REVIEW ESSAY Beyond Social Construction: Toward New Histories of Psychiatry

Focusing on symptom classification and on the outcome of somatic interventions, Berrios and Shorter challenge the social constructionist and anti-psychiatry tendencies that have framed the writing of the history of psychiatry for the past quarter-century. Contextualizing clinical interventions, these studies point out the value of examining the proposition that practitioners were motivated as much about curing distress as they were about eliminating nonconformity. Such examinations require an understanding of the strengths and limits of medical science that often have been trivialized or ignored by some social constructionists. Together the studies under review open the possibility that recent biological interventions may have transformed psychiatry in such fundamental ways that they call into question the assumptions that have underlay in an almost two-century-old classification system. Ironically, adherence to the scientific method (falsification) reveals that the biological revolution in psychiatry fits post-modern claims about the tentative nature of knowledge claims, while it simultaneously undercuts the particular historical interpretations of post-modern scholarship.     

Why does child trafficking policy need to be reformed? The moral economy of children's movement in Benin and Ethiopia

This paper challenges policy discourses that frame children's independent movement as intrinsically exploitative and threatening to their development. Drawing on research with children and adults in Benin and Ethiopia, two countries caught up in current efforts to eradicate child migration and the trafficking with which it has become associated, the paper critiques assumptions about children's vulnerability and physical dependence and contests the idea that appropriate childhood is necessarily fixed spatially within stable family structures. It, thus, situates children's migration within socio-cultural and economic contexts and suggests that it should be understood as part of a moral economy that confounds simplistic paradigms that conflate migration with trafficking. Policy suggestions are offered for how best to secure children's well-being through acknowledgement of the important relationship between mobility and child maturation.     

Distinguishing between archaeological sheep and goat bones using a single collagen peptide

We describe a method of isolating and analyzing a single collagen peptide able to distinguish between sheep and goat bone collagen. The 33 amino acid peptide from both sheep and goat collagen was sequenced and shown to differ between the two species at two positions. Analysis of a range of caprines indicated that the sequence changes occurred between the divergence of the Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus) and the ibex (Capra ibex) and that the proposed goat marker is diagnostic of all Capra species and breeds. The survival of these markers in archaeological bones was tested using a set of 26 ovicaprid specimens from Domuztepe, a Neolithic site in south central Turkey. These markers were used to test the osteological determination of 24 of the Domuztepe bones, and determine the species for two immature specimens. The collagen-peptide method has advantages over other non-morphological methods of sheep/goat distinction because of the long-term survival of collagen over other biomolecules such as ancient DNA. The results also highlighted the problems in relying upon one morphological criterion, in this case on the distal radius, to distinguish between sheep and goat bones.     

A Theory of Vernacular Rhetoric: The Case of the “Sinner's Prayer” Online

This paper seeks to rigorously define and illustrate the analytic category of “vernacular rhetoric” through an examination of the “Sinner's Prayer” as it appears on an amateur web page. In the online environment, this invitation to a traditional prayer performance seems to be a strategy for converting non-Christians. Through the application of the concept of vernacular rhetoric, however, it becomes clear that the deployment of the prayer can also function as an invitation for the already-converted to “testify” to their faith. In this way, the apparently evangelic prayer form also functions as an invitation for the already-converted to perform previously held values. By applying the concept of vernacular rhetoric to this example of online discourse, its value as an analytic category becomes clear because it can address the performative nature of World Wide Web-based documents.     

Reviews

Richard J. Goy, The House of Gold: Building a Palace in Medieval Venice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xxiv + 304pp., 13 col., 100 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–521–40513–0. £60.

Paul Mattick Jr. (ed.), Eighteenth‐Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. viii + 256 pp. ISBN 0–521–43106–9. £30.

Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education, Cambridge Mass. & London: MIT Press, 1994. xxx + 350 pp., 197 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–19342–6. £24.95.

Barry Cunliffe, Wessex to AD 1000, London & New York: Longman, 1993. 388 pp., 128 plates and figures. ISBN 0–582–49279. £16.99.

J. M. Fladmark (ed.), Cultural Tourism, London: Donhead, 1994. 413 pp. 86 b. & w. illns. ISBN 1–873394–15–2. £37.00.

John Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, Cambridge, Mass., and London: The MIT Press, [1992], 1994. xviii + 388 pp., 127 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–08211‐X. £17.95. Venetia Murray, Castle Howard The Life and Times of a Stately Home, London: Viking, 1994. xx + 236 pp., 33 b. & w. illus. and 20 figs. ISBN 0–670–83379–7. £18.00.

Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xv + 334 pp., 21 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0 521 40586 6. £14.95.

Alan R. H. Baker and Gideon Biger (eds.), Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 356 pp., 93 figs. ISBN 0–521–41032–0. £40.00.

Timothy Ambrose and Crispin Paine, Museum Basics, London and New York: Routledge, 1993. 319 pp., 6 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–415–05770–1. £19.99.

Martin Warnke, The Court Artist: On the Ancestry of the Modern Artist, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xx + 299 pp. ISBN 0–521–36375–6. £35.

David Dean, Museum Exhibition Theory and Practice, London and New York: Routledge, 1994. xii + 177 pp., 56 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–415–08016–9. £22.50.

Hanno‐Walter Kraft, A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present, London: Zwemmer and New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994. 706 pp., 207 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–302–00622–2. £25.00

James Strike, Architecture in Conservation: Managing Development at Historic Sites, London and New York: Routledge, 1994. x + 163 pp., 86 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–415–08130–0. £40.00.

Peter Walker & Melanie Simo, Invisible Gardens. The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape, Cambridge, Mass, and London: The MIT Press, 1994. xvi + 365 pp., 12 col. and 144 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–262–23177–8. £44.95.

John Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1988] 1990. xvi + 351 pp., 204 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–521–39848–7. £22.95.

G. J. Ashworth & P. J. Larkham, (eds.), Building a New Heritage: Tourism, Culture and Identity in the New Europe, London: Routledge, 1994. xiii + 278 pp., 39 figs. ISBN 0–415–07931–4, £40.00.

W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and Power, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994. vii + 248 pp., 72 b. & w. illus. ISBN 0–226–53207–0. £ 11.25.     

Contributors

The historic region of Ohmi‐Hachiman, located in central Japan, is an example of a Continuing Landscape in an Asian setting. With a differing perspective on what may constitute authenticity, a planning exercise is now underway looking for a sustainable future for the city and surrounding countryside that is both a popular tourist attraction and a working agricultural area. Ohmi‐Hachiman combines two areas ICOMOS has declared as under‐represente d—an Asia heritage site and an agricultural landscape. This region is a Japanese case study that shares many planning and policy traditions with the West. It is the product of a long industrialised and developed nation, yet the site is quintessentially Asian with rice paddies and small villages sharing an ethos with the rest of this part of the world. It is an ethos that includes a philosophical and practical approach to this Japanese Continuing Landscape which dramatically diverges from conventional Western practices and challenges the accepted ideas of authenticity. It is an approach worthy of close scrutiny by those overseeing heritage landscapes in the rest of the world who may also be facing the uncomfortable clash of commerce and conservation.     

Editorial-Heritage Challenges in the New Century

The paper considers the case of Raffles Hotel in Singapore which has been the subject of a conservation project with a significant element of redevelopment. The circumstances are discussed within the context of heritage tourism in colonial cities and changing approaches to conservation in Singapore. Built colonial heritage exhibits a symbolism which affects how it is presented and interpreted, serving as a tool for nation building and as a tourist attraction. Policies about conservation and use are influenced by these alternative and often contested meanings, while economic imperatives may demand that buildings generate revenue. Raffles Hotel illustrates the difficulties involved in managing and marketing colonial heritage and securing an acceptable balance between commercial and conservation objectives, with possibilities for confusion as a consequence of the combination of restoration, reconstruction and new building techniques employed.The case has a wider relevance which extends to other forms of built heritage around the world and highlights the dilemmas facing those making decisions about how to present the conserved past as a contemporary tourist space.