Cheating death: the potency and perversity of Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple

ABSTRACT

Comic narratives provide an arena wherein the marginalised are centre stage, in the tradition of the carnival. This article examines Margaret Rutherford's performance in the role of Miss Marple in the 1960s MGM films, exploring how Rutherford's persona articulates complex discourses concerning age, gender and national identity, in the tradition of the contradictory nature of the trickster. The trickster tradition, in its evocation of a mythological resonance, creates a liminal space in the narrative, bridging life and death, male and female, chaos and order. Her narrative function is to restore social stability, to “cure” and “heal”, through chaos and cunning. Rutherford ultimately defies socially inscribed definitions of ageing femininity, inhabiting Agatha Christie's Miss Marple as a comic entity, whose ability to dissemble, impersonate and subvert makes her a potent and yet perverse force for good. Her performance as Miss Marple can be read within the social context of reconfigured discourses regarding age and gender in the second half of the twentieth century; greater life expectancy, social mobility and evolution of family structures challenged the traditional role of the ageing woman. She is a nostalgic articulation of Englishness which draws on the figuration of the village spinster.     

Ridicule,gender hegemony,and the disciplinary function of mainstream gender humour

ABSTRACT

This paper foregrounds the disciplinary power of ridicule, as a form or aspect of humour, vis-à-vis gender norms. While much theoretical and empirical research in gender studies recognizes the punitive function of gendered humour and/or ridicule, this function is given no theoretical significance. To resolve this tension, I integrate social psychologist Michael Billig's theory of ridicule as a universal reinforcer of the social order, along with the notion of gender order (as a particular type of social order) as outlined in masculinities theorist Raewyn Connell's gender hierarchy model. I contend that as a form of mainstream gender humour, ridicule serves as a tool for policing the gender order and creating self-regulating gendered subjects. The argument enables a rereading of mainstream gender humour, especially when it deploys ridicule to target non-hegemonic gendered subjectivities, practices, and performances. Such apparently banal humour, as I illustrate with examples of contemporary Anglo-American mainstream gender humour, speaks to and protects the fundamental elements of the gender order of the society and culture in which the humour circulates. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the main argument for pro-gender democracy research and activism.     

Why cooperate with others? Demystifying China's trilateral aid cooperation

This article examines China's motivations for trilateral aid cooperation in the context of its seemingly assertive diplomacy in recent years. Previously known for its preference for bilateral aid delivery, China, however, is increasingly conducting trilateral cooperation with western donor states and UN agencies. By employing constructivism and cognitive learning theories, this paper focuses on two perspectives: China's calculation of national interests and international engagement, and is structured around two case studies: UNDP's advisory role for China on development cooperation, and China–US trilateral aid cooperation. It argues that strategically, China is putting growing emphasis on its identity as a growing great power in the development sector, using trilateral cooperation to build its global image. Technically, China's four-decade long external engagement has promoted changes in its ideas about aid cooperation, thus reinforcing its desire for cognitive learning to improve its aid performance.     

Developing a rhetorical analysis of racist humour: examining anti-black jokes on the Internet

Racist humour is frequently the subject of media and public debate in relation to issues of offence and acceptability. Despite this, little has been done to analyse it or its relationship to other forms of racism. I argue that an analysis of racist humour needs to account for the rhetorical structures of humour – to consider humour as a rhetorical device similar to metaphor or metonym – that has a persuasive potential. Using jokes from four US websites, the rhetorical aspects of humour are unpacked through the use of rhetorical discourse analysis and semiotic theories of humour. I then identify an important effect of racist humour. Zygmunt Bauman's ideas on the problem of ambivalence for dichotomous discourse and category formation are employed to argue that racist humour expresses racist dichotomies and has the potential, among others, to “hide” the ambivalence to which such dichotomies are prone. The article then considers the meaning and ambivalence of less severe racist joking.     

The trade‐offs in developing public affairs metrics

This paper examines the place of metrics in the assessment of a corporation's public affairs practice. It describes how public affairs metrics are situated in the larger context of organisational performance assessment, examines the range of metrics available to the CPA practitioner, and identifies the critical trade‐offs associated with why public affairs metrics utilisation has not achieved the level of application that some experts have encouraged. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Transgression and (sexual) citizenship: the political struggle for self-determination within BDSM communities

There has been – and continues to be – a tension within the political strategies of sexual minority communities claiming citizenship. Whilst attempting to forge a political self-determination based on being (dissident) sexual subjects, members of sexually diverse communities have frequently engaged in political practices that normalize their diversity to accord with wider socio-cultural conventions. In this article, we address this issue in relation to the political strategies of one of the most marginalized sexual identities/practices: BDSM. By drawing on the work of Foucault, Rose, Rabinow and Bahktin, we advance a case for how it may be possible for dissident sexual communities to resist the normalizing effects of citizenship whilst still making claims for legal recognition and wider social acknowledgment. Key to the argument is the theorization of a position wherein carnival transgression operates within a dialectical integration of ideology and utopia as a mode of citizenship.     

Posner,Bentham and the rule of economy

Law and economics is a prominent but understudied discourse of liberal government. This essay examines the work of Richard Posner, with special attention to his rediscovery of Jeremy Bentham as a founder of law and economics. Posner's new reading of Bentham accurately identifies Bentham as a fellow anti-juridical theorist of government and a fellow believer in the rule of economy. But Bentham's economy makes room for a range of disciplinary appropriations, and Posner's does not. Posner's economy is entirely defined and exhausted by a particular economic doctrine. The essay suggests that civil society has been over-emphasized in the literature contrasting classical and contemporary liberalism. Instead, it turns attention to a common understanding of law as a non-autonomous and flexible tactic of economic government and to the role of the various sciences that can inform it.     

Between two rights: Julien Freund and the origins of political realism in France

Julien Freund (1921–93) was a French sociologist and political theorist who taught at the University of Strasbourg in the 1960s and 1970s. Although he is the author of over two dozen books, Freund remained throughout his lifetime something of a marginal figure in his own country. Yet, strangely, Freund is now receiving more scholarly attention in France than ever before. The question is why? This paper attempts to provide an answer by looking at Freund's attempt to establish an alternative intellectual canon in France that was heavily indebted to the German tradition of political realism. The story begins with Freund's early relationship with Raymond Aron, and suggests, perhaps provocatively, that Freund is responsible for luring Aron back into his studies on Max Weber dating from the 1930s. It then moves on to explore Freund's relationship with Carl Schmitt. Freund became Schmitt's closest French friend and, for forty years, exhibited a veritable obsession with disseminating Schmitt's work in France. Finally, it suggests that recent attempts by those who wish to place Freund within a current tradition of French liberalism are mistaken. Instead Freund must be placed within a German Neue Rechte context, and specifically his desire to introduce the German tradition of political realism into France. In the end the article argues that the French Nouvelle Droite—with its stress on the cultural and ethnic foundations of the nation-state—pushed Freund's political thought in a decidedly anti-liberal and seemingly pseudo-fascist direction.     

Japan's policy on steel trade disputes with the United States: a comparative analysis

Abstract

This article examines interactions among the United States, Japan and the European Union over steel trade disputes with particular interest in Japan's reactions to the disputes. For this objective, this paper establishes an analytical framework that takes into account bilateral, international, and domestic factors in formulating a state's external policy and relations. It was found that the special relationship with the United States still impinged on Japan's reactions to steel trade disputes, but its influence has gradually declined. Moreover, growing familiarity with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and practices and collaboration with other countries enabled Tokyo to expand its policy options to handle steel trade conflicts with Washington. Significantly, Japan formally adopted seemingly bold measures to cope with the US steel safeguard action, but the measures’ substantial influence on the US government was limited compared with those adopted by the European Union. Weak policy coordination among ministries prevented Japan from formulating strategic and effective measures in managing steel trade disputes with the United States.     

The impact of information acquisition on EU performance judgements

Public evaluations of EU performance are not only critical indicators of the EU's output legitimacy, but also shape future support for European integration. For citizens to monitor the political performance of the EU they need relevant facts, yet it is anything but clear that gains in information about EU performance cause change in judgements about such performance. Drawing on two‐wave panel data, this article examines whether acquiring information following a real‐world EU decision‐making event alters citizens' judgements about the utilitarian and democratic performance of the EU. It also examines how this effect differs for people with different levels of general political information. It is found that citizens who acquired performance‐relevant information became more approving of the EU's utilitarian performance but did not change their judgements about its democratic performance. Also, individuals with moderate levels of general political information were affected most strongly by new facts about performance. The implications of these findings for EU‐level representative democracy are considered.     

Water transfers,irrigation districts,and the compensation problem

Despite statutory reforms and potentially large economic gains from water trades, water markets have been slow to develop throughout the West. This article examines an institutional impediment that has not received adequate attention: How can irrigation districts structure water trades to benefit their customers? It shows how this question can be satisfactorily answered by organizing a proposed water trade like a friendly corporate tender offer. While seemingly a radical procedure, the method conforms with a simple economic interpretation of statute and case law that (1) describes the trustee relationship between irrigation district boards and their customers and (2) defines the equitable and beneficial interest of landowners in the district's water supply.     

Death and the Modern Imagination

This essay is an exercise in what might be called metaphysical sociology. Metaphysical sociology focusses on the meaning questions that confront all humans, questions about origins, about what to do with one's life, and about death. In particular, the essay examines the place of death in the modern secular psyche, given that interpretations of mortality have become clouded in uncertainty.     

Managing the grassroots and assessing its performance

This paper examines the increasingly popular advocacy activity of grassroots management. The success of many US government relations programmes depends heavily on the involvement and support of the organisation's grassroots networks. This paper provides a brief introduction to the grassroots, provides a number of methods for understanding and assessing grassroots performance and examines some of the key organisational considerations for institutionalising grassroots performance assessment into an organisation. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Benefiting from Public Sector Innovation: The Moderating Role of Customer and Learning Orientation

This article examines whether the payoff from engaging in innovation‐generating activities is contingent on an organization's level of customer and learning orientation. The authors suggest that innovative activity is associated with higher public service quality when the level of customer and learning orientation within the focal organization is high. They test this hypothesis by drawing on a novel panel data set covering all public nonspecialist hospital organizations in England. Using dynamic panel data estimation techniques, the authors find strong support for a direct relationship between innovative activity and public service quality and for a moderating role of both customer and learning orientation. These findings call for a contingency perspective on public sector innovation and highlight some of the boundary conditions that need to be in place if public service organizations are to benefit fully from their innovative activities.     

Unexpected narratives in conservation: Discourses of identity and place in Šumava National Park,Czech Republic

Abstract

In ?umava National Park, dominant actors dispute appropriate conservation strategies habitually overlooking ?umava's residents and their socioeconomic concerns. Routinely disregarded, ?umava's residents invoke narratives of identity and place that undermine the conservation paradigm by constructing the local population ‘quality’ as insufficient to make conservation a success. This paper examines the circumstances in which such a discourse emerges, how it responds to the asperity of conservation in a post-socialist setting and gains credence for implausible conclusions by appealing to broadly recognised Czech and European narratives of identity and place. What emerges is a discursive fragmentation of the subject simultaneously lends the discourse credibility and frustrates the redistribution of power in the area.     

Localizing Peacebuilding: The Arizona Market and the Evolution of U.S. Military Peacebuilding Priorities in Bosnia

ABSTRACT

This article examines peacebuilding localization, in particular how encounters with local contexts and actors shape external peacebuilders' priorities and practices. My vehicle for exploring this dynamic is the rapid emergence of a massive black market in northeast Bosnia, the ‘Arizona’ market, which developed on territory controlled by U.S. peacekeeping forces. I argue that the military's relationship with the market contributed to a shift from an initially minimalist, peacekeeping-centric, conception of the peacebuilding process toward the embrace of broader post-war political and economic initiatives, and identify three factors that influenced its unfolding in the case of Arizona: adaptation, embeddedness and place.     

On the Efficiency of By-Product Lobbying

To explain the existence of large lobbying groups, Olsonproposes a `by-product theory': large lobbies are by-productsof industry associations that operate as monopolists inprivate goods markets. This paper explicitly formulatesOlson's by-product theory of lobby funding and examines itsefficiency as a funding method. Lobbying efficiency isenhanced by the association's ability to price-discriminate.Price discrimination, in turn, is facilitated by theassociation's superior knowledge of its members'characteristics. The paper also examines the relationshipbetween lobby strength and industry size, as well as thequestion of `who exploits whom' under by-product lobbying.     

Beijing and the Myanmar problem

Abstract

The re-emergence of China as a major economic and political power has drawn attention to the role it might play in solving regional problems. Prominent among many Asian issues on Beijing's agenda is its southwestern neighbour, Myanmar, and in particular the military machine that has long ruled the country with an iron fist. The junta in place today is both acknowledged as problematic by policymakers in Beijing, and seen by the wider world as a regional challenge on which China should take the lead. However, there is little agreement on ways forward. To determine how Beijing might handle the Myanmar problem, this article first examines the concept of intervention, reviewing the manifold modes found in the contemporary world and drawing up a typology. Then it surveys arguments about intervention, focusing on perspectives that are relevant in this context. Next it presents arguments about intervention in Myanmar, and follows up by looking in some detail at China's current low-level engagement. Finally it considers where Beijing might go from here in dealing with Myanmar. The argument pulled together in the conclusion is that while nobody has a full solution to the Myanmar problem, a case for enhancement of China's role can be grounded not only in its global obligations, but also in precepts found deep in its national tradition. It is here that efforts to boost Beijing's engagement should be directed.     

The EU Politics of Remembrance: Can Europeans Remember Together?

Over the last few years, EU institutions have taken on the task of promoting an ‘active European remembrance’ of Europe's twentieth century totalitarian experiences. At stake in this process is the possibility of constructing an EU-wide historical narrative. However, EU-level debates on the remembrance of European history are permeated by struggles between policy actors who vie for control over the telling of Europe's past. Using insights from the agenda-setting and framing literatures, the article examines the conditions under which memory narratives are able to become prominent or, conversely, lose ground in the EU's overall discourse. It concludes that, although the constellation of actors in place was a key factor in explaining fluctuations in the EU's remembrance discourse, the weight of their arguments also depended on how well their discourse resonated with existing memory cultures at the domestic and the EU levels.     

Citizenship agendas for the abject: the production of distrust in Amsterdam's youth and security domain

In this article I explore the seemingly contradictory notion of citizenship agendas for the abject. While abjection suggests a casting off or expulsion, citizenship implies inclusion. The youth and security policies that I argue can be read as citizenship agendas for the abject evidence this contradiction and the concomitant ambiguity. This article focuses on the workings of the ‘youth and security assemblage’ in the Amsterdam South District. This policy assemblage primarily targets ‘unruly’ young Moroccan-Dutch men from Amsterdam's notorious Diamantbuurt. In Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands, such young men have been portrayed as the ultimate troublemakers who have made urban lives unsafe and ‘terrorized’ entire neighborhoods. Through an ethnographic analysis of a public event that brought together various members of the youth and security assemblage, this article examines the tensions and organized distrust that these citizenship agendas for the abject carry within them.