Not a right but a public function: the debate in the French National Assembly over the 1872 law on jury formation

Because of the highly politicized nature of the French judicialsystem in the nineteenth century, laws governing the selectionof jurors were often the subject of strong political debate.There were repeated controversies over which citizens shouldbe jurors and which authorities should draw up the annual jurylists from which the trial panels were drawn. Perhaps no eventbetter reflected the nature of the controversy than the debatewhich occurred in the National Assembly in 1872, when the conservativegovernment proposed an act which gave the judiciary power torevise the annual jury lists drawn up by elected officials.However, liberal deputies opposed the act because they maintainedit gave too much power to a conservative judiciary in determiningwhich citizens should be jurors. The debate in fact went tothe heart of the nineteenth-century struggle between the Rightand Left.     

Building and ornamental stones of the Awam (Mahram Bilqis) Temple in Marib, Yemen

One of the most famous monuments of the ancient Kingdom of Saba is the first-millennium BC Awam Temple in Marib, Yemen. Despite its fame, almost nothing has been published about the building and ornamental stones used in its construction, or the quarries that supplied these stones. This paper presents the results of the first geological study of the Awam Temple and its stone quarries.     

Bone weight,meat yield estimates and cod (Gadus morhua): A preliminary study of the weight method

Past approaches to the Weight Method (use of the weight of excavated bone assemblages to evaluate the relative potential meat yield of the animals from which they came) are critically reviewed. They do not account for both inter-taxon and intra-taxon variability in the relationship between bone weight and total body or soft tissue weight. Critics of the Weight Method have assumed that these problems are insurmountable. It is argued here that they can be overcome practically. Solutions lie in the integration of classic Weight Method approaches, which assume a consistent ratio of bone weight to body weight between different taxonomic and size groups, with the understanding of animal scaling provided by studies of skeletal mass allometry. Allometric equations derived from original data (regarding cod, Gadus morhua) and available from published sources (regarding mammals and birds) are used to illustrate this argument. Three practical approaches to the Weight Method are suggested and briefly explored, using bone weight data from Earls' Bu, a Norse site in Orkney, Scotland, as a case study.     

Innovation projects and local production networks: A case study of Hertfordshire

This paper evaluates some of the key arguments underlying what is called here the local production network paradigm (LPNP). These are presented as three interlinked hypotheses that turn on the idea that firms competing in world markets need to accommodate continuous change by fostering product or process innovation. The definition of innovation used in this study is “the commercially successful exploitation of new technologies, ideas or methods through the introduction of new products or processes, or through the improvement of existing ones” (EC DG XIII, 1996, p. 54).

One conventionally described organizational response to this requirement to accommodate continuous innovation is to dis‐integrate firms and set up local production networks. Local production networks are defined in this study as “collaborative linkages between local firms and local factors of production”. Such networks are said to rely on local resources of various kinds to enable them to innovate on a continuous and incremental basis. As a result of such dependencies on local factors, and their interconnectedness with each other, the local production network (LPN) firms then become ‘embedded’ in their localities. Such networked economies have been variously described as new industrial districts, areas of flexible specialization, and innovative milieux.

The evidence presented to test these hypotheses is based on a case study of innovative, award‐winning firms in Hertfordshire. The findings show that although these firms do compete successfully in fast‐moving international markets, they do not rely much on local production networks, as defined here, to enable them to do so. The findings call into question the general applicability of the LPNP. Questions are raised particularly with respect to innovation in the important minority of highly innovative core metropolitan regions.

Innovation is argued to be an interactive process that is both driven by a steady supply of technological advances and stimulated by different types of consumer demand. In the case of the firms interviewed in Hertfordshire, most of their innovative projects were developed by the firms working individually, and in isolation, from other local businesses using high quality, knowledge, information, human resources and venture capital. At the same time, these firms were also pulled by demands from military, health and company consumers. Only in the case of the minority of innovations that were purchased in the first instance by private final consumers were local production networks of some significance.     

Book reviews

The Solitary Self: Jean‐Jacques Rousseau in Exil and Adversity. By Maurice Cranston (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997) xii + 247 pp. $29.95 cloth.

The Self‐Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta‐Painting. By Victor I. Stoichita (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) xv + 345 pp. $85.00, £55.00 cloth.

The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Edited by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) ix + 403 pp. $18.95, £13.95 paper, $59.95, £40.00 cloth.

David Hume: Political Essays. Edited by Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) lxvi + 346 pp. $49.95, £30.00 cloth, $15.95, £10.95 paper.

Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason. By Thomas R. Flynn (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997) 340 + xvi pages. $18.95 paper.

Shaping World History: Breakthroughs in Ecology, Technology, Science, and Politics. By Mary Kilbourne Matossian (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997) 264 pp. $62.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.     

Descartes our contemporary

Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. By Stephen Gaukroger (Oxford University Press, 1995), xviii + 499 pp. £25.00 cloth.

Descartes and his Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections, and Replies. Edited by Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene (University Of Chicago Press, 1995), vii + 261 pp. $17.95 paper.