DELIBERATION AND LEARNING IN MONETARY POLICY COMMITTEES

We use records from Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings to investigate the importance of deliberation and learning in monetary policy decision making in the period from 1970 to 1978 when Arthur Burns served as Chairman. We first propose a model of Bayesian learning in which FOMC members learn from each other as they sequentially reveal their policy preferences in a committee meeting. Then, as an alternative, we investigate a model in which members defer to an emerging consensus. Neither model is supported by the data, suggesting that within‐meeting deliberation might have had little effect on the quality of monetary policy decisions in the Burns era. (JEL E520, E580)     

Associational links with home among Zimbabweans in the UK: reflections on long‐distance nationalisms

In this article, I provide an overview of the character of associations formed in Britain by Zimbabweans in the context of the mass exodus that gathered pace from the late 1990s. I discuss the politicization of the Zimbabwe diaspora, which infuses many aspects of associational life beyond specifically political organizations, and also emphasize the importance of Zimbabwean church fellowships. I offer an historical explanation for the strength of nationalism expressed in the diaspora and the absence of ‘translocal’ associations characteristic of other African diaspora groups, such as hometown associations, and explore reasons why burial societies, which have been centrally important for Zimbabwean migrants in other periods and contexts, are less prevalent in Britain. I build my argument on an historical discussion of continuities and changes in the associational forms characteristic of labour migrancy and urbanization within the southern African region. I emphasize the legacies of a strong segregationist settler state, the mobilizations and international solidarities of the protracted struggle for independence, the Christianization of elite African culture in Zimbabwe's cities, and the international politics of the recent multifaceted crisis. My discussion of the associational expression of ‘long distance nationalisms’ is based on interviews conducted in 2004–5, participation in diaspora meetings and events, and reading of diaspora media and websites. In the article I aim to highlight the specific social histories of association and the political context of diaspora formation, which are essential for understanding the nature of institutions connecting with home, and ideas about home itself.     

A view from the fort: Erving Goffman as Canadian

L'analyse micro-sociologique de la vie et du langage d'une communauté démontre non seulement que tout phénomène social, manifeste ou non, prend forme dans le cadre d'un modèle, mais aussi que la modélisation de ces phénomènes tend àêtre homologue, ou du moins congruente, au sein de tout système auto-défini. Le Canada en est un parfait exemple. Derrière une apparence uniforme d ‘américanisme’, on trouve dans ce pays un ensemble développé et coherent de contre-messages qui suggère, plus que la presence, l'omniprésence d'un fond unique de structuration iconique. Cette structuration imprègne tous les aspects du tissu social - des contes folkloriques au comportement politique. La façon dont les Canadiens conceptualisent, codifient et expriment leur monde est ainsi non seulement influencée, mais aussi limitée. Images de confinement en art, symbolisme de la maison en littérature, une obsession des limites humaines à la fois sociales et corporelles, indiquent une preoccupation pour frontières, murs et bordures - pour le point de contact entre soi et autre. Arguing for culture-specific cognitive imprinting, this paper examines the kinship between Erving Goffman's discursive practices/preferences and the aesthetic strategies preferentially employed by Canadian artists and poets. Far from being idiosyncratic, it claims, Goffman's implied identification with the stigmatized, his preoccupation with role maintenance and modes of mediation, his vision of the world as strange and threatening, even his much commented upon reluctance to theorize, can be seen as natural concomitants of the centripetal orientation which is diagnostic of the Canadian psychotype. It concludes by suggesting that the same pattern of response can be seen in the work of numerous other Canadian scholars including Harold Innis, Northrop Frye, and Marshall McLuhan.