September 11: A societal reaction perspective

This article illustratesthe application of the labeling or societalreaction theory regarding the events ofSeptember 11, 2001. It explains thevarious types of labels that societyassigned to ``September 11' and how societalreactions led to governmental and lawenforcement changes. Pertinent opinionpolls were analyzed to indicate the powerof labeling which, in turn, was used todemonstrate how the USA PATRIOT Act waspassed during heightened societalreaction.     

Shaped on the Anvil of Mars: Vance and Nettie Palmer and the Great War

In Australia as elsewhere within the belligerent nations of the Great War, dissenting thinkers were marginalised with the mobilisation of militarism. Vance and Nettie Palmer, Australia's most important literary partnership in the interwar period, were initially critical of the war, their response typical of the English radical intelligentsia among whom they were living at the time of its outbreak. Forced back to Australia in 1915, the Palmers had to re-establish themselves in its increasingly turbulent intellectual battlefields. Nettie's earlier anti-war beliefs and cosmopolitanism were undermined while Vance became ever more deeply enmeshed in a discourse concerning the virtues of the “ordinary people”, which encompassed the men of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Nevertheless, in their extensive writings about Australia, neither Palmer ever endorsed the legend of the heroic Anzacs. The Great War, however, profoundly shaped their political consciousness and their choice of genre and writing strategies, as it did others of their literary generation. This article will show that the war was a far more important influence on their work than usually acknowledged in Australian literary scholarship, and thereby reveal some of the cultural patterns that shaped their generation of Australian radical writers and intellectuals — particularly in Melbourne, arguably the heartland for the tradition of democratic literary nationalism which the Palmers have been seen to epitomise.     

Reviews

Roman Szporluk (ed.), National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1994, xiii + 328 pp., £40.00 h/b, £16.00 p/b.

Paul Kolstoe, Russians in the Former Soviet Republics. London: Hurst, 1995, xii + 340 pp., £35.00.

Ronald Grigor Suny, The Révenge of the Past. Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, xix + 207 pp., £25.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Ian Bremmer & Ray Taras (eds), Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, xxvii + 557 pp., £55.00 h/b, £17.95 p/b.

Charles A. Kupchan (ed.), Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1995, xi + 224 pp., £31.50 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Christopher Williams, AIDS in Post‐Communist Russia and its Successor States. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995, xvi + 216 pp., £35.00.

Amin Saikal & William Maley (eds), Russia in Search of its Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xii + 239 pp., £30.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Marco de Andreis & Francesco Calogero, The Soviet Nuclear Weapon Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, x + 130 pp., £25.00.

Eva Haraszti‐Taylor, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956. A Collection of Documents from the British Foreign Office. London: Astra Press, 1995, xxxii + 404 pp., £5.95.

Julian Cooper, Maureen Perrie & E. A. Rees (eds), Soviet History, 1917–53: Essays in Honour of R. W. Davies. London and Basingstoke: St Martin's Press, 1995, xxviii + 273 pp. £45.00.

Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sovetskoi Armii. Putevoditel’ v dvukh tomakh. Minneapolis: East View Publications, Vol. 1, v + 421 pp., Vol. 2, vi + 531 pp., 1991, 1993, £59.00.

Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, xiv + 455 pp.

Semion Lyandres, The Bolsheviks’ ‘German Gold’ Revisited: An Inquiry into the 1917 Accusations. Pittsburgh: Carl Beck Papers No. 1106, Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1995, 132 pp., no price.

Al Richardson (ed.), In Defence of the Russian Revolution: A Selection of Bolshevik Writings. 1917–1923. London: Porcupine Press, 1995, xvi + 287 pp., £12.99.

Neil Robinson, Ideology and the Collapse of the Soviet System. A Critical History of Soviet Ideological Discourse. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, x + 227 pp., £45.00.

Alexsandras Shtromas (ed.), The End of “Isms"? Reflections on the Fate of Ideological Politics after Communism's Collapse. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995, 234 pp., £13.99.

Simon Tormey, Making Sense of Tyranny: Interpretations of Totalitarianism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, vi + 199 pp., £7.95.

David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994, xv + 282 pp., £26.95.

Heather Hogan, Forging Revolution: Metalworkers, Managers, and the State in St. Petersburg, 1890–1914. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, xviii + 319 pp., £32.50.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer (ed.), Culture Incarnate: Native Anthropology from Russia. Armonk, New York, London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, xii + 270 pp.

Michael D. Kennedy (ed.), Envisioning Eastern Europe: Postcommunist Cultural Studies. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994, 249 pp., £30.00.

Blanche H. Gelfant, Cross‐Cultural Reckonings: A Triptych of Russian, American, and Canadian Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, x + 190 pp., £35.00.     

B. F. Skinner's utopian vision: behind and beyond walden two

This paper addresses B. F. Skinner's utopian vision for enhancing social justice and human well‐being as it was introduced in his 1948 novel, Walden Two. In the first part, we address the historical, intellectual, and social context that situates the book in the utopian genre, the critiques of its premises and practices, and the fate of intentional communities patterned on the book. In the second part, we review practices in Skinner's book that advance social justice and human well‐being under the themes of health, wealth, and wisdom, and then focus on contemporary practices that are the legacy of his vision. His vision was neither the a priori truth of a particular premise about human behavior or a necessary practice (blueprint) for an intentional community but rather the use of empirical methods to discover premises and practices that work to advance the health, wealth, and wisdom of individuals and survival of the culture.