Twenty years of heritage studies – the showbiz of history?

This paper is part of a collective retrospective convened in 2014 looking back at various disciplines in the Humanities at Wits over the 20 years of democracy. The seeds of the heritage studies programme at Wits were sown in 1990 when it became apparent that the apartheid regime was about to cede to a more democratic regime, creating a new opportunity for Wits academics to engage with public institutions. The paper discusses this moment against the background of the History Workshop at Wits, which hosted some of the discussions about public culture in the early 1990s. It attempts to elucidate the origins of the heritage studies programme at the university and describe some of its features. The paper follows the migration of the programme from Social Sciences to the Wits School of Arts, outlining some of the philosophical ramifications of its relocation.     

Issues of Motivation – Vassa/Equiano and Carretta's Critique of the Evidence

This article offers an analysis of the written record of an oral statement of grievances delivered in 1798 by George II, king and principal chief of the Afro-Indian Miskitu nation, before Antonio de Echeverría, the senior officer in command of the small Spanish settlement of Río Tinto. Containing 44 articles and extending over four days, George's protest is used here as a lens through which to examine the ways in which the Miskitu exploited their occupation of a strategically vital borderland between British and Spanish empires in Central America and the Caribbean to protect their autonomy, and extract advantage from the Europeans who competed for their loyalty. In discussing the wider context and the circumstances that gave rise to the 1798 events from an indigenous perspective, it also throws new light on the processes and experiences that entangled Britons, Spaniards and Miskitu over the decades from the 1770s to 1800.     

Terror as potentiality – the affective rhythms of the political

ABSTRACT

The paper addresses the ways in which the cultural, the affective and the political intersect, counter and/or feed upon one another in the context of contemporary terror. Initially, building upon Machiavelli and Hobbes, we deal with the political significance of terror (and the fear it provokes), emphasizing its potentiality, which inscribes future within the present. Then we turn to an analysis of terror in the prism of securitization. Terror, in this respect, amounts to de-materialization (the enemy as spectre), de-temporalization (the erasure of the temporal difference between the present and the future), and de-territorialisation the breakdown of the distinctions between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Following this, we observe how these three processes are dealt with at the subjective and objective (social) levels. Regarding the first, subjective, level we differentiate three attitudes as paranoid, panic and rational. Regarding the latter, we consider terror in terms of accident, risk and catastrophe. Then, discussing the rhythmic relations between these conceptualizations and their spatio-temporal consequences, we focus on the notion of catastrophe. We end with articulating the aporias emerging in this context     

Deception and reputation – An experimental test of reporting systems

We use a repeated sender-receiver game in which sender behavior is revealed to future counterparts either by (i) standardized computer reports or (ii) individual reports composed by the receivers. Compared to our baseline, both reporting systems significantly decrease the rate of deceptive messages chosen by senders. However, we find that computer reports reduce deception to a higher extent than individually written reports. This comparably higher impact can be explained by the senders’ anticipation of a high number of missing or deficient receiver reports that we find. We conclude that the precision of a reporting system has a higher importance for reducing deception than its personal character via individual feedback. Surprisingly, the reliability of computer reports is not correctly anticipated by receivers, who trust individually written reports more in the beginning and hence seem to back the wrong horse initially.     

The eligibility question – the real source of depersonalisation?

There have been a number of high-profile strategies over recent decades to raise social care above what is widely regarded as an unacceptable service in the United Kingdom. Quite apart from all too frequent high-profile scandals, it is seen as a service that is depersonalising and stigmatising. None of the strategies to bring about change, most of them introduced to great fanfares, have delivered the changes they promised. This article sets out a view that the reason why they have all failed is that none of them have identified or therefore tackled the underlying problem, which is the relationship between needs and resources. Underfunding has long been a serious concern for campaigning organisations. The article does not detract from that contention. However, it sets out how strategies to manage the gap between needs and resources, more than the funding gap per se, are themselves the root cause of depersonalised and chronically impoverished services. The unlikely source of these strategies can be traced to the unintended consequences of an Act of Parliament that had the best of intentions.     

A Christmas Tree in Flames and Other – Visual – Stories: Looking at the Photojournalistic Coverage of the Greek Protests of December 2008

In December 2008, the killing of a fifteen-year-old boy by the Greek police triggered the country's worst civil unrest in decades and an outbreak of rage and violence, which turned into a wider protest expressing deep popular discontent and frustration with ageing problems in the country. Through a content analysis of themes appearing in eight media of different genre and political orientation, and using solely images as units of analysis, this paper examines the visual framing of these protests and its function in the public screen. The findings show that two frames are used to imply a distinction between Us (as normal citizens who protest peacefully) and Them (as ‘hooded hooligans’ who protest violently).     

Roma Press Center – 20 years of making a difference

ABSTRACT

The Roma Press Center (RPC) is the first Roma news agency in Hungary with the goal of reducing prejudice against the Roma. Their profile has been changed throughout the years, since the technological developments of the media and the political and economic changes of the country challenged their way of effectiveness. Until recently, the RPC was always about reacting to the negative stories about the Roma and balancing this image in the media. In the last 3 years, RPC changed its attitude by becoming a proactive media organisation which directly participates in shaping the public discourse about the Roma with their work. The interview with the two decisive characters of the RPC tells about this process.     

The last 20 years of visual anthropology – a critical review

This article is a critical review of the last 20 years of the development of visual anthropology in the United States and United Kingdom. It is argued that there are three approaches to the field – visual anthropology as ethnographic film, as the cultural study of pictorial media and as an inclusive anthropology of visual communication. The development and expansion of scholarly journals, training programmes and increasing general acceptance of this branch of cultural anthropology bodes well for the future. The anthropologist as image‐maker and scholar of the visible and pictorial world is becoming increasingly commonplace.     

Cambodian youth managing expectations and uncertainties of the life course – a typology of biographical management

Globalising changes in recent decades have produced great impacts on young lives, and youth sociologists have been analysing how young people negotiate change and uncertainty in their lives. This article complements existing research by a case study on Cambodia, where young people have in recent years been charged to deal with drastic social changes but in social conditions different from the better known global North. By drawing on data from a study of young rural–urban migrant labour workers' and university students' life experiences and expectations in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, we systematically compare their sense making, action strategies and future orientation during their transition into working life. We present a theoretically informed but empirically grounded typology that illustrates three major modes of biographical management: entrepreneurial, traditional and situational, which are linked to different perceptions of uncertainty, future perspectives, action strategies, planning modes and resources available through the family, personal capacity and the larger sociocultural context. We conclude with critical remarks on the extent to which the fulfilment of Cambodian young people's hopes for a better life is shaped by broader social conditions and individual circumstances.     

Praxis – Zuschreibung – Objektivit?t.

The article scrutinizes different arguments as against individualism that are different from arguments from emergence. What these types of arguments nevertheless share with an argument based on emergence is the idea of a decisive asymmetry: whereas individual properties have to be derived from social properties, social properties do resist to an analysis in terms of individual properties. Four types of such anti-individualistic arguments are distinguished: First, the idea that individual actions become meaningful actions only in the context of a social practice; second, the claim that action derives from processes of social attribution; third, the thesis that subjective states presuppose intersubjectivity; and, finally, the claim that actorship requires the process of social recognition as an actor. It can be shown that these types of arguments are not conclusive. Thus, an individualistic concept of social phenomena is defended. Following Max Weber, social properties are considered to be a certain class of individual properties that constitute the social world, i.e. individual properties do not necessarily depend on social practices or processes of attribution or recognition.     

A Statistical Profile of the Irish Community in Gateshead – The Evidence of the 1851 Census

By the mid-nineteenth century, the north east of England was home to the fourth largest Irish settlement in England. The 1851 census makes it possible to identify key features of this post-famine community and provides a basis for the exploration of non-quantitative sources. The Gateshead Irish community was the third largest in the north east, behind Newcastle and Sunderland. The census data can establish such key features as the spatial distribution of the Gateshead Irish, their occupational profile, age distribution, household size, marital status and the extent of intermarriage between the Irish and the host community. It will be shown that the concept of the ghetto does not apply to the Irish; that they were overwhelmingly employed in unskilled work; that they were, in general, older than the host community; and that there were a significant number of cases of intermarriage between the Irish and English.     

Academic writing as autocommunication – the case of doctoral dissertations on CSR

In this article, we explore the self‐oriented rather than socially‐oriented reasons why a doctoral dissertation in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is written. We base our article on Yuri M. Lotman’s idea on autocommunication which we use as tool in analysing a group interview conducted with six doctoral students studying in the field of CSR. We suggest that autocommunicational aspects might play a much more important role in rationalized Western culture and science than is often realized, and our main thesis is that one essential reason for writing a doctoral dissertation in the field of CSR might be to communicate with oneself and that this even might contain a therapeutic dimension. Implications for students, supervisors and future research are discussed at the end of the article.     

The Role of Hadramis in Post-Second World War Singapore – A Reinterpretation

Past scholarship has tended to portray the history of Hadramis in Singapore with that of the political, economic, social and religious prominence of the diasporic community in the pre-Second World War period, followed by declining significance and disenfranchisement. This article is a revisionist attempt at documenting the crucial roles played by members of a prominent Hadrami family, the Alsagoff, in shaping the course of Malay activism from 1945 to 1965. By employing previously untapped sources, three key areas in which the Alsagoff (s) played crucial roles are unravelled: the propagation and reassertion of Islam (da' wah), Malay politics and Malay literary movement. Through such an exposition, this study hopes to provide new inroads into the study of Hadramis in Singapore.     

Carriers of the troublesome violence – the social services’ support for female victims of domestic violence

In Sweden, the social services’ responsibility for abused women has been reinforced and clarified on several occasions since the 1990s. At the same time, the knowledge of their work is undeveloped. This article analyses the social services’ support for female victims of domestic violence with a focus on organisation, based on the concepts of specialisation and specialists. The study consists of qualitative interviews with 16 social workers in 11 municipalities. The study shows great organisational variation between the municipalities, although most have some sort of specialised units or person-bound specialisation. Colleagues, training and external supervision are factors the social workers emphasise as important in working with female victims of violence, a social problem described as both special and difficult. The different forms of organisation and specialisation influence the support the social services offer abused women.     

Adolescents' understandings of binge drinking in Southern and Northern European contexts – cultural variations of ‘controlled loss of control’

Previous research on youth drinking has brought out important features in young people's time- out cultures as and how they relate to the current neo-liberal social order with its expectation of self-governing individuals. However, previous research has not sufficiently considered cultural variations on the meaning of binge drinking for young people; in particular, there have been very few studies dealing with under-aged drinkers. This paper considers the applicability of binge drinking as ‘controlled loss of control’ in Northern and Southern European contexts by comparing young people's perceptions of binge drinking in Finland and Italy, which have conventionally been considered as representing sharply contrasting drinking traditions. The data consist of 28 focus-group interviews conducted at schools among 15-year-old pupils (N = 148) in Helsinki and Turin. In both countries, binge drinking was seen as risky, but it was associated with social norms that defined the limits of successful or failed drinking experience. Cultural variations were found especially in the ways self-control was defined with regard to drinking regulation. However, in both data the competence of the drinker and self-control was emphasized, thus contradicting the interpretation of binge drinking as loss of control or a time-out from the neo-liberal social order.