Feminism and anthropology

Henrietta L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (Polity Press), Cambridge, 1988. Marilyn Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (University of California Press), Berkeley CA, 1988.     

Physical stature and biological living standards of girls and young women in the Netherlands,born between 1815 and 1865

This is the first study in Dutch anthropometric historiography that describes and analyzes the development of the biological standard of living of girls and young women from the perspective of female adult stature. It is shown that adult stature of women, imprisoned in the second half of the nineteenth century and born between 1815 and 1865, slightly increased, approximately 1 cm. From 1850 onwards stature of women born in the cities notably increased. Development of female adult stature was compared to that of male stature; both were quite similar. No circumstantial evidence was found that girls or young women were on a disadvantage with respect to nutrition and (medical) care.     

Institutionalized Governance: The Case of the National College for School Leadership

The article is based on data from the Knowledge Production and Educational Leadership Project (funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council RES‐000-23-1192) where we investigated the relationship between the state and public policy and knowledge in England during the New Labor governments from 1997. The relationship between the state and civil society is one of institutionalized governance where the public institution in the form of the national ministry and the establishment of Non-Departmental Public Bodies remain important in policymaking but is increasingly inter dependent with networks of advisors and private consultants who “enter” government as policy designers and deliverers. We intend to develop this through using the National College for School Leadership as a case study based on primary documentation and interview data.     

E–governance and e-publicanism: preliminary perspectives on the role of the Internet in South African democratic processes

Abstract

The idea of peace has gained a hegemonic place in the discourse of intellectuals and the mass media. From being a preoccupation of religious and utopian sages throughout history, a vision of a peaceful world emerged as a fashionable occupation for peace activism in the 1960s and ultimately in the 21^st century peace research has become a fast-growing industry. The assumed need to end wars and violence and to enforce peaceful existence on individuals, groups, societies and the entire world has been unquestionably accepted as if a self evident truth. By accepting such dubious claims many scholars have consciously and unconsciously distorted historical data in order to produce an image of an ideal peaceful world. Yet increasingly the belief in the ability to abolish war and eliminate conflict is being questioned and conflict prevention is seen as unrealistic, undesirable and based on misguided assumptions. Thus, if achieving peace is counterproductive what are the motives, aims and consequences of peace enforcement? This article begins a critical interrogation of the idea of peace and peace discourse and the formative value of war as human reality. The article uncovers the genealogy of peace, evaluates the relationships between peace and war and exposes the deceptive strategies and tactics of peace discourse as it manipulates language and the mass media. The article concludes that the consequences of enforcing peace do not produce a beautiful society but a nightmare where war is seen once again as a blessing.     

Democracy and Human Rights in the Mexican States: Elections or Social Capital?

Why does the relationship between a government and its citizens deteriorate to violence? Large-N cross-national quantitative analyses of human rights violations have found an inverse relationship between democracy and violations. These analyses, however, have not been able to address the central finding of an influential subnational analysis of democracy that stresses the importance of a single dimension of democracy, social capital. In this article we combine these two streams of research with fresh data from the Mexican states to investigate how and why democracy inhibits violations. Theoretically, we connect a policy interest in protecting human rights to politicians' office-seeking goals and to the level of social capital. Empirically, our data allow us to disentangle two principal components of democracy, elections and social capital, and include important control variables, notably ethnic diversity, which have been largely left out of the cross-national analyses. Our central finding is that the electoral components rather than social capital produce important consequences for the protection of citizens' human rights.     

Welfare Reform: Revolution or Retrenchment?

This article introduces the two main themes of this specialissue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, workfare and federalism.At this early stage in the history of the 1996 Welfare ReformAct, these themes must be stated as questions rather than answers,as hypotheses not conclusions. What does the new welfare policyseek to accomplish? What are the effects—intended andunintended—of its limited devolution of power to the states?