Legal reforms appropriate for cohabitants and LATs

Cohabitants and LATs (couples who “live apart together”) do not fit the traditional categories and rules of our family law system. This article describes what we know about both cohabitants and LATs in the U.S., compares the two institutions, and makes recommendations about legal reforms with respect to each. For cohabitants the reforms would assimilate cohabiting couples to marriage after the passage of time, based on the evidence of their economic interdependence and the probability that there are children in their households. As to LATs, the reforms proposed are limited to those that would support the caretaking functions LATs perform for each other, resulting in benefits to society as a whole.     

Placing Racial Stereotypes in Context: Social Desirability and the Politics of Racial Hostility

Past research indicates that diversity at the level of larger geographic units (e.g., counties) is linked to white racial hostility. However, research has not addressed whether diverse local contexts may strengthen or weaken the relationship between racial stereotypes and policy attitudes. In a statewide opinion survey, we find that black‐white racial diversity at the zip‐code level strengthens the connection between racial stereotypes and race‐related policy attitudes among whites. Moreover, this effect is most pronounced among low self‐monitors, individuals who are relatively immune to the effects of egalitarian social norms likely to develop within a racially diverse local area. We find that this racializing effect is most evident for stereotypes (e.g., African Americans are “violent”) that are “relevant” to a given policy (e.g., capital punishment). Our findings lend nuance to research on the political effects of racial attitudes and confirm the racializing political effects of diverse residential settings on white Americans.     

Transfiguring the golem: technicism,human relations technology,and the human project

The original Minnowbrook perspective is described as part of a broader human relations technology movement in which the organization of human activity could be accomplished without the negative features of bureaucracy—routinization, rationalization, depersonalization, mechanization, computerization. But, the problem is really not bureaucracy, it is technicism—the technological imperative. The article contrasts masculine and feminine perspectives on organizations and the implications of this contrast for wars between nation-states, human and organizational communication, and human relations technology. In this technicism era, public administered institutions are the best bet to hold together the fabric of society.     

The watch committee and the national indications center: The evolution of U.S. strategic warning 1950–1975

A new pearl harbor villain: Churchill

Introductory Commentary

James Rusbridger and Eric Nave: Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II. Summit Books, New York, 1991, 303 p., $19.95.

A cryptologic analysis

Behind the drums and bugles

Trevor N. Dupuy (USA ret.): International Military and Defense Encyclopedia Brassy's/Macmillan, Washington, DC, 1993. 6 volumes, ca 3,200 p., $995.00 and $1,250.00 (after 1 January 1994).

Breaking the German codes

David Kahn: Seizing the Enigma: The Race To Break the German U‐Boat Codes, 1939–1943 Houghton &; Mifflin, New York, 1991, 336 p., $24.95.

Whales in the air

Curtis Peebles: The Moby Dick Project: Reconnaissance Balloons Over Russia Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1991, 250 p., $45.70.

Getting the message through

C and A Entwistle: Undercover Addresses of World War II Bloomfield, Perth, Scotland, 88 pps., £6. (Available in the United States from L. D. Mayo, Jr., Box 20837, Indianapolis, Ind., $8.00.).

Intelligence: the first line of defense

Samuel M. Katz: Soldier Spies: Israeli Military Intelligence Presidio Press, Novato, Calif., 1992, 389 p., $21.95.     

Role-Switching in the Dutch Parliament: Reinvigorating Role Theory?

The lack of explanatory power of roles in the study of legislative behaviour has led to questioning of the utility of role theory. The problem may be that scholars tend to focus on classifying legislators according to one role orientation, thereby running the risk of oversimplification. Using questions from the 1990, 2001 and 2006 Dutch Parliamentary Studies, this study explores whether MPs specialise in a particular role or switch between roles depending on the situation at hand. A general trend towards specialisation in the partisan role is detected, accompanied by a decrease in the number of role-switching MPs. Furthermore, it is found that whereas government MPs tend to specialise in the role of the parliamentarian, opposition MPs are more prone to put on their partisan hats.     

From neoliberalism to neocommunitarianism: opposing justifications in a dispute over privatized electricity infrastructure

It is becoming increasingly clear that neoliberal ideological efforts to depoliticize politics have come to incorporate arguments once associated with radical communitarian, localist and existential critiques of capitalism. This article contributes to cross-disciplinary discussion of how and on what terms this process of assimilation has taken place. It first describes the rise of neocommunitarian politics and policy-making in the privatized electricity system of a “first-mover” neoliberal state, Australia. It then examines in detail a dispute over a proposed upgrade to a piece of electricity system infrastructure in a formerly industrial, working-class and immigrant, now post-industrial, bourgeois-bohemian and gentrified suburb of inner-Melbourne, Victoria. The study reveals a shift over time in the strategy of the protest group convened to resist the proposed upgrade. Originally using NIMBY-like arguments to oppose the upgrade, the group gradually transformed its strategy into a more general critique of privatization and marketization, and of the use of neocommunitarianism by state and market interests to promote economic growth. Generalizing from this case study, we suggest that such a transformation in protest strategy signals the possibility of a new culture of awareness that neocommunitarianism is little more than a response by states and markets to public rejection of free-market reforms. Moreover, the transformation of the protesters' strategy heralds the possibility of a renewal in critical thought and practice, one that is repoliticizing politics by challenging the marketizing and privatizing of public goods.     

‘I am an American’: protesting advertised ‘Americanness’

How are citizenships and nationalisms constructed, connected, and contested in the post-9/11 USA – performatively, affectively, and visually – and how do their relationships figure ‘Americanness’? This article takes up this question (1) by tracking how Americanness was advertised in the American Ad Council's ‘I am an American’ campaign and (2) by introducing the multimedia project ‘I am an American’: Video Portraits of Unsafe US Citizens, which engages the Ad Council's campaign as a practice-based protest of the Ad Council's advertised ‘Americanness’. The article traces how the Ad Council's campaign advertises what Evelyn Alsultany calls ‘diversity patriotism’. It also constructs a complex, mobile system of differentiation that marks some citizens as ‘safe’ and others as ‘unsafe’, which runs counter to the idealized notion of a unified ‘Americanness’ that it advertises. The article then examines how the practice-based protest project ‘I am an American’ takes these ‘unsafe citizens’ – US citizens who either will not or cannot make their differences normatively conform to the national ideal of the ‘One’ composed of the ‘Many’ propagated by the Ad Council's campaign – as its point of departure to reflect upon how citizenship protests function for and against citizenship, nationalisms, and various figurations of Americanness.     

Unpacking Thailand's southern conflict: The poverty of structural explanations

Despite its importance and timeliness Peter Gowan's article “Triumphing toward International Disaster” falls short insofar as it fails to locate “American Grand Strategy” in the context of the global social relations of the capitalist order; particularly problematic is the way that he takes for granted the constitution of “global politics” as a system of nation-states. In our response we try to draw out some of the inconsistencies in Gowan's analysis by engaging the state-centeredness of his argument and discussing some of the implications of this for critical engagement with the changing world order and the current global crisis.