83% never participated in winter sports, and that 36% thought Michel Rocard would be a good finance minister. Anyone who could not remember those findings for long might be forgiven, for they were but drops in an ocean of polling data, a tidal wave of information that swept over France each year. For many, this onslaught of polling data is deeply disturbing, given their belief that opinion polls have undermined elected representatives’ ability to use their judgment in making political decisions and have silenced other, more authentic expressions of popular opinion (for example, see Champagne 1990). Even those who welcomedles sondages d’opinionas a new means of bringing the people’s voice into arenas of power might still have felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of them published in France by that time–well over 500 in a typical year, according to one 1984 estimate–and many began to characterize the country’s apparently insatiable appetite for polls assondomanie, or “poll mania” ( Jaffré 1985). Perhaps it was only to be expected that France, one of the pioneers in the creation of modern democracy, would be among the countriesmost interested in using polls to proclaim the will of the people to the humble and the powerful alike.

The Decline of Citizenship in an Era of Globalization

This article seeks to identify the linkages between traditional conceptions of citizenship based on affiliation with a territorial state and the rise of global market forces. The basic argument set forth is that the erosion of state autonomy and the emergence of arenas of decision and power beyond the control of the state have been weakening traditional bonds of identity between individuals and the state. This pattern is particularly pronounced in the liberal democratic states of the West, which were the main settings within which citizenship in its modern forms emerged. The latter parts of the article consider the prospects for new forms of political identity that are reshaping the meaning of citizenship, creating multiple loyalties and superseding the monolithic conception of citizenship associated with a Westphalian system of world public order. It is, as yet, too soon to depict the contours of post-Westphalian citizenship, but its essence will be shaped by an allegiance to shared values and to the experience of community, a dynamic that will increasingly diminish the reductive association of the citizen exclusively with a particular sovereign state.

Globalization and Sites of Conflict: Towards Definition and Taxonomy

'Globalisation' is rapidly replacing the 'Cold War' as the most overused and under-specified explanation for a variety of events in international relations. For some, it represents a natural, indeed inexorable, progression towards a 'borderless world' signalling the end of the modern international state system as we know it. Analysis is underwritten by faith in, and exhortation to, the future. For others, the concept is over-stated and its benign influences are exaggerated. Indeed, globalisation is dangerous and perhaps even non-existent as a phenomenon. Furthermore, its invocation generates fear and resistance. This difference in interpretation has given rise to a dispute between those who see the emergence of a number of salient alternative authority structures, especially in the corporate world, that compete (increasingly successfully) with states in determining the direction of the global political economy (globalisers or globalists) and those who still see the states as the principal actors in global political and economic orders (internationalists) with security issues as still paramount. It is more accurate (albeit less parsimonious for theorising) to see state and non-state authority existing in a much more contingent, interactive and dynamic manner. We identify four definitions of globalisation in common use in both the scholarly and the policy community. These are we call (i) globalisation as historical epoch; (ii) globalisation as the confluence of economic phenomena; (iii) globalisation as the triumph or American values; and (iv) globalisation as sociological and technological revolution. Then we identify four propositions central to any understanding of the emerging field of 'globalisation studies' in international relations: (i) the Redistributive thesis, (ii) the Regionalism thesis, (iii) the Modernisation thesis and (iv) the Internet thesis. As analytical approaches they reflect the ontologies and epistemologies of the definitions from which we argue they are derived and help identify the arenas of power and policy contest and the principal actors involved in the changing relationship between market power and state authority thereby revealing significant contextual, empirical and normative variation in the authoritative relationship between states, markets and civil society.

The Flexible Woman

■ In the US, as more poor women must work to support their house holds, and state support for women/caregivers is consistently reduced, we find an increase in violence and domestic conflict and the abandonment and neglect of children. The 1996 welfare laws exacerbate this situation as they force more poor women into the low-paid or unpaid labor force, to the further cost of poor children. These new laws reflect and reinforce a shift in what was viewed by the welfare state as legitimate dependence for mothers and children. It is no longer sufficient, if it ever was, to talk of male or female domination or subordination among poor people in the United States. In the 1990s, arenas of power for men are contradicted by other arenas of power or access to resources from the state for women. Thus in spite of the utility of analyses that dealt with the experiences of men and women separately, only an analysis that portrays the integral inter dependencies of the two interlocking/conflicting gender hierarchies in terms of class, poverty and state regulations can elucidate the parameters of the new poverty and the violence it generates.

The Flexible Woman

In the US, as more poor women must work to support their house holds, and state support for women/caregivers is consistently reduced, we find an increase in violence and domestic conflict and the abandonment and neglect of children. The 1996 welfare laws exacerbate this situation as they force more poor women into the low-paid or unpaid labor force, to the further cost of poor children. These new laws reflect and reinforce a shift in what was viewed by the welfare state as legitimate dependence for mothers and children. It is no longer sufficient, if it ever was, to talk of male or female domination or subordination among poor people in the United States. In the 1990s, arenas of power for men are contradicted by other arenas of power or access to resources from the state for women. Thus in spite of the utility of analyses that dealt with the experiences of men and women separately, only an analysis that portrays the integral inter dependencies of the two interlocking/conflicting gender hierarchies in terms of class, poverty and state regulations can elucidate the parameters of the new poverty and the violence it generates.

‘Problems in International Environmental Governance’ or ‘A Policy Analyst Looks at the World…. this Being a Tale of How the Hopes of Mice and Men in Geneva Are Dashed in Canberra’

Concern about international environmental governance has shifted from the problems in having multilateral environmental agreements adopted to trying to ensure that the agreements which are negotiated are implemented, and that they produce positive environmental outcomes. This article argues that features of the international policy process which assist domestic policy adoption, especially scientific reductionism and moral suasion, can undermine the chances of policy implementation. This is often because business interests which are marginalised during policy adoption are more influential at the domestic level at which policy must be implemented. This asymmmetry is explained by suggesting that — rather than their being ‘two‐level games’ (as Putnam suggested) — there are (in Lowi's terms) distinctive arenas of power at the the international and national levels. Improving policy effectiveness requires the distribution of power in each arena to be made more symmetrical.

The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico.

In this study of gender relations in late colonial Mexico (ca. 1760-1821), Steve Stern analyzes the historical connections between gender, power, and politics in the lives of peasants, Indians, and other marginalized peoples. Through vignettes of everyday life, he challenges assumptions about gender relations and political culture in a patriarchal society. He also reflects on continuity and change between late colonial times and the present and suggests a paradigm for understanding similar struggles over gender rights in Old Regime societies in Europe and the Americas. Stern pursues three major arguments. First, he demonstrates that non-elite women and men developed contending models of legitimate gender authority and that these differences sparked bitter struggles over gender right and obligation. Second, he reveals connections, in language and social dynamics, between disputes over legitimate authority in domestic and familial matters and disputes in the arenas of community and state power. The result is a fresh interpretation of the gendered dynamics of peasant politics, community, and riot. Third, Stern examines regional and ethnocultural variation and finds that his analysis transcends particular locales and ethnic subgroupings within Mexico. The historical arguments and conceptual sweep of Stern's book will inform not only students of Mexico and Latin America but also students of gender in the West and other world regions. |An illustrated history of the hurricanes known to have struck North Carolina from the days of the first European settlers to the present. This edition takes into account the three major storms--Bonnie, Dennis, and Floyd--that have hit North Carolina since the last edition was published in 1998.

Constructing the Image of Ethnic Harmony in Toronto, Canada

The author applies a social constructionist approach to the issue of urban ethnic relations, arguing that analyzing the political processes that construct urban images, issues, and identities will illuminate arenas of power and conflict obscured by other approaches. Toronto, known for harmonious ethnic relations, is ideal for a case study of how urban images are constructed and maintained and how certain conditions, issues, and grievances are not defined as problems. The author draws on theoretical literature, elite interviews, and textual analysis of the periodical literature on Toronto to demonstrate the important role of elites in framing issues that define the "objective conditions" of urban ethnic relations.

Editorial: Women in Politics

A recent headline in the Guardian newspaper stated 'Britain holds poor record for women in public life' and the author went on to demonstrate that, in terms of the percentage of women in national parliamentary assemblies, Britain ranks 10th out of the 12 European Community countries. This is hardly news to most women in Scotland who arc only too aware of their exclusion from formal arenas of power. If the reporter had pursued his investigations he would have discovered that women in Scotland fare even worse than women in England in terms of political representation. For example, although the representation level of women in the House of Commons stands at just under 9 per cent for the UK as a whole, this rate falls to only 7 per cent for Scotland where just 5 women were elected to represent Scottish parliamentary constituencies from a total of 72 seats at the general election in 1992. A brief examination of the position of women in other public arenas mirrors this poor representation in Parliament. A Gender Audit published by Engender, the new campaign and research organisation for women in Scotland, draws attention to the fact that Scotland's first woman judge was appointed in 1992 (on a temporary basis), 30 years after the first woman judge in England and Wales; a pilot survey of twelve top Scottish businesses revealed only one company with a woman on the Board of Directors; excluding Children's Panels women have less than 20% representation on public bodies; only 3% of headtcachers in Scottish secondary schools are women; and there arc no women editors or depute editors in the Scottish national press. By way of contrast women are grossly over-represented in low grade, low paid, insecure jobs, and many more women than men live in poverty in Scotland. This is a dismal record for a country which often prides itself on its egalitarian and democratic culture and values, and reflects another example of the cultural contradictions referred to in Lindsay Paterson's editorial in the last issue of Scottish Affairs.

President and Congress: Executive Hegemony at the Crossroads of American Government, by Robert J. Spitzer

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Foundations of the Presidential-Congressional Relationship Antecedents The Founders' Fears Fear of a Strong Executive Fear of a Strong Legislature Fear of Concentrated Power Fear of Governmental Paralysis The Constitutional Framework Conclusion 2. The Evolving Relationship Case I: The First Congress, 1789-1791 Politics as Usual What's in a Name? The Government Seat Debt Funding and Assumption Assessment The Evolving Relationship The Jacksonian Era Case II: The Twenty-Seventh Congress, 1841-1843 Assessment The Road to a Stronger Presidency The Civil War-Reconstruction Era The Ascendancy of the Modern Strong Presidency Conclusion: Explaining the Changing Relationship 3. The Domestic Realm I: The Legislative Presidency Chief Legislator Why a Legislative President? An Administrative Congress? Setting the Agenda Central Clearance Liaison Lobbying from the White House The President's Full-Court Press Party Leadership Patronage Rallying Public Support Controlling the Endgame: The Veto Presidential Success: Measuring the President's Batting Average Conclusion 4. The Domestic Realm II: Explaining Presidential-Congressional Interactions Political Explanation: Presidential Leadership Leadership and Presidential Power Leadership Qualities and Congress Assessment Historical Explanation: Budgeting From Legislative to Executive Budget Congress Awakens Executive Counterpunch Assessment Legal Explanation: The Legislative Veto Congress Gets a Veto Arguments Pro and Con The Court Rules... ...But the Veto Remains Assessment Policy Explanation: Policy Types The Arenas of Power The Four Presidencies Assessment Conclusion 5. Foreign Affairs I: Who Steers the Ship of State? The Executive-Legislative Balance and the Constitution Are There Two Presidencies? Why Presidential Ascendancy? Powers and Military Force The Founders and Imperfect Wars The Evolution of the Power The Powers Resolution The Powers Resolution in Operation... ...or, Oh, What a Lovely War Presidential Making Conclusion: Pacificus Prevails 6. Foreign Affairs II: Ah, Diplomacy! Treaties and Executive Agreements Ending Treaties Treaty-Making Success: The Panama Canal Treaties Treaty-Making Failure: The SALT II Treaty Assessment: Treaties, the President, and Congress Executive Agreements Arms Sales and the Changing Role of the United States in the World The Saudi Arms Deal Foreign Aid Intermestic Issues The President, Congress, and Intelligence Iran-Contra Conclusion 7. Conclusion: Is the Separation of Powers Obsolete? The Presidential-Congressional Relationship: Marginal or Hegemonic? The Ineffectual Congress/Ascendant President Argument Terms and Parties The End of Congressional Lawmaking Is Change Desirable? The Congress/Weak President Argument The Legalism Critique The Imperial Congress Executive Absurdism Were the Founders Wrong? Separation of Powers and Alternatives Retaining and Executive-Hegemonic Separation of Powers The Rules and Outcomes The Presidency and Democracy Appendix A: The Politics of the Modern Presidency Appendix B: The Politics of the Modern Congress Selected Bibliography Index

Social Change and Land Use in Prehistoric Dalmatia

The Neothermal Dalmatia Project is an Anglo-Yugoslav collaborative project whose aims are to define and explain changes in physical environment, settlement pattern and social structure in north Dalmatia over the last 12 millennia. The Project's fieldwork included archaeological field survey, analytical survey, trial excavation of Neolithic, Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman sites, soil and land use mapping, ethnographic survey of modern villages and hamlets and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions (pollen, sediments, sea-level change, etc.). Within the long-term constraints of a limestone-dominated study region, the short-term events and medium-term agrarian and demographic cycles of the Dalmatian social groups have been studied in an inter-disciplinary manner. In this article, an attempt is made to examine the environmental and archaeological data within the frameworks of four explanatory models: the Land Use Capability (LUC) Model, the Cyclic Intensification–Deintensification (CID) Model, the Communal Ownership of Property (COP) Model and the Arenas of Social Power (ASP) Model. In the LUC model, reconstructions of past land use capabilities are used to derive postdictions of the most likely settlement patterns for successive periods (Neolithic–Roman); a high degree of postdictive success is met. In the CID model, Bintliff's model of cyclic variations in agricultural intensification and private land-holding is refined and tested against survey and excavation data. In the COP model, Fleming's model of communal land ownership is tested against similar data, with contrasting results. Finally, the ASP model is used to explain the expanded range of arenas of social power which develops from a place-based worldview in the early farming period. The conjoint use of these four explanatory models, which operate at different scales of duration, provides a broader basis for understanding changes in the prehistory of north Dalmatia in the Neothermal period than had previously been constructed.

The Contributions of Theodore Lowi to Political Analysis and Democratic Theory

Lowi, like Gaul, can be divided into three parts: (1) the policy analysis (arenas of power) scheme; (2) democratic theory (juridical democracy, the critique of pluralism, rule of law); and (3) constitutional advocacy centering on designs for parliamentary government. It is in the second category, I believe, that he has made the most significant and lasting contribution.The first and earliest segment, the policy analysis scheme, was developed in articles, in and after the seminal 1964 book review in World Politics (Lowi 1964, 1972, 1976). Lowi's students have directly employed the policy typology in work on national institutions and policy development (Spitzer 1983; Sanders 1981). However, Lowi himself has not fully developed the implications of the typology in such a way that it could generate an integrated set of testable hypotheses and has failed to clear up essential definitions. The words used to label the four cells of the typology (distributive, regulatory, redistributive, and constituent) have fallen into common currency, but are used in a muddle of ways not consistent with the meanings I believe (as an alumna of Lowi's graduate public policy workshop) that he wants to attach to them. Much of this confusion, and the failure of this set of tantalizing ideas to bear much theoretical fruit, must be laid at the creator's doorstep for neglecting to draw out at length and in detail the typology's implications.

The Contributions of Theodore Lowi to Political Analysis and Democratic Theory

Lowi, like Gaul, can be divided into three parts: (1) the policy analysis (arenas of power) scheme; (2) democratic theory (juridical democracy, the critique of pluralism, rule of law); and (3) constitutional advocacy centering on designs for parliamentary government. It is in the second category, I believe, that he has made the most significant and lasting contribution.The first and earliest segment, the policy analysis scheme, was developed in articles, in and after the seminal 1964 book review in World Politics (Lowi 1964, 1972, 1976). Lowi's students have directly employed the policy typology in work on national institutions and policy development (Spitzer 1983; Sanders 1981). However, Lowi himself has not fully developed the implications of the typology in such a way that it could generate an integrated set of testable hypotheses and has failed to clear up essential definitions. The words used to label the four cells of the typology (distributive, regulatory, redistributive, and constituent) have fallen into common currency, but are used in a muddle of ways not consistent with the meanings I believe (as an alumna of Lowi's graduate public policy workshop) that he wants to attach to them. Much of this confusion, and the failure of this set of tantalizing ideas to bear much theoretical fruit, must be laid at the creator's doorstep for neglecting to draw out at length and in detail the typology's implications.

Black Offenders, Criminal Courts, and Philadelphia Society in the Late Eighteenth-Century

To describe fully, accurately, and with suitable sensitivity the in history has been a persistent challenge to historians. Because histori? cally blacks have been uneducated, inarticulate, and denied access to arenas of influence and power in society, meeting the challenge has not been easy. Important advancements in our understanding of history, when they have come, have resulted from the use by historians of imaginative approaches to offer new materials and perspectives.1 For early history at least, legal history has not made contributions commensurate with its potential for clarify ing the relationship (and changes in the relationship) between and white Americans, or for shedding light on social tensions associated with that relation? ship. Treatments of crime and its judicial resolution are particularly well suited to illuminate a society's distribution of power, and changes occurring in its values, assumptions, and priorities over time.2 An examination of crimes attributed to blacks, and their resolution in early Philadelphia, serves as a case in point. Such a study illuminates the nature of personal relations among blacks, and, on different levels of society, between blacks and whites. It also casts light on opportunities or lack of opportunities available to Philadelphia's population. In addition, it demonstrates that theft lay at the heart ofthe eighteenth-century criminal theft born of need rather than calculated revenge against Philadelphia's propertied classes. The dramatic rise in prosecutions against blacks for property offenses in the mid-l?90s, and the concomitant rise in the conviction rate in such prosecu? tions, reflected not so much a growing racism and discrimination against blacks as an increase in thefts, and a more intense concern on the part of authorities with property and its protection. The mounting prosecution level against blacks for theft was paralleled by a similar increase against white thieves. At this point, Philadelphia's black experience began to meld with the broader American preoccupation with safeguarding property and property rights. Such a study also reveals, however, that those who sought to guarantee defendants equality and justice before the law failed. By almost every measure? ment available to students of criminal justice, blacks fared more poorly in Pennsylvania courts than did whites. Even so, reformers in Philadelphia, in conjunction with court personnel, achieved a legal system sensitive to rights, and certainly more fair and just in its practices than society outside the courts.

Red, Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture by Eugenia W. Herbert

Book Reviews Red, Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture. By Eugenia W. Herbert. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Pp. xxiii+413; illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $32.50. This is a splendid book. There has been nothing like it since Wal­ ter Cline’s classic 1937 work, Mining and Metallurgy in Negro Africa, which Eugenia Herbert’s Red Gold of Africa neither supplants nor complements. They are entirely different scholastic efforts, and each stands as a major resource for students of African societies. Herbert’s perspective is much broader, however, and reaches schol­ ars like myself with little experience in African prehistory but with a fundamental concern for prehistoric technologies—metallurgical or not—and their primary role in the making of culture. If I had to choose one word to capture the spirit of this book, I would say it is enthusiastic, in the sense that it encourages the exploration of a theme—copper in precolonial Africa—from many perspectives, those of economic history, of the history of art, and of anthropologi­ cal inquiry, and realizes a synthesis of those perspectives that is rare and convincing. This enthusiasm is expressed by the author: “The theme of copper has provided an opportunity to interweave ele­ ments of economic, cultural, and technological history on a continen­ tal scale that I have found irresistibly fascinating and challenging” (pp. xxii-xxiii). It is beautifully written, the prose at times elegant. As an economic historian, Herbert’s initial interest in copper devel­ oped from her investigation of trans-Sahara trade, which, long be­ fore the European exploitation of African resources, was char­ acterized by a constant demand for copper in West Africa, a region that is especially poor in copper ores. That demand was met by mas­ sive transfer of the metal across the desert and later, of course, from the 15th century onward, by sea from Portugal, Holland, and Britain. In seeking the sources of that demand, the author found it ev­ ident that copper, as a material, and the manufacture of objects of copper, as an activity, were ritualized and sacralized not only among West African societies but in many regions of precolonial Af­ rica. Thus, the stimulus behind the demand was set in a context of cultural values that relegated copper—and later the alloy brass—to arenas of status display, political power, and ritual symbolism that re­ moved the metal from utilitarian uses filled by iron and other materi­ als. Herbert even suggests that the copper trade may have been as Permission to reprint a book review in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 130 TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 131 important in the political formation ofstates in certain regions of cen­ tral and southern Africa as was the trade in gold, a trade engen­ dered by the rapacious quest for that metal by Europeans. Gold was simply irrelevant to African societies before the stimulus of for­ eign demand. In any event, it was the internal cultural demand for copper and the attendant extensive intra-Africa exchange of the metal that Portuguese merchants witnessed and were “ . . . com­ pelled to respond to ...” in the late 15th century, “ ... to habits of consumption already well formed, to preexisting demands, and this was as true for copper goods as for textiles and beads” (p. 120). Herbert’s book skillfully reveals the essence of its title: Red Gold. Red gold, of course, is copper and its alloys bronze and brass. For Af­ ricans these materials were as precious as was the metal gold for Euro­ peans. And just as the color gold held specific connotations for Europeans—or for prehistoric peoples of the Andes and Mesoamerica —so the color red imbued copper with qualities that in­ hered in that metal but that varied among African societies. Its color was seen as its most salient characteristic. “It carries the mani­ fold connotations of blood: sacrifice, execution, war on the one hand; fertility and vitality on the other. It marks the transition from child to adult, from adult to ancestor. Its presence is fre­ quently a statement of aggressivity, of the power to take life . . . ” (p. 279). Just as...

Arenas of Power

Arenas of Power

Coming to Terms with the Public PresidencyRonald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism. By Robert Dallek The Public Presidency: The Pursuit of Popular Support. By George C. Edwards III The Presidential Quest: Candidates and Images in American Political Culture, 1787-1852. By M. J. Heale The American President: Power and Communication. By Colin Seymour-Ure Presidents and the Press: The Nixon Legacy. By

Coming to Terms with the Public Presidency<i>Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism</i>. By Robert Dallek <i>The Public Presidency: The Pursuit of Popular Support</i>. By George C. Edwards III <i>The Presidential Quest: Candidates and Images in American Political Culture, 1787-1852</i>. By M. J. Heale <i>The American President: Power and Communication</i>. By Colin Seymour-Ure <i>Presidents and the Press: The Nixon Legacy</i>. By

The Presidency and Public Policy: The Four Arenas of Presidential Power. By Robert J. Spitzer (University: University of Alabama Press, 1983. Pp. xii + 189. $18.75.)

The Presidency and Public Policy: The Four Arenas of Presidential Power. By Robert J. Spitzer (University: University of Alabama Press, 1983. Pp. xii + 189. $18.75.)