South Carolina's Harvest Festivals: Rural Delights for Day Tripping Urbanites

Crop harvests, livestock and poultry products, and hunting and fishing activities provide the themes for 18 annual festivals staged by rural South Carolina communities on weekends and holidays during the April-December festival season. Drawing 5,000 to 25,000 participants, the typical harvest festival mixes the promotion of visitor industry with the friendly spirit of a community gathering. Urbanites are attending South Carolina's harvest festivals in large and growing numbers. They are attracted by their ready accessibility, novelty and emphasis on something-for-everbody family fun with a distinctive "down home" country flavor. For the sponsoring communities, the festivals provide not only an excuse to get together and have fun, but also a morale boost and an important source of funds for much-needed civic projects. In the years to come it is likely that the state's harvest festivals will increase in number, and that the attendant rise in competition will on the one hand lead to improvements in management and on the other increase the incidence of gimmickry designed to boost attendance.     

Zedekiah,Josephus and the Dating of the Books of Chronicles*

ABSTRACT

The Bagoses story from Josephus, Antiq. XI 297-301 turns out to be helpful for two riddles. Rainer Albertz has argued that the events narrated in that story fit very well the developments in Jerusalem in the final decade of the fifth century BCE. I will argue, that the report on the conquest of Jerusalem in 2 Chronicles 36,11-21 can be seen as a key that matches the historical lock that is evoked by Josephus. As a result, I would argue that this report was composed in that very period as a mirror for the infidelity of some priests. In generalizing the proposal: if the entire Books of Chronicles were composed at that time, a good argument for the silencing of Samaria is found.     

An economic assessment of informal recreation policy in the Scottish countryside

Countryside recreation policy in Scotland is currently delivered through numerous ad hoc arrangements. This paper assesses the economic effectiveness of these arrangements using cost‐benefit analysis. The benefits associated with recreation enhancements are measured using the contingent valuation method, while the costs are assessed through a survey of public and voluntary section expenditure on informal recreation. The analysis demonstrates that recreation policies are generally economically efficient in that they target enhancement programmes that are shown to generate high economic benefits. The exception to this is related to investments in visitor centres. The paper concludes that the cost‐benefit methodology adopted in this research can provide useful information for the strategic analysis of countryside recreation policy.     

The visual dehumanisation of refugees

Dealing with refugees is one of the most contested political issues in Australia. We examine how media images of asylum seekers have framed ensuing debates during two crucial periods over the past decade. By conducting a content analysis of newspaper front pages we demonstrate that asylum seekers have primarily been represented as medium or large groups and through a focus on boats. We argue that this visual framing, and in particular the relative absence of images that depict individual asylum seekers with recognisable facial features, associates refugees not with a humanitarian challenge, but with threats to sovereignty and security. These dehumanising visual patterns reinforce a politics of fear that explains why refugees are publicly framed as people whose plight, dire as it is, nevertheless does not generate a compassionate political response.

如何对待难民是澳大利亚一个最具争议的政治话题。我们考察了在过去十年中的两个关键时期中媒体的避难者形象是如何影响接下来辩论的。根据笔者对报纸的头版所做的内容分析,避难者主要被再现为中、大型群体,多集中在船上。我们认为,这样的视觉形象、尤其是缺少描画个体避难者脸部特征的形象,不会将避难者同人道主义问题联系起来,而只会同威胁主权及安全相链接。这类非人性化的视觉模式强化了恐惧的政治,这也解释了为什么公众认为难民境遇凄惨,却不给他们政治上的同情。