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'The discussion on language rights is affected by some confusion on the nature and status of rights. In this paper, a rigorous characterisation of language rights is proposed. It is argued that the general assimilation or equation between language rights and human rights is not only erroneous as far as it is inaccurate, but it leads to a distorted image of the relationship between law and politics. While human rights do limit (at least, ideally) state behaviour, language rights are, more often than not, an issue devolved to the political process. The point being made in this paper is that recognition of language rights (as such or as part of minority rights) is based primarily on contingent historical reasons. Some tentative explanations on the poor status or unequal recognition of language rights in international and domestic law will also be offered throughout the paper.' (author's abstract)

Abstract
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, "Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies," revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; others describe a term of art from another discipline or interdisciplinary area and show how it might relate to transgender studies. While far from providing a complete picture of the field, these keywords begin to elucidate a conceptual vocabulary for transgender studies. Some of the submissions offer a deep and resilient resistance to the entire project of mapping the field terminologically; some reveal yet-unrealized critical potentials for the field; some take existing terms from canonical thinkers and develop the significance for transgender studies; some offer overviews of well-known methodologies and demonstrate their applicability within transgender studies; some suggest how transgender issues play out in various fields; and some map the productive tensions between trans studies and other interdisciplines.

Contends that contemporary green theorists (1) endorse nature & ecology while perceiving human intervention as threatening & (2) emphasize the role of culture in creating nature. Despite the differences in each definition's conception of nature, both explanations are important for attempting to clarify humankind's relationship with the nonhuman world. It is contended that both definitions raise contrasting accounts of truth & authenticity in relation to the nonhuman world. Although both definitions' tendency to perpetuate anthropocentricity is not deemed deplorable, it is maintained that human beings should not overlook nonhuman nature's role in fulfilling human needs & concerns. Humankind & nonhuman nature are strictly differentiated by the former's concern with cultural transcendence. Noting that Karl Marx identified the devastating nature of cultural transcendence, the ability of contemporary humankind to develop an ecologically sensitive approach to the human/nonhuman nature dilemma is questioned. Recommendations for constructing an ecological-socialist approach to answering the proposed question are offered. J. W. Parker

Reflects on the ecopolitical implications of Adorno's writings about natural beauty, the pre-conceptual, & silence as aesthetic response. Adorno's notions are then linked to those put forth by Shierry Weber Nicholsen, who argues that a tension marks our environmental attitudes between feeling a bond with nature & indifference to its destruction. Our interest should lie less in how nature's beauty may render us mute than in how silences serve to evade responsibility for -- & complicity with -- environmental destruction. K. Coddon

This article describes some aspects of an Italian didactic-pedagogic experiment about interaction between "town" pupils and natural environments. The project's general philosophy is to try to make pupils aware of our condition as "biocultural beings," as results of biological, technological, and cultural co-evolution. The presence of extensive natural, cultural, and technological resources at the site where the experiment takes place favors such an awareness.Some examples of teaching techniques designed especially to introduce pupils to the difficult but necessary subject matter of co-evolution are also described. Such teaching techniques have as their main goal to make the pupils themselves able to construct a logical network of questions, rather than in teachers giving them already prepared answers.The as yet unresolved problems, which concern the training of teachers steeped in traditional methods, are also briefly described.