Listings

The Winds of Change

Angelo Zito and Tani E. Barlow (eds.), Body, Subject and Power in China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, £35.95, £13.50 (pbk.).

Tani E. Barlow (ed.), Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994, £42.75, £15.95 (pbk.).

Writing and Killing

Hoda Barakat, The Stone of Laughter, trans. from the Arabic by Sophie Bennett, introd. Fadia Faqir, Garnet Publishing, Arab Women Writers Series, 1994, £8.95.

Salwa Bakr, The Golden Chariot, trans, from the Arabic by Dinah Manisty, introd. Fadia Faqir, Garnet Publishing, Arab Women Writers Series, 1995, £8.95.

A Tunisian Search for Independence

The Silences of the Palaces, directed by Moufida Tlatli.

Landscapes and Bodies

Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospective, The Tate Gallery, Liverpool     

Individual and situational determinants of police force: An examination of threat presentation

This study is based on previous research denoting the primary factors that influence officer decisions regarding the use of differing levels of force in police-citizen encounters. Using a totality of the circumstance approach, primary emphasis is directed toward explaining those factors that contribute to officers’ estimation of the perceived level of threat inherent in police-citizen encounters. Officers’ perceived level of threat presented by a suspect or the situational context of an encounter is important because in 1989, the Supreme Court in theGraham v. Conner decision mandated that the appropriate amount of force that can be utilized depends on the following four primary factors: the threat, offense severity, actual resistance offered, and whether the suspect is trying to escape custody. These criteria were tested and placed into a predictive model along with other indicators the literature has found to be correlated with situations in which police force is used more often. The findings suggest that while the threat presented to officers is important and related to the level of force that is deemed appropriate by the police profession, many additional elements must be taken into consideration when interpreting if an officer used force correctly.     

Quarantine in times of emergency: the scope of s 51(ix) of the Constitution

This article explores the scope of s 51(ix) of the Constitution, the power of the Commonwealth to make laws with respect to "quarantine". While this power has sustained the Quarantine Act without a challenge since 1908, it may be that future national public health emergencies, such as epidemics or bioterrorism, will (as has happened in other countries) demand a level of federal preparedness that requires augmented public health powers at a national level. If so, will the scope of the quarantine power, as determined by the High Court, be wide enough allow the Commonwealth to implement these powers? While there is some advantage in a national approach, there is also some authority suggesting that the quarantine power could not extend to domestic public health controls. If there is uncertainty about the scope of the power, what are the options? Should there be another approach, with the States, Territories and the Commonwealth moving towards uniform legislation and co-operative arrangements?     

A lifting process for determining the writing sequence of two intersecting ball-point pen strokes

The authors describe a technique for determining the order in which two intersecting ball-point pen strokes were made by means of lifting part of the ink with KromeKote paper. The KromeKote paper is applied to the intersection with the glossy side against the writing. The back of the lifting paper is rubbed with a blunt pointed instrument using moderate pressure. Study of the lift under low magnification discloses a pattern of edge markings with those from the last written line dominating the intersection. Results show a high percentage of accuracy.     

Social Network Analysis of German Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

ABSTRACT

Why do Westerners become foreign fighters in civil conflicts? We explore this question through original data collection on German foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, and test three sets of hypotheses that revolve around socioeconomic integration, online radicalization, and social network mobilization. We conduct link analysis to map the network of German foreign fighters prior to their mobilization, and marshal evidence to assess the validity of competing explanations. We find only modest support for the integration deficit hypothesis, and meager support for the social media radicalization theory. Instead, the preponderance of evidence suggests that interpersonal ties largely drive the German foreign fighter phenomenon. Recruitment featured clustered mobilization and bloc recruitment within interconnected radical milieus, leading us to conclude that peer-to-peer networks are the most important mobilization factor for German foreign fighters.     

Public administration and public policy: old perspectives,new directions

Public administration has rather studiously avoided serious consideration of its ties to public policy throughout most of this century. The politics/administration dichotomy leaves a lasting legacy. Policy has a central place in the ongoing effort to explain what public administration is and how it functions. Policy defines the purpose of agencies, stipulates much of the detail about their organization, provides authority and legitimacy, and makes them important -- probably the most important--instruments of policy effectuation and evaluation. Public administration has traditionally displayed an interest in management; it has been studied, taught, and practiced as method, “how to.” This instrumentalist orientation has addressed successively different perspectives, all subsumed within the rubric of public administration. The first of these emphasized administrative reform, followed by an interest in scientific management. These left a legacy that largely treated administration as an end in itself, divorced from matters of policy. Further developments during the depression and post-war years gave prominence to human relations and decisionmaking. These newer orientations emphasized public administration's non-involvement with policy, although decisionmaking proved less inward-oriented and contributed some methodological insights for better understanding policy's ties to public administration. Decisionmaking's preoccupation with unifunctional organizations accountable to a single power center has proved a formidable obstacle to empirical investigations of policy/administration ties, however. This dilemma calls for new perspectives from which to study these ties; one promising perspective is the examination of administrative involvement in successive stages of the policy process.