Can Civil Society Succeed Where Elites Have Failed in the War on Sectarianism? Towards an infinitely demanding politics for the North

Caught between the well-armed imaginations of paramilitary organisations competing for the hearts and minds of a divided population, and state engineering of a liberal peace, civil society's impact on Northern Ireland's identity politics was limited during the thirty-year conflict. Specifically, the community and voluntary sector itself has tended to replicate as much as it challenged patterns of segregation in many of its own structures. With plans set out in the Northern Ireland Executive's Programme for Government (2008-11) to engage civil society in opening a new era of ‘good relations’ work to counter sectarianism and racism, civil society organisations will face a complex terrain, facing scepticism about their contribution to peace-making before the Good Friday Agreement, and working in a post-Agreement environment marked by continuing elite and communal antagonism demonstrated by the crisis at the turn of 2009 over devolution of justice and policing powers to the Northern Ireland Executive. A significant aspect of the resolution was a belated agreement by Sinn Fein and the DUP on a new community relation strategy, Cohesion, Sharing and Integration. This article suggests that civil society has a significant role to play in encouraging communities to confront the contradictions and tensions that continue to haunt the political architects of the Good Friday Agreement by affirming a radical and contingent vision of democracy as democratisation at a distance from the identity-saturated politics of the state-region of Northern Ireland. It draws on the work of Simon Critchley, Emmanuel Levinas and Wendy Brown, to offer an approach to identity politics in post-conflict Northern Ireland, focusing on the future orientation of civil society.

Molecular cloning of the helokinestatin/CNP precursor from a venom-derived cDNA library of the Mexican beaded lizard, Heloderma horridum, and identification of a novel encoded bradykinin-antagonist peptide, helokinestatin-6

Helokinestatins 1–5 represent a novel family of bradykinin antagonist peptides originally isolated from the venom of the Gila Monster, Heloderma suspectum. We found that they were encoded in tandem along with a single copy of C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), by two different but almost identical biosynthetic precursors that were cloned from a venom-derived cDNA library. Here we have applied the same strategy to the venom of a related species, the Mexican beaded lizard, Heloderma horridum. Lyophilised venom was used as a surrogate tissue to generate a cDNA library that was interrogated with primers from the previous study and for reverse phase HPLC fractionation. The structure of a single helokinestatin precursor was obtained following sequencing of 20 different clones. The open-reading frame contained 196 amino acid residues, somewhat greater than the 177–178 residues of the corresponding helokinestatin precursors in H. suspectum. The reason for this difference in size was the insertion of an additional domain of 18 amino acid residues encoding an additional copy of helokinestatin-3. Helokinestatin-6 (GPPFNPPPFVDYEPR) was a novel peptide from this precursor identified in venom HPLC fractions. A synthetic replicate of this peptide antagonised the relaxation effect of bradykinin on rat arterial smooth muscle. The novel peptide family, the helokinestatins, have been shown to be present in the venom of H. horridum and to be encoded by a single precursor of different structure to those from H. suspectum. Studies such as this reveal the naturally-selected structures of bioactive peptides that have been optimised for purpose and provide the scientist with a natural analogue library for pharmacological investigation.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People's War

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is one of the most enduring and complex in the modern world. But, why did the conflict break out? Who is demanding what, and why is peace so difficult to achieve?

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict tackles the subject and analyses the conflict from its historical roots in the late nineteenth century to the present attempts at conflict resolution in the twenty-first century.

Framing the debate and analysis around issues such as Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, international peace efforts, the refugees, state-building, democracy and religious opposition and highlighted by first hand quotes and sources of the conflict from its major participants, Beverley Milton-Edwards explores the deep impact of the conflict on regional politics in the Middle East and why the enmity between Palestinians and Israelis has become a number one global issue drawing in the world’s most important global actors.

An essential insight into the complexities of one of the world’s most enduring conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, this textbook is designed to make a complex subject accessible to all. Key features include a chronology of events and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is an ideal and authoritative introduction into aspects of politics in Israel, among the Palestinians – a vitally important issue for those studying the politics of the Middle East.

Playing with the ‘Erbe’: The Legacy of the Songs of the 1848 Revolution in the GDR

After the twelve-year rupture caused by the Nazis, in the Soviet zone after 1945 attempts were made to reconnect with the traditions of workers’ songs and critical folk songs that were viewed as the cultural heritage of the communist movement. One of these ‘repertoires’ of song was that of the 1848 Revolution. In the 1950s GDR researchers such as the Germanist Bruno Kaiser, the musicologist Inge Lammel and in particular the folklorist Wolfgang Steinitz made substantial contributions to the collecting and publication of the 1848 songs. Their work provided an important reference point for the singers of the German folk song revival in the GDR from the late 1970s onwards. As the cases of groups such as Folkländer and Wacholder showed, theirs was a particularly creative appropriation of the revolutionary Erbe that involved performing protest songs of the past as if they were criticising the present.