Celebrity Culture

Although the idea of a celebrity has been around for a long time, its mutation into an important cultural force is a relatively recent development. In recent decades the meaning of a celebrity has altered and is now often applied to those who are famous for being famous. The ascendancy of the celebrity has been fuelled by society’s uneasy relationship with the question of authority. Often celebrity provides an alternative source of validation. The tendency to outsource authority to the celebrity represents an attempt to bypass the problem of legitimacy by politicians and other figures.     

JUSTICE IN HELMAND – THE CHALLENGE OF LAW REFORM IN A SOCIETY AT WAR

The author describes the shortcomings of the justice system in Helmand province and the problems of running an effective Western-style system when civil authority is strongly contested. Traditional methods of dispute resolution are examined, together with the approach followed by the Taleban. His conclusion is pessimistic. A choice has to be made between accepting an effective traditional system and supporting a system familiar to the West which has little local traction.     

Modernität – zur Kritik eines Schlüsselbegriffs soziologischer Zeitdiagnose

The article discusses different research perspectives of the concept of modernity. Against the background of Max Weber’s diagnosis of the time, it analyzes the circular construction of this concept. Using discourse theory, the article traces the most important meanings of this concept as developed in the work of authors like Beck, Luhmann, Taylor, Habermas and Eisenstadt. Contrary to existing assumptions of a universal concept of modernity, the article argues for a sociological analysis of the concept of modernity in the line of post-colonial approache, which then can be used for a more adequate diagnosis of the time.     

The social composition of the Mau Mau movement in the white highlands

This article is an attempt to locate the social basis of the Mau Mau movement in the White Highlands. It is argued that the Mau Mau revolt was an outcome of a prolonged agrarian struggle between Kikuyu squatters and European settlers. In this agrarian struggle, the leading rôle was assumed by Kikuyu artisans and petty traders. This leadership provided the Mau Mau movement with the type of organisation and strategy that could unite the Kikuyu peasantry.     

Auctioneers and Misdescription: Between Scylla and Charybdis

In Elidor Investments SA v Christie's, Manson Woods Ltd the court implied a term as to Wednesbury reasonableness into an auctioneer's agency contract which fettered its ‘sole and complete discretion’ to describe lots. It is contended that, in so doing, the court unjustifiably and unnecessarily extended the jurisdiction into areas where it was not required and, in granting an injunction to restrain the sale of the lots, failed properly to apply the appropriate criteria.     

A limited solution carried to excess

In writing of the Presidency, Marshall Dimock declared that the personal staff idea was a limited solution carried to excess. This paper undertakes to examine the Dimock assertion in the wider arena of the Executive Branch. It first considers the idea of staff, exploring its earlier applications. It relies on the work of Douglas McGregor in suggesting that the personal staff orientation, as exhibited in the White House, tends to perpetuate profoundly hierarchical assumptions in respect to organizing and managing. The increasing politicization of the top echelons of the Federal bureaucracy further accentuates tendencies toward a system that is characterized by loyalty to an individual rather than to a system. The emergence of the role of Chief of Staff throughout the bureaucracy in recent years has provided further structure and influence to the personal staff movement. A case study of the role of the Chief of Staff in the administration of Anne Burford in the Environmental Protection Agency, 1981-83, provides evidence of the role and its significance. It is concluded that Marshall Dimock identified a problem which deserves greater research interest and public attention.     

The past to come ∗

Proto-industrialization (PI) is a concept introduced several years ago to explain a number of paradoxical aspects of the pre-history of industrialization: in a word the remarkable growth of labour-intensive, low technology handwork for distant markets, dispersed in countless rural households throughout large regions of west, central and eastern Europe. Without disputing the facts themselves, the concept has been subjected to vigorous and serious criticism, including one by the present author. Geoff Eley's recent review article of one of the basic PI texts (KMS) argued that these critiques were basically negative, neglecting the ‘moment’ in which that work was conceived and written, and thus blind to the substantial advance which it represented. I dispute his argument; Eley neglects the constructive part of our own contributions — that is ‘our moments’: the attempts to formulate alternative frameworks capable of explaining the same facts and giving reason to our criticism. The Whole question surely brings into focus the more serious problem of the methodological and theoretical status of the several types of transition theory, most notably the problem of all ‘internalist’ treatments, the place of regions beyond Europe in an adequate debate on transition, and thus the question of the minimal framework suitable for dealing with such questions, even when they pertain directly to Europe.