Suchergebnisse

This article explores the multiple ways in which the 1934 massacre of peasants in Ránquil in the Chilean Andean region of Lonquimay has been remembered and explained in Chile across the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. With the rise of the left and internal Communist Party debates in the 1930s, Ránquil first became an emblem of popular resistance and the unity between Mapuche and non-Mapuche peasants who were willing to sacrifice all in the name of revolution. During the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, Ránquil was one of several massacres transformed into narratives of popular heroism that were used as emblems to support the construction of a new and more inclusive national community. Yet because of Ránquil's unique location along the southern frontier where Chilean expansion into Mapuche territory created a rupture in the national imaginary that has yet to be closed, the presence of Mapuche peasants in the massacre continues to be debated until the present day. Ránquil is therefore an especially meaningful example of how debates over memory can serve as windows into the deeper conflicts and anxieties present in any society.

The middle class is primarily an urban phenomenon generally
associated with professional occupations, service sector and salaried
jobs. Yet despite a general acceptance of the important economic,
political and social role that the middle class plays in society, the
term itself remains ambiguous and arbitrary. In much of recent
literature the middle class is equated with middle income which does not
reflect what "class" refers to in classical writings. The present paper
takes a multidimensional approach to measure the middle class in
Pakistan through a weighted composite index that takes into account all
possible factors associated with the concept, including income,
occupation, education, housing and lifestyle. Using the Pakistan Social
and Living Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2007-08, the magnitude of the
middle class in the country, as represented by the "expanded middle
class", is estimated at around 35 percent of the total population. The
proposed measure of the middle class has a sense of stability attached
to it, making it less susceptible to sudden inflationary shocks than an
income-based measure. JEL classification: Z13, R20, A14 Keywords:
Pakistan, Middle Class, Multidimensional

AbstractFor all the attention paid to the economic, social, and moral dimensions of prostitution in Thailand, no scholar has thus far conducted an empirical study of the relationship between the vice and political change in the countryside, where most sex workers come from. Using the case of Phayao Province in northern Thailand, I attempt to redress this lacuna. I show how rampant prostitution, the most acute social issue in Phayao, has ushered in the rise to power of one virtuous woman from an ethnic minority family—Ladawan Wongsriwong. Located on the economic and social margins of Thailand, many village families in Phayao traditionally relied on prostitution for income, causing a massive influx of young girls into the lucrative sex industry in Bangkok and abroad. In the 1990s, however, AIDS started taking a heavy toll on Phayao's small population. Against this backdrop, Ladawan emerged as a prominent female leader in the male-dominant rural society of Phayao by conducting an extensive issue-oriented campaign against prostitution. This case questions much of the literature on rural politics and female leadership in democratizing Southeast Asia that underestimates the importance of social issues.

This article examines the trajectories and approaches to public policy making in Africa. Using process tracing interlaced with analysis of historical records, secondary literature, and elite interviews, the article shows that since the 1990s, policy making in some African countries, especially Ghana, has been witnessing a gradual shift away from bureaucratic approaches to policy making to the ones that directly engage the citizenry through consultation and open public participation. The article shows that this shift to citizenry participation is largely due to an emphasis in the development literature on good governance broadly defined to include public participation, and the view of civil society as a platform for social transformation. The article provides a step-by-step analysis of strategies used in recent social security reforms in Ghana to illustrate this change in approach to public policy, and shows that public participation approach to policy making is fraught with several structural challenges and impediments that not only privilege elites' preferences over the unorganized rural dwellers but also questions some of the fundamental principles of the good governance mantra.

The strength of a weak institution. The case of a European information agency To understand how information produced by European agencies contributes to the convergence of individual state policies it is often necessary to study the venues where experts, policy makers, representatives of interest groups or civil society, etc., socialize. In particular, it is argued that those venues and arenas are key settings where social learning process takes place. It is not as common, however, to study the conditions under and the processes by which information is generated within/by those agencies. This type of analysis could nevertheless be of interest for better understanding the elementary mechanisms that compose socialisation and social learning processes : by analysing the actual production process of information, one can disclose what are the peculiar nature and features of this information and according to which it is considered as true, reliable or legitimate by actors evolving in European arenas, networks and institutions. It helps explaining the efficacy of ideas, i.e. their capacity to circulate, to convince and, finally, to affect the behaviours of its main targets.

AbstractThis is a survey study of 43 judges from the British House of Lords, the Caribbean Court of Justice, the High Court of Australia, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and the Supreme Courts of Ireland, India, Israel, Canada, New Zealand and the United States on the use of foreign law in constitutional rights cases. We find that the conception of apex judges citing foreign law as a source of persuasive authority (associated with Anne-Marie Slaughter, Vicki Jackson and Chris McCrudden) is of limited application. Citational opportunism and the aspiration to membership of an emerging international 'guild' appear to be equally important strands in judicial attitudes towards foreign law. We argue that their presence is at odds with Ronald Dworkin's theory of legal objectivity, and is revealed in a manner meeting his own methodological standard for attitudinal research.Wordsworth's words, written about the French Revolution, will, I hope, still ring true: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven.– Justice Stephen Breyer's assessment of 'the global legal enterprise now upon us' before the American Society of International Law (2003)

AbstractWork has been ongoing, at least since Newton's Principia, to develop a science of life and social phenomena equivalent to the natural sciences such as physics and chemistry. Currently, such a science does not exist. This paper provides the foundation for a science of life and society. The hypothesis of this paper is that the methodologies used to develop the extant natural sciences can be used as a model for developing a natural (hard) life and social science. The natural sciences are typified by identification of fundamental phenomena, measurement of and measurement units for these phenomena and formal equations for the relations among these phenomena. Information is identified as a fundamental phenomenon of life. The natural science methodology is used to develop units of measure for information, and formal equations are developed among behaviours, structural characteristics, available energy and information. This paper shows that information is a measurable universal phenomenon that causes the behaviours of living systems. These developments validate the hypothesis and provide the foundation for natural living systems science. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Este artículo sostiene que la ciudadanía política es formulada por Esteban Echeverría como un producto histórico-institucional del progreso que, gradualmente, con la labor pedagógica de los capaces se ampliará a toda la sociedad. La ciudadanía política, escala meritocrática entre el municipio y el gobierno nacional, es una solución al problema del desajuste producido entre la ley electoral de 1821 implementada en el Estado de Buenos Aires y la inexperiencia del Río de la Plata en materia de gobierno representativo. Para enmendarlo propondrá "organizar la democracia" en base a la "soberanía de la razón" o el gobierno de los capaces. ; In this ar ticle we propose that citizenship is for Esteban Echeverría an historical and institutional result of gradual pedagogical work of illustrated people by which they will extend political liberty throughout society. Citizenship, as meritocratic scale between local and national government is for Echeverría a solution to the problem of incompatibility between 1821 electoral law and the inexperience in representative government of Rio de la Plata. To resolve it, he will propose the organization of democracy based on reason's sovereignty, that is, the government of illustrates. ; Departamento de Historia

International audience ; This is the translation (from Arabic to French) and transcription of a discussion that was recorded impromptu in a Cairo taxi cab on February 15, 2007. I was in the back seat of a decaying specimen of the capital's indefinite fleet of black and white cabs. The cab picked up another customer, as is often the case, who got into the front seat. The conversation started between this customer and the driver and lasted ten minutes in the usual rumor of traffic jams. And the entire Egyptian society was reviewed during this chat between strangers . ; Ceci est la traduction et la transcription d'une discussion enregistrée de façon impromptue dans un taxi du Caire, le 15 février 2007. J'étais sur la banquette arrière d'un spécimen décati de la flotte indéfinie des taxis noir et blanc de la capitale. Le taxi a pris un autre client, comme cela se fait souvent, qui est monté à l'avant. La conversation s'est engagée entre ce client et le chauffeur et dura dix minutes dans la rumeur habituelle des embouteillages. Et toute la société égyptienne est passée en revue au cours de cette discussion entre inconnus.

Understanding cooperation and punishment in small-scale societies is crucial for explaining the origins of human cooperation. We studied warfare among the Turkana, a politically uncentralized, egalitarian, nomadic pastoral society in East Africa. Based on a representative sample of 88 recent raids, we show that the Turkana sustain costly cooperation in combat at a remarkably large scale, at least in part, through punishment of free-riders. Raiding parties comprised several hundred warriors and participants are not kin or day-to-day interactants. Warriors incur substantial risk of death and produce collective benefits. Cowardice and desertions occur, and are punished by community-imposed sanctions, including collective corporal punishment and fines. Furthermore, Turkana norms governing warfare benefit the ethnolinguistic group, a population of a half-million people, at the expense of smaller social groupings. These results challenge current views that punishment is unimportant in small-scale societies and that human cooperation evolved in small groups of kin and familiar individuals. Instead, these results suggest that cooperation at the larger scale of ethnolinguistic units enforced by third-party sanctions could have a deep evolutionary history in the human species.

International audience ; In this presentation, we have three key claims. First, we wish to make a case for an alternative conception of linguistic diversity, which sees language pluralism not as an "obstacle" or "barrier" that needs to be (dis)solved, but rather as a value that needs to be cherished and promoted, at different levels of politics and society. Second, we also hold that the "Digital Humanities" create new possibilities and thus open a "new age" for literary translation, which will also deeply impact research and education [Lacour, P. et alii (2010a)]. Third, as we should argue, the application of interpretive and corpus-driven linguistics to Computer Assisted Translation should foster collaboration on the realm of precise translation of cultural texts [Bénel, A. and Lacour, P. (2011)] and therefore help reinforcing the sustainability of culture(s) and identity(ies), "on" and "off" line. Behind these claims, lies a conception of "language as a common good" which can (or should) be freely disposed by all its users. This paper aims consequently at proposing a more appropriate definition of the copyright for digital literary translation, especially for multilingual corpora.

Purpose – The article indicates how companies may prepare for and deal with cultural differences. Because the research base is still rather limited an overall perspective may not be realised.Approach – After discussing definitions and concepts of culture, as well as values, cultural differences between states are discussed, illustrated by a practical example how to prepare for these differences. The focus on states may be explained from the recognition that states still are the source of political, economic and legal frameworks and hence, also the framework for doing business.Originality – The idea of a cultural competence has hardly been developed but at the same time both business and the multicultural society are asking for it. This cultural competence is an integral combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes for dealing with cultural differences between people.Implications – Globalising business needs to develop the cultural competence of its managers. Within the EU this applies to nearly all production facilities and quite a few service providers.Further research – Business needs practical approaches between simple sets of rules for behaviour and scientific approach.

Proceedings of the SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering Vol.8013, 801309 ; The improvement of energy efficiency is the key issue after the energy performance of buildings directive came into the force in European Union countries. The city of Kuopio participate a project, in which different tools will be used, generated and tested to improve the energy efficiency of public buildings. In this project there are 2 schools, the other consuming much more heating energy than the other same type of school. In this paper the results of the thermography in normal conditions and under 50 Pa pressure drop will be presented; as well as the results of remote controlled air tightness test of the buildings. Thermography combined with air tightness test showed clearly the reasons of specific consumption differences of heating energy - also in the other hand, the measurements showed the problems in the performance of ventilation system. Thermography, air tightness test and other supporting measurements can be used together to solve energy loss problems - if these measurements will be carried out by proper way. (1 refs.) ; Thermosense: Thermal Infrared Applications XXXIII. Orlando, FL, USA, 26-28 April 2011

Businesses and professions must stay in accord with social ethics, or risk losing their autonomy. A major social ethical issue that has emerged in the past four decades is the treatment of animals in various areas of human use. Society's moral concern has outgrown the traditional ethic of animal cruelty that began in biblical times and is encoded in the laws of all civilized societies. There are five major reasons for this new social concern, most importantly, the replacement of husbandry-based agriculture with industrial agriculture. This loss of husbandry to industry has threatened the traditional fair contract between humans and animals, and resulted in significant amounts of animal suffering arising on four different fronts. Because such suffering is not occasioned by cruelty, a new ethic for animals was required to express social concerns. Since ethics proceed from preexisting ethics rather than ex nihilo, society has looked to its ethic for humans, appropriately modified, to find moral categories applicable to animals. This concept of legally encoded rights for animals has emerged as a plausible vehicle for reform.

RESUMEN: Este articulo es fruto de una investigación etnográfica que se propuso evidenciar las tensiones entre ciudadanía y migración con el fi n de reconocer a los migrantes ubicados por fuera del estatus de ciudadanos como sujetos políticos que configuran prácticas de ciudadanía en medio de luchas por reconstruir sus proyectos de vida en una nueva sociedad. A partir de la experiencia de una familia de colombianos solicitantes de refugio se mostrará cómo en medio de una trayectoria migratoria los estatus jurídicos mudan, ponen en tensión la categoría de ciudadanía y reconfiguran el concepto mismo a partir de las cotidianidades de los sujetos en movimiento. ; ABSTRACT: This article is the result of an ethnographic research that proposed to highlight the tensions between citizenship and immigration in order to acknowledge migrants role as political subjects in the middle of struggles to rebuild their life in a new society. From the experience of a Colombian family seeking refuge, the article shows how in the middle of a migration path the juridical status changes, putting the category of citizenship in tension and rewiring the same concept in the everyday life of the subjects in motion.