Terrorism,anti-terrorism and the normative boundaries of the US polity: The spatiality of politics after 11 September 2001

Both terrorism and governmental anti-terrorist actions affect spatial structures and their boundaries, such as the state and the distinction between public and private spaces. Those spatial structures also articulate the normative dimensions of human life, which include the ethical principles and constitutional rights that orient behaviour and thought. By affecting the spaces, places and scales of life, (anti-)terrorism potentially can generate a new normativity. A new normativity would be manifested in changes to spatial structures and thereby would indicate that the content of political rights like personal freedom had been changed in practice. This paper addresses the possible emergence of a new normativity via an examination of how spatial structures are affected—specifically, their permeability and plasticity—by terrorist and anti-terrorist activities within a US context.     

Intersecting Religioscapes and Antagonistic Tolerance: Trajectories of Competition and Sharing of Religious Spaces in the Balkans

Abstract

This article analyses patterns of competition between religious groups in urban settings, and empirical indicators of the dominance of one religious community over another, utilising the theoretical model of ‘Antagonistic Tolerance’, or competitive sharing of space. The key analytical concept used is ‘religioscapes’: the distribution in spaces through time of the physical manifestations of specific religious traditions and of the populations that build them. These indicators include perceptibility (for example, height, mass, colour, audibility) and centrality in a settlement. The model is explained with reference to patterns of change of religioscapes in: Sarajevo, Bosnia; Sofia, Bulgaria; Belgrade, Serbia; and other examples from the post-Ottoman world. While the focus of the paper is mainly on cities, an analysis of specific sites in contemporary Cyprus reminds us that urban conflicts are inevitably tied to those in wider social spheres.     

The publication of Australian Press Council Adjudication 1468: a failure to meet ‘due prominence’ requirements

The Australian Press Council, the print media self‐regulation body in Australia that receives and adjudicates complaints by the public, states that upheld adjudications are to be published with ‘due prominence’. The Council defines ‘due prominence’ as publishing the adjudication such that it is ‘likely to be read by those who saw the offending material’. In 2010 the Council upheld a complaint about misleading material that occurred on the front page of a newspaper. The complaint included that the misleading front page material triggered a large number of insulting letters about the person in that story which the newspaper published the following day. The newspaper published the upheld adjudication (no. 1468) on the letters page even though the primary offending material occurred on the front page. Rather than seek re‐publication in a more prominent location, the Australian Press Council accepted the newspaper's placement as satisfying their ‘due prominence’ requirement. Given the apparent inconsistency between publication of the adjudication on the letters page and the ‘likely to be read by’ definition of due prominence, we provided 100 adult newspaper readers with brief details of the upheld complaint and the definition of due prominence and asked where in the paper the adjudication should be published. Contrary to the Council's acceptance of the location of the newspaper's publication of the adjudication, the vast majority of newspaper readers (88%) responded with the front page (62%) or the first three pages (26%). This discrepancy is discussed in the context of the efficacy of self‐regulation and the ethical standards of bodies charged with ethical governance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Embedded regulation:” The migration of objects,scripts, and governance

This paper asks why an officially unregulated market in pharmaceuticals in a least developed country, Djibouti, behaves as if it were strictly regulated, with limited access to a small number of high‐cost drugs. We use Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) to show that the explanation is more complex than critics of the international pharmaceutical industry have supposed. Regulation and property rights generated in developed countries have become embedded in the drugs and “black boxed” to the point of invisibility. This has allowed them to travel to Djibouti with the drugs, while maintaining their effects in action. This case study develops our understanding of the way in which materials that are not designated as regulatory agents may still have regulatory impacts through their ability to enrol complex networks of actors, rules, values, and practices. Finally, it argues against the notion of law as a fixed and distinctive space for action, as opposed to the ANT vision of a fluid and contingent order, where law is part of a socio‐technico‐legal alliance that happens to achieve certain effects.     

Aid instability as a measure of uncertainty and the positive impact of aid on growth

This article contributes to the literature on aid and economic growth. We posit that uncertainty, measured as the instability of aid receipts, will influence the relationship between aid and investment, how recipient governments respond to aid, and will capture the fact that some countries are especially vulnerable to shocks. When we account for uncertainty (which is negative and significant), we find that aid has a significant positive effect on growth, largely due to its effect on the volume of investment. The finding that uncertainty of aid receipts reduces the effectiveness of aid is robust. When the regression is estimated for the sub‐sample of African countries these findings hold, although the effectiveness of aid appears weaker than for the full sample.     

The Perils of Bula Matari: Constraint and Power in the Colonial State

This review article argues that analyses of the food security implications of emerging powers in Africa could be strengthened through foregrounding the issue of perspective. Researchers working in this area should engage with food security opinion contests, and avoid obscuring these debates moving forward.     

Business groups,financing constraints and investment: the case of India

We examine the effect of business group affiliation on corporate investment behaviour in India. More specifically, we test whether group affiliation reduces financing constraints for the affiliated firms. We use a data set containing 694 listed Indian companies for the 1989–97 period. We estimate a simple investment equation and find evidence that the investment-cash flow sensitivity is much lower for group affiliates. This suggests that business group affiliates have better access to external funds than stand-alone firms.     

Infant and child mortality in developing countries: Analysing the data for Robust determinants

Is development best achieved by going for growth, or does specific attention need to be paid to directly improving human welfare? In contrast to the Human Development Reports of the UNDP, the World Bank has stressed the growth approach. Recent work has reinforced this position by arguing that health spending is extremely ineffective in reducing infant or child mortality, which is mainly explained by a country's income per capita. This article contests this position through testing the robustness of determinants of infant and child mortality. We have estimated over 420,000 equations which show that, while income per capita is a robust determinant of infant and child mortality, so are indicators of health, education and gender inequality. Some health spending, such as immunisation, is thus shown to be cost effective way of saving lives. Our results are consistent with the view that much health spending in developing countries may be poorly targeted or otherwise ineffective, but do not support the position that public health strategies should not be given too great a role in pursuing improvements in human welfare.