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.     

To fund or not to fund …

A local government practitioner and a marketing academic consider the claims for marketing as a new organising principle for local government. They scrutinise the most frequent objections to the concept of marketing in this context and demonstrate that these have little or no force. This is especially true concerning the emerging paradigms of relationship marketing and Webster's development of the marketing concept. The authors conclude that a marketing philosophy underlies much of the new approach to local government service provision, and set out some of the characteristics which local government marketing needs to have.     

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.     

From D-Mark to Euro: the impact of mass media on public opinion in Germany

The introduction of the Euro in cash currency on 1 January 2002 has been one of the most important steps towards European integration since the foundation of the European Union. In Germany public opinion vacillated between rejection and approval. Did the media coverage play any role in the forming of this public opinion? How often and with what bias did television newscasts report on the Euro? To answer these questions, systematic content analyses of television newscasts will be compared with representative opinion polls on the aggregate level. On the individual level, the influence of media use on attitudes towards the Euro will be evaluated by means of a cross-section survey. Up to 2001, public opinion was a reflection of the Euro/US dollar exchange rate. Since then it has coincided rather with media coverage. The individual views regarding the Euro are, however, best explained by general attitudes towards European integration.     

Risky Lifestyle as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Deviant Peer Affiliation and Dating Violence Victimization Among Adolescent Girls

Few studies have explored the possible contribution of the peer group to dating violence victimization. The current study tested the hypothesis that a risky lifestyle would mediate the relationship between deviant peer affiliation and dating violence victimization among adolescent girls. The proposed mediation model was derived from lifestyles and routine activities theories. A sample of 550 girls (mean age = 15) drawn from a larger representative community sample in Quebec, Canada, completed a questionnaire on three forms of dating violence victimization (psychological, physical, and sexual). Results revealed that girls with a higher level of affiliation with deviant peers were more likely to endorse a risky lifestyle and reported higher rates of all forms of dating violence victimization. Further analyses showed that, while deviant peer affiliation is associated with dating violence victimization, this relationship may be explained, at least partially for psychological violence, and completely for physical/sexual violence, by the girls’ own risky lifestyle. Future preventive interventions for adolescent dating violence victimization should target deviant peer groups, as well as adolescent girls who display a risky lifestyle.