美国师德问责体系的结构、特点及启示——基于德克萨斯州的经验

美国德克萨斯州历来重视教育工作者的职业道德建设，建立了一系列教育工作者违规行为问责机制，形成了较为完善的师德问责体系。美国德克萨斯州的师德问责体系具有独特的结构与特征。颁布《教育工作者伦理规范》，使问责有法可依；设立专门机构，使问责主体明确；细化教师违规行为，使问责有据可凭；强调证据证词，使问责合理科学；重视结果多样，使问责责罚分明。这些对于促进我国师德问责的规范化、制度化发展有着积极的借鉴意义。     

威廉·坦普尔的园林理论初探——以《论伊壁鸠鲁的园林,或论园艺》为分析对象

威廉·坦普尔爵士园林思想的研究,一直是学术界研究的薄弱之处。实际上,坦普尔在《论伊壁鸠鲁的园林,或论园艺》中系统地探讨了园林的起源、伦理意义和审美形态等问题。他从病原学的角度出发,把园林作为治疗人们过剩欲望的理想之地。他虽然赞同伊壁鸠鲁主义的退隐思想,却从政治德性、顺从自然、自由选择3个方面阐述了园林的退隐伦理。在园林之美上,他认为美在于形式,但是这种形式既包括欧洲的规则式之美,也包括中国的不规则之美。坦普尔的园林理论对我国当下的疗养院园林、私家园林的建设等有一定的指导意义。     

外资法的选择:南非改革《投资保护法案》

国际投资体系正在遭遇危机，越来越多的国家开始质疑双边投资协定提供的投资者保护制度是否确实有益于增加投资的流动，全球多个国家正在审慎地进行外国投资法的改革。基于此，文章以南非的实践为现实起点，通过概述南非投资保护制度变革的缘由以及深入剖析《投资保护法案》的立法意图，阐明其以国内立法维护公共利益监管权力的法律选择，旨在“一带一路”背景下，为远赴南非的中国投资者提供法律风险的预判，揭示外资法变革对于中国投资者可能产生的影响。对于南非建立新的投资保护制度，其将面临的挑战是如何维持稳定、可预测的投资环境与实现投资保护改革的若干目标之间的平衡。      

论宪法中的行政诉权

中国宪法第41条中的“控告权”不等同于、但包含了“行政诉权”的内涵。宪法中的行政诉权具有两种属性:一是作为公权利的“监督权”，二是作为私权利的侵权后的“救济权”。前者是政治性权利，也是实体性权利，后者是非政治性权利，是典型的程序性权利。这意味着人们长期把行政诉权仅仅作为一种救济权或程序性权利有失偏颇。为了规范行政诉权行使的秩序，行政诉讼法对宪法中的行政诉权在内容上进行了缩限，并在权利的外在形式上体现出程序性特征，但这不意味着行政诉讼法中的行政诉权所继受的权力属性有所改变。     

Tornado warning: Understanding the National Weather Service’s communication strategies

This study explores the National Weather Service’s communication through a multi-sited rapid ethnography that extends the fully functioning society theory. National Weather Service field offices do not employ public information officers. Instead, forecasters predict the weather, craft messages, and build relationships with their publics. Scholars have called for public relations research that examines messages, including how crisis communication can help publics cope. Additionally, scholars have noted that all organizations need public relations, even if they do not employ formal public relations personnel. In our study, forecasters emphasized the need to build their publics’ tornado threat awareness and provided strategies to make weather science accessible. Forecasters discussed a variety of message strategies including avoiding fear appeals, humanizing the organization, and visualizing risks. Forecasters also built relationships with active publics through soliciting weather spotters and empowering them to prepare others for severe weather. Overall, findings expand knowledge about how organizations can employ strategic public relations to benefit society, thereby extending fully functioning society theory.     

Social capital,guanxi and political influence in Chinese government relations

Social capital has emerged as a promising theoretical approach to understanding political influence in the public relations literature. However, the rationale of using social capital to influence corporate government relations in authoritarian societies is indistinct. To remedy this, we integrate Bourdieu’s (1986) and Lin’s (2001) social capital theories to explore how applying a variant form of social capital (e.g., guanxi) might shape corporate government relations in authoritarian China. A multi-method, qualitative approach was employed involving 44 interviews, participant observation and document review. The findings highlighted an underexamined “vertical” dimension of social capital (i.e., links with authority in a hierarchy), which enables corporations to exercise agency over the pre-existing and often vague regulatory environment. This study adds a new perspective to social capital with hierarchical guanxi that enriches our understanding of guanxi-based political influence in Chinese corporate government relations.     

Explicating trust and its relation to dialogue at a time of divided societies

Values, beliefs, opinions and attitudes on issues (such as religion, LGBTQ, immigration, etc.), and the proliferation of social media platforms have made society not only more diverse but also more divided. Competing and conflicting views and attitudes result in more schisms and disengagement. In addition, conflicts and disagreements on various issues also have resulted in a lack of trust and a reluctance of organizations and publics to engage in meaningful communication. As a result, developing trusting relationships by facilitating dialogues is significant. Trust has been an important construct in past research on organization-public relationships. However, the concept of trust has rarely been discussed in-depth in public relations literature. This special section of Public Relations Review, entitled Enhancing Dialogue and Trust in Diverse Societies, examines whether the current definitions of trust and its dimensions in the public relations literature are adequate in an organization-public dialogic communication setting.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Aesthetics of disaster as decolonial aesthetics: making sense of the effects of Hurricane María through Puerto Rican contemporary art

ABSTRACT

On 20 September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico causing unprecedented disaster. From that day onwards, the Puerto Rican multi-layered colonial, social and political context was further complicated by the traumatic acceleration of a human disaster via this natural disaster. This crystalized the urgency of using art as vehicle for (social) catharsis, a practice that continues to be used by individual artists, collectives, community organizations, art projects, and other art institutions on the island and abroad, through mural art, community paintings, art exhibitions, literature, music, and many other aesthetic expressions. This article examines, from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective, post-Hurricane María artistic expressions in contemporary art as decolonial aesthetics through the cathartic use of the frame of an aesthetics of disaster. It is argued that, an aesthetics of disaster aims to re-assert an artistic form that is able to accelerate the discursive nullification of a deeply rooted colonial, social and cultural problem by way of art as catharsis inspired by the way that Hurricane María unveiled these problems. The piece briefly contextualizes Puerto Rico, and it examines the idea of Puerto Rican contemporary art as catharsis. Then, it describes how Puerto Rican contemporary art exhibitions and associated aesthetic production are processing urgent post-hurricane issues through three illustrative pieces in exhibitions in PR and abroad in the United States (US). Lastly, decolonial aesthetics is reexamined and re-understood, informed by Édouard Glissant's view expressed in Poetics of Relation which aids to the conclusion that Puerto Rican contemporary art using the frame of an aesthetics of disaster functions as a powerful form of decolonial aesthetics.