“From one April to another”: remembering and acknowledging the Holocaust in the poetry of Michael Longley

Michael Longley has written and spoken of the responsibility to commemorate the Holocaust in a manner which is free from historical or political distortion. This article will consider his poetry about the Holocaust in the light of these statements, arguing that the epigraph in Gorse Fires (1991) from the work of Paul Celan provides an indication of Longley's strategy. The close association of elegy and botanical life in Longley's work manifests in the reconfiguration of remembrance poppies in relation to Celan and the Holocaust. The article discusses Longley's work in relation to Ireland's refugee policies during the Second World War, with recourse to the poems “Buchenwald Museum” and “Poppies”. Finally, the article considers Longley's personal link to the Holocaust through his friend Helen Lewis. The representation of the Holocaust in Longley's poetry is always associated with other traumatic events and this article extracts the threads which entangle Longley's evocations of historical violence.     

25 Jahre Metropolregionen in Deutschland im Spagat zwischen Raumordnung und Raumentwicklung. Ein Klassifizierungsvorschlag

Standort - Seit nunmehr einem Vierteljahrhundert gibt es auch in Deutschland Metropolregionen. Sie haben sich zu einem festen Instrument der Raumordnungspolitik entwickelt, vor allem um die...     

Catastrophic Limestone Decay at the Central Sanctuary of Iupiter Dolichenus at Dülük Baba Tepesi in Southern Turkey: Causes and Implications for Future Conservation

Dramatic deterioration of Hellenistic-Roman limestone remains recently excavated at Dülük Baba Tepesi (Southern Turkey) has been observed following the cold, wet winter of 2011/2012. A conceptual model is presented to explain the dramatic deterioration in which case hardening develops and initially strengthens the stone against deterioration, but then makes it more prone to exfoliation and blistering. Data collected using non-destructive techniques (Equotip surface hardness tester and Karsten tube for water uptake) on F?rat and Gaziantep formation limestone time series excavated in 2005, 2007, and 2013 demonstrates the progress of case hardening and deterioration after excavation. In combination with meteorological data from Gaziantep weather station the results are used to test and revise the model taking into account non-linear and threshold effects. Future excavation and conservation efforts should take into account the often-complex interactions between post-excavation case hardening and extreme winter conditions which can cause catastrophic deterioration.     

Social movements in an era of post-democracy: how the Israeli J14 tent protests of 2011 challenged neoliberal hegemony through the production of place

Abstract

Inspired by the Arab Spring, massive social movements have erupted since 2011 in many places around the world. Despite their differences, these movements have had at least two remarkable common features: all of them struggled for ‘real democracy’ and occupied prominent urban public spaces to erect temporary tent encampments. By focusing on the case study of the 2011 Israeli tent protests, this paper argues that the production of such places of resistance works as a crucial, albeit ambivalent, strategy to confront hegemonic power relations. On the basis of the literature on the spatialities of contentious politics, the article demonstrates that the establishment of more than 70 tent camps in public spaces all across Israel was of vital importance not only to challenging the post-democratic political system but also to overcoming an internal crisis of representation within the Israeli protest movement. However, the case of the Israeli J14 tent protests also underlines that while the production of place can be a powerful starting point for social movements, it is not a durable alternative to multi-scalar, networked forms of organisation, which are also able to confront state authorities in the long term.     

Examination of some pigments,grounds and media from Egyptian cartonnage fragments in the Petrie Museum,University College London

A number of cartonnage fragments from the collections of the Petrie Museum, UCL, were examined to identify pigments, media and grounds. The different types of cartonnage made in ancient Egypt are reviewed. Special attention was paid to green pigments, which were shown to be of green earth, or a mixture of Egyptian blue and a yellow, usually goethite or orpiment. Green earth was found in one artefact, dated to the 9th century BC: all other examples were from the Graeco-Roman period. No copper-organometallic greens were present in the examples studied, or Egyptian green, or malachite. Binding media was identified both by ELISA and by GC/MS. A pink colourant was identified as madder, while lead white was used as a white in one example, showing the influence of Roman and Greek pigments on Egyptian art in these later periods. Plant gum, egg, and animal glue were found in different fragments, with mixed media in a few cases. Moganite was found associated with quartz in some preparatory layers by X-ray diffraction, which has not been reported previously as a constituent of ground layers in Egyptian artefacts.     

Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory-building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy-induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed-methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal-typical trajectories of policy change.     

The Growth of the Evaluation Tree in the Policy Analysis Forest: Recent Developments in Evaluation

The practice and profession of evaluation is continually evolving. From its early origin in the Great Society years of the 1960s, through its golden years of the 1970s, its transformation under the fiscal conservatism of the Reagan era in the 1980s, and in its maturation during the performance and results era of the 1990s, the field of evaluation continues to evolve in response to broader trends in society. This article examines recent developments and trends in the practice and profession of evaluation. Structured around the evaluation theory tree, the presentation of these developments elaborates on the three main branches of evaluation: methods, use, and valuing. The concluding discussion briefly addresses the central role of evaluation—and other types of knowledge production—in providing actionable evidence for use in public policy and program decision making.     

Morphological distinctions between the mandibular teeth of young sheep, Ovis, and goats, Capra

Morphological distinctions between the mandibular teeth of young sheep (Ovis) and goats (Capra) are described, and their value in the study of bone samples from archaeological sites is briefly discussed.