The regulation of standards in British public life: Doing the right thing?
Author: David Hine One of the most profound changes in British public life over the last twenty years has been the increasing concern with probity and standards. Some of that concern has been the product of scandals such as the cash for questions affair and the expenses scandal; some of it reflects the erosion of trust in politicians and in traditional approaches to government and administration. The book analyses the way new machinery and new rules have been put in place in different parts of the public sector as a protection against corruption and conflict of interest and as a spur to raising standards. It provides the first full-length treatment of the evolving integrity agenda in the United Kingdom. The book traces the impact of the Committee on Standards in Public Life which set out the Nolan principles in its first report in 1995 and examines how those principles have been applied in different sectors Parliament, the executive, the civil service, local government and the devolved governments and how they have been applied to the problems of party funding and lobbying. Finally, it assesses the changing level of support for the Committees mission and the impact of its work both on the quality of public life itself and on public confidence.
Author: edited by Ruth Hubbard & Gilles Paquet
The Case for Decentralized Federalism and its sister volume The Case for Centralized Federalism are the outcome of the Federalism Redux Project, created to stimulate a serious and useful conversation on federalism in Canada. They provide the vocabulary and arguments needed to articulate the case for a centralized or a decentralized Canadian federalism. The Case for Decentralized Federalism brings together experts who believe decentralized federalism is the optimal arrangement for governing the contextual diversity and cultural pluralism in Canada. Using different approaches, they argue that by dividing the work of public governance among different levels of government, it is easier to address the needs and aspirations of the diverse groups that make up Canada.
Author: Sue Taylor
Incorporating copious archival research and original close readings of American artist Grant Woods iconic as well as lesser-known works, Grant Woods Secrets reveals how his sometimes anguished psychology was shaped by his close relationship with his mother and how he channeled his lifelong oedipal guilt into his art. Presenting Woods abortive autobiography Return from Bohemia for the first time ever, Sue Taylor integrates the artists own recollections into interpretations of his art. As Wood dressed in overalls and boasted about his beloved Midwest, he consciously engaged in regionalist strategies, performing a farmer masquerade of sorts. In doing so, he also posed as conventionally masculine, hiding his homosexuality from his rural community. Thus, he came to experience himself as a double man. This book conveys the very real threats under which Wood lived and pays tribute to his resourceful responses, which were often duplicitous and have baffled art historians who typically take them at face value.
Author: Dianna E. Anderson
From Beyonces Lemonade to The Force Awakens to the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, the entertainment industry seems to be embracing the power of women like never before. But with more feminist content comes more feminist criticismand it feels as if theres always something to complain about. Dianna E. Andersons incisive Problematic takes on the stereotype of the perpetually dissatisfied feminist. Too often feminist criticism has come to mean seeing only the bad elements of women-centric pop culture and never the good. Anderson suggests that our insistence on feminist ideological purity leads to shallow criticism and ultimately hurts the movement. Instead, she proposes new, more nuanced forms of feminist thought for todays culture, illustrated by examples from across the spectrum of popular music, movies, and TV, including Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and even One Direction. While grounding her inquiry in pop culture media and topics, Anderson draws on concepts of feminist theory to show how we can push for continued cultural change while still acknowledging the important feminist work being done in the pop culture sphere today.
Author: Bradford Luckingham
Phoenix is the largest city in the Southwest and one of the largest urban centers in the country, yet less has been published about its minority populations than those of other major metropolitan areas. Bradford Luckingham has now written a straightforward narrative history of Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, and African Americans in Phoenix from the 1860s to the present, tracing their struggles against segregation and discrimination and emphasizing the active roles they have played in shaping their own destinies. Settled in the mid-nineteenth century by Anglo and Mexican pioneers, Phoenix emerged as an Anglo-dominated society that presented formidable obstacles to minorities seeking access to jobs, education, housing, and public services. It was not until World War II and the subsequent economic boom and civil rights era that opportunities began to open up. Drawing on a variety of sources, from newspaper files to statistical data to oral accounts, Luckingham profiles the general history of each community, revealing the problems it has faced and the progress it has made. His overview of the public life of these three ethnic groups shows not only how they survived, but how they contributed to the evolution of one of America's fastest-growing cities.
Author: Edward D. Mansfield
Preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) play an increasingly prominent role in the global political economy, two notable examples being the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement. These agreements foster economic integration among member states by enhancing their access to one another's markets. Yet despite the importance of PTAs to international trade and world politics, until now little attention has been focused on why governments choose to join them and how governments design them. This book offers valuable new insights into the political economy of PTA formation. Many economists have argued that the roots of these agreements lie in the promise they hold for improving the welfare of member states. Others have posited that trade agreements are a response to global political conditions. Edward Mansfield and Helen Milner argue that domestic politics provide a crucial impetus to the decision by governments to enter trade pacts. Drawing on this argument, they explain why democracies are more likely to enter PTAs than nondemocratic regimes, and why as the number of veto players--interest groups with the power to block policy change--increases in a prospective member state, the likelihood of the state entering a trade agreement is reduced. The book provides a novel view of the political foundations of trade agreements.
Author: edited by John M. Marston, Jade d'Alpoim Guedes, and Christina Warinner
Paleoethnobotany, the study of archaeological plant remains, is poised at the intersection of the study of the past and concerns of the present, including agricultural decision making, biodiversity, and global environmental change, and has much to offer to archaeology, anthropology, and the interdisciplinary study of human relationships with the natural world. Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany demonstrates those connections and highlights the increasing relevance of the study of past human-plant interactions for understanding the present and future.A diverse and highly regarded group of scholars reference a broad array of literature from around the world as they cover their areas of expertise in the practice and theory of paleoethnobotanystarch grain analysis, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA, digital data management, and ecological and postprocessual theory.The only comprehensive edited volume focusing on method and theory to appear in the last twenty-five years, Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany addresses the new areas of inquiry that have become central to contemporary archaeological debates, as well as the current state of theoretical, methodological, and empirical work in paleoethnobotany.
Author: Victor Lowe
Originally published in 1962. The central aim of this book is to discuss the development of Alfred North Whitehead's thought and to underscore how it is unique. The book collects nine essays written by Victor Lowe originally published between 1941 and 1961. The essays have been revised for inclusion in this volume.
Author: George Mentore
Compelling and evocative, Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences reveals the vital cultural interconnections at the heart of a rain-forest Amerindian society. The Waiwai, who live in the remote interior of Guyana and in neighboring Brazil, follow a customary subsistence lifestyle built around swidden agriculture and hunting.How do the Waiwai experience and think about themselves and their place in the so-called modern world around them? The anthropologist George Mentore draws on years of living with the Waiwai, a compelling theoretical perspective grounded in ethnographic subjectivity, and his own Guyanese heritage to depict the social and cultural world of the Waiwai. Mentore describes the relationship between the Waiwai cultural construction of the body, settlement, houses, fields, wildlife, power, knowledge, and gift giving in a variety of contexts and roles. This web of relationships, as well as the various spaces discovered and illuminated between Mentore's social being and theirs, point to a complex organization of culture that is distinctively Waiwai. When considering the Waiwai peoples plaited design of passion and intimacy in the way it relates to humans, plants, and animals, Mentore promises the reader that through his text you will encounter a community of truth that tames logic and desire, where well being, beauty, morality, and care encircle the transcendent self.
Author: Stephen J. Collier
The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, Post-Soviet Social uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding--that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity--lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.