Recycling the orphan photograph: the new life of Jewish objects

The aim of this article is to explore the new lives of prewar photographs of European Jewry. In particular, I employ the concept of ‘orphan photograph’ which describes any work whose owners, producers, and the subjects featured in them are no longer available. Working from the premise that a photograph is not only a two-dimensional representation but also a three-dimensional object, I show how family images are consumed, distributed, discarded, salvaged and brought back to life. As I argue in this article, with the annihilation of their owners the once-important personal meanings of the pictures become obscured and obliterated. Subsequently, in post-Holocaust culture orphan photographs become invested with collective values. In the process of being recycled, these private family photographs are transformed into public spaces through which new visions of the past are projected and group interests promoted. Drawing on two case studies from Poland, I look at the ways in which these orphaned images are used by writers and NGOs, and examine how the various agents affect the subsequent readings of these artefacts. The article shows that once allowed to ‘speak for themselves’ these images reveal an immense capacity to challenge our pre-set notions of the past and escape the ‘backshadowing’ narrative of the Shoah.     

The 3rd May,a photograph: identities of and beyond displacement

This article proceeds from a photograph. It does so to begin an investigation of the diverse sites within and beyond it, and the reflections of several enactments of nation, culture, belonging and non-belonging. The image in question depicts a group of children waving flags. It is an old photograph, possibly removed from our ‘present’, though it holds within it multi-temporal spaces into which we might enter. The aim of this article is to do just that – to enter the image, armed with all the things a researcher gathers in terms of background data, narratives and contexts, and examine the complex negotiations enacted within and beyond it. How does this group of flag-waving children impact on us today? This article explores the extent to which an understanding of a temporal enactment of nation in displacement might reflect on contemporary negotiations of citizenship, culture and representation.     

The financial simulacrum: The consequences of the symbolization and the computerization of the financial market

In a first step, we present the symbolic evolution of financial market that illustrates the growing “consumer-oriented” dimension of finance. We introduce then the technological evolution of finance, that derives from the growing computerization of finance. The third part of the paper shows that this double evolution in finance allows us to consider the financial market as a “hyper-market”. The financial market is then presented as a result of what Baudrillard calls a “hyper-reality”. In the last section, we show that this hyper-reality allows a plurality of theoretical interpretations of the financial reality.     

The best interests of the child? The role of the court welfare officer

SUMMARY. The current developments in practice, where children are involved with the courts, will form a fundamental part of work with children under the 1989 Children Act. One of the key actors will be the Court Welfare Officer, part of the Probation Service. This article reviews the role as it has developed in recent years, pointing out the different practices which coexist, even in the same area. Using evidence from a small scale research study in one Service, the article argues for a clearer and more consistent role, which can only really develop under a Family Court Welfare Service     

The sexualization of the medical

The medicalization of sex is part of an already-in-place discursive problem that can be illuminated by looking at efforts to sexualize the medical. "Erectile dysfunction," "female sexual dysfunction," and their real and imagined pharmacopia, do not constitute the medicalization of sex; they are effects of sex already having been-to borrow a term from Peter Conrad ( 1992 )-healthicized. The equation of sex and health, as cultural common sense, has made health seem like the natural discourse for thinking about sex in the first place. Reversing the terms of this special issue, and using the methodology of rhetorical analysis, this article looks at the person with cancer as a sexualized subject-someone whose health is represented as intimately tied to his or her sex life. It suggests that, in public discourse-and notably in movies and on television-sex is the comic ending of the illness narrative. In light of this narrative move, the ability to have good sex joins the ability to be positive and cheerful as a (Western) cultural imperative of illness experience, in general, and cancer experience, in particular. Public representations of illness virtues often fail, then, to answer realistically the compelling question, "How shall I be ill?"     

The state of the state

Theory and Society -     

The turning of the tide

Abstract

A conflict between the local and the global is built into the contradiction of being a linguistic animal, at once bound by one's bodiliness to the local and able to conceptualize (and therefore to act) far beyond it. The paper considers some of the effects of this conflict, before proceeding briefly to examine four interrelated but distinct terms: universal, international, cosmopolitan and global. This paper was originally delivered as a lecture given at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's conference ‘Navigating Globalization: Stability, Fluidity and Friction’, sponsored by the NTNU Globalization Programme held in Trondheim, Norway, August, 2005.     

The Legend of the Dashun

THOSE who've seen the movie "Titanic" might think that they could never forget the soul-stirring catastrophe of the sinking of the "unsinkable" ship. However for the survivors of the Dashun their real life tragedy really will be etched in their memories for all time. November 24, 1999 was an inauspicious day for the passengers and crew aboard the Dashun. Leaving Yantai in East China's Shandong Province for Dalian, a port city in     

The passing of the Rex

This paper takes as its point of departure the ethical problematization of debating both sides – having students argue both affirmative and negative on a debate resolution – in order to highlight the role of communication as a cultural technology of liberalism. It argues that debating both sides contributed to the cultural governance of cold war liberalism by separating speech from conviction to cultivate the value of debate as a method of democratic decision-making. The valorization of free and full expression as a pre-requisite for ‘decision by debate’ prepared the ground for dis-articulating debate from cold war liberalism and re-articulating it as a game of freedom that contributes to the moral education of liberal citizens. In so doing, debate becomes a global technology of liberalism creating exceptional subjects by circulating the communicative norms of deliberative democracy.     

The moral of the gift

The author analyses the gift as a moral phenomenon. Based on a research on gift-giving in family networks, the article shows that one cannot apply to the gift the moral rules normally based on duty. A “true” gift must be free not only from economic obligation but also from moral duty, and in some way from any obligation. It is as if something more than what the rules prescribe were essential to the gift, as defined by social agents. This is why one can define the ideal-type of gift as a positive debt system voluntarily maintained by its partners.     

The History of the Qipao

A study of the evolution of garments in China reveals thatthe qipao,which originated from the traditional dress ofManchu women,had been a popular dress among women ofthe upper classes befofe it began to be worn by all Chinesewomen. Taditionally drsses for women of Han nationalityhad always been in two pieces-a blouse and a skirt,while