The movies, whatever they may have been or may yet become, are currently filling (yet again) the emptiness left by our theater's abdication from anything we can recognize as our experience. And only snobbism, professional investment, or myopia can prevent us from seeing that. A handful of movies are filling the space: six, eight, perhaps a dozen in the last few years. Three or four are filling more of it than the rest. As for the bulk of films, more than one person has said that mass tastes belong more to sociology than aesthetics, a dictum as applicable to Broadway as to Hollywood. Most plays are bad, most movies are bad; yet it has been my observation that almost nothing in the recent theater has been nearly so good as some of the films of the new Iranians, of the so-called Fifth Generation in China, of the Europeans Aki Kaurismäki, Michael Haneke, Nanni Moretti, Mike Leigh, and the Dardenne brothers, of the Asians Jun Ichikawa and Hong Sang-soo, and of the following Americans: Neil LaBute, David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Victor Nuñez, and Todd Solondz.

Before going on, I should set down some propositions. The first, which should already be clear, is that the movies are an art form, full-fledged, conscious, of legitimate birth, and needing no more defenses or rationales.

Introduction

To understand the national question in Soviet history ultimately means to know the scholarship that informed it. Among the most important of the scholars, perhaps surprisingly, was I.V. Dzhugashvili, also known by his underground name as Koba Stalin. His first major article on the subject, “Social Democracy and the National Question” (1913), was not just a crafty polemic against the Austrian Marxists, as most scholars have proposed. Written for the party academic journal, Enlightenment (Prosveshchenie), it was also a well-read piece on the subject of nations and nationalism. One of the last major publications before his death, “Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics” (1950), recapitulated the themes. Originally published in Pravda in serial parts, it was a polemic to be sure, but framed within the rather dry analysis of linguistics. In between came a host of speeches, articles, pamphlets and discussions on language and national issues. Some were more academic than others. All were political. All confronted, to one degree or another, language as a constituent “form” of the nation. Or, as Karl Marx intimated in the quote above, language as a privileged field within which we humans move and act and think.

When Mad Tales from the Raj was first published in 1991, few historians worked on colonial psychiatry and medicine. It took another four years before McCulloch explored the role of ‘colonial psychiatry in Africa’. The scope of these first two major studies could not have been more different. One focused on a subcontinent, South Asia, the other on a continent, Africa. Mad Tales was concerned with the early nineteenth, McCulloch's Colonial Psychiatry with the early twentieth century. Crucially, one paid particular attention to the theories and practices of British psychiatry in relation to Europeans in India, while the other assessed the role of western psychiatry in relation to colonial racism and Africans. Unsurprisingly, subsequent work on South Asia and Africa has expanded beyond both, focusing on the treatment of the Indian mentally ill during later periods and on case-studies of particular African regions respectively. The history of psychiatry within the context of various colonial settings has clearly come of age over the last two decades. Some reflection on how this reprint of Mad Tales can be located within a fast developing field of study is clearly indicated. This requires an appraisal of the historiographic reconfigurations and conceptual developments that have characterized South Asian medical history in recent years.

In the 1980s, the study of medicine and colonialism was still in its infancy. Existing work drew on Fanon whose seminal book Black Skins, White Masks had been made available in a new English edition in 1986.

Jean Renoir (1894–1979) completed his thirty-ninth motion picture, The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir, in 1970. His first film, The Water Girl, was made in 1924 during the silent era. What comes between is perhaps the most impressive body of filmmaking ever directed by one person. But, before any consideration of the length or quality of Renoir's career, one must first consider the length of his life – of his life, not just anyone who happens to survive for eighty-four years – because it gave him a unique place that would affect his art.

Now the history of film is full of such unique “places,” or remarkable confluences. (At least that's a cursory way to describe complicated matters of cultural and psychic history.) D. W. Griffith came along just when the newborn medium needed a genius to formulate its language. Eisenstein and Pudovkin came along in the Soviet Union just when the new society needed new artists to celebrate it in this new art form. And Jean Renoir connected La Belle Époque – from his equally famous father, the painter Auguste – to the last quarter of the twentieth century. And this made him an exponent of a view of art that doesn't promise to be generated again, and that the director amply elucidated in any number of interviews he gave from 1939 to 1975: art as community, from which one can make every bitter expedition into blackness, as Renoir certainly did, but whose communal nature supports the expedition and strengthens its unsentimental insistence.

Introduction

By the late 1920s the idea that language is a social phenomenon and various linguistic phenomena can be given a sociological explanation had become a commonplace in Soviet linguistics. Several reasons for the ‘sociological turn’ can be found. Firstly, the dramatic social and economic changes caused by the Revolution were reflected in the Russian language, thus making it evident that language and society are intimately connected. Secondly, many Soviet linguists – like scholars in other academic disciplines too – felt the urge to develop a new Marxist approach to the study of language as opposed to earlier ‘bourgeois’ theories of language (for discussion, see Alpatov 2000, Brandist 2005). In most cases the growing interest in ‘the questions of language and society’ meant the study of social dialects and linguistic changes that took place in the Russian language after the Revolution. Thirdly, linguistics became a socially significant discipline in the construction of the new Soviet state, because many linguists were engaged in the creation of alphabets for different languages which did not hitherto have a written form. Fourthly, one certainly should not underestimate the role of the ‘climate of opinion’ (see Koerner 1987) – the special emphasis on language as a social fact at the beginning of the 20th century – in the formation of the early Soviet sociology of language.

The early sociological approach to the study of language is frequently – albeit mistakenly – equated with the idea of the class character (klassovost') of language only (see Desnitskaia 1974).

Born out of an ancient geographical theory of balance, the term ‘antipodes’ was first used to refer to the vast uncharted underworld of the southern hemisphere from a northern perspective. The principle behind this belief, as described in the Quarterly Review in the nineteenth century, was ‘that all the land, which had till then been discovered in the southern hemisphere, was insufficient to form a counterpoise to the weight of land in the northern half of the globe’. The idea of the antipodes as a counterbalance, though now remembered only as a peculiar, discredited theory, has been surprisingly influential as an imaginative concept. An antipodean expectancy filled minds, maps, novels and utopian plans, laying the foundation for perceptions of Oceania and Australasia that continue to impact on how this part of the world is seen from a distance as well as from within. The region of the antipodes has been occupied by European settlers and their descendants for a relatively short time.

The Merits of International Trade

Considering all the difficulties faced by developing countries in adapting to the rules-based system, why do they still remain in the WTO? Since the WTO has been careful to maintain a distance from those who wish to categorise it as a development organisation, why do the Member States still drive negotiations on a development platform especially under the Doha Round? One may ask whether indeed there is a correlation between the creation of trade rules and the attainment of increased opportunities, full employment, welfare gains, poverty alleviation, and higher standards of living. Since these issues are essentially those which are relevant in the domestic social and economic arena, how does multilateral co-operation assist the attainment of such objectives? Do trade rules not in fact undermine the ability of an internal government to decide on a trade and development regulatory structure which will respond to the particular needs and concerns of its internal environment?

This final chapter points to the incontrovertible response to all these questions: that indeed trade does offer an opportunity for development but it is an opportunity which can only be obtained by collective responsibility both at the multilateral, and at the domestic level. The arguments go back and forth on the merits of international trade rules. On the one hand, international regulation for the buying and selling of goods and services under the open trade conditions of the WTO system may adversely affect the national industries without domestic governments adopting restrictive measures to safeguard its domestic trade environment.

Understanding the WTO

The WTO is an umbrella organisation established after the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The WTO Agreement states that the Organisation is meant to provide the common institutional frame works for the implementation of those agreements. The basic functions of the WTO are:

• (a) to implement, administer, and carry out the WTO Agreement and its Annexes,

• (b) to act as a forum for ongoing multilateral trade negotiations,

• (c) to serve as a tribunal for resolving disputes, and

• (d) to review the trade policies and practices of member states.

The package of agreements is annexed to the WTO Agreement and is binding on all members of the organisation as a single body of law. Under Article II (2) of the WTO, the Multilateral Trade Agreements under Annex 1, 2, 3 are binding on all the members. Pursuant to Article II (3) however, Annex 4 on the Plurilateral Trade Agreements is binding only on members who have accepted it. These Agreements are geared towards the provision of a common institutional framework for the conduct of trade relations among Members of the WTO in matters related to the agreements and associated legal instruments included in the Annexes to the Agreement.

The reference to the WTO as a ‘rules-based’ system is due to the sophisticated structure of international trade regulation based on various trade agreements and also, by the compulsory dispute settlement system which includes a judicialstyle review mechanism.

The Agreements under the WTO are as follows:

• 1. The Final Act

• 2. Agreement Establishing the WTO

Annex 1A: Agreement on Trade in Goods

• 1. General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1994)

• 2. Uruguay Round Protocol to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

• 3. Agreement on Agriculture

• 4. Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures

• 5. Agreement on Textiles and Clothing

• 6. Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade

• 7. Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures

• 8. Agreement on Implementation of Article VI (on antidumping)

• 9. Agreement on Implementation of Article VI (on customs valuation)

• 10. Agreement on Preshipment Inspection

• 11. Agreement on Rules of Origin

• 12. Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures

• 13. Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures

• 14. Agreement on Safeguards

Annex 1B: General Agreement on Trade in Services

Annex 1C: Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Annex 2: Understanding of Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Dispute

Introduction

This chapter examines the circumstances that have encouraged the emergence of a consensus around democratic institutions and values in the Western Hemisphere during the Post-Cold War era. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the role and impact of the Organization of American States (OAS) in promulgating democratic institutions and values in Latin America and the Caribbean. This chapter examines the OAS in an effort to evaluate the degree of effectiveness that its actions and decisions have had in fostering reform in support for democracy as the most appropriate inter-governmental alternative among its member states. The consensus emerging around democratic institutions and norms in the Western Hemisphere is not perfect by any means, yet it is important to note that this consensus has progressively taken hold, and that the interruptions to democratic governments in the region have been increasingly infrequent and subject to punishment.

As a preamble to the chapter, the first section introduces the basic concepts that guide the discussion and identifies the conditions and specific moments in the period encompassed by the end the first Gulf War and the fall of the former Soviet Union in 1991, up to the time of the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata in November, 2005, which have either favored or frustrated the acceptance and internalization of democratic norms and values in the Western Hemisphere.

Addressing the Development Objective in Settling Trade Disputes

In the preceding chapters we have examined development in the context of the rules, the implementation, the challenges, and the initiatives adopted by the WTO. But the issue has not been left out of the dispute settlement process of the WTO. Particularly in the course of judicial review, the concept and how it is interpreted, indeed to what extent it is acknowledged, is fundamental to the perception of the WTO as an Organisation for development through trade.

Some developing country Member States have not been entirely satisfied that the dispute settlement process has furthered the development objective. They are not convinced that the DSB has always interpreted developing country domestic policies from a development perspective. They have expressed the view that ‘the Panels and Appellate Body have displayed an excessively sanitised concern with legalisms, often to the detriment of the evolution of a development-friendly jurisprudence’. To counter this perception, Qureshi first engaged in a careful study of several disputes which have centred on the development question. He subsequently opined that the development question ‘needs to be factored in at the level of drafting WTO Agreements; institutionalised in the very process of interpreting WTO Agreements; engineered in actual interpretations of WTO Agreements; and facilitated through the introduction of development friendly material in the judicial process’.

Some efforts have been undertaken at Secretarial level to facilitate developing country utilisation of the dispute settlement mechanism.

The Merits of International Trade

Considering all the difficulties faced by developing countries in adapting to the rules-based system, why do they still remain in the WTO? Since the WTO has been careful to maintain a distance from those who wish to categorise it as a development organisation, why do the Member States still drive negotiations on a development platform especially under the Doha Round? One may ask whether indeed there is a correlation between the creation of trade rules and the attainment of increased opportunities, full employment, welfare gains, poverty alleviation, and higher standards of living. Since these issues are essentially those which are relevant in the domestic social and economic arena, how does multilateral co-operation assist the attainment of such objectives? Do trade rules not in fact undermine the ability of an internal government to decide on a trade and development regulatory structure which will respond to the particular needs and concerns of its internal environment?

This final chapter points to the incontrovertible response to all these questions: that indeed trade does offer an opportunity for development but it is an opportunity which can only be obtained by collective responsibility both at the multilateral, and at the domestic level. The arguments go back and forth on the merits of international trade rules. On the one hand, international regulation for the buying and selling of goods and services under the open trade conditions of the WTO system may adversely affect the national industries without domestic governments adopting restrictive measures to safeguard its domestic trade environment. Thus from one perspective, it could be considered that ‘under certain conditions, open trade in goods leads to factor price equalisation with reduced returns to factors that are relatively abundant in other nations’. An example would be for instance, that should low-skilled labour be relatively abundant outside the United States, open trade in products intensively utilising such labour will lead to lower income for low-skilled American workers. In recent times, there may be more to this argument considering the resurgence of queries on the benefits of free trade and international rules to America which became a key issue in the 2008 American presidential race.

Brogues and Blarney—The Semeiotics of Language

From its earliest days, tourism has primarily involved the search for difference. Tourists leave home to experience something different, even when they insist on enjoying all the comforts of home. Ironically, however, they may find unpleasant—sometimes even frightening or disgusting—the very the differences they've set out to explore. Nevertheless, they travel to encounter sights and sensations considered unique to the host country. In this respect tourists are, as Dean MacConnell and Jonathan Culler have argued, semioticians, looking for signs of Frenchness, Englishness or Irishness. Inevitably, many such signs derive from and point back to stereotypes visitors hold regarding the host nation and its people. Moreover, this search for signs of foreign difference based on stereotypes manufactured back home may not reflect native realities. As Johathan Culler suggests, a “chanteuse” in Paris singing in English with a French accent may seem more “authentic” to an American tourist than if the woman sang in French. Similarly, tourists scanned the behavior, dress and speech of their Irish hosts for “authentic” signs of Paddy—based on stereotypes of British invention

Speech was one potential source for Irishness. Since many Irish stereotypes had been propagated in the theater, British tourists expected their hosts to sound like the Stage Irishman. However, in crossing the Irish Sea British visitors crossed several linguistic frontiers, taking them beyond Paddy's Stage-Irish drolleries.

Developing Countries and Barriers to Trade

Prior to the adoption of a rules-oriented system, there were barriers or trade restrictive measures which were identified under the GATT as ‘obstacles to international flows’ of goods and services. Such barriers made it impossible for producers and exporters to make meaningful gains from their economic endeavours, and for consumers to have a reasonable choice of goods and services. Davey et al analysed these obstacles on four levels. Generally, these were:

1. Governmental explicit obstacle to imported goods e.g. quantitative restrictions, subsidies, government procurement practices.

2. Governmental internal practice or regulations which have protective effects e.g. regulations requiring a higher standard of safety for imports, requirement that importers be licensed. The authors point out here that there is often a valid domestic governmental purpose such as consumer health or protection addressed by the regulation and that the problem is balancing the application of governmental measures for a legitimate purpose against the requirements of the international trading system to minimise obstacles to imports.

3. Problems which arise due to the importing structure of the importing country e.g. government ‘industrial policy’, the structure of industry.

4. Business practice (non-governmental) e.g. governmentally-induced practices such as directing a private firm to refuse to purchase foreign goods, restrictive business practices of private enterprises such as exclusive dealing arrangements, business practice and structure such as habits and preferences of businesses, cultural barriers including a dislike of certain brand names, or a willingness to pay a premium for certain quality or specialty goods. Here, Davey et al note that these preferences may require marketing expertise on the part of particular companies in order to allow them penetrate the market.

I took another look at five old films recently, films I hadn't seen since they first came out. And I'm sorry I did.

I had seen them for the first time at the Mayfair Theatre, an art-deco house in Miami, Florida, where I grew up (after being transplanted from New York City). And perhaps my once fond memories of the films I'm going to discuss are connected to the place where I first saw them – predictably, a place (1605 Biscayne Boulevard) where only a large mall, the Omni, now stands. The Mayfair was Miami's premiere art-house cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, showing lots of foreign films but also a fair sampling of the so-called New American Cinema. I used to drive there at night, alone, in my Austin-Healey as often as I could during my senior year of high school, as well as during summers and holidays away from college. Much to my parents' dismay, I liked seeing movies alone, and I liked driving my sports car downtown (from suburban, at the time even rural, Hialeah) to the theater where I'd see them.

I especially loved those tense moments just before the movie began, the sense of pure promise and incipience they held. Blissfully holding on to the bottom of my seat or the rails of my chair, I would play a little game with time, a game that had several variants, all of them designed to heighten the mystery of beginnings.