Rubh’ an Dùnain: a multi‐period maritime landscape on the Isle of Skye,Inner Hebrides,Scotland

A non‐intrusive survey of this headland on Scotland's western seaboard reveals evidence of maritime activity from prehistory until the recent past. The siting of an Iron Age dun appears to have exploited a natural creek to bring boats to a secure landing‐place. Access was enhanced by a cleared channel, and two docks with adjacent nousts constructed. A stone‐revetted canal was later driven to the loch beyond, and quays built on either side of the entry. A 12th‐century boat‐timber was found in the loch. Later the canal was widened, and finally blocked. The sequence of development, and associated dating, merits further research.     

The precarious and the transitional: labor casualization and youth in post-bubble Japan

ABSTRACT

In recent decades economic globalization and neoliberal restructuring have constricted longstanding pathways to middle-class citizenship in Japan and other postindustrial economies. Much attention has been given to how the shift from ‘lifetime’ salaried employment to ‘flexible’ labor markets has disenfranchized many young people, leaving them struggling to reconcile dominant middle-class expectations of adulthood with neoliberal economic realities. Taking an anthropological approach, this article reconsiders this prevailing assessment of labor casualization by examining ways in which young casual workers in Tokyo’s retail, service, and creative industries navigate the transforming economy. Their circumstances, choices, and self-representations shed light on the active role they play in the formation of alternative transition regimes that challenge normative transitions to work and adulthood in Japan. These findings have broader implications for the limits of conventional social scientific approaches to the impact of economic crises and neoliberal restructuring on youth in the early twenty-first century.     

Book reviews

AUSTRALIA IN PEACE AND WAR: EXTERNAL RELATIONS 1788–1977, T.B. Millar, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978, 578 pp.

CHINA AND AMERICA: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW RELATIONSHIP, William Barnds, ed., New York University Press, New York, 1977. $15.00 cloth.

CHINA AND THE WORLD SINCE 1949, Wang Gungwu, The Macmillan Company of Australia, December 1977, $17.50 bound, $8.75 paper.

THE DIPLOMACY OF DETENTE: THE KISSINGER ERA, Coral Bell, Martin Robinson, London, 1977, pp. 278.

THE PROBLEM OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE, Volume IV: CB DISARMAMENT NEGOTIATIONS, 1920–1970, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1971.

CHEMICAL DISARMAMENT: NEW WEAPONS FOR OLD, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1975.

DELAYED TOXIC EFFECTS OF CHEMICAL WARFARE AGENTS, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1975.

ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE SECOND INDOCHINA WAR, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1976.     

THE BUILD-UP AND DURATION OF SUBSIDY-INDUCED EMPLOYMENT EVIDENCE FROM U.K. REGIONAL POLICY*

ABSTRACT. The paper takes microlevel data on U.K. regional policy instruments and other financial assistance payments to industry to examine the time profile of assisted employment up to five years after the date of assistance. The theoretical analysis indicates factors bearing on the employment effect of industrial assistance and highlights the possibly key role played by the firm's access to private funds. The results from the regression analysis indicate that both the build-up and duration of subsidy-induced jobs vary between assistance form and firm, and that assistance is generally ineffective in large firms. Elsewhere, assisted jobs accumulate over a period of three years, but then are lost to policy at high rates.