פרסומים

This paper proposes to break through the current divide between legal proportionality and policy analysis, and suggests that policy-making should and can be conducted in a way that facilitates the proportionality doctrine, while the latter is adapted to the unique goals and practices of policy analysis. Such integration of proportionality in policy analysis can streamline the consideration of fundamental rights in the policy-making process and consequently increase their protection. We further suggest that the proposed integration of proportionality in policy analysis may complement the limitations of courts in performing judicial review of policy, by offering courts procedural criteria, in addition to the often contested substantive criteria. We begin with a brief presentation of the two domains. Next, we review key differences between the practice of judges and policy-analysts, with the aim of designing the stages of policy analysis in a manner that suits its unique characteristics. Drawing on these foundations, we propose broad guidelines for a normative model of policy analysis that accommodates the requirements of proportionality. Lastly, we consider and discuss the implications of this potential development in policy analysis for the practice of judicial review of public policy.

This article examines what I call ‘pulsing’ – visible surges of pedestrian activity. It applies a selection of Torsten Hägerstrand’s time-geographic vocabulary in an ethnographic case-study of Mitzpe Ramon, a small Negev Desert town in Israel, illustrating how various spatio-temporal constraints shape flows of walking at daily, weekly, and annual scales. Pulsing, I argue, simply but powerfully communicates when events of collective interest occur, where, for which groups, and at what volumes. Pulsing embodies cultural practices through mobilities, and shapes community norms. Extending beyond this particular example, I also suggest that the concept of pulsing advances understandings of synchrony and synchory in collective pedestrianism and mobilities more broadly, including pilgrimage, urban rhythms, commuter patterns, periodicity, rush hours, and the filling and emptying of public space.

Mary Seacole’s memoir Wonderful Adventures is recognized for its negotiation of various genres of Victorian writing, including autobiography, travel writing, the slave narrative, and a burgeoning Caribbean tradition of letters. It is a text which is usually interpreted through conventions of Empire, or through the lens of Postcolonial studies. Attempting to bridge this either/or approach, this article focuses on Seacole’s construction of narrative commonalities: I ask, why would a woman so clearly bent on defying the limitations placed on her by gender and race, and whose achievements appear so exceptionally individual, undergird her narrative with constant references to collective identities — often in their most stereotypical abstractions? To answer this question, I engage in close readings that explore the tension between the typical and the specific though Seacole’s use of terminology, focalization and passive voice, and the repeated use of antiphonal structures such as an AAB pattern. I show how Seacole’s self-representation, and her reference to black communities and individuals, draw on trickster sensibilities, thus expanding previous readings of her text that consider her either subversive or complicit in the imperial project. I suggest that Seacole injects Jamaican and black Atlantic sensibilities into her text, even as she uses Victorian rhetorical devices, making the two traditions complementary — as they seem to be in her life.

March 2021: Ruth S. Wenske is a postdoctoral researcher at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she also serves as head the Africa Unit at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. Her main research area is contemporary Anglophone African realism with a focus on self-writing, having published articles on the novels of Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe, and Binyavanga Wainaina. Her secondary research focus is on the connection between literature and literacy in questions of language and pedagogy, including a joint research project with Makerere University on the implementation of the Mother Tongue reform in Ugandan primary schools. She has taught courses on African literature and culture at the Program of Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University, and at the University of Haifa, where she completed her PhD at the English Department. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2246-6867