Constructing a new understanding of the environment under postsocialism

This paper introduces a special grouping of papers on the theme of the environment and postsocialism. After the collapse of state socialism in Europe between 1989 and 1991, many immediate approaches to environmental reconstruction assumed that economic liberalisation and democratisation would alleviate problems. Since then, critics have argued that these proposed solutions were themselves problematic, and too closely reflected Western European and North American conceptions of environmental quality and democracy. The result has been a counterreaction focusing on detail and specificity at national levels and below. In this paper, we summarise debates about the environment and postsocialism since the period 1989 - 91. In particular, we examine whether an essentialistic link can be made between state socialism and environmental problems, and how far civil society -- or environmentalism -- may result in an improvement in perceived environmental quality. Finally, we consider the possibility for developing an approach to the environment and postsocialism that lies between crude generalisation and microscale studies

Sounds of Silence : The Reflexivity, Self-decentralization, and Transformation Dimensions of Silence at Work

This article explores silence as a phenomenon and practice in the workplace through a Buddhist-enacted lens where silence is intentionally encouraged. It brings forward a reconsideration of the roles of silence in organizations by proposing emancipatory dimensions of silence—reflexivity, self-decentralization, and transformation. Based on 54 interviews with employees and managers in a Vietnamese telecommunications organization, we discuss the dynamic nature of silence, and the possible coexistence of the constructive and the oppressive aspects of silence in a workplace spirituality context. Instead of studying silence as one-dimensional, we call for an integrated view and argue that studying silence requires consideration of the multiplicity of its interconnected dimensions. By considering silence as a relational and emerging processes constructed around its vagueness and uncertainties, our study reveals the many possible ways silence is organized and organizes and sheds light on silence as a marker of the complexities and paradoxes of organizational life

How expectations became governable: institutional change and the performative power of central banks

Central banks have accumulated unparalleled power over the conduct of macroeconomic policy. Key for this development was the articulation and differentiation of monetary policy as a distinct policy domain. While political economists emphasize the foundational institutional changes that enabled this development, recent performativity-studies focus on central bankers’ invention of expectation management techniques. In line with a few other works, this article aims to bring these two aspects together. The key argument is that, over the last few decades, central banks have identified different strategies to assume authority over “expectational politics” and reinforced dominant institutional forces within them. I introduce a comparative scheme to distinguish two different expectational governance regimes. My own empirical investigation focuses on a monetarist regime that emerged from corporatist contexts, where central banks enjoyed “embedded autonomy” and where commercial banks maintained conservative reserve management routines. I further argue that innovations towards inflation targeting took place in countries with non-existent or disintegrating corporatist structures and where central banks turned to finance to establish a different version of expectation coordination. A widespread adoption of this “financialized” expectational governance has been made possible by broader processes of institutional convergence that were supported by central bankers themselves

Controlling the dead An analysis of the collecting and repatriation of aboriginal human remains

In 2 vols.SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN018944 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Repatriation developments in the UK

Requests for the return of ancestral remains have been heard from indigenous communities across the globe. In the United States, the National Museum of the American Indian Act (1989) and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) have legislated for repatriation for over a decade. In Australia, indigenous communities and individuals have campaigned for the return of ancestral remains for over 30 years, although objection to the collecting of remains is evident throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and various examples exist of early requests for the return of remains. In the UK, some museums and holding institutions have repatriated remains to Australia, some have narrow criteria for allowing the return of remains, some have policies which oppose repatriation, and others have no written policies at all. Recent developments in the UK have seen repatriation move into the political sphere, a progression which mirrors that which occurred in Australia and the United States 10-15 years ago and which, it could be argued, is what forced the scientific and museum community in those countries to accept that they no longer had sole rights to decide what should happen to the indigenous human remains in their collections

Repatriation Research: Archives and the Recovery of History and Heritage

This paper explores the significance of museum archives in the repatriation movement. Drawing on the experience of three researchers involved in repatriation research and historical analysis since the early 1990s, the paper will consider the importance of archives for repatriation practice and the information they can reveal about the collecting enterprise and the Indigenous response to the removal of the dead. We draw attention to the use of archives to locate and provenance human remains and how such research has contributed to knowledge about methods of acquisition and scientific use, as well as how the removal of remains was connected to European scientific and colonial ambitions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We reflect on the refusal by some museums to allow access to information about their holdings, discuss the response from Indigenous groups, museum professionals and academics, and follow the resulting change in some museum policies