Quiet comfort: noise, otherness, and the mobile production of personal space

Marketing, news reports, and reviews of Bose QuietComfort noise-canceling headphones position them as essential gear for the mobile rational actor of the neoliberal market—the business traveler. This article concerns noise-canceling headphones’ utility as soundscaping devices, which render a sense of personal space by mediating sound. The airplane and airport are paradoxical spaces in which the pursuit of freedom impedes its own enjoyment. Rather than fight the discomforts of air travel as a systemic problem, travelers use the tactic of soundscaping to suppress the perceived presence of others. Attention to soundscaping enables the scholar to explore relationships between media, space, freedom, otherness, and selfhood in an era characterized by neoliberalism and increased mobility. Air travel is a moment in which people with diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and bodies crowd together in unusually close proximity. Noise is the sound of individualism and difference in conflict. Noise is othered sound, and like any type of othering, the perception of noise is socially constructed and situated in hierarchies of race, class, age, and gender. The normative QuietComfort user in media representations is white, male, rational, monied, and mobile; women, children, and “chatty” passengers are cast as noisemakers. Moreover, in putting on noise-canceling headphones, diverse selves put on the historically Western subjectivity that has been built into their technology, one that suppresses the noise of difference in favor of the smooth circulation of people, information, and commodities.     

Slaves, servants and wage earners: Free and unfree labour, from Grotius to Blackstone

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

Critical perspectives on CSR and development: what we know, what we don't know, and what we need to know

The May 2005 issue of International Affairs addressed the theme of critical perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the developing world. The aim of this article is to take the debate a step further. Five researchers and practitioners on corporate social responsibility and development in various regions in the developing world—Central America, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, Argentina and India—using knowledge gained by their empirical research, argue that the management-oriented perspective on CSR and development is one-sided. While recognizing that critical approaches to the question have emerged, there is still a need to know which issues should form part of a critical research agenda on CSR and development.
In this article the authors seek to fill this gap in order to facilitate a more in-depth investigation of what CSR initiatives can or cannot achieve in relation to improving conditions of workers and communities in the global South. They suggest that a critical research agenda on CSR and development should encompass four areas: a) the relationship between business and poverty reduction; b) the impact of CSR initiatives; c) governance dimensions of CSR; and d) power and participation in CSR. Such an alternative critical approach focuses on society's most vulnerable groups and adopts a 'people-centred' perspective as a counterbalance to the dominant 'business case' perspective. The authors conclude that this has significant implications for CSR practice.     

Between Athens and Jerusalem: Western otherness in the thought of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt

In understanding the meaning of the West, twentieth‐century political philosophers Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss called for a return to “Athens” (classical political philosophy) in order to address the “crisis of the West,” a loss of a sense of legitimate and stable political authority which, in their view, constitutes a nihilistic threat to Western democracy. The only way for the West to escape this nihilistic crisis is to return to Plato and Aristotle. Implicit in this critique is the belief that the other tradition of the West, “Jerusalem” (the Bible) has contributed to this nihilism, by undermining the authority of the Greeks. Is Jerusalem, then, the fatal “Other” for the West? Which tradition—Athens or Jerusalem—is best prepared to alleviate the crisis of the West, especially the survival of democracy? As I address these questions, I shall contend that it is Jerusalem, not Athens, which is the true source of Western democracy.     

The role of forests in global climate change: whence we come and where we go

Neither the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) nor the Kyoto Protocol include a satisfying mechanism for reducing the substantial emissions from deforestation which are responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is acknowledged that planting forests, for example through afforestation and reforestation in the Clean Development Mechanism, clearly provides an opportunity to sequester carbon in vegetation and soils. However, it takes decades to restore carbon stocks that have been lost as a result of land-use changes. Reducing the rate of deforestation is the only effective way to reduce carbon losses from forest ecosystems. As negotiations on a post-Kyoto agreement have already started the authors argue that a complete and fair post-Kyoto regime will have to expand existing regulations by creating a framework to encompass all land-use and forest-related changes in carbon stocks. Developing countries administer the majority of the world's environmental resources and provide a vital global public good by maintaining environmental assets. However, with increasing pressure on development and the use of resources, developing countries can hardly be expected to provide these services free. Therefore, they will have to be integrated into a more comprehensive incentive framework which also rewards forestry conservation, sustainable forest management and afforestation. The authors discuss how an incentive system for the protection of forests can be included in a future climate regime. Different design choices are considered and two recent approaches to reward developing countries that avoid further deforestation are compared: the 'compensated reduction of deforestation' approach and the Carbon Stock Approach.     

And if they don't dance,they are no friends of mine: Exploring boundaries of national identity

National identity is widely used to explain anti-immigrant attitudes and thus the appeal for right-wing (populist) parties. Yet, consensus on how to capture national identity is lacking. This article identifies ideal-typical patterns of national boundary making across 42 countries and more than 25 years beyond the ethnic–civic dichotomy and addresses the multidimensionality of national identity. Using latent class analysis and cluster analysis, four ideal-typical conceptions of nationhood are identified and shown to be differently related to national attachment, national pride, and national chauvinism. Overall, the results close the methodological–empirical gap between classical approaches and recent inductive approaches to national identity and demonstrate that national identity is a cross-cultural phenomenon with distinct types.     

Where do we come from,where do we go: Political anthropology looks ahead

Robbins Burling. The Passage of Power: Studies in Political Succession. New York: Academic Press, 1974. xiv + 322 pp. Maps, figures, appendixes and index. $11.50.

Abner Cohen. Two‐Dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974. xii + 156 pp. Bibliography and index. $8.50.     

Evolution and a free society: Spencer,Kropotkin and popper

Despite the negative connotations often associated with ‘Social Darwinism’, theorists representing a wide range of political opinion have drawn on Darwinian ideas to support their own positions. An examination of the views of Spencer, Kropotkin and Popper, as representatives of the Right, the Left and the Centre, provides an interesting basis for a consideration of the application of Darwin's thesis to social and political life. Although these theorists develop very different visions of the good society, they are all Darwinists, and they all use an evolutionary model to support their visions of a free society. A comparison between their different use and interpretation of Darwinism, and a critical evaluation of their positions, displays the significance of Darwinism as well as identifying some of the major difficulties which arise in the attempt to apply this perspective to a consideration of political issues.     

The Art of Taphonomy and the Taphonomy of Art: Layer IV,Molodova I,Ukraine

Level IV of Molodova I, an open-air Middle Paleolithic site in the Ukraine has been described by some researchers as a possible source of evidence for early symbolic behavior. We examined bone objects from this layer that were identified by Ukrainian researchers as exhibiting possible Neandertal produced engravings including two anthropomorphic figures. While we have determined that there is no evidence of symbolic activity at Molodova I, the database we have created, with its systematic recording of traces left by taphonomic agents on faunal remains, provides a better understanding of the overall site taphonomy.     

‘The land we have we must hold’: soil erosion and soil conservation in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century New Zealand

Most accounts of the emergence of soil conservation practices in New Zealand have been written by individuals centrally involved in the area. These accounts typically give prominence to the motives and actions of individuals. This paper offers a contrasting viewpoint by discussing developments in soil conservation in terms of some of the elemental functions of states. This perspective reveals how soil conservation in New Zealand emerged out of a ‘war against nature’ linked to colonial land settlement, how in the twentieth century it performed both a social welfare and economic management function, and less obviously how soil conservation was interpreted in terms of national identity.     

They would if they could: class, gender, and popular representation of English divorce litigation, 1858-1908

A systematic sample of the petitions presented to the English Divorce Court from 1858 through 1908 makes it possible to assess the differential contribution of discrete social and economic subgroups to the litigation the Court oversaw. An examination of four of these -- the titled aristocracy, those employed in the theater, those in receipt of financial aid, and laborers -- shows that English divorce litigants exhibited a broader social profile than commonly attributed to it by the newspaper coverage of divorce litigation, which gave a skewed impression of its social profile. Analysis of these cases underscores the gendered, class, and geographically inflected demand for divorce in a judicial setting that imposed severe restrictions on access to divorce as a remedy for marital breakdown.