Number Of Civilizations Research Articles

A Good Act of Contrition?Geography, Civilisational Thinking, and the Colonial Present

There exists a growing interest in the complicity of geographical knowledge and practice in the colonisation by European powers of territories in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.1 In particular, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century professional and institutional development of Geography cannot, it seems, be studied without reference to the historical geography of European imperialism and colonialism. Through the mapping of coastal zones, transport routes, soil and climatic conditions, natural resources, and disease patterns, Geography provided technical support to colons and serviced their commercial and business imperatives. More importantly, by contributing to the development of environmental determinist ideology and the notion that there existed a hierarchy of civilisations or a number of civilisations surrounded by a sea of debased barbarism and savagery, Geography aided in the development of forms of scientific racism that legitimated colonial settlement and economic exploitation. It was the discipline of Geography that codified and mobilised civilisational thinking and lent authority to its role in colonial aggrandisement.

After the War was over: The civilian return to Leningrad

This article focuses on the civilian return to Leningrad after the end of the Blockade and in the immediate post-war period. It examines how the authorities tried to control movement back to the city but proved to be overwhelmed by vast numbers of civilians returning with or without permission. It describes post-war living conditions, explores the official historical narrative of resilience and recovery, and provides a critique of the alternative historical narrative that claimed there was no post-war ‘return to normalcy’ and that Leningrad became a different city after the war.

Managing Violent Crises: Swedish Peacekeeping and the 2004 Ethnic Violence in Kosovo

This article analyses the devastating ethnic ‘riots’ in Kosovo in March 2004. By focusing on the response of the Swedish military, it concludes that peacekeepers must be more adequately prepared to counter the types of crises that arise in countries emerging from conflict. In particular, units must cultivate readiness for worst-case scenarios and train to curb violence involving large numbers of civilians.

Watching Genocide, Doing Nothing: The Final Betrayal of Darfur

As the fourth year of genocidal destruction in the Darfur region of Sudan grinds on, with ever greater numbers of civilians affected by increasingly chaotic conflict, one feature in this obscene episode of mass human destruction is clear: never before in history has genocide been so reliably, fully, and consistently reported as it unfolds. This is not to say that the news media have done their job in Darfur. Indeed, with the exception of a few U.S. reporters who have dispatched—at times—superb work and the Reuters newswire (in particular the extraordinarily insightful and intrepid Opheera McDoom), coverage has been poor in larger circulation newspapers and worse in news magazines. Exceptions must be made for the compelling op-ed work of Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, who has made a number of trips to Darfur and eastern Chad, and the superbly informed editorial writing on Darfur by the Washington Post.

The United Nations and International Security in the New Millennium

AbstractThe end of the Cold War opened a window of opportunity for the United Nations to play a greater role in international security than it was allowed to play in the midst of the ideological conflict between the United States and the former Soviet Union. However, the expected "peace dividend" never materialized in the post-Cold War period. Instead, a number of civil conflicts erupted and new threats to security, particularly to human security, emerged. This chapter critically examines the evolution of the UN's role in addressing international security problems since 1945, including global terrorism. It also outlines recent attempts by the world body, through extension of its reach beyond the territorial constraints of sovereignty, to build sustained peace through preventive measures and protect human security globally.

San Diego Presidio: A Vanished Military Community of Upper California

Popular views of San Diego Presidio portray it as a fortified community, inhabited largely by Spanish soldiers, who followed customs that were predominantly European. Ongoing documentary and archaeological research suggest that these views represent an inaccurate picture of the settlement and its people. For more than a third of its years of existence (1769-1835), the presidio was not protected by any fortifications. Throughout its history, the population of the base included large numbers of civilians. The people of the presidio represented a racially mixed community. The way of life that they pursued included elements that drew heavily on local Native American, and Mesoamerican, cultural roots.

Studying Civil Suits Against the Police: A Serendipitous Finding of Sample Selection Bias

This article examines the sources of municipal variation in the number of civil suits filed against police. Although a number of theoretical explanations are plausible, existing data and research are limited to a handful of rational/ technical explanations. A secondary analysis of a national survey data set reveals a moderate but manageable problem with missing data among the predictors. However, the problem is more severe for the outcome variable, the ratio of civil suits per 1,000 field officers, which is missing for about 70% of respondents. The authors explore a number of potential remedies based on recent advances in the statistical treatment of incomplete multivariate data. Their analysis suggests that data on civil suits are not missing randomly: There are important and quantifiable differences between respondents and nonrespondents to this survey item. These findings suggest a modest case of sample selection bias, which cannot be corrected using even the most recent statistical advances. The remedy lies not in statistics but in the use of new and creative research methods that account for the sensitive nature of the topic.

A Comparison of Laboratory-conditioned and Naturally-weathered Bonded Joints

Adhesive bonding is often the most desirable joining method in terms of structural efficiency and cost and is being used in an increasing number of civil and military applications. One of the main stumbling blocks to the further use of adhesive bonding is the lack of confidence in long-term durability, particularly in humid environments. When designing bonded joints, the effect of ageing is usually accounted for by subjecting the joints to artificially high levels of loading or extreme environmental conditions for short times prior to testing. However, the relationship between the results from these accelerated tests and actual long-term ageing is poorly understood. The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) has what is probably a unique set of experimental data for a wide range of adhesively-bonded joints subjected to both accelerated ageing in the laboratory and long-term outdoor exposure. In this paper the relationship between the naturally aged and accelerated aged joints is explored. It is concluded that no simple correlation can be made between joints aged in different environments. The best that accelerated ageing can achieve is to eliminate those adhesives likely to perform badly in conditions of high humidity and to indicate those systems likely to perform well.

Working in teams: negative effects on organisational performance in policing

This study tested predictions derived from social psychological theorising on the deindividuation phenomenon concerning the effects of working alone or collectively on the quality of outcomes of police patrolling activity. Police officers (n = 1,118) reported the resistance experienced when they last carried out each of 12 patrol activities. Officer age, gender, rank and experience did not predict resistance experienced. Increased resistance was associated with the more active afternoon and night shifts, the presence of larger numbers of civilians, and the two (cf. one) officer patrol mode. Although the resistance experienced by officers working collectively in part reflected the influence of work shift on patrol mode, there were substantial proportions of variance in resistance for most patrol activities that could not be explained by the shift variable. The influence of collective patrolling on resistance was consistent with theorising about the origins of deindividuated behaviour, and highlighted the importance of broad conceptualisations of organisational effectiveness when evaluating individual and collective functioning.

PLATO OF MIND AND JOSEPH OF COUNTENANCE

The 'Book of Good Counsel' (Andarzname), which is widely and unaccountably known as Qabusname, has, from very early on, enjoyed popularity in two linguistic domains, first that of its native Persian and subsequently, that of (pre-)Ottoman Turkish.1 For the past two centuries, it has been renowned among Western students of medieval Iran and Islam of the most diverse specializations. Indeed, its compass is much broader than would be indicated by its conventional designation as a 'mirror for princes', even though its first express addressee was a young prince, Gllanshah, and the exigencies of his presumptive career as amir figure prominently in the text. However, the dedicatee's father and the author of the book, the Ziyarid prince Kay Ka'us b. Eskandar, was enough of a realist not to trust blindly in the permanence of his dynasty's political fortunes. In order to prepare his son for unforeseen circumstances, he expanded the scope of his work to include, in addition to advice on the proper conduct of affairs of state, of the household and the self, surveys of a number of civil and military professions as well, from those of religious scholar, physician, merchant to those of poet and minstrel to that of military leader in short, all those indispensable to any ruler and at any court. The book's particular charm is owed to the fact that the author was not a professional litterateur or scholar, but a practitioner of statecraft, on however reduced a scale, on the one hand, and an enthusiastic dilettante of adab on the other. Kay Ka'us's down-to-earth realism, alluded to above, and common sense, informed by long experience,

Administrative reform as policy change and policy non-change

The literature on administrative reform around the world shows that such efforts are quite popular but rarely have much effect. Post-war Japan is no exception. For decades, attention focused on restraining the number of civil servants across all government agencies, a 'balanced' approach that was attractive because it was easy to implement.The administrative reform campaign of the early 1980s had an exceptional impact partly because Rinch6 was able to play a powerful 'policy sponsorship' role. Despite the ironic tone of much writing about that period, many policy areas did see significant reform. Since then, however, there has been a lot of talk but

Introduction: Modernisms and Modern Wars

Introduction: Modernisms and Modern Wars Margot Norris (bio) I began writing this introduction on 10 May 1998, with the opening sentence, “It may seem anomalous to have a special issue on ‘Modernisms and Modern Wars’ at this particular moment in history, at the very end of the twentieth century, when the Cold War, with its threat of global annihilation, is construed as effectively over.” Two days later, on 12 May 1998, India tested a series of nuclear devices of twice the force of the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. “India’s blast shook the world out of its post-cold-war complacency,” Newsweek noted on 25 May 1998 (Thomas 30). A little more than two weeks later, the headlines of the Los Angeles Times announced “Pakistan Explodes 5 Nuclear Devices in Response to India” (Filkins A1). This event deepened the seriousness of Newsweek’s ominous warning that “India could be a harbinger of a more chaotic world order, of rivalrous nationalities scrambling to arm themselves with the bomb. Think of Europe in August 1914, only with weapons of mass destruction” (Thomas 30). The short-lived hope that, with the end of the twentieth century, large-scale war might be over has been revealed as a dangerous delusion. Among our various constructions of the modernity of the twentieth century, we must list as its premier legacy the combined will and technology that made it the bloodiest in the history of the world. The [End Page 505] casualties of World War I are estimated at ten million dead and twenty million wounded. Of World War II, Paul Fussell writes: Killed and wounded were over 78 million people, more of them civilians than soldiers. Close to 6 million Jews were beaten, shot, or gassed to death by the Germans. One million people died of starvation and despair in the siege of Leningrad. . . . If the battle of the Somme constitutes a scandal because 20,000 British soldiers were killed in one day, twice that number of civilians were asphyxiated and burned to death in the bombing of Hamburg. Seventy thousand died at Hiroshima, 35,000 at Nagasaki, and the same at Dresden. (307) And Barbara Ehrenreich reports that “an estimated 22 million people” have been killed in the 160 wars since World War II (226). The final human tragedy of our age resides in our inability to draw a line under these unimaginable numbers, this unspeakable suffering, and declare that it is over. The twentieth century has been unable to contain its violence within its temporal boundaries because war is, by its constitution, uncontrollable and uncontainable. The truce and the treaty that mark the end of this or that armed conflict effect the cessation of only one form of injuring, and they rarely neutralize the potentialities for further violence that have been unleashed. Elaine Scarry’s groundbreaking study of the structure of war, The Body in Pain, exfoliates the reasons for war’s problematic of closure by noting that the postwar memorializations that signify an altered national identity are not accidental by-products, but constitutive effects of the political outcomes war aims to achieve (113–15). The essays of this special issue of Modern Fiction Studies explore in various literary discourses the diverse phenomena that recognize that once war has occurred, it can never really be over. I’ve divided the essays in this volume into three sections titled “The Home Front,” “Trauma,” and “Ethics”—rubrics of our contemporary literary preoccupation with the effects of war beyond the scene of combat. These essays track the oblique and invasive effects that perdure beyond war’s specific spatial and temporal confines to enter into the most intimate recesses of private and domestic life, on the one hand, and into the far reaches of cultural expression, on the other. [End Page 506] Thinking about the literature of war has been deeply marked by the access that late-twentieth-century literary theory has opened to marginal, invisible, and even unspeakable regions of suffering. The transmutations of war’s violence into effects that are unstoppable, or not easily stoppable, have become more readily visible in the light of modern theories that make formerly obscure...

Does Lawyer Advertising Adversely Influence the Image of Lawyers in the United States? An Alternative Perspective and New Empirical Evidence

Abstract Using multiple regression analysis, this study investigates the impact of lawyer advertising on the public's image of the law profession. The analysis, which includes variables to reflect per capita real outlays on lawyer advertising, the public's image of politicians, long‐term trends in the image of lawyers, the per capita number of lawyers, the per capita number of civil suits commenced in U.S. district courts, and the divorce rate, finds that lawyer advertising raises the public's esteem for the law profession. Moreover, causality tests supplementing the regression estimation reinforce this conclusion while revealing a bidirectional relationship between lawyer advertising and lawyer image.

Legal Background and Analysis of the 1997 Convention Banning Anti-Personnel Mines

Countries all over the world, from Angola to Afghanistan, from Cambodia to Nicaragua, are littered with uncleared mines. In 1994, it was estimated that more than 100 million anti-personnel mines (hereinafter: AP mines) were scattered wantonly in over sixty countries. In 1997, over 110 million mines were deployed and another 100 million stockpiled around the world. Mines can be scattered over large areas by airplanes or delivered by rockets and do not need to be laid manually.AP mines were originally designed to slow down the advancement of enemy troops and to defend territory. For thirty years, AP mines have injured large numbers of civilians, although this remained practically unreported up until the 1980s, when these mines were used increasingly as a deliberate military strategy to spread terror among civilians.

The number of civilizations

The number of civilizations

Healing the Hiroshima Maidens: A Historic Lesson in International Cooperation

THE AUGUST 6,1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima did more than destroy the city and kill at least 100 000 of its inhabitants: it also forever changed the lives of the survivors and their progeny. Years of rebuilding and recriminations followed this single act of destruction. Particularly tragic was the number of civilians who were killed and maimed, many suffering horrifying injuries that handicapped and disfigured them. In 1955, a few compassionate and well-connected Japanese and Americans worked together to heal some of the survivors' physical and psychological wounds, creating in the process lasting bonds of friendship and collegiality that continue to this day. Through a series of diplomatic maneuvers and a few strokes of luck, 25 badly burned young women, the "Hiroshima Maidens," were able to come to the United States for plastic surgery to ameliorate some of the damage done by the bomb. <h3>'Hoping for a Miracle'</h3> Shigeko Niimoto

BRITISH AND PRC GOVERNMENT POLICY: CAREERS IN THE MIDST OF POLITICAL CHANGE

On the expiration of the 99‐year lease, on 30 June 1997, Hong Kong will revert to the control of China and become a special administrative region (SAR) under Chinese Sovereignty. Civil servants in the British colony will continue to play a vital role to ensure the smooth transfer of sovereignty in 1997. In the period of political change, they are facing a number of critical issues that may affect their careers and morale. Sources of discontent include: slow growth in the number of civil servants; in some cases even a reduction in size through privatization; pension payment beyond 1997; the localization process; career path and tension between specialisst and generalists; and increasing conflict between the upper and lower grade civil servants. Increasing intervention from the PRC Government makes the job of civil servants more difficult. Discusses views from civil servants concerning their careers.

Consumer Protection and Deviant Religion: A Case Study

This paper describes a recent effort to pass some "anti-cult " legislation in Nevada. The effort exemplified a new consumer-oriented approach to such matters that seeks to treat religious groups similarly to charitable organizations, and implicitly defines religion as a consumer good to be regulated by government. The bill would have authorized a number of civil and state actions against religions. It evoked considerable controversy before being defeated, with Mormon legislators playing a key role in the bill's defeat. A number of more liberal and moderate members of the legislature supported the legislation, however. Implications of this approach are discussed.

Civilian casualties and health needs in Indochina.

The Indochina War is not only continuing to tear at America's national life and spirit. It is also heightening the agony of a rapidly growing number of civilians in the affected areas of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. We are confronted today with a very serious regional crisis of people — millions of people — refugees, civilian casualties, war victims of all kinds. The deteriorating situation reflects not only the continuing high level of military activities — including the extensive use of American airpower — but also the simple fact that the war is scarcely winding down for the people of . . .

The Administrative Autonomy of Creditors and French Legislation on Bankruptcy

In French law at the present time, when a merchant stops paying his debts, he is subjected by decision of the Court of Commerce to one of two special procedures which is intended to secure the interests of his creditors-judicial [le reglement judiciaire] and [la faillite]. The terms and arrangement are employed to designate not only this special procedure but also the position of the debtor (whether an individual or a company) which finds itself subjected to such proceedings. Thus it is said that so-and-so is bankruptcy or judicial arrangement. In France the institutions of judicial and are commercial in three respects: they apply only to merchants (including, in French terminology, companies); they apply only to the refusal to pay debts of character; and they are pronounced only by the Court of Commerce. When a debtor who is not a merchant finds it impossible to pay his debts, he is not admitted to arrangement or declared bankrupt, but is in a of insolvency [deconfiture]. In contrast to insolvency, which is more a state of fact, during which the creditors acting individually and without restriction may serve executions taking effect upon one or another particular item of the estate, is a procedure of collective execution which allows the body of creditors of a merchant who stops his payments to group themselves into a class, represented by a trustee, to seize all the assets of the debtor and to realize upon them in order to obtain, in strict equality, shares proportional to their respective claims. In addition, it entails for the debtor a certain number of civil and professional disqualifications which end only after rehabilitation; the most important of these is the prohibition against engaging again in a business.