Evaluating communicative planning: A revised design for performance research

This paper adds to the literature on the ‘performance’ rather than the ‘conformance’ of plans, relating the arguments to an issue that is under‐researched: the evaluation of communicative planning. With the ‘IOR‐School’, it argues that the purpose of planning is to improve the quality of decisions. To establish how plans can do that, the paper looks at the interaction between the maker of a plan and those responsible for subsequent decisions as a process of communication. Drawing inspiration from literature according an inalienable role to the reader of a text in interpreting it, the paper proposes a modified design for performance research.     

The disciplinary effects of communicative planning in Soufriere, St Lucia: governmentality, hegemony and space-time-politics

Communicative planning initiatives are being increasingly implemented across both the North and South of the globe. Influenced by Habermas' theory of communicative rationality, this form of planning concentrates upon consensus building between different signified interest groups. The paper explores how communicative planning in the eastern Caribbean country of St Lucia disciplines people's conduct from the perspectives of Foucault's concept of governmentality and Laclau and Mouffe's theorization of hegemony. Linking the latter to an analysis of Massey's non-bounded conceptualization of the local, it is argued that, as geographers, we may do better to concentrate less upon the deterministic effects of common styles of government and more upon the moments which bring their themes temporarily and spatially into being. In doing so, some initial steps are made toward proposing the concept of space-time-politics, drawing upon Wittgenstein's work on 'aspect-seeing'. In concluding, I argue that we should not see terms such as 'consensus', 'empowerment' and 'the local' as pre-existing moral justifications for political action, but instead as the product of relations of space-time-politics.     

The changing role of evaluation methods in a changing planning environment: Some Dutch experiences

This paper reviews the role of ex ante evaluation methods in Dutch planning practice in the past decades. It is illustrated that the improvement of the evaluation methodology is to a large extent based on a learning process. Many innovations were evoked by criticism and limitations disclosed in practical applications. Since the planning environment as well as the professional skills and attitudes are also constantly changing, this demands a high degree of flexibility of the evaluation methodology. A shift of interest can be witnessed from the quality of the decision towards the quality of decision‐making. It is argued in this paper that in Dutch planning practice currently at least four different situations can be distinguished with respect to the use (or non‐use) of formal ex ante evaluation methods. In planning situations with a hierarchical power structure evaluation methods are regularly used, whereas in situations with a mixed power structure evaluation methods are only used ‘in disguise’ (e.g. hidden in geographical information systems studies, market analysis).     

Educating the guardians: The politics of the Australian defence force academy

In 1978–80 there was a fierce debate in public and in private over the proposal to create a new university for the academic education of officer cadets from the three services. This debate was one of the most intense and widespread in the defence area since the Vietnam War.

The pressure for a single tri‐service military academy goes back at least to the early 1960s. It reflects a broader movement in the defence field towards centralization of functions and reduction of the influence of the three separate services. Significantly, the tri‐service proposal was accepted by a Labor government in 1974 and by a Liberal‐CP government in 1976.

Opposition to the proposal came principally from the three services, the universities and parliamentarians from all parties. Hearings by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works provided a forum for criticism which was widely reported in the media.

In the event the Public Works Committee recommended against proceeding with the project but was overridden by the government The episode illustrates significant aspects of civil‐military relations and the workings of the political process.     

Educating the masses: Cartoons from the populist press of the 1890s

Walter Bagehot's celebrated albeit ironical statement that the English were the model of a deferential nation appeared in The English Constitution in 1867. This is generally thought to have been the first formulation of the concept of deference, which has since been applied to explain social attitudes in other connections, including late colonial America. Curiously enough, Bagehot's observation had been anticipated in closely similar language by Richard Hildreth, the American historian and political scientist, in his Theory of Politics in 1853. Bagehot, who frequently quoted American commentaries and statistics in his own works, and used American comparisons with Britain, must certainly have read Hildreth, whose book was on sale in London. We cannot be sure, but we are left with the tantalizing probability that this essentially English theory was drawn from a contemporary American source.     

浅析新石器时代生产工具中的“仪式用斧”问题——兼论生产工具功能的分化

石铲和石钺在我国新石器时代之初是较为普遍的生产工具,后来随着社会经济的发展和原始宗教力量的增强,部分石铲和石钺逐渐从生产工具中分化出来,制作日益精美,有的器表还刻有纹饰,成为祭祀或是宗教活动中的仪式用品。本文以石铲和石钺为例对新石器时代生产工具中的仪式用斧现象略作探讨。     

Wear Traces and the Interpretation of Stone Tools

Abstract

Hafting traces integrated within a larger functional analysis can be used to improve our understanding of the dynamic life cycle of a stone tool. Based on the analysis of hide scrapers from the Magdalenian site of Verberie, France, the potential of research that considers macroscopic and microscopic traces from different causes (e.g., production, use, manual grasping, and hafting) is demonstrated. Hafting traces can throw light on a tool’s use and hafting mode, but also on its morphology and reasons for discard, among other things. Most importantly, the principles necessary to analyze experimental hafting traces are shown to be useful for interpreting archaeological hafting modes.     

Tools slippage and the Tel Dan inscription

Two extreme views exist as to the structure of Lam 1: one is that there is no structure at all, while the other is that we have a very sophisticated and intricate structure. The author of this article, in rejecting - as would many scholars - both extremes, underlines the unique occasion of the poem - the aftermath of 586 BCE - and the traumatic experiences that are being commemorated, and argues for a dramatic composition involving role-play in the annual commemoration of the greatest tragedy in the history of Israel.