A post-apartheid paradigm? a view from the outside

The South African student movements of 2015 and 2016 have critically recalled the question: how to dismantle the thinking inherited from apartheid? More than twenty years after the fall of the racist regime, this question still haunt South African humanities. While the term “post-apartheid” might have addressed this urgency and even crystallized an intellectual ambition, it’s multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings have made it hard to establish a paradigm. The authors of this special section have sought to interrogate the use and abuse of the concept in the literature of their respective disciplines, keeping in mind that, whatever its polysemy, the term has become a reference point for the humanities worldwide, as untranslatable as it is inescapable.     

Firefighters across frontiers: two fire brigades cooperating in the Dutch–German borderland

This article focuses on boundaries as symbolic constructs to overcome structural impediments to cooperation in a borderland constituted by two nation states – Germany and the Netherlands – that, from a global perspective, may be regarded as close cultural neighbours. Empirically, the vicissitudes of cross‐border cooperation are analysed at the level of a Dutch and a German fire brigade in adjacent borderland villages. The diminishing visibility of borders does not necessarily lead to more openness, but gives rise to the emergence of socially constructed symbolical boundaries, which has major effects on issues of national identity and loyalty within organizations operating in trans‐border spaces. Cultural differences can complicate processes of transnational coordination, harmonization, and negotiation. However, cooperation and trust, based on an affinity with a local culture in borderlands, may provide a more stable fundament for successful common ventures than do regulations enacted by state authorities. Addressing the question of how processes of transnationalization affect inter‐organizational cooperation, this article describes and analyses the ways in which European integration, national bureaucracies and cultural similarities and differences form partly converging and partly conflicting forces in cooperative efforts in the Dutch–German borderland.     

Levelling across the life‐span?: Tracing the face vowel in panel data from the North East of England

Apparent time analysis has revealed that the Tyneside face vowel is the site of two intersecting trends: levelling towards the supra‐northern monophthong as well as the gradual incursion of the southern standard closing diphthong. This article investigates the participation of individual speakers across their life‐span in these ongoing changes in the face vowel. We report on a small‐scale panel sample of six speakers who were recorded in 1971 and again, 42 years later, in 2013. The analysis probes the stability of individual speakers’ grammars, relying on longitudinal ethnographic analysis in the community as well as insights gleaned from sociolinguistic interviews about the speakers’ socio‐demographic trajectory and their presentations of self. The article contributes to the growing body of panel research that aims to determine the scope and the limits of linguistic malleability across speakers’ life histories.     

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).     

Abortion: rights or technicalities? A comparison of Roe v. Wade with the abortion decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court

A comparison of the difference in approach, philosophy, and percepti on of social implications of abortion in the United States and Germany is examined by contrasting the Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court with the abortion decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Roe v. Wade effectively established abortion on demand prior to "viability" (approximately 6 months) and makes it difficult to prevent it for any reason at any time prior to live birth. When the West German Federal Diet passed the Fifth Law for the Reform of the Penal Code which allowed abortion on request up to 12 weeks of conception and for reasons of maternal health up to 22 weeks, the Constitutional Court declared it null and void 8 months later. The 2 courts reached their decisions for quite different reasons. In the U.S. "Jane Roe" was a real, though anonymous, woman. Other real persons had been trying to overturn abortion statutues in various states. The German court acted on a petition brought by 193 members of the Federal Diet and 4 of the states. It was thus, under the German system, obligated to decide the constitutionality of the revisions in abortion legislation and the decision returned the question to the legislative body. The fundamental difference between the German and the American approach is the "right to life." In America the conflict is between the mother's "right to privacy" and the compelling interest of the state to protect the right to life. At no point does the U.S. Supreme Court consider whether the unborn has rights but only whether they constitute a value the protection of which is a legitimate state interest. In Germany, by contrast, the Federal Constitution explicitly establishes the right to life as a subjective human right; the state not only has no right to take life but acknowledges that this right belongs to the human being himself. The U.S. court reasoned that the unborn have been protected "only" for the last century while the German court stated the right has "already" been recognized for a century. The U.S. Court made no mention of the wider social implications of the decision except for a few brief references; the German court's major consideration was the social implication of the law. An appendix with 6 refs. give a translation of the German court's decision.     

Prize Possessions: Transported Material Culture of the Post-Abolition Enslaved – New Evidence from St Helena

This article examines the artefacts of personal adornment recovered during recent archaeological excavations of a graveyard associated with the nineteenth century, British-run ‘Liberated African Establishment’ in Rupert's Valley, on the South Atlantic Island of St Helena. It presents evidence for the transportation of pre-enslavement cultural material, and identifies factors that may have affected the ability of captive Africans to retain personal effects. It also discusses the interpretative constraints that exist in identifying transported – as opposed to acquired – material culture in the context of the post-Abolition Transatlantic slave trade.     

Demanding hosts and ungrateful guests – the everyday drama of public transportation in three acts and academic prose

In their own view, public transportation companies make a very hospitable offer to commuters: if you are ready to travel with us, we will take you for a reasonable price nearly anywhere, every day and almost at any time of the day, under good conditions of comfort and safety. Please, step onboard. But commuters resist being reduced to the thankful guests of their commuting service providers. Commuting is an experience whose rhythm structures daily lives. It is not an innocuous in-between-doors passage, but a social practice intertwined with the routines bound to the home, workplace, and places of leisure which they commute to and from. Commuting routines are a constitutive part of commuters’ lives. Correspondingly, commuters own their commuting space. They do not own it in terms of legal ownership, although they possess a valid ticket; they own it via the degree to which they are at home in their routines and intuitively know through the senses and feelings produced through the normal flow of daily practices, that they are on their own home turf. Home is more than the physical space of the house; it is an embodied perception of a familiar cultural space which is organized in such a way that one has some control and responsibility over. Because commuters grant transportation companies daily access to the intimacy of their homes, they are hosting the companies, not the opposite. Public transportation hospitality is thus a tension-filled drama, co-produced by transportation companies and commuters. In this drama managerial routines meet routines of daily life, legal definitions of ownership meet practice-based ones, and organizational hospitality stands against individual hospitality. Our claim is that the fact that each party considers itself to be the host of the other, the prevailing situation consequently frames the provision and experience of public transportation services as a drama: the drama of hospitality.     

Understanding the mobility chances of children from working-class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

Research in social stratification has shown that children from working-class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labor market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds. However, we still know relatively little about the micro-level processes that account for this empirical regularity. Our study examines the roles of two individual-level characteristics—cognitive ability and locus of control—in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain. We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35% of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20% of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment. These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability. We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers—at labor market entry and at occupational maturity—and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.     

The confession of a timber baron: patterns of patronage on the Indonesian–Malaysian border

This article explores the socio-economic significance of patronage at the edge of the Indonesian state. It argues that marginal borders and adjacent borderlands where state institutions are often weak, and state power continuously waxes and wanes, encourage the growth of non-state forms of authority based on long-standing patron–client relationships. These complex interdependencies become especially potent because of traditionally rooted patterns of respect, charismatic leadership and a heightened sense of autonomy among borderland populations. The article contends that an examination of these informal arrangements is imperative for understanding the rationale behind border people's often fluid loyalties and illicit cross-border practices, strained relationships with their nation states and divergent views of legality and illegality. The article contributes to recent anthropological studies of borders and believes that these studies could gain important insight by re-examining the concept of patronage as an analytical tool in uncovering circuits of licit and illicit exchange in borderlands.     

The fictitious commodity: A union view of labor’s antitrust exemptions

Labor is not a commodity, though there are those who would have it treated as if it was one. Antitrust is probably a futile exercise when applied to business, it would be dangerously destructive to apply it to labor. The raison d'Être of unions is to remove wages from competition and that is a socially necessary purpose. Of course, events of the last several decades have already weakened unions substantially. In their weakened state, unions are less able to accomplish this social purpose, and workers have suffered as a result (for examples see Mishel et al., 1999). Why weaken unions further now?     

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.     

Orchestras as “Ensembles of Possibility”: Understanding the Experience of Orchestral Musicians Through the Lens of Communities of Practice

This article examines the professional culture of a UK symphony orchestra and the ways the musicians perceive themselves as a Community of Practice (CoP). The study draws on data from semi-structured interviews. Findings illuminated aspects of a CoP among the musicians, including having a shared purpose, valuing their collective endeavor, and experiencing tension between individual and collective development. These elements provide insights for our understanding of CoP, and highlight critical aspects of musical and interpersonal interactions that emerging professional musicians and advanced students need to develop and skillfully balance if they are to operate effectively within an orchestral CoP.     

A Matter of Context? Understanding Social Enterprises in Changing Environments: The Case of Germany

Questioning the popular point-blank juxtaposition of “new social enterprises” and “old providers” of social services, the paper argues that contingency is an important feature of any organizational setting. Drawing on the case of Germany, it suggests a time-contingent typology of social enterprises covering the roots of social entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century over the rise of the Free Welfare Associations up to the often highlighted “new generation” of social entrepreneurs. Against this background, today’s social enterprises appear to be less novel and unique but again a time-contingent outcome of an adjustment to a zeitgeist-specific governance arrangement.     

Replication: Emotional well-being and unemployment – Evidence from the American time-use survey

We use data from the well-being module of the American Time-Use Survey (ATUS) 2010–2013 to reexamine the relationship between unemployment and emotional well-being. We replicate two previous studies (Krueger & Mueller, 2012; Dolan, Kudrna, & Stone, 2017) which have produced differing findings on this relationship, and analyze what factors cause the differences in their outcomes. We find that the results critically depend on the definition of employment statuses and the choice of well-being measure. The unemployed appear sadder and more in pain than the employed, but no other emotion queried in the ATUS has worse values for the unemployed than for the employed. Aggregate emotional well-being measures suggest that unemployment is not negatively related to emotional well-being. Applying a wider instead of narrow definition of unemployment tends to result in better emotional well-being scores for the unemployed, mainly because job leavers and new or re-entrants into the labor market report better emotions than the group of people who are unemployed due to an involuntary job loss.     

Understanding Difference: The Importance of ‘Place’ in the Shaping of Local Social Economies

By contrasting and confronting the experiences of social enterprises in two Northern English city regions, and exploring the meaning and implications of difference between two broadly similar locations, this paper argues that what social enterprises can achieve depends as much on the context from which they emerge and operate as on the individuals involved. The findings from the research underpinning this paper reveal that each locality nurtures different relational assets, depending on the nature of the institutions and the community and its culture. These relational assets in turn provide diverse incentives and opportunities for the social economy to develop and grow.     

Beyond the iconic protest images: the performance of ‘everyday life’ on social media during Gezi Park

ABSTRACT

Using the Gezi Park protests as a case study this article considers the performative component of protest movements including how and why protestors actively produce protest activity ‘on the ground’ and how this is expressed through visual images. It looks beyond iconic images which appear as emblematic of the protest and instead shifts our focus to consider the more ‘everyday’ or mundane activities which occur during a protest occupation, and explores how social media allows these images to have expressive and communicative dimensions. In this respect, protests can be performed through humdrum activities and this signifies a political voice which is communicated visually. The research is based on visual analysis of Twitter data and reveals methodological innovation in understanding how protestors communicate.