Analysing characters' interactions in filmic text: a functional semiotic approach

This paper presents an analytical tool for constructing characters' action patterns in film. Understanding characters in moving images has been regarded as one of the most significant elements of narrative comprehension and interpretation because spectators' inferences of narrative structures are substantially mediated by characters. The social semiotic method presented in this paper shows how characters' actions and interactions can be systematically constructed based on the co-patterning of textual elements in film and how the patterns provide an analytical foundation for understanding and interpreting characters. In addition, this paper also reviews the previous explorations of the more fine-grained approaches to character analysis and then demonstrates how the method the paper suggests can support and strengthen the accounts provided to date. Most importantly, by comparing scenes within and across two war films, The Thin Red Line (1998) and Black Hawk Down (2001), the article will show the potential of this method for effectively constraining hypotheses for empirical investigations of filmic meaning.     

The anti-political economy

This paper develops Michel Callon's analysis of the technological economy in two ways. First, the paper is concerned with the way that political activity is framed through the use of a variety of technical devices. Arguing against the view that politics can be located in all forms of social and economic activity, the paper suggests that politics should be regarded as a rather specialist activity that is often directed towards 'anti-political' ends. Second, through a discussion of what the paper terms 'the fragility of metrological regimes' and the 'inventiveness of measurement', the paper argues that measurement and calculation can have the effect of disrupting the frame of politics, and creating a conduit for the cross-contamination of the economic and the political.     

To distort the market: The role of society in Chinese modernization

Market distortions are generally caused by the state or social institutions. This paper discusses the social distortions of the Chinese market through examining a “Chinese style” labor market-the community-based labor markets. Along with the now standard argument emphasizing the role of the state, this paper concludes that the “right kind” of societal distortions or control of the market have been crucial to the phenomenal success of the Chinese marketization and the seemingly puzzling political and social stability in that country. Besides contending for the general “necessity” of market distortions, this paper calls for further studies on the significant role of social institutions in contemporary China.     

Explaining the formation of business-environmentalist collaborations: Collaborative windows and the Paper Task Force

Building on the agenda setting theory of Kingdon (1984), this paper develops a collaboration forming model to explain the creation of multi-party initiatives as an addition to Gray's (1985 and 1989) explanation for collaborations as a response to environmental turbulence, crisis, or complexity. It tests this model by examining the Paper Task Force, a collaboration of five multi-national companies, an environmental group, and a university intended to determine environmentally sound guidelines for paper procurement. The study finds that multi-stakeholder collaborations can require collaborative windows for their formation. These windows occur when four process streams – problem, policy, organizational, and social/political/economic – converge. In the case of the Paper Task Force, the problem stream was an increasing recognition of the environmental burdens throughout the lifecycle of paper production. The policy stream included new governmental initiatives to make paper-making processes cleaner and use paper with more recycled content. The organizational stream consisted of an increasing willingness among corporations to improve their environmental performance combined with their development of paper making technology with lower environmental impacts. The social/political/economic stream included strong public support for the environment in the United States and demand for chlorine free paper in Europe. A collaborative entrepreneur, the Environmental Defense Fund, working with the other Task Force members, was able to join solutions to problems. Implications for other collaborative ventures are developed.     

Intergovernmental relations on immigrant integration in Spain: The case of Catalonia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the nature of intergovernmental relations (IGR) on immigrant integration in Spain, a relatively recent immigration country, with a focus on Catalonia. By means of qualitative document analysis and semi-structured interviews at both levels of government, the paper demonstrates that despite the formal existence of multilateral and institutionalized fora for intergovernmental relations, most intergovernmental relations on immigrant integration tend to be informal and bilateral. The paper also highlights that the conflictual nature of IGR on integration varies across sub-policy areas and over time. The paper contributes to strengthen existing hypotheses regarding institutional features (the distribution of competencies and the territorial organization of power) and party politics for explaining the patterns of IGR.     

Operationalizing cultural citizenship: towards a concept of culture regime*

This paper contributes to the study of cultural citizenship by laying the foundations for a concept of culture regime. Depicting culture as a malleable concept that encompasses both particularistic and universalistic elements, the paper emphasizes the potential of the concept of culture regime to bridge those of citizenship, language and ethnicity regime. While presenting narrow conceptions of culture as ethnic identity as a defensible compromise in the context of comparative empirical research, the paper discusses how the study of culture regimes could integrate broader approaches to culture by incorporating other forms of cultural claims and identities that go beyond ethnic traits. In doing so, the paper aims to promote an inter-disciplinary dialogue on cultural citizenship, arguing that some of the differences in cross-disciplinary approaches to culture owe to methodological rather than ontological considerations.     

The campaign dynamics of economic voting

This paper considers the relationship between election campaigns and the impact of economic evaluations on vote choice. The motivation is the standard expectation that the campaign generally serves to amplify the significance of economic considerations in the voter's calculus—to focus his/her attention on this “fundamental” element of the electoral decision. Drawing on survey data from ten national elections across four countries (Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) and applying both parametric and semi-parametric statistical techniques, the paper finds no support for this proposition. The paper reflects on the significance of this conclusion for work on political learning during election campaigns, the literature on economic voting, and the study of electoral behaviour more generally.     

Return of the Governors: Citizenship and the New Governance of Neighbourhood Disorder in the UK

Liberal processes of urban governance are based around a concept of the citizen as both governor and governed. This duality suggests a dynamic relationship between the individual citizen, fellow citizens and the state in which responsibility for the governance of public life will oscillate between actors. This paper argues that increasingly the rhetoric and policy of neighbourhood governance in the UK represents a return of the direct role of the state as an 'official' presence in the governance of neighbourhood disorder. Such a return is a consequence of the failure of previous appeals to both 'active citizens' and 'communities' to exert informal social control over their local public spheres. This paper provides a critique of such appeals as a response to the continuing crisis of urban citizenship and 'community' in liberal democracies. The paper analyses the implications for urban citizenship theory of two recent UK policy developments, child safety initiatives (commonly referred to as curfews) and neighbourhood warden schemes and places these initiatives in the context of an increasing role for official housing agencies and private interests in neighbourhood governance. The paper suggests a need for urban policy to reflect the diversity of urban identities and to re-establish the links between civil, political and social rights of citizenship.     

Corruption in public policy and its impact on development: The case of Uganda since 1979

This paper argues that corruption is a product of self-aggrandizement; of unrealistically low remuneration which makes it impossible for public servants to live within their legitimate means; and of a closed political system which inevitably tends to exclude aggregated interests'. Corruption leads to loss of much needed revenue and human talent for development, distorts priorities for public policy, and shifts scarce resources away from the public interest. The mutual distrust that results among the different sections of society, and the growth of despondency in the general public, are incompatible with the requirements for successful public policy. The main theme running through the paper is that political instability, corruption and underdevelopment are mutually reinforcing. The paper finally outlines certain measures that need to be taken in order to clear the path for sustained growth and development.     

Binding: a resource for exploring interpersonal meaning in three-dimensional space

This paper takes an in-depth look at Binding, a recently theorised resource for analysing interpersonal meaning in three-dimensional space. Binding is concerned with the dialectic between affect and space. Extremes of Binding can evoke claustrophobic and agoraphobic responses to space, whereas median choices produce comfort zones of security or freedom. In considering how security and insecurity are experienced in the spatial realm, the paper also compares Binding with the resources language has for expressing similar meanings. While the examples used in this paper are drawn from the domestic sphere, Binding is relevant to spaces across an endless range of fields – the natural environment, schools, workplaces, retail sites, hospitals, museums – as well as virtual and literary spaces. It can be used to inform the design and analysis of all three-dimensional space – natural or built.     

Proxy documents as a source of measurement error in the Comparative Manifestos Project

This paper considers the issue of document type diversity in the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP). For many years the CMP has been collecting and coding a variety of documents, such as speeches, pamphlets, newspaper articles and leaflets, as manifesto proxies. By using previously unexplored archival material to perform controlled comparisons between different types of documents, this paper argues that the coding of such documents introduced considerable measurement error to party position estimates. Statistical analyses indicate that this measurement error is systematic rather than random as it is often manifested as centrist bias in parties' left–right position estimates. Consequently, the paper argues that random error correction methods cannot always correct for error attributed to the coding of proxy documents. The paper concludes with some recommendations for third-party users of the CMP data and documents and a plea to the CMP research team.     

Contested meanings of environmentalism and national security in green Korea

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between national security and environmentalism in South Korea. The 2009 South Korean Presidential Committee on Green Growth set a long-term vision for South Korea to ‘go green’. This is promoted as a new state-led development paradigm and a response to new global security risks. The paper identifies official and unofficial contested narratives on development, environmentalism and national security. By focusing on civil society movements, the paper identifies challenges to the exclusionary realist and liberal institutional approaches to South Korea's Green Growth initiative. These alternative discourses of national security are unpacking and reconstructing the relationship between development and environmentalism through the question of who defines ‘national security’ and for whose interests.     

The Pluralistic Public Sphere from an Ontological Point of View

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide a rationale for a ‘model of the public sphere’ in terms of hermeneutic ontology that begins from Heidegger's Being and Time. However, this Heideggerian hermeneutic ontology will both be weakened and extended through a dialogue with social theory, which occupies a central place in this paper. More specifically, the main aim of this paper is to suggest some ideas to bridge the gap between the ontological focus on the hermeneutic fore-structure of being-in-the-public-sphere and the focus of social theory on the nexus between constructing identity and narrative, the result of which is the idea of the public sphere as an open-ended intercultural dialogue.     

Office and Policy at the Expense of Votes: Plaid Cymru and the One Wales Government

This paper will examine Plaid Cymru's experience in government from 2007 to 2011. Drawing on literature on autonomist parties, parties in government for the first time, and Strøm and Müller's policy/office/votes framework, the paper examines where strategic 'trade-offs’ were made and what the consequences of such trade-offs were. The paper takes a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interview and documentary data. The paper finds that Plaid Cymru valued the policy-seeking potential of office at the expense of vote-seeking ones because of the importance of 'autonomist' goals, namely the 2011 referendum which saw primary law-making powers granted to the Welsh Assembly. Furthermore, the experience of governmental office exposed organizational vulnerabilities in the party's leadership structures which undermined the ability to construct an effective vote-winning strategy at the 2011 Welsh election, where the party lost four seats.     

Expenditures and votes: In search of downward-sloping curves in the United States and Great Britain

An earlier paper showed a negative relation between increases and accelerations in F, the ratio of federal expenditures to GNP and E, the reelection or defeat of the incumbent party in the White House over the last 100 years. This paper argues that there also exists a negative relation between V, the percentage of the popular vote cast for the incumbents, and F. This function is displaced by wars and depressions and can drift over time, making it difficult to discover negative curves in the data. Dividing British and US data for the last 50 years into party periods yields clearly discernable negative functions for F and V for the incumbents.     

From book to stage to screen: semiotic transformations of Gothic horror genre conventions

ABSTRACT

This paper adopts a multimodal social semiotic approach for exploring the semiotic changes involved in the transformation of a novel into stage and screen productions. It examines how semiotic resources are deployed in each medium through elements of mise-en-scène, such as speech, music, sound, lighting, props, staging, and cinematographic techniques, and the viewing perspectives that are thus established for audiences. The genre of Gothic horror is selected for this purpose, given how this form of performance has transfixed audiences for centuries and has been adapted for both the stage and the screen. In order to demonstrate how each performance medium has produced its own unique set of foregrounding devices to enthral and captivate audiences, a comparative analysis of excerpts from the novel The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, a videotaped theatrical performance, and the 1989 British television film of the same name is undertaken. The paper discusses the implications of the multimodal semiotic approach for developing a better understanding of the semiotic transformations that horror genre conventions undergo in different media and the viewership positions that are thus re-drawn for audiences. The paper concludes with a view of multimodal recontextualisation processes which form the underlying basis of human sociocultural life.     

"Bru-u-u-uce": The simple economics of mob goods

This paper provides a pure economic rationale for chronic excess demand for tickets to events like rock concerts. The model focuses on "mob goods", which are consumed jointly with crowd reaction, or "noise". Whereas the primary commodity is provided by the seller, the joint product is provided collectively by buyers. If propensities to make noise are inversely correlated with reservation prices and a capacity constraint applies, excess demand (queuing) is a necessary condition for profit maximization. One important implication is that anti-scalping laws may be welfare-increasing. The paper explores other applications in professional sports, restaurants, and on-stage theatre.     

An expanded approach to analyzing policy-minded candidates

A random pivot model is used to expand the theory of policy-minded candidates. Previous results (Wittman, 1977, 1983; Cox, 1984; Hansson and Stuart, 1984) are derived under weaker assumptions. New results about candidate strategies in multiple elections are also obtained. The thrust of these results supports Calvert's (1985) finding that office-seeking and policy-mindedness are countervailing forces in election contests.Delivered at the 1989 Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, GA, 31 August–3 September 1989. An earlier draft of this paper was delivered at the Public Choice Society Meetings, Orlando, FL, 17–19 March 1989. I would like to thank Chuck Cameron, Don Wittman, and Henry Chappell for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am greatly indebted to Gary Cox for his helpful suggestions in revising this paper. I would also like to thank three anonymous referees.     

Strategic Thinking,Shared Meaning‐Making and the Interpretive Turn in Policy ‐ A Case Study

Governments' demands for results in a complex and rapidly changing policy environment call for more strategic and nuanced ways of approaching policy. Drawing on the work of the British interpretive ‘turn’, evidenced in the network governance literature and the differentiated polity critique of Westminster narratives, and of Liedkta on strategy as design, this paper suggests that shared strategic narratives, more consciously applied to policy development and implementation, could deliver better results; that consensus from shared meaning‐making may have depth, and that it could emphasise the transformative over the conservative forces of individuals' traditions and beliefs. Data for the paper came from a micro‐study on the implementation of SmartGate automated border processing system in New Zealand.     

A Trojan Horse? Unionism, Trust and Truth-telling in Northern Ireland

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship betweentrust, testimony and truth recovery processes as part of post-conflicttransition. The paper uses the case study of unionist attitudestoward a community-based truth-telling project in Northern Irelandto demonstrate the impact an absence of trust can have uponwhat the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has described as the‘space of controversy’ that emerges between the‘certification’ and the ‘accreditation’of testimony. The paper suggests such distrust is a legacy,not only of conflict, but also of the particular circumstancesof transition and the specific mechanisms of truth recoveryadopted. Ultimately the paper argues for a holistic, community-centredapproach towards truth-telling and raises issues relevant toother violently divided societies undergoing transition andgrappling with ways in which to deal with the legacy of politicalconflict.