Suchergebnisse

An account of Uzbekistan's torture, imprisonment, and killing of its own people on political and religious grounds and the US response. It is claimed that the US has been largely supportive and uncritical of Uzbekistan, even while gross human rights abuses were obvious and widespread, taking a more critical stance only after the government massacred a group of peaceful demonstrators in Andijan numbering between 500 and 1,000. Prior to the incident in Andijan, the Uzbek government had a history of imprisoning and torturing individuals on the false claim that they were terrorists. The massacre in Andijan began with the protest of 23 Uzbek businessmen against the government's accusation that they were terrorists, an accusation that was preceded by conflict between the government and traders. Following the massacre, the Bush administration initially defended the Uzbek government and President Karimov, and its condemnation came days later than that of international organizations.

Ethical matters in research with children and young people, such as recruitment procedures and gaining informed consent, have been a fruitful ground for exploring issues such as power and protection, researcher responsibility and social versus individual good, that feature in all human research. It has also raised for debate the extent to which children and young people are similar to, or different from, adults and whether they require special protection to manage their involvement. A four-step process for recruiting young people into a qualitative research project is outlined. Young people were recruited as fully consenting participants and, at the same time, adult requirements that parents be informed and agree to their children's involvement was achieved. The process discussed enables the exercise of parental responsibility while not discounting the rights and needs of children for recognition of their agency and autonomy

This article explores the nature and formation of African-derived religions in Brazil and their importance for Black people's unity and resistance against historical denial and social exclusion. The history of the diversity, development, and leadership of these religions is traced succinctly. For centuries, they have been subject to racist stereotyping and police persecution. Today, although religious freedom is professed to be a constitutional right, persecution continues in the aggressive anti-African activity of evangelist Christian sects, often with the support of mass communications media. African religions come from two major cradles of civilization: the Congo and the Gulf of Guinea. Central African cultural heritage imprints a strong ancestral tone to contemporary African religions in Brazil, whereas the West African matrix has shaped their liturgical and visual presentation and given them intermediary deities. African religious communities have been a major agent of resistance and social cohesion.

Institutional approaches to explaining political phenomena suffer from three common limitations: reductionism, reliance on exogenous factors, and excessive emphasis on order and structure. Ideational approaches to political explanation, while often more sensitive to change and agency, largely exhibit the same shortcomings. In particular, both perspectives share an emphasis on discerning and explaining patterns of ordered regularity in politics, making it hard to explain important episodes of political change. Relaxing this emphasis on order and viewing politics as situated in multiple and not necessarily equilibrated order suggests a way of synthesizing institutional and ideational approaches and developing more convincing accounts of political change. In this view, change arises out of "friction" among mismatched institutional and ideational patterns. An account of American civil rights policy in the 1960s and 1970s, which is not amenable to either straightforward institutional or ideational explanation, demonstrates the advantages of the approach.

English
Mental health service users/survivors are subject to both mental health and disability policies, yet there appears to be an ambiguity in the approach of disability policy and disability politics to them. Mental health policy, which has always had powers to restrict their rights, is now increasingly associating mental health service users/survivors with 'dangerousness' and focusing on them as a threat to 'public safety'. Mental health service users'/survivors' organisations, which have so far tended to focus their activities on mental health policy and partnership approaches to making change, are now beginning to look to disability policy and politics to develop their thinking and activities for the future, while retaining their own distinct and independent identity. This has important implications for disability studies, policy and politics, and highlights the importance of addressing issues relating to mental health service users/survivors fully and equally.

Children born out of wedlock often suffer due to infrequent and limited interaction with the noncustodial parent. To address this issue, progams have been developed at the federal and state level that attempt to improve the access of noncustodial parents (primarily fathers) to their natural children. This article describes an access and visitation program and presents findings from a 6-month demonstration in two counties in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. The program assists noncustodial parents in establishing an access agreement with the custodial parent and in pursuing the establishment of their legal parental rights. In total, the demonstration involved over 100 noncustodial parents. This report documents the process of establishing and maintaining visitation agreements, and identifies the principle barriers to establishing visitation. The data on the program came from case files and administrative records and reflect status at 3–6 months after case opening and at case closure.

Institutional approaches to explaining political phenomena suffer from three common limitations: reductionism, reliance on exogenous factors, and excessive emphasis on order and structure. Ideational approaches to political explanation, while often more sensitive to change and agency, largely exhibit the same shortcomings. In particular, both perspectives share an emphasis on discerning and explaining patterns of ordered regularity in politics, making it hard to explain important episodes of political change. Relaxing this emphasis on order and viewing politics as situated in multiple and not necessarily equilibrated order suggests a way of synthesizing institutional and ideational approaches and developing more convincing accounts of political change. In this view, change arises out of "friction" among mismatched institutional and ideational patterns. An account of American civil rights policy in the 1960s and 1970s, which is not amenable to either straightforward institutional or ideational explanation, demonstrates the advantages of the approach. (American Political Science Review / FUB)

This article argues that the future of the European project depends on the capacity to maintain security. It traces the link between security and political institutions in the case of nation states and, subsequently, blocs. The security of nation states and blocs was defined in terms of the defence of borders against an external enemy and the preservation of law and order within borders. Today, the distinction between internal and external has broken down; 'new wars' are a mixture of war, organised crime and violations of human rights. Security can only be maintained through the extension of law and order beyond borders – through enlargement, migration and citizenship policies, and effective humanitarian intervention. Any other approach could lead to a reversal of the process of integration. This type of security policy is likely to be associated with a very different type of polity.

Education-business partnership in the United Kingdom has a long history. The promotion of links between the partners at all levels and in all sectors of the economy has become a service industry in its own right. In 1991, the UK government established a regional network of Education-Business Partnerships (EBPs) in an attempt to coordinate these activities. Education-business links embrace curriculum enrichment for students at all levels of education; professional development for teachers, lecturers, and business employees; and institutional development and mutual benefits arising from collaboration between educational institutions, business, and the wider community. The authors review the development of education-business links in the United Kingdom and raise a number of issues about definition and purpose. They discuss the difficulties of establishing an educational framework for industrial, commercial, and business enterprises and the economic and technological processes which operate within them.

This is an essay about the establishment and expanding roles of the colonial state in India, and their probable correlation with developments of Indian identity. As I have argued elsewhere, identities are always multiple, contingent and continuously constructed, so that traditions, also continually reinvented, are shared and reiterated practices and beliefs which reflect the collective memories of previous constructions. There is no analytical contradiction therefore between long-term civilizational continuities and emerging forms of 'constructed' identity. This paper is about a particular form of identity that is currently associated with concepts of public space and rights, and with the nation-state, or at least political and territorial units. For convenience I refer to it as 'modern Indian identity' because it has been defined and been growing in significance in the modern era; but no inference should be drawn that I consider it to be the only form in India.

This article analyzes the processes and stages through which individual actions undertaken to fulfill housing needs are transformed into collective actions when a group of individuals becomes aware of the scope and implications of its organization and participation in this endeavor and problematizes what it had assumed was "natural" about living in poverty. The author describes the stages of transforming an urban slum into an organized community, a process that includes the construction, improvement, and consolidation of people's dwellings; the provision of infrastructure, utilities, and facilities; and the evolution of social relations and the development of a sense of community that leads its members to seek collective solutions to their problems, demand respect for citizen's rights, and design strategies to fight for their achievement. These stages are based on information obtained from in-depth interviews with a sample composed of men and women residing in a Venezuelan barrio.

This paper examines the political controversy surrounding the building of Camp Sister Spirit, a feminist cultural and educational retreat for women, on 120 acres of land in rural Jones County, Mississippi. The intensity of the resulting confrontation with individuals and groups in nearby communities quickly raised the scope of conflict and attracted national media and political attention, including intervention by the Clinton administration and hearings by the Subcommittee on Civil Rights of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. In discussing this ongoing controversy, we locate Camp Sister Spirit in the history of the search for alternative community and analyze the nature and rhetoric of the conflict between the camp and some of the citizens of the small town of Ovett, Mississippi, as a complex moment in the tension between the competing languages and value systems of individualism and community in the American political culture.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [263]-275) and index ; The Asian region is seeing the largest expansion of telecommunications in history. From rural communications to information superhighways, the demand for equipment and services is the fastest growing in the world. What is driving it? How is it to be financed? Where will the equipment come from? Trade in telecommunications and related information and media services is also growing rapidly throughout the region, and is forcing many Asian governments to respond and protect their national interest. At the same time, local Asian companies are becoming regional players in their own right. This book is a timely examination of all these issues. The authors are leading specialists in their areas of telecommunications and media. They have provided the most searching analysis, and the most detailed and comprehensive account ever published of telecommunications in the developing economies of Southeast and East Asia ; published_or_final_version

An obsession with constitutional reform characterized Canadian politics between 1987 and 1992. This reflected the failure of traditional mechanisms for bridging linguistic and regional differences in Canada, and the spirit of contentiousness and rightsconsciousness that has been encouraged since the passage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. These efforts to reform the constitution failed. In the 1992 referendum a majority of both French- and English-speaking Canadians, and majorities in 6 of the 10 provinces, rejected proposals supported by the country's political and economic elites. Support for the reform proposals was greatest among the more affluent parts of Canadian society. Despite the fact that both French and English Canada rejected the proposed reforms, their reasons for doing so were quite different. In the wake of this failure, the terms of a reconciliation between the aspirations of French and English Canada are elusive as ever.

The British Union of Fascists dealt with the contradictions between its fascist ideology and certain institutions and values dominant in Britain in the 1930s. The economic and social conditions in Britain provided the back-cloth from which the BUF's ideology and policies emerged.While critical of Parliament as inadequate for coping with a modern economy, the BUF had to take account of the depth of public attachment to elections and democracy. Corporate state proposals were presented as expressing the British habit of teamwork, and popular control over fascist governments was envisaged via plebiscites. Unusually for fascists, the BUF distinguished between public obligations and private rights and this because of the dominance of individual liberty in the collective conscience.Finally, the specific co-existence of the modern and the archaic in the BUF's discours in terms of British social and historical factors has to be stressed.