Suchergebnisse

This special issue, entitled "Post-AIDS' and Global Health Discourses: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,' emerged from a one day Medical Humanities symposium at the Leeds Centre for Medical Humanities, at the University of Leeds, England, on February 27th 2015. This special issue focusses on the perceived deprioritising of HIV and AIDS in the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, that were launched in 2015. The SDGs function as policy benchmarks for all entities within the United Nations system and they supersede the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, which expired in 2015. As the word millennium indicates, the MDGs were launched in 2000 and 2015 was designated as the benchmark year when the successes and shortcomings of the MDGs would be critically assessed. One key difference between the MDGs and the SDGs, which D'Ambruoso foregrounds (2013), is that the writing process underpinning the SDGs involved lengthy consultations, and feedback, with communities and health care practitioners around the world. By contrast, because the MDGs were mainly written by government officials, policy makers and health care practitioners without consulting wider communities, the processes underpinning the SDGs consultations are more inclusive than the MDGs. What is most critical about the SDGs for this special issue, however, is that they reflect a clear shift away from 'HIV exceptionalism' and towards what critics have described as 'post-AIDS' rhetoric, specifically when one compares the MDG health goal 6 and the SDG health goal 3.

The dissertation elaborates on topics that are related to (i) intergenerational transfers of wealth and to (ii) how government ideology and elections influence outcomes (income inequality and budget consolidation) and political processes (fiscal planning and policy advice). The dissertation consists of six studies. The first study investigates the determi-nants of inter vivos transfers of firm ownership. The results show that owners of larger firms, and firms with strong current business conditions, transferred ownership at higher rates than others. Inter vivos transfer rates also rose following a 2009 tax reduction on transfers of business assets. The second study delves into how the 2009 transfer tax re-form influenced individual inter vivos transfers in Germany. The results do not show that the reform influenced transfers within the nuclear family, whereas transfers to close relatives and to unrelated recipients increased by about 30 percent. The third study de-scribes how government ideology and globalization were associated with top income shares in OECD countries. The fourth study shows that German state politicians' and governments' words differed from actions regarding budget consolidation and the Ger-man debt brake. The fifth study describes how government ideology and upcoming elections influenced fiscal planning in German states. The results show that East German state governments underestimated the size of government in pre-election years. The sixth study investigates how ideological positions of German economic research insti-tutes influenced policy advice in the Joint Economic Forecast.

The dissertation studies the influence of military mass mobilization on the top income shares in the society, and therefore on inequality levels, in the United States and Europe over the last one hundred years. More precisely, one of the main results in this work shows that when the individual external fighting effort in a conflict with another country is high, thus during military mass mobilization, then the internal fighting efforts for appropriation or rent seeking between rich and the rest of the society decrease, and in turn the inequality levels inside the society are lower. On the contrary, during periods of professional army, thus when the individual external fighting effort is low, then inside the society the internal fighting efforts for appropriation or rent seeking between rich and the rest of the society increase, and in turn the inequality levels increase. These implications are shown using models of inequality and conflict that are based on contest success functions. The dissertation also includes statistical evidence in support of the main hypothesis of this work. Several statistical tests are presented that show that periods of conscription are correlated with low levels of the top 1 and top 10 percent income shares using data over the last one hundred years. The dissertation ends with an analysis of the cases considered from North America and Western Europe. A comparative analysis and difference in difference method is employed to distinguish between different periods and systems.

The judgment of Mr. Justice Wright in Masterman-Lister v Jewell and Home Counties Dairies and Masterman-Lister v Brutton & Co., [2002] EWHC 417 (QB), which was handed down on 15 March 2002, is the most important decision so far in English law on the meaning of the term 'patient'. This, of course, is one of the two disabilities recognized in CPR Part 21. It is also the cornerstone of the Court of Protection's jurisdiction under the Mental Health Act 1983.Section 94(2) of that Act defines a 'patient' as someone who is 'incapable, by reason of mental disorder, of managing and administering his property and affairs.' There are two prerequisites. A person must (a) have a mental disorder, and (b) as a consequence, be incapable of managing and administering his property and affairs.'Mental disorder' is defined in the legislation, but the incapacity to manage one's property and affairs is not, and this is where Sir Michael Wright's decision has filled a void, and possibly opened a debate. In fact, he said nothing startlingly new, but the significance of his judgment is that it will be widely reported, whereas previous decisions on the meaning of incapacity to manage one's property and affairs have been inaccessible, either because they were unreported, or because they emanated from other common law jurisdictions, whose reports are only available in a few very specialist libraries.

Private military and security companies do not operate in a complete legal vacuum. The inherently transnational nature of the so called market for force, however, makes traditional single state regulation insufficient. Ensuring control over the private military industry is thus a complex endeavour involving a broader network of actors alongside states, such as international and nongovernmental organizations, private customers and the industry itself. In order to unravel the challenges produced by the emergence of a PMSI and show the need for a multilayered and multifaceted approach to regulation, this paper will focus on three basic questions. First, it will analyze what to regulate, exploring the nature and the activities of PMSCs. In addition, it will explicitly focus on why the market should be regulated by drawing on the literature on the control over military force. Finally, it will concentrate on how to regulate, approaching the issue from two different standpoints. On the one hand, it will explore the main regulatory tools available to public actors, analyzing the potential of a combined approach based on both legal and informal regulation. On the other, it will look at the challenges and the potential of regulation at different levels. After analyzing the role of home, contracting and territorial states, the final sections will focus on different avenues for international regulation and on the need for EU action, whose potential in regulating the market appears huge and, to date, insufficiently exploited.

In this study I examine the inter-relationship between literature and revolution in modern Ireland and Spain. I concentrate on the period 1913 to 1923 in regard to Irish affairs, a decade that saw the re-emergence of the militant politics in 1913, the 1916 Easter Rising, the Anglo-Irish War and subsequent internecine conflict, as well as the European War of 1914-18. My analysis of revolutionary literature in Spain focuses on the years 1930 to 1939, which encompasses the collapse of the Primo de Rivera military dictatorship and concomitant rise of the Second Spanish Republic in 1930, the workers' rising in the Asturias in October 1934, and the Civil War of 1936-39. In examining the literature of these revolutions I deal primarily with the work of four writers: Patrick Pearse and JE (George Russell) in relation to the Irish revolution, and Manuel Azana and Rafael Alberti in regard to events in Spain during the period under discussion. These writers were all leading figures in the cultural and political developments of their day and, as such, exerted an important influence on the development of their countries? respective revolutions. As well as presenting a detailed analysis of their writings, therefore, my analysis also considers how their work impinged upon the broader literary and social events of their time. ; TARA (Trinity's Access to Research Archive) has a robust takedown policy. Please contact us if you have any concerns: rssadmin@tcd.ie

All recycling in India is undertaken by (and via) the informal sector. This sector includes waste-pickers, small middlemen, transporters, larger middlemen and Anally, reprocessors. These self-employed people play a very important role in urban waste management as they provide a service which the urban municipalities cannot provide given their current institutional framework. Although the sector of informal waste managers is critical to solid waste-handling in India, the sector is unable to optimise its work due to lack of social legitimacy or legal rights over waste-processing, which makes it vulnerable to intimidation. Additionally, due to lack of awareness and specific skills, as well as very poor working conditions and poor access to basic facilities, this sector has so far been unable to make its recycling efficient and profitable. With certain changes in the policies relating to recycling and ownership of waste, there can be a synergetic relationship between the recycling sector, the existing relevant laws, and waste-handling in India that can significantly improve the efficiency of the sector and enhance financial returns to the waste-pickers and reprocessors. Such policy changes as provision of legal rights over solid waste to waste-pickers and organisation of waste-pickers into cooperative groups, can further the interests of these marginalised groups and maximise their profits, in addition to substantially improving solid waste management in the city.

Abstract Although it never formally participated, the British government described the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and relations with China more broadly in strikingly positive terms between 2015 and 2019. Nonetheless, by late 2019 and amidst a sharp deterioration in relations, the prospect of the UK joining the BRI had more or less disappeared from the government's agenda. This article argues that there was not a ruptural policy break. While there was a turnaround, there were also significant numbers of short-run policy zigzags. The principal reason for this instability, the article argues, lies in the relatively weak character of the UK-China policy regime which was an amalgam that sought to accommodate and integrate three different ideational clusters. Such amalgams are inherently unstable and policies drawn from them are likely to change quickly in response to internal tensions as well as exogenous events and developments. Given this, British policy towards China moved quickly and erratically between a "golden era", a repudiation of this as "naïve", and the designation of China as a "systemic challenge". Within this context, expressions of enthusiasm for the BRI were displaced by uninterest or scepticism.

Abstract Economic and military power have rested on the possession of metallic minerals for many centuries; far longer than has been the case with hydrocarbons. Since minerals are unevenly distributed around the world, there have been many instances in history where countries have sought to bolster or extend their power by the acquisition of minerals from others through trade or through territorial expansion (empire-building). This article explores the interplay of mining, metals and power, through case studies of Ancient Rome, Spain during its colonisation of South and Central America, Britain's maritime empire, and the Soviet Union's belated and rapid industrialisation during the twentieth century. These case studies serve to make the point that current concerns in the USA, Europe, Japan and China about the vulnerability of their economies and military capabilities to the disruption of mineral supplies from overseas are nothing new, although the range of minerals now used, the complexity of modern supply chains and prevailing geopolitical norms suggest that there may not be too much in the historical record to assist these countries and regions address their concerns.

This article explores the escalation of tensions surrounding Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, when a protracted war of national liberation escalated sharply into an international crisis. Rather than see Angola as merely a proxy war, the article depicts the varied responses to Angolan anti-colonial nationalism as consequences of "internationalization," or the deliberate and endogenous process of framing the struggle for Angolan independence in global terms. By establishing Angolan independence as part of a worldwide battle against imperialism, racism, and Western hegemony in the early 1960s, and by raising the issue in international forums, creating transnational support networks, and operating across borders and oceans, the Angolan national liberation movements created the ideological and political preconditions for the military interventions and Cold War political theater of the 1970s. Angola thus demonstrated how national liberation movements, as transnational actors, learned to operate within the international system to gain necessary material and moral support but also provoked the ire of more powerful external actors who had their own political and ideological reasons for opposing a pro-Soviet regime in Angola.

China's role in Southeast Asia is of a multi-dimensional nature and, as in the case of all small and medium powers that are forced to deal with the presence of a great power in their midst, the Southeast Asian nations have to negotiate and mediate China's presence. The resulting conduct of foreign policy, foreign economic policy and security policy towards China is no longer based on the strategic considerations of insulated government elites, but are the result of complex decision-making processes which are also influenced by non-governmental actors. Consequently, foreign policy-makers have to reconcile international and domestic priorities and demands. Loosely based on Robert Putnam's analytical framework of "two-level games", this article looks at two case studies which highlight the interlinked reality of international and national agendas. First, the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), which was initially and enthusiastically embraced by ASEAN for general political reasons, and second, the conflicts in the South China Sea where the Southeast Asian claimants are carefully trying to balance a multilateral approach towards China (via ASEAN) with their specific national interests.

In their resonant and evocative stories – Billy Budd, Sailor and 'The Prussian Officer' – Herman Melville and D. H. Lawrence adopt military settings for a personal drama. In both tales, two men come into close and dangerous proximity, resulting ultimately in their deaths. Michael Squires has argued that the Lawrence story, "revealing the secret origin of abuse, shows the Captain punishing what he cannot consciously desire". This comment could also be applied to Melville's introspective and ambiguous novella (which has been subject to diverse interpretations), suggesting a motive for John Claggart's persecution of the innocent Billy. Furthermore, secret abuse and subconscious desire are certainly prevalent within Benjamin Britten's operatic version of Melville's tale, with libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier. When it is considered that Forster had almost certainly read Lawrence's controversial story of military insubordination, bullying, murder and repressed homoerotic desire, a fascinating and complex pattern of inter-connection begins to emerge. Below, I will attempt to tease out the most significant connections by examining both stories alongside the subsequent recasting of Billy Budd as an opera.

In this article, I discuss prospects for democracy in the Middle East. I argue, first, that some democratic experiments—for instance, Egypt under Mohammed Morsi—are not in keeping with etymological and historical meanings of democracy; and second, that efforts to promote democracy, especially as exemplified in U.N. documents emphasizing universal rights grounded in Western traditions, are possibly totalitarian and also colonialist and hence counter to democratic ideals insofar as they impart one set of values as the only morally acceptable ones. A respectful dialogue in which people from both regions strive to understand conditions giving rise to certain social practices would be more productive than morally superior attitudes, and help all to see areas where their respective cultures could be improved. I conclude by discussing concepts of democratic and pragmatic faith articulated by John Dewey and William James, arguing that democracy will continue to flounder in the Middle East so long as the basic trust implied in these concepts is lacking; and how Westerners might consider this a cautionary tale regarding social attitudes and public policies contrary to democratic life in their own countries.

Humour and laughter have become the subject of recent geopolitical scrutiny. Scholars have explored the affirmative and liberatory possibilities of humour, and the affective bodily dimensions of laughter as tools for transformative action in critical geopolitics. Humour that is vulgar and politically ambiguous is yet to be explored as a potent geopolitical avenue of enquiry. Studies of satire have suggested that rather than contesting entrenched geopolitical beliefs, satirical shows can serve to further divide audiences both amenable and antagonistic to the satire in question. I argue that this should not involve a wholesale rejection of satirical shows, as humour that uses irony, subversion, and other discursive techniques is just one way satirical media becomes an effective commentator on political issues. I examine the show South Park and argue its satire combines bodily and scatological humour with more traditional satirical techniques to produce a comedy that ridicules contemporary issues by reducing complex politics to the most basic and crass condition possible. This is defined in a Bakhtinian sense of the body grotesque, a social inversion through reference to the common bodily functions of all human beings.