Skin deep: Barthes,Lavater and the legible body

Much of the Indian debate about secularism is built around what seem to be commonsense assumptions about India and the West. But a close look at the impact of Protestant Puritanism on the relationship between religion and politics in the United States suggests that these assumptions are mistaken. Far from having fundamentally different experiences, there are some striking similarities between India and the United States: similarities that draw attention to potential long-term dangers for India.     

Sustainable development,sustainable livelihoods and land reform in South Africa: a conceptual and ethical inquiry

In this article various necessary conceptual linkages as well as contingent discontinuities between the concepts of land reform, sustainable livelihoods and sustainable development are studied. Exploring the complex relationship between land reform and sustainable development through a critical analysis of the concept of sustainable livelihoods, we argue that a strong ethical case for land reform as a component of sustainable development can be constructed by appealing to principles such as justice, equity and the obligations that we have towards fellow humans, as well as the environment, but fail to discharge if land reform is neglected. The case against land reform and its importance for sustainable livelihoods and sustainable development is also considered. We argue that this case is either inconclusive, or at best shows limits to the value of land reform in certain contexts only. It also suggests pitfalls to be avoided when land reform is being introduced, and can thus be regarded as enhancing the case for land reform that avoids such pitfalls. We furthermore argue that the complex set of relations that emerges proves to justify increased emphasis on implementation of land reform as a contribution towards sustainable development.     

Place, Space, and Time in the Sign of Property

Property is a complex sign in semiotics. It is also the source of tension and conflict in law. This paper examines property in triadic terms consisting of what Charles S. Peirce would identify as the icon (firstness), the index (secondness), and the symbol (thirdness). From this perspective the paper explores the ideas of place, space, and time at the iconic level of the sign of property. Discussion addresses the way in which property serves as a coded system for communicating information about a given community’s values and its cultural-interpretive hierarchy. Much like an aboriginal songline, property functions as a way of imprinting the land with impressions of social ordering related to place, space, and time. In the context of global trade we therefore observe property conflicts which are sometimes not so much about the technical language of property as they are about tensions among the embedded values in competing signs of property.

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The unintended consequences of New Zealand's primary health care reforms

In 2001, the New Zealand government commenced a program to reform the organization of publicly funded primary care services. While there have been several positive results of this reform, including the reduction of patient co-payments and the extension of the range of primary care services, the government's program was a hastily implemented attempt to place primary care, the delivery of which is dominated by private doctors, under firm state control. It was also an attempt to override preexisting arrangements. As such, the government succeeded in its goal of establishing new primary health organizations (PHOs), but there were also significant unintended consequences. As detailed in this article, these consequences include (1) the creation of a labyrinthine funding and organizational system with a variable capacity to deliver on the government's reform objectives, (2) an increase in the power and scope of preexisting doctor organizations combined with a government unable to wrest control over the setting of patient co-payment levels, and (3) an emerging lack of clarity about future directions for the primary health care sector.     

Care-Politiken,Care-Arbeitsmarkt und Ungleichheit: Schweden,Deutschland und Italien im Vergleich

Social and demographic changes in western societies have led to a (re-)definition of social rights related to care-dependency and the introduction of further regulations of formal and informal care delivery. Care has increasingly become provided in the public sectors – the state, market and civic sector – and new types of cash benefits to support informal family care have been introduced. In this article, the concept of social care is used as a theoretical tool to analyse the relationship between the (re-)definition of social rights, the growth of a regular or grey care labour market and the related development of new forms of inequality according to socio-economic class and ethnicity in the female dominated area. The empirical comparison of the developments in Sweden, Germany and Italy reveals the dimensions of social rights – eligibility criteria, level and types of benefits – which are decisive for the growth of a regular and grey care labour market and the intersection of different forms of inequality.     

Open Societies and Closed Minds

Karl Popper’s equation of the closed society with tribalism is reviewed and modified. The German origins of the anthropological concept of culture and its related ideas of the folk culture and cultural relativism are explored. The vicissitudes of the idea of The Folk and its swing from Right to Left are related to contemporary neo-primitivism. The open society and high culture are defended.

Diplomatic intercepts in peace and war: Chanak 1922

Recent Public Record Office releases of British Foreign Office documents include diciphered diplomatic messages from several European capitals intercepted from 1919 onwards by a department of the Foreign Office called the Government Code and Cipher School (GCCS). These intercepts were called 'bjs' - 'blue jackets', from the blue folders in which they were regularly delivered to a very few top government officials. This paper is based on bjs mainly from French, Italian, American and Turkish capitals and embassies during the autumn of 1922 when a genocidal war was being fought along the Black Sea southern coast between Greece and Kemalist Turkish forces under the future President, Ismet Inonu. What became known as 'the Chanak Affair' led the Powers perilously close to renewing hostilities terminated at the Armistice of 1919. Despite the attention given by Lloyd George, Curzon and Churchill to the implications of the bjs as to Turkish, French and Italian intentions, peace was established on the ground before the end of the year by Inonu and the British C-in-C, General Harington.