Flying bananas: small producer tactics and the (un)making of Philippine banana export chains

Global production network (GPN) analysts argue that workers actively contribute to the shaping of GPNs through different forms of agency. In this contribution I extend this argument to the tactical agency of small producers. By focusing on the phenomenon of side-selling among Filipino banana contract farmers, I show that these tactics have contributed to the emergence of alternative trade networks that undermined traditional lead firm behaviour and inspired new struggles over chain governance. However, as a diverse and ambiguous group of growers engages in this tactical agency, predominantly as small capital, they also contribute to the continuation of broader dynamics of capital accumulation and labour exploitation.     

Open Societies and Closed Minds

Karl Popper’s equation of the closed society with tribalism is reviewed and modified. The German origins of the anthropological concept of culture and its related ideas of the folk culture and cultural relativism are explored. The vicissitudes of the idea of The Folk and its swing from Right to Left are related to contemporary neo-primitivism. The open society and high culture are defended.

Law and Market Economy: The Triadic Linking of Law,Economics, and Semiotics

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Diplomatic intercepts in peace and war: Chanak 1922

Recent Public Record Office releases of British Foreign Office documents include diciphered diplomatic messages from several European capitals intercepted from 1919 onwards by a department of the Foreign Office called the Government Code and Cipher School (GCCS). These intercepts were called 'bjs' - 'blue jackets', from the blue folders in which they were regularly delivered to a very few top government officials. This paper is based on bjs mainly from French, Italian, American and Turkish capitals and embassies during the autumn of 1922 when a genocidal war was being fought along the Black Sea southern coast between Greece and Kemalist Turkish forces under the future President, Ismet Inonu. What became known as 'the Chanak Affair' led the Powers perilously close to renewing hostilities terminated at the Armistice of 1919. Despite the attention given by Lloyd George, Curzon and Churchill to the implications of the bjs as to Turkish, French and Italian intentions, peace was established on the ground before the end of the year by Inonu and the British C-in-C, General Harington.     

The Participation Divide? Political Participation,Trust in Government,and E‐government in Australia and New Zealand

Drawing on 438 telephone interview surveys in Australia and 500 in New Zealand, we find evidence of a 'participation divide' where those participating in politics do so using a range of means, including electronic ones. Those less likely to participate in politics, are less likely to participate across all means measured. Those with higher levels of education and income and of European ethnicity are more likely to participate. We confirm the existence of the so-called 'digital divide' with those that use e-government means and those that do not, being stratified by education, ethnicity, income, gender and age. Contrary to our expectations we find that lower levels of trust in government are associated with higher levels of some types of participation, including e-government ones.     

In Brief

Hawthorne's Fuller Mystery, by Thomas R. Mitchell. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

New Latina Narrative: The Feminine Space of Postmodern Ethnicity, by Ellen McCracken. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1999.

Dos Passos and the Ideology of the Feminine, by Janet Galligani Casey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

The World Wars Through the Female Gaze, by Jean Gallagher. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.

The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern, by Linda Nicholson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Sex and Sexuality in Early America, edited by Merril D. Smith. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Kate Chopin's Private Papers, edited by Emily Toth and Per Seyersted, associate editor, Cheyenne Bonnell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America, by Nancy Isenberg. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Women and the Rise of the Novel, 1405–1726, by Josephine Donovan. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Eroticism on the Renaissance Stage: Transcendence, Desire, and the Limits of the Visible, by Celia R. Daileader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.     

Intragroup Contact and Anxiety Among Ethnic Minority Adolescents: Considering Ethnic Identity and School Diversity Transitions

Everyday interactions with same-racial/ethnic others may confer positive benefits for adolescents, but the meaning of these interactions are likely influenced by individual differences and larger structural contexts. This study examined the situation-level association between contact with same-ethnic others and anxiety symptoms among a diverse sample of 306 racial/ethnic minority adolescents (Mage = 14 years; 66 % female), based on (1) individual differences in ethnic identity centrality and (2) developmental histories of transitions in diversity between elementary, middle, and high school. The results indicated that at the level of the situation, when adolescents interacted with more same-ethnic others, they reported fewer anxiety symptoms. Further, for adolescents who had experienced a transition in school diversity, the positive benefits of contact with same-ethnic others was only conferred for those who felt that their ethnicity was very important to them. The importance of examining individual differences within larger developmental histories to understand the everyday experiences of ethnic minority adolescents are discussed.     

Virtual law school

This is an account of how legal education may look in 25 years time. It is written in a science fiction style which seems appropriate for a futuristic piece. The account focuses on the central role that information technology will undoubtedly play in the law schools of the future and, in particular, on the crucial part that the Law Courseware Consortium may take in the ‘computerization’ of legal education.