The Construction of Social Meaning and Material Value: a Note on Trade in Melanesia

Marilyn Strathern has greatly refined the analysis of gift exchange, emphasizing that in gift exchange, units of value understood as metonymic extensions of their donors, are substituted for each other. However, the question still remains of how we should take into account the social meaning and material value of exchange processes usually called barter or trade; especially if we do not want simply to conceive of them as gift exchanges and nothing else. Drawing on fieldwork among the Kobon in the northern fringe of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, this paper proposes to view barter/trade in Melanesia as a strategic and symbolic interaction that combines aspects of gift and commodity exchange.     

Political economy and social legislation in Germany,ca 1870–1890

Summary

This article examines the nature of academic political theory in Britain in the post-war period, examining in particular the degree to which theorists were able to mount normative theoretical arguments. Traditionally, commentators such as Brian Barry and Perry Anderson have argued that political theory in this period was largely dead between 1945 and 1970 due to the impact of positivism, but I argue this is mistaken for two main reasons. First, it fails to distinguish between the different forms that positivism took in the post-war era. Thus although it is true many theorists tended to claim that moral and political values could (or should) not be discussed rationally, their reasons for doing so varied considerably. For while theorists such as A. J. Ayer and T. D. Weldon justified their positions theoretically, with arguments drawn from behaviourist social science or innovations made in linguistic philosophy, others, such as Ralf Dahrendorf and Anthony Crosland, argued that it was the perceived success of post-war welfare states or the alleged failure of political ideologies that made traditional political theory irrelevant. Second, following on from this, I argue that delineating more accurately how positivism actually operated helps to explain how political theorists were able to pursue their discipline normatively—albeit that few reacted to all aspects of positivism. Thus if some (such as Karl Popper) were more concerned to insist that political philosophy had something to say in practice, others (such as Michael Oakeshott), reacted more strongly against the proposition that human behaviour can be understood purely causally. Finally, I examine the impact of ordinary language philosophy on post-war political theory, and argue that rather than simply damaging the cause of normative political theory by encouraging a myopic concentration on the linguistic analysis of particular moral and political concepts, over the longer term its effects were much more positive, since it helped to focus attention on the irreducibly normative dimension of political concepts.     

Collaboration in Print: the ‘Aktion Ritterbusch’ and the failure of German intellectual propaganda in occupied Denmark, 1940–1942

During the Second World War, Germany's National Socialist regime mobilized German universities in order to support the war efforts through academic collaboration and a number of publications that were meant to legitimize Germany's territorial ambitions. The rector of the University of Kiel, Dr Paul Ritterbusch, was put in charge of the operation, which became known as the Aktion Ritterbusch. While earlier accounts have focussed on the Aktion Ritterbusch's endeavours in Germany itself and its ambitions in Western and Eastern Europe, this article shows how Ritterbusch also extended his efforts to Denmark.