Morris Davis

Toward a Sociology of Public Transit

Short trips on public transit frequently exhibit stressful sociological characteristics. Passengers tend to view the vehicles as mono-instrumental conveyances and to evince a pronounced exit-orientation; but transit arrangements rarely facilitate an equitable order in departing. Severe limits on what one can see and whom one can look at further reduce the joy of riding. The folklore of public transit reinforces its situational deficiencies. Some unusual modes of transit do escape these difficulties; in the main, though, transit riders engage in various small conflicts and in low-level, but persistent and focused, games of anticipation.

Audits of international relief in the Nigerian Civil War: Some political perspectives

Information from four audits, or audit-like reviews, of international relief programs in the Nigerian-Biafran war sheds considerable light on the financial sources, scope, timing of flows, and cost-efficiency associated with that complex operation. Beyond their intrinsic interest, which is heightened by two of the documents remaining unpublished, such economic data bear heavily on many political aspects of the relief effort. For example, they permit examination of the relationship, and partial disjunction, between dominance in contributions (which was mainly governmental and particularly American) and leadership in administration (which was chiefly continental European and private). They also facilitate an assessment of the massive or token proportions of these endeavors, their capacity to anticipate rather than just respond tardily to predictable catastrophes, and the extent of their entanglement in the domestic and international power fields that characterized the Nigerian conflict. For all their rather divergent modi operandi, the leading role in the relief process of the two private umbrella organizations is clearly apparent; but so too is the limited ambit of even such comparatively massive relief work within the context of an on-going civil war.

The Functions of the Publics in Plato's Cities

ing, and most of the people who could do it, so far as mastery of the subject matter goes, cannot write lucidly enough for the purpose. Wl7ich leads into the subject of my next suggestion, if you wish to consider other pedestrian matters. How can foundations stimulate more lucid writing, not only in book reviews, but in synthetic treatises and above all in textbooks? Is it really necessary that in some fields almost every textbook be terribly dull, designed almost to discourage any introductory reader? Could foundations do something to help textbook writers, reviewers, etc., let their readers know what is important and what isn’t? If you tolerate further suggestions, I shall also want to say something about the tremendous importance of arranging for &dquo;mopping-up&dquo; operations-providing definite incentives for somebody to finish a report, left unfinished by the initial investigator, encouraging the editing for publication of inaccessible or difficult-to-read

The International Committee of the Red Cross and Its Practice of Self-Restraint

The way the International Committee of the Red Cross (hereinafter &dquo;ICRC&dquo; or &dquo;Committee&dquo;) sees itself differs from the impression that many other international relief agencies have of it. This interpretive disparity encumbers relief efforts that seek to ameliorate wartime suffering. It also suggests more massive difficulties in the larger world of international politics. For if the ICRC and its allies disagree about what the agency is like, the chances of an integrated perception linking those organizations and the parties to the conflict are virtually nil. The ICRC’s self-view is generally benign and positive. The Committee sees itself grounded in reality, flexible, properly innovative, fastgrowing, yet modest in demeanor. The feeling often met in adjacent agencies, by contrast, is that the ICRC is traditional and even uncreative, hide-bound, overly cautious, small scale, and wreathed in pride. Red Cross spokesmen usually trace the criticisms to misunderstanding; and hence advocate