Performing identities: music and dance in the Irishcommunities of Coventry and Liverpool

This article will examine how British-born second- and third-generation Irish people use Irish music and dance in the production of an Irish cultural identity. The article draws on research undertaken with members of the Irish communities in the English cities of Coventry and Liverpool. The research was conducted with music and dance practitioners in Liverpool who strongly identify as Irish and also with schoolchildren in Coventry whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland. The paper first explores the comments of the Liverpool respondents and points to how music and dance can offer a space in which different generations can mark out their affiliation or embody their Irishness. Secondly, the paper considers interview work with schoolchildren in Coventry, concentrating on their responses as listeners to Irish traditional music. Their comments point to the capacity of this music to resonate with multiple, even conflicting, productions of Irishness. The comments of all the respondents raise key debates about authenticity and the construction of identity.     

Jean Norton Cru and combatants' literature of the First World War

Using the unpublished archives of Jean Norton Cru, held at the University of Aix-en-Provence, this article provides a new interpretation of Cru's famous book on First World War literature, Témoins, first published in 1929. This work severely criticised a large number of books of soldiers' experiences of combat. Here a new reading of Cru's motives is offered, looking in particular at the author's Protestant background as well as at the links between reading and writing strategies.     

Organisational responses to climate change: do collaborative forums make a difference?

Innovative and effective responses to climate change require that we move beyond reliance on government to include organisations spanning different sectors, such as not‐for‐profit, private, and community groups. Interactions among these organisations in collaborative networks—or “forums”—may provide important mechanisms to successfully address climate change impacts. This paper investigates the relationships between organisational participation and involvement in forums and responses to climate change. Survey data show that people from many organisations are participating in forums and using these meeting points to discuss climate change, even when forums are intended to serve other purposes. The data suggest that participation in any type of forum is related to organisational responses to climate change. Attributes such as type of organisation and knowledge of climate change issues were also found to be related to organisational responses to climate change but these became less important when climate change was discussed in forums. The results of the research suggest that a practical way to increase the volume and variety of organisational responses to climate change may be to encourage participation in forums and/or to influence existing networks to incorporate more discussions of climate change issues.     

Structural Reform of the Veterinary Profession in Africa and the New Institutional Economics

This article reviews a number of critical issues in the structural reform of animal health services in Africa. Using the New Institutional Economics, it highlights several problems that others concerned with the privatization of this service area have tended to neglect. Most notably it calls attention to: (1) the need to retain a central role for paraprofessionals in the new delivery system; (2) the desirability of competition between the veterinary and para-veterinary professions; (3) the importance of developing state contracting procedures for assisting the private delivery of animal health that will avoid the problems of local monopoly; and (4) the central role that new and strengthened professional associations will have to play in this area if collective goods and the public interest are to be served. The article's larger purpose is to demonstrate that the New Institutional Economics has a great deal to contribute to the older precepts of neo-classical economics in anticipating and thinking through the fundamental changes that privatization of professional services in Africa are posing. In this sense it is a first step in a larger programme of empirical and theoretical research.