The United Kingdom and the Negotiation of the 1969 New York Convention on Special Missions

During 1968–9, members of the United Nations, meeting in the Legal Committee of the General Assembly, negotiated a Convention on Special Missions, sometimes known as the New York Convention, setting out the privileges and immunities of ad hoc embassies between states. The negotiation was part of a process through which the UN sought to clarify the status and rights of official representatives, so that diplomacy could function with security and certainty. This article looks at the role of one leading power, the United Kingdom, in the talks. It explores how British interests were defined, the tactics used to secure them and how London came to terms with pressure from other states to redefine its approach. The focus is on the overall political thrust of the British negotiating position, as formulated mainly by the Foreign Office, rather than the detailed talks on such thorny issues as tax avoidance and diplomatic property. The article shows that, while London was keen to see a codification of diplomatic law, cold-war considerations made it less than enthusiastic about an upsurge in the number of special missions that the New York Convention might encourage.     

Sexual harassment in Korean college classrooms: how self-construal and gender affect students' reporting behavior

This article examines the reasons why women students may hesitate to report sexual harassment. The research draws on the notion of ‘self-construal’. Self-construal is a form of self-identification in social relationships, which in this case relates, in particular, to gender within cultural environments in Korea. For the purposes of this research, a survey was conducted with 298 Korean college students from 7 to 14 March 2006. The results showed that different types of self-construal had different influences on Korean college students' and their reporting of sexual harassment, whereas gender did not. Grounded in the theoretical framework of self-construal, people with independent self-construal were found to express their uncomfortable feelings and to report to the university counseling center, whereas people with interdependent self-construal did not. Furthermore, we found that women were more likely than men to directly express their opinions and report sexual harassment to the university counseling center. Men are also harassed by women colleagues or students but are often more reluctant than women to recognize their experiences as ‘sexual harassment’ because of the stereotype that men are the perpetrators of this behavior, not its victims, and because they fear ‘loss of face.’ It is necessary to engage not just with femininity but also with masculinity and the relationship between these constructs because they are both temporally and geographically contingent.     

Landlord Villages of Iran as Landscapes of Hierarchy and Control

This paper analyses the walled landlord villages of the Tehran Plain in terms of hierarchy and control, and how these structures are created and expressed through the spatial landscape of the villages. Drawing on original fieldwork, the ways in which landlords used the physicality of the villages to maintain and reinforce control over farmers is explored. We suggest that the “success” or at least longevity of the land tenure system in Iran prior to the later twentieth century can be attributed at least in part to the buildings and spaces of the villages themselves.     

Spot On: The Role of Political Advertising in Australia

During an election campaign, political advertising is not the only means by which the Australian political parties seek to persuade voters but it is 'the most expensive one, perhaps the most precise one and the only one over which the parties have complete control' (Mills 1986, 132). Over $30m is now spent on advertisements during federal elections, with up to 70% of the major parties' campaign budgets devoted to television advertising alone. When one considers that 90% of Australians are exposed to televised political advertising, the parties' control over these messages takes on particular significance. This article explores the apparently limited interest among academic analysts in political advertising in Australia, explains that advertising now has a central role in the political process and argues that this needs to be recognised in scholarly research.     

X-ray microtomographic imaging of charcoal

We assess the potential of X-ray microtomography as a tool for the non-destructive, three-dimensional examination of the internal structure of charcoal. Microtomographic analysis of a series of charcoals produced by the experimental pyrolysis of pine wood at temperatures from 300 and 600 °C in nitrogen only and in nitrogen mixed with 2% oxygen indicates that, despite substantial shrinkage, observed porosity, pore size and pore connectivity are all increased by pyrolysis and also by chemical oxidation. Analysis of a number of altered and unaltered archaeological and geological charcoals has demonstrated the capacity of the technique to identify and map the distribution of authigenic mineral contamination within charcoal fragments. The results are of significance to radiocarbon dating in that they provide insights into the mechanisms by which charcoal can be contaminated by extraneous carbon in the natural environment.     

Synchrotron radiation-based x-ray analysis of bronze artifacts from an Iron Age site in the Judean Hills

Seven bronze bangles from Tell en-Nasbeh, northern Judah, were investigated to understand the phase composition and manufacturing process of the artifacts, and possibly suggest a provenance for their origin. Synchrotron x-ray radiation diffraction (XRD) and fluorescence (XRF) were used in the analysis to avoid any destructive sampling and at the same time penetrate through the surface into the core metal. These techniques enabled us to determine that the bangles were not just tin bronze, but leaded tin bronze. Based on excavation reports, it is unlikely that the metal objects were manufactured locally at Tell en-Nasbeh; rather, preliminary XRD and XRF data point towards the neighboring region of Edom as their origin. Despite their political enmity during the Iron Age II, the data suggest that Judahite social demands for bronze may have fostered a strong economic relationship between these two polities.