Thompson's Article Research Articles

On the Peculiarity of Standards: A Reply to Thompson

As Paul B. Thompson suggests in his recent seminal paper, “‘There’s an App for That’: Technical Standards and Commodification by Technological Means,” technical standards restructure property (and other social) relations. He concludes with the claim that the development of technical standards of commodification can serve purposes with bad effects such as “the rise of the factory system and the deskilling of work” or progressive effects such as how “technical standards for animal welfare… discipline the unwanted consequences of market forces.” In this reply, we want to append several points to his argument and suggest that he rightly points out that standards can promote various goods; however, there are peculiar powers wielded by standardization processes that might profitably be unpacked more systematically than Thompson's article seems to suggest. First, the concealment of the technopolitics around standards is largely due to their peculiar ontological status as recipes for reality. Second, technical standards can and do commit violence against persons, but such violence is often suffered not in the formation of class consciousness, as Marx might have put it, but as a failure to conform to the laws of nature.

Imperial Co-Histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press (review)

Reviewed by: Imperial Co-Histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press Margaret Beetham (bio) Julie Codell , ed., Imperial Co-Histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press (Cranbury, N.J., U.S.A., London UK and Mississauga, Canada, Associated University Presses, 2003), pp. 328, 24 illustrations, $57.50 cloth. The title of Julie Codell's edited collection situates it clearly in the space opened up by post-colonial studies, a space in which absolute oppositions of imperial centre and colonial subject are destabilised, if not undone. Influenced by theorists like Edward Said and Homi Bhaba, who supply the epigraphs to Codell's 'Introduction', post-colonial studies explore the complex and shifting relationships in which imperial identities were worked out. My understanding of the project of 'Co-Histories' is that it involves thinking the narratives of metropolis and colony together and addressing the possibility of hybrid identities. Julie Codell, Professor of Art History at Arizona State University, has given us a volume which makes an important addition to this growing body of scholarship. Those whose focus of research is periodical literature have long argued that the dialogic nature of serial forms gives them a particular importance in cultural history. However, in post-colonial studies, as in other more established humanities areas, periodicals are still often treated reductively. This volume is therefore particularly welcome because it brings work in periodical literature to bear on the project of post-colonial studies, focusing on national identities in the nineteenth-century British Empire. Codell's introduction gives an excellent account of the project of the book in these terms. Inevitably, the eleven individual essays vary in how far they employ the same theoretical model, but the collection works well as a whole. This is remarkable, given the range of disciplinary backgrounds from which contributors come. These include Anthropology, [End Page 104] Art History, English, and History, Media and Communications Studies and Women's Studies. The diversity of approaches marshalled within a broad framework is one of the strengths of this collection as its address to visual as well as print texts. The importance of India in the narratives of the British Empire is evident here, and six chapters deal either directly or indirectly with India. However, the range of material in the volume is much wider. Several of the articles deal with the way information was managed and transmitted across the Empire, whether by the telegraphic agencies which Alex Nalbach discusses; through the Imperial Press Conference, the subject of J. Lee Thompson's article, or through The Imperial Gazetteer, which Michael Hancher discusses. The volume as a whole relates the general argument to specific colonial histories though essays which relate to South Africa (Dorothy Helly and Helen Callaway), China (Catherine Pagani), and Australia (Toney Hughes-D'Aeth). It also brings into question the idea of Britain as a single nation through Aled Jones's subtle essay on the relationship between Welsh missionaries and India. Read as a whole, therefore, the volume posits a complex web of identities and knowledges, constructed, transmitted and resisted through a press which both stretched across the Empire and had local and particular manifestations. Imperial Co-Histories is divided into two sections: the first is headed 'Sites of Authority; Imperial Domination and Press Intervention' and the second, 'Sites of Fracture; Resistance and Autonomy in Imperial Representation'. This looks as if it reproduces the old oppositions of ruler and ruled, but it manages to escape that. Several of the essays in the first section resist a too simple model of the 'domination' implicit in the sub-heading and instead develop arguments about the way the press worked to produce complex knowledges and hybridised identities. Notable here is Deepali Dewan's account of the way The Journal of Indian Art and Industry produced an imperial account of Indian art production. However, for me, the second section of this collection is particularly strong. Articles by Catherine Pagani on images of China; Denise Quirk's excellent essay on the 'True Englishwomen' and the 'Anglo- Indian' in the Women's Press; Codell's own thoughtful exploration of the way 'Native Informants' participated in the debate about India in the British press; Tony Hughes...

No title

Sir: Thompson's article on the internet and suicide (Psychiatric Bulletin, August 1999, 23, 449–451) is a timely and welcome addition to the slowly growing literature on the internet and health. However, she could possibly have developed further positive ways of approaching the influence of the internet. Attempting to shut down, or restrict access to internet sites dealing with suicide is likely to be difficult to enforce in practice and may inadvertently block access to sources of positive help. It is important to stress the potential benefits of support online. The vast majority of online informants of my current thesis in medical anthropology on chronic fatigue syndrome and internet use reported that it provided a lifeline in the face of prejudice and lack of sympathy for family and desertion by friends. There is a vast untapped potential for NHS trusts and bodies such as Mind, or the Royal College of Psychiatrists to set up websites, moderated newsgroups and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) services to provide more therapeutic approaches to suicide and mental illness than those described by Thompson.

Paradigms, Processes, Parsimony, and Predictive Power: Arguments for a Generic Dual-Process Model

(1999). Paradigms, Processes, Parsimony, and Predictive Power: Arguments for a Generic Dual-Process Model. Psychological Inquiry: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 113-118.

Content Versus Process: If There Is Independence, Can There Still Be Two Levels of Information Processing?

In this commentary, we begin by describing Kruglanski and Thompson's main point. We then discuss their evidence and suggest some ways to strengthen their argument. Finally, we attempt to summarize Kruglanski and Thompson's position and speculate as to where the debate currently stands. First, then, we describe briefly what we see as the main point of Kruglanski and Thompson's article. They propose that persuasion occurs through a single route. This is in direct contrast to the dual-route models of Petty and Cacioppo (1986) and Chaiken (1987), in which persuasion is thought to occur through two distinct routes (i.e., deep vs. shallow processing).1 Kruglanski and Thompson discuss past research by Petty and Cacioppo and by Chaiken and focus on the two types of persuasive information used in this research: source information (which they call cues or heuristics) and message content.2 Kruglanski and Thompson's basic argument is that content of the persuasive information is not related to the process (or route) of persuasion. That is, they believe that one type of persuasive information is not always linked to a specific type of processing. Although past research has linked source information to shallow processing and message content to deep processing, Kruglanski and Thompson think this is misleading. They argue that the crucial distinction between source information and message content refers to informational contents relevant to a conclusion, rather than a qualitative difference in the persuasive process itself. In short, they believe that the content of a persuasive communication is independent from the process of persuasion. Kruglanski and Thompson call their model a unimodel of persuasion because they believe that persuasion occurs through the same syllogistic reasoning process, regardless of whether the evidence is in the form of message content or source information. That is, they believe that persuasion occurs through a single route and that the content of the persuasive communication is independent from this single process of persuasion.

Esophageal Detector Device in Pediatric Tracheal Intubation

Bhende and Thompson's article in Pediatrics (1995;95:395-399) showed problems associated with the use of capnometry for initial control of tube position in cardiac arrest. They found a failure to detect carbon dioxide (CO2) in six of 39 patients with correct tracheal tube position.1 This is similar to their earlier publication with a failure in two of 17 cardiac arrest patients with tracheally placed tubes.2 We found a 13% incidence of failure to detect CO2 with the EASYCAP (Nellcor, Hayward, CA) in cardiac arrest despite tracheal intubation in pooled data.3

Stellar Optical Interferometry in the 1990s

The unaided eye has an angular resolution of about 1 arcminute. From the invention of the telescope in the 17th century to the middle of the 1970s, astronomers improved on this resolution by two orders of magnitude by building bigger telescopes and putting them at good sites. Even at good sites, however, atmospheric turbulence limits the resolution at visible and infrared wavelengths to 1 arcsec or a little better. In the past 20 years, a further factor-of-ten improvement has come with two developments that deal with the atmosphere: “speckle interferometry,” in which the blurred image is frozen in a short exposure and the image is reconstructed from many exposures, and adaptive optics, in which the effects of the atmosphere are sensed, then corrected with a defbrmable mirror, before the image is recorded. (See Laird A. Thompson's article in PHYSICS TODAY, December 1994, page 24.)

Working Hours and Conditions during the Industrial Revolution: A Re-Appraisal

A though it is generally acknowledged that working conditions might be harsh and hours of work lengthy before the onset of industrial change in the second half of the eighteenth century, there is still general agreement that work discipline subsequently intensified. This is seen as occurring only in textile factories but also in other places of work as industrial capitalism tightened its grip on the labour force. The classic statement of this belief is to be found in E. P. Thompson's article in Past & Present in i967,1 and other historians have expressed similar views, even though their approach in other respects is markedly different from Thompson's. Thus J. D. Chambers remarked that the labour force in the Industrial Revolution was only very much larger, but was worked very much harder.2 M. I. Thomis has made the point that the Hammonds argued that the growth of the domestic industries in the half century after the introduction of steam power was accompanied by deteriorating conditions, and (says Thomis) 'few would quarrel with this view today'.3 In a recent work, Duncan Bythell clearly regards all out-workers throughout the nineteenth century as sweated labour, and suggests that the depressing story is almost unchanged from the handloom weaver and framework knitter of the i83os and 40s to the nailmaker and needlewoman of the i88os and i89os.4 It appears, then, that whether a worker was employed in a textile factory (the most extreme case) or in a small workshop, he suffered a marked deterioration in his life at work-the obvious consequence of the quickening pace of industrialization. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century was there any general reduction in the length of the working day and/or improvement in working conditions. Pollard seems to sum up this view of the earlier period when he observes in a colourful metaphor that the modern industrial proletariat was not allowed to grow in a sunny garden: it was forged, over a fire, by the powerful blows of a hammer.5 Yet in spite of this weight of opinion, some doubts must remain. Even Thompson admits that the imposition of the new work routines was a slow process, sometimes taking several generations (as in the Potteries), and was perhaps never fully accomplished in all sectors of industry.6 Moreover, it is

Charles H. Thompson: A Bibliography

Charles H. Thompson's accomplishments as an educator and as an administrator at Howard University, from 1926 until his retirement in 1966, have been given attention elsewhere,-including recent issues of the Journal of Negro Education. Therefore, background information on his life and career will not be discussed here. Rather, this article will focus on Dr. Thompson's accomplishments as a writer of numerous articles on social issues that affected the lives of Black people internationally, but particularly Black Americans. With the pen as his sword, Dr. Thompson was relentless in his efforts to expose inequities in the treatment of minority groups and to bring about equality of opportunities. Although his main interests were in the field of education, he was also concerned about problems in race relations, civil rights, employment, and so on. To our knowledge, a complete compilation of Dr. Thompson's works has not been published. bibliography included in this article not only lists his editorials and articles in the Journal of Negro Education but his thesis, dissertation, articles in other publications, books, books that mention him, as well as manuscript collections that allude to him. Many of the titles appear to be as appropriate today as they were when written. Although several books have made references to Charles H. Thompson, the two works that devoted most attention to him are Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (1976) and Richard Bardolph, Negro Vanguard (1950). Bardolph declares that the Journal of Negro Education, edited by Charles H. Thompson at Howard University, earned its reputation as one of the finest publications of its kind. Kluger points out that though Thompson had almost no money except to pay the printing bills and postage, he launched in 1932, the Journal as a means of fully documenting the conditions of Negro schools and exploring the implications of segregated education. Thompson's magazine seized the torch, according to Kluger, that had been let fall when Crisis lost its founder. He argues: The Journal was, to be sure, far less polemical than Crisis had ever been, but it served a similar purpose: to inform, to arouse, to inspire (p. 168). Howard University contributed office space, clerical help, and about one-third of Thompson's salary. In 1928, three years after he received his doctorate and four years prior to the establishment of the Journal, Dr. Thompson wrote a major article that was published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. This particular issue was devoted to Negro Education and included articles by some of the leading Negro spokesmen of that era: W. E. B. Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, James Weldon Johnson, Charles J. Johnson, Alain Locke, and Kelly Miller. Dr. Thompson's article, The Educational Achievement of Negro Children, declared: A critical examination of the fact presented in this study shows that when Negroes are given equal environmental and school opportunities their educational achievements are equal to or better than that of the whites. (In fact, it is surprising to note that Negroes achieve as much as they do in consideration of the poor environmental and school opportunities they are afforded.) In other words, the educational achievement of Negro children, as with white children, is, in the main, a direct function of their environmental and school opportunities rather than a function of some special inherent difference in mental ability. In conclusion he stated, A critical appraisal of the facts with reference to the educational achievement of Negro children forces one to conclude: 1. That the doctrine of an inherent mental inferiority of the Negro is a myth unfounded by the most logical interpretation of the scientific facts on the subject produced to date. 2. That the mental and scholastic achievements of Negro children, as with white children, are, in the main, a direct function of their environmental and school opportunities rather than a function of some inherent differences in mental'ability. …

Women in physics

Professor Thompson's article 'Male chauvinist physicists?' (Physics Bulletin October 1978 p450) raised some very interesting questions concerning women and physics. The main point of the article was that, over the last ten years, the ratio of men to women applying to study physics at university has increased, whereas in most other subjects this ratio has steadily decreased.

Outlaws and Inlaws

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussionOutlaws and InlawsHenry MouldsHenry Moulds Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 77, Number 3Apr., 1967 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/291636 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1967 University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Applied Anthropology as a Public Service

Editor's Note. A number of articles have appeared recently having to do with the functions applied anthropology might perform and in particular with the part the applied anthropologist should play in relation to his clients. Dr. Laura Thompson's article, Some Perspectives in Applied which appeared in the June 1944 issue of this Journal and Dr. Sol Tax's article, Anthropology and Administration in the January issue of America Indigena, are among the most recent of these. Dr. Lantis's article represents a somewhat different point of view which will be of interest to all those concerned with this problem.