The Planning System in Northern Ireland Post-devolution

Devolution within the UK has produced new systems of governance within Scotland and Wales and restored to Northern Ireland local accountability following three decades of direct administration. The paper reviews the different status of Northern Ireland to provide both an understanding of the context in which planning has been set and the new structures that are taking shape. Particular focus is placed upon the ambitious mechanisms underlying the Agreement between the political parties in the province. The paper discusses how planning issues and responsibilities have moved from one highly centralized government department pre-devolution to effectively three new departments thereby providing a test not only of joined-up governance but of the ability of the new devolved structures to work effectively. Challenges posed by the different competencies are debated and emerging issues are discussed in terms of coherent planning at regional, subregional and local levels.     

Seeing Red: Liberalism, Communism, and the Black Struggle for Human Rights

Carol Anderson , Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 . New York : Cambridge University Press , 2003 . 290 pp.     

暗潮汹涌的“大汉贵州军政府”

武昌起义后贵州各界仓促应变,携手组成大汉贵州军政府。新政府中的各实力派因宗旨不同。渊源各异,而各行其是,由此导致军政府的最终解体。本文围绕组成大汉贵州军政府的自治学社、宪政预备会、新军三大力量之间的政治互动,重新审视这一问题,以期进一步梳理大汉贵州军政府的兴衰历程。     

Of Human Bondage: The Breaking In of Stockmen in Northern Australia

This article examines the cultural forms through which the young European‐Australian stockmen who work on the cattle stations of north Queensland are socialised. Exploring their interactions with a social and physical landscape and their rites of passage, as manifested in everyday actions, performance and material culture, it reveals how – and why – they are given little choice in acquiring values which are intensely adversarial to the land and to the indigenous people of Australia. It also explores the relationship between the transmission of particular values to these young men and the wider political and hegemonic role of the pastoral sub‐culture in defining Australian national identity. 1 1 It has take me a while to lasso and subdue this ethnographic beast, and in the course of the struggle I have benefited greatly from the advice of colleagues at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Oxford, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the University of Wales, Lampeter and fellow Australianists at the Centre for Australian Studies in Wales and at the Menzies Centre in London. I am also most grateful to Neil Maclean and his anonymous referees for their many helpful suggestions and comments. I would like to pay an affectionate tribute to the young stockmen on the cattle properties of Cape York's western coast: at Rutland Plains, Koolatah, Highbury, Drumduff, Sefton and the other stations where I was invited to ‘sling my swag’. Behind the sabre‐rattling that I have quoted, most of these young men were good folk: they were largely tolerant of have a female (and a bloody pom too!) in their midst, generously sharing stories, explaining their lives, making hat‐catchers and belts for me, and showing me how to break horses and the occasional bone. I have had a little feminist fun in considering their performances of Masculinity, but I haven't forgotten that what they do often requires real courage and determination. Though I have tried here to point to the political hegemony of their role and its potentially bleak consequences, I hope that an understanding of their sub‐culture and its pressures will assist the resolution of some of the conflicts in which they find themselves entangled.
     

The Northern Ireland Conflict: A Framework for Discussion1

At the Dublin Antipode Conference of March 1978, a debate occurred on the Northern Ireland question. In what follows we present extended versions of two of the papers (those by Boal and Anderson). We have also included other pertinent material in the form of Pringle's essay and Perron's review. Hopefully both of these papers will add a further dimension to the debate. In the case of Anderson's paper, due to both time and space limitations, the editorial collective reduced his original work substantially.     

The dilemmas of ontological insecurity in a postcolonising Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

Since the signing of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998, Northern Ireland has made significant progress towards a postcolonising transformation of its political culture and its major political and social institutions, as it has shifted away from violence and the dominance of political ideologies structured by the friend–enemy distinction. These ideological formations and the practices of social and political antagonism that they prescribed have been challenged by adversary–neighbour ideological formations that construct identities and relations through more inclusive norms of recognition and that support a more complex emotional constellation. However, as this cultural transformation has been neither thoroughgoing nor universal, Northern Ireland finds itself in the somewhat counter-intuitive situation in which the shift away from the violence of the past has increased, rather than reduced, the ontological insecurity of its citizens. Moreover, as ontological security may be supported by either friend–enemy or adversary–neighbour ideological formations, two distinct ways in which ontological security may collapse or re-configure have emerged in Northern Ireland.     

The last glaciation in the Western Mourne Mountains,Northern Ireland

During the late‐Midlandian (25–13 ¹⁴C ka BP), the last Irish Ice Sheet was thicker in the Western Mourne Mountains than previously argued. Geomorphological and sedimento‐logical analysis shows that regional ice from the Irish Ice Sheet spilled over the mountains, reaching a major limit 5 km along Pigeon Rock Valley. These findings differ from the previous view that a local valley glacier occupied the valley during this period. The pattern of deglaciation was reconstructed using glacial and periglacial evidence. A complex topographic environment in the upper reaches of the valley suggests that regional ice stagnated as it wasted away. During the Nahanagan Stadial (Younger Dryas, ca. 11–10 ka ¹⁴C BP) an arcuate ridge was formed on the western flank of the valley. Calculations suggest that the Equilibrium Line Altitude, influenced by topographic conditions favourable for snow accumulation, was approximately between 1736 m and 1386 m lower during the Nahanagan Stadial than at present.     

The Intellectual Internment of a Conflict: The Forgotten War in Northern Ireland

One of the most enduring ideas about the Northern Ireland conflict is that it has been rigorously studied. This is a myth. The stark absence of analysis of its military and international dimensions makes the conflict one of the least understood of modern times. Scholarly studies of Northern Ireland have been insulated from influences in the wider academic world by the dominance of hitherto unchallenged images about the crisis. These images support a dominant orthodoxy that has confined intellectual investigation of the 'Troubles' to Northern Ireland itself, sustaining a view that little of value can be gained from studying the military nature of the conflict. This orthodoxy is one to which, depressingly, the international relations community has been only too willing to contribute to justify its fear and neglect. Not only does this reflect poorly on academic practice but it has also helped to engender a dangerously distorted image of the conflict that bodes ill for the future.