THE TIBETAN VILLAGE OF NORTH WEST YUNNAN-a basic grammar of local authenticity

This work is the result of a journey in North West Yunnan. The European architects try to identify and explain which the main characters of local authentic architecture are, and to define a basic grammar. Observing the ongoing trends of change, they make comments and give some basic personal suggestions about architectural conservation. Authenticity is not an absolute idea and it should be clear that the following observations come from a European conservationist point of view. The document is written in the perspective of promoting a conservation oriented to tourism development in the area.     

Determinants of Organizational Failure in the Milwaukee School Voucher Program

In this article, we utilize 25 years of data on the Milwaukee voucher program to test the relationships among organizational liabilities of newness, institutional affiliation, market‐share, and regulatory environment on the cumulative risk of school failure. Overall, we find that 41 percent of all private voucher schools operating in Milwaukee between 1991 and 2015 failed. Start‐up voucher schools, and those unaffiliated with a larger institution, have comparatively higher failure risk over time. The results of our analysis shed light onto one of the long‐term impacts of a public policy reform premised on social entrepreneurship. We conclude that policymakers should consider the consequences of organizational failure when utilizing nongovernment entities in the provision of public goods, and that scholars focus increased attention to understanding the negative externalities created by public entrepreneurship.     

Anti-Slavery and the Reconstitution of Empire

This survey article combines some recent scholarship on anti-slavery with work on humanitarianism and legal history to explore ways in which anti-slavery fed into the legal transformation of the British Empire in the first decades of the nineteenth century. It argues that campaigns for abolition, emancipation, and the amelioration of slavery did more than use law as a means to the end of slave emancipation. Anti-slavery efforts were integral to a larger process of imperial legal reordering: they often aimed, and invariably worked, to transform the legal relationship among subjects, colonial states and the imperial centre.     

The spectacle of the poor. Or: ‘Wow!! Awesome. Nice to know that people care!’

On the night of 14 November 2012, a police officer of the New York Police Department encountered a homeless person while performing his duties around Times Square. He gave him a pair of boots and while doing so, he was photographed by a tourist. The photo was posted on Facebook, receiving in a few days more than 1.6 million visits. The paper unfolds the reasons why this particular image and story have gone, as the media has put it, ‘viral’. The paper investigates the spaces that have emerged in the media elongation of DePrimo's practice of care and, introducing the notion of ‘spectacle of the poor’, it argues that this specific case simplifies the dominant western framings around matter of ‘caring for the poor’. The political and cultural consequences of these framings are investigated, and reflections on how to tackle them provided.     

Rights,participatory spaces and the daily fabric of children and young people’s voices in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in public policies aimed at hearing children and young people’s voices, which typically entail creating supportive participatory spaces. While this political project is usually presented as a radical move towards a more inclusive society, it raises critical questions about whose voices are being represented, how, why, by whom and for whom. Drawing upon recent ethnographic research on childhood and youth policies in Switzerland, this article explores how children and young people’s voices are produced in concrete situations. It studies how the institutional and material characteristics of participatory spaces and situated interactions shape which voices will actually be heard. The research highlights that, despite their inclusive ambitions, participatory spaces paradoxically exclude young persons who fail to articulate, orally or in written, linguistically, morally or politically legitimate voices.     

Vitrification of basalt orthostats and mud building components from Tilmen Höyük (south-eastern Turkey): an experimental and geoarchaeological approach

Finds of basalt orthostats and mud building components from the archaeological site of Tilmen Höyük (south-eastern Turkey, early 2nd Millenium BC) preserve a glassy crust formed by vitrification of the material. It is proposed that such features are related to destructive fire events, which destroyed the wooden building elements and burned natural stones. The geoarchaeological and experimental approach confirms this hypothesis. The geochemical composition of experimental melts is comparable to that of natural basalts. Spot analyses evidence the heterogeneity of the melts, especially for mudbricks and ceiling plasters. It is concluded that the investigated finds were subjected to strong burning under oxidising conditions reached during a violent fire. Temperatures similar to those derived by experimental melting (1180–1195 °C) were likely reached in the fire at Tilmen in order to produce the glass observed.