Energy policy under austerity localism: what role for local authorities?

In the UK, local authorities (LAs) have been placed at the forefront of domestic energy-reduction strategies as the responsible actors for coordinating policy in this sector. Yet, there has been little research regarding the role of LAs in this policy agenda, and their abilities to bring together stakeholders in the successful design and implementation of strategies to reduce energy demands. The paper aims to fill this gap by highlighting the relevance and importance of the energy policy sphere to local government studies, building on the idea of resilient LAs within the context of tensions between the localism agenda and the actual implementation of energy efficiency polices. This is achieved through multiple rounds of semi-structured interviews with LA officers. Our findings reveal that LAs, operating under a localism agenda, lack the freedoms and resources from central government to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders, resorting to short-term policies.     

Unravelling Identities: Performance and Criticism in Australian Feminisms

The following article is an exploration of the non-linear and non-unified identities that make up Australian feminism. The main premise is that the divergent strands of rational and romantic thought, central to the project of liberalism, are inherent in the characterization of Australian feminisms. As a result, there have always been tensions between feminists, centred around politics of self-identification. These tensions continue to exist, but to be articulated in different ways in different decades as a result of the ever changing relationships between feminist, state and media/public discourses. These ideas are explored through comparing two key moments in our recent past in which differences between feminisms were declared. These two events - the Mary Daly visit to Australia to promote Gyn/Ecology in 1981, and the debate engendered by Helen Garner's The First Stone in 1995 - are taken to be performative metaphors through which the continuities and discontinuities of the nature of Australian feminisms can be subjectively explored.     

Site, type, and local mechanism of tibial shaft fracture in drivers in frontal automobile crashes

The location, type, and local mechanism of tibial shaft fracture were determined for 66 drivers injured in frontal automobile crashes. The results from the analyses showed that the distal third is the most common fracture location (p<0.05) and that bending is responsible for the majority of these fractures regardless of the fracture site. These findings indicate that the current injury criterion for predicting the occurrence of tibial shaft fracture in crash tests with anthropometric test devices is appropriate in terms of accounting for the primary mechanism of fracture but that increased protective effectiveness could be achieved by redefining the criterion for the distal third shaft section instead of the currently specified mid-shaft section of the tibia.     

Reviews and notes

A response to block and Hirschhorn ? This piece grew out of discussions between the author and several (but not all) members of the editorial collective.

The Capitalist State: Its ‘Relative Autonomy’ Reexamined ? Presented at the 1981 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society in Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 8–11, 1981.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Gross, New York: M. Evans and Co., Inc., 1980, $15.95. ISBN 0–87131–317–0.

Wealth and Power in America by Gabriel Kolko, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1962, 178 pp.; American Class Society in Numbers edited by Bob Howard and John Logue, Kent, OH: Kent Popular Press, 1978, 98 pp.; Class in the United States: Workers Against Capitalists by Charles Loren, Davis, CA: Cardinal Publishers, 296 pp., 1977.

Feminism and Materialism. Women and Modes of Production, edited by Annette Kohn and AnnMarie Wolpe (London, Boston and Henley: Rout‐ledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), viii, 328 pp., paperback $9.00.

An Interview with Jacques Attali ? Jacques Attali was chief economic adviser to Mitterand before the Socialist Party victory in France.