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[EN] Waste-derived, soluble bin-based substances (SBO), are effective low-cost photosensitizers that could find application in pollutant photodegradation. For this reason, it is important to understand if and to what extent irradiation could modify their properties. The exposure of SBO to simulated sunlight induced important spectral and structural modifications. Both the whole material and its acid-soluble fraction were characterized, highlighting several properties in common with humic and fulvic substances, including absorption spectra, specific absorbance and fluorescence behavior. The latter was described with a three-component model using PARAFAC analysis. Irradiation induced SBO photobleaching, but the absorbance of the acid-soluble fraction increased with irradiation. This finding suggests a progressive photochemical solubilization of SBO, which is confirmed by the increase of the carboxylic groups. In addition to absorbance, the fluorescence of whole SBO was also decreased by irradiation, thereby suggesting that both chromophores and fluorophores were photodegraded. The increasingly hydrophilic character given to SBO by irradiation also accounted for the photoinduced decrease of the surfactant properties of the material. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ; This work was funded by the 7thFP IRSES-2010-269128-EnvironBos Marie Curie Action and by Ministero delle Politiche Agricole e Forestali (Agrienergia project). The authors are grateful to the following private and/or public Italian institutions: (a) Acea Pinerolese Spa in Pinerolo (TO) for supplying the SBO sourcing materials; (b) Studio Chiono ed Associati in Rivarolo Canavese (TO) for making available pilot equipment and services for the production of the SBO. ; Avetta, P.; Berto, S.; Bianco Prevot, A.; Minella, M.; Montoneri, E.; Persico, D.; Vione, D. (2015). Photoinduced transformation of waste-derived soluble bio-based substances. Chemical Engineering Journal. 274:247-255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2015.03.126 ; S ; 247 ; 255 ; 274

The literature of social movement outcomes is engaged with the study of social change. However, social movement theories limit the explanatory potential of social movements' political outcomes, only in relation to policy and institutional change. Therefore, they do not pay attention to the various political qualities which emerge from protest cycles and move away from institutional arrangements. Against this backdrop, the paper suggests approaching social transformations as changes in boundaries. Boundaries define, each time, the limits of social settings and describe organizational and identarian aspirations of social change in daily life. Periods of crises are characterized by intense transformations, which overcome the old and create new boundaries. Based on qualitative field research conducted in more than 50 social movement organizations in Greece, between 2016 and 2017, the paper analyses the mechanisms that facilitated the enlargement of social movements' cognitive and structural boundaries, towards service-oriented repertoires of action. By studying social movement outcomes through boundary transformations, the paper challenges the rigid categorizations of movement outcomes and unravels the interactions among their personal, cultural and political aspects. As such, it demonstrates the need for social movement theories to consider non-institutional political changes of daily life, within the study of movement outcomes.

This interdisciplinary endeavour portrays the central features of militant movements which hold totality as an important part of their doctrinal core. Revisiting the importance of modernity, utopianism, eschatology, charisma, psychology and the history of ideas, Mihai Murariu pursues a reconstruction of the historical requirements for the emergence of such movements. Making a central use of the concept of totalism, the work establishes a conceptual bridge from antiquity to the contemporary period, whilst also arguing for the suitability of the term in comparison to totalitarianism or political religion. The author also proposes a distinct taxonomy for structural elements, variants, and development phases which may be encountered in totalist movements. Contents • Totality and Totalism: Theory and Concepts • Evolving Perspectives: Eschatology and Utopia • The Totalist Types: Between Renovative and Utopian Strands • Totalism Transformed: Power, Purity, and Truth from Heterodoxy to Ideocracy • The Legion of the Archangel Michael and the "Hybrid" Totalist Type Target Groups • Lecturers and students of political science, security studies, history, sociology, philosophy • Academics, policymakers About the Author Mihai Murariu is an independent researcher, as well as a writer and essayist. His research interests focus on the roots of radicalism, modernity, terrorism, and the interplay between ideology, security and militant movements, and the challenges these bring about in contemporary pluralist societies.--

Abstract
While Singapore's education system claims to implement meritocratic ideals, official statistics indicate that Malay students in Singapore have been underperforming when compared to other ethnic groups (MOE 2012). This statistical representation raises the possibility of a politically induced, systemic inequality as a point of investigation. To investigate this seeming contradiction between the rhetoric and practice of equal educational opportunity, this paper proposes a philosophical and analytical synthesis for examining the 1979 policy report that provides the fundamental basis for Singapore's streaming education system. In examining this policy development, the analysis draws upon a combination of Foucault's archaeological method and Critical Discourse Analysis as a way of understanding conditions that made possible the continuous re-construction of new but unequal representation of learners. The findings suggest that complex relations between capability identification, justice, and ethics set the conditions for the appearance and transformation of subject positions necessary to legitimise unequal structural access.

The State, classical international actor, has had to readaption to the new dynamics in the International Society and has given prominence to other actors. In this logic, it´s relevant to analyze the role in the international system after the Cold War to evaluare whether it is still an actor capable of responding to the functional needs of the society. For this, reaffirms its commitment to multilateralism as a response to the main issue on the international agenda. Namely, is reactivated as an ideal tool to manage structural changes, despite the different interpretations of United States, the European Union or the BRICS. The object of this analysis contribute to the academic debate and focuses on studying the transformations of the State in the globalized international society where multilateralism has become a concept discussed and a common practice in the international discourse, despite its complexity and the different visions and interpretations by different actors. Multilateralism granted the State a path of cooperation and understanding as a guiding principle and foreign policy legitimizing discourse

Taking the phenomenon of empire as its starting point, this article seeks to provide a framework for addressing the question of how and why international systems change over time. Synthesising elements from network-relational analysis and practice theory, I argue that international systems are best thought of as being composed of multiple partially overlapping and interrelated hierarchical networks. These networks are made up of social ties – as in classic network analysis – but also of specific repertoires of practice. Systemic transformations happen through the reconfiguration of networks, both through shifts in social ties and through changes in their practices. Empire provides a particularly illuminating window into the topic of systemic change, in part because a major driver of historical transformations has been the expansion of empires and their encounters with other heterogeneous polities across the globe, and in part because a focus on imperial interactions highlights the limitations of existing unit-centric perspectives. Drawing on examples from the nineteenth century, I illustrate the usefulness of the framework by showing how different regionally anchored systems came into contact with the expanding spheres of Western empires and how such points of interaction contributed to the development of an increasingly global international system.

This article investigates impacts of the urbanization and globalization process in the city of Istanbul regarding to housing preferences and changing housing patterns. During the last two decades, Istanbul's socio-cultural and urban identities have been undergoing radical transformation. Globalization, internationalization and the rapid flow of information, as the case in the rest of the world, have played a significant role in changing the city and her people. The multi-dimensional outcomes of this transformation have manifested themselves through the peculiarities of activity patterns, behavioral relationships, social and cultural norms, as well as architectural and urban patterns. Process of economic and social change that occurs in our country and all over the world requires to, continuously, define urbanization and housing problems in the light of this change. In this context, it is essential to focus on the subject of quality of environment in newly formed urban areas. In the process of quality search in urban environment and especially in housing environment it is necessary to identify which objective determines the "of good quality environment". Based on these above arguments, article aims to analyze and discuss the transformation in the new housing developments in Istanbul in the context of quality of life issues. The article, which consists of five sections, has two three sections besides the introduction and conclusion. In the first part a theoretical framework is established, explaining and discussing culture, continuity and change in the process of urbanization. The second part includes the latest housing trends in Istanbul with the subjects of economical, cultural and political conditions that Turkey is already in and related. The Third part examines new residential patterns catering to the upper classes, which have been emerging in Istanbul since 1980 will be considered. We will, therefore, discuss the emerging patterns of social and cultural differentiation in Istanbul through the examples of the exclusive suburbs in the third part. At the end, we argue that recent housing projects and trends represent new forms of organizing social and cultural differences, and could be read as urban forms, which create segregation and reproduce ; publisher version

This book is about how the three most important countries in South America have responded to the challenges of globalization since the mid-1960s, the first OPEC price hike, the Third World debt crisis leading to the 'lost-decade' for the continent, and finally bold, but often ill-planned, neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s. Latin America will experience another cycle of structural changes in the coming decades, as the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s failed to produce the desired effects; social justice, fair income distribution, sustainable growth, and consolidation of democracy.

"The question at hand seems relatively simple and straightforward: whether and to what extent the protection and promotion of human rights is necessary for efforts to address conflict and build peace. The issue has been much debated over time. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights forcefully associated the protection of human rights with the prevention of violent conflict, stating that 'it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law' (UN 1948, preamble). Yet in 1996, an anonymous author in Human Rights Quarterly accused the international human rights movement of prolonging the war in Bosnia Herzegovina. There, human rights activists had rejected pragmatic deals that could have ended the violence and, from hindsight, were no worse than the eventual agreement in rewarding ethnic cleansing and aggression. In that author's view, it made 'today's living the dead of tomorrow' by pursuing a perfectly just and moral peace that would bring 'justice for yesterday's victims of atrocities' (Anonymous 1996, 259). Since then, the idea that the normative nature of human rights standards may complicate the practical demands of peacemaking has been a recurrent theme in discussions on the relationship between human rights and efforts to address violent conflict. This is especially the case when the latter is conceived of in terms of conflict settlement or resolution. Questions of definitions and objectives are thus key. Also relevant are the time frame, context and level of intervention one focuses on, though few authors on the subject make this explicit. In addition, narrow perceptions and generalizations abound in this debate as people working on human rights, peace and conflict have been grouped into categories of 'human rights activists' and 'conflict resolvers' as if these were homogenous and coherent clusters of actors. In this chapter, the authoress argues that considering human rights and conflict transformation in conjunction deepens one's analysis of what is involved in moving from violence to sustainable peace. It is informed by the idea that the two fill 'gaps' in one another, in that each contributes to a better understanding of the other by highlighting elements that are relatively under-explored in the theory and practice of each separate field. For conflict transformation, which will be the main focus here, the perspective of human rights forces a greater emphasis on structural conditions, especially the role of the state, systems of governance and issues of power in generating, escalating and transforming violent conflict. Considering human rights in relation to conflict transformation, moreover, highlights the need to employ a holistic, multidimensional understanding of human rights that does not reduce them to their legal foundations. This chapter suggests that conflict transformation, because of its explicit grounding in social justice, and hence inherently normative foundation, may provide a more nuanced and fruitful conceptual space for thinking about human rights, conflict and peace than conflict resolution and conflict management. Placing constructive social change at its core, conflict transformation acknowledges the need for addressing power imbalances and recognizes a role for advocacy and the importance of voices that challenge the status quo. Its concern with direct, structural and cultural violence is thus also highly relevant from a rights perspective. In order to place these ideas in context, the chapter will briefly comment on literature that has been published on human rights and approaches for addressing conflict and building peace (section 2). Section 3 proposes a framework for understanding the relationship between human rights and conflict transformation, using the metaphor of an iceberg, with its graphic image of things visible connected to matters unseen. It also introduces four dimensions of human rights that need to be taken into account in processes to build a just and sustainable peace. Section 4 discusses some of the practical implications of adopting a human rights perspective on conflict transformation. Nepal, South Africa, and other countries where the authoress has worked over the past 15 years, are used as illustrative examples throughout sections 3 and 4. Finally, section 5 concludes and points to some areas for further research." (excerpt)

Kenneth Waltz's recent book,Theory of International Politics, is one of the most important contributions to international relations theory since hisMan, the State and War. It picks up where the earlier work left off: with the structure of the international system serving as the basis for explaining a variety of international outcomes. The most profound and perhaps the most perplexing outcome Waltz attempts to explain is the lack of fundamental change in the international polity. The author argues that Waltz does not fully succeed in this endeavor for three reasons. First, his definition of structure fails to capture so momentous a change as that from the medieval to the modern international systems. Second, his application of the structuralist method leads him to ask questions in such a way that the answers systematically understate the degree of potential change in the contemporary international system. Third, his model of structural explanation turns out to allow only for a reproductive logic but not for a transformational logic. With the epistemological underpinnings of his theory thus biased against the possibility of change, it is not surprising that Waltz finds the likelihood of future continuity compelling. In the spirit of constructive criticism, this review article tries to amend and augment the theory in a manner that is not incompatible with its basic realist precepts.

Jacqueline Best argues that the changes in International Monetary Fund, World Bank and donor policies in the 1990s, towards what some have called the 'Post-Washington Consensus, ' were driven by an erosion of expert authority and an increasing preoccupation with policy failure. Failures such as the Asian financial crisis and the decades of despair in sub-Saharan Africa led these institutions to develop governance strategies designed to avoid failure: fostering country ownership, developing global standards, managing risk and vulnerability and measuring results. In contrast to the structural adjustment era when policymakers were confident that they had all the answers, the author argues that we are now in an era of provisional governance, in which key actors are aware of the possibility of failure even as they seek to inoculate themselves against it. This book considers the implications of this shift, asking if it is a positive change and whether it is sustainable