The ‘White Working class’ in South Africa

In general, the analysis of classes in the literature on South Africa beginsfrom the political and ideological levels and not from the concept of the mode of production. The effect of this is to obscure the nature of the class structure and changes in it and leads to a neglect of shifts in class alliances in the class struggle. In this paper, concepts of the ‘white working class’ commonly found in the literature are critically analysed and an alternative conceptualization which begins from the mode of production is outlined. The paper ends with a brief analysis of changes in the relationship between the white working class and the state.     

Targeting at the Margin: the ‘Glass of Milk’ Subsidy Programme in Peru

This article evaluates the Vaso de Leche (VL) feeding programme in Peru in order to illustrate an evaluation methodology based on targeting criteria for a decentralised transfer programme. We find that the degree of overall targeting of poor individuals attributable to the central government's choice of districts is greater than that attributable to choice of participants within districts made by the municipalities and the mothers' committees. However, when we use a version of a targeting efficiency measure first introduced by Galasso and Ravallion [2003] which we modify to be defined on the values of allocations, the opposite is the case. The community-based decision makers appear to be targeting the poor in terms of the values of the transfers.     

Dimock's philosophy of administration

Marshall E. Dimock was a self-confessed non-conformist who valued individualism and individual self-development above all other values. For him a philosophy of administration is more than a science or art and “must deal with institutional goals and objectives, with social values and individual growth, as well as with the paraphernalia of organizing and running things, which are only “incidental.^”(1) He warned that “over specialization of the individual makes him dull and lacking capacities for administrative growth^”(2)and decried the parochialism of behaviorists, logical positivists and other methodologists. At the core of his thinking about problems of administration, management and organization was what he regarded as the fundamental importance of “moral philosophy” although he recognized that “the political economist who epitomizes moral philosophy is regarded as a regrettably nonconformist and excessively individualistic relic of a past age.^”(3)     

Pursuing justice in a free society: Part one—power vs. liberty

John Kaplan, The Hardest Drug: Heroin and Public Policy Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983, xi + 247 pp.     

Small Gestures and Acts of Grace: An Interview with Germaine Koh

Knitwork is an 80-metre long work generated by unraveling cast-off garments, and reknitting them into a wide blanket. The piece is visually rich: bands of bright colours, softer shades and painterly mixes. The artist Germaine Koh, who lives and works in Canada, conceived the piece in February 1992 as a life-long project. It has since been shown in galleries across North America, Australia and, most recently, in 2002, at the British Museum in London, where it cascaded down marble steps in the Great Court. Knitwork is reminiscent of the work of feminist artists of the 1970s (such as Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in the United States, or the Feministo group in Britain), work that commented on the devaluation of both domestic labour and craft, particularly with regard to textiles, traditionally associated with women. Although Koh intends this reading, Knitwork is one of a series of-what might be described as-conceptual art projects that she has exhibited over the last decade. These focus on the ways in which we invest time and effort in seemingly mundane activities, what Koh describes as 'the weighty psychic accretion of everyday habits and mundane debris'. By using commonplace objects, abstracting them or changing their context, she aims to stimulate reflection about how we interact, and the tokens or gestures we use. Sometimes Koh knits alone, privately; and, at other times, publicly, when the piece is on exhibition, transforming it from object to performance. By 1998 the piece had 'consumed' more than 260 garments and was over 60 metres long. By 2002 it had grown to 80 metres, including nearly 300 garments, and weighing 400 pounds. Koh describes Knitwork as a comical object, somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous. Yet, because it has both its past and future written into it, it contains a certain melancholy. It is a measurement of a life, its output, and also its duration, each stitch a record of a decision, and of a moment in time.     

Repeated arson: data from criminal records.

The criminal careers of all arsonists convicted in former West-Germany between 1983 and 1985 who were found not to be responsible due to diminished responsibility for psychiatric reasons and a random sample (every third) of all criminally liable arsonists during the same period of time were followed up until 1994 by means of their trial records. Reappearance before the court for arson did not differ between the groups. When subjects are grouped by the additional occurrence of crimes other than arson, however, arsonists with diminished responsibility are the most problematic group: In comparison with all other subgroups, the arsonists who were partly responsible who did not commit any crimes other than arson showed the highest number of fire-setting incidents. Among the arsonists who committed other crimes as well, arsonists with diminished responsibility had the highest number of additional offences.