Learning to think the past: Heritage,identity and state education in Wales

Abstract

Despite its problematic nature, the term Celtic is often linked with Wales and its history. Commonly regarded as a Celtic nation, the concept has been used to engender a sense of identity and also a sense of difference between Wales and other parts of the British Isles, particularly with England. As the national curriculum has been adapted to the needs of schools in Wales, some of these aims and objectives have been made explicit in many parts of the syllabus. Heritage sites in Wales also relate their history and present archaeology to a Celtic past and a case study of a specific site in Pembrokeshire is used to exemplify this approach. There is evidence that children find these portrayals of their past, as contained in the teaching in schools and site visits, interesting and informative. The dangers lie in the over‐simplification of the contested concept of Celticity and in the shortage of good evaluative assessments of these learning to think approaches.     

Punctuated Equilibrium and Bureaucratic Autonomy in American City Governments

Several recent applications of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) have yielded compelling findings linking institutional design and change distributions, yet, much more work needs to be done to understand institutional arrangements that make punctuated processes more or less likely. In responding to the recent call for more research on unraveling particular mechanisms through which bureaucracy moderates the odds of policy punctuations, this research explores the potential of bureaucratic expertise and professionalism in fostering rational decision making, and thus the stability in change dynamics. One important feature of urban government receives close attention: the position by professionalized, trained bureaucrats in municipalities (city manager and chief administrative officer) and the effects of their discretion on altering municipal budgetary change distributions. Analysis of a novel dataset of fiscal policy changes, charter and census information of city governments in the State of Michigan, 2005–11, suggests city governments, on average, produce change patterns that conform to the expectations of PET; more importantly, it reveals that heightened levels of managerial discretion can have a significant implication for helping cities experience less abrupt, punctuated budget changes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for PET, policy change dynamics, and the design of city-governing institutions.     

Development of the former Radcliffe Infirmary,Oxford, 1770–1900

Summary: Archaeological excavations on the site of Oxford’s first ‘modern’ hospital, the Radcliffe Infirmary, uncovered evidence for its use after its completion in 1770 and subsequent 19th-century expansions. Providing insights into the ancillary buildings, drainage and water supply structures located to the rear of the Infirmary, among the features excavated was a stone-built soakaway serving the first laundry complex. Upon the building being rebuilt as a fever ward in 1824, the soakaway became a receptacle for unwanted pottery, glass and other finds. The composition of this assemblage provides a glimpse of the material culture of a hospital during this period.     

Learning from popular culture: Interpretation,visitors and critique

Abstract

The publication of Frank McCourt's autobiographical novel, Angela's Ashes in 1996 has sharply focused attention upon a sense of place and heritage identity of the Irish town of Limerick. It has both bolstered a local civic self‐conscious identity and spawned ‘McCourt tourism’. On the other hand it has provoked local controversy by revealing the existence of a number of hitherto largely concealed heritage dissonances.

The historical vision of the interwar period that it vividly portrays is a working‐class experience of poverty, poor housing, and absence of facilities compounded by an indifference of the local contemporary political and clerical establishment. There is a geography of McCourt's Limerick, much of which is still extant, composed of row housing, docks, gas works, public houses, Victorian churches and the like that is a different Limerick to the medieval conserved monuments of English Town or the stately residences of the Georgian Newtown (as portrayed in the earlier novels of Kate O'Brien). Such an image contrasts not only with the tourism image projected externally but more significantly with much of the received interpretation of the post‐independence Irish State that was until recently an almost unchallenged dominant ideology.

The catalytic impact of a single novel upon a town's self‐identity raises more general issues about the role of the novel in the shaping, revision and essential instability of heritage messages through time, as well as the management of disagreeable or contradictory elements in a local past through a polysemic and essentially multilayered heritage.     

Does EU cohesion policy work? Theory and evidence

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that “Objective 1” funds are characterized by strong spatial externalities and a positive and concave effect on the growth of GDP per worker, which reaches a peak at the ratio funds/GDP of approximately 3 percent and becomes non‐significant after 4 percent. “Objective 2” and “Cohesion” funds have nonsignificant effects, while all the other funds exert a positive and significant effect, but their size is very limited. EU Cohesion Policy, moreover, appears to have increased its effectiveness over time. In the period 2000–2006 Objective 1 funds are estimated to have a median multiplier equal to 1.52, and to have added 0.37 percent to the GDP per worker growth. Overall, in the period 1991–2008, funds are estimated to have added 1.4 percent to the median annual growth, and to have reduced regional disparities of 8 basis points in terms of the Gini index.     

Book reviews

J. J. Ras (ed.). Javanese literature since Independence: an anthology. xi, 442 pp. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979. (Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkunde, 88.) Guilders 65.

Hans Rhodius and John Darling. Walter Spies and Balinese art. Zutphen: Terra, 1980. 95 pp. Guilders 39. [Obtainable from Uitgeverij Terra, Postbus 188, 7200 AD ZUTPHEN, Netherlands.]

A Teeuw. Modern Indonesian literature. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979. 2 vols. x, 232 pp, 12 plates; x, 292 pp, 8 plates (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde. Translation Series, 10.)

Drs. Ibrahim. Kursus bahasa Indonesia. London: Linguaphone Institute, 1978. [vi], 128 pp. — G. Hoff and J. Pride. Indonesian course handbook. London: Linguaphone Institute, 1978. [v], 130 pp. — Anonymous. Indonesian course instructions. London: Linguaphone Institute, 1978. [ii], 5 pp. — 4 cassettes. £85.