“Hegemony Protected by the Armour of Coercion”: Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and the State

This article argues that Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest is best understood in the context of the consolidation and expansion of the US state following the First World War and the Russian Revolution. It also argues that Hammett's novel constitutes a highly significant articulation of theoretical debates about the nature of political authority and state power in the modern era and speaks about the transition of one state formation to another. Insofar as Red Harvest explores the way in which the state's coercive and ethical character are bound up together, this article argues that Hammett's novel draws upon an understanding of political authority and state power primarily derived from Gramsci, via Marx. Gramsci insists that control cannot be maintained through force alone (and his conception of hegemony, in turn, suggests a power bloc that can become fragmented and disunited in a war of position). In the same way, Red Harvest traces the transformation of the “economic-corporate” state into the expanded or “ethical” State but crucially any ethical dimension, as Gramsci notes, is always beholden to the needs of the capitalist economy. As such, the apparently arbitrary bloodshed in the novel is conceived as a relatively minor realignment in the ranks of the capitalist classes – certainly less serious than the miners' strike that prefigures the novel. What makes this realignment significant is that it calls attention to the state both as repressive and as a site of conflict and compromise. Here, the work performed by the Continental Op and by the crime novel in general – simultaneously buttressing and, to some extent, contesting the power of the state – needs to be understood as part of the process by which the state is consistently enacting hegemony (albeit protected by the armour of coercion). The article concludes by pointing out that while Gramsci is perhaps too willing to dwell upon the state's expanded reach, Red Harvest is more interested in examining possible “cracks and fissures” in the state formation, even if the critique it ultimately offers goes nowhere and yields nothing.

Wholeness of healing: an innovative Student-Selected Component introducing United Kingdom medical students to the spiritual dimension in healthcare.

Objective: This Student Selected Component (SSC) was designed to equip United Kingdom (UK) medical students to engage in whole-person care. The aim was to explore students' reactions to experiences provided, and consider potential benefits for future clinical practice.

Methods: The SSC was delivered in the workplace. Active learning was encouraged through facilitated discussion with and observation of clinicians, the palliative team, counselling services, hospital chaplaincy and healing ministries; sharing of medical histories by patients; and training in therapeutic communication. Assessment involved reflective journals, literature appraisal, and role-play simulation of the doctor-patient consultation. Module impact was evaluated by analysis of student coursework and a questionnaire.

Results: Students agreed that the content was stimulating, relevant, and enjoyable and that learning outcomes were achieved. They reported greater awareness of the benefit of clinicians engaging in care of the "whole person" rather than "the disease." Contributions of other professions to the healing process were acknowledged, and students felt better equipped for discussion of spiritual issues with patients. Many identified examples of activities which could be incorporated into core teaching to benefit all medical students.

Conclusion: The SSC provided relevant active learning opportunities for medical students to receive training in a whole-person approach to patient care.

PANEL DATA UNIT ROOT TEST WITH FIXED TIME DIMENSION

The consideration of the limit theory in which T is fixed and N is allowed to go to infinity improves the finite-sample properties of the tests and avoids the imposition of the relative rates at which T and N go to infinity.

Arbitrary amplitude ion-acoustic solitary excitations in the presence of excess superthermal electrons

Velocity distribution functions with an excess of superthermal particles are commonly observed in space plasmas, and are effectively modeled by a kappa distribution. They are also found in some laboratory experiments. In this paper we obtain existence conditions for and some characteristics of ion-acoustic solitary waves in a plasma composed of cold ions and kappa-distributed electrons, where kappa>3/2 represents the spectral index. As is the case for the usual Maxwell-Boltzmann electrons, only positive potential solitons are found, and, as expected, in the limit of large kappa one recovers the usual range of possible soliton Mach numbers, viz., 1 < M < 1.58. For lower values of kappa, modeling the presence of a greater superthermal component, the range of accessible Mach numbers is reduced. It is found that the amplitude of the largest possible solitons that may be generated in a given plasma (corresponding to the highest allowed Mach number for the given plasma composition) falls off with decreasing kappa, i.e., an increasing superthermal component. On the other hand, at fixed Mach number, both soliton amplitude and profile steepness increase as kappa is decreased. These changes are seen to be important particularly for kappa < 4, i.e., when the electrons have a "hard" spectrum.

Developing students’ ability to engage critically with science in the news: identifying elements of the ‘media awareness’ dimension

Worldwide, science education reform movements are stressing the need to promote ‘scienti?c literacy’ among young people. Increasingly, this is taken to include empowering students to engage critically with science-related news reporting. Despite this requirement now featuring in statutory curricula throughout the UK, there has, to date, been a dearth of research-informed advice to assist science teachers as they identify appropriate instructional objectives in this regard and design relevant learning activities through which these might be achieved. In this study, prominent science communication
scholars, science journalists, science educators and media educators were interviewed to determine what knowledge, skills and habits of mind they judged valuable for individuals reading science-related news stories. Teachers of science and of English from nine secondary schools in Northern Ireland addressed the same issue. A striking – and signi?cant – ?nding of the study was the very substantial number of statements of knowledge, skill and disposition o?ered by participants that relate to ‘media awareness’, an issue largely overlooked in the science education literature. The school-focused phase of the research suggests that cross-curricular approaches involving teachers of science collaborating with those of English/media education or media studies may best serve to address this important curricular goal.