An historical explanation of the development of occupational health and safety and the important position it now occupies in society

Scientific and social (economic and ethical) dimensions of occupational health and safety (OH&S) are discussed. Three broad stages in the development of ethics in Western society are analysed in order to assist in understanding the arrival of moral relativism and constructivism under postmodernism. Against this background three recent stages in the emergence of OH&S are outlined and OH&S is shown to be of key importance to sustainable development. Comment is made about the prospects for survival, under moral relativism, of the duty of care ethic which lies at the heart of OH&S and which has until the present time catalysed professionally responsible innovation and change. It is argued that (1) because OH&S tools and techniques called up in legislation are scientific in nature and apply equally to all under law, and (2) because OH&S is increasingly understood as a profitability strategy, ongoing duty of care appeals for reform may continue to be effective even against the corrosive malaise of moral relativism. OH&S workers are reminded of the contribution their profession can make to safe and civil society and to sustainable development and their responsibility for upholding and promoting the ethical dimension expressed through duty of care

Voicing Back: The Poetics and Politics of Ping Chong's Ethno-Historiographic Fables

In spite of Ping Chong¡¯s reputation in the American theatre scene, little has been done to explore his artistic works from a fully theorized perspective. In this dissertation, I propose a category of ¡°cultural narrative texts¡± to investigate cultural and historical themes of ¡°culture and the other¡± in Chong¡¯s fascinating ethno-historiographic fables. The poetics and politics of Chong¡¯s narrative texts are the subject of this dissertation. The frames of myth and narratology in their constructive aspects (how the mythic narratives are expressed) provide the poetics part. I adopt the literary approaches of Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke for their intense studies on image (narrative unit), rhetoric (narrative signification), and emplotment (narrative sequence). In a connective linkage from poetics, the politics part engages the cultural and historical thematics through which I read what is expressed in Chong¡¯s (counter-) myths on people, cultures, and histories. For this complex thematic part, I construe a theoretical bricolage of a broad range of disciplines and methodologies, from psychoanalysis, cognitive science, anthropology, historiography, sociology, to poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and feminism.This dissertation deals with Chong¡¯s ethno-historiographic fables throughout his theatrical career over three decades, examining how his deconstructive myth-making wrestles with the problematic notion of ¡°the other¡± in both local (national) and global aspects. Borrowing Julia Kristeva¡¯s socially informed psychoanalysis, I approach Chong¡¯s concept of ¡°the other¡± as ¡°social abject¡± inhibiting at the margins. I argue that through Chong¡¯s (counter-) myth-making which destabilizes the authority of hegemonic narratives of the incompatible split between the self and the other, multiple voices of the marginalized return, and the monologue of the hegemonic culture is interrupted. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how the performance of Chong¡¯s (counter-) narratives, what I call ¡°voicing back,¡± resist the silence, enabling the marginalized abject to become the subjects of their own desires and histories. This ¡°voicing back¡± in its shared political languages of respect, equality, and justice (toward the others) prepares for the performance of a democracy which is based on the complete modes of speech acts, speaking and listening

The California gold rush romance collection (Book Review)

A review of Barratt, A., Bell, A., Christner, D., Harris, L. F., Hickey, C., Hillman, P., ... Wright, J. J. (2016). The California gold rush romance collection. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour Books. 444 pp. $14.99. ISBN 978163409912

The Diplomatic Strategies for Normalizing Relations between Japan and Korea and between Japan and China: Shelving, Layering, Demarcation, and Iridescence

This study is an attempt to comparatively analyze the processes behind the normalizing of relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in 1965 and between Japan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1972. Through this analysis, similarities and differences in the origins of and the methods for dealing with unresolved historical issues are identified. Considering that the special circumstances of these normalization processes involved countries which were divided during the Cold War, we can see that Japan recognized the ROK and PRC as the sole legal governments of their respective countries. Meanwhile, the PRC forwent demands for war reparations and the ROK focused on economic cooperation. This study also examines how the negotiation processes involved shelving, layering, demarcation, and iridescence to handle disputes. It is hoped that this study, by jointly analyzing the normalization process of Japan-ROK and Japan-PRC relations, can help to reflect on the establishment of the postwar order in East Asia, solve the historical problems which remain at issue to this day, and help to imagine and construct a new order in East Asia

Thermal OH (1667/65 MHz) Absorption and Nonthermal OH (1720 MHz) Emission Towards the W28 Supernova Remnant

The W28 supernova remnant is an excellent prototype for observing shocked gas resulting from the interaction of supernova remnants (SNRs) and adjacent molecular clouds (MCs). We present two new signatures of shocked molecular gas in this remnant. One is the detection of main-line extended OH (1667 MHz) absorption with broad linewidths. The column density of OH estimated from the optical depth profiles is consistent with a theoretical model in which OH is formed behind a C-type shock front. The second is the detection of extended, weak OH (1720 MHz) line emission with narrow linewidth distributed throughout the shocked region of W28. These give observational support to the idea that compact maser sources delineate the brightest component of a much larger region of main line OH absorption and nonthermal OH (1720 MHz) emission tracing the global structure of shocked molecular gas. Main line OH (1665/67) absorption and extended OH (1720 MHz) emission line studies can serve as powerful tools to detect SNR-MC interaction even when bright OH (1720 MHz) masers are absent.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, one table, to appear in ApJ (Jan 10, 2003

VLBA Imaging of the OH Maser in IIIZw35

We present a parsec-scale image of the OH maser in the nucleus of the active galaxy IIIZw35, made using the Very Long Baseline Array at a wavelength of 18 cm. We detected two distinct components, with a projected separation of 50 pc (for D=110 Mpc) and a separation in Doppler velocity of 70 km/s, which contain 50% of the total maser flux. Velocity gradients within these components could indicate rotation of clouds with binding mass densities of ~7000 solar masses per cubic parsec, or total masses of more than 500,000 solar masses. Emission in the 1665-MHz OH line is roughly coincident in position with that in the 1667-MHz line, although the lines peak at different Doppler velocities. We detected no 18 cm continuum emission; our upper limit implies a peak apparent optical depth greater than 3.4, assuming the maser is an unsaturated amplifier of continuum radiation.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure