Splendid Isolation Research Articles

Small Steps: Ending Trade's Splendid Isolation from Human Rights

With their unremitting and inevitable intersections, trade and human rights would seem ideal candidates for natural alliance to accomplish their complementary goals. Trade's guarantees of collective freedom, non-discrimination, property rights, and the rule of law protect the corresponding human rights to individual liberty, protection from discrimination, the right to private property, and guaranteed access to the judicial system. Tragically, the reality has seen neither alliance nor coordination. Often, even simple recognition of the other policy is lacking.Three propositions portend for us the way to end trade's splendid isolation from human rights. First, global trade rules contain an abundance of effective but unexplored safe harbors to shelter human rights measures from sanctions for violation of trade's non-discrimination and other defining pillars. Second, the unheralded indirect effects of both the World Trade Organization (WTO) and regional trade free agreements (FTAs) in forcing governments to act with greater transparency and accountability have resulted in substantial advancement of human rights compliance. Finally, we can no longer seriously question that governments have an obligation to include in trade agreements enforceable provisions that ensure compliance by signatories with fundamental human rights.At GATT's creation in 1947, negotiators could be forgiven the failure to appreciate trade's inevitable effects on human rights. Such ignorance no longer can be countenanced in the crafting of trade treaties that have transformed the world over the past 30 years into an unstoppable engine of economic growth with near fathomless power to change the standard of living of every global citizen. Each new treaty is not only born into the corpus of existing public international law, including human rights treaties and custom, but each new trade negotiation must accept the facts that half a century of ever-broader trade rules have revealed. Trade's inexorable growth has, as economists predicted, created winners and losers. Trade's winners mostly have been transnational corporations able to reduce costs by seeking out countries with a comparative advantage in their products, usually without concern either for the human lives or the natural resources abused in that search. Trade's biggest losers have been the human rights of workers, of environmental and thus human health, of women, of indigenous populations, of the poor, of development and developing countries generally.Trade agreements must assume some responsibility to deliver the human rights promised by a dozen U.N. treaties. For the same reasons that a developing country cannot today justify the worst forms of child labor by citing to similar U.S. and European abuses during industrialization of those countries in the 19th century, trade negotiators cannot fail to use the unique power of globalization to eliminate poverty, to make a reality of non-discrimination, to protect the traditional knowledge of indigenous populations, to ensure the raising of women out of second-class status, to protect core labor rights. Trade's right to regulate for human rights purposes must become trade's obligation to regulate consistently with human rights law.

Physiological considerations about a statement by Gaius Petronius

In my inauguration speech on November 8, 1989 as Rector of the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz (1) I have warned not to split off the Medical Faculty as a separate Medical University "... since such a separation of a part of a University corresponds to an amputation." In spite of this and of other warnings the decision was made by a federal law to permit this separation. The irrevocable and definite step to execute the separation was done by a vote of the Medical Faculty in Graz. The logical consequence is now the development of isolationism, which will lead to a narrowness of Medicine in a kind of "Splendid Isolation." The observation of systems like a University shows, that in such a community time, time course and periods play an important role. It seems interesting to discuss the time course of the development of Universities from the first foundations in Europe and to analyze the effect of sudden changes produced by external influences. In particular the new laws, which came into effect in the last decades and years and changed the function of the Universities markedly, are of interest. From a discussion of the development of Universities until recent events one can conclude, that the splitting of each of the three Austrian Universities, which included Medical Faculties, into a new Medical University and a Rest University will lead to the growth of two "daughter cells" with each growing to a larger size than the former whole University. Another conclusion indicates that even in simpler systems instability can be produced, if new disturbing inputs are effective in a too fast sequence.

Physiological considerations about life cycles of universities

In Austria, a new federal law concerning university reorganization (UG 2002) has led to the former university medical faculties in Vienna, Innsbruck and Graz becoming independent medical universities, despite warnings by competent persons that this could have negative consequences. One logical consequence for example, is a certain isolationist trend that will eventually lead to medicine withdrawing into a kind of "splendid isolation", physically separated, even, from the rest in brand new buildings. The splitting of each of the three Austrian universities, which included Medical Faculties, into a new Medical University and a 'Rest University', has led to the growth of two daughter cells each now larger in terms of administration than the former university. The historical development of universities in Europe has seen times of affluence and times of decline. The recent new laws will for a long period have a marked impact on medicine and on the Medical Universities.

Generational consciousness and retirement communities

AbstractTime and collective historical experience loom large in the formation of generations. I argue that spatial proximity cements generational consciousness among seniors in Arizona retirement communities who identify themselves as members of the Second World War generation. The argument twins Karl Mannheim's social‐historical conception of generations and Hannah Arendt's political philosophy which underscores the space of appearance in the public realm in identity formation. It is through congregating, interacting and conversing on a daily basis that seniors in retirement enclaves affirm and reaffirm who they are, both to themselves and outsiders. I draw upon a suite of Arizona case studies, 1988–2000, in revealing ‘voices’ for a slice of the Second World War generation. Discussions revolving around family, community and national life reveal beliefs and values coalescing around four themes: (1) splendid isolation; (2) dissolution of values; (3) absence of children; and (4) fraying the social compact. The space of appearance within retirement enclaves engenders a strong sense of collective identity and belonging in ageing and, simultaneously, leads to questions about implications and consequences of intergenerational separation. I conclude with a poignant multigenerational experience as suggestive of the potency of intergenerational contact and exchange. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

"Dirty Domestics and Worse Cooks": Aboriginal Women's Agency and Domestic Frontiers, Southern Australia, 1800-1850

"Dirty Domestics and Worse Cooks":Aboriginal Women's Agency and Domestic Frontiers, Southern Australia, 1800-1850 Lynette Russell (bio) When the Australian historian Jan Critchett implied, somewhat provocatively, that the "frontier" might be understood to run down the bed shared by an Aboriginal woman and a European man, she highlighted the importance of the domestic sphere and the intimate relationships between men and women in colonial Australia.1 In many ways the domestic sphere appears to be the most mundane of settings; there is an assumed immediate appreciation of what domesticity looks like at any given historical period. Within the home people are at their most intimate, possibly most vulnerable, yet the power structures within the home can invert those that are external to it. Women can, do, and did effect change within the home; they exercise power, control, and agency. This paper considers the domestic relationships of Aboriginal women and newcomer men who worked in the sealing industry of southern Australia after 1800. My concern is whether the home that Aboriginal women shared with the sealers functioned as a site of colonialism or in fact operated as a threat to the colonial project. It is my contention that the role of the home in the process of colonialism and the domestic relationships that emerged out of the sealing industry (c. 1800–c. 1850) is not easily categorized. These relationships were complex, multifaceted, indefinite, culturally porous, and often unstable, and changed over time in unexpected ways. Historical representations of these relationships have tended to focus on the "racial" aspects often at the expense of an exploration of how gender operated. My analysis uses Anne McClintock's framework in which "race, gender and class are not distinct realms of experience, existing in splendid isolation from each other. . . . [R]ather, they come into existence in and through relation to each other—if in contradictory and conflictual ways."2 In exploring the nature of these relationships and their inherent contradictions and conflicts it is essential to engage with notions of hybridity and liminality.3 Generally, Australian historiographers have resisted [End Page 18] using concepts such as cultural hybridity or liminality. I argue, however, that by exploring and speculating about the women's motivations for entering domestic arrangements with newcomer men and by considering the women's subjectivity and agency, it is possible to offer a theory of the role of the home in mid-nineteenth-century Australia.4 This challenges the assumption that native-newcomer engagements simply consolidated the power relations of the "white" men. My analysis reveals that the domestic arrangements that emerged between Aboriginal women and newcomer men working in the sealing industry destabilized the colonial process and enabled the women to maintain their culture. It is a common understanding that Australia was colonized without the consent of the "natives," contrary to substantial and unequivocal instructions from the British Colonial Office.5 Engaging with historical materials that emerge out of this illegal occupation implicates the researcher in the ongoing processes of colonialism. Such an implication is unavoidable, however, for it connects with and acknowledges the privilege that has enabled "white" academic research to provide a creative "enunciative space" for developing historical models.6 An imperative component of this is the need for researchers consciously to present their subject position and their relationship to the material.7 Elsewhere I have discussed at length how establishing my own Aboriginal heritage created an ambivalent and entirely uncertain subjectivity. As I have noted, I articulate an identity that states emphatically that this having (Aboriginal heritage) is different to being. I draw my heritage from both sides of the frontier, or perhaps as Critchett might observe, from the middle of the bed. For me, the binaries of indigenous/nonindigenous, native/newcomer, even colonizer/colonized are meaningless. At an intellectual and personal level, this issue was further developed a number of years ago when I attended a family funeral and met my father's cousins. Like my father, these men were of Aboriginal and European descent; their maternal great-grandmother was a Pallawah (Aboriginal Tasmanian) woman who lived on the Bass Strait Islands and undertook sealing activities with her European "husband."8 I naively characterized her as...

The World of a Seventeenth-Century Book Collector: The Atlas Blaeu-van der Hem (review)

Reviewed by: The World of a Seventeenth-Century Book Collector: The Atlas Blaeu–van der Hem Michael Dzanko The World of a Seventeenth-Century Book Collector: The Atlas Blaeu–van der Hem. By Erlend de Groot . ‘t Goy-Houten, the Netherlands: Hes & de Graaf Publishers, 2006. 395 pp. €99.00. ISBN 978-90-6194-359-4. This review of Erlend de Groot's meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated account of the seventeenth-century Amsterdam collector Laurens van der Hem also marks the passing in December 2006 of one of our own most noteworthy collectors, Dr. Bent Juel-Jensen. Collectors have always been a curious lot, and although the Danish bibliophile and physician took a decidedly more scholarly approach to his collection than most, he still had much in common with his early-modern Dutch predecessor, van der Hem. Each man had a singular obsession when it came to collecting: for Juel-Jensen it was the works of the poet Michael Drayton, more than 340 of which were donated to the Bodleian Library at Oxford; for van der Hem it was the fifty-volume Atlas Blaeu–van der Hem, which "is generally considered the most beautiful atlas ever composed" (7). Although much celebrated in its own time, van der Hem's atlas was largely forgotten after being bought at auction by Eugene of Savoy in 1730. In fact, it was not until 1992 that the Dutch public was permitted to view only a few volumes of the atlas. Even when the sixth and final volume of a descriptive catalog of the entire atlas was finally made available last year, its "world on paper" continued to be viewed in splendid isolation. This volume is intended as both a continuation and an addition to previous studies of van der Hem and his atlas. In this proposed seventh volume to the series, the reader is at last permitted a fitting context for appreciating both the collector and his collection. The first four chapters of the book are concerned with van der Hem's life and collecting practices. Perhaps surprisingly for a member of one of Amsterdam's most prominent merchant families, van der Hem himself cuts a rather enigmatic figure. Born in 1621 into a close-knit Catholic community, van der Hem chose to study law at the Catholic University in Leuven. He then followed those studies with the obligatory Grand Tour through France and Italy, with a visit to Rome as his ultimate goal. On his return to the Netherlands he, like his father and uncle before him, turned financier and investor, and though Rome's "Missio Hollandica" only served to exacerbate Amsterdam's already tense religious relations, van der Hem [End Page 467] still managed to become one of the two hundred richest men in the city. This rise in prosperity and status would continue until the French and Münsterite invasion that precipitated the Rampjaar, or "year of calamity," 1672. After that date van der Hem almost vanished from the historical record until his death six years later. The origins of the van der Hem collection are also something of a mystery. In the next four chapters Groot makes a convincing argument for the atlas's foundation having been laid during the five-year period 1664–69; however, because of the loss of the travel diary he kept as a youth, it is impossible to say with any certainty what prompted van der Hem's interest in collecting. It is clear that he possessed the same curiositas that many wealthy burghers affected, and, like many of his contemporaries, he "was no scholar, but a layman with wide-ranging interests who happened to have a taste for beautiful editions and richly illustrated books" (75). His library was, in many respects, a typical seventeenth-century collector's library. Although having certain pretensions toward universality, it was of average size, having some fourteen hundred titles, and was far more concerned with appearance than substance, which perhaps explains the exceptionally large collection of folios and art books that account for almost half the library. Indeed, van der Hem's apparent desire for finding visual accompaniment for his books eventually led him to become one of...

The longevity of Y chromosomes: The Human Y chromosome is not dead (yet)

There are those who want us to believe that, given sufficient time, the human Y-chromosome (HY) will disappear (Graves, 2006). Their reasoning is simple and straightforward. Owing to lack of recombination the HY has degenerated in size and number of genes during its 300 million years of splendid isolation and there is nothing to prevent this process from continuation towards its impending demise. Still, although there are many strong arguments in favor of this hypothesis, there might be some hope.

Science and Environmental Policy: The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations

Michael Oppenheimer Science and Environmental Policy: The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations THIS PAPER ADDRESSES THE ROLE OF NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, or NGOs, in the science-policy nexus. I shall draw on my 21 years ofexpe­ rience working for a nongovernm ental organization, Environm ental Defense, my earlier experience as a research scientist, and my recent experience as a professor, the latter two positions at large universities. I hope this quasi-anecdotal approach is informative, but in addition, it is a necessity because there have been relatively few academic studies of nongovernm ental advocacy organizations. I shall begin by considering a question arising from the opening section of this volume: Is the special objective role of science in the policy arena, presumed by m any observers to have existed in an earlier political era, about to disappear into the dust bin of history, and if so, should we act to restore such a role? My view is consistent w ith Daniel Kevles’s paper: science in the current policy world has just as m uch to do w ith regulation of corpo­ rate activity and, to a lesser extent, people’s lives, as it does w ith the means to wage war or develop consum er goods like com puter games. This development dates to the revolution in environm ental regulation in the 1970s, as well as the expansion of regulatory attention to foods, drugs, and health care. If science formerly was viewed as a servant of social research Vol 73 : No 3 : Fall 200 6 881 people’s wants and needs, science-based decision m aking now also func­ tions as som ething of a m aster over people and companies by dictat­ ing restrictions. So it was inevitable in a free society, organized in part along the lines of special interests, some empowered by large financial resources, that a melee should ensue. And that is w hat we have today on m any issues, particularly global warm ing, aided and abetted by a related phenom enon: governm ent that is often disingenuous. I argue that there is no point trying to put the genie back in the bottle, no point trying to regain an imagined status of science operating in splendid objectivity and isolation, rendering untainted judgm ents. It probably never was so, and I doubt it ever will be. Furtherm ore, it should become apparent from this paper that proposals to create a neat division between regulation and science, resembling Alvin W einberg’s earlier notion of a science court (Jasanoff, 1990), are tinged w ith elit­ ism while satisfying neither side, and if they were proposed (and I have heard such rumblings) m any scientists, including me, would be strongly opposed. The relation of science to government has indeed worsened, and needs to be fixed, but w hether or not the good old days ever existed, we should not aspire to return to them . To deal with current problems of the environm ent, science needs to be inclusive rather than exclusion­ ary, as usually has been its tendency. We need to recognize that values and viewpoints are an inevitable part of scientific judgm ent in the zone w here science interacts w ith governm ent over m any environm ental problem s, w here systems are complex, uncertainty is endemic, and learning is slow. W hat questions are asked and how they are fram ed are a critical part o f science research and science advice in this arena. A necessary part of improving the science-govemment interface is to avoid pretending that science advice in such an arena can be built from pure natural science. Rather, as Henry Kelly has noted, “Sound policy depends on a rough m arketplace of ideas.” We m ust all get used to this new situation. Of course, this rough m arketplace has some big downsides. The problem isn’t all the voices heard. Rather, it is that some participants do 882 social research not play by the usual rules, and at the same time, have disproportionate resources to amplify their message in public (Mooney, 2005) and often have differential access to the decision process (Jasanoff, 1990). The solution I propose is...

‘Universal Responsiveness’ or ‘Splendid Isolation?’ Episodes From the History of Mathematics Education in Russia

This article investigates the prevalent attitudes toward foreign influences and methodologies in Russian mathematics education at different periods in Russian history. The words ‘universal responsiveness’ belong to Dostoevsky, who, in his famous speech on Pushkin, used them to characterize Pushkin’s openness to the genius of all other nations. Moreover, Dostoevsky considered universal responsiveness to be typical of Russians in general. However, the isolationist tradition in Russia has been no less influential. At times this tradition has prevailed, at times it has retreated. It has expressed itself openly in political life – Stalin’s campaign against ‘cosmopolites’ was an especially striking example – and its impact on the development of literature and science has been the object of extensive research. Mathematics education, however, has rarely been looked at from this perspective. This paper will focus on a few select episodes from the history of mathematics education in Russia. These episodes, however, clearly demonstrate that a conflict between the isolationist and the internationalist traditions has taken place in this field as well. The paper contains a discussion of Leo Tolstoy’s article ‘On the People’s Education’, little‐known in the West, in which Russian mathematics education is aggressively and favorably contrasted with German methodologies. It also examines a methodological work from 1951, which includes a chapter entitled ‘From the History of the Struggle against Foreign Influences in Russian Mathematics’. On the other hand, the article also looks at materials from Russian mathematics teachers’ congresses from before the Russian Revolution, which illustrate Russian involvement and participation in processes taking place abroad. It also analyzes correspondence between the well‐known Russian and American mathematics educators Dmitriy Sintsov and David Eugene Smith, discovered by the author, which facilitates a deeper understanding of certain aspects of the issues under investigation.

Outside History: Edna O'Brien's House of Splendid Isolation

Edna O'Brien is not a name one often hears in discussions of postmodernism. Nevertheless, her 1995 novel House of Splendid Isolation, which some reviewers have described as a new departure for O'Brien, contains postmodernist ele ments.1 For instance, the novel resembles a pastiche in its almost random jux taposition of diary entries, snippets of poems, a children's fable, Irish mythol ogy, a 1921 IRA volunteer's journal, and personal notes included without any introduction, interspersed throughout its short, staccato sections of narrative.2 These italicized insertions make it difficult to fit the story within the framework of a known history, a defamilarizing strategy often employed in postmodernist fiction. narrative itself proceeds in an achronological way through frag mented bits and pieces that the reader must fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. This fragmented style, which reminds one of the crosscutting technique in contemporary cinema and television, makes House of Splendid Isolation at times confusing. novel opens with a short section titled The Child, in which an initially unidentifiable voice speaks prophetically, as if from the grave. fol lowing section titled The Present begins by describing the Northern Irish IRA gunman McGreevy hiding under a tree as he is pursued by a police heli copter. Then we meet the Irish garda officer Rory Purcell who is presented in a domestic scene with his wife, son, and daughter. Purcells are watching a

Translation and the Individual Talent: The Splendid Isolation of Our Retranslators of Russian Classics

(2006). Translation and the Individual Talent: The Splendid Isolation of Our Retranslators of Russian Classics. Translation Review: Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 37-40.

Beyond the World Heritage Site: A huge enclosure revealed at Hatra

Splendid isolation and an austere environment allegedly saved Hatra on more than one occasion from the wrath of Rome. Even when the city finally fell to the Sasanians in AD 240 and Shapur carried off its portable wealth, its comparative remoteness prevented the wholesale destruction that happened, for instance, at nearby Ashur. So in 1985 UNESCO had no difficulty in recognising the ruins' value as a gem of world heritage.Hatra's comparative isolation presents problems but also advantages for archaeologists. The problems concern the city's economy and subsistence with respect to its size and density in a hostile environment beyond the limit of dryland farming. Most prominently Hatra will have played an important role as a centre for nomad-sedentary political and economic exchange. The central temple of Shamash, which might have served as a focus of pilgrimage, will have added in some degree to its wealth, as reflected by its architecture and sculpture. According to some authors the city also played at least some role in long-distance caravan trade, which might have created further substantial revenue. But the important question remains: to what extent did Hatra's inhabitants complement their livelihood through cultivation

Splendid Isolation: Does Networking Really Increase New Product Success?

This paper presents the case for and against the involvement of external organizations in new product development projects. It examines both the frequency of interaction of firms with their customers, suppliers, universities, research institutes and competitors, and also the correlation between such interaction and new product success. Empirical data were collected from 60 electronics firms in Ireland and the UK using a well-established framework (Souder, et al., 1998). The analysis examines small and large, Irish and UK firms and concludes that the impact of networking and collaboration on new product success is dependent on a range of factors and should not be viewed as a panacea for product development problems.

“Splendid but Undesirable Isolation:” Recasting Canada’s National Game as Box Lacrosse, 1931-1932

“Splendid but Undesirable Isolation:” Recasting Canada’s National Game as Box Lacrosse, 1931-1932

Confronting Shibboleths of Dental Education

Shibboleths are common expressions presented as indisputable truths. When used in educational discussions, they reflect "motherhood and apple pie" viewpoints and tend to bring debate to a halt. Use of shibboleths may precede a desired imposition of "locksteps" in educational programming and are easily perceived as paternalistic by recipients. Nine shibboleths are presented as common beliefs of dental faculty and administrators. Evidence contradicting the veracity of the "obvious truths" is offered. The traditional "splendid isolation" of dentistry contributes to parochialism and belief in false shibboleths. Sound principles of higher and health professions education, student learning, and dental practice apply to dental education as to all health disciplines. Student passivity in dental education is not the best preparation for proficiency in dental practice. The master teacher possesses a repertoire of methodologies specific to meeting defined educational objectives. Active learning experiences bear close resemblances to professional duties and responsibilities and internally motivate future doctors of dental medicine. The difficulty in achieving curricular change leads to curricular entrenchment. Dentistry and dental education should not trade their ethical high ground for the relatively low ethical standards of the business world. Principles of professional ethics should govern relationships between dentists, whether within the dental school workplace or in practice. Suggestions are made on how to confront shibboleths in dental school settings.

The Expulsion of the Negative: Deleuze, Adorno, and the Ethics of Internal Difference

To compare Deleuze with another thinker is already to proceed in counterpoint to Deleuzian practice, to refuse at some level to follow Deleuze's own method. The monograph (as applied to Bergson, Kant, Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Leibniz, to name only philosophers) is Deleuze's favored method of investigation. Deleuze does not orchestrate encounters of contradictory voices, but instead revoices the philosophical character (personnage) he is studying. He isolates himself (selectively) in windowless monad with the object of his inquiry to enumerate the essential qualities upon single plane of immanence. If, with Guattari, Deleuze offers readers bewildering multiplicity of objects to consider, these are understood to be singularities, each enclosed in the splendid isolation of its function (1993: 3). Between these singularities and the totality that Deleuze calls the of no dialectical relations inhere, but rather an absolute leap of perception. Deleuze and Adorno thus appear to stand in irreconcilable opposition.' The former the philosopher of immanence and the of the latter the foremost thinker of irresolvable contradictions and negative dialectics, they look to very different precursors and speak entirely different philosophical languages that allow for precious little communication to occur. Yet to leave each to his proper plane of immanence-in which their respective truth may be expressed without dissent--would be to abandon critique for the history of ideas. Instead, I think it is possible to compose dissonant relationship between these two seemingly antagonistic thinkers. In this article, I propose to examine Deleuze's early writings via critical reading of the founding operative concept of the Deleuzian project: internal difference. If Alain Badiou rightly locates the precondition of Deleuzian thought in the univocity of being, this remains a silent, supra-cognitive or mystical intuition (31) about which one can say no more than to repeat the mantra: Being is One. What one can talk about instead are the modes or simulacra of

Odious Comparisons: Incommensurability, the Case Study, and “Small N's” in Sociology

Case studies and “small-N comparisons” have been attacked from two directions, positivist and incommensurabilist. At the same time, some authors have defended small-N comparisons as allowing qualitative researchers to attain a degree of scientificity, yet they also have rejected the case study as merely “idiographic.” Practitioners of the case study sometimes agree with these critics, disavowing all claims to scientificity. A related set of disagreements concerns the role and nature of social theory in sociology, which sometimes is described as useless and parasitic and other times as evolving in splendid isolation from empirical research. These three forms of sociological activity—comparative analysis, studies of individual cases, and social theory—are defended here from the standpoint of critical realism. In this article I first reconstruct, in very broad strokes, the dominant epistemological and ontological framework of postwar U.S. sociology. The next two sections discuss several positivist and incommensurabilist criticisms of comparison and case studies. The last two sections propose an understanding of comparison as operating along two dimensions, events and structures, and offer an illustration of the difference and relationship between the two.

Splendid Isolation to Finest Hour: Britain as a Global Power, 1900–1950

Usually British foreign policy in the twentieth century is seen as a progress from ‘Isolation’ to ‘Commitment’, a view questioned in this essay. The view that Britain was isolated stems from contemporary polemic, since Lord Salisbury's policy had been more flexible and subtle than such a simplistic description implies. By 1905 Britain's diplomatic position was better than it had been for a decade, and it may be that fear about isolation and Germany tipped Sir Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary 1905–16) into leaning too far towards France and Russia who were not without revisionist aspirations. The perceived success of the Great War led Britain into assuming an exposed diplomatic position which proved ultimately unsustainable, as the isolation of the summer of 1940 showed. In that light her refusal to become involved in the nascent European movement deprived her of any alternative to the role of America's adjutant, with consequent results.

Talking Shakespeare: Shakespeare into the Millennium (review)

188 Reviews Parergon 21.2 (2004) that his account presents. For challenges there are: how can we read the traces of the past so that women emerge as agents, making their own histories? Patricia Crawford Discipline of History The University of Western Australia Cartmell, Deborah and Michael Scott, Talking Shakespeare: Shakespeare into the Millennium, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2001; hardcover; pp. ix, 253; RRP£45; ISBN 0333777913. This wide-ranging and provocative set of essays considers Shakespeare in relation to the ways in which Shakespeare is encoded for us – in language. The editors begin their introductory essay: ‘Talking Shakespeare, as its title implies, focuses on the reciprocal relationship between past and present, the way Shakespeare talks to us, and the way in which Shakespeare, ultimately, is “all talk”.’ With their emphasis on aspects of talk, the editors and individual authors find a common bond between Shakespeare as instigator of text, Shakespeare and the survival of historic theatrical practice, Shakespeare, Shakespeare in the light of contemporary theory, and Shakespeare as the basis of adventures in film. The thirteen essays in this volume are mainly by scholars centred at De Montfort University in Leicester, with invited contributions from others. The first of the four sections into which the essays are grouped is headed ‘Shakespeare, Theory and Contexts.’ In the title essay, ‘Talking Shakespeare’, Michael Scott ranges widely through Shakespeare’s plays as artefacts that speak of themselves as repositories of language. He suggests that words create a force- field of signification that is not simply self-reflexive but is also out there in a way that impinges on our consciousness of our own lives. Nigel Wood, asking ‘How does Hamlet end?’, answers his own question with the divided perception that the way a text ends for an author and for an audience may be different matters. On the one hand, variant endings of Hamlet remind us of ‘the probability that there were coexistent texts without an authoritative source’ (p. 35). On the other hand, there is the issue of what Stanley Fish called ‘interpretive communities’, which leaves us wondering: ‘Is the reader or the text the source of meaning?’ (p. 25). Peter Davison’s chapter on Shakespeare on the road is in contrast to some of the heady theoretical issues which precede and follow it. His ‘Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Stage: Touring Practice in Shakespeare’s Day’ brings back to life, Reviews 189 Parergon 21.2 (2004) and very vividly too, the really gritty issues facing travelling players that have often been lost in the rosy glow of Shakespearian heritage. In another somewhat corrective piece, entitled ‘Studying Shakespeare and His Contemporaries’, Emma Smith argues cogently for considering Shakespeare in dialogue with his contemporaries rather than in the splendid isolation he has enjoyed in recent decades. Other writers have paid considerable attention to Shakespeare in dialogue with Jonson through their plays, but other dramatists have faded into the shadow of Shakespeare’s greatness. In examining three pairs of plays – Richard II and the anonymous Woodstock, The Taming of the Shrew and John Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed, and Hamlet and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy – Smith revisits some old arguments and introduces some new ones. The section concludes with a review of New Historicism and its proponents by Dermot Cavanagh under the title of ‘Shakespeare and History.’Cavanagh find that an over-emphasis on French theorists and a correlative neglect of the Frankfurt School has skewed critical writing. He advocates more attention to Adorno, for whom ‘the capacity of art to explore the conflict and contradictions between antithetical values ... was a key factor in the complex relationship between art and ideology’ (p. 80). The second section contains a stand-alone essay by Colin Chambers on the cultural significance of the RSC: ‘“Home, sweet home”: Stratford-upon-Avon and the Making of the Royal Shakespeare Company as a National Institution.’ Apart from providing much important factual information about the RSC, some of it relatively little known, Chambers propounds an interesting argument about the cultural politics of the RSC in relation to wider political and economic forces within Britain. Section III offers three essays under the heading...

The Global Baby Bust

You awaken to news of a morning traffic jam. Leaving home early for a doctors appointment you nonetheless arrive too late to find parking. After waiting two hours for a 15-minute consultation you wait again to have your prescription filled. All the while you worry about the work youve missed because so many other people would line up to take your job. Returning home to the evening news you watch throngs of youths throwing stones somewhere in the Middle East and a feature on disappearing farmland in the Midwest. A telemarketer calls for the third time telling you We need your help to save the rain forest. As you set the alarm clock for the morning one neighbors car alarm goes off and anothers air conditioner starts to whine. So goes a day in the life of an average American. It is thus hardly surprising that many Americans think overpopulation is one of the worlds most pressing problems. To be sure the typical Westerner enjoys an unprecedented amount of private space. Compared to their parents most now live in larger homes occupied by fewer children. They drive ever-larger automobiles in which they can eat smoke or listen to the radio in splendid isolation. Food is so abundant that obesity has become a leading cause of death. (excerpt)