‘Ellie is the coolest’: class,masculinity and place in vehicle engineering students’ talk about literature in a Swedish rural town school

This article aims to show how boys in a vehicle engineering programme at an upper secondary school in Sweden use their reading and literature discussion in their identity construction and how the classroom is converted into a place where the boys create the social space that they are a part of. This article is written in the intersections between different disciplines, research fields, and theoretical and methodological perspectives, and it is argued that this approach makes it possible to exceed each respective limitation and present a more nuanced and far-reaching discussion about how children use literature discussions in the construction of identity and place.     

Maya heritage: entangled and transformed

This article discusses two aspects of heritage – entanglement and transformation – that became clear during a recent cultural heritage project in Yucatan, Mexico. Regarding entanglement, heritage becomes relevant only when coupled with other concerns, ranging from politics to livelihood to personal biographies. An unpredictable array of entanglements came into being during the project and these entanglements elevated the impact and visibility of local heritage to an unanticipated degree. Transformation refers to the claim that heritage is not frozen in the past. Instead, it is in motion and subject to change. The transformations of heritage discussed in this paper are examined from the perspective of a mobilities paradigm and understood, in part, as resulting from the experience of performing heritage for outsiders for the first time. In so far as the heritage project precipitated changes in identity, this paper explores what is meant by Maya identity and argues that it is a fluid construct that can be both anchored in the past and negotiated in the present. This perspective makes sense of an event in which contemporary people anchored their identity in a spectacular 1000-year-old ruin, but falls short of explaining the uneven recognition of smaller ruins.     

The Images of Arabs and Jews as a factor in British policy towards Palestine

Moshe Davis and Ben‐Arieh Yehoshua, eds., With Eyes Toward Zion, (Volume III, Western Societies and the Holy Land), New York, Praeger, 1991, 304 pp., $55.00.

Sergio I. Minerbi, The Vatican and Zionism, Conflict in the Holy Land 1895–1925, translated from Hebrew by Arnold Schwartz (Studies in Jewish History Series) (Mus.), New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, 272 pp., $30.00.

Ephraim Even, The Schism in the 1922 Zionist Movement: Why Jabotinsky Established the New Zionist Organization (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Rubin Mass Ltd., 1992, 243 pp.

I. Alfassi, ed., Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization): Collection of Archival Sources and Documents, April 1937‐April 1941, Tel Aviv. Vol. I, 1990, 472 pp.; Vol. II, 1992, 472 pp.

Abraham S. Hyman, The Undefeated, Jerusalem, Gefen Publishing House, 1993,486 pp., $24.95.

Yemima Rosenthal, ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, Volume 6, 1951, Jerusalem, Israel State Archives, 1991, 916 pp. and Yehoshua Freundlich, ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, Volume 7, 1952, Jerusalem, Israel State Archives, 1992, 774 pp.

Nitza Ben‐Dov, Notes on Agnon's Art of Indirection: Uncovering Latent Contents in the Fiction of S.Y. Agnon, New York, E.J. Brill, 1993, 168 pp., $57.25.

Morris, Benny. Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, xxii+470 pp.

Laurence J. Silberstein, ed., New Perspectives on Israeli History, New York, New York University Press, 1991, ix+281 pp.

Itamar Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken: Early Arab‐Israeli Negotiations, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, xi+259 pp., $22.95.

Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993, xii+470 pp.     

When nationalism beats populism: The secessionist movement in Texas

Six members of the Republican Party have presented and supported a House Bill in the Texas House of Representatives proposing a referendum to decide whether Texas should leave the United States. This initiative has been seen as a success by the Texas Nationalist Movement, who has been advocating for Texit for years. Applying frame analysis on an extended corpus of Texas nationalist sympathisers' statements, this article empirically explores the discourse of the Texas Nationalist Movement. The analysis contributes to recent literature on new nationalist movements and shows that Texas nationalism articulates its discourse around a homogeneous and exclusionary national conception based on the need to achieve independence as a solution to the country's problems.     

Defining and Characterizing Archaeological Quartzite: Sedimentary and Metamorphic Processes in the Lithic Assemblages of El Habario and El Arteu (Cantabrian Mountains,Northern Spain)

Quartzite was the second most‐often used lithic raw material in Europe in the Palaeolithic. However, this rock has not been characterized fully from the geo‐archaeological point of view. This study characterizes, defines and determines types of quartzite in northern Spain through a methodology that integrates petrography, digital image processing and X‐ray fluorescence. As a methodological foundation for the characterization of the material, it aims to open the possibility of discovering mechanisms of mobility, selection and management of quartzite by prehistoric societies. The types determined, based on the petrogenesis of the material, enable a better understanding of the archaeological sites of El Arteu and El Habario in the context of northern Spain in the Middle Palaeolithic.     

Measuring Regional Cohesion Effects of Large-scale Transport Infrastructure Investments: An Accessibility Approach

Transport infrastructure is considered one of the main policy instruments to achieve the cohesion goal, although the inclusion of cohesion effects in assessment methodologies is scarce and uneven. Although most cohesion studies are constrained to the analysis of regional disparities in economic indicators, this approach can be broadened to include other regional performance indicators. One of these indicators could be accessibility measures, from the point of view that accessibility, representing a competitive advantage of locations, constitutes a “desirable good” closely related to the welfare of each region. This paper suggests using changes in the spatial distribution of accessibility as a proxy to assess regional cohesion effects of transport infrastructure investments. However, as the conclusions taken depend heavily on the formulation of the accessibility measure, we recommend computing a set of accessibility indicators and analysing their results in a complementary way. The proposed methodology is tested by assessing regional cohesion effects of the large-scale road and rail transport infrastructure investments carried out in Spain in the period 1992–2004. The results obtained show that cohesion has improved for the road mode, while regional disparities have increased for the rail mode. This paper identifies the main factors driving this final cohesion effect and explores the strengths and weaknesses of the different accessibility indicators that were considered. The approach suggested in this paper has the potential to be applied in transport planning processes, and may eventually complement existing strategic assessment methodologies.     

Importing phenomenology: the early editorial life of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

This paper examines the reception of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, a philosophy quarterly which was founded in conjunction with the International Society of Phenomenology and for which Marvin Farber served as editor until his death in 1980. From its founding in 1940, Farber relied on the editorial support of many of Husserl's enthusiastic students who found themselves intellectual exiles, including Husserl's son. Farber's professional and personal interaction with Husserl's ardent followers reveals a dramatic story of former students who were ever vigilant about maintaining the core values of the Master's unique philosophy, and Farber's personal philosophical transformation from a publicist of Husserl's work to a guarded critic intent on avoiding the promotion of sectarianism.     

The Political Economy of Unemployment Insurance based on Individual Savings Accounts: Lessons from Chile

In recent years, unemployment protection systems based on individual savings have been instituted in several developing countries. Chile was one of the first to establish such a system, which at the time was widely cited as a model for other countries. This article discusses the particular political context in which the Chilean system was created before examining how it works in terms of coverage and levels of benefits received by unemployed workers. The authors undertake a detailed analysis of the administrative data produced by the system and conclude that the insurance covers only a small proportion of the unemployed, as most workers generally had precarious jobs that did not allow them to contribute to the system consistently. The Chilean case illustrates how difficult it is to establish functioning unemployment insurance in developing countries with precarious labour markets. Based on the interaction between employment characteristics and the conditions imposed by the benefit system, the article assesses the efficacy of the Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts (UISA) system and analyses whether it can indeed serve as a model for other developing countries.