Understanding and negotiating identity: Children from cross-community families in public care in Northern Ireland.

In Northern Ireland, most research on the impact upon children of living through the 'troubles' and in a divided society has assumed that children are from either the Catholic or Protestant community. There has been very little researchwith children from cross-community families who have one parent from a Catholic background and one from a Protestant background. it is know, however, that these children are over-represented in the public care system in Northern Ireland. The study reported in this paper addresses this gap in knowledge by exploring the experiences and views of children from cross-community families who are in public care in northern Ireland. The study has key messages for the development of services for looked after children from cross-community families, if these are to be delivered in accordance with legislative duties in Northern Ireland and in an anti-sectarian manner.

The Changing Significance of European Borders

It is necessary to understand how state borders in Europe are changing in order to fully assess the factors which facilitate and encourage cross-border cooperation. This article considers the enduring social significance of borders, the need for a historical understanding of the nature and extent of border change in Europe, and the impact of recent European integration. Change in the structure, functions and meanings of European state borders has been the norm rather than the exception. Although much of this change has been associated with war, violence and coercion, a key contemporary issue facing the architects of European integration is how the ambiguity and contradictory nature border change can be regulated democratically and managed cooperatively.

Teenagers Telling Sectarian Stories

The purpose of this article is to examine the socially constructed nature of the story telling process by drawing on an example from one locality in Northern Ireland. The research draws on focus group interviews with teenagers from polarized working-class communities in North Belfast. The overall locality is divided into Catholic and Protestant areas and a recurring feature of the data is the tendency for each group to define themselves in opposition to the other. Throughout the focus group interviews, the teenagers produced four types of stories and the article assesses the relevance of each type to producing, reproducing or challenging sectarian divisions. The first three groups of stories, First-hand stories, Second-hand stories and Collective stories reflect individual and group attitudes to distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ while the fourth, Alternative stories, questions the homogeneity of the in-group and the immutability of these divisions. These stories verbalize the internal recollections of both individuals and groups and rely on real and imagined memories. The thrust of the article illustrates the ways in which sectarian identities are constructed, shaped and diluted through these narrative encounters.

EU Environmental Policy under Pressure: Chemicals Policy Change between Antagonistic Goals?

Until now, chemicals policy was unable to find a method to establish a sound balance between the benefits and risks of chemical substances. Policy learning within the European Union (EU) resulted in the formulation of an alternative approach to future chemicals policy in some quarters. The Commission's proposal for new chemicals legislation - presented as 'paradigmatic' policy change - led to a highly controversial lobbying debate. This paper deals in particular with the influence of structures, policy networks, multi-level governance and the influence of new modes of governance on chemicals policy-making. It argues that future policy will not represent the paradigmatic change announced by the Commission but only one incremental, cost-effective step towards such a reform. The final proposal is criticised as a neo-liberal interpretation of the Lisbon strategy which includes a dangerous shift in environmental policy making.

Prosodic Characteristics of Skilled Reading: Fluency and Expressiveness in 8- 10-year-old Readers

Statistical methods of describing prosody were used to study fluency, expressiveness and their relationship among 8-10-year-old readers. There were robust relationships between expressiveness and variables associated with pitch mobility; and between fluency and measures associated with temporal organization. Interactions indicated that the relationships were not simple. Differences between groups depended on sentence content and position. Some measures offer a basis for rules aimed at assigning individuals to skill categories. The effects suggest psychological hypotheses about the underlying mechanisms.

Sublime Lessons: Education and Ambivalence in War Exhibitions

This paper examines how experiences of the sublime are regulated in the war exhibitions of modern museums. Ambivalence is a key feature of the sublime because subjects are forced to negotiate simultaneous feelings of terror and awe in the face of something unrepresentable like war. This paper analyses how war exhibitions dispel ambivalence by resuscitating a Kantian sublime full of resolution, catharsis and transcendence. In this context, potentially destabilising encounters with horrific objects (e.g. guns, bombs, shrapnel) are neutralised by didactic 'Lessons of War' and celebratory narratives of victory. Using examples from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Imperial War Museum in London and the Smithsonian Institution, this paper illustrates how conventional war exhibitions reproduce a politics of consensus by carefully managing the experience of the sublime.

Benevolent Patriotism: Art, Dissent and the American Effect

This article examines the role of contemporary art in a post-9/11 context through The American Effect exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2003. This exhibition displayed a range of artworks from around the world that specifically engaged with, commented upon and interrogated the USA's pre-eminent position as a global superpower. In the politically charged climate after 9/11, the exhibition offered itself as a critical voice amid the more obvious patriotic clamour: it was one of the places where Americans could ask (and answer) the question, `Why do they hate us so much?' Although The American Effect claimed to be a space of dissent, it ultimately failed to question, let alone challenge, US global hegemony. Instead, the exhibition articulated a benevolent patriotism that forced artwork from other nations into supplicating and abject positions, and it obscured the complex discursive networks that connect artists, curators, critics, audiences and art museums.