Restructuring British Public Sector Industrial Relations: State Policies and Trade Union Responses

This article examines how Conservative governments restructured public sector in day trial relations in Britain between 1979 and 1997, and identifies the main components of trade union strategic response to change. It argues that Conservative policy is important for its impact upon trade union strategy and practice, and that public sector unions constitute the leading edge of trade union strategic modernization in Britain.     

Can Histories Be True? Narrativism,Positivism, and the “MetaphoricalTurn”

Narrativism, as represented by Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, can fruitfully be analyzed as an inversion of two brands of positivism. First, narrativist epistemology can be regarded as an inversion of empiricism. Its thesis that narratives function as metaphors which do not possess a cognitive content is built on an empiricist, "picture view" of knowledge. Moreover, all the non-cognitive aspects attributed as such are dependent on this picture theory of knowledge and a picture theory of representation. Most of the epistemological characteristics that White and Ankersmit attribute to historical narratives therefore share the problems of this picture theory.
The article's second thesis is that the theories of narrative explanation can also fruitfully be analyzed as inversions of positivist covering-law theory. Ankersmit's brand of narrativism is the most radical in this respect because it posits an opposition between narrative and causal modes of comprehension while simultaneously eliminating causality from narrativist historical understanding. White's brand of narrativism is more of a hybrid than is Ankersmit's as far as its theory of explanation is concerned; nevertheless, it can also be fruitfully interpreted as an inversion of covering-law theory, replacing it by an indefinite multitude of explanatory strategies.
Most of the striking characteristics of both White's and Ankersmit's narrativism pre-suppose positivism in these two senses, especially their claim that historical narratives have a metaphorical structure and therefore no truth-value. These claims are had to reconcile with the factual characteristics of debates by historians; this problem can be tracked down to the absence in "metaphorical” narrativism of a conceptual connection between historical narratives and historical research.     

Social geographies of rural mental health: experiencing inclusions and exclusions

A dominant urban focus in previous research on the social geographies of mental health has obscured the experiences of people with mental health problems living in rural localities. Critiquing this urban focus, we report on research conducted in the rural and remote Scottish Highlands. Evidence derived from in-depth interviews with over 100 users of psychiatric services in the Highlands is deployed to investigate the complex socio-spatial dynamics of inclusion and exclusion experienced by these users on a daily basis. A discussion of the explanations that users themselves offer of their experiences is accompanied by a theoretical framing of these issues pivoting on relations of proximity–distance and intimacy–repulsion.     

Trade unions,the Australian Labor Party and the Trade–Labour Rights Debate

This paper examines the Australian trade union movement's campaign to convince the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to support the inclusion of core labour standards in international trade agreements. Despite historical affiliations, the Australian union movement has been unsuccessful in its attempts to influence the ALP. In contrast, the US union movement has convinced both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to accept that core labour standards should be a part of the trade negotiating agenda. The reasons for the US unions' success on this issue are examined within the context of the changing relationship between the respective union movements and their traditional parliamentary allies. The need for Australian unions to examine and reassess their strategies by drawing lessons from the US experience, including the possibility of a changed relationship with the ALP, is discussed.     

云上吃茶大吉岭

或许远离都市真就是医我的药。在爪哇老木屋里吃着晚餐,不远处的白衣侍者正逐级而下,把石阶上那一盏盏黝黑的铜油灯点亮。在风里,那火焰像一簇簇小旗一样摇曳。我从来没有这么清晰地记得《吉檀迦利》里的句子：“我收到这世界节日的请柬,我的生命得到了祝福。”     

Sexuality And The Social Body Between The Wars

Books reviewed in this article:
Carolyn J. Dean, The Frail Social Body: Pornography, Homosexuality, And Other Fantasies In Interwar France