Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and Anglo‐Norman England

The use of castration as a punishment for treason and other forms of misdemeanour was a specific trait of the Norman realms of medieval Europe. In the post‐Carolingian kingdoms of France, Germany and Italy, it was rarely practised and only known as a punishment for sexual crimes. In Scandinavia, Normandy, Anglo‐Norman England and Norman Sicily, however, blinding and castration were regarded as an appropriate equivalent of the death penalty. The particular emphasis on masculinity implied in the Norman construction of noble honour, rendered the Norman warrior's body particularly vulnerable. Since his testicles were regarded as the prerequisite of his social existence, they became a legitimate point of attack whenever the ruler felt betrayed and decided to use force against his enemies. This gendered violence constituted a constantly renewed frame of reference, which defined political power as male and reinforced the notion that authority required a fully functional masculine body.     

Poverty Reduction with Growth and Redistribution

In the late 1990s the bilateral and multilateral development agencies placed increasing emphasis on poverty reduction in developing countries. This led to the establishment by the United Nations of the ‘International Development Targets’ for poverty reduction. The target of poverty reduction might be achieved through faster economic growth alone, through redistribution, or through a combination of the two. This article presents an analytical framework to assess the effectiveness of growth and redistribution for poverty reduction. It concludes that redistribution, either of current income or the growth increment of income, is more effective in reducing poverty for a majority of countries than growth alone.     

Civil Liberty in Hobbes's Commonwealth

Hobbes has been long accused of providing a political philosophy that threatens individual liberty. While some commentators have tried to rescue him from this criticism, little attention has been paid to the specifics of his statements on such topics as freedom of speech, censorship, and property rights. In this paper, I examine what Hobbes says on these issues and conclude that his overwhelming priority is to defend liberty once peace has been secured. I conclude by suggesting that Hobbes's political project has some similarities with current liberal proceduralist theories of justice.     

‘Black Economic Empowerment’, Business and the State in South Africa

‘Black Economic Empowerment’ (BEE) has been a major policy thrust of the democratic governments in South Africa since 1994 in attempting to redress the effects of apartheid. In this article, we explore the historical precedents to BEE in South Africa, review the different steps taken in promoting it, and assess some of its outcomes to date. We argue that BEE can take only limited forms because of the economic policy constraints in which it has been incorporated. Moreover, these forms have an increasingly managerial logic that further restricts what can be achieved. Short of a major shift in conceptions of — and policy for — BEE, meaningful ‘empowerment’ is unlikely to take place.     

Use of robust methods to determine quadratic surfaces: application to heritage

3D surveys of archaeological elements and the construction of virtual models enable us to reconstruct historical sites. They provide useful data to select specific building processes.Photogrammetry and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) are the most common techniques to obtain synthetically heritage models. These techniques provide massive data which can only be managed by replacing them by primitive shapes, thereby obtaining more simple models and the explicit geometry of the element. Statistical and robust methods are used for this substitution, thereby avoiding the common errors due to measuring. Of these methods, the most widely used are the least-median-of-squares (LMedS) and the RANSAC method.Another computation method consists in recursive processes based on evolutive-type algorithms to adjust the model to the data captured.This paper describes two surface computation methodologies to determine the modelling of a column shaft located in temple G of the archaeological park of Selinunte (Sicily).