Cultural policy as development policy: evidence from the United States

Cultural policies and cultural projects in the United States have been reframed to emphasize their economic benefits to cities. New alliances between arts advocates and place promoters are apparent at all levels, but are most prominent locally. These new alliances are facilitated by the changing interests of local officials and business people, who have come to believe there is economic value in the arts and of arts administrators, for whom attracting broader public support has become imperative. In some cities, entirely new organizational structures have sprung up to plan and implement projects that serve cultural and economic development advocates simultaneously. Such new institutions are most prominent in more economically disadvantaged cities.     

Roman Villa,Discovered at Bisley,Gloucestershire

In 1973 the Watch Hill barrow in St Stephen-in-Brannel, Cornwall was excavated and demonstrated to be a complex structure. However, at the time it was only possible to arrange two radiocarbon determinations, from the same pit in the base of the ditch. As part of postgraduate research carried out at the University of Exeter, the archive was revisited and funding obtained for a further four radiocarbon determinations from the ditch and central burial within the barrow. The six radiocarbon determinations together ranged between 2140 and 1680 cal. BC. The results are significant as they indicate that the site was in use over several centuries with the burial occurring towards the end of activity.     

A Tile Pavement from the Queen's Chamber,Clarendon Palace,Dated 1250-2

This article undertakes an object-focused study of a single work of art of great material and visual complexity: the Wallace Collection pax. This object stimulates an important discussion on how the making, materials and form of a work of art are fundamental to unravelling the object’s function and meaning for a contemporary audience. In placing at the core of the object a rare example of a late medieval amber Vera icon, the Wallace Collection pax also opens up a wider discussion on the nature and popularity of amber as a material of artistic expression in the later Middle Ages. In basing this article on the physical and material history of the work of art, I hope to illustrate the importance of going back to first principles when undertaking object-based research, and I intend to highlight the complex interaction between material and form in late medieval art.     

An Angel on the Wind: How Heroic Policy Narratives Shape Policy Realities

Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a new and maturing theory of the policy process that takes a systematic, scientific approach to understanding the social construction of policy realities. As such, NPF serves as a bridge between postpositivists, who assert that public policymaking is contextualized through narratives and social construction, and positivists, who contend that legitimacy is grounded in falsifiable claims. The central questions of NPF are: What is the empirical role of policy narratives in the policy process and do policy narratives influence policy outcomes? First, the contributions of NPF scholarship at three levels of analysis—micro, meso, and macro—are examined. Next, necessary conditions of a policy narrative are specified, accompanied by detailed discussion of the narrative components: narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. Finally, an empirical illustration of NPF—a case study of Cape Wind's proposal to install wind turbines off Nantucket—is presented. Although intercoalitional differences have long been studied in the NPF scholarship, this is the first study to examine intracoalitional cohesion or the extent to which a coalition tells the same story across narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. NPF is a new approach to the study of the policy process that offers empirical pathways to better speculating the role of narrative in the policy process.     

Early Cretaceous chelids from Lightning Ridge,New South Wales

Fragments of plastron and vertebrae from the Griman Creek Formation (middle Albian) at Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, extend the Australian record for chelid pleurodires back in time by over 50 my. Contemporaneous with the oldest known occurrences of chelids in Patagonia, this record indicates that during globally warm intervals, pleurodire distribution included high palaeolatitude locations. Although referred to Chelidae, the material shows no characters to enable more detailed taxonomic assessment and it is unclear whether known genera are represented. The diverse and prolonged history of chelids in South America and Australia indicates that the basal eupleurodiran divergence occurred deep in the Jurassic.