Beyond reason and hysteria: Towards a postmodern model of communication and control in science

This article takes the controversy over ‘Mad Cow Disease’ ('BSE') in Britain as the starting point to reflect on postmodern contexts for the production, circulation and control of scientific discourse. It looks at two competing models of scientific rationality, modernist and postmodernist, as they function in contexts we call ‘postmodern’. With BSE? the Government began with the modernist project of combating hysteria with calm reasonableness, thereby helping to produce the hysteria they feared. But science, far from being entirely rational or unitary, is a set of relatively independent discourses? including ‘entropie’ discourse: discursive black holes which are strictly policed but never fully contained—the unconscious of science? where scientific creativity and popular paranoia meet. Where modernist science defends against the crisis of unreason to prevent it from happening, postmodern science (chaos theory, fuzzy logic) accepts the normality of crisis? chaos and unpredictability, which are not coincidentally coming to characterise the postmodern world. The problems of modernist science are not purely epistemological. The postmodern alliance of modernist science and global agribusiness has meant unprecedented assaults on nature, producing a ‘return of the (biotic) repressed’ that, in turn, becomes the content of the discursive repressed of science itself. To contend with these processes, we need postmodern theories of science—including the anomalous? the improbable in the analysis—as was not done with BSE until too late? because current science refused to accept the possible existence of a phenomenon that was empirically unproven and did not fit in. Of equal importance is to include popular discourses among the full set of available sources of scientific ‘truth’. Films like Outbreak and popular science like The Hot Zone express a popular paranoia that discourses of science urgently need to attend to. The study of popular culture should become an integral part in a new postmodern sociology of science.     

THE CHILDREN ACT 1989 AND THE VOICE OF THE CHILD IN FAMILY CONCILIATION

Over the past 10 years, there has been a rapid development of conciliation throughout Great Britain in matters relating to divorce and separation. The growth has been in terms of the accessibility of services as well as in the styles of conciliation practice offered. Throughout this period, the question of the involvement of children in conciliation has persisted as a key issue. Should children be involved at all, and if so, how should this involvement best be brought about? This article suggests that the change of philosophy regarding child law intended by the new Children Act 1989 will give considerable impetus to this debate and should lead to a clarification of the role of conciliation in allowing the voice of the child to be heard following divorce or separation.     

How can small donors contribute to sustainable development in large regions? The case of NZAID in Latin America

Donors face many issues when trying to support development goals in large regions such as Latin America. In their attempts to channel assistance to appropriate end‐users, they also have to provide coherence with national strategy, balance supply and demand of technical resources, and ensure accountability to their taxpayers. Resolution of these issues requires considerable focus and a clear understanding of all relevant factors. This is particularly so for, but not exclusive to, small donors. This paper provides agencies with a model to assess regional involvement and create a decision‐making framework for future investments. It places the quality of aid above the quantity of donation.     

Talking past each other: Journalists,readers and local newspaper reporting of general election campaigns in the UK

Drawing on an extensive database of local press reporting of the last four general elections (1987, 1992, 1997 and 2001), as well as contemporary interviews with journalists and editors, this paper argues that local press coverage of the constituency campaign has changed markedly since 1987, and in ways which may contribute to diminishing voter interest and participation in elections. Significantly, journalists do not perceive themselves as the ‘cause’ of voter apathy, but their efforts to ‘lighten up’ election coverage and report local election issues, contrast starkly with readers' preference for more serious reporting of the national agenda. Journalists and readers appear to be talking past each other in the pages of the local press. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Integrated planning and Bob tunings organizational conflict

Abstract: This paper examines the introduction and operation of integrated resource planning management in the Department of Energy and Natural Resources, Government of Alberta, during the period 1976-86. In government planning, systems are introduced to increase task interdependencies, create common purposes and establish performance monitoring. Such a system forces the organizational units concerned to confront their differences. This is because planning systems change task interdependence from pooled to reciprocal. This change means that the differences between organizational units in terms of values, status, organizational processes and power are brought into the open. As a result conflict occurs, not so much because planning in uSis context represented an organizational change, but because reciprocal interdependence is inherently conflictual. This case shows that the planning systems are about both policy-making and organizational structure and processes. Changes in ways of making policy are changes in organizational operation. Outcomes such as incrementalism and political behaviour are derived from the pre-existing pattern of organizational differentiation and the way in which an innovative technical system, in this case integrated resource planning, interacts with that differentiation by changing task interdependence between resource agencies. Sommaire: Cet article traite de la mise sur pied et du mode de fonctionnement d'un service intégré de planification des ressources au ministére de l'Énergie et des Res-sources naturelles de l'Alberta entre 1976-86. Les gouvernements conçoivent des systémes de planification pour accroître l'interdépendance des tâches, fixer des objec-tifs communs et surveiller le rendement. Un systéme de ce genre fait ressortir les divergences qui existent entre les unités organisationnelles car l'interdépendance des tâches y est réciproque au lieu d'y être collective. Ceci met en lumiére les différences qui opposent les unités organisationnelles sur le plan de leurs valeurs, de leur statut, de leurs procédés organisationnels et de leurs pouvoirs. Il en découle un conflit, non pas tant parce que dans ce contexte la planification représente un changement organisational, mais parce que l'interdépendance réciproque est conflictuelle par essence. L'étude démontre que les systémes de planification touchent à la fois l'élaboration des politiques, la structure et les procécdés organisationnels. Modifier la façon d'élaborer les politiques débouche sur un changement du fonctionnement organisationnel. La comportimentation et le comportement politique qui en résultent proviennent du modéle organisationnel pré-existant, des divergences qu'il comporte et de la maniére dont un systéme technique novateur, en l'occurrence la planification intégrée des ressources, répose sur ces divergences pour modifier l'interdépendance des tâches entre les organismes ressources.     

Race, conventional crime, and criminal justice: The declining importance of skin color

Blacks in the United States are arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the population. One explanation is that racial discrimination against Blacks pervades the American system of criminal justice. This study examined the nature and extent of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system by evaluating five propositions using data from extant literature. Little evidence was found to support the allegation that the criminal justice system systematically discriminates against Blacks.     

Public Sector Labour Relations in Western Australia – An Overview

The election of a LiberalNational Coalition government in 1993 heralded a period of significant and sustained change in Western Australian public sector labour relations. As legislator, the Coalition government embarked upon a program to decentralise and deregulate the Western Australian industrial relations system; as an employer, the government has had to respond to the economic imperatives which have faced most employers in recent years. The result has been a period of major change in the public sector – employment levels have declined as services have been privatised or contracted out; the proportion of non-permanent and part-time employees has risen significantly. Individual workplace agreements have been introduced; individualised performance-related management and reward systems have increased; and the scope for union involvement has diminished, as has the level and density of union membership. The experience of the public sector therefore reflects many of the workplace changes that are also found in the private sector. It also brings the government's industrial relations policies into sharper focus.     

International relations in Indonesia: historical legacy, political intrusion, and commercialization

This paper is about the development of international relations(IR) as a field of study in Indonesian universities. It arguesthat IR as a discipline has been encountering a paradox. Onthe one hand, while the discipline has been increasingly heldin high esteem by students, marked by an increasing number ofapplicants to IR departments across the country; on the otherhand, IR scholars show too little commitment to research andpublication for the development of the discipline; and if theydo publish, the quality of writing is generally poor. This articleindicates that the paradox of teaching IR in Indonesia has muchto do with historical legacies and political intrusion, as wellas an economic environment in which universities are increasinglydriven toward commercial activities. All these factors shapethe current development of social science in general, and IRin particular. Received for publication August 28, 2008. Accepted for publication October 7, 2008.