Public Services, Quangos And Women: A Concern For Local Government

The past eighteen years have witnessed a shift in the locus of much public sector service provision from elected and heavily regulated local government to the more opaque, appointed sector of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (QUANGOs). This shift has been the basis of much debate about the nature of democratic accountability and whether the users of public services are empowered by such decentralization. What has yet to be considered is how the displacement of local authority representation and service delivery may affect different groups of service users. This article is concerned with such issues in relation to women as consumers of public services who, from genuine political as well as expedient motivations, have been relatively well represented by local authorities. The concern here is that as decision making moves away from public view, the need to be seen to accommodate difference is lost, and representative diversity will suffer.     

Guilty Bodies, Productive Bodies, Destructive Bodies: Crossing the Biometric Borders

This article examines the forms of power brought into play by the deployment of biometrics under the lenses of Foucault's notions of discipline and biopower. These developments are then analyzed from the perspective of governmentality, highlighting how the broader spread of biometrics throughout the social fabric owes not merely to the convergence of public and private surveillance, but rather to a deeper logic of power under the governmental state, orchestrated by the security function, which ultimately strengthens the state. It is associated with the rise of a new governmentality discourse, which operates on a binary logic of productive/destructive, and where, in fact, the very distinctions between private and public, guilty, and innocent—classic categories of sovereignty—find decreasing currency. However, biometric borders reveal a complicated game of renegotiations between sovereignty and governmentality, whereby sovereignty is colonized by governmentality on the one hand, but still functions as a counterweight to it on the other. Furthermore, they bring out a particular function of the "destructive body" for the governmental state: it is both the key figure ruling the whole design of security management, and the blind spot, the inconceivable, for a form of power geared toward producing productive bodies.     

We Are All Probing Each Other,All the Time

The recent scandal of the National Security Agency (NSA) “Hoovering” up the metadata on US and foreign citizens from Google, Facebook and Yahoo exposes in the full light of day the central paradox of the new digital age: The Internet enables us to know and learn more than ever before, but enables more to be known and learned about us by both snooping governments and monetizing information corporations alike. In this section, Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen discuss this paradox. We also reprint an interview from 2009 with Mike McConnell, a former chief of the National Security Agency and the driving force behind Booz, Allen, Hamilton's digital security operation. Edward Snowden, the systems administrator who blew the whistle, was employed by the NSA as a subcontractor from Booz, Allen, Hamilton.     

Public Policies, Private Strategies and Local Public Spending Bodies

Local Public Spending Bodies (LPSBs) occupy an important position in the contemporary structures of governance in the UK. As exemplars of many of the diverse characteristics of the New Public Management, LPSBs inhabit the fuzzy space between the public and private spheres, both in terms of organizational structure and service delivery. One finding from recent research into the internal governance of three kinds of LPSBs – Further Education Colleges, Housing Associations and Training and Enterprise Councils – was that the language of strategy predominated over that of policy on the boards of such organizations. In this article we assess the significance of this finding. We contend that the two terms are not interchangeable and that a vital distinction needs to be maintained between them. Specifically we argue that policy refers to collections of decisions grounded in public values whereas the concept of strategy, particularly as currently understood in the context of the New Public Management, refers to the positioning of an organization in its struggle to survive and grow. We conclude that LPSBs have been invited to behave strategically within a framework of increasingly centralized policy objectives and resource allocations.     

Bodies and Bullying: The Interaction of Gender,Race, Ethnicity,Weight, and Inequality With School Victimization

The problem of bullying among youth is receiving more attention because of long-lasting detrimental consequences of victimization at school. Research demonstrates that gender, race, ethnicity, and weight are separately linked to bullying victimization; however, little is known about the interaction of these factors in relationship to victimization at school. This study utilizes the 2005/2006 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) data to investigate how bodies (i.e., gender, race, ethnicity, and weight) matter with youth victimization. Drawing from the 2005/2006 HBSC sample consisting of 7,143 youth, findings indicate that interactions of gender, race, ethnicity, and weight are linked to school bullying victimization.     

Contemporary Governance and Local Public Spending Bodies

This paper draws on recent research conducted by the authors to examine the nature of board/executive relations in three different kinds of Local Public Spending Body (LPSB). Big variations are noted, between and within sectors, in the way in which boards organize themselves and the degree of power they have in relation to executives. In all organizations studied the executive played a crucial role both in managing day-to-day operations and in setting the organization's strategic direction. Chief executives exercised considerable influence over the recruitment of board members and the maintenance of consensual relations between board and executive. The dilemma of the voluntary board member with limited time and a lack of inside knowledge of the organization he/she is accountable for is examined. It is argued that the most effective boards contain members with a strong sense of their own legitimacy and enjoy a membership with a diverse range of interests and experiences. It is suggested that such models might combine the merits of greater democratic responsiveness and enhanced organizational effectiveness.     

五洲之内皆兄弟姐妹

中国古语云:"四海之内皆兄弟姐妹."在这全球化、信息化的时代,这句话可以发展为:五洲之内皆兄弟姐妹."世纪之灾"的印度洋海啸引动世界大救援,正体现了这种精神.中国政府和人民、全球华人奉献的真诚爱心,体现了中华民族的优良传统,受到了全世界的赞赏.     

The Piper Played to Us All: Orchestrating the Cultural Cold War in the USA, Europe, and Latin America

Review of a recent book on the Congress for Cultural Freedom by British author and documentary filmmaker Frances Stono Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 1999), leads into an examination of the cold war ideological contest in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Particular attention is given to the Americas and U.S. efforts to manipulate the social sciences as instruments of hemispheric control. Saunder's book is compared and contrasted to other works on the cultural cold war, while extensive references are provided for further reading and research.