The terrible gift: Museums and the possibility of hope without consolation

Public history is turned toward the future no less than the past. Little discussion exists as to how practices of public history might foster new ways to live with the presence of history. Museum exhibitions are one site where such discussions may take place. Particularly generative in this regard are exhibitions that present artifacts and documentation that reference state-sponsored violence. One such exhibition in development is discussed. While this exhibition presents evidence of past events, it also assembles traces of the past and bequeaths them as a testament, “a terrible gift” that places difficult demands on those to whom it has been given. In discussing the practices of inheritance initiated by such a gift implications are drawn for how museums might initiate a reconsideration of the force of history in social life.     

Counterfeit museology

Museums are not usually seen to be agents of change. If they are to serve as important mechanisms for empowering local communities to define, recognize, and develop their own indigenous heritages, they should first consider a potential contradiction contained within this initiative: museums specialize in the representation of other peoples, while people have the sovereign right to represent themselves. Left unresolved, this contradiction could produce counterfeits of good intentions. The introduction of professionalized cultural management may mitigate the responsibilities of the citizenry to actively participate in the production and preservation of their own heritage.     

American historians and European archival theory: the collaboration of J.F. Jameson and Waldo G. Leland

J. Franklin Jameson and Waldo G. Leland remain forever linked in American archival history as the founders, respectively, of the National Archives and the American archival profession. From the immediate post-Revolutionary period until the eve of the First World War, American historians recognized that their nation's early history remained locked in European archives. However, not until the pioneering efforts of Leland, working under supervision of Jameson during the early 20th century, did any of these historical researchers bring to the United States, along with the voluminous copies of archival documents, the emerging tenets of European archival theory. This is the story of the collaboration between Jameson and Leland, and of Leland's efforts to professionalize American archival practice on the basis of European archival theory.     

Analysis of the urban/rural broadband divide in Canada: Using GIS in planning terrestrial wireless deployment

Millions of Canadians residing in Canada's northern, isolated, rural, and remote communities do not have broadband Internet access. This situation has led to a national “broadband divide.” That is, the deployment of wireline broadband is very limited in Canada's northern, isolated, rural, and remote areas because of the significant expense of installation and maintenance of the wired infrastructure needed to reach dwellings in these locations.Terrestrial broadband wireless technology, on the other hand, does not entail the same kind of physical infrastructure. As a result, there are dramatic changes in how spatial considerations affect the provision of broadband Internet services (BIS) to areas beyond the urban zone. In particular, the spatial question is now focused on assessing the capacity for different technological solutions to reach profitable population bases, and brings to the forefront organizations that are developing non-line-of-sight (NLOS) technologies that would permit wireless Internet access over much greater distances than current solutions.We begin this paper by establishing the importance of broadband connectivity to Canada's northern, isolated, rural, and remote communities. This discussion comments on the role of the Government of Canada in the provision of broadband connectivity to residents of these communities, and outlines the current regulatory issues that govern wireless services and policy formulation.The second part of the paper illustrates the use of geographic information system (GIS) approaches in the study of wireless broadband planning and deployment. Case study findings suggest that GIS applications can make a significant contribution to the analysis of wireless deployment planning, to the understanding of the relationships between wireless signal sources and consumers, and to the spatial configuration of terrestrial wireless broadband networks. We conclude the paper by discussing how the GIS approach employed could be used to inform the public policy process with regard to increasing access to broadband Internet services in all regions of the country, and thereby providing the opportunity for all Canadians, regardless of location, to fully participate in the Information Society.     

Effects of Mass and Interpersonal Communication on Breast Cancer Screening: Advancing Agenda-Setting Theory in Health Contexts

Drawing on components of agenda-setting theory and the two-step flow of information from mass media to news audiences, this study examines the effects of mass and interpersonal communication on breast cancer screening practices among college- and middle-aged women (n = 284). We theorized that screening behaviors among younger women would be influenced more by interpersonal sources of information while screening among middle-aged women would be more influenced by exposure to mass-mediated information. Findings supported anticipated patterns, revealing important and varying roles for both mass and interpersonal communication in the health behaviors of women. Implications for health practitioners and campaign planners, as well as recommendations for future research, are discussed.     

Bakhtin Applied: Employing Dialogism to Analyze the Interplay of the Ideologies of Individualism and Community Within the Discourse of Alcoholics Anonymous

An ongoing debate regarding the nature of therapeutic communities concerns the extent to which these communities reinforce the ideologies of individualism and community. This article engages this discussion through a process of social text analysis informed by the dialogism theory of Russian philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. Dialogism seeks to understand the multiple voices interpenetrating particular utterances, revealing an emergent social construction of meaning. Applying this approach to examples of discourse from a prominent therapeutic community, Alcoholics Anonymous, illustrates how meaning in the discourse of this movement can be understood to emerge among the interplay between the ideologies of individualism and community as expressed within the movement's narrative practice.     

Another Look at What Moves Public Opinion: Media Agenda Setting and Polls in the 2000 U.S. Election

This study examined two levels of media agenda effects on aggregatepublic opinion from different news sources. The effects wereinvestigated immediately and cumulatively. Content analysisdata from the 2000 U.S. presidential election coverage by fournational news organizations were related to the Gallup pre-electionpoll standings of each candidate. Regression analyses foundthat both the salience of a candidate and the salience of theattributes of a candidate cumulatively, but not immediately,influenced his standing in the polls. An analysis of news sourcessupported the finding that the two levels of agenda-settingeffects seemed mostly cumulative rather than immediate. Newsfrom different sources, however, tended to have effects of differentdegrees and sometimes different directions on candidate pollstandings. Cumulative effects of candidate salience on aggregateopinion change were found for non-partisan and neutral newssources—reporters, poll reporting and public documents—whereasthe effects of candidate attribute salience mostly came frompartisan sources—the candidate himself and members ofthe competing political party. Possible political implicationsof these findings are discussed.     

美国公共图书馆收费状况的远程考察

论文对美国公共图书馆的收费状况进行了分析，目的是为我国公共图书馆收费提供一些有益的参考。     

Masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and cooperative ways of organizing: contradictions and tensions in the experience and enactment of democracy

This study explores how members of the Nebraska Cooperative Council and its constituent producer-owned cooperatives understand and enact democratic ideologies, drawing particular attention to how emergent contradictions and tensions are experienced and managed. The Council serves as a particularly rich context in which to explore traditionally feminine ways of organizing (i.e., cooperative enactment) in a historically male-dominated arena (i.e., agriculture). The dialectic of independence and solidarity became a revealing prism through which to make sense of how members enact cooperative life. This dialectic manifests itself in the discourse of cooperative life as members struggle to manage tensions between efficiency and participation, equality and equity, and the paradox of agency. Communication theorizing about gendered organizing and the history of American agrarianism is used to explore intersections between the social construction of masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and tensions embedded in the discourse of cooperative organizing.