‘If not for you’. The nation state as an archaeological context

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Schlanger

AbstractRather than being bashed around in view of its contents, the nation state – or at least the ‘state’ part of this compound term – needs to be cherished for the context it provides. Without the state, instilling regulations, procedures and common purpose, archaeology will not really thrive. This is confirmed through an exemplary case study, namely the seemingly measured and consensual retrenchment of the state occurring in England over the past 25 years. A brief presentation of the structure of English archaeology serves to highlight the situation of each of its main sectors, commercial contractors, curators at local levels and national bodies. Recent changes at the last level, involving English Heritage Trust and Historic England, highlight the risks posed by state disengagement, by funding withdrawal and by the enforced commercialization of public services.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Viera Papcunová ◽  
Roman Vavrek ◽  
Marek Dvořák

Local governments in the Slovak Republic are important in public administration and form an important part of the public sector, as they provide various public services. Until 1990, all public services were provided only by the state. The reform of public administration began in 1990 with the decentralization of competencies. Several competencies were transferred to local governments from the state, and thus municipalities began to provide public services that the state previously provided. Registry offices were the first to be acquired by local governments from the state. This study aimed to characterize the transfer of competencies and their financing from state administration to local government using the example of registry offices in the Slovak Republic. In the paper, we evaluated the financing of this competency from 2007 to 2018 at the level of individual regions of the Slovak Republic. The results of the analysis and testing of hypotheses indicated that a higher number of inhabitants in individual regions did not affect the number of actions at these offices, despite the fact that the main role of the registry office is to keep registry books, in which events, such as births, weddings, and deaths, are registered.


2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Antoun

In the Middle East over the past half-century, three religious processes have grown together. One, the growth of fundamentalism, has received worldwide attention both by academics and journalists. The others, the bureaucratization of religion and the state co-optation of religion, of equal duration but no less importance, have received much less attention. The bureaucratization of religion focuses on the hierarchicalization of religious specialists and state co-optation of religion focuses on their neutralization as political opponents. Few commentators link the three processes. In Jordan, fundamentalism, the bureaucratization of religion (BOR), and state co-optation of religion (SCR) have become entwined sometimes in mutually supportive and sometimes in antagonistic relations. The following case study will describe and analyze the implications of this mutual entanglement for the relations of state and civil society and for the human beings simultaneously bureaucratized and “fundamentalized.”


Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sierk Ybema

Studies interested in the discursive use of ‘the past’ often view history as an organizational resource designed to create a shared origin and a common purpose, promoting a sense of continuity and commitment among organizational stakeholders. In this article, I view ‘history’ instead as a symbolic site for discursive struggles between proponents and opponents of organizational change. It shows how organizational actors use ‘traces’ of a collective past in their version of ‘the’ history to win consent for change and to counter competing views. They do so by creating a sense of discontinuity from the past. The case study presented in this article combines a historian’s account of a newspaper’s history with an ethnographic account of the use of history prevalent among newspaper editors. While the historian’s narrative suggests the continuance of some vigorous traditions alongside identity change, the editors narratively construct or ‘invent’ transitions between periods or episodes while disregarding the organization’s traditions in their everyday talk. Storying the past, present and future in terms of a temporal dichotomy and ‘inventing’ transitions departs from existing studies of rhetorical history that tend to highlight invented traditions which establish or reaffirm continuity with the past. The case analysis shows how the editors selectively and strategically deploy history to accomplish or oppose change as part of ongoing negotiations within the editorial staff.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-336
Author(s):  
Mohd Nordin Adlan ◽  
Jaber M. A. Alkasseh ◽  
Hj. Ismail Abustan ◽  
Abu Bakar Mohamad Hanif

The average percentages of non-revenue water (NRW) for Malaysia and for the state of Perak in 2010 were 36.37 and 29.44%, respectively. These average percentages have led to lower income generation. This could create constraints on maintenance and operation of water reticulation systems. In this study, the appropriate time band of minimum night flow (MNF) and the actual water loss or amount of NRW for the district of Kinta in Perak, Malaysia were investigated. Flow and pressure in 361 zones in Perak were monitored for 24 h using PrimeWorks software. From the 361 zones, 30 study zones were randomly selected. The 30 study zones were geographically divided into three groups, with each group having 10 zones. Statistically, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the variations in MNF among the three groups. The data of the flow for the 30 zones were screened from 1:00 to 5:00 am for the past 4 years. The frequency of MNF occurrences was analyzed every 15 min. The results show that the majority (84.2%) of the frequencies of MNF occurrences in the 30 study areas occurred from 2:15 to 4:15 am, whereas minimum frequencies were observed at 1:00, 1:15, and 5:00 am.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Budi Sirait

This article is based on research in Gereja Kristen Indonesia (GKI, Indoensian Christian Chruch) Yasmin Bogor as a case study. It has been years for the community to struggle for gaining permission to legally build the church. Court has decided to allow the community to use the building for religius activities. However, practically, the court's decision cannot be implemented because there was pressure for some parties, including from the local government, to refuse the operation of the church. The study is aimed to identify the dynamics and difficulties of being minority in a nation-state, called Indonesia. This lengthens the list of acts of intolerance and violence on minority within a democratic government, in which majority is still preferred. There is a celar need for changing the mindset of the state and society to resolve conflict based on religious belief, to enable equality in economy, politics and religious life.


1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Kollmorgen ◽  
Jonathan Harvey

This article examines the requirement of 'genuineness' in industrial demands—the doctrine established by the High Court, the manner in which the requirement has been interpreted and applied by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, and the actual and likely future impact of recent developments upon federal tribunal practice. The commission has, as a matter of practice, considered that the service and subsequent rejection of a log of claims involving inflated, ambit demands through the mechanism of the 'paper dispute' was adequate to form the basis of a statutory and constitutional industrial dispute unless there was extremely clear evidence that the log constituted a mere device to attract federal jurisdiction. The result has been that genuineness has not been argued as a crucial issue before the commission in more than a handful of cases in the past decade. The High Court's re- examination of the genuineness requirement undertaken in cases placed before it during 1993 is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on the traditional doctrinal position. On a practical level, however, genuineness has subsequently been raised as a crucial issue on a far more regular basis, and certain changes to commission practice have been necessitated, first, because of perceived tightening of the require ment and, second, because legislative change has reduced the ability of employers to challenge commission jurisdiction on other bases.


2002 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Byung-ok Kil

This inquiry demonstrates that the political legitimacy of a certain society is historically determined, reflects specific institutional and contextual features, and employs a variety of meanings. These meanings can describe both a state of affairs and a process that ultimately involves justifications for legitimate agents and socio-political structures. This paper attepmpts to understand how the meanings of political legitimacy are conceptualized in society. As a case study, it questions: What are the conditions for the existence of political legitimacy and how have they been constructed? How is political legitimacy endorsed in South Korea today, and how does it differ from the past? This paper applies a deconstructive theory of political legitimacy that exploresa a distinctively modern style, or 'art of governance' that has an all-encompassing, as well as individualized effect upon its constituencies. By this approach, this paper argues that the concept of unification does not have a solid significance in the real world, but rather, it is an imaginary idea imposed by the dominant elite class, which is constantly imposed, reinterpreted and transformed in its political context.


2016 ◽  
pp. 78-119
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kamusella

In the past, Silesian was treated as a subdialect of the Polish language (and sometimes of Czech). During the 1990s, following the fall of communism and the establishment of democracy in Poland, most Silesian-speakers decided to treat Silesian as a language in its own right. It became part and parcel of their effort to shed the status of second-class citizens that had been imposed on them in the interwar and communist Poland. Warsaw has not recognized this language yet, but, despite suffering this (quite humiliating) disadvantage, Silesian-speakers have produced a growing number of articles, books, websites, radio and television programmes in their language, winning a recognition for Silesian as a language abroad and among scholars. It appears that the Polish administration’s rigid stance toward the Silesians and their language is dictated by the logic of ethnolinguistic nationalism, which equates the legitimacy and stability of the nation-state with the full ethnolinguistic homogeneity of its population. This article sketches the trajectory of the main events and probes into the state of the discourse on the issue of Silesian language and culture during the quarter of a century after the fall of communism in 1989.


2020 ◽  
pp. 41-54

The chapter discusses Jewish Israeli women immigrant artists through the case study of artist Jennifer Abesirra (b. 1984), an immigrant from France of Algerian origin. Abesirra's artworks stand as examples of the complex, multilayered, and dynamic identity of immigrant women in Israel. The discussion in the chapter integrates global and transnational aspects of women's migration with local perspectives, which are unique to the ethnic, religious, social and civic circumstances in the state of Israel. It tackles feminist issues, arguing for a new understanding of the role played by immigrant women within the nation–state. While striving to problematize essentialist theorisation, it examines heterogeneous constructions of gendered selves by women who live in transnational contexts: out of the mosaic of artistic artefacts analysed arises an argument that challenges the binary thinking that distinguishes the ‘Israeli society’ from ‘women migrants, and ‘the State of Israel’ from the ‘Middle Eastern space’.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Kunikowski ◽  
Anna Kosieradzka ◽  
Urszula Kąkol

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a proposal for the methodology of developing rescue plans and the concepts of applying recommended response schedules in the context of the State Fire Service’s planning responsibilities (preparation) and public administration (reconciliation and approval), according to the legal order in force in Poland. In the proposed concept, recommended schedules are built on the basis of the matches and successes identified according to the criteria, i.e. the best carried out rescue actions from the register of reports. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on the analysis of existing legal status and policy in Poland as well as the selected relevant academic literature. Findings The result is the formulation of a methodology for drawing up the rescue plans to the extent required by law and proposing a concept for the method of developing and applying recommended response schedules, supporting operational planning and conducting rescue operations. Practical implications The proposed methodology is to support the procedure of drawing up rescue plans by implying and implementing them into IT solutions. The suggested recommended response schedules, based on observations and conclusions from the analysis of the past rescue operations, may present circumstances and sequences of the use of forces and measures that have had beneficial effects in the past. An in-depth analysis of historical data from the conducted rescue operations may also be used to determine time indicators for the response phase. Originality/value The proposed solutions complement the methods currently used by public administration in Poland. The concept can also be inspiring for the State Fire Service (PSP) which has its own analytical tools in the form of a decision support system and registers of rescue operations carried out. The PSP may undertake the practical verification of the presented methodology for preparing rescue plans and recommended response schedules.


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