Faith,Ethics, and Communication: Some Recent Writing in Philosophical Theology

Four very different books on the relationship between faith and ethics are reviewed from the point of view of coping morally and intellectually with difference. Marty focuses on the stranger in pluralist societies and finds that more than mere tolerance is needed as a response to religious difference. Humility and hospitality draw more deeply on the resources of the religions as a basis for true civility. Muers explores the communicative possibilities of silence: how can one speak of God's self‐communication without silencing others? She draws conclusions for sensitive questions such as the right to privacy. Schweiker identifies “spaces of reasons” in which the religions can be moral resources in a “time of many worlds.” Burrell sets up an inter‐religious dialogue across the ancient world, bringing thinkers as diverse as Aquinas, al‐Ghazali, and Maimonides into conversation about the relationship between creator and creature.     

Cecil Sharp in Somerset: Some Reflections on the Work of David Harker

David Harker's criticism of Cecil Sharp's work has been called the beginning of serious critical work on the early folk music movement, and it has become an orthodoxy which later commentary has accepted without question, taking its accuracy and the validity of its research base on trust. This article shows that the trust has been misplaced. It uses a fresh, more complete and more rigorous analysis of the Sharp MSS to show that Harker's criticism is inaccurate, innumerate, flawed in its methods, and unjustified in its assumptions. It forces a reassessment both of Sharp's work and of Harker's, and renders untenable many of the assumptions upon which modern interpretations of the early folk music movement in Britain are based.     

Responding to the Mystery of Human Existence: David Walsh and Some Contemporaries for and Against Modernity

Abstract

An analysis of David Walsh's critique of modern liberalism based primarily on two of his works, The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997) and The Third Millennium: Reflections on Faith and Reason (1999). Walsh's assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of modernity are discussed, and comparisons are drawn to the analyses of Eric Voegelin, Pierre Manent, Charles Taylor, and Michael Oakeshott.     

Regional development and technology policies: Some lessons from the German experience

The development of economic, ecological, social, cultural and political conditions has a lasting influence on the development of individual regions and economic areas, and is in turn influenced by them. Background conditions in Germany have changed over the last few years, with reunification and the upheavals in Eastern Europe, the prospective completion of the Singh European Market and the increasingly insistent new challenges in the areas of the environment and transport. This paper gives some examples of the changes taking place in some of these background conditions, and discusses their foreseeable future regional impacts in the FRG. In the last 10 years, Baden‐Württemberg in south‐west Germany has been considered as one of the most successful examples in Europe of regional structural adaptation combined with a dynamic innovation system. The characteristics of the economic development of this region and their causes are dealt with.     

Review article: David and goliath on the fly

The Ok Tedi Settlement — issues, outcomes and implications. Edited by Glenn Banks and Chris Ballard. Canberra, NCDS/Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1997. xii, 279pp, apps, bibliog. ISBN 0731523628.     

Management and Community: Some Problems with New Labour

Abstract

This essay examines some tendencies in New Labour's political rhetoric, in particular its reduction of what counts as political and what counts as community. What will be argued is firstly, that the quest for managerial efficiency has functioned to reshape political discourse. This has come about primarily through the attempted removal of political control from economic and public life through the rhetoric of audit and the proliferation of executive agencies and other quangos. Secondly, I will also claim that the language of something called ‘the value of community’, despite being the primary moral principle underpinning the whole New Labour agenda, is politically virtually redundant, principally because its sphere has been reduced to the ‘voluntary’ sector. This redrawing of the boundaries of politics does not augur well for the long-term survival of the British political system: serious questions about the role of the state and the future of democracy emerge from the policies of the past five years and will be discussed briefly in the final section.     

David and Hazael: War,Peace, Stones and Memory

Abstract

This paper reexamines the rise and fall of two regional empires: the Israelite kingdom of David and Solomon, and the Aramaic kingdom of Hazael and his son Bar-Hadad III. The author presents a comparison between these two regional empires, discussing the following main points: the rise to power of the founders: David and Hazael and their charismatic character; their wars and peace treaties; the boundaries and the administrative organization of these two empires, and the decline and fall of the kingdoms in the days of the founder's sons: Solomon and Bar-Hadad III. The author is of the opinion that the existence of a regional empire in the days of Hazael and his son is of great significance for the reality of the empire of David and Solomon, since the former clearly proves that in certain geopolitical circumstances the making of a regional empire that controlled most of the area between the Euphrates and Philistia was entirely possible. The phenomenon of the Aramaean regional empire of Hazael and his son does not prove the existence of an Israelite regional empire, but it indicates that the biblical account of the rise and fall of an Israelite empire in the days of David and Solomon was possible, and even reasonable.     

The sustainable development paradox: urban political economy in the United States and Europe * Rob Krueger and David Gibbs (Eds)

Recent work in the field of urban political ecology has broughtto attention the lack of critical discussion surrounding notionsof ‘sustainability’ in local planning and policydiscussions. In The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban politicaleconomy in the United States and Europe Rob Krueger and DavidGibbs edit a comprehensive volume that highlights many currentcritical conversations about sustainability. Work on sustainabilitygenerally begins by stating that it is a widely recognized conceptwith no clear definition and therefore the need to define itbecomes paramount. Krueger and Gibbs go beyond this tired tropeand challenge current theorizations of sustainability whiletaking up critical analysis of its use in material practice.The question that runs throughout the volume is: how can wediscuss achieving a state of sustainability under the currenteconomic system? Through detailed case studies, the authorstake a distinctly geographical approach