Suchergebnisse

Visuotiniame pasaulyje kinta kultūrinis žemėlapis. Greita ekonomikos plėtra skatina kinų kultūros pokyčius. Jaunimui būdingas individualumas, silpni giminystės ryšiai, meilės, sekso ir vedybų politikos pokyčiai. Dėl gimimų skaičiaus ribojimo Kinijoje vaikai ir jaunimas labiau linkę būti individualistai nei kolektyviški, tai skatinama ir per filmus ar televizijos serialus. Dažniau jie galvoja apie save nei apie Jus ar Juos. Giminystės ryšiai Kinijoje taip pat silpni, todėl šiame darbe daroma prielaida, kad būtent dėl tokių priežasčių 2006 m. labai padaugėjo santuokų su užsieniečiais. Taip pat tai atsiliepia ir vertinant požiūrį į partnerį. Kaip teigia pranešimo autorius, tai turi įtakos ir santuokai, seksualiniams santykiams.Chinese changing identities in globalised worldRobert Paul Smith (Xu, Ke Shu)
SummaryThe cultural map is changing in the globalised world. The quickly developing economy changes the identities of Chinese quietly. Typically, the young generation is more individualistic, the traditional kinship weakens, and the ideology on love, sex and marriage changes. Because of Chinese birth control policy, the children and young people who grow up as the only child in her or his family respect individualism more than collectivism influenced by movies of Hollywood and Western TV soap plays. What they think most is in terms of "I", not "you" or "they". Kinship in China is now much weaker in Mainland China than it was in the past. In fact, there are many empty-nest families, in which children have left home to seek success in metropolis in China and cities in Foreign Countries, and their old, sick parents are suffering in loneliness. In the Chinese countryside, a lot of young couples refuse to support their old parents. Some old parents are even driven out and suffer from hunger. Now in China, DINK marriages and sexless marriages are common in the cities. More than 400,000 Chinese people have married foreigners till 2006. In 2005, more than 70,000 Japanese men and 41,000 Korean men have married Chinese women. Rich men change girlfriends or sex partners frequently. Some even keep special, private houses where their girlfriends live apart from their wives. Thousands of workers, drawn from farms to jobs in the cities, are sexually hungry and visit illegal striptease shows frequently. The new generation of Chinese people does not even value virginity very highly. There are too many quick marriages in China now. This was especially true in the lucky wedding year of 2006. Some married quickly and divorced very soon.Key words: change, identities, individualization, kinship, loven>

Tras una breve contextualización de la cooperación europea, en este trabajo, en primer lugar, se analizan las bases jurídicas comunitarias en materia de política de desarrollo, incidiendo especialmente en los documentos estratégicos más recientes. En segundo lugar, se presenta la nueva arquitectura
institucional y el funcionamiento general de la cooperación comunitaria para el desarrollo, distinguiendo entre las instituciones decisorias y las instituciones orientadoras y ejecutoras. Y en último lugar, además de repasar las fortalezas y debilidades de este nuevo entramado institucional encargado de decidir y gestionar sobre la política comunitaria de cooperación al desarrollo, se tratan de identificar algunos de los dilemas jurídico-administrativos que tienen que ver con la eficacia del ordenamiento comunitario en materia de cooperación al desarrollo, con la actual distribución de esta competencia, y con la coherencia, coordinación y complementariedad entre las instituciones europeas y las administraciones de los Estados miembros.
Europako lankidetzaren nondik norakoen azalpen laburra egin ondoren, garapen-politiken inguruko oinarri juridiko erkidea aztertuko dugu lehenik eta behin, arreta berezia emanaz dokumentu estrategiko berrienei. Bigarrenik, erakundeen egituraketa berria azalduko dugu, bai eta garapenerako lankidetza erkidearen funtzionamendu orokorra ere. Horretarako, bereizi egingo ditugu, batetik, erabakiak hartzen dituzten erakundeak eta, bestetik, orientazioa ematen duten eta erabakiok gauzatzen dituzten erakundeak. Azkenik, garapenerako lankidetzako politika erkidea zehaztu eta kudeatzeko erakunde-egituraketa berri horren alde onak eta alde ahulenak errepasatzeaz gain, gai honek pizten dituen dilema juridiko-administratibo batzuk identifikatzen saiatuko gara; hala nola, garapenerako lankidetza gaietan erkidegoko ordenamenduren efikazia, eskumen horren gaur egungo banaketa, eta Europako erakundeen eta estatukideen administrazioen arteko koherentzia, koordinazioa eta bateragarritasuna.
After explaining briefly the context of the European cooperation, I will first of all analyse the Community legal basis in the field of policies in cooperation, especially paying attention to the most recent strategic documents. Second of all, it is introduced the new institutional architecture and the general
operation of the Community cooperation to development, distinguishing between institutions that decide and the institutions that give guidelines and execute. Last of all, as well as reviewing the strengths and weakness of this new institutional framework that has to decide and manage the Community policy on cooperation to development, this paper tries to identify some of the legal-administrative dilemmas which have to do with the effectiveness of the Community order in the field of cooperation to development, with the current allocation of competences, and with the coherence, coordination and complementariness between the European institutions and the administrations of the Member States.

The Communist Party based its attitude to religion on Marxism-Leninism as a scientific and theoretical framework. As a critical theory of the capitalist society Marxism examined the phenomenon of religion and religious feelings in civil society and designed a project of a future socialist society. One can say that Marxism looks at the phenomenon of religion from the angle of a class society, from a materialistic viewpoint and while using the historical research method. The source of religion is in man's alienation first from himself, then from other people and, finally, from society itself. Marxism surpasses the criticisms of religion dating back to the Enlightenment as well as the vulgar-marxist criticisms that associated religion and religious feeling with human ignorance and delusion. Marxism places religion into the historical framework including the social and economic setting which is changing, developing and thus producing or bringing about changes in religious consciousness. In their practice, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia or what was later the League of Communists of Yugoslavia had an attitude to religion and the church that was a mixture of some original Marxism but also, in much larger measure, of dogmatic, Leninist-Marxist and most often administrative –pragmatic stands which suited the then balance of political power in the state or at lower administrative levels. This attitude was also conditioned by the situation in the party, the state, Yugoslavia's international position, the situation in the church, etc. In this context, one can say that in the actual laws and regulations governing the legal status of the church and the issue of the religious rights and liberties of citizens the atheist approach predominated, i.e. the approach that was solely and exclusively determined in relation to God. This approach seems to have predominated due to the negative experience gained by the workers' movement in Yugoslavia between the two World Wars as well as during the course of the Second World War when the majority of church activists adopted a negative attitude to the National Liberation Movement (NLM). The process of atheization which was launched immediately following the end of the Second World War, in addition to formally playing a major role in establishing and giving legitimacy to the new social system of government, was also ongoing, in terms of its attitude to the churches, on at least two levels: 1) depoliticization of all religious communities; and 2) supression of the idea that religious attributes should be identified as national attributes in the established and traditional churches and religious communities (Serbian Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, Islamic Religious Community).

In the days following the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers on September 11, 2001 (9/11), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated numerous air monitoring activities to better understand the ongoing impact of emissions from that disaster. Using these data, EPA conducted an inhalation exposure and human health risk assessment to the general population. This assessment does not address exposures and potential impacts that could have occurred to rescue workers, firefighters, and other site workers, nor does it address exposures that could have occurred in the indoor environment. Contaminants evaluated include particulate matter (PM), metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, particle‐bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, silica, and synthetic vitreous fibers (SVFs). This evaluation yielded three principal findings. (1) Persons exposed to extremely high levels of ambient PM and its components, SVFs, and other contaminants during the collapse of the WTC towers, and for several hours afterward, were likely to be at risk for acute and potentially chronic respiratory effects. (2) Available data suggest that contaminant concentrations within and near ground zero (GZ) remained significantly elevated above background levels for a few days after 9/11. Because only limited data on these critical few days were available, exposures and potential health impacts could not be evaluated with certainty for this time period. (3) Except for inhalation exposures that may have occurred on 9/11 and a few days afterward, the ambient air concentration data suggest that persons in the general population were unlikely to suffer short‐term or long‐term adverse health effects caused by inhalation exposures. While this analysis by EPA evaluated the potential for health impacts based on measured air concentrations, epidemiological studies conducted by organizations other than EPA have attempted to identify actual impacts. Such studies have identified respiratory effects in worker and general populations, and developmental effects in newborns whose mothers were near GZ on 9/11 or shortly thereafter. While researchers are not able to identify specific times and even exactly which contaminants are the cause of these effects, they have nonetheless concluded that exposure to WTC contaminants (and/or maternal stress, in the case of developmental effects) resulted in these effects, and have identified the time period including 9/11 itself and the days and few weeks afterward as a period of most concern based on high concentrations of key pollutants in the air and dust.

Georgi Arbatov, the eminent grise of the Soviet foreign policy apparatus, was waiting for me at the bus stop an hour out of Moscow. A little bowed at 84, he grabbed me by one arm and leaned on his homemade walking stick cut from a nearby birch and led me to a small, shabby block of flats, paint peeling in the entrance, a year's dust and leaves on the staircase. Like his mentor, Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief and later head of the Soviet Union, Arbatov has always shunned many of the perks of the apparatchiks, content with a modest flat in the city and this dacha in the countryside.
We talked as we did 30 years ago, at great length, over vodka, coffee, cucumber, and beetroot. The advisor to every Soviet president from Leonid Brezhnev to Mikhail Gorbachev remains as lucid as he was when he told me in November, 1978, that if the West pursued its relationship of growing closer to China on "an anti Soviet basis," turning China "into some sort of military ally to the West… then there is no place for détente…. What sense would it make for us to agree to reduce armaments in Europe if armaments are simply to be channeled by the West to the Eastern front?".
The full-page interview—which ran first in the International Herald Tribune and later in many other papers—caused an enormous stir. It was the first time a senior Soviet official had talked at length to a Western journalist on the record, without notes, and answered every question put to him in an easy, conversational manner. Edward Crankshaw, the distinguished Sovietologist, writing in the London Observer, described it as "the most interesting thing to come out of official Moscow since the fall of Khrushchev fourteen years ago." It was the cover story in The Economist.
This time, if less threatening, he seemed just as preoccupied with the way Western-Russian relations were headed. "We have not yet returned to the Cold War. But we can get into one," he said quietly. "The danger looms over us. Two years ago it was impossible to think of this. Now it is possible."
We began our talk with Stalin. Like Arbatov, I am convinced the inbuilt hostility of much of the Western foreign policy elite towards the Soviet Union and later russia has its foundations in a false reading of Moscow's post–World War II territorial ambitions. To understand today's deteriorating relationship we have no choice but to begin there.

Abstract


The study employs two experiments to examine the effectiveness of various strategies used to dissuade consumers from downloading music illegally. The research investigates two specific strategies that the recording industry has used: (1) fear or threat appeals (e.g., the threat of punishment, such as fines and/or jail time), and (2) attribution of harm (informing consumers of the harm caused by the illegal downloading of music, such as financial loss to either the artist or the recording company). The study also considers whether past illegal downloading behavior reduces the effectiveness of these disincentive strategies. Finally, the impact of subjective norms (i.e., whether subjects think their friends would approve of downloading music) was also investigated.


A 3 (level of threat: low, moderate, or high) X 2 (who is harmed by illegal downloading: artist or recording company) experimental design was employed for study one. Undergraduate students (n = 388) participated in the study. Study two expanded on the design of the first study by adding a variable of subjective norms and by including previous downloading behavior in the model. Undergraduate students (n = 211) also participated in the second experiment.


Findings indicate a significant effect of threat appeal such that stronger threat appeals were found to be more effective than weaker threat appeals in reducing illegal downloading. The first study also showed that prior illegal downloading behavior does not curtail the effects of threat appeals aimed at reducing illegal downloading. In addition, results reveal no differences in downloading behavior in terms of attribution of harm deterrent strategy (harm to either the recording artist or company). The most interesting finding from the second study is that subjective norms appear to equalize low versus high past downloaders, but only under conditions of weak fear.


The current manuscript is the first to examine the impact of four different variables (threat appeals, attribution of harm, subjective norms, and previous downloading behavior) on subjects' likelihood to illegally download music in the future. In particular, this research illuminates the potential importance of social norms in discouraging a type of undesirable consumer behavior but shows that this occurs only under a restricted set of conditions: when threat is low and the consumer is not a habitually high downloader. It should be of interest to those in fields where intellectual property can be pirated on the Internet.


Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Romania free of Jews and other ethnic and religious minorities was for Ion Antonescu and his regime a major political aspiration. As a result, some three hundred thousands Romanian and Ukrainian Jews died along the road. Yet another three hundred thousands survived the war as Romania's government decided at a certain moment to fail its ally standards and radical policy, and disengage with the Final Solution. The decision was motivated less by humanitarianism and more by domestic and international protests and interventions, massive bribe, and a rapidly changing military and political situation. From late 1942 onward, in Romania, political and military tactics and calculation gradually downplayed radical, eliminationist anti-Semitism, without totally eradicating it. Romania's abrupt and unforeseen defection took the Germans by surprise. Nazi officials never gave up hope, continued to sway, pressure and, finally, even threaten the Romanians to hand over their Jews, and advised the Antonescu government to stay in line with the implementation of the Final Solution as it was already too late for them to persuade the Western allies on their innocence when it comes to the Holocaust. Stubbornly refusing to loose initiative and control over their Jews at the hands of the Nazi bureaucrats, a situation they disliked as it portrayed them as puppets and ordinary Executioners, some of the Romanians continued with the desperate efforts to constantly depart from the Nazi plan, bravely opposing when not cunningly mocking German diplomats and the SS. Understanding the decision-making process, and the strategic logic of the perpetrators, is no less essential than the final outcome, the fortuitous (in many respects) survival of the already targeted victims. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to grasp the set of elements that altogether might provide us with an adequate explanation for Romania's gradual shift from total commitment to outright defiance toward the Nazi Final Solution. My chief interest is with delineating the reasons and motivations behind the decision of the Romanian government not to hand over half of the Jews to the Nazis. Issues that are equally significant and helpful in understanding the process that ultimately led to Romania's Disengagement from the Nazi Final Solution, most if not all of them already considered and sometimes reconsidered by other historians, will be analyzed in a wider, European context, as the dynamic of the Final Solution at large, the Nazi perspective on the events, their plans, expectation and so on; might help in understanding some inner developments of Romania's semi-independent genocide.

Despite omnipresent rumours of imminent war, the flagship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, the express steamer BREMEN (IV), left Bremerhaven on 22 August 1939 for her 187th round trip to New York. After scheduled stops in Southampton and Cherbourg, the number of passengers on board had risen to more than 1,700. Many of them were Americans who saw the BREMEN as their last opportunity to leave Europe before the outbreak of war - a correct assessment, as it turned out. Citing the presence of precisely these passengers as well as the German diplomats among them who were heading towards their posts abroad, Captain Ahrens remained on route to New York even after all German merchant vessels had been ordered to turn around. The ship arrived safely at its destination on 28 August. Although she had been scheduled to return immediately, the BREMEN was initially prevented from setting sail again by the Neutrality Act which had been signed by the U.S. president only shortly beforehand. Finally setting off on 30 August, Captain Ahrens succeeded in reaching Murmansk in the Soviet Union - a temporary ally - without incident on 6 September. Although the mooring had originally been considered to be safe, the harsh arctic winter caused the captain to consider another attempt of bringing his ship home. In December, the BREMEN once again succeeded in running the British blockade. Captain Ahrens had already been awarded the honourable title of commodore in September 1939 for having brought the ship back from the U.S. During the war years, several publications on the BREMEN's last voyage were issued under his name, quite evidently intended as propaganda. Comparisons with other sources, however, clearly reveal that his depictions of the events - like those of many other authors as well - are extremely free interpretations of what actually happened. A particularly conspicuous aspect of the commodore's publications is his failure to mention various orders issued by the Reich Transport Ministry and the supreme command of the German navy, most significantly the telegram ordering him to turn back, which he had ignored. Commodore Ahrens's account was thus incomplete to the point of distorting the truth, and his post-war publications differed from his previous ones only slightly. As a result, there have since been a wide range of speculations as to whether he really was guilty of open refusal to obey orders and, if so, what could have moved him to take this highly dangerous step.

Abstract. The primary background for the present study was a project to assist the authorities in Thailand with development of plans for how to deal with the future tsunami risk in both short and long term perspectives, in the wake of the devastating 26 December 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tsunami. The study is focussed on defining and analyzing a number of possible future earthquake scenarios (magnitudes 8.5, 8.0 and 7.5) with associated return periods, each one accompanied by specific tsunami modelling. Along the most affected part of the western coast of Thailand, the 2004 tsunami wave caused a maximum water level ranging from 5 to 15 m above mean sea level. These levels and their spatial distributions have been confirmed by detailed numerical simulations. The applied earthquake source is developed based on available seismological and geodetic inversions, and the simulation using the source as initial condition agree well with sea level records and run-up observations. A conclusion from the study is that another megathrust earthquake generating a tsunami affecting the coastline of western Thailand is not likely to occur again for several hundred years. This is in part based on the assumption that the Southern Andaman Microplate Boundary near the Simeulue Islands constitutes a geologic barrier that will prohibit significant rupture across it, and in part on the decreasing subduction rates north of the Banda Ache region. It is also concluded that the largest credible earthquake to be prepared for along the part of the Sunda-Andaman arc that could affect Thailand, is within the next 50–100 years an earthquake of magnitude 8.5, which is expected to occur with more spatial and temporal irregularity than the megathrust events. Numerical simulations have shown such earthquakes to cause tsunamis with maximum water levels up to 1.5–2.0 m along the western coast of Thailand, possibly 2.5–3.0 m on a high tide. However, in a longer time perspective (say more than 50–100 years) the potentials for earthquakes of similar magnitude and consequences as the 2004 event will become gradually larger and eventually posing an unacceptable societal risk. These conclusions apply only to Thailand, since the effects of an M 8.5 earthquake in the same region could be worse for north-western Sumatra, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, maybe even for Sri Lanka and parts of the Indian coastline. Moreover, further south along the Sunda arc the potentials for large ruptures are now much higher than for the region that ruptured on 26 December 2004.

This essay will examine some of the narrative practices emerging in the health care professions — medicine, nursing, social work, and psychotherapy. We have always, of course, understood that the most fertile and clinically salient information we derive about patients comes from listening to them talking about their illnesses. Nonetheless, medicine's recent past is marked by not so much a suspicion of as a dismissal of word in diagnosing and treating disease. Of late, medicine (and because I am a doctor, I will limit myself to thinking about medicine in the essay) has found sustenance from such fields as trauma studies, oral history, and testimony work. Finally, we are coming around to understanding that our tasks include the duty to bear witness as others tell of trauma and loss.The narrative practice of medicine — or, as I have come to say, the practice of narrative medicine — unites a host of neighboring concerns and approaches. Historically, medicine came into the narrative realms through qualitative social science, especially sociolinguistics, as a means to represent and comprehend the conversations that take place between doctors and patients. Such scholars as Elliot Mishler, Richard Frankel, Catherine Riessman, and Candice West really altered medical practice by making medical discourse amenable to inspection and then analysis. Around the same time, we also turned to literary texts and ways of thinking that help us to enter the worlds of patients, see others' experience from their perspectives, greet the metaphorical as well as the factual power of words, and be moved by what we hear. Oddly, then, medical practice became a bridge between the qualitative social sciences and literary theory, letting us, from the inside, see how very similar are the efforts of the sociologist examining discourse and the novelist creating it.We doctors feel great good fortune in having the ultimate objective correlative — what might be captivating but ethereal theorizing becomes as practical and concrete and earthy as can be by virtue of being about somebody's body — particularly somebody's ailing body. What extreme pleasure that my thinking complicated thoughts and being attuned to the complex ways of language can translate into control of my patients' blood sugar or relief of their migraines or diagnosis of their coronary artery disease. Narrative medicine becomes, in the end, a heady, brainy, compassionate, corporeal practice that can heal the patient and nourish the doctor at the same time — by virtue of the talk.

PurposeThe variety of differences encountered when interacting with people from other cultures can be daunting for foreign nationals operating in another country. Consequently, many companies send their managers on some form of cultural orientation training, before beginning their duties in a foreign country. The problem for companies is: "Which programme to choose?" This paper seeks to examine forms of cross‐cultural training, and assess the relative effectiveness of each.Design/methodology/approachPotential participants were identified using a stratified random sample of companies that do business in Mexico. Individuals received a personal e‐mail, requesting their participation in the research. Those who agreed to participate completed a questionnaire and cultural understanding survey online.FindingsThe data showed that meetings with experienced international staff were the most common type of training. The second was lecture training. Behaviour modification methods and field experiences were the methods that were the greatest help to US managers in understanding Mexican culture. Analysis of the data would seem to support the idea that there must be factors other than training that influence a US managers understanding of Mexican culture. A possible explanation is the level of psychic distance between the cultures of those involved in the interaction.Research limitations/implicationsSome respondents felt that the scenarios were somewhat generalised and did not account for regional differences in Mexico, or for the great degree of cultural convergence that is occurring between the USA and Mexico, especially along the border between the two countries. However, another respondent uses very similar scenarios in her consulting and training practice. It appears, therefore, that the debates regarding generalised national cultures are as evident among business people as they are among academics.Practical implicationsCompanies should use meetings with experienced expatriates as a central part of their training programme. Field experience, despite its obvious resource implications, should be considered as a key element of training for those preparing to work in Mexico. Companies should place greater emphasis on cross‐cultural skills for expatriates, both in terms of their initial selection, and their subsequent training. There is also the issue of the length of time spent in training: 20 of the 29 participants surveyed either had no training, or had less than one week's training. Companies that claim to take the issue seriously must be prepared to devote a correspondingly serious level of resources to the issue.Originality/valueThe paper shows how companies should look at cultural training not in terms of time‐limited, task‐specific, discrete chunks, but should seek to develop programmes that aim to educate the whole person.

Ladislas Löb's superb translation of Otto Weininger's highly controversial but enormously influential book is a most welcome contribution to understanding Vienna circa 1900 for readers who, for whatever reason, must approach Weininger via an English edition. It replaces what Wittgenstein termed a "beastly" anonymous translation published by Heinemann in England and G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1906 in the United States; the latter was reissued in 1975 by AMS Press and again as recently as 2003 by Howard Fertig. Approaching Weininger from that translation, one has the sense of being confronted with the work of a madman, who spins thoughts off the top of his head in a way that can only be described as absurd, so absurd that their very implausibility and contrariness have a way of making it into a fascinosum. To be sure, there is enough in Weininger's original to encourage that impression. It also helps to explain his appeal to half-educated fanatics like Dietrich Eckhart. Such a seriously defective edition, expurgated, bereft of one hundred thirty-five pages of notes and references and notoriously inaccurate, made it even more difficult than it otherwise might have been to understand how Weininger attracted the attention of brilliant thinkers and writers like Karl Kraus, Elias Canetti, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and even James Joyce (whose Ulysses, improbable as it seems, is deeply indebted to Weininger). In his Translator's Note, Löb provides numerous examples of absolutely grotesque mistranslations—in one place "es ist klar" is rendered as "it does not follow"—which more than corroborate the judgment Wittgenstein passed on the 1906 English edition. Löb neglects to mention, however, that English prudery seems to have dictated that all explicit references to orgasm be deleted. The expurgated version gives the impression of being a kind of misogynistic, anti-Semitic version of Peter Pan. Only a naïve, sensitive "boy genius" could have written such nonsense. In the end, camps formed on both sides about whether the author was a genius or a madman. Nobody, however, paid much attention to the argument—or the state of the text itself. This state of affairs has persisted until recently. Only in 1982 did it become known that there were two slightly different German editions of the work, and this only became widely known in the mid-1990s thanks to the assiduous research of Waltraud Hirsch (who is currently preparing an electronic critical edition of Weininger's complete works that should finally clear up the matter of the authoritative German text). Little wonder that there has been so much confusion surrounding Weininger.

Questions surrounding the legitimate extent of the judicial role have long been the source of controversy. Concerns that unelected and unrepresentative judges are 'legislating' rather than interpreting the law or are interfering in matters of 'democratically endorsed' government policy, have often been, and will continue to be, raised by academics and politicians alike. The question is one of separation of power— of the appropriate constitutional role and division of functions between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the United Kingdom Government. This debate has been given a new dimension by the Human Rights Act 1998 (hereafter HRA), most obviously through the courts' exercise of their power under section 3(1) of that Act—the duty to interpret primary and secondary legislation to be, as far as possible, compatible with 'the Convention rights'. Indeed much has been made of the unique method by which the HRA reconciles the interpretative obligation under section 3(1) with the sovereignty of Parliament by way of the 'declaration of incompatibility' under section 4. The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty imposes limits on the scope of section 3(1); in spite of its 'broad and malleable' language, which might permit 'an interpretation which linguistically may appear strained', it does not sanction courts to act as legislators. As Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead noted in Re S; Re W, attributing to a statutory provision 'a meaning which departs substantially from a fundamental feature of an Act of Parliament is likely to have crossed the boundary between interpretation and amendment'. That case has been seen by some as a retreat from what has been termed the 'far-fetched' interpretation of section 3(1) adopted by the House of Lords in the earlier decision of R v A. Nicol, for one, has argued that Re S; Re W and Anderson taken together, clearly reject 'the notion that "interpretations" could conflict with clear statutory words' — as R v A had arguably suggested — thereby endorsing parliamentary sovereignty, above the Convention, 'as the country's supreme constitutional doctrine'. For it to retain its legitimacy therefore, the judicial act under section 3(1) needs to remain an exercise of 'interpretation': to attribute a meaning to a legislative provision 'quite different from that which Parliament intended … would go well beyond any interpretative process sanctioned by section 3 of the 1998 Act'. It would 'not be judicial interpretation but judicial vandalism'.

What explains the lack of what Mike Davis famously called 'magical urbanism'— referring to the increasingly influential and potentially radical role played by Latino immigrants in US politics — in such diverse Canadian cities as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver? This article points out how the Canadian legacy of multiculturalism constitutes one key cause of the failure of left urban politics in Canada to produce yet anything approaching the promise of 'magical urbanism' south of the border, especially by underlining how this bulwark of liberal ideology lends itself so readily to some resilient variations of bourgeois urbanism — including the commodification of difference, most recently under the auspices of Richard Florida's 'creative class'. Against the pluralism of the food court and the shopping mall, both in its official multicultural and seemingly oppositional 'hybrid' forms, are radical approaches to difference in the city still possible — in Canada or elsewhere? The authors argue that the concepts of 'maximal' and 'produced' (vis‐à‐vis 'minimal' and 'induced') difference and the politics of 'the right to the city' elaborated by Henri Lefebvre — in conjunction with the reflections on subaltern experiences of difference by critics such as Himani Bannerji and Ambalavanar Sivanandan — indeed provide a starting point for radical urban politics.Comment expliquer, dans des villes canadiennes aussi différentes que Toronto, Montréal ou Vancouver, l'absence de ce que Mike Davis a appelé'l'urbanisme magique' en parlant du rôle de plus en plus influent, voire radical, des immigrants latinoaméricain dans la politique des États‐unis? L'héritage canadien du multiculturalisme explique d'abord pourquoi la politique urbaine de gauche n'a encore rien pu produire au Canada qui s'approcherait de la promesse d'un 'urbanisme magique' comme au sud de la frontière. L'article souligne notamment comment ce rempart d'idéologie libérale se prête si facilement à quelques variantes résistantes d'urbanisme bourgeois, dont la banalisation de la différence, tout récemment sous les auspices de la 'classe créative' de Richard Florida. Face au pluralisme de l'aire de restauration et du centre commercial, tous deux sous des formes 'hybrides' multiculturelles et aparemment contradictoires, des approches radicales de la différence dans la ville sont‐elles encore possibles, au Canada ou ailleurs? Les concepts de différence 'maximale' et 'produite' (par opposition à'minimale' et 'induite') et la politique du 'droit à la ville' conçue par Henri Lefebvre — alliés aux réflexions sur des expériences de différence subalternes émanant de critiques tels que Himani Bannerji et Ambalavanar Sivanandan — offrent indubitablement un point de départ pour une politique urbaine radicale.