Masculinity and shell shock in the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon: soldier of trauma and poet of abjection

This dissertation assesses potential links between masculinity and shell shock, explored through a psychoanalytic perspective in the First World War poetry of Siegfried Sassoon. I suggest that Sassoon, through his poetry, critiques the idea of a heteronormative, hypermasculinity that was propagated throughout the period of WW1. The pressure to perform in the hypermasculine area of war resulted in emotional conflict for Sassoon subliminally explored through his writing, which allowed him to express a personal critical evaluation of masculinity in the war period. The personal perspective offered by Sassoon, leads to a wider critique, as Sassoon’s poetry offers a social perspective on the presentation of a desired masculinity that the period required. This study suggests that there are inextricable links between performing heteronormative hypermasculinity and shell shock

The Effect of Zonally Asymmetric Ozone Heating on the Northern Hemisphere Winter Polar Stratosphere

[1] Previous modeling studies have found significant differences in winter extratropical stratospheric temperatures depending on the presence or absence of zonally asymmetric ozone heating (ZAOH), yet the physical mechanism causing these differences has not been fully explained. The present study describes the effect of ZAOH on the dynamics of the Northern Hemisphere extratropical stratosphere using an ensemble of free-running atmospheric general circulation model simulations over the 1 December - 31 March period. We find that the simulations including ZAOH produce a significantly warmer and weaker stratospheric polar vortex in mid-February due to more frequent major stratospheric sudden warmings compared to the simulations using only zonal mean ozone heating. This is due to regions of enhanced Eliassen-Palm flux convergence found in the region between 40°N–70°N latitude and 10–0.05 hPa. These results are consistent with changes in the propagation of planetary waves in the presence of ZAOH predicted by an ozone-modified refractive index

Use It or Lose It: Canadian Identity and the Construction of Arctic Security Policy

This dissertation investigates the specific factors that drive state action in Canadian Arctic security policy, particularly in relation to securitization of the Arctic region and historical factors that influence decision-making. The purpose of this research is to develop stronger linkages between securitization processes and actual policymaking. When studying the Arctic as a defined geographical space, we see considerable differences between Arctic states when it comes to how cultural and historical attachment to the Arctic region may serve as a selling point for the ability of national governments to justify allocation of defense resources to their respective publics. Using the Canadian case, this research illustrates the strength of identity factors when compared to day-to-day bureaucratic politics and the influence of public opinion. This dissertation does not follow the ideas of one particular theoretical paradigm, but instead utilizes eclecticism to better illustrate the depth of the various factors that may contribute to policymaking. Additionally, the effects of policymaking and securitization processes are measured through public opinion. The ultimate findings of this research support a hypothesis of linear identity factors as a major influence on Canadian Arctic security policy, but also suggest that research on securitization theory needs to better connect rhetorical v securitization processes to actual policymaking. Through this, the research not only provides value in using this case as a test for the strengths and limits of securitization theory, but also emboldens understandings of security policy as being driven by a combination of domestic policy, foreign policy, endemic historical factors, and government strategic communication practices

The nature of the British soldier : warrior or weapons platform a philosophical framework

This thesis is an examination of how the nature of the British soldier is constructed/imagined in contemporary British society if a spectrum of meaning is imagined that posits a warrior existing at one extreme and a weapons platform at the other. Located within a philosophical setting and indebted to Charles Taylor’s modern social imaginaries, a number of sub-questions function as the mechanism used to explore the thesis question in the six research chapters which are: 2, Identity and Narrative; 3, Being and Doing; 4, Clausewitz, Trinitarian War and New Wars; 5, Selected Societal Factors (Death, Risk, and Post-heroicand Feminised Society); 6, The Future Nature of Conflict; and 7, Future Technology. This thesis provides a basis by which to evaluate the cultural, practical, philosophical and intellectual pressures affecting how the British soldier is envisaged in the UK social imaginary. It also offers a functional framework to understand those roles British society is prepared to tolerate and validate when deploying and utilising the generic soldier. The main conclusions of the research chapters are contained in the following six propositions: 1. The identity of the warrior requires a narrative of war(fare) validated by the society with whom he/she is in relationship. The identity of the soldier does not necessarily require a narrative of war. 2. The distinction between the warrior and the soldier is best framed in the language of ‘being’ and ‘doing’. For the warrior their ‘being’ is intuited in combat; whereas the soldier requires a narrative that validates the required/expected output. 3. New wars are non-Clausewitzian. Any Western narrative will suffer narrative deflation in the soldier’s daily experience in non-Western operational settings. 4. Post-modern, risk averse, post-heroic societies will struggle to generate a nonapocalyptic narrative capable of tolerating significant casualty numbers. 5. The question of intervention in a non-Western, non-permissive operational setting will examine the depth of liberal values in Western societies. 6. Though pragmatic, the development of robotic weapons stands in contradiction to the authenticity of the warrior and robs the West of the vitality of its liberal values

Screening for health risks: A social science perspective

Health screening promises to reduce risks to individuals via probabilistic sifting of populations for medical conditions. The categorisation and selection of 'conditions' such as cardiovascular events, dementia and depression for screening itself requires prior interpretive labour which usually remains unexamined. Screening systems can take diverse organisational forms and varying relationships to health status, as when purported disease precursors, for example 'pre-cancerous' polyps, or supposed risk factors, such as high cholesterol themselves, become targets for screening. Screening at best yields small, although not necessarily unworthwhile, net population health gains. It also creates new risks, leaving some individuals worse-off than if they had been left alone. The difficulties associated with attempting to measure small net gains through randomised controlled trials are sometimes underestimated. Despite endemic doubts about its clinical utility, bibliometric analysis of published papers shows that responses to health risks are coming to be increasingly thought about in terms of screening. This shift is superimposed on a strengthening tendency to view health through the lens of risk. It merits further scrutiny as a societal phenomenon

The Reinstated Steel Trigger Price Mechanism: Reinforced Barrier to Import Competition

Early in 1978 the Carter Administration implemented a trigger price mechanism (TPM) to aid the distressed United States steel industry. Although the TPM by its terms is a monitoring system, the controversy it has aroused suggests that its actual function extends far beyond mere monitoring of steel imports. Part I of this Comment will examine the TPM in the context of world steel trade to show how the original system actually functioned, and how the new version is likely to operate. Part II will explore the ways in which this import relief program is inconsistent with traditional United States trade law and policy

Countdown to 2010: Can we assess Ireland’s insect species diversity and loss?

peer-reviewedThe insects are the most diverse organisms on this planet and play an essential role in ecosystem functioning, yet we know very little about them. In light of the Convention on Biological Diversity, this paper summarises the known insect species numbers for Ireland and questions whether this is a true refl ection of our insect diversity. The total number of known species for Ireland is 11,422. Using species accumulation curves and a comparison with the British fauna, this study shows that the Irish list is incomplete and that the actual species number is much higher. However, even with a reasonable knowledge of the species in Ireland, insects are such speciose, small, and inconspicuous animals that it is diffi cult to assess species loss. It is impossible to know at one point in time the number of insect species in Ireland and, although it is useful to summarise the known number of species, it is essential that biodiversity indicators, such as the Red List Index, are developed

Engineering affective atmospheres on the moving geographies of the 1897 Andrée expedition

How might the dynamic materiality of atmosphere be addressed in ways that register simultaneously its meteorological and affective qualities? The present article considers this question via a discussion of the kinds of atmospheric spaces in which the emergence and experience of modern balloon (or aerostatic) flight is implicated. In doing so it argues that aerostatic flight can be understood simultaneously as a technology for moving through atmosphere in a meteorological sense and as an event generative, at least potentially, of atmospheres in an affective sense. This argument is exemplified via a discussion of a particularly notable instance of balloon flight: the attempt, in 1897 by a Swedish engineer, Salomon August Andrée, and two companions, to fly to the North Pole in a hydrogen-filled balloon. Drawing upon a range of contemporaneous accounts, the article makes three claims about the expedition: first, that it can be understood, following Spinoza, as an effort to engineer a mode of addressing the meteorological atmosphere as a relational field of affect; second, that the passage of the expedition can be understood in terms of the registering of atmospheres (in both meteorological and affective terms) in moving, sensing bodies; and third, that the expedition was also generative of a distributed space of anticipation and expectancy. In concluding, the article speculates upon how conceiving of atmospheric space as simultaneously as meteorological and affective might contribute to recent attempts to rethink the materialities of cultural geographies

Absolute continuity and spectral concentration for slowly decaying potentials

We consider the spectral function $\rho(\mu)$ $(\mu \geq 0)$ for the Sturm-Liouville equation $y^{''}+(\lambda-q)y =0$ on $[0,\infty)$ with the boundary condition $y(0)=0$ and where $q$ has slow decay $O(x^{-\alpha})$ $(a>0)$ as $x\to \infty$. We develop our previous methods of locating spectral concentration for $q$ with rapid exponential decay (JCAM 81 (1997) 333-348) to deal with the new theoretical and computational complexities which arise for slow decay