Counting the Costs of the Nuclear Age

Stephen L. Schwartz, Atomic audit: the costs and consequences of US nuclear weapons since 1940     

The Poverty Discourse and the Poor in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is cited as an exemplary case of direct poverty alleviation because of a long history of social welfare and high values in quality of life indices. Notwithstanding, anti-poverty measures in Sri Lanka founded on the international discourse of poverty and development do not serve the interests of poor people. This discourse begins by locating poor people in a distinct poverty sector and proceeds to examine its characteristics. Several attributes of that discourse make it intellectually incapable of seeing how poverty is socially constructed in a diffused nexus of production relations that extends far beyond the so-called 'poverty sector'. An alternative 'substantive approach to poverty' is presented. The arguments are illustrated using the theme of food production in Sri Lanka.     

Animal Bodies and Ontological Discourse in the Greek Neolithic

The present article tries to assess the ways that animal bodies were represented in the Neolithic of Northern Greece. Contending that representations always have a material presence (be they spoken, depicted or anything else), an attempt is made to sort out how the specificity of this presence constitutes a frame of reference for the deployment of social action. Animal representations seem to be particularly related with certain materials, especially clay, and certain objects, mostly clay vessels. It is suggested that these objects allow animals to be incorporated in social action in a very specific manner, one that is further defined by the contexts of their use.     

Sheep wool in Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe

This study presents the results of a series of wool measurements from Bronze Age and Iron Age skins and textiles from Hallstatt, and Bronze Age textiles from Scandinavia and the Balkans. A new method of classification that was set up and applied on mostly mineralised Iron Age material has now been applied to a large body of non-mineralised material from the Bronze and Iron Ages. Three types of microscopes were used and their advantages and disadvantages assessed. The results of the investigation cast new light on sheep breeding and fibre processing in prehistoric Europe, and suggest that different sheep breeds existed in Bronze Age Europe.     

河南龙山时代和早期青铜时代考古六十年

河南位于中原腹地,在龙山时代和早期青铜时代,河南的龙山文化和二里头文化在中华文明起源与发展进程中,对以中原为中心的趋势的形成和夏王朝的建立,起着举足轻重的作用。对新中国成立60年来,河南的龙山文化和二里头文化的考古发现和研究成果的回顾和总结,将有利于我们对中华文明形成的机制、动力和规律等问题作持续的新的探索。     

Ethnocentricity of the Nationalist Discourse

Abstract. Nationalism is a theory about the nature, purposes, boundaries and the basis of the legitimacy and the unity of the state. It maintains that the state should ideally be constituted as a nation. This means that a nation has a right to form a state of its own, as also that every state should endeavour to become a nation. The nationalist discourse rests on several assumptions, such as that nationalism is a universal phenomenon, that nationalist movements have identical structures, that all nations aim to become independent states, that non-Western nationalism is derivative in nature and that nationalism is an unmitigated evil. The author elucidates the distinctive nature of nationalism and criticises these and related assumptions.     

Diaspora and identity in the Viking Age

This article investigates the implications of the recent application of the term ‘diaspora’ to the overseas settlements of the Viking Age and offers a speculative assessment, based on literary, historical, archaeological, sculptural and onomastic evidence, of how the concept might contribute to our understanding of the cultural dynamics of the period. This exploratory look at connectivity in the ‘viking world’ considers the respective roles of the Scandinavian homelands and overseas settlements in the interplay of cultural forces from the ninth to the eleventh century.     

Business Improvement Districts and the Discourse of Contractualism

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are increasingly being advanced in a range of national contexts as a new delivery mechanism for securing improvement, regeneration and enhanced service delivery in specifically delineated districts. This paper considers BIDs as an example of a modern institutional design that is reconfiguring existing economic and legal regimes within town centres. Drawing on the theories of new institutional economics and transaction costs, the paper discusses how the contractual turn in urban governance advances our conceptual understanding of the rationale, scope and significance of partnership working. The discussion brings together emerging literatures around new ways of understanding partnership working in government thinking. It contrasts the advocacy and use of BIDs with the (previously established) practices of town centre management. It asserts that BIDs represent a new form of formalized and contractualized partnership working in sub-municipal governance, which has particular spatio-temporal implications for state–market–civil relations.