Suchergebnisse

This article examines the process of normative change & nascent norm emergence in areas of global policy making through the convening of UN global conferences. Specifically, the article is a case study of how the norms & discourse undergirding & legitimizing global population policy have changed from population control to reproductive rights through the passing decades. The UN, as a main site of discursive & normative contestation, provides opportunities for global social movements to lodge oppositional claims against states & other actors in world politics. A constructivist approach is used to identify five processes integral to understanding mutually constitutive & fluid agent-structure processes of normative change & nascent norm emergence in global population policy. This research contributes to the extant constructivist literature on the process of norm emergence by suggesting one processual model that can illuminate other cases of norm formation, maintenance, & change regarding other transnational issues. Adapted from the source document.

L'analyse minutieuse de l'activité réelle des clavistes dans la presse quotidienne confirme l'écart entre règles formelles et normes implicites. Les régulations de l'allure de travail mises en œuvre par les opératrices pour sortir le journal à temps, montrent que la contestation des prescriptions officielles obéit en fait à une logique de l'efficacité, que clandestin et productif vont souvent de pair.

This article examines the process of normative change and nascent norm emergence in areas of global policy making through the convening of UN global conferences. Specifically, the article is a case study of how the norms and discourse undergirding and legitimising global population policy have changed from population control to reproductive rights through the passing decades. The United Nations, as a main site of discursive and normative contestation, provides opportunities for global social movements to lodge oppositional claims against states and other actors in world politics. A constructivist approach is used to identify five processes integral to understanding mutually constitutive and fluid agent-structure processes of normative change and nascent norm emergence in global population policy. This research contributes to the extant constructivist literature on the process of norm emergence by suggesting one processual model that can illuminate other cases of norm formation, maintenance, and change regarding other transnational issues. (Original abstract)

La nature des infractions liées à la culture, au commerce et à la consommation de cannabis fait en sorte que la criminalisation engendre des discours sociaux variés venant justifier et contester celle-ci. La présente étude vise, d'une part, à relever les justifications énoncées pour rendre acceptable l'imposition de la souffrance par le droit criminel, et, d'autre part, à examiner les contestations que génèrent les normes pénales relatives au cannabis. L'examen des justifications et des contestations de la prohibition du cannabis révèle deux vedettes centrales : le déviant et la victime. Ces vedettes se présentent sous des figures variées. Les rhétoriques prohibitionnistes donnent vie à cinq figures typiques de la déviance : le dangereux, le fou, le junkie en devenir, le fumeur et l'« amotivé ». Les figures typiques de la victime auxquelles donnent vie tant les contestations que les justifications sont le corps, la liberté et la société. L'analyse de la construction de ces deux vedettes et des rôles pour lesquels on leur déroule le tapis rouge permet d'entrevoir certains produits culturels du régime prohibitionniste, notamment comment ce régime peut être justifié par certains de ses effets qui se présentent comme des causes.

Despite a growing interest in corruption, the topic has been absent from democratic theory. The reason is not a lack of normative issues, but rather missing links between the concepts of corruption and democracy. With few exceptions, political corruption has been conceived as departures by public officials from public rules, norms, and laws for the sake of private gain. Such a conception works well within bureaucratic contexts with well‐defined offices, purposes, and norms of conduct. But it inadequately identifies corruption in political contexts, that is, the processes of contestation through which common purposes, norms, and rules are created. Corruption in a democracy, I argue, involves duplicitous violations of the democratic norm of inclusion. Such a conception encompasses the standard conception while complementing it with attention to the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion within democratic politics. By distinguishing the meanings of inclusion and exclusion within the many institutions, spheres, and associations that constitute contemporary democracies, I provide a democratic conception of corruption with a number of implications. The most important of these is that corruption in a democracy usually indicates a deficit of democracy.

This article explores how gender bias in population policies interacts with local culture to reinforce distortions in sex ratios among infants and young children in rural China. It argues that population policies introduce new sources of inequality into local culture while, conversely, gender inequalities embedded in local culture influence formal population policy and practice. Applying an institutional approach to the study of an agricultural county in Jiangxi province, southeast China, the analysis identifies four ways in which an interplay between gender bias in policy and culture produces gendered fertility outcomes: (1) the creation of gendered official categories such as "daughter‐only households"; (2) a male bias embedded in local government; (3) the use of local gender norms in state pedagogy; and (4) the reworking or subverting of official norms in ways that reinforce gender inequalities in local reproductive culture. The article concludes that despite indications of contestation of village patriarchy, discrimination against daughters is likely to persist.

Internationalization is a contested concept. Economic internationalization of China does not only refer to increased cross-border flows of capital, technology and goods and services, as is conventionally argued. From a critical perspective, internalizing principles, rules and norms embedded in the world economy which define "correct" and "acceptable" economic behavior of the state constitute a more dynamic and revolutionary process of China's economic internationalization. An examination of Chinese reform experience and the contestations about China's WTO membership reveals that the selective internalization so far has been dictated by strategic and instrumental considerations. China's "deep integration" into the increasingly globalized economy after its entry into the WTO demands normative changes, not just behavioral ones. This is contingent less on irrevocable wider opening of the Chinese economy than on immutable internalization and cognitive embracing of laws, standards and norms prevailing in the world economy. (J Contemp China/DÜI)

This research employs qualitative methodology to analyze social change in business news articles of The New York Times. A random sample of 127 articles published between 1970 and 2000, discussing advertising news and containing one or more of the terms "Gay", "Lesbian", " Bisexual", "Transexual", "Transgendered" and "Queer" (GLBTQ), were selected. Feminist, Marxist, Postmodern, and critical theory is used to analyze social representation, cultural norms, stereotypes and levels of visibility. The "meta-theoretical" lens applied is a gendered postmodernism grounded in stratification theory that assuages the cultural-based critique of Marxism, overcomes the essentialist limitations of radical feminism, incorporates the pluralism of socialist feminism and delimits the relativist tendencies of a purer postmodernism. Quantitatively, gay men were found to achieve twice as much business news coverage as lesbians. Bisexuals, transsexuals, transgenders and queers were highly invisible. Overall, a change in the representation and depiction of corporate interest in gays and lesbians was manifested. This socio-historical analysis revealed a shift from deviantization and stigmatization of homosexuality to the commodification, and spectacularization of GLBTQs. GLBTQ invisibility is documented and the misconception of gay and lesbian wealth, created by market research, is addressed. Invisibility of GLBTQs is posited to be both an intentional and actively managed form of politics. Furthermore, business news reporting is argued to be less "objective" and more a political, social cultural and political activity where the media itself is a stage for the cultural contestation of social norms. This sociologically informed reading of business news articles details numerous case-specific instances where The New York Times contributed towards the proliferation of norms, values and beliefs characterizing GLBTQs. The New York Times is argued to be a contributor towards the creation of sexuality as a cultural product. Its representations of GLBTQs are seen as one manifestation of an institutionally created understanding of the "culture of homosexuality". ; Ph. D.