The martyr, the matrona and the bishop: the matron Lucina and the politics of martyr cult in fifth- and sixth-century Rome

The present study attempts to build on the achievement of Pietri and Llewellyn in assessing the peculiarities and limitations of the gesta martyrum as a source for late ancient and early medieval Rome, while shifting interpretative stress away from the lay—clerical binary which has dominated recent treatments of the cult of the saints, and toward an emphasis on factional conflict among lay—clerical coalitions. Central is an analysis of the literary motif, which recurs across the gesta of Lucina, the aristocratic matrona or widow who sees to the burial of the martyr on her own lands. Though the stereotypical figure of Lucina warns us of the limitations of the gesta as a source for the patronage activity of the lay aristocracy, it is argued, her appearance in crucial texts such as the Passio Sebastiani can nonetheless help us to trace the role which the memory of the martyrs played in texts such as the gesta martyrum, the Symmachan Forgeries, or the Liber Pontificalis, as well as the role which martyr shrines such as the Vatican basilica and the memoria apostolorum on the Via Appia played in the contestation and consolidation of Roman episcopal authority.     

Book reviews

Australian politics

John Cain, John Cain's Years. Power, Parties and Politics (Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 1995) pp.323 $29.95 ISBN 0 522 34615 7.

Braham Dabscheck, The Struggle for Australian Industrial Relations (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995) pp.194 $26.95 ISBN 0 19 553486 7.

Timothy Doyle and Aynsley Kellow, Environmental Politics and Policy Making in Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1995) pp.296 $32.95 ISBN 0 7329 2794 5.

Roy Green and Rodin Genoff (eds), Making the Future Work: Crisis and Change in the South Australian Economy (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.254 $26.95 ISBN 1 86373 526 7.

Comparative and international politics

Howard Adelman, Allan Borowski, Meyer Burstein and Lois Foster (eds), Immigration and Refugee Policy: Australia and Canada Compared. 2 Vols. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994) pp.725 $34.95 @ Vol.1 ISBN 0 52285 559 2, Vol.2 ISBN 0 52284 560 6.

David Arase, Buying Power: The Political Economy of Japan's Foreign Aid (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1995) pp.307 $US49.95 ISBN 1 55587 447 9.

Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament. State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995) pp.216 $US18.95 ISBN 1 55587 567 9.

Bruce J. Berman and Colin Leys (eds), African Capitalists in African Development (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1994) pp.275 $US45.00 ISBN 1 55587 417 7.

Robert Ellas and Jennifer Turpin (eds), Rethinking Peace (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994) pp.380 $US19.95 ISBN 1 55587 488 6.

John R. Faust and Judith F. Kornberg, China in World Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995) pp.281 SUS19.95 ISBN 1 55587 427 4.

Elie Kedourie, Nationalism, 4th ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) pp.154 $US16.95 ISBN 0 63118 885 1.

Jan‐Erik Lane and Svante Ersson, Comparative Politics: An Introduction and New Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994) pp.270 $35.95 ISBN 0 7456 1257 1.

Rosemary Righter, Utopia Lost: The United Nations and World Order (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995) pp.420 $58.20 ISBN 0 87078 358 0.

Herbert F. Weisberg (ed.), Democracy's Feast: Elections in America (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1995) pp.353 $US29.95 ISBN 1 56643 011 9.

Spencer Zifcak, New Managerialism: Administrative Reform in Whitehall and Canberra (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1994) pp.229 $39.95 ISBN 0 33519 304 8.

Political theory and methodology

R. Darcy and Richard Rohrs, A Guide to Quantitative History (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995) pp.323 $35.25 ISBN: 0 275 95237 1.

Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994), pp.225 $35.00 ISBN 0 241 00220 6.

Jurgen Habermas, The Past as Future, interviews with Michael Haller (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994) pp.181 $34.95 ISBN 0 74561 454 X.

G.J. Mulgan, Politics in an Antipolitical Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994) pp.215 $US19.95 ISBN 0 745 60813 2.

Hugh Stretton and Lionel Orchard, Public Goods, Public Enterprise, Public Choice: Theoretical Foundations of the Contemporary Attack on Government (London: Macmillan Press, 1994) pp.301 $39.95 ISBN 0 33360 725 2.

Vernon Van Dyke, Ideology and Political Choice; the search for freedom, justice, and virtue (Chatham: Chatham House Publishers, 1995) pp.320 $US24.95 ISBN 1 56643 017 8.     

CANADA'S INDUSTRIAL PERFORMANCE AND PROSPECTS UNDER FREE TRADE

Canada is currently involved in renegotiating its tariffs in the present discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt). Although official policy seems to be cast in terms of sectoral tariff cuts, reflecting Canada's trading strengths and weaknesses, there has been strong advocacy by some economists that Canada should enter free-trade agreements with the United States or preferably on a multilateral basis (Daly and Globerman, 1976; Economic Council of Canada, 1975; Wonnacott, 1975). The recent books advocating free trade are persuasive in mood and argument but their authors follow "the established orthodoxy of most economists in this country over the past two decades: foreign investment is, of itself, not a problem except to the jaundiced eye of the (nationalist) beholder. The tariff is the real villain … There are no problems, in this view that a good dose of free trade and free capital markets will not cure" (Rotstein, 1972, 2). So, we are faced with a paradox: on the one hand some economists, including those working for the Economic Council, are strongly committed to the argument that free trade will lead to manufacturing success for Canada while on the other hand the nation is experiencing its worst negative balance for secondary manufactured goods. Canada's trading partners have indicated increasingly that Canada does not produce finished goods of the type they require at attractive prices. This anti-export syndrome is a product of the high exchange value of the Canadian dollar (till early 1977) and the high basic cost of Canadian goods.     

Flood risk mapping in southwestern Nova Scotia: Perceptions and concerns

Flood risk mapping allows for informed decision making regarding personal and community planning. Resistance to flood risk mapping can be driven by potential decline of property values. This paper explores resistance to flood risk mapping through the lens of climax thinking. Climax thinking is a novel theory guiding explorations of resistance to proposed land use changes. The aim of this study was to understand flood experiences, the presence of resistance to flood risk mapping, and whether climax thinking could help explain this resistance. To address this, surveys were administered to residents in the Nova Scotian towns of Liverpool and Bridgewater. We found that one third of respondents have experienced flooding, yet the majority have not seen a flood risk map, nor were they concerned about the potential impacts of flooding. Only one sixth of respondents exhibited resistance to flood risk mapping because of potential loss to property value. Dimensions of climax thinking were predictive of this resistance, specifically ignorance of an individual's own ability to adapt and inability to recognize the impact of their adaptation decisions on others, which together quadrupled the predictive power of the ordinal regression model. These insights can be applied to support the acceptance of flood risk mapping.     

Women and Alcohol Consumption in Fascist Italy

This article examines discourses and practices around women's drinking in Fascist Italy. The history of alcohol production and consumption in Italy during the fascist dictatorship has only recently received attention; alcohol's gendered dimensions, especially women's drinking, have been hitherto overlooked. While the production of legislation, rhetoric and propaganda on alcohol consumption was dominated by men, women were identified as key constituents whose alcohol-related practices could make or break the causes of fascist propagandists, ‘anti-alcohol’ campaigners and alcohol industry associations. The article explains how Italian women were imagined and addressed by regime propagandists, alcohol industry producers and temperance campaigners as (a) simultaneously the principal victims of and responsibility bearers for male excess alcohol consumption, (b) potential ‘crisis-women’ whose unpatriotic drinking choices (whether English tea, French champagne or American cocktails) denoted their prioritising of fashion over fascist values and (c) gatekeepers of family alcohol consumer practices and consumers of alcohol in their own right. It then moves to examine sources left by interwar Italian women to explore what, how and when they drank. Ultimately, it argues that despite attempts to construct women's drinking in archly nationalistic terms, the discourses and actual practices of Italian women around alcohol consumption operated within profoundly transnational frames.     

Youth,Temporality, and Territorial Stigma: Finding Good in Camden,New Jersey

The concept of “territorial stigmatisation” identifies the role of symbolic denigration in the production of marginalised places. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research with a food justice organisation in Camden, New Jersey, to examine youth's responses to territorial stigma. The analysis demonstrates how Black and Latinx youth rewrite the story of Camden in a way that locates the “good” within it, using narratives of the city's prosperous history and possible futures to recuperate value within a stigmatised place. I argue that the perspectives of youth illuminate the temporal dimensions of territorial stigma, situating the blemish of place in relation to conceptions of individual and social change. The article contributes to a growing literature examining the strategic responses of those who dwell in pathologised places. Because youth are uniquely situated within the production of place, their perspectives offer important insights in this process.     

Integrating isotopes and documentary evidence: dietary patterns in a late medieval and early modern mining community,Sweden

This study explores the relationship between dietary patterns and social structure in a pre-industrial mining community in Salberget, Sweden c. 1470 to 1600 A.D. using a combination of different research approaches and tools, including archaeology, osteology, bone chemistry and history. The correlation between demographic criteria (sex and age) and archaeological variables (burial type and burial location) shows that Salberget was a highly stratified community. Group diets were investigated through analyses of stable isotopes (carbon, δ ¹³C, and nitrogen, δ ¹⁵N) of bone collagen from a sub-sample of individuals buried at the site (n = 67), interpreted alongside data from human dental lesions and deficiencies, animal bone waste and information on eating habits extracted from the extensive historical documents regarding mining activities at Salberget. These integrated analyses provide a clear association between social status and diet and confirm that social status, and to a lesser extent sex, gender and age, likely governed food choice and opportunity in this diverse community.