Specific Historical Time Research Articles

Michael Banton's critique of John Rex's ‘mistakes’

This paper asserts that academics, unless they work for or in malign regimes, do not make ‘mistakes’, but work within their own historical period using their knowledge of past thinking. Thus, debates on race, ethnicity, race relations and so on, and the plethora of competing definitions and approaches, take place within specific historical times. The paper notes that for John Rex, racism was always the problem, to be defined and explained. It reviews the research carried out in Handsworth, Birmingham 1974–78, Rex's use of classical social theorists, and it refutes Banton's assertion that Rex did not engage with his critics. It concludes that Rex may well have been prophet in foreseeing the permanence of issues of race, ethnicity, multiculturalism, migration, integration, citizenship and a ‘war on terror’ in a global era.

Basic Income: An Open Challenge between Labour Transformation and Welfare Shrinkage

1. Basic Income: what are we talking about?The idea of Basic Income grant to provide for fundamental life needs dates back long time in the history of the broader ius existentiae debate (Bronzini, 2011). Basic Income sits in the debate concerning the historical issue of wealth redistribution, rather in the discussion about the allocation of that amount of affluence generated by determined social order, in specific historical time. Indeed, we will see how Basic Income focuses directly on the relationship between social and productive organization, which is at the heart of the capitalist contemporary mainstream development model (Gorz, 2009).A first attempt to summarize this historical debate and to equip research of commonly shared definition of Basic Income has been led by the philosopher Philippe Van Parijs and the political scientist Yannick Vanderborght. In their book, L'Allocation Universelle, they not only rebuild thoroughly genesis of the principle of ius ad vitam, but they also refine what is today the most notorious explanation of Basic Income: a revenue paid individually by political community to all its members, without means test and working requirements (Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2005, trad. it. 2006:5). However, despite this first conceptual framing, which at first glance appears to undermine the social stratification basis in terms of material and symbolic rewards, it is still missing deeper level of specification to clarify the following issues: How much does Basic Income amount to? Who are the exact targets? Is it distributive or re-distributive measure? The extraordinary multitude of approaches and methods employed throughout time to identify the mechanisms of wealth creation have led to great confusion in the definition of what Basic Income is and how it should work.To this day, there has been partial attempt to shed light on the fragmented terminology in the final report of the Parlamentare per l'analisi delle compatibilita macroeconomiche della spesa sociale (so called Commissione Onofri, Roma, 1997)1. Here, the Italian sociologists Chiara Saraceno and Maurizio Ferrera have tried to outline some pathways, addressed to the national Italian government, that will provide for direct support to individual income. In spite of that, together with Greece, Italy is still today the only European country lacking national-net of income support. Saraceno and Ferrera have sketched out distinction among some of the most employed terms for individual cash transfers: Basic Income, Citizenship Income, Guaranteed Minimum income, Insertion Income and Last Resort income. However, we are still lacking careful taxonomy of the several measures calling for cash transfer and of the resulting levels of social protection.The whole redistributive debate orbits around two main phenomenological axes: the crisis of the fordist labour and the crisis of the related welfare system (Sennet 2006, Rifkin 2002, Fraser-Honnet 2003, Paci 2007, De Masi 1999, Mantegna-Tiddi 1997). Therefore, we must interpose the research on the Basic Income idea between the passing of the wage society and the overcoming of the charitable state (Accornero 1997, Paci 2007, Fumagalli, 1997b). For this reason, in this review I will go over the main literature dealing with the idea of Basic Income. First, I will try to outline brief historical bibliography about the issue of ius existentiae. Secondly, I will provide an empirical picture of the experiences of such monetary transfer. Thirdly, I will depict general map of the socio-economic approaches to Basic Income in the contemporary redistributive debate. In conclusion, I will attempt to point out possible research direction.2. The historical background2.1 The Humanist rootsThe idea of right to the essential means for life is certainly not new (Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2005, trad. it. 2006). During the Renaissance thinkers pointed economic and political elites towards the problem of the poor and indigents, extracting it away from the usual church protective layer. …

Sfera pubblica, pluralismo e media: tre modelli

In this essay it is argued that the public sphere, as a social reality, is rooted in a specific historical time and can assume several shapes. Authors distinguish three main patterns: the liberal, the democratic, and the communitarian. These three perspectives look at the public sphere in different ways and still remain the main frameworks to understand the mediated public sphere. The essay outlines the need of drawing suggestions from all three traditions in order to understand which could be the role of media in a pluralistic public sphere.

The Government of War

I write this piece as Iraq, following Syria, descends into a civil war that is undermining the post–World War I state system and reconfiguring regional and transnational networks of mobilization and instrumentalizations of violence and identity formation. That the Middle East has come to this moment is not an inevitable product of the artificiality of national borders and the precariousness of the state system. It is important to avoid this linear narrative of inevitability, with its attendant formulations of the Middle East as a repository of a large number of absences, and instead to locate the current wars in a specific historical time: the late and post–Cold War eras, marked by the agendas of the Washington Consensus and the globalization of neoliberal discourses; the privatization of the developmental and welfare state; the institutional devolution and multiplication of security services; and the entrenchment of new forms of colonial violence and rule in Israel and Palestine and on a global scale. The conveners of this roundtable have asked us to reflect on the technopolitics of war in the context of this particular moment and in light of the pervasiveness of new governmentalities of war. What I will do in this short piece is reflect on the heuristic and methodological possibilities of the study of war as a form of governance, or what I call the “government of war,” in light of my own research and writing on Iraq.

Differentiating Ideals versus Practices in the Discussion of Confucian Influences on Chinese Parent–Child Relationships

The primary purpose of this essay is to call for a renewed understanding of Confucianism in the discussion of Chinese parent-child relationships. Citing historical evidence, we present the evolution of Confucianism as a school of thought in China. In addition, we present research on Chinese parent–child relationships, which to a varying degree are said to be associated with Confucian influences, in contemporary Chinese communities. By comparing Confucian ideals versus practices in the name of Confucianism, we conclude that Confucianism has been through transformations throughout history and its influences on Chinese parent–child relationships are intertwined with practical needs of the specific historical time and social context. In addition, we suggest focusing on social class variability in the study of Confucian influences represented in parent–child relationships. To conclude, it is important to study the actual beliefs and practices of families, taking into consideration to specific historical time, social contexts, as well as individual circumstances and characteristics of participants.

Éthique et recommandations de bonne pratique : à propos du dépistage précoce de la surdité et de l’accompagnement de l’enfant et de sa famille

A national program for newborn hearing screening is gradually spreading throughout France, coming at a specific historical time: French sign language was recognized as a French language only in 2005, after almost a century of this language being banned in French educational institutions. Therefore, social views on deafness vary considerably depending on hearing status--deaf or hearing--and on the language used: spoken language, sign language, or bilingual. To help professionals take these different perspectives into account, the ethical questions raised during the French Authority for Health clinical practice guidelines development on deaf child care were retrospectively analyzed based on the Childress and Beauchamp principles: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. This analysis showed that the steps followed during the guideline development were very similar to those devised by J.M. Gomas's model for ethical decision making and were respectful of R. Ogien's minimal ethics principles: equal consideration for everyone, neutrality toward conceptions of what is good for oneself, and interventions limited to cases of obvious harm caused to others.

Assessing the Performance of a Northern Gulf of Mexico Tidal Model Using Satellite Imagery

Tidal harmonic analysis simulations along with simulations spanning four specific historical time periods in 2003 and 2004 were conducted to test the performance of a northern Gulf of Mexico tidal model. A recently developed method for detecting inundated areas based on integrated remotely sensed data (i.e., Radarsat-1, aerial imagery, LiDAR, Landsat 7 ETM+) was applied to assess the performance of the tidal model. The analysis demonstrates the applicability of the method and its agreement with traditional performance assessment techniques such as harmonic resynthesis and water level time series analysis. Based on the flooded/non-flooded coastal areas estimated by the integrated remotely sensed data, the model is able to adequately reproduce the extent of inundation within four sample areas from the coast along the Florida panhandle, correctly identifying areas as wet or dry over 85% of the time. Comparisons of the tidal model inundation to synoptic (point-in-time) inundation areas generated from the remotely sensed data generally agree with the results of the traditional performance assessment techniques. Moreover, this approach is able to illustrate the spatial distribution of model inundation accuracy allowing for targeted refinement of model parameters.

INFORMATION AND FINANCE CAPITAL

This article examines the political economy of information in relation to finance capital from the vantage points of commodity, spatiality, and temporality by using Reuters as an illustrative case. The use and exchange values of financial information are examined in productive capital; and the fixed value of financial information as capital goods in finance capital is assessed. The value of financial information is argued to be both time and space dependent. The circulation of financial information constitutes a specific historical time in capitalism, which David Harvey characterized as ‘time–space compression’. Financial information is integral to both spatial fixes and temporal fixes, which have been used to solve the problem of surplus over-accumulation.

Søren Frank, Migration and Literature: Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, and Jan KjærstadMigration and Literature: Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, and Jan Kjærstad. Søren Frank. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. ix+235.

<i>Søren Frank</i>, Migration and Literature: Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, and Jan Kjærstad<i>Migration and Literature: Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, and Jan Kjærstad</i>. Søren Frank. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. ix+235.

DETERMINISMOS CULTURAIS FRENTE À LUDICIDADE NA INFÂNCIA: CONCEITOS E CONCEPÇÕES PARADIGMÁTICAS

Esta escrita contempla a temática da cultura instituída na sociedade e o espaço da infância ao longo dos tempos, discutindo a vivência das atividades lúdicas na primeira infância. Dessa forma, proporciona uma reflexão frente à percepção e à vivência da infância, estabelecida pela sociedade em cada tempo histórico. Utilizam-se autores como: Áries (1986) e Kramer; Leite (1998) para discutir a infância; Château (1987), Brougère (1995), Nogueira (1998), Santos (2000) e Negrini (2000) para a abordagem dos aspectos da ludicidade e sua importância ao desenvolvimento infantil; bem como Morin (1991), Pérez Gómez (2001), Neves (2002) e Santos (2002) a fim de entender os determinismos culturais na sociedade contemporânea, abordando aspectos da cultura escolar de hoje. Busca-se uma compreensão histórica de como a ludicidade está sendo vivenciada nos espaços-tempos infantis e, mais especificamente, na escola. Assim, acredita-se nas práticas lúdicas como atividades relevantes e, mesmo necessárias, para um bom desenvolvimento infantil, salientando que estas devem estar presentes nas práticas educativas em tempos de avanços econômicos, tecnológicos e industriais.

Why Do We Need to Create a Moral Image of the World?

This article deals with our constructed notions of evil and how an historical appraisal takes shape after specific stories and narratives become important objects of public deliberation, historical criticism, and disclosive views of what constitutes the moral harms of human cruelty. I analyze the historical representations of the meaning of evil in specific historical times through narratives that have made important contributions to our historical understanding of them. I also propose that our learning from them is the result of public debates, of memory wars, and of important interventions from public intellectuals, writers, historians and witnesses. Therefore, deliberating about human cruelty is always a reconstructive effort to understand and judge what has happened and why it could have been prevented. The term evil is a moral filter that allows us to situate the kind of moral harm that needs a specific lens of moral understanding and a reconfiguration of actions that tie perpetrators to sufferers. Moral harms are better ways to describe the kind of actions that we call evil. The article highlights the relevance of language, disclosive views, criticism, public debate and the ways in which societies cope with their past in order to envision a different future.

The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe by Steven F. Kruger

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Romance as History, means that some texts, most notably the Bridlington Prophecy, do not receive as clear an analysis as they may have otherwise. I trust, however, that this will be rectified in that project, and I particularly look forward to the promised expansion of the discussion of the relationship between romance and historiographic discourses. A short review, however, cannot do justice to the depth of Ingledew’s scholarship . His careful reading will enrich our understanding of the penitential and liturgical aspects of the poem and renew debate about its historical context and references. Richard J. Moll University of Western Ontario Steven F. Kruger. The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Pp. xxx, 320. $26.00 paper, $78.00 cloth. Steven Kruger has been writing important and innovative articles on the topic of representations of Jews in the Middle Ages for over a decade now. This background shows in the breadth and erudition of this book, which is not simply a reprinting of earlier articles, but a significant and thoughtful expansion of this earlier work. The study draws upon an unusually wide range of sources and locations and thereby fulfills its goal of presenting changes and continuities over time and geographical region. Kruger opens with a reading of a visual representation of ‘‘The Living Cross,’’ engaging questions of gender as well as religious difference. This is a real strength of the book; although the title focus is on Jews, Kruger never loses sight of the intersection of this category not only with gender but also with sexuality and with other forms of religious difference, including representations of Islam and of heresy. This opening reading is later echoed by an equally compelling reading of Chagall’s White Crucifixion . Kruger’s readings maintain a firm basis in specific historical times and settings, but he also never loses sight of the relevance of his readings to contemporary issues and debates. The book’s title concept, ‘‘spectrality,’’ is a very effective tool for understanding what Kruger rightly terms the ‘‘strong ambivalence’’ in PAGE 502 502 ................. 16596$ CH13 11-01-10 14:08:29 PS REVIEWS medieval Christian representations of and treatment of Jews and Judaism (p. 5). Kruger’s theoretical frame draws primarily on Derrida’s Specters of Marx, but it is also influenced by work on sexuality (Terry Castle) and race (Kathleen Brogan). Kruger begins by examining the importance of temporality to Christian formulations of the role of Jews and Judaism; the notion of supersession posits that Judaism is the Old Law, but this ancestor cannot be completely discarded, since it is upon this Jewish foundation that Christianity’s claims to truth lie. In order to deal with this paradox, Kruger argues, Christianity attempts to ‘‘conjure’’ away the Jewish past, but this very conjuring perpetuates a haunting Jewish presence. As Kruger observes, ‘‘In being summoned up for burial, Jewish corporeality is also paradoxically preserved and invested with a transgressive, polluting power’’ (p. 13). In describing this phenomenon of an ‘‘absent presence,’’ Kruger takes care not to erase actual Jews from his argument. The book continually attempts to take into the account the impact of their spectral representational role on actual Jews, particularly through focusing on the debate genre and the question of conversion, which, as Kruger shows, are often interrelated historically and textually. Chapter 2 focuses on what Kruger calls the ‘‘long twelfth century,’’ a period marked by increased and significant cultural and intellectual exchange between Christians and Jews as well as a significant negative shift in the nature, tone, and magnitude of polemic against Jews and Judaism. Focusing on the writings of Guibert de Nogent, Kruger shows the ways in which the new formulations of Christian identity developed in the ‘‘twelfth-century Renaissance’’ were dependent on conceptions of Jews and particularly of Jewish bodies as a site through and against which Christian identity was defined. Kruger also demonstrates how the figure of the Muslim was seen as a different, but related, form of threat and reads Guibert against contemporary Jewish writings, specifically responses to the pogroms of the first Crusade, which constructed models of martyrdom in response to...

Perpetuum Mobile: The Literary Travels of Claude Michel Cluny

Poet, essayist, novelist, art and literary critic, editor, historian, lucid chronicler of the second half of the twentieth century Claude Michel Cluny has produced a substantial and multifaceted body of work. For his seventyfifth birthday in June 2005, the Sorbonne's Center of Research in Comparative Literature is presenting him a Festschrift.1 This tribute is a long overdue celebration of one of France's most accomplished literary personalities. Drawing from a rich life experience, Cluny employs a wide variety of writing genres, from irregular to regular verses, from prose poems to novels-in-stories, from short stories to essays and historical studies. Early on, he thought of becoming a painter. His knowledge of art and artistic techniques are reflected in the lavish visual elements in his works, from painting with words and frequent references to the visual arts to the use of cinematographic techniques. Yet he is mostly defined by his travels: life travels, knowledge travels, and writing travels. Uniting life and art and exploring their possibilities to the fullest, he creates a new kind of literary travel altogether. Le Silence de Delphes, the first volume of Cluny 's literary journal, which covers the years 1948-62, reveals his anguish at not having found his literary voice. When he published Un jeune homme de Venise, his second novel, at age thirty-six, he was still doubting that he would become a writer. Still, the novel is a surprisingly mature work that announces many of his major themes and methods. The center of the novel is a brief event, a meeting between friends whom fate will soon separate. The action takes place within a fortnight, a knot with loose ends that unravel into the distance as the friends will be separated by death. Their materialistic detachment echoes the desire for a total gift of self, even to death, and a poignant feeling of and longing toward youth and innocence. Wishing to erase the novelist's presence, Cluny plays with linear time in a method reminiscent of the cinematographic techniques of fadeout and flashbacks. In so doing, he writes what we would call today a novel-in-stories, forcing the reader to add context and to construct the novel. Wishing to further distance the novel from its concrete anchors, Cluny blurs the distance between reality and confabulation by stating in the novel's afterword that the action's decor, eighteenth-century Venice, is construed so as to make impossible the placement of the action in a specific historical time. He also skillfully plays with the issue of the writer's absence /presence, stating (still in the novel's afterword) that he wants to erase all trace of the In addition to his work as a poet, novelist, and essayist, Claude Michel Cluny has written short stories, film criticism, and historical studies. His freestyle analysis of the theme of the raven in Poe, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Pessoa is woven with a commentary on the paintings of Julio Pomar. As a film critic, he co-edited Les Dossiers du cinema (1971-75) with JeanLouis Bory and the Dictionnaire du cinema (1986, 1992) with Jean-Loup Passek and Michel Ciment. He has also written film, art, and literature reviews and travel writing for the magazines Cinema, Les Lettres Frangaises, Combat, Le Nouvel Observateur, Lire, Grands Reportages, and L'Express. Cluny's life has been busy in other ways. He is currently serving on the juries of the Grand Prix de Poesie Roger Kowalski de la Ville de Lyon and the Pr x Max Jacob, and at Les Editions de La Difference, his primary publisher, he founded and directed the poetry collection Orphee (220 titles published between 1989 and 1997). In 1986 h received the Pr x Guillaume-Apollinaire for the poetic volume Asymetries. In 1989, as the poetic volumes Poemes du fond de Vozil and Odes profanes were published, Cluny received the Grand Prix e Poesie Franchise. In 1991 his activities as editor of the Orphee collection were crowned by the Prix Diderot-Universalis; in 2002 the Prix Renaudot-Essai crowned the first of his literary journals, Le Silence de Delphes, 1948-1962. Cluny is still very active. Two subsequent volumes of his journals have appeared, Annees de sable, 1963-1967 (2003) and Impostures, 1968-1973 (2004), which constitute the first thr e volumes of a collection entitled L' In-

Projective Framing, Cultural Opportunity Milieu, and the Rastafari

Current social movement literature is replete with considerations of the ideational dimensions of collective actions. The roles of collective action frames in the ebb and flow of social movements are rightly accented. However, the trend suffers from the flaw of construing frames as though they are frozen in specific historical spaces and times. The continuity-discontinuity dynamics that exist between “old” and “emergent” collective action frames is given scant attention. This study, accordingly, examines the link that exists between what could be referred to as “cultural opportunity milieu” and the Rastafari, an internationally recognized movement that originated in the 1930s in Jamaica. Because the movement culture of the Rastafari is multi-layered, the study focuses on its projective framing, an interpretative contrivance of articulating an idealized community. Under the themes of religious, cultural, and intellectual sources, the relationships between the projective frames of slaves in resistance, the Ethiopianist movement, and the movement paradigm of Marcus Garvey, on the one hand, and the Rastafarian projective frame, on the other, are examined in some detail. Clearly, the Rastafarian projective frame is closely knit with the “old” frames preceding the movement. Yet, movement participants have shown their ingenuity by pronouncing a projective frame that in many ways has transcended previous ones. Primary and secondary sources that deal with the multi-dimensional facets of the movement culture of the Rastafari are the basis of this study.

Life Course, Households and Institutions: Brazil and Mexico

This paper analyzes how increases in life expectancy have, in several ways, reorganized the individual life-course during the last century ( 1900-1990) in Brazil and Mexico. In each society, couple and family relationships, domestic positions, household’s composition and structure, domestic resources and institutional mediations are in interplay with survival and generational patterns. A higher life expectancy extends the duration of the individual trajectories, successive cohorts of men and women survive longer, different generations survive together, differences by gender emerge, and domestic relationships conform a mix of types of households. The household structure has changed while people survive until advanced ages, their adult children leave the parents’ household and older people live alone as a couple and then, after the death of one of the partners, they live as a widow or widower. On the other hand, socioeconomic and institutional conditions are different in each society, drafting specific settings that can promote or limit the household members’ opportunities. Individuals of different cohorts reproduce norms and resources according to different phases of the demographic transition and institutional properties in specific historical time.

Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (review)

Reviewed by: Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class Ginger S. Frost (bio) Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class, by Leonore Davidoff; pp. x + 276. New York: Routledge, 1995, $17.95, £13.95. Worlds Between is a collection of essays by noted British social historian Leonore Davidoff. The collection ranges from her groundbreaking work from the mid-seventies, such as her study of domestic service, to her well-known work with Catherine Hall on the Victorian middle-class family in the mid-eighties, to more recent work on sibling relationships and the public/private dichotomy. Davidoff, in her Introduction, explains the connection between the articles by pointing out that all the topics “come from the margins,” and “are often seen as peripheral to historical and sociological interests” (1). Those categories are so broad, however, that it is probably better to see the book as a capsule picture of Davidoff’s evolution as an historian of gender. In some ways, this book is dissatisfying. Almost none of the articles are original to the collection. Most have been published and even reprinted before; the one exception is the seventh article, on siblings (the last article, too, is a much expanded version of a previously published piece). Since these articles are very well known and, in fact, have been most influential in family history, why republish them here, sometimes for the third time? After all, they have hardly been buried in obscure journals or overlooked by other historians. In addition, Davidoff has included only a short Introduction and no conclusion; [End Page 332] thus, she has made only a superficial effort to connect the works with overarching themes or to trace the trajectory of her thought. She does not even include an index to make it easier for the reader to do so. Even more disappointing, she decided not to try to update most of the articles, but to leave them as they first appeared. Though understandable, this decision means that she missed the opportunity to rethink some of her most interesting ideas in the light of new methodologies and theoretical constructs. And yet, given all that, the collection remains absorbing. Rereading Davidoff’s work means rediscovering her skill and intelligence as a researcher, thinker, and writer, and remembering her enormous impact. Indeed, the very reason that the articles do not seem fresh is that her ideas are so embedded in modern British family history. Though her influence is wide-ranging, this book especially highlights five of its trajectories. First, in all her work, implicitly or explicitly, Davidoff questions historical categories, particularly the division between public and private. Servants, for instance, were paid employees, yet also “part of the family”; landladies ran businesses, but also acted as substitute wives; housework was both a paid occupation and a “natural” aspect of femininity. In her later work, Davidoff has concentrated more and more on examining the very categories as historical entities—how they came into being and how they have influenced historians. She concludes that often “it is classification systems themselves” (11) which determine what will be studied, and so it is all the more important for historians to understand how the systems developed. Second, Davidoff has always made excellent use of a wide range of disciplines, including feminist theory, sociology, and anthropology. Yet she grounds these in a specific historical time. As she insists, “The effort to conceive gender—or class or race—as an abstract logical grid without a notion of historical process is doomed for the categories are only worked out during that process and are emergent in social practices” (10, all emphases as in original). A third major theme of the collection lies in Davidoff’s insistence that the key period in gender and class formation was the “long nineteenth century” between 1780 and 1914. Though she recognizes that many of the ideas and economic forces of the nineteenth century had roots in the early modern period, she asserts that the crucial moment of class and gender formation was the age of industrialism. This period saw the hardening of gender ideology, the “rationalization” of housework, the problematic (and sometimes imaginary) separation of home from work and private from...

Sampling Errors for Water Resources Design: The Need for Improved Hydrometry in Developing Countries

In recent years, there has been a marked decline in the amount of hydrological data being collected in many parts of the developing world. This paper reviews some of the arguments in favour of the continued collection of hydrological data. The technical case is based on the need for long record lengths in order to obtain a reasonable estimate for the mean and variability of river flows. Estimates are presented for the dependence of the standard error on record length for the case of the main sample statistics, for reservoir design and for flood estimation. Typical values are presented both in general terms and for some specific historical time series. The current status of hydrological data collection in Africa is then contrasted with the situation in Europe before concluding with the results of several case studies of schemes in Africa and Asia whose operational performance has been affected due to insufficient hydrological data.

THE «INVENTION» OF AMERICA: ENCOUNTER SETTINGS ON THE LATIN AMERICAN LYRIC STAGE

The basis for interpretation of Latin American settings of encounter sub jects for the lyric stage must differ fundamentally from interpretations of European settings, with the possible exception of Spain and Portu gal, which were culturally engaged in the Conquest. For Latin America, the Conquest remains an event of apocalyptic proportions that changed the core of its historical being. I could not possibly approach my sub ject by analyzing libretti from the standpoint of dramaturgical conven tion (as J?rgen Maehder has brilliantly done for Italian, French, and German settings).1 Where I to do so, I would be placing the Latin Ame rican settings as brands of European exoticism, thereby dismissing their cultural significance. Within European exoticism, the choice of exotic subjects remains a matter of cultural indifference, swapping heroes on the lyric stage as if they were cardboard pieces on a chessboard. From Maehder's study of European settings, and up to 1900, one may con clude that the intensification of ?otherness? as dramatic device may have dictated the choice of American subjects. For Latin American set tings, an interpretation requires the framework of history and an under standing of how Europe conjured up its image of America; how ?for Eu rope? America became a fictive place; and what were the consequences of this fiction for the inner cultural dynamics within America, as it be came itself. In the myth-making scheme of history, reenactments of the Conquest in Latin America become part of the process of understand ing, parts of an inevitable cultural catharsis at specific historical times and places ? the late 18th and 19th centuries in Mexico and Peru ?

Przemiana – społeczna i osobista. „Chłop polski” jako przyczynek do analizy współczesnych przemian w szkolnictwie wyższym na świecie

The present work represents an extrapolation of Wiliam I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s study, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, on behalf of the development of sociological theory. The subject consists of careers and institutions in higher education. The curriculum vitae serves as the novel human document by which to investigate both social and personal change. Academic careers are studied by virtue of their objective and subjective dimensions. Objectively, the institution of education is revealed for the shifting expectations that govern work in academia in specific historical times (indicated by the cohort in which academics earned their Ph.D.s) and in specific socially bound places (indicated by the type of university in which academics work). Major social change in education likely spells personal change for the way in which people subjectively experience the contemporary academic career. The data come from U.S.-based academics; parallel transformational changes are observable globally. The global change discussed in the work centers on diffusion and institutionalization of the research role. The sources and consequences of this change are problematic. Akin to Thomas and Znaniecki’s larger analytic aims, patterns of change are used inductively to formulate theory: the paper culminates by postulating a theory of increasing tendencies in the way knowledge is produced in higher education institutions throughout the world.