Percival Kirby’s wax cylinders: elegy on archiving a deaf spot

Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe. London: Heinemann, 1987.

Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania by Neville Alexander. Cape Town: Buchu Books, 1989.

Black Valour: The South African Native Labour Contingent and the Sinking of the ‘Mendi’ by Norman Clothier. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1987.

The Devils Are Among Us. The War For Namibia by Denis Herbstein and John Evenson. London: Zed Press, 1989.

Modernising Hunger: Famine, Food Surplus and Farm Policy in the EEC and Africa by Philip Raikes. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations with James Currey and Heinemann, 1988.

Childhood in Crossroads. Cognition and Society in South Africa by Pamela Reynolds. Cape Town: David Phillip, 1989.

The Praises of Dingana (Izibongo zikaDingana) edited by D.K. Rycroft and A.B. Ngcobo. Durban: Killie Campbell Africana Library and Pietermaritz‐burg: University of Natal Press, 1988.

Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Translated from the Gikuyu by Wangui wa Goro London: Heinemann African Writers Series, 1989.     

The Concepts of Risk,Safety, and Security: Applications in Everyday Language

The concepts of risk, safety, and security have received substantial academic interest. Several assumptions exist about their nature and relation. Besides academic use, the words risk, safety, and security are frequent in ordinary language, for example, in media reporting. In this article, we analyze the concepts of risk, safety, and security, and their relation, based on empirical observation of their actual everyday use. The “behavioral profiles” of the nouns risk, safety, and security and the adjectives risky, safe, and secure are coded and compared regarding lexical and grammatical contexts. The main findings are: (1) the three nouns risk, safety, and security, and the two adjectives safe and secure, have widespread use in different senses, which will make any attempt to define them in a single unified manner extremely difficult; (2) the relationship between the central risk terms is complex and only partially confirms the distinctions commonly made between the terms in specialized terminology; (3) whereas most attempts to define risk in specialized terminology have taken the term to have a quantitative meaning, nonquantitative meanings dominate in everyday language, and numerical meanings are rare; and (4) the three adjectives safe, secure, and risky are frequently used in comparative form. This speaks against interpretations that would take them as absolute, all‐or‐nothing concepts.     

Does marriage affect men’s labor market outcomes? A European perspective

Does marriage make men more productive, or do more productive men marry? Previous studies have reached different conclusions but have also been conducted using different methodologies in different countries and in different time periods. We use two sources of European panel data (spanning the years 1994–2001 and 2003–2007) to assess the relationship between marriage and labor market outcomes. By using data from 12 countries over a 13 year period, we are able to investigate the impact of marriage in different country groups and across time. We find that selection into marriage accounts for most of the differences in hours worked and wages between married and non-married men. With respect to wages we note that while the difference between married and non-married males has increased over time, the actual effect of marriage has disappeared.     

Paradoxes of late-modern autonomy imperatives: Reconciling individual claims and institutional demands in everyday practice

Governmentality studies and social theories agree that in contemporary societies the idea of autonomy is no longer simply an ideal or an individual aspiration but a social obligation. In an attempt to clarify the meaning of autonomy in this day and age, this paper asks how individuals perceive and negotiate the various dimensions of autonomy and how this affects the functioning of late-modern institutions. The empirical insights derived from a qualitative study provide a differentiated picture of how individuals pursue their claims to autonomy and comply with institutional demands for autonomy in everyday practice. By presenting seven types of late-modern “autonomy managers,” the analysis evinces a usurpation of autonomous agency that renders individuals the institutional editors of the contemporary contradictions, deficits, and tensions that occur in their everyday interactions. This comes at the price of notionally free but exhausted actors running short of all kinds of resources.