Carl J. Friedrich's Legacy: Understanding Constitutionalism as a Political System

Carl J. Friedrich (1901–1984) defined constitutionalism as something more than can be expressed by the dominant behavioralist paradigm of modern political science and the typical academic focus on law and courts. A leading but now neglected post-WWII authority on constitutionalism, Friedrich argued that it should be understood as an institutionally-based, interactive system for deliberating the meaning and legal application of the norms of a political community. His approach shares much with the contemporary “historical institutionalist” call to situate law and courts within a broader, more normative, and more interactive conception of constitutionalism. Accordingly, a reconsideration of Friedrich's work may help current efforts to better articulate the full richness and complexity of constitutionalism as a distinctive way of ordering political life.     

Joining the Evangelical Club: The Movement of the Wesleyan‐Holiness Churches in Australia Along the Church‐Sect Continuum

A number of North American Wesleyan‐Holiness denominations emerged in Australia, beginning in the years following the Second World War. Some of these churches moved from being despised and marginalized sects to established denominations while others remained small and isolated, experiencing little growth. Their story demonstrates that movement along the church‐sect continuum is by no means a smooth and inevitable one. Random processes may lower or raise religious tension within the group thus affecting its movement along the continuum. The strict behavioural standards in Wesleyan‐Holiness churches have gradually been lowered and the distinctive beliefs of these groups have been eroded. Wesleyan‐Holiness churches in Australia have grown primarily through “switchers” from other denominations more than from new convert growth, so that they have become more generically “Evangelical” and less distinctively “Holiness” in their beliefs and practices.     

Ornamental Constitutionalism in Africa: Kenyatta and the Two Queens

Evidence from the political career of Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya suggests that Africans took a constitutional rather than ‘ornamental’ view of the imperial monarchy. Far from accepting that majesty and aristocracy domesticated alien overrule, they expected the British monarchy to protect them against local colonial excess. Kenyatta's Gikuyu (Kikuyu) people had two grounds for this view. One was a sense of imperial history, in which land alienation in favour of white settlers was a form of oppression unthinkable in the days of Queen Victoria – a more equal past that the Crown ought to restore to them. The other was their projection on to the imperial stage of an indigenous sense of the reciprocal relations of advantage that should exist between wealthy patrons and loyal clients. Kenyatta's political strategy after the Second World War was conditioned by this Gikuyu constitutionalism.     

Lines of Desire: Power and Materiality Along a Tanzanian Caravan Route

The caravan routes that connected the East African interior to the coast are well known from the nineteenth century, when trade along them was intense and increasingly formalised. It is understood that this brought important changes in the structure of society, in people–object relations and in the opportunities for the exercise of power; we also assume that this situation differed from pre-colonial periods, yet very little archaeological work has examined that assumption. Understandings of the incorporation of this region into a larger world of commodity exchange have been based upon implicit assumptions about the role of trade; these often stress the underdevelopment of East Africa. Yet it is necessary to examine the ways in which foreign goods were made commensurable with valuables and assets in the regional economy before it is possible to discuss the ways that access to these goods may have affected local power structures. This paper attempts such an analysis, through a focus on two areas in the interior which have been the subject of recent archaeological field work. By tracing the specific histories of their interaction with objects before and during the nineteenth century, it examines the assumption that the accumulation of exotic objects was necessarily the basis of authority. Instead, it will be argued that the ways in which new opportunities and objects were incorporated were specific and local, fitting within existing schemes of understanding and the authorisation of power.     

Population Oscillations in a Nonlinear Migration Model

The purpose of this paper is to prove the existence of Hopf bifurcations in Sheppard's generalized dynamic migration model. Hopf bifurcations appear as a result of structure changes in the system. First, we deal with the general case of H cities. Then, the case of two cities is dealt with.     

Sociology,Religion, and Historians Revisited: Towards an Historical Sociology of Religion

Abstract

Two great movie directors were both born in 1930. One of them, Jean-Luc Godard, revolutionized filmmaking during his 30s and declined in creativity thereafter. In contrast, Clint Eastwood did not direct his first movie until he had passed the age of 40 and did not emerge as an important director until after he was 60. This dramatic difference in life cycles was not accidental, but was a characteristic example of a pattern that has been identified across the arts: Godard was a conceptual innovator who peaked early, whereas Eastwood was an experimental innovator who improved with experience. This article examines the goals, methods, and creative life cycles of Godard, Eastwood, and eight other directors who were the most important filmmakers of the second half of the twentieth century. Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg, and François Truffaut join Godard in the category of conceptual young geniuses, while Woody Allen, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, and Martin Scorsese are classed with Eastwood as experimental old masters. In an era in which conceptual innovators have dominated a number of artistic activities, the strong representation of experimental innovators among the greatest film directors is an interesting phenomenon.     

Folk Religion in a Calvinist Context: Hungarian Models and Scottish Examples

GEORGES DUMÉZIL. Mythes et Dieux des Germains. Essai d'interprétation comparative. Librairie Ernest Leroux. Paris, 1939. Reviewed by R. A. Williams

HISTORY OF ST. PETER'S CHURCH, PETERSHAM, SURREY. By CHARLES D. WARREN. Pp. 168 + xii. Sidgwick &; Jackson. 1938. 7s. 6d. Reviewed by M. M. Banks.

MORE WEST HIGHLAND TALES. Vol. I. Transcribed and translated by John G. Mackay. Pp. xxxix + 540. Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh and London. 1940. 25s. Reviewed by Mary Macleod Banks.

ESSAYS IN POLYNESIAN ETHNOLOGY. By ROBERT W. WILLIAMSON. Edited by Ralph Piddington, with an analysis of recent studies in Polynesian History by the Editor. Cambridge University Press, 1939. 25s. net. Reviewed by Beatrice Blackwood.

LA VIE DE L'ENFANT EN CHINE, Etude de Folklore, par M. et Mme. Yang Kun. No. 4, Petite Collection “Chine-France” de l'Ami, Revue Mensuelle, Yenching, Pékin, 1939. Reviewed by E. D. Edwards.

FOLK-SONGS OF ROANOKE AND THE ALBEMARLE. By Louis W. CHAPPELL. The Ballad Press, Morgantown, W. Va. 1939. Reviewed by A. G. Gilchrist.     

Power and Religion in a Modern State: Desecularisation in Australian History

Secularisation is a concept with many meanings making it difficult to analyse historically. Yet it is the default master narrative in much Australian historiography. Secular historians typically criticise the role of religion in history as being either too unengaged or, if engaged, too intrusive and negative in its impact. This article challenges both assumptions, taking five “nodal points” in Australian history and arguing that they are better given a “Christian” than a secular interpretation. Australia's first European settlement was a high‐minded reform experiment, based partly on a humanitarian Christian vision. The Church Acts gave the population ready access to Christian influence, resulting in a highly “Christianised” nation. When federated, that nation refused to give ascendancy to any one Christian denomination, but largely assumed that its polity was that of a “Christian commonwealth.” Out of its Christian commitment, in the middle of the twentieth century, it withstood control by atheistic communists of its industrial and political life. In the first decade of the present century, a surprising number of politicians have sought to define its national identity largely in terms of its Christian heritage rooted in the Classical/Christian tradition.     

Religion and nationalism: four approaches*

ABSTRACT. Building on recent literature, this article discusses four ways of studying the relationship between religion and nationalism. The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race, as analogous phenomena. The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about nationalism – its origin, its power or its distinctive character in particular cases. The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of interpenetration and intertwining. The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism. The article concludes by reconsidering the much‐criticised understanding of nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon.     

Civil Religion Reconsidered: The Saliency of a Venerable Concept

This essay reexamines civil theology, a venerable concept in the field of political science and how it is symbolized in contemporary political practice. Civil theology provides the foundation of politics for a community and is reflected in its myths and how the community interpretes itself within the greater structure of reality. It is during periods of crises, however, when this myth structure and society's understanding of itself come into question that civil theology presents itself as a salient topic for theoretical analysis and speculation. This article considers a contemporary response to the crisis of our time, one associated with the breakdown of the “traditional” American civil theology and the impact this has had on political thought and policy debates. From an understanding of this response may come a broader knowledge of the problems confronting the policy process as well as potential resolutions.