Hard rocks and heavy science

Earl Swanson, ed. Lithic Technology: Making and Using Stone Tools. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers, 1975. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Company, vii + 251 pp. Illustrations, tables, figures, biographical notes, and indices. $27.50.     

A Two‐Tiered Method for Identifying Trends in Media Framing of Policy Issues: The Case of the War on Terror

Research on media framing of policy issues has flourished. Yet the varied approaches to conceptualizing and operationalizing issue frames that make this literature rich also hinder its advancement. Here, we document the benefits of a two‐tiered method: the first level accounts for issue‐specific frames, while the second level tracks frames that generalize across issues. For this study, we draw on generalizable frames from prospect theory (loss vs. gain frames) and social identity theory (self‐referential vs. other‐referential frames). We discuss the theoretical merits of a two‐tiered approach, arguing that it should yield compound insights greater than the sum of its parts. Applying this method to newspaper coverage of the war on terror, we find a strong trend at the generalizable level: media framing of the war shifted over time from a predominant use of “fear” (self‐referential loss) frames to an increasing use of “charity” (other‐referential gain) frames. Our approach further reveals that the fear frames used in the lead‐up to the Iraq War were not driven by issue‐specific frames related to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction as we might have thought, but rather by frames related to the anticipated threats to U.S. troops. This study sharpens our understanding of how framing of the war evolved, but more broadly it suggests that a two‐tiered approach could be applied both within and across policy issues to advance our understanding of the framing process.     

Juvenile Travellers: Priscilla Wakefield's Excursions in Empire

While most discussions of juvenile imperial literature relate to the mid-nineteenth century onwards, this article draws attention to an earlier period by examining the children's books of Priscilla Wakefield. Between 1794 and 1817 Priscilla Wakefield wrote sixteen children's books that included moral tales, natural history books and a popular travel series. Her experience of the British Empire's territories was, in the main, derived from the work of others but her use of interesting characters, exciting travel scenarios, the epistolary form to enhance the narrative and fold-out maps added interest to the information she presented. Her strong personal beliefs are evident throughout her writing and an abhorrence of slavery is a recurring theme. She was also the grandmother and main caregiver of the young Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his immediate siblings. In contrast to his grandmother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield's experience of the empire was both theoretical and practical. He drew on, and departed from, the work of political economists to develop his theory of systematic colonisation and was active in both Canadian and New Zealand affairs. He began writing about colonisation in the late 1820s and his grandmother's influence can be seen in his wide use of existing sources and attractive writing style to communicate with his audience.     

‘Science in the Hands of Love’: British Evangelical Missionaries and Colonial Development in Africa,c. 1940–60

During the era of colonial development, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the London Missionary Society (LMS) revitalised their work by taking advantage of the 1940 Colonial Development and Welfare Act to uplift British Africa. These evangelical organisations did not simply appropriate governmental ideas of development, but formulated their own concepts based on the incarnational theology of the ‘whole man’ with body and soul. In implementing their developmental policies, these evangelicals promoted Christ's example of a ‘servant’ to guide missionary conduct as they encountered increased African criticism of colonialism following the Second World War. Both organisations shifted to focusing more closely on souls rather than bodies when African independence movements strengthened during the mid and late 1950s in hopes that Christian ideology would steer Africans towards Christian democracies. By 1960, the CMS and LMS stressed their relationship within the ecumenical Church in their efforts to emancipate themselves from their colonial ties. Through examining missionary discourse on colonial development, this article reveals not only the complexity of development discourse, but also the various ways in which evangelical missionary organisations sought relevance within the context of the Cold War, the rise of the welfare and expert state, and decolonisation.