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“Men make their own history,

but they do not make it just as they please;

they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves

but under circumstances directly encountered,

given and transmitted from the past.”

–Karl Marx

“Men make their own history,

but they do not make it just as they please;

they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves

but under circumstances directly encountered,

given and transmitted from the past.”

Over one dozen books have been written about historically black colleges and universities over the last 15 years. However, not one of the volumes published addresses this cohort of institutions from a global dimension. Each of the books ignores the reality that there are institutions of higher education populated by persons of African descent scattered around the globe. Equally, the emergent literature is silent on issues of racial stratification; consequently, treating black colleges as homogenous monoliths. This quiesance ignores the important tension of racial oppression/white supremacy, social stratification, and the persistent hegemony of power in societies with black populations. In this commencing chapter, there are two primary explorations: (1) the particularities of race and identity in black colleges in the United States, and (2) the nexus between race and culture in black colleges outside of the United States. In order to properly contextualize this diorama, it is imperative to examine the meaning of diaspora, the realities of racial stratification, and the ways in which hegemony can be unsettled and usurped.

Books and periodicals on aeronautics: A buying list

In my book, Rural Rebels, I examined the nature of two protest movements in Kenya and discussed their determinants. Here I will attempt a more general explanation of protest movements in colonial Kenya addressing the question of why they clustered among certain tribes and in certain areas and not in others. The fact that movements were not randomly distributed throughout the country but clustered, suggests that any explanation of causation that focuses merely on culture contact, or on colonialism or one of its aspects, is inadequate because these are not sufficient causes in themselves. The questions that need to be answered are, under what conditions does colonialism or culture contact lead to the occurrence of protest movements? Any adequate explanation should be able to account for their appearance in one area, and absence in another, within a particular country. Secondly, within tribes and particular areas, what are some of the factors involved in support for, and opposition to, colonialism? Third, why was the protest movement such a common response? The following analysis tries to answer these questions, however tentatively.

The brewing industry in the Netherlands is an industry of great importance, and the brewers of lager beer in that country have established a first‐rate reputation in foreign markets throughout the world. Two kinds of lager beer are exported, one in cask, the other in bottle. It also appears from the official figures given in the Jaarstatistick for 1933 that a relatively large amount of beer is imported in casks. This seems to come mainly from Germany. There is no suggestion that this importation is part of the transit trade, and yet the quantity of the imported cask beer is considerably in excess of that which is exported. The number of litres imported each year from 1930 to 1933 are in round numbers as follows:—4 million in 1930, 4·3 million in 1931, 4 million in 1932, and 3 million in 1933. The exports of cask lager for these years are 3·8, 3·4, 2·5, 2 27 millions of litres. The nature of the beer so imported is not stated, it is returned simply as “beer,” but if the declared value is to be taken as any indication of quality, then we may say that the value of the imported cask beer is to that of the exported cask beer in the ratio of about two to three.

We published last month a letter from Mr. E. A. Savage, who is acting as Secretary to the new Library Association Committee on Technical Libraries, which gave us great gratification, since it showed us that the inactivity of the Association is being broken in a useful direction. To the Committee in question is referred the subject of how to strengthen technical libraries in industrial centres, but now we understand that the reference has been widened, with wisdom we think, to include scientific libraries. How it will proceed is not yet apparent, but several things suggest themselves. First, the Committee will collect information as to what resources exist, and to what extent they are accessible to, and used by, the public, with, we hope, the means that are taken to advertise them. Secondly, it is to be hoped that the Committee will invite co‐operation in discussing and propagating means of improving such collections. Thirdly, it is devoutly to be expected that the Association, fortified by the researches of the Committee, will approach the various Government commissions and committees now considering technical and other education, with a plea to be heard upon these things. Mr. Savage told us that a questionnaire to elicit information was being prepared, and invited suggestions, and we hope that his letter has received the attention it merited. Delay is the one thing to be guarded against, as it is all too probable that while we are gathering information, the Government bodies referred to may have concluded their investigations and have made their reports, which in that case it is almost certain will contain few if any references to public libraries. We hope, therefore, that the circular of questions has been drawn up. At the time of writing there are no signs of its appearance, which is not a satisfactory matter, seeing that the Committee was appointed more than two months ago. If the Committee is to occupy a whole year in reaching its conclusions the value of the work will be negligible—days rather than weeks or months are important at present. Then, we appeal to librarians to furnish information directly it is requested; dilatoriness in such a case would be unpardonable, and all who have had to do with circularising the profession know how prone librarians are to the postponement of answers. It is desirable that information should be definite: not only the extent of collections, as shown by statistics of volumes, but also their quality should be elicited. The usual lists of libraries, year‐books and similar works, mention the various special collections owned by the libraries listed; but the “special collections” of music, art, &c, which figure there are often too limited to deserve such mention except with qualifications.

Despite the attention that Charles Sanders Peirce and Herbert Blumer dedicated to semiosis, symbolic interactionism still clearly lacks a theory of the sign. Attempts to appropriate Saussurean semiology and deconstruction have been made, but these have often resulted in, respectively, denying the importance of interaction and interpretation, or in implying the demise of meaning. In this article I propose an interpretive analytics of the sign by building upon Peircean semiotics and social semiotics. I examine the sign as a tripartite process of relations among object, representamen, and interpretant and analyze processes of production, distribution, and consumption of signs, and how these processes are shaped by power dynamics. I discuss how socio-semiotic codes are constituted through specific ideological discursive practices, and how these discursive practices are contingent on exo-semiotic conditions. Finally, I reflect on the importance of this approach for the continued growth of symbolic interactionism.