Public Declaration Research Articles

Mapping a New Geography of Space and Power

In this paper, I analyze the ways in which MST-Bolivia (Movimiento Sin Tierra) forged a national-level movement through one counter-hegemonic event: the Fifth Indigenous March for Land and Territory, which originated in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in October 2006. This march enacted a powerful performance of pan-indigenous solidarity and nationalistic sentiment which led to a public declaration by president Evo Morales to approve the New Agrarian Reform Law. I focus in particular on the organizational and spatial structure of the march, and on the significance of seizing public space in protest.

The Internet and Hoisan-wa in the U.S.: Counter-Hegemonic Discourses and Shifting Language Ideologies

Abstract This report explores some aspects of the language ideologies discussed on the Internet about Hoisan-wa, a variety of Cantonese. Informed by a language ideology framework, it looks at two YouTube videos and users’ comments regarding them. The findings of the report demonstrate a shift in language beliefs about speaking Hoisan-wa as less of a “harsh-sounding, mere dialect” to more of a public declaration of pride in being speakers or descendants of this language background. The author also discusses the prospects for Hoisan-wa language maintenance and how technology can aid in this process.

Effect of marriage on pre-existing psychoses

Byline: Prakash. Behere, T. Sathyanarayana Rao, Kiran. Verma consists of the rules and regulation which define the rights, duties and privileges of the husband and wife. – Georgea Lundberg Marriage is a social union or legal contract between a male and a female having intimate interpersonal relationships. It has been the greatest and most important of all social institutions in the human society. People marry for many reasons such as legal, social, libidinal, emotional, economic, spiritual, and religious. These might include arranged marriages, family obligations, legal establishment of a nuclear family unit, legal protection of children, and public declaration of commitment. The relationship between marriage and mental illness is very complicated and this issue commonly arises in psychotic illnesses. Psychosis is usually diagnosed at late adolescent and early adulthood. Being a disease of the age at which decision of marriage is taken, the question of whether to marry or not and whether marriage will lead to improvement or deterioration in psychoses is equally faced by patients, their family members, and treating psychiatrists. Mental disorders and problems in marriage are closely linked though there is a controversy about the sequence. Peculiarities of Marriage in India In India, marriage is a social institution of extreme importance. It is much more than a variety of close personal affiliation uniting two partners and is based on the following foundations... [sup][1] most often it is not a free personal choice but is an arranged relation between two families; the maturity of the partner is not an essential requirement for marriage, and marriage encompasses a heterosexual relationship. In Indian marriage, the husband is considered the head and principle earner of the family; sexual fidelity and monogamy of both husband and wife are represented as marital ideals. Society exerts great pressure on both sexes to marry; mostly people marry without thinking about their personal choice of getting or not getting married. In the presence of mental illness, if marriage is done under pressure, it may lead to deterioration of mental condition. Situation of Mentally Ill Females In India, marriages are usually arranged by parents and are influenced by number of factors such as astrological compatibility, caste regulation, geographic proximity, and expectations of dowry. Female psychotic patients have multifold psycho-socio-economic problems than males because in an Indian setting, male dominates and he is the deciding person for selection of partner. Female patient undergoes tremendous stress in getting married, and if she is having pre-existing mental illness, then the situation worsens. Almost all females face many of the following problems in getting married and sustaining married life. Firstly, at the time of proposal, when a girl is shown to the male partner, it is a stress due to the uncertainty of fixing up of marriage. Secondly, the question of dowry hampers and causes stress. Thirdly, after marriage, she has to leave her parents' house where she has spent 18-20 years of her life. Fourthly, she goes to a new house where she has to cope up with new family members of different temperaments. Fifthly, if she is on drugs for maintenance of improvement from psychoses, she has to face difficulties such as her in-laws may ask for the reason of taking drugs and she may stop taking because of impending risk of questioning and may lead to relapse. Sixthly, she has to undergo first sexual experience which may be traumatic to her. Seventhly comes pregnancy, which itself is a stress (wanted or unwanted). Eighthly, she undergoes the stress of having a male or female baby because male babies are socially much more accepted and preferred over female babies. And finally, child birth. Because of the above-mentioned stressors, female psychotic patients may have more episodes of exacerbation of symptoms or relapse of psychotic illness. …

‘A beautiful show of strength’: Weight loss and the fat activist self

This article explores the disciplinary and productive effects of late 20th-century/early 21st-century discourse around the obesity epidemic. For my purposes, both the Fat Activist and Weight Loss Surgery patient may be seen as outcomes of this discursive proliferation. Based on a content analysis of two online accounts of weight loss by prominent fat activists, I examine the ways in which such public declarations can be seen as contemporary examples of Foucault's notion of the confession. Through debates in the 'fatosophere', such activists and their peers simultaneously take up and reject both biomedical and fat activists tenets in ways that are highly ambivalent. In the process, fat activism unsettles and resituates its borders and boundaries and the issue of weight loss becomes a discursive technique of knowledge/power for the understanding of and relating to the fat activist self.

Comment on “International and Regional Cooperation: Asia's Role and Responsibilities”

Comment on “International and Regional Cooperation: Asia's Role and Responsibilities”

Arendt, Byron, and De Quincey in Dark Times

This article begins as an improvisation on terms developed in Hannah Arendt’s collection Men in Dark Times. Dark times for Arendt signal disastrous conditions under which life and the ideas about such a life remain invisible or obscure. Lives led under dark times are marked by a resistance to public declaration and display, and they are intelligible only in terms of privation. Dark times are thus hopeless and intransigent; while they are a state of emergency for Arendt, this paper aims to think differently about the non‐pathological and transformative effects produced by disaster – that is to say, how catastrophic events in texts by De Quincey and Byron are denatured or flattened out to the point where disaster expresses new relational forms of non‐destructive dark life.

Local Stagings, Global Productions: The Theatricality of Food Rituals in Landless Movement

While most scholarly work in the 1990s focused on the use of ethnic identity and indigeneity as a critical tool for movement building in Latin America, this article turns toward new performative strategies in the 2000s. Through food performances—from showing and boasting about small-scale production to collective practices of cooking and feeding activists from a common pot—MST-Bolivia teaches campesinos about the importance of reclaiming land, territory, and food systems for indigenous peoples. The discourse of food sovereignty respatializes agriculture from global and corporate arenas to the local, as MST activists demand that food should be first and foremost a right and secondarily an item of trade. Yet there is no purity to their politics: daily contradictions exist between public declarations of sovereignty and collectivity and individualistic needs and desires. Despite such tensions, MST transports food traditions from regional to international arenas where they reassemble highly flexible organizational strategies capable of providing food for thousands of activists.

THE CONTENTIOUS FIELD OF PRECARIOUS WORK IN ITALY: POLITICAL ACTORS, STRATEGIES AND COALITIONS

This article aims to present an empirically grounded analysis of the field of actors mobilized against precarious work in Italy. Based on extensive fieldwork including interviews and document analysis, we discuss and compare four types of social and political actors and their organizing patterns: traditional trade unions, radical trade unions, groups of self-organized precarious workers, and grassroots activist groups. The underlying questions focus on patterns of organization and coalition building. By analyzing how precarious workers organize, which goals they have, which kinds of collective actions they engage in, and how they connect to other actors, we found that distinctive strategies lead to diverse degrees of agency and subjectivity that precarious workers develop, ranging from almost nonexistent to high degrees of subjectivity. Recent transformations in the Italian labor market toward more flexible forms of employment lead to a broader diffusion of precarious work, especially among younger generations, women, and migrants. Despite the existence of many studies about labor market flexibility and precarity in Italy, there is only a small amount of publications dealing with the organization of precarious workers struggling to improve their working and living conditions. 2 Among these publications, empirically grounded analyses that compare different actors organizing precarious workers are seldom. Drawing on different strands of literature, such as social movement studies and labor and industrial relation studies, we adopt a comparative perspective on the contentious field related to precarious work. The results we present in this article are based on extensive fieldwork revolving around three sets of data sources: forty-one semistructured interviews 3 ; official documents like public declarations and collective agreements; documents produced during protest events and campaigns like call for actions and leaflets. We analyzed and compared the data constructed during the fieldwork according to a qualitative analysis strategy focusing on four dimensions linked to collective action that we introduce below. This article develops as follows. The first subsection presents a critical literature review about the concept of precarious work and precarity that also serves to introduce a working definition for our understanding of precarious

“Manifesto” for Advancing the Control and Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are the most common infections of the world's poorest people and the leading causes of chronic disability and poverty in low- and middle-income countries [1]–[3]. NTDs (Table 1) especially affect children and young women of reproductive age [4], and consequently deprive them of their health and economic potential [3]. NTDs also impair agricultural productivity and are an important reason why the world's poorest 1.4 billion people who live below the poverty line cannot escape destitution and despair [3]. Despite the devastating effect of these diseases on health and development, with evidence that their global burden is as great as that of any other serious disease [1]–[3], financial support for control and elimination efforts, as well as research and development (R&D), have been inadequate [2], [5]. Indeed, in Millennium Development Goal 6 (to “combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases”), NTDs were not even specifically mentioned but merely considered as part of the “other diseases” [6]. However, policy makers are slowly beginning to appreciate the importance of NTDs. Table 1 Neglected tropical diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) has a new Department of Neglected Tropical Diseases, and WHO-TDR (Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases) has a new 10-year strategic plan with support from UN agencies, member states, and private philanthropies. At the same time, funding for integrated NTD preventive chemotherapy control from the governments of the US and UK has increased dramatically and is approaching US$100 million annually, while support remains strong for product development partnerships from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), and a few European governments. Recently, the new Director of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, has targeted NTDs as a research priority, and the UK charity Wellcome Trust has agreed with the multinational pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. to allocate substantial funds for a joint, not-for-profit research center in India to develop inexpensive “antipoverty” vaccines against neglected diseases [7], [8]. Additional efforts to combat NTDs are also being shared among major multinational pharmaceutical companies (i.e., Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck & Co.) and others who have also committed resources and made investments in research and development for these conditions. Thus, although at present only about 10% of the global funds required for preventive chemotherapy and NTD mass drug administration have been committed, and although R&D for NTDs has not even reached the so-called 10/90 gap [9], (meaning only 10% of available global R&D spending is committed for diseases that disproportionately affect 90% of the world living in low-income and middle-income countries), there is cautious optimism that such disparities could diminish in the coming decade. With a combination of funds from the group of eight (G8) nations, emerging economies (e.g., Brazil, India), multinational companies, and private philanthropic sources, together with a community of scientists, physicians, and other healthcare workers, global public health experts and policy makers committed to NTDs have begun to deliberate about how future resources and investments should be best allocated, particularly in terms of an appropriate balance between implementation and R&D. The leadership of key international agencies such as WHO, ministries of health in disease-endemic countries, and the communities themselves is key to achieve any ambitious strategy. With a global dialogue now underway, this is an appropriate time to present an eight-point manifesto (“a public declaration of motives and intentions by a government or by a person or group regarded as having some public importance” [2], [11]) for NTDs.

Bahaullah's Bishrt (Glad-Tidings): A Proclamation to Scholars and Statesmen

This article is a historical and textual study of the one of the major writings of Bahaullah: the Law-i Bishrt (Tablet of Glad-Tidings), revealed circa 1891, and advances new theories as to its provenance and purpose. The Tablet of Glad-Tidings is a selective compendium of Bahaullah's laws and principles, sequentially presented in a series of 15 Glad-Tidings. As the Arabic term, Bisharat, suggests, these Glad-Tidings were a public announcement of some of the essential teachings of the new Baha'i religion. The Glad-Tidings is the most extensive of several tablets by Bahaullah that present key teachings in a numbered structure. The Glad-Tidings may, in part, be regarded as serially articulated world reforms intermixed with religious reforms emanating from Bahaullah in his professed role as World Reformer. The Glad-Tidings also functioned analogously (albeit anachronistically) to a press release, serving not only as a public proclamation but to rectify the inaccuracies and gross misrepresentations that had previously circulated in print. Intended for widespread translation and publication, the Glad-Tidings was sent to scholars notably Russian orientalist, Baron Viktor Rosen (18491908) and Cambridge orientalist, Edward Granville Browne (18621926) and possibly pre-revolutionary Russian statesmen as well. As a Proclamatory Aqdas, the Tablet of Glad-Tidings was part of a much broader proclamation by Bahaullah, who proclaimed his mission to the political and religious leaders of the world. This study will argue that Bahaullah may have revealed the Tablet of Glad-Tidings for E. G. Browne or rather through him, since Bahaullah evidently intended that Browne should translate and publish the Bisharat in order to make the nature of the Baha'i teachings more widely known. This would then correct the distortions that had previously been published regarding Bahaullah's purpose and the nature of the religion that he founded, thereby promoting a public awareness that a new world religion was on the horizon of modernity.

Exchange Rate Proclamations and Inflation-Fighting Credibility

AbstractIf governments choose economic policies that often run counter to their public commitments, are those commitments meaningless? We argue that government proclamations can be critical in signaling economic policy intentions. We focus on the realm of exchange rate policy, in which countries frequently implement an exchange rate regime that differs from the officially declared regime. We argue that the official exchange rate regime is one of the most important signals of a government's economic policy preferences. When a government makes ade jurepublic commitment to a fixed exchange rate, it sends a signal to domestic and international markets of its strict monetary-policy priorities. In contrast, a government that proclaims a floating exchange rate signals a desire to retain discretion over monetary policy, even if it has implemented ade factofixed rate. We use data on 110 developed and developing countries from 1974 to 2004 to test two hypotheses: first, that governments that adoptde factofixed exchange rates will experience less inflation when they back up their actions with official declarations; and second, that governments that abide by their commitments—as demonstrated by a history of following through on their public declarations of a fixed exchange rate regime—will establish greater inflation-fighting credibility. Within developing countries, democratic institutions enhance this credibility. Results from fixed-effects econometric models provide strong support for our hypotheses.

Ethics and the ‘Human Terrain’

Against the backdrop of the current ethics controversy within the American Anthropological Association over the U.S. Army's Human Terrain Systems project, this article evaluates the moral obligations of scholars and academics asked by their governments to contribute their unique expertise toward the waging or ending of wars of which those scholars morally disapprove. Citing the examples of moral dilemmas occasioned by conflicts between duties of scholarship and duties of citizenship from past wars, together with examples like Doctors without Borders at present, I argue that it is not automatically, or in principle, morally objectionable for scholars and academics to provide assistance to their governments or militaries, even in what they regard as unjustifiable wars, nor would such assistance necessarily involve an inherent violation of professional principle (as the AAA Executive leadership has claimed in recent public proclamations). Rather, the permissibility, or in some cases even obligation, to assist one's government when requested depends critically upon the government's intention in lodging this request, as well as upon both what the scholar is being asked to do, and whether those specific activities would result in violations of accepted canons of professional practice. I illustrate the resulting decision dilemmas with cases of anthropologists or psychologists asked to assist in humanitarian military interventions or in mitigating or helping to end misguided or mistaken campaigns of counter-terrorism.

<em>No-Party Democracy? Ugandan Politics in Comparative Perspective</em>, Giovanni Carbone

Reviewed by: No-Party Democracy? Ugandan Politics in Comparative Perspective Ishmael I. Munene Carbone, Giovanni. 2008. No-Party Democracy? Ugandan Politics in Comparative Perspective. Boulder, Colo., Lynne Rienner. 259 pp. $58.50 A lot has been written about Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's mercurial transformation of Uganda, politically and economically. Giovanni Carbone's work is the first comprehensive empirical study of the Museveni's rise to power using his no-party democratic dispensation. Carbone, a political scientist, presents a refreshing account of Museveni's uncanny ability to reconfigure the country's sociopolitical institutions and overcome political resistance to create the longest-running stable presidency in East Africa. Chapters 1 and 2 of the book lay the framework for understanding no-party democracy. In the first chapter, Carbone shows the historical confluence between ethnicity and religion in creating and consolidating cleavages in Uganda's body politic, both before and after the achievement of independence. The attendant consequences, including political parochialism, exclusion from political power, demise of political parties, and weakening of political institutions, with the rise of a politicized military [End Page 91] and constitutional abrogation, are well delineated. Museveni's no-party democracy was aimed at mitigating these political weaknesses by infusing individual merit as the basis of political participation. Chapter 2 shows how Museveni crafted a no-party state amid two conflicting political tensions: those in favor of state reconciliations and those hostile to new institutions and organizations. To survive politically, Museveni embarked on an institution-building, institution-destroying strategy. He consolidated power through the military, reengineering the constitution to restrict political-party activities and enable his National Resistance Movement (NRM) to retain political power, and decentralizing local administration. How is it that a transitional experiment in no-party democracy lasted more than twenty years? Carbone interrogates, in Chapter 3, the political economy of regime support. Museveni has ensured local and international political legitimacy by manipulating the intersection between domestic politics and international forces, thereby ensuring regime survival. Rapid economic recovery, the emergence of a strong domestic constituency content with the status quo, a price paid by opposition-oriented northern and southeastern regions, and the benevolence of external multilateral and bilateral donors, provided Museveni with a broadly supported political apparatus to fortify his regime. The chapter's strength lies in demonstrating how markedly the Ugandan case differed from the situation in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which were under intense international and domestic pressure to institute multiparty political democracy. Chapter 4 is a study of Museveni's personality and how it meshed with the emerging politico-institutional development of a no-party state. His charisma, with his antipolitical rhetoric, won him appeal as a political outsider. Ironically, he has been part and parcel of the political apparatus in Uganda since the overthrow of the Idi Amin regime. Once in power, he used "ple-biscitarian appeals… to reject any institutional restraints on that power[,] thus contributing to a… deinstitutionalization of the state" (p. 77). Parliament, the judiciary, the civil service, the press, and the constitution—all of which could impose restraints—were attacked and emasculated. In chapter 5, subtitled "The Movement: A Partisan Organization in Disguise," Carbone delves into the murky waters of conceptualizing the NRM as a political system. As it turns out, contrary to the public proclamation of NRM as a mass movement open to all and sundry, constitutional vagueness allowed it to function as a full-fledged political organization, committed to the conquest and retention of political power. Its relationship with other political organizations has been anything but hegemonic—a role played by a political party in a multiparty democracy. The author offers contrasting cases from Tanzania, South Africa, Mexico, Malaysia, and Taiwan. As the NRM became a powerful political actor, older actors had to give way. The task of chapter 6 is to catalogue the political stratagems employed by Museveni to neutralize old parties, namely the Democratic Party (DP) and [End Page 92] the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC). Political tools at the disposal of these parties were integration, boycott, or violence, each with its strengths and risks. Carbone demonstrates how contextual variables like resource scarcity, individual and community benefits, divisions within the...

Daddy's Little Girls: On the Perils of Chastity Clubs, Purity Balls, and Ritualized Abstinence

Daddy's Little GirlsOn the Perils of Chastity Clubs, Purity Balls, and Ritualized Abstinence Breanne Fahs (bio) Introduction Recent years have seen a surge in public attention to the culture of chastity, including purity balls, chastity clubs, and other public declarations of abstinence and asexuality. Building on the welfare reform act of 1996—which introduced abstinence-only sexual education primarily as a social mechanism of control over lower-income women of color—the past eight years have ushered in a sharp increase in the visibility of and funding for abstinence-only programs targeted at young women across the spectrum of raced and classed backgrounds.1 As widespread efforts to block federal and state funding for comprehensive sexual education have succeeded, a rush of support for abstinence-only education has taken its place, despite lack of evidence for its effectiveness in delaying teenage sex, preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and promoting contraception usage. With this newfound interest in abstinence-only education, schools around the country have reported a dramatic increase in the emergence of groups on campus whose sole purpose is to support the "culture of purity." Such groups typically recruit members by appealing to their desire to please their parents, God, and their peers by resisting sexual temptation. Although girls from elementary through high school represent the majority of participants in chastity clubs, there is also a rise in the popularity of these clubs on university campuses, and Ivy League campuses in particular, in which women organize with the singular goal of protecting female purity. When speaking of the irony of sexual repression fostering sexual obsession, Foucault argued, "It is said that no society has been more prudish; never have the agencies of power taken such care to feign ignorance of the thing they prohibited, as if they were determined to have nothing to do with it. But it is the opposite that has become apparent, at least after a general review of the [End Page 116] facts: never have there existed more centers of power; never more attention manifested and verbalized; never more circular contacts and linkages; never more sites where the intensity of pleasures and the persistency of power catch hold, only to spread elsewhere."2 As such, our obsession with restraining sexual expression has led to the sex-obsessed culture of chastity, including purity balls, virginity clubs, and ritualized celibacy pledges. Although these organizations and clubs around the country are not exclusively for women, or exclusively designed by women, they overwhelmingly focus on the recruitment of young women by appealing to their collective desires to fight "the urge to merge." My central argument puts forth that this particular construction of sexuality results in a highly gendered social space that reinforces women's oppressed sociosexual status as the property of men, inadequately prepares them for negotiating the terms of their sexual health, and encourages them to seek out chastity clubs and social spaces that construct an identity based on enforced repression of sexual desire and expression. As such, issues of personal agency—for example, the extent to which women choose or, alternatively, are pushed into these social spaces—represent a crucial problem in the culture of chastity, one I will address here in detail. This article includes four sections that collectively examine the social spaces in which chastity is rewarded, nurtured, and publicly flaunted. As an outline of the major points covered in this piece, I first examine the social meaning of chastity rituals, including their effects on women's sexual socialization, ideologies of sexual violence, and their relationship to "losing" virginity. The central claim in this first section is that the gendered space of chastity clubs encourages women to adopt the worldview that women are distinctly and essentially different from men and that sexuality is itself dangerous, resulting in, for example, the construction of sexual violence as "giving in" to temptation. Second, I examine the perils and dangers of the culture of chastity, including a survey of recent studies that show increased sexual risk-taking among women who have joined chastity clubs, as well as an analysis of the relationship between traditionalist religious teachings and young women's sexual behavior. When only the most...

Sovereign Power, Human Rights and Hypocrisy Costs

When states espouse a pro-human-rights position but act inconsistently with that position - in other words, when they exercise sovereign power in ways inconsistent with their public proclamations about the value or propriety of compliance with human rights and international law - their actions are not costless. State compliance practice may result from instrumental or principled reasons. However, if the Schmittian theory of the state of exception applies in the modern liberal state, even those states that support human rights for principled reasons may find their commitment to the rule of law faltering. In this paper, I describe why states that may have principled (or endogenous and non-instrumental) reasons for supporting human rights may nonetheless violate those values. Using the Central Intelligence Agency's high value terrorist detainee program as a case study, I defend a theory of hypocrisy costs. These are the costs that accrue to a state when its philosophically or morally sincere public statements - specifically, its evangelism about a certain value, norm, principle, or law - are inconsistent with its practice. These can be further categorized as internal and external hypocrisy costs. Ultimately, hypocrisy costs make it harder for a state that has principled reasons for supporting human rights to further foreign policy goals that implicate moral positions.

Manual Labor in the Life and Thought of St. Basil the Great

Manual Labor in the Life and Thought of St. Basil the Great Andrew Dinan (bio) In keeping with the initiative of the Second Vatican Council, the late Pope John Paul II often looked back to the patristic period in order to develop and to articulate the teachings of the magisterium. The new catechism, for example, is replete with citations from the Fathers, as are several of the late pontiff’s encyclicals and other communications.1 Yet his social encyclicals—Laborem exercens (1981), Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987), Centesimus annus (1991)—contain few patristic references.2 In these works, in addition to frequent citations of Gaudium et spes and Scripture, John Paul consistently draws from, commemorates, and develops the teachings of the social encyclicals of his predecessors, notably Rerum novarum (1891), Quadragesimo anno (1931), Mater et magistra (1961), Pacem in terris (1963), and Populorum progressio (1967). But the relative infrequency of patristic citations in the social encyclicals—whether those of John Paul or indeed those of his predecessors—should not lead one to conclude that such teaching is a recent phenomenon.3 Rather, as John Paul acknowledges in Laborem exercens, there is a long-standing tradition of vibrant social thought within the Church, one that stretches well beyond St. Thomas Aquinas—who is cited in all but [End Page 133] one of the encyclicals just mentioned—to the very first centuries of Christianity, a time of extraordinary theological fecundity when Christians distinguished themselves by fervent charity and the development of a robust approach to social issues.4 This article explores one aspect of this social teaching: the role of manual labor in the life and thought of St. Basil the Great (329–79), the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, a staunch defender of Nicene orthodoxy, and a central figure in the development of monasticism.5 Far from being an insignificant issue, work lies “at the very centre of the ‘social question’” according to John Paul, and while labor certainly implies much more than working with one’s hands, manual labor might justifiably be considered the primary form of work, and it has special significance in the growth of Christianity.6 Furthermore, during the pontificate of a pope whose name evokes the famous imperative ora et labora, it is especially appropriate to take up this subject. If Pope Benedict XVI’s choice of a name reflects, at least in part, a desire to look to the approach of Benedictine monasticism in early sixth-century southern Italy as an inspiration for missionary activity and for the preservation and revitalization of Western culture, it is worthwhile pondering anew the role of manual labor in human life and society. I have chosen to focus on Basil for several reasons. It is significant that he is one of the few patristic authors mentioned in the social encyclicals of John Paul.7 This is not surprising, for Basil’s writings reveal how deeply he had reflected on social questions in general and in particular on the role of labor within the life of committed Christians. His counsels to ascetic communities, which influenced St. Benedict, comprise one of the most extended early discussions of the role of manual labor in Christian life, and they contain fundamental principles that are relevant to recent papal teaching.8 Moreover, Basil’s counsels regarding labor have proved useful not only to scholars who have sought to highlight the ways in which Christianity led to a revision of Greco-Roman social and ethical norms,9 but also to those who have probed the extent to which the economic [End Page 134] organization of early medieval monasteries was the impetus for the complex economies and technological innovations that marked the early modern period.10 But easily overlooked is the pivotal role of manual labor in Basil’s own conversion. In fact, if we are to believe the account of his brother Gregory, such labor was of fundamental importance for the life of asceticism adopted by Basil and several other members of his family. I suggest that Basil’s later teachings on labor should not be seen as the distant, patronizing approbation of an intellectual. The consistency between Basil’s personal life and his public proclamation...

Save the Videogame! The National Videogame Archive: Preservation, Supersession and Obsolescence

Save the Videogame! The National Videogame Archive: Preservation, Supersession and Obsolescence

Inside Out: Jane Eyre on the Victorian Stage

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is now valued as a subtle retrospective narrative of its heroine's inner life, but its melodramatic elements proved enticing for the Victorian popular stage. This paper describes the eight stage versions of Jane Eyre which appeared on the British and American stage between 1848 and 1882, and argues that the conventions of stage melodrama turn Jane's story 'inside out', translating it from inward analysis to soliloquy and dialogue, from a private 'autobiography' shared with the discerning reader to a public declaration of grievance delivered in a voice, as Dickens put it, 'audible half a mile off'.

Accreditation of (chemical) measurement laboratories is also about verifying the implementation of metrological principles in (chemical) measurement

Accreditation, according to its self-declared principles is ‘‘athird party attestation related to a conformity assessmentbody conveying formal demonstration of its competence tocarry out specific conformity assessment tasks’’ [1, 2]. Aprevious definition described it—somewhat shorter andclearer—as ‘‘… formal recognition of competence to carryout specific tasks…’’.It would appear logical that this should be done against(the latest) internationally agreed principles and conceptsabout ‘measurement’.After 10 years of difficult work on the 3rd edition of theInternational Vocabulary of Metrology—basic and gen-eral concepts and associated terms (VIM) 3rd edition,JCGM 200:2008 (‘‘VIM3’’), we now have a set of suchconcepts since 2008-06-14 available for free from thepublicly accessible website of the BIPM [3], the executiveBureau of the CGPM and CIPM, the world’s top author-ities in matters of measurement units. It is the best anduniquely consistent set of concepts governing ‘measure-ment’ i.e. ‘metrology’. Patronizing the VIM, are BIPM(the International Bureau of Weights and Measures inParis-Se`vres), IEC (the International ElectrotechnicalCommission), IFCC (the International Federation ofClinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine), ILAC (theInternational Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation), ISO(the International Organisation for Standardization),IUPAC (the International Union for Pure and AppliedChemistry), IUPAP (the International Union for Pure andApplied Physics, OIML (the International Organisationfor Legal Metrology).It was voted into existence unanimously by these or-ganisations through a formal international voting procedure(some of them even after a formal internal voting proce-dure such as is the case for ISO), after more than 700comments had been received and been replied to. Itwould also follow that this stringent approval and votingmechanism, would give the Vocabulary the highest inter-continental, rather than just the international authority itneeds—and deserves-. That entails that it would also offerthe best guarantee for the fulfillment of the very useful targettask formulated by ILAC: ‘‘Tested once, recognized andaccepted everywhere’’ [4].It would follow that the, so far best, internationallyrecognized principles for good measurement, leading tomore ‘competence in measurement’ almost by definition,have been assembled and formulated in this ‘‘Vocabulary’’.It would also follow naturally that being accredited, i.e.verified for achieved ‘competence in measurement’, iswhat measurement laboratories would be entitled to expectfrom accreditation.One would expect that the acceptance and implemen-tation of this consistent set of basic and general concepts asapproved and unanimously agreed by a vote of a set oforganizations which included ILAC, would be the subjectof a public declaration of the accreditation bodies statingthat ‘‘henceforth, accreditation bodies will take the VIM asone of the guides for their accreditation activity in measure-ment’’.Thusimplementationoftheprinciplesandconceptsofthis guide would become common and intercontinentallyapplied, putting the conclusion of ‘competence in measure-ment’ on a common basis for all laboratories submitting toaccreditation.

‘There is Peace Here’

This article describes the relations between Hindus and Muslims in a small town in central Gujarat following the massive violence against the Muslim minority community throughout many parts of the state between February and May 2002. While the ‘communal divide’ has become more pronounced following the 2002 attacks in many parts of the state as well as in the town in which the research was conducted, concerted efforts are made by members of both communities as a means of re-imposing a sense of ‘everyday peace’. As such, normative discourses presenting the 2002 violence as an aberration with respect to the state of local communal relations in the town represent a collective strategy of containing the tension and mutual suspicion which remain constant undercurrents in daily life. This article, moreover, explores the ongoing caste– and class-based social networks and interactions underlying public declarations of ‘everyday peace’ which have played a central role in, if not averting violence altogether, discouraging the development of further communal segregation and division in the aftermath of the 2002 attacks in the town.