Citizenship: Care of the Self,Character and Personality

Recent attempts to reinvigorate citizenship have been rooted in a romantic impulse. The current nostalgia over citizenship strives to recuperate the participatory involvement of the small community with face-to-face interaction. This article advances a conception of citizenship that attends more closely to the agonistic ways that citizens have been historically constructed in order to challenge the romanticism of civic republicanism. We draw on those aspects of the Foucauldian governmentality literature concerned with the care of the self. Citizenship is a technology of government that constitutes membership in a political community that requires both self-mastery and attention to relations with others. Importance is attached to truth-telling since this is what makes one a subject of government. We argue that an historical shift occurred between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from a subjectivity rooted in ‘character’ to one based on ‘personality’ that corresponded to changes in the prevailing form of citizenship and the practices of the self. The preoccupation with ‘building character’ involved a caring for the self that was based on striving for conformity with a set of public virtues. The emphasis on personality involved a care of the self organized around the quest for a unique self. This phase in the care of the self marks a shift in the ethical requirements of effective citizenship and as a result, represents a new form of truth-telling. We argue that these two forms of caring for the self mark a decisive mutation in the characteristics that were considered desirable for citizens to exhibit.     

High level Antarctic EIA under the Madrid Protocol: state practice and the effectiveness of the Comprehensive Environmental Evaluation process

The 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol), the latest instrument of the Antarctic Treaty system (ATS), establishes environmental standards to manage 10% of the planet. Under the Madrid Protocol, all activities subject to advance notice reporting obligations under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty are required to undergo prior Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The highest level EIA—termed a Comprehensive Environmental Evaluation (CEE)—requires international scrutiny. This is the only form of EIA where such scrutiny occurs and the only context under the Madrid Protocol or any other part of the ATS where the proposed actions of State Parties, or operators subject to their jurisdiction, are subject to formal international review. Whilst this review does not provide a veto, it has been viewed as an important development in the Antarctic multilateral regime. To date, there have been 19 CEEs. This article reviews the Antarctic CEE process and evaluates its application in practice against the environmental obligations established in the Protocol. Whilst most CEEs are substantial documents and processes, which have raised the standard of environmental care in the area, there are significant generic limitations. Not one CEE appears to have led to substantial modification of the activity as first elaborated by the proponent, let alone a decision not to proceed with the activity, despite this being a mandatory consideration. There are indications that the imperatives in the CEE process are often administrative and diplomatic rather than environmental and that notwithstanding the international scrutiny of draft CEEs, state action may not be significantly changed. Suggestions are made on improvements to the CEE process. The Madrid Protocol is a framework convention, designed so that its technical annexes, including that addressing EIA, may be periodically updated. Twelve years after its entry into force, and almost 20 years after its adoption, such updating may now be useful.     

Programme Participation Intensity and Children’s Nutritional Status: Evidence from a Randomised Control Trial in Mozambique

Abstract

Agricultural interventions are thought to have the potential to improve nutrition, but little rigorous evidence is available about programmes that link the two. In this article, we study impacts of an integrated agricultural and nutritional biofortification project, the REU in Mozambique. We first provide evidence on dietary impacts of the programme and then examine impacts of the programme by participation intensity. Using OLS and IV techniques, we find that more intense participation in both project components led to larger impacts. The results therefore have important implications for refining the design of future projects attempting to link agricultural and nutrition interventions.     

Policy Attitudes in Institutional Context: Rules,Uncertainty, and the Mass Politics of Public Investment

This article examines the link between citizens’ policy attitudes and the institutional context in which policies are carried out. The article develops a theory of opinion formation toward policies that impose costs on citizens in order to invest in broadly valued social goods. In this framework, problems of agency loss and time inconsistency leave citizens uncertain about whether promised policy benefits will be delivered. Citizen support for public investments thus depends on whether the institutional context makes elites’ policy promises credible. We consider hypotheses about how the institutional allocation of authority and the institutional rules governing implementation affect citizen support for public investment, and we find broad support for the framework in three survey experiments administered to representative samples of U.S. citizens. The results shed light on the link between political institutions and citizens’ attitudes, the capacities of voters for substantive political reasoning, and the political prospects for public investment.     

A Cognitive Perspective on Policy Implementation: Reform Beliefs,Sensemaking, and Social Networks

Utilizing a cognitive perspective, this article examines the social processes through which teachers come to understand the Common Core State Standards. The authors begin by identifying three beliefs that have important implications for policy implementation: self‐efficacy, resource adequacy, and value for clients. They measure those beliefs and the Common Core discussion networks that emerge among teachers at three points in time. Through the use of SIENA models, the authors explore how networks and beliefs coevolve within schools. Unlike prior research on social networks, which consistently finds strong homophilous tendencies, this research finds no evidence that teachers seek out coworkers who hold similar beliefs. Rather, teachers relied on preexisting formal and informal relationships to guide interactions. Those interactions were characterized by social influence, whereby a teacher's own beliefs adapted toward the beliefs held by the members of their social network. The findings offer a novel perspective on the complex dynamic that occurs within organizations as new policies are unveiled and employees interact with one another to understand the changes those policies entail.     

From Birth to Death: The Life of the Standards Board for England

Organizations wax and wane, and some cease to exist altogether. The Standards Board for England was abolished after a 10‐year life. Created to regulate the ethical behavior of local politicians in England, the ethics of politics was undermined by the politics of ethics. This article analyzes the life of the Standards Board initially through the lens of a life‐cycle approach to organizations but finds that a problem‐cluster approach provides a sharper picture. Over its lifetime, the Standards Board faced a number of crises; its failure to resolve these crises and an unfavorable political climate led to its demise.     

An Intelligent Radical’s Guide to the 1930s

In six short chapters, covering 1934 to 1940, the fifty-year-old Alfred Kazin self-assuredly serves as Virgil guiding readers, along with his younger self, through the mythic “Red Decade” in a style that delivers straight-up lectures intercalated with show-and-tell. What did Kazin do and how did he do it?     

Estimating Projectile Perpendicular Impact Velocity on Metal Sheet Targets from the Shape of the Target Hole

Abstract:  The correlation between bullet hole shapes in metal and projectile impact velocity was examined. A series of shots were fired from an M-16A1 assault rifle of 5.56 mm caliber toward a 1-mm thick metal target. All shots were fired at a perpendicular angle to the metal sheets, and the velocity was measured just before the projectile hit the target. Velocities ranged between 400 and 900 m/sec. From the replica of the shooting hole, a perpendicular plane was created, showing the symmetrical properties of the hole. The best mathematical equation describing the shape of the entrance hole was the exponential function in the form:
The empirical equation of the hole defined using the regression method is:
This equation describes the general shape of shooting holes created by velocities ranging from 440 to 750 m/sec. From this equation, one can estimate the bullet velocity when it hits the target.