Book reviews

THE STUDY OF POLITICS: A COLLECTION OF INAUGURAL LECTURES. Preston King (ed). London, Cass, 1977, pp 322.

JAPAN AT THE POLLS: The House of Councillors Elections of 1974. Michael K. Blaker (ed.), American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. 157 pp. ISBN 0–8447–3213–3, $US3.00.

MANKIND'S FUTURE IN THE PACIFIC. R.F. Scagel (ed.), Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976, $10.50 paperback.

THE EEC AND AUSTRALIA. J.D.B. Miller. Nelson, in association with A.I.I.A., Melbourne, 1976. pp. x, 137.

UNEQUAL ALLIES. AUSTRALIAN‐AMERICAN RELATIONS AND THE PACIFIC WAR. Roger J. Bell. M.U.P., 1977, 278 pp.

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Taylor & Francis Ltd., London, 1977 pp. 95. L5.     

Conveying Mission Through Outcome Measurement: Services to the Homeless in New York City

This paper outlines the policy decision to implement a performance incentive program in a large social services agency. Specifically, it describes the evolution of services to homeless people in New York City, including the creation of the New York City Department of Homeless Services, the privatization of a majority of the shelter system, and the redefinition of the role of government in the provision of homeless services. It explains how performance measurement is an integral part of this evolution, and the numerous challenges that this initiative has presented to management of the Department.     

Incidental heritage: difficult intangible heritages as collateral damage

Within the context of ‘negative’ and ‘intangible heritage,’ this paper explores Burström and Gelderblom’s proposition of ‘difficult heritage,’ with respect to Bückeberg, the site of the Third Reich Harvest Festival, as a site where collective moments of cultural shame occur. The paper then considers homelessness within this theoretical framework to ask whether those aspects of our inherited and contemporary culture, which are difficult and culturally shameful, are able to be accommodated within the framework of intangible heritage. It proposes homelessness as difficult intangible heritage which is produced as ‘collateral damage,’ an indirect byproduct of other pro-active cultural processes and community values.     

The History of Political Thought as secular genealogy: the case of liberty in early modern England

ABSTRACT

The History of Political Thought originated in, and partially remains an adjunct to the academic study of politics. As such it is not a mere subject matter or authentic tradition of speculation, but a secularising genealogy in some tension with an impulse to rigorous historicity. It provides an under-acknowledged context for the thinkers and concepts placed within it. The difficulties and consequent distortions are illustrated with reference to seventeenth-century discussions of liberty. It is argued that notions of negative liberty and Republican liberty as an ideological alternative are secularising genealogical projections that distort the character of seventeenth-century debate; but that republican liberty can be reformulated in more historically plausible terms as a special case of one of the entailments of contentious office-holding in and beyond a secularised conception of the political. Thomas Hobbes's conceptions of liberty provide a concluding illustration.     

Scottish national identities among inter-war migrants in North America and Australasia

Interpretations of Scottish identities have for too long been immersed in an inward-looking or domestic perspective. Where constructions of migrant identities exist they too have been influenced by developments about identity within Scotland, specifically a focus on Highlandism, by a disproportionate concentration on the Scots in Canada, and by exclusion of the twentieth-century migrant experience. This article examines the personal testimonies of Scots in several destinations and argues that they manifested a striking range of external and internal manifestations of their national identities. Unlike Irish migrants, however, whose cultural institutions served a dual purpose, allowing their identities to be proclaimed and engaging in active pursuit of political objectives, the major construction of Scottishness was internalised. Furthermore, visible expressions of Scottish identities did not generate disapproval from the public at large that the assertion of Irish identities occasionally excited. Despite its relative invisibility this sense of being Scottish was powerful and dynamic and shows a Scottish world coexisting within a British one.     

Re-thinking threats to architectural heritage

This paper proposes the need for heritage strategies and policies to engage with the psychological literature on risk perception because current heritage processes exclude many groups of people due to the psychological processes that are favoured in current procedures. Risk perception research has affected mitigation strategies in the realms of natural disaster planning (for example, earthquake preparedness) and, more recently, climate change mitigation. The paper outlines relevant psychological research and highlights areas that have the potential to inform heritage loss mitigation.     

Screw Threads on the SS Xantho Engine: a Case of Standardisation in 19th Century Britain

A former RN gunboat horizontal trunk engine taken from the SS Xantho (1848–1872) in 1985 was totally disassembled by May 2004. All the threads on the engine were examined and the majority were found to be British Standard Whitworth (BSW). This provides material evidence of the spread of standardisation at a time when the Royal Navy commissioned the first mass-produced marine engines and fitted them to the 'Crimean War Gunboat' types. The study also provides a pointer to the use of screw threads as a diagnostic tool in maritime archaeology.
© 2004 The Nautical Archaeology Society