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AbstractThe 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage specifies that communities are to be full partners in efforts to safeguard their intangible cultural heritage. Yet the notion of safeguarding has been complicated by the politics and mechanisms of digital circulation. Based on fieldwork in British Columbia and Thailand, I show that community-based productions of multimedia aimed at documenting, transmitting, and revitalizing intangible heritage are productive spaces in which local cultural property rights discourses are initiated and articulated. I argue that digital heritage initiatives can support decision making about the circulation—or restriction—of digital cultural heritage while drawing attention to the complexities of safeguarding heritage in the digital age.

AbstractVote buying and vote selling are prominent features of electoral politics in Lebanon. This article investigates how vote trafficking works in Lebanese elections and examines how electoral rules and practices contribute to wide and lively vote markets. Using original survey data from the 2009 parliamentary elections, it studies vote selling with a list experiment, a question technique designed to elicit truthful answers to sensitive questions. The data show that over half of the Lebanese sold their votes in 2009. Moreover, once we come to grips with the sensitivity of the topic, the data show that members of all sectarian communities and political alliances sold their votes at similar rates.

The dominant literature on transnationalism regards it as an alternative way of framing immigration, but the a priori exclusion of labor migrants from the scope of migrant transnationalism is untenable. Evidence from East Asia suggests that labor migrants, who are compelled by the prevailing policy regime in the region to become sojourners, engage in what can be called modular transnationalism. Labor migrants are East Asia's prototypical transmigrants when seen in light of the rising trend of immigration via marriage migration, in which case transnationalism can be highly constrained by the state and cultural politics. The discussion draws mainly, but not exclusively, from the transnational practices of migrants from the Philippines.

Contemporary research on the international relations of Southeast Asia has neglected the latent possibilities of reading non-western indigenous forms of international relations as a contribution to worldwide debates on the nature of international politics. Drawing on one precolonial account of Southeast Asian political practices in the Malay Archipelago, the Sejarah Melayu, this article proposes that Southeast Asians have previously philosophized about "intersocietal relations" in ways that privilege noble prowess, knowledge quests, and hierarchical justice through the interdependence of trade and culture within the region, and with India, China, and the Arab world. These features can still speak to contemporary relations between peoples rather than states and to security issues within borderless regions.

There has been a persistent contest among contemporary scholars over what is considered legitimate knowledge. This contest has implications on ways of knowing, organizing society, and responding to environmental challenges. The Western education system is a hybrid of different knowledge, adopted through European global expansion, to enrich our learning in formal educational settings. This article examines the production of Western knowledge and its validation, imposition, and effects on indigenous people and their knowledge. The author argues that there is a relationship between knowledge producers and their motives with the society in which they live. This relationship influences what is considered "legitimate knowledge" in society, politics, and economy in non-Western contexts.

AbstractThe European Convention on Human Rights is rapidly evolving into a cosmopolitan legal order: a transnational legal system in which all public officials bear the obligation to fulfill the fundamental rights of every person within their jurisdiction. The emergence of the system depended on certain deep, structural transformations of law and politics in Europe, including the consolidation of a zone of peace and economic interdependence, of constitutional pluralism at the national level, and of rights cosmopolitanism at the transnational level. Framed by Kantian ideas, the paper develops a theoretical account of a cosmopolitan legal system, provides an overview of how the ECHR system operates, and establishes criteria for its normative assessment.

New Zealand's aid policy has undergone a revolution under the National Party government elected in 2008. Prior to this, NZAID, a semi‐autonomous unit, had evolved to manage aid in line with internationally agreed principles. Under the new government, NZAID was reincorporated into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, its focus was shifted from poverty reduction to economic growth, and its programme was aligned with foreign policy. This article aims to provide an overview of the shifts in New Zealand's aid policy over four decades, to explore the relationship between the global aid regime and national practice, and to analyse the influence of politics, and of key individuals, in setting the direction of aid policy.

The political use and instrumentalization of history is a central theme within the historiography of history education. Neither history nor education is a politically neutral domain; history education is and has always been a highly politicized phenomenon. For his recent article on the development of history education in England, Germany, and the Netherlands throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Dutch history didactician Arie Wilschut chose the significant title, "History at the Mercy of Politicians and Ideologies." History education, Wilschut argues, has, in all three countries, continually—with a short break in the 1960s and 1970s—been instrumentalized by national politics to the detriment of unbiased interpretations of the past.

The concept of autonomy as presented in the works of Cornelius Castoriadis offers the possibility of expressing the core aims of a radical politics in a manner divorced from a discredited Marxist or communist past. The concept occasions ongoing debate about its true meaning as well as its implications and consequences. Some people question the value and viability of autonomy as a political aim. This article attempts to elucidate and defend what I see as the central meanings and implications of the concept of autonomy, particularly in its political dimension. The concept of autonomy is considered in its relationship to the ideas of project, self-limitation, and democracy, and the socialist tradition.

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of immigration on election outcomes. Our analysis makes use of data on city districts in Hamburg, Germany, during a period of substantial inflows of immigrants and asylum seekers. We find significant and robust effects for changes in foreigner shares on the electoral success of parties that built up a distinctive reputation in immigration politics. In particular, our fixed-effects estimates indicate a positive effect for xenophobic, extreme right-wing parties and an adverse effect for the Green party that actively campaigned for liberal immigration policies and minority rights. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that changes in local compositional amenities shape individual attitudes towards immigration.

Esta semana:Dado los últimos acontecimientos de la crisis de la deuda en Europa, El País de Madrid pone a disposición un Especial con toda la información sobre la crisis de la deuda del Euro. Descargar Informe Money, Politics and Power: Corruption Risks in Europa (Dinero, política y poder. Peligros de la corrupción en Europa) de Transparency International que se centra en la falta de claridad con que se adoptan decisiones en los países europeos. DescargarEl pasado martes 12 el Banco Mundial hizo publico el informe "Latinoamérica Hace Frente a la Volatilidad, El Lado Oscuro de la Globalización", con datos interesantes de las perspectivas económicas de nuestra región. Descargar

A través de diversas teorías sobre el liderazgo así como la influencia del cine en el legado visual y biográfico de algunas personalidades relevantes, este artículo analiza el liderazgo de Margaret Thatcher mostrado en la película Iron Lady, sobrenombre con el que se la conoce. El largometraje presenta la figura de la que fuera primera ministra de Gran Bretaña a través de los recuerdos de su protagonista, los factores y circunstancias personales que influyeron en su estilo de gobernar y liderazgo, su personalidad y su faceta en el entorno familiar.Palabras clave: liderazgo; política; cine; imagen pública; Margaret Thatcher Key words: leadership; politics; cinema; public image; Margaret Thatcher

Статья раскрывает глубинные причины международной напряжённости, периодически возникающей в Кавказском регионе. Основное внимание в работе автор акцентирует на влиянии геополитического фактора на историю местных народов. Положение на стыке больших пространств и интересов субъектов мировой политики ведёт к росту конфликтности в периоды деформации баланса сил и смены геополитических эпох. ; The author reveals the root causes of international tension recurrent in the Caucasus region, pays special attention to geopolitical factor influence on the history of local peoples, and shows that the situation at the junction of large spaces and world politics subjects' interests leads to the increase of conflict in the periods of the deformation of power balance and geopolitical eras shifts.

The article aims at exposing the features of the media institution, particularly, its operation under conditions of transformation and presents a review of the basic functions performed by this institution in post-Soviet countries. In transitional societies the role and status of mass media differs from those in the countries with developed democracy. The freedom of speech and thought, political and ideological pluralism, the right to receive and spread information, etc. have become a reality. Media not only react to political events, but also affect them. It is part of the politics: the media create the agenda, become a mediator and instrument in shaping domestic and foreign policy, adjusting and changing the public opinion.

This paper describes a method for surfacing and exploring 'situated knowledge' in medium-sized organisations, with employee groups utilising a 'low impact' form of group support system (GSS), based on wireless handsets. Some results of piloting this method are summarised and one intervention is presented in detail. The method encouraged organisational members to give voice to the emotions and politics of leadership and learning in organisations, and helped to articulate how situated knowledge was ignored, as well as utilised. The method is practical, and may be used by organisations for themselves to aid the development of group as well as individual reflection, to stimulate the consideration of change.