Who Owns the Victorians?

In contrast to Peter K. Andersson, Steinbach argues that there is a great deal of scholarly work on working-class Victorians and that the works of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault are not particularly influential. She argues, first, that ‘middle class’ and ‘respectability’ are terms more useful to Victorian Studies than Andersson’s ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘civilized’; second, that interdisciplinarity is too difficult to achieve and maintain, both on the individual and the institutional levels. She concludes by proposing that Victorian Studies instead commit to a multidisciplinary model.     

Who killed nuclear enlightenment?

William Walker is right to link the international nuclear order to the international political order, and to assert that the attempt to construct a rational nuclear international order around the Nuclear Non‐proliferation Treaty is in a shambles. But he puts too much of the blame on the Bush administration (which he is right to criticize) and tends to neglect the fl awed character of the project itself (and the recent changes in the political international order which have an inevitable bearing on the nuclear one).     

Who Pays the Costs of Inflation?

Inflation may be looked upon as a deferred consumption tax which reduces consumer purchasing power through high prices to compensate for earlier excess expansions of credit. A portion of this excess borrowing is by government to finance deficits. The inflation cost may then be compared by family–income class with the alternative income taxes needed to avoid inflation by eliminating the deficits. By this calculation for 1965–75, the inflation cost was highly regressive, with an effective rate of 17 percent on. families below $5,000, and 17 times greater than such families would have had to pay in income taxes. Meantime, the effective inflationary tax rate for wealthy families over $50,000 in income was a bonus, or tax rebate, of one percent.     

Frankenstein's problem: Who controls the controls?

Langdon Winner. Autonomous Technology, Technics‐out‐of‐control as a Theme in Political Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977. x + 384 pp. Notes and index. $17.50.     

Who were the latter Pleistocene eastern Africans?

A later Pleistocene Khoisan peopling of eastern Africa has been suggested by most researchers. The evidence cited consists of a few isolated crania, archaeological occurrences described as Wilton, rock paintings and scattered populations of present-day hunter-gatherers speaking languages with clicks and viewed as bearing some physical resemblances to living Khoisan groups. When these different lines of evidence are evaluated, it is clear that there is no strong basis for retaining the concept of later Pleistocene Khoisan populations in eastern Africa. Instead, the available data suggest that the later Pleistocene and Holocene eastern Africans were tall, linear peoples.

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Résumé La plupart des chercheurs proposent que l'est de l'Afrique a été peuplé pendant le Pléistocène tardif par des gens Khoisan. Les témoignages citées par ces auteurs consistent en quelques crânes isolés, des mobiliers archêologiques catégorisés comme du type Wilton, des peintures rupestres, et la répartition actuelle de quelques groupes sociaux bien parsemés de chasseurs-cueilleurs qui parlent des langues avec des claquements et qu'on pense à ressembler physiquement à quelques peuples Khoisan d'aujourd'hui. Quand ces lignes de raisonnement sont évaluées individualement, il se manifeste qu'il n'y a aucune base solide qui peut nous justifier à garder l'hypothèse de la présence des gens Khoisan dans l'est de l'Afrique pendant le Pléistocène tardif. Au contraire, les données disponibles nous amènent à penser que les gens est-africains au Pléistocène tardif ainsi qu'à l'Holocene étaient de haute taille et mince.