The nomad at home

This essay addresses issues related to leaving and recreating a home from the perspective of different kinds of movements, transformations, and diasporic ways of living. Global restructurings in the wake of neoliberal economic developments provide the main background for a discussion of contemporary global upheavals and displacements, and the concomitant mix of old and new understandings of border rossing, multiple or hybrid identities, and neo/colonialism. The figure of the nomad is at the center of these discussions. The nomad is described as someone who carries home as an essential psychological belonging, and who can re-create home in diverse places, anywhere.     

Introduction: shifting meanings of home

The studies and narratives collected in this special volume acknowledge "home" as a complex, ambiguous notion and reality. The contributors pay tribute to different ways of experiencing home, and to multiple connections to place and time. They illustrate how home is a social edifice, how it embodies different meanings and values, how it demarcates individual and social or national identities, and how a longing for home permeates experiences of homelessness as well as cultural, spatial, linguistic, and economic transitions.     

Recent developments in German health law

Health law provides the regulatory constitution for the medical and healthcare system. It covers individual medical treatment as well as public healthcare provision and is insofar medical law as well as social security law (statutory health insurance law). The medical and health sciences (public health sciences) are the main complementary disciplines of health law. This article gives an account of some representative developments in both fields which have taken place in the last three years.     

Display's the thing: The real stakes in the conflict over high-resolution displays

Japan has a strong lead over both the United States and Western Europe in the development of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). We argue in this article that LCDs and associated integrated display technologies are critical for competition in a growing proportion of global electronics markets. The “architecture of supply” is the issue here, and U.S. firms need help from the government to insure that they will have access to the latest display technologies in a timely manner at market prices. Besides adopting foreign economic policies designed to achieve this purpose, it will be necessary for the government to continue to work with the domestic electronics industry to raise the industry's technological capabilities in new display technologies.     

Riots without killings

From 1980 to 1985 serious clashes between police and squatter activists and their supporters occurred on the streets of Amsterdam. This paper describes the series of riots that took place and analyzes five of them in greater detail. Specifically, the investigation focuses on the issue of learning from recurrent crises. Did the authorities learn from one riot to the next? If so, in what ways and at what levels? And how effective did the lessons drawn prove to be — given the fact that the other party may have learned as well. Analyzing the key decisions that have been taken in these cases and confronting them with alternative scenarios that may have been pursued, suggests that learning from crises is a two-edged sword. Its potential benefits must be traded off against risks of overgeneralization or misapplication of lessons. The paper is commented on by Arthur H.W. Docters van Leeuwen, Head of the Dutch Security Service.     

A. Reviews: general

i. Syria and the Lebanese Crisis. By Adeed Dawisha. London, Macmillan, 1980. pp.xii, 208. £15.00.

ii. Geographical Changes in the Traditional Arab Villages in Northern Israel. By Y.Bar Gal and A.Soffer. Durham University, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (Occasional Papers Series, No.9). 1981. pp. 88, 20 figs.,10 plates, 13 tables.

iii. Moroccan Peasants: A Century of Change in the Eastern Rif 1870–1970. By David Seddon. Folkestone (Kent), Dawson, 1981. pp.xvii, 337, maps, tables. £15.00.

iv. Honneur et baraka: Les Structures socials traditionelles dans le Rif. By Raymond Jamous. Cambridge (Atelier d'Anthropologie Sociale), Cambridge University Press/Paris (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1981. pp.303, maps, tables, photographs. £22.50.

v. Ibn Khaldun and Islamic Thought Styles : A Social Perspective. By Fuad Basil and Ali Wardi. Boston, Mass., G.K.Hall & Co., 1981. pp.155. $23.95.

vi. The Arabic Novel : An Historical and Critical Introduction. By Roger Allen. University of Manchester (Journal of Semitic Studies Monograph No.4), 1982. pp.181.     

Private Security: Enforcing Corporate Security Policy Using Private Investigators

This article focuses on the use of private investigators as external agents, commissioned to enforce internal corporate security policy. After describing the sorts of services private investigators provide to industry and commerce and the legal contexts within which they operate, it considers private investigators as a form of secret police within private justice systems defined by companies. It considers the relationship between notions of public good and commercial expediency and raises important questions about the problem of controlling activities which are purposefully kept from legal scrutiny.