Facing east: the World ORT Union and the Jewish refugee problem in Europe, 1933–38

The World Union of Societies for Promotion of Artisanal and Agricultural Work among the Jews (ORT Union) was created in Berlin in 1921 by emigrants from Russia, veterans of the Russian ORT that had been founded in St Petersburg in 1880. By 1933, the ORT Union represented a transnational association of public philanthropic organisations and maintained a large network of professional schools and vocational training courses scattered all over Eastern Europe. After the advent of the Nazis in 1933, the ORT Union managed to work out and fulfil several relief programmes directed towards the rescue of the German Jews and improving the refugee problem. The ORT leadership considered the remote Birobidzhan region in the USSR as a possible asylum for the German‐Jewish refugees and tried to organise their large‐scale resettlement there. Although, because of a considerable change in Stalin’s foreign policy in the late 1930s, this ambitious plan was not fulfilled in full measure, the efforts of the ORT Union to rescue German Jews and solve the refugee problem undoubtedly led to an expansion of its activity and created a transcontinental network of technical and agricultural training institutions. ORT’s connection to the migratory processes of this period cannot be overestimated, especially in relation to professional training, which allowed thousands of refugees to adapt in a very short time to the new socioeconomic reality in the countries of their destination. Using documentary sources preserved in archives in Russia, Britain, Germany and Israel, this article analyses the all‐embracing programmes offered by the ORT Union for ameliorating the Jewish refugee problem in Europe from 1933 until the eve of the Second World War.     

Psychiatric Labelling and the Imputation of Mental Illness by Jurors

Abstract

Previous research suggests that jurors in defense-of-insanity trials are influenced significantly more by defendent behavior than by professional psychiatric diagnoses. This finding would appear to refute labelling theory's emphasis on societal reaction as equally or more important in the development of a deviant career. These earlier studies of jury decision making, however, were not designed as tests of the labelling perspective and the results must therefore be regarded as inconclusive. The study reported here represents an attempt to reassess the issue of the relative influence of defendent behavior and psychiatric labelling on jurors while allowing for conflicting testimony and operationalizing behavior in terms of residual rule-breaking. Defendent behavior again emerges as the variable with the greatest explanatory power, but the findings do provide evidence of a significant labelling effect as well. Implications for labelling theory and defense-of-insanity trials are discussed.     

‘It is Unjust for the Law of Marriage to be Broken by the Law of Slavery’: Married Slaves and their Masters in Early Colonial Lima

This article examines the conflicts between married slaves and their masters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lima. An investigation of ecclesiastical court cases shows the role that slave marriage played in limiting masters’ authority by preventing sales and forced migration of married slaves. By citing the Church's insistence on marital cohabitation, slaves had success impeding their masters’ agendas. The sacrament of marriage, however, did not guarantee absolute slave autonomy. Instead, masters could also use the courts, as well as their finances, to subvert the Church's protection of slave marriage. In the end, this article demonstrates how the ecclesiastical tribunal served as a place for meaningful redress for slaves, while still providing masters with ways to maintain control over the enslaved population.     

The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations

Over the past decades, the impact of Atlantic ideas and ideologies in the Americas has become a constant subject of discussion. The ways in which the French and Haitian revolutions determined the actions of African slaves in the Americas have only been matched by the relevance given by scholars to the impact of British Abolitionist policies from 1807 onwards. West African wars associated with the transplantation of Islam were just as important. Until today, the impact and the very existence of Islam among West African slaves taken to Cuba have been all but overlooked. In this article, I attempt to establish connections between Islam in West Africa and Islamized West African slaves in Cuba. My key argument is that in one way or another, Islamized Africans were present in Cuba from a very early period and that they continued to arrive in the following centuries. There are certainly enough elements to offer a first, preliminary sketch of the presence and impact of Islamized West Africans in Cuba.     

A new single transferable vote method and its axiomatic justification

We propose a new method for conducting Single transferable vote (STV) elections and provide a unified method for describing classic STV procedures (the Gregory Method, the inclusive Gregory method and the Weighted inclusive Gregory method) as an iterative procedure. We also propose a modification for quota definition that improves the theoretical properties of the procedures. The method is justified by utilising a new set of axioms. We show that this method extends the Weighted inclusive Gregory method with the modified definition of quota and random equiprobable selection of a winning coalition in each iteration. The results are extended to the methods, allowing fractional numbers of votes.     

Knowledge work and practices of seeing: Epistemologies of the eye,gaze, and professional vision

Much practice within organizations is to some extent embodied in and centered on the visual capacities of the agent, the acting subject. Distinguishing between ‘epistemologies of the eye’, i.e. theories of how knowledge is acquired through visual practices, and ‘practices of seeing’, i.e. theories and studies of how vision and visuality are actually used in everyday working life, the paper points to the need to understand vision and visuality in organizational practice. Using the case of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), it is suggested that professional vision, i.e. practices of seeing that are shared within epistemic communities, is firstly technologically mediated and, secondly, based on the ability to combine vision, speech, gesture, and other embodied and cognitive resources in order to make sense of the images produced by fMRI technology. The paper concludes that organization theory should examine practices of seeing in greater detail and as part of the project in order to understand how knowledge is constituted and used as a collectively constituted resource within organizations.     

The architect's gaze: The maintenance of collective professional vision in the work of the architect

Knowledge is something which is essentially embodied and present in the collective practices of seeing, in the professional vision of specific communities of knowledge workers. Architects represent a form of professional and knowledge-intensive work that includes both abstract categories such as style and design (‘form’) and material categories (‘matter’). Thus, professional vision is midway between, but also capable of integrating and co-aligning, abstract/intangible and concrete/material knowledge. Exploring how architects draw on vision and know-how in their day-to-day work, as well as in their engagement with a variety of media at a major Swedish firm of architects, the study suggests that the professional vision of the practicing architect is never fully integrated or coherent but must be subject to constant modifications and joint adjustments.     

The effect of alternative staff time data collection methods on drug treatment service cost estimates

Although a limited number of service cost estimates exist, no study has evaluated how differences in the method used to collect the staff time allocation across treatment services contribute to differences in service cost estimates. Three alternative data collection methods for estimating service-level costs in methadone treatment programs were evaluated: key informants, staff surveys, and staff diaries. We analyzed data from 25 methadone clinics across the United States. Results indicate that for the three primary services offered at methadone clinics—individual counseling, group counseling, and methadone dosing—no statistically significant differences exist in the mean estimates of costs per session across programs. Of the other five services analyzed, we found no statistically significant differences in two of the mean costs per session and a small but statistically significant difference in another service. We found large and statistically significant differences in mean costs for two services, initial patient assessment and initial medical services. Although there is no gold standard available to judge which method is the best to use, we concluded that the key informant method yields more reliable cost estimates compared with the staff methods and is less burdensome to both the treatment programs and to researchers. Our findings suggest that the key informant method is the preferred method for costing substance abuse treatment services.     

Reputational Bargaining With Minimal Knowledge of Rationality

Two players announce bargaining postures to which they may become committed and then bargain over the division of a surplus. The share of the surplus that a player can guarantee herself under first‐order knowledge of rationality is determined (as a function of her probability of becoming committed), as is the bargaining posture that she must announce in order to guarantee herself this much. This “maxmin” share of the surplus is large relative to the probability of becoming committed (e.g., it equals 30% if the commitment probability is 1 in 10 and equals 13% if the commitment probability is 1 in 1000), and the corresponding bargaining posture simply demands this share plus compensation for any delay in reaching agreement.