The Politics of Ego: Senatorial Front Office Presentation of Self

Many scholars have studied elected officials’ presentation of self, typically through examination of behavior in their districts, speeches, and Web sites. In this article, the authors examine a little-studied but telling element of U.S. senators’ presentation of self—the images they display to constituents and others visiting their offices in Washington, DC. Drawing on original data, we analyze both the total amount of items displayed as well as the number that focus on the senators themselves, and find that having run for president, being a Republican, and representing a state closer to Washington, DC, all predict a senator having more self-centered front-office décor, while having served more years in the chamber and hailing from a state closer to the nation's capital are associated with greater sheer number of items displayed in a senator's front office. This research demonstrates that political ambition, geography, and partisan affiliation are all related to senatorial ego. Studying senators’ presentation of self via their office walls offers important insight into the ways that elected officials view themselves and present themselves to a variety of audiences, thereby offering a glimpse of the ever-elusive link between the represented and the representative.     

How to Make an Unfired Clay Cooking Pot: Understanding the Technological Choices Made by Arctic Potters

Between about 500 a.d. and the late nineteenth century, clay cooking pots associated with the Thule culture were produced in the Arctic region. Ethnographic and archaeological records indicate that these vessels were typically underfired (often even unfired), highly porous, and easily broken. Despite these characteristics, the evidence indicates that they were used to heat water over open fires. In this paper, we examine how Arctic potters were able to produce unsintered vessels capable of holding liquids without disintegrating. We conclude that the application of seal oil and seal blood to the pot’s surface was the key to their success.

Latitudinal variation in a photoperiod response gene in European barley: insight into the dynamics of agricultural spread from ‘historic’ specimens

Between ca. 6000 BC and ca. 500 BC, barley cultivation spread across the continent of Europe from the extreme south to the extreme north. Carbon-dating would suggest that this spread, and indeed the spread of crop cultivation generally, varied in its pace, with ‘delays’ at certain points along its route. Such delays in the spread of agriculture have been explained as resulting from the slow assimilation of agricultural practices by existing indigenous human populations or as the time taken for the crops to adapt to novel climatic conditions, such as altered temperature regimes and day-lengths. A mutant form of the photoperiod response gene, Ppd-H1, causes barley to be non-responsive to long days, while the wild-type responsive form allows plants to flower in response to long days. We sequenced this gene in 65 ‘historic’ barley accessions, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in order to explore the potential role of environmental adaptation in the spread of agriculture. We chose to use ‘historic’ material, to complement the richer patterns in extant genetic lines, by spreading the data range in both time and space. Our ‘historic’ barley data shows a latitudinal divide in the Ppd-H1 gene similar to that found in extant lines, but with clearer geographical resolution, and extending northwards into the Arctic Circle. We discuss the implications of our results in relation to the dynamics of agricultural spread across Europe.     

The Bush administration and Asia Pacific multilateralism: unrequited love?

This article challenges the presumed multilateral aversion of the George W. Bush administration. It argues that, at least in its approach toward the Asia-Pacific, this administration has been a more active and stimulatory advocate of multilateral approaches than is commonly acknowledged. The article begins by documenting the Bush administration's multilateral activism in the Asia-Pacific and examines those factors which appear to have contributed towards it. It then goes on to demonstrate, however, that Bush's at times unexpected enthusiasm for multilateral approaches has encountered a high degree of regional reticence. For a part of the world that has been affording an increased prominence to multilateral institutions and activities, this finding is initially both surprising and significant. The article concludes by seeking to account for this apparent anomaly and by considering its possible implications for the emerging regional architecture.     

Internal Decolonization? British Politics since Thatcher as Post-colonial Trauma

In recent years a growing number of commentators, especiallyones associated with the idea of a ‘new imperial history’,have argued that British politics and culture remained moreheavily shaped by colonialism and decolonization than had previouslyconventionally been thought. This paper pursues that line ofthought in relation to political debates during and since the1980s, especially those concerning devolution, constitutionalreform, and race relations. It then, however, highlights somemajor problems with and limitations of this kind of argument,suggesting that the emerging historiography of Britain's ‘internaldecolonization’ remains at present empirically weak, conceptuallycloudy, and often unhelpfully polarized.     

SERVICE EXPORTS AND REGIONAL GROWTH IN THE POSTINDUSTRIAL ERA*

ABSTRACT. The role of service industries in the regional growth process has been debated for decades. Although the importance of services in providing an essential framework for the development of exports has long been acknowledged, their ability to initiate growth has never been generally accepted. In this paper the change in composition of exports from Canada's four western provinces between 1974 and 1979 is analyzed. It was observed that service exports increased more rapidly than exports of goods on both a direct and a direct-plus-indirect basis in 88 percent of comparisons. In absolute terms, the gain in service exports was equal to 89 percent of that for goods exports.