bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reconstructing past environments from remnants of human occupation and sedimentary archives in western Eurasia
Authors: Mackay Anson W. , Oberhänsli Hedi
Published: February 2007

Impacts of climate change and human occupation on the landscapes in western Eurasia are complex in terms of both their spatial distribution and temporal resolution. Reconstructing impacts is not straightforward, however; often, semi-arid conditions prevail, which reduce the extent of suitable archives for reconstructing past change. Other sites are very remote, so that few studies exist from which to make these reconstructions. In order to tackle some of these issues, we convened a session at the EGU (Vienna) April 2005 to compile recent research on Holocene environments in western Eurasia. In all, 22 presentations were given, with special emphasis on paleoenvironmental reconstructions from regions with rich archaeological histories. Several papers presented significant methodological advances with regard to reconstructing the past from lake sediments, while others brought the growing field of Russian archaeological pedology to the attention of other scientists. Studies from remote sites were also highlighted, because they served as useful comparisons from which to reconstruct past climatic impacts with minimal human disturbance in the western Eurasian region.
Taipei Park: Signs of Occupation
Authors: Allen Joseph R.
Published: February 2007

This essay investigates the configuration of public space in Taipei City using the example of a small urban park. In particular, this essay considers how that space functioned and functions as a site for “occupation”—that is, when and how the public space was produced by, brought under the control of, or performed in by a specific cultural agent, whether a colonial government or skateboarder. Those occupations delineate and transform the space for purposes ranging from the official, macro, and long-lived to the subversive, partial. and fleeting. The park is a shifting pastiche of different moments of occupation, diachronically and contemporaneously layered, existing in a tissue of accommodation and anxiety. The primary focus here is the evolution of the park in the urban plans of the early Japanese colonial government; however, comparisons to both the pre- and postcolonial periods are made, and the contemporary conditions of the park are considered as well.
Resurrecting Prostitutes and Overturning Treaties: Gender Politics in the “Anti-American” Movement in South Korea
Authors: Moon Katharine H. S.
Published: February 2007

Although recent expressions of “anti-Americanism” in South Korea have alarmed policy makers in Seoul and Washington and aroused fears about declining popular support for the bilateral alliance, they are understandable manifestations of civil society activism, which has grown since democratization began during the late 1980s. This paper analyzes anti-Americanism as a dynamic coalition movement accompanied by the all of internal competition, conflicts, and contradictions that characterize such movements. In the process, some actors and issues have become high priorities, whereas others have been marginalized or silenced. Professor Moon examineskijich'on(camptown) prostitution around U.S. military bases in Korea as a case study of how power conflicts within the coalition movement, which are focused on nationalism and gender, have exploited and shut out the very people who served as its initiators and early leaders.
Finiteness, mood, and morphosyntax
Authors: ANDERSON JOHN M.
Published: February 2007

The approach adopted here identifies finiteness with the capacity to license an independent predication. The prototypical independent predication is positive and declarative; other ‘moods’, or main-clause types, while finite, may fail to display the morphosyntactic properties associated with this prototype. These properties vary from language to language, but the recurrent core properties are verbal, since the verb is the prototypical predicator. Some constructions that occur in both main and subordinate clauses, such as the infinitival in English, differ in interpretation in these two different circumstances; this may be the only difference between finite (main-clause) and non-finite (subordinate-clause) use. This general approach is contrasted with one in which finiteness is identified with the presence of a particular set of morphosyntactic properties: such a view as the latter can be maintained, if at all, only on the basis of massive recourse to covert categories.
Morphological reversals
Authors: BAERMAN MATTHEW
Published: February 2007

The term morphological reversal describes the situation where the members of a morphological opposition switch their functions in some context (as with Hebrew gender marking, where -Ø~-a marks masculine~feminine with adjectives but feminine~masculine with numerals). There is a long tradition of polemic against the notion that morphology can encode systematic reversals, and an equally long tradition of reintroducing them under different names (e.g. polarity, exchange rules or morphosyntactic toggles). An examination of some unjustly neglected examples (number in Nehan, aspect in Tübatulabal, tense in Trique and argument marking in Neo-Aramaic) confirms the existence of morphological reversal, particularly as a mechanism of language change. This is strong evidence for the separateness of morphological paradigms from the features that they encode.
The metrical organization of Classical Sanskrit verse
Authors: DEO ASHWINI S.
Published: February 2007

In generative metrics, a meter is taken to be an abstract periodic template with a set of constraints mapping linguistic material onto it. Such templates, constrained by periodicity and line length, are usually limited in number. The repertoire of Classical Sanskrit verse meters is characterized by three features which contradict each of the above properties – (a) templates constituted by arbitrary syllable sequences without any overtly discernible periodic repetition: APERIODICITY, (b) absolute faithfulness of linguistic material to a given metrical template: INVARIANCE, and (c) a vast number of templates, ranging between 600–700: RICH REPERTOIRE. In this paper, I claim that in spite of apparent incompatibility, Sanskrit meters are based on the same principles of temporal organization as other versification traditions, and can be accounted for without significant alterations to existing assumptions about metrical structure. I demonstrate that a majority of aperiodic meters are, in fact, surface instantiations of a small set of underlying quantity-based periodic templates and that aperiodicity emerges from the complex mappings of linguistic material to these templates. Further, I argue that the appearance of a rich repertoire is an effect of nomenclatural choices and poetic convention and not variation at the level of underlying structure.
Gaps and repairs at the phonology–morphology interface
Authors: RICE CURT
Published: February 2007

The paper discusses phonologically motivated gaps in inflectional paradigms. A model is offered in which the appearance of gaps is based on a tension between markedness constraints, faithfulness constraints, and constraints which require the expression of morphological categories. After presenting the model, additional implications are analyzed. Situations in which the same problem has different solutions in different morphological contexts are predicted insofar as constraints requiring the expression of different categories can vary in their ranking relative to some faithfulness constraint. Hence, the same phonotactic problem can yield a gap in one situation and a repair in another. This prediction is illustrated and further details of the prediction are explored, including the identification of a situation requiring a more restrictive version of the model. This is achieved by drawing on Smith's (2001) proposal that faithfulness constraints can be indexed to lexical categories to model this situation.
Foetal nutritional status and cardiovascular risk profile among children
Authors: Liu Jian , Sempos Christopher
Published: February 2007

Objective

To estimate the impact of foetal nutritional status on cardiovascular risk among children with the Foetal Nutritional Status Index (FNSI), calculated by dividing the child's birth weight (BW, kg) by the mother's height (m2).

Design

Cross-sectional survey analysis.

Setting

A sample of children from the US Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Subjects

A total of 3109 children who were 5–11 years of age and had data on BW and mother's height. Non-fasting blood samples were included.

Results

Overall, the FNSI was positively associated with BW and negatively associated with mother's height (P < 0.0001). Within sex-specific quintiles of FNSI (third quintile as reference) adjusted for potential confounding variables, cardiovascular risk factors tended to be ‘higher’ in the lower quintiles for males while the opposite was true for females. Multivariate logistic regression analyses indicated that the odds for males in quintile 1 was 2.4 for having a low level of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (P < 0.01) and 2.1 for having a cluster of cardiovascular risk factors (P = 0.01); for females, the odds of having a cluster of cardiovascular risk factors was approximately two times higher for those in the first and fifth quintiles, who also had a significantly higher prevalence of central obesity.

Conclusions

The FNSI may be a potential proxy indicator of foetal nutritional status and it may be used to test specific hypotheses of whether foetal nutrition restriction or overnutrition programmes future cardiovascular risk.
Introduction: Liminality and the Social Location of Musicians
Authors: BUTLER BROWN KATHERINE
Published: February 2007

Liminality seems to have become something of a buzzword. Typing ‘liminal OR liminality’ into Google™ produces one and a quarter million hits. That this should be so is not altogether surprising, for the liminal state has much in common with the postmodern age, as scholars as diverse as Homi Bhabha and Sharon Zukin have argued: the blurring and crossing of thresholds and boundaries; the breakdown of historically fixed categories; the exposure of ambiguities; the fluidity and hybridity of identities; play and absurdity; and uncertainty. Indeed, Bhabha has gone so far as to suggest that liminality is the hallmark of postmodernity, that the postmodern age is itself liminal, existing between a dead modernity and a future not yet known.
Controlling the Liminal Power of Performance: Hungarian Scholars and Romani Musicians in the Hungarian Folk Revival
Authors: HOOKER LYNN
Published: February 2007

In the Hungarian folk revival, Hungarian Roma (Gypsies) serve as both privileged informants and exotic Others. The musicians of the revival known as the táncház (dance-house) movement rely heavily on rural Rom musicians, especially those from Transylvania, as authentic sources of traditional Hungarian repertoire and style. Táncház rhetoric centres on the trope of localized authenticity; but the authority wielded by rural Rom musicians, who carry music both between villages and around the world, complicates the fixed boundaries that various powerful stakeholders would place on the tradition. Drawing on media sources and on fieldwork in Hungary and Romania, I examine how authenticity and ‘Gypsiness’ are presented and controlled by the scholars, musicians, and administrators who lead the táncház movement, in particular in the context of camps and workshops dedicated to Hungarian folk music and dance. Organizers often erect clear boundaries of status, genre, and gender roles through such events, which, among other things, address the anxiety raised by Rom musicians’ power in liminal spaces. In addition, I look at how Rom musicians both negotiate with the táncház’s aesthetic of authenticity and challenge it musically. Finally, I discuss how musicians and the crowds that gather to hear and dance to their music together create a carnival atmosphere, breaking down some of the boundaries that organizers work so hard to create. Throughout, I demonstrate that liminality is an extraordinarily pertinent lens through which to view Roma participation in the Hungarian folk music scene.
Performing Spaces: Street Music and Public Territory
Authors: BYWATER MICHAEL
Published: February 2007

The interaction between ‘marginal’ music performance (whether socially or musically marginal, e.g. busking, ambient music, etc.) and ‘liminal’ spaces is at first sight a characteristically twentieth-century phenomenon. However, performance history as revealed not only through historical scholarship but through contemporary anecdotal or fictional writings can contextualize these current uses of music in negotiating public space, while revealing some of our assumptions about performance in general. I argue that much of liminal performance is concerned with the appropriation and retention of spaces in which to perform, and that this is no new thing but was, until relatively recently, the norm. I look at some aspects of performance history in the light of contemporary thinking about liminality, and consider how buskers, particularly in Bath (where I lived for several years) contend for temporary possession of public space as a prerequisite of their performances. I conclude by suggesting that the defining of liminal space might be usefully extended, in thinking about street performance, into the notion of ‘liminal spacetime’.
Texts, Tunes, and Talking Heads: Discourses about Socially Marginal North Indian Musicians
Authors: MACISZEWSKI AMELIA
Published: February 2007

In this study, criss-crossing discourses – written, visual, and aural – are brought together in an effort to shed light on a section of the tawa’if (traditional courtesan) community in contemporary North India. As a kind of companion text to my point-of-view documentaries Guria, Gossip, and Globalization and Chandni’s Choice, I present an overview of the NGO Guria. This organization works to empower tawa’ifs to reclaim their liminality as artists, able to move back and forth between their own profoundly socially marginalized community and mainstream society, a privilege they enjoyed historically but have virtually lost in the present day. I have juxtaposed this with an exegesis of talk, including gossip, about and by these performers and their music. This includes issues of their gossip- and media-driven legacy that have led to their current position, often dangerously vulnerable, in the global marketplace. Finally, I examine the life of a teenage member of a musical matriarchy whose foremothers have been somewhat successful at continuing to traverse the borderlands between various levels of society.
COMING THROUGH
Authors: NEIMEYER ROBERT A.
Published: February 2007

Poetry/fiction.
Introduction and Comments
Authors: Johnson James
Published: February 2007

To whom should political scientists address themselves? Should we be
content to pursue more or less purely intra-disciplinary concerns, whether
those be driven by some specialist “literature” or by one or
another preferred method of inquiry? Is it intellectually responsible to
do so? Do we have the tools or capacity to do otherwise? Given the
fallible character of even our most confidently held research findings,
what are the ethical or intellectual consequences of addressing ourselves
to audiences in the world of law or policy or politics? And given that any
potential interlocutors in those extra-disciplinary, non-academic domains
quite legitimately have interests and agendas of their own, how should we
anticipate the knowledge claims we advance might fare on various terrains
of contest and power? These questions and others are central to the
mission of this journal.
At the Court of Chaos: Political Science in an Age of Perpetual
Fear
Authors: Katznelson Ira
Published: February 2007

An anonymous late eighteenth century British painting at the Ackland
Museum in Chapel Hill portrays “Satan Leaving the Court of
Chaos,” a reference to Book II of John Milton's Paradise
Lost. In an assertion of demotic power, Satan, “the adversary
of God and man,” travels “full fraught with mischievous
revenge” from Chaos, where he is most at home, to God's created
world in order to corrupt Adam and Eve and induce original sin.
The Cold War on Ice: Constructivism and the Politics of Olympic
Figure Skating Judging
Authors: Sala Brian R. , Scott John T. , Spriggs James F.
Published: February 2007

We examine judge bias in Olympic figure skating as an exploratory
analysis of a leading constructivist approach to identity using
quantitative methods more closely associated with non-constructivist
social science. While constructivism is a major theoretical orientation in
international relations, large-n quantitative studies of the approach are
uncommon in large measure due to the principal argument of
constructivists: that interests should be treated endogenously. If
interests and identities are mutually constituted, then it would seem to
be impossible to distinguish their effects, creating a problem of
observational equivalence. Some constructivist theorists nevertheless
suggest that under certain conditions material interests can be thought of
as causes of collective identity, meaning that it is in principle possible
to isolate the influence of identity. We build on this
“bounded” version of constructivism by identifying an arena of
international relations in which the observable effect of the identities
constituted by interactions among states can be analyzed independent of
those states' national security concerns. We study whether collective
identities constituted by the international system during the Cold War
systematically influenced judge bias in Olympic figure skating, examining
whether judges' evaluations of skaters systematically vary according
to whether their respective states viewed one another as
“friends,” “rivals,” or “enemies.”
A Connecticut Yankee in Saddam's Court: Mark Twain on
Benevolent Imperialism
Authors: Johnson Joel A.
Published: February 2007

Is it acceptable (or perhaps even imperative) that the United States
works to spread democratic liberty, even when nation building requires
warfare on behalf of the oppressed? I argue that Mark Twain's novel
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a useful aid
for reflection regarding this question. What Twain accomplishes, thanks in
great part to his humor, is an honest exposure of the partial truths and
considerable falsehoods contained in each common opinion regarding
benevolent intervention. To highlight the complexity of Twain's
thoughts on nation building, I discuss three possible interpretations of
Connecticut Yankee. The first conceives of Hank Morgan as a
well-intentioned democratic reformer, laying the proper foundation for a
peaceful democratic transition after King Arthur dies. The second reads
the book as ironically criticizing Hank for his overzealous promotion of
democracy amidst a traditional culture. The third portrays Hank as an
all-out revolutionary, justified in using any means to rid Camelot of
slavery and oppression. Each of these interpretations represents, I
believe, one aspect of Twain's outlook on the world. Brought together
in the minds of thoughtful readers, these three themes prompt deeper
reflection on the moral status of benevolent imperialism.
Signals and Spillover: Brown v. Board of Education and
Other Social Movements
Authors: Meyer David S. , Boutcher Steven A.
Published: February 2007

The watershed Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of
Education affected activist politics on issues that extend well
beyond African-American civil rights or education. The apparent success of
the Court decision in spurring social change encouraged activists in other
social movements to emulate the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's litigation
strategy, and to adapt organizational structures, political strategies,
and rhetoric borrowed from the civil rights movement. We examine how a
Supreme Court decision and its subsequent interpretation influenced the
development of other social movements. Borrowing from work on social
movements, we contend that the Court decision signaled judicial openness
to stand up for minority points of view on questions of fundamental
rights, and that the civil rights movement spilled over to affect other
movements. Activists continued to respond to that signal decades after
Brown, even when that signal of judicial responsiveness and
openness did not reflect the real prospects for achieving influence
through a litigation-based strategy.
The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition
Authors: Brooks Thom
Published: February 2007

The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition.
By Roger Berkowitz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. 234p.
$49.95.

Roger Berkowitz's The Gift of Science is about the
genesis and development of legal codification from its birth in Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz's work to the German Civil Code of 1900.
Leibniz's legal writings have been long neglected and this study is
to be commended for bringing these writings back to our attention.
Berkowitz charts the development of Leibniz's legal thought from his
early to mature writings, illuminating Leibniz's surprisingly helpful
reflections on the nature of law.
On Justification: Economies of Worth
Authors: Creppell Ingrid
Published: February 2007

On Justification: Economies of Worth. By Luc Boltanski and
Laurent Thévenot. Translated by Catherine Porter. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2006. 400p. $85.00 cloth, $39.50 paper.

Those interested in any of a variety of fields—reasoning about
justice, the foundations and mechanics of social interaction, rational
action, value formation, norm change, or conflict—will find rich
potential in this ambitious and challenging book by sociologist Luc
Boltanski and economist/statistician Laurent Thévenot, which
does not fit into any single research paradigm. Published in France more
than 15 years ago, the book is available in this English translation and
ought to have a significant impact on social theory generally.
Reforming Liberalism: J. S. Mill's Use of Ancient, Religious,
Liberal, and Romantic Moralities
Authors: Pearce Colin D.
Published: February 2007

Reforming Liberalism: J. S. Mill's Use of Ancient, Religious,
Liberal, and Romantic Moralities. By Robert Devigne. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006. 320p. $45.00.

In this scholarly book, Robert Devigne links John Stuart Mill to the
aporia of the Platonic dialogues, the romantic expressivism of Kant and
Coleridge, and the great tradition of British empiricism that it was
Mill's purpose to reform. In so doing, Devigne introduces us to the
great thinker who remains today the most direct entry point (along with
Russell perhaps) into the Western tradition of philosophy for those whose
native language is English. Devigne's Mill then is the “Great
Mill,” the synoptic, conceptive, comprehensive Mill, the Socrates of
Gower Street and Charing Cross Road, the towering genius who bestrode
Victorian intellectual life like a colossus. It is thus with Nietzsche
rather than with Bentham that Devigne's Mill should be classed.
Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment
Authors: Kapust Daniel
Published: February 2007

Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. By
Bryan Garsten. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. 290p.
$45.00.

Bryan Garsten's Saving Persuasion is an engaging and
original work of wide appeal. Garsten analyzes the formation of an
antirhetorical tradition in modern political thought, investigates its
rival classical tradition of rhetoric and judgment, and explores the
promise that a politics of persuasion offers contemporary democratic
societies.
Politics as Religion
Authors: Sabetti Filippo
Published: February 2007

Politics as Religion. By Emilio Gentile. Translated by George
Staunton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 194p. $39.50.

The projected secularization of the world—or the suggestion that
religion should have as little as possible to do with economic, social,
and political life in industrial societies—is not happening. First,
the traditional faiths have shown a surprising vitality in reclaiming
their respective space in the secular, public square. It is evident that
faith movements cannot always be caged in pejorative stereotypes;
secularization is not a linear process, and religious beliefs continue to
shape ordinary people's lives and to have a say in public affairs.
The increasing politicization of religion in many parts of the world has
brought with it the challenge to engage Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
as essential allies in the modern struggle for human rights, social
justice, and enlightened thought. Second, the importance of religion in
modern democracy and mass politics can be gleaned in an ex
adverso kind of way: Even when rejecting the mission of religion to
give meaning to human existence, many politicians have found it useful to
appropriate for themselves the trappings of religious symbols and rituals.
This sacralization of politics has sought to interpret and to define human
existence by subordinating the destiny of individuals and the collectivity
to a supreme entity, liberal democracy, or totalitarianism.
The Trouble with Passion: Political Theory Beyond the Reign of
Reason
Authors: Sabl Andrew
Published: February 2007

The Trouble with Passion: Political Theory Beyond the Reign of
Reason. By Cheryl Hall. New York: Routledge, 2005. 192p. $75.00
cloth, $22.95 paper.

This book argues for passion in politics: not just calm passions, that
is, sentiments or interests, but “enthusiasm” and
“explicit appreciation of and commitment to something valued”
(pp. 12, 7). Liberal theory, Hall argues, is wrong to regard political
passions as inherently suspect, intolerant, and “opposed to both
reason and justice” (p. 3). Passion in politics is inescapable, for
passion and reason are not opposed but interpenetrating aspects of human
thought and motivation. Beyond this, however, some passions are
politically salutary: They inspire worthy political actions, especially
movements for social change.
The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and
Responsibility
Authors: Tronto Joan C.
Published: February 2007

The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and
Responsibility. By Linda C. McClain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006. 392p. $45.00.

Linda McClain's excellent book provides a comprehensive account
of the political issues concerning families in United States public policy
and a coherent perspective from which to evaluate proposals for change in
these policies. Writing as a liberal feminist, McClain has an approach
that will not please everyone, but since her starting point takes families
seriously as political units, no serious discussant in these debates can
ignore this book.
Challenging Liberalism: Feminism as Political Critique
Authors: Gill Emily R.
Published: February 2007

Challenging Liberalism: Feminism as Political Critique. By
Lisa H. Schwartzman. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2006.
224p. $45.00.

In this book, Schwartzman argues that liberalism's methodological
individualism and its neutrality through abstraction from social contexts
and relations of power render it a questionable approach for those who
would challenge the oppression of women or, by extension, of other
traditionally subordinated groups. She instead advocates a feminist
methodology based on ways that individuals are often embedded in a social
context characterized by power and domination. She would not have us
jettison concepts such as rights, equality, liberty, and autonomy, but
would have us reformulate them by attending to perspectives and contexts
that help us to avoid the pitfalls of liberalism.
The Liberal Conscience: Politics and Principle in a World of
Religious Pluralism
Authors: Deneen Patrick J.
Published: February 2007

The Liberal Conscience: Politics and Principle in a World of
Religious Pluralism. By Lucas Swaine. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2006. 240p. $35.00.

In this book, Lucas Swaine argues that modern liberalism has failed in
its efforts to provide adequate justification of liberalism's
political legitimacy to religious adherents. This may seem a surprising
contention, given the vast literature that attempts to do precisely this,
reaching easily as far back as John Rawl's Political
Liberalism if not to the constitutive works of Hobbes and Locke. In
particular, according to Swaine, contemporary liberalism has failed
because it does not offer arguments that can appeal to religious
believers, preferring instead a standard of “reasonableness”
that cannot assail the faith commitments of religious believers.
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?
Authors: Gaus Gerald F.
Published: February 2007

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?
By Philip E. Tetlock. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 352p.
$45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

This is a wonderful and important book. Philip Tetlock is a political
psychologist who has a knack for innovative research projects (e.g., his
earlier work on how people cope with trade-offs in politics). In this
book, he addresses a question that would scare away more timid souls: How
well do experts predict political and economic events?
Common Ground: Committee Politics in the U.S. House of
Representatives
Authors: Berard Stanley P.
Published: February 2007

Common Ground: Committee Politics in the U.S. House of
Representatives. By John Baughman. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2006. 272p. $50.00.

A handful of scholars have devoted attention in recent years to the
dynamics of standing committee jurisdictions in the U.S. Congress. This is
an important focus because congressional rules and procedures give
committees a central role in the legislative process and because the
increasingly complex policy environment of recent decades has made clear
demarcations of subject matter jurisdiction more difficult. How Congress
resolves overlapping committee jurisdictions can affect both the
deliberative quality and the substantive outcomes of policymaking. This is
an important point of departure for reading John Baughman's new
book.
Mayors and Schools: Minority Voices and Democratic Tensions in Urban
Education and Schools In: Federalism and the National Education
Agenda
Authors: Robinson Scott E.
Published: February 2007

Mayors and Schools: Minority Voices and Democratic Tensions in
Urban Education. By Stefanie Chambers. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2006. 240p. $64.50 cloth, $21.95 paper.

Schools In: Federalism and the National Education Agenda. By
Paul Manna. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 222p.
$26.95.

Interest in the politics of American cities and states has been
steadily increasing in recent years, as scholars have rediscovered the
importance of studying issues of governance at subnational levels. Recent
research has illustrated that the American federal system is both more
interconnected than many Washington-centric accounts would lead one to
believe and more complicated insofar as the politics of states and local
governments do not perfectly reflect national political processes. These
two books represent efforts by emerging scholars to leverage the
advantages of studying state and local politics in order to address major
questions about political institutions in the United States and to make
the case for greater incorporation of state and local elements into
mainstream accounts of political change.
Activism Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is
Strangling Progressive Politics in America and The Art of
Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the
Streets of Seattle
Authors: Imig Doug
Published: February 2007

Activism Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is
Strangling Progressive Politics in America. By Dana R. Fisher.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 168p. $24.95 cloth.

The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights
Movement to the Streets of Seattle. By T. V. Reed. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 362p. $74.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

These two new books bring welcome perspectives to the study of social
movements in America. Reed considers the art of collective action: in
terms of both the creative repertoire of activists responding to evolving
social and political contexts and the cultural arts that are invoked by
and associated with social movements. Fisher's book, meanwhile, sheds
light on a second dimension of collective action: the nationwide
grassroots canvassing organizations that collect donations and
[ostensibly] inform concerned citizens about progressive issues.
At first glance, the two books seem to be speaking to aspects of
mobilization that are worlds apart. However, their differences help to
bring a fuller understanding of the operational field in which social
movements are sustained or wither.
The Supreme Court and American Political Development
Authors: Jenkins Jeffery A.
Published: February 2007

The Supreme Court and American Political Development. Edited
by Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
2006. 400p. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

In this book, Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch bring together an
impressive group of scholars to present essays on how the theoretical
tenets of the American political development (or APD) research agenda can
help illuminate the behavior and institutional trajectory of the U.S.
Supreme Court over time. At the same time, these authors discuss at length
the role that the Supreme Court plays in the continuing development of the
APD enterprise and the ways in which the American state has evolved. This
volume provides a useful contribution, as the APD literature has typically
focused on the presidency and bureaucracy (specifically, executive
agencies), and more recently on Congress, as the key players in the
development of the American state, with “parties and courts”
representing the historical antecedents. By focusing specifically on the
Supreme Court, Kahn and Kersch place it in a starring role in American
legal development, and American political development more generally.
Black Feminist Voices in Politics
Authors: Berg John C.
Published: February 2007

Black Feminist Voices in Politics. By Evelyn M. Simien.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 196p. $71.50 cloth,
$23.95 paper.

Evelyn M. Simien makes three major contributions in this book. First,
and most important, she uses insights derived from a black feminist theory
that is largely literary to inform hard, number-crunching empirical
research. Black feminist theorists from Maria Stewart and Sojourner Truth
to Kimberlé Crenshaw and bell hooks are used to derive operational
definitions and testable hypotheses. Those seeking unity in the discipline
would do well to study this book.
The Truce: Lessons from an L.A. Gang War.
Authors: Kraus Neil
Published: February 2007

The Truce: Lessons from an L.A. Gang War. By Karen Umemoto.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 232p. $57.50 cloth, $18.95
paper.

The Truce, by Karen Umemoto, chronicles a gang war in the Los
Angeles neighborhood of Oakwood that occurred between 1993 and 1994.
Umemoto states that her “central concern” is “the
relatively quick process through which rather harmonious social relations
across racial boundaries are overcome by racial tensions and distancing,
which set in place a more fractured pattern of race relations” (p.
5). The book, then, is primarily an analysis of the complex and changing
dynamics of racial conflict, and the author uses the gang war to explore
that conflict.
Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and
Military Occupations and War and State Formation in Ancient China
and Early Modern Europe
Authors: Sinno Abdulkadeer
Published: February 2007

Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and
Military Occupations. By Alexander Cooley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2005. 191p. $35.00 cloth.

War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern
Europe. By Victoria Tin-bor Hui. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005. 294p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

These two ambitious books by Alexander Cooley and Victoria Tin-bor Hui
address the consequences of managerial decisions within empires.
Cooley's book borrows organizational models from the field of
business management to explain the growing pains of empires and the
misfortunes of newly independent states, with a particular focus on
post-Soviet Central Asia. Hui draws on classical authors to explain how
basic structural administrative choices within states affect systemic
competition.
Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation?
Authors: Munro William A.
Published: February 2007

Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation?
By James L. Gibson. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004. 448p. $47.50
cloth, $22.50 paper.

In this engaging and meticulously constructed statistical analysis of
attitudes among South Africa's apartheid-defined racial groups
(African/black, Coloured, Asian, white), James Gibson sets out to do
two things. One is to map the state of political reconciliation among
these groups. The second is to measure the impact of South Africa's
truth and reconciliation process, focusing on the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC), in promoting reconciliation. The analysis is based
largely on a national opinion survey carried out in 2000 and 2001, but
also draws comparatively, where possible and appropriate, on a similar
survey from 1997.
Rotten States? Corruption, Post-Communism, and Neoliberalism
Authors: Sum Paul E.
Published: February 2007

Rotten States? Corruption, Post-Communism, and Neoliberalism.
By Leslie Holmes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 440p. $84.95
cloth, $23.95 paper.

As a veteran of corruption studies in the postcommunist world, Leslie
Holmes addresses three fundamental issues confronting students of
corruption: the definition and categorization of corruption, the impact
corruption has on democracies, and causal factors that account for its
rise within postcommunist states. The comparative study focuses on
Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. China, the author argues, has
developed a system akin to postcommunism and is treated in the analysis as
far as data permit. The author also refers to other postcommunist cases,
when appropriate, and many of the observations and inferences would apply
to all democratic countries.
Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy
Authors: Maas Willem
Published: February 2007

Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy.
By Charles Pattie, Patrick Seyd, and Paul Whiteley. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004. 364 pages. $70.00 cloth, $29.99 paper.

What does it mean to be a British citizen in the early part of the
twenty-first century? The authors of Citizenship in Britain
address this question through the lens of the Citizen Audit, comprehensive
surveys carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research
Council's democracy and participation program. The Citizen Audit had
three components: “wave 1” face-to-face interviews of 3,145
respondents (62.2% response rate) conducted between September and December
2000, “mail-back survey” questionnaires with 9,023 respondents
(37.5% response rate) between January and May 2001, and follow-up
“wave 2” face-to-face interviews with a subset of the original
interviewees (809 respondents; 67% response rate) between September and
December 2001. The wave 1 interviews consisted of 62 questions, while the
mail-back surveys and wave 2 interviews included a subset. The authors
weighted the raw data by age, sex, and employment status to make them
consistent with census data to compensate for nonresponse.
The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and
Identity
Authors: Gunter Michael M.
Published: February 2007

The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and
Identity. By David Romano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006. 290p. $75 cloth, $29.99 paper.

When the Ukrainians became independent at the end of 1991, the Kurds
succeeded to the title of largest nation on earth without its own
independent state. This dubious distinction is not due to any dearth of
academic attention since in recent years, there has been an explosion of
scholarly books and articles regarding the Kurds. David Romano's new
publication is clearly one of the best. The author takes the theoretical
analysis of Kurdish ethnic resurgence to a new, higher level, while also
placing it in the larger context of ethnic nationalist resurgences
throughout the world. No other recent analysis of the Kurds has done
this.
The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided
Leviathan
Authors: Michie Aruna Nayyar
Published: February 2007

The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided
Leviathan. By Aseema Sinha. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2005. 384p. $64.95 cloth, $27.95 paper.

This excellent study by Aseema Sinha is a pathbreaker in the fields of
political economy and comparative politics generally, and an especially
welcome addition to India studies. Conventional wisdom has it that low
economic growth rates in India until liberalization in the 1990s were the
result of centralized control, especially in the area of the issuance of
licenses governing investments known as the license raj. On this
view, licensing controls and cumbersome bureaucratic implementation
procedures—supported by an ideology that sought to prevent
concentration of economic power in the hands of a small group of private
entrepreneurs at the expense of the wider social good—have been a
drag on the Indian economy. Far better, the argument goes, would have been
to let the market function to determine investment patterns. In essence,
the debate about Indian growth has been framed around two
alternatives—the classical free market and the dirigiste state.
Immigration Phobia and the Security Dilemma: Russia, Europe, and the
United States and National Security and Immigration: Policy
Development in the United States and Western Europe Since 1945
Authors: Freeman Gary P.
Published: February 2007

Immigration Phobia and the Security Dilemma: Russia, Europe, and
the United States. By Mikhail A. Alexseev. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006. 294p. $70.00.

National Security and Immigration: Policy Development in the
United States and Western Europe Since 1945. By Christopher Rudolph.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 288p. $55.00.

Analyses of immigration from the perspective of national security are
often greeted with skepticism. In the early nineties I mentioned the work
of Myron Weiner, a pioneer in thinking about the security implications of
migration, to a scholar who later held a high immigration policy position
in Washington, D.C. “A waste of time,” came the reply,
“worse than that, positively damaging, because immigration has no
important security implications and such talk only provides ammunition to
anti-immigration activists.” In the wake of 9/11, that
complacency has been shaken amid a groundswell of interest in security and
migration, but there is in some quarters more resistance than ever to
linking the two concepts. The recent literature is sharply divided over
the legitimacy and necessity of policies that “securitize”
migration policy and over the appropriateness of academic analysis set
within a security framework. A major theme in the literature is the claim
that the securitization of immigration policy is a repressive state
strategy designed to capitalize on public fears in the post–Cold War
era and to give security forces something to do now that keeping track of
communist subversives is no longer on the table.
How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict
Authors: Paul T. V.
Published: February 2007

How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict. By
Ivan Arreguin-Toft. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 250p.
$75.00, cloth, $29.99 paper.

The question of asymmetric conflicts or, more precisely, wars between
two states of unequal power capabilities is an important one, but it has
received scant scholarly focus, especially in the international relations
field. More importantly, the subject of weaker actors winning wars against
stronger adversaries has received limited attention. This is especially
puzzling since during the Cold War, both superpowers experienced defeat or
stalemate at the hands of weaker powers. In the case of the Soviet Union,
an ill-fated asymmetric war in Afghanistan contributed to its demise as a
state. America's failure in Vietnam had a major impact on U.S.
domestic politics and foreign policy behavior for years to come. It
affected American strategy regarding war in the developing world,
encouraging the development of and reliance on new precision-guided
weapons systems and strategies that would preclude ground combat. The
failure of France in Indochina and Algeria also point to the significance
of the phenomenon of asymmetric war. The Israeli and American withdrawals
from Lebanon in 1982 and 1983 and India's pulling out from Sri Lanka
in 1990 are other instances of stronger powers failing to make gains
against their weaker adversaries. In the post-9/11 world, asymmetric
conflicts have increasingly received the attention of military strategists
as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they have not
received commensurate attention from IR scholars.
Unifying China, Integrating with the World: Securing Chinese
Sovereignty in the Reform Era
Authors: Gallagher Mary E.
Published: February 2007

Unifying China, Integrating with the World: Securing Chinese
Sovereignty in the Reform Era. By Allen Carlson. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005. 320p. $55.00.

This is one of the first major works examining Chinese sovereignty in
the post-Mao era. Unlike earlier works that have examined sovereignty
through its manifestation in one or two policy areas—such as Taiwan,
human rights, or economic integration—Allen Carlson's
synthesizes Chinese behavior and rhetoric over a range of issue areas,
from Taiwanese independence to World Trade Organization accession.
Globalization from Below: Transnational Activists and Protest
Networks and It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and
Politics
Authors: Press Robert M.
Published: February 2007

Globalization from Below: Transnational Activists and Protest
Networks. By Donatella della Porta, Massimiliano Andretta, Lorenzo
Mosca, and Herbert Reiter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2006. 300p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. By
Francesca Polletta. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 242p.
$45.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.

While different in scope and intent, both books offer a refreshing and
uplifting sense of the capacity and willingness of people to protest
conditions in society, or the world, which they deem unjust. The authors
may not have set out to highlight idealism in political activism, but they
ended up doing so.