More law and more rights: will children benefit?

This paper questions the view that children are just another disadvantaged group and that they need substantially more, or more varied, rights than they enjoy at present in the UK. It suggests there is a lack of appreciation of the consequences of current 'rights' advocacy, especially that which draws on the United Nations Convention on The Rights of The Child, and doubts whether a simple piling up of more rights will prove wise, workable or effective; rather it could become counter-productive and even generate a backlash from individuals and wider society. More fundamentally, It argues that the pursuit of greater benefits for children, as children , is ultimately divisive and segregating at a time when our society needs an integrating philosophy that emphasises the mutual and reciprocal nature of relationships between citizens. It proposes, instead, an approach to rights which emphasises shared interests and participation as key factors in improving the welfare of children as developing citizens.     

Decentralization and growth: Do informal institutions and rule of law matter?

We develop a model of the interactions among decentralization, informal institutions and the rule of law. The model sheds light on the ambiguous empirical results reported in the literature regarding the growth effects of the policy of devolving fiscal responsibility to local governments. We find that the distribution of civicness within a country determines the magnitude of the effects of decentralization on its regional convergence, as well as whether decentralization fosters or dampens the country’s national growth. We perform a series of simulated “reforms” using Monte Carlo methods parameterized using OECD countries data set. We then test our findings using a panel data set of 23 OECD countries covering the period 1975–2010. We find that the short and the long run growth effect of decentralization policy depends on the size of the policy reform and can range from extremely negative to positive depending on the rule of law, the level of social capital and its regional dispersion, in line with the model predictions.     

Police violence and judicial bias in the age of mass democracy: Glasgow, 1933–1935

Using the example of an impoverished, so-called ‘slum’ district in Glasgow, this article argues that poorer, working-class people were subjected to aggressive and frequently violent policing along with systematic hostility from the judiciary and the press in Britain during the 1930s. In Glasgow, attempts to challenge police methods and police officers’ courtroom testimonies met with a highly punitive response from the city’s legal establishment. Despite enjoying the rights of citizenship, working-class people found it difficult to find politicians to take up their complaints about police incivility and brutality, embodied in the conduct of a police constable known locally as ‘Hitler’. Those few politicians willing to do so, whether in Glasgow Corporation or in the House of Commons, found themselves marginalized as mainstream politicians of all parties refused to accept that the British police were capable of inflicting ‘terror’ on civilians. Press sympathy extended only to those working-class women jailed for perjury and separated from their children in the wake of trials of ‘rioters’ at Glasgow Sheriff Court. Human-interest coverage of the plight of their families gave working-class people a voice as victims of misfortune. They were not permitted to speak as victims of miscarriages of justice.     

The transfer of arms and the diffusion of democracy: do arms promote or undermine the “third wave”?

The post–Cold War world has witnessed a proliferation of countries governed by democratic rule. Consequently, optimism has arisen about the prospects for the spread of freedom along with democratic peace and prosperity. Along these lines, many democratic countries have made the active promotion of democracy an explicit goal and a condition for third world countries’ assistance. However, such intentions may be threatened by the ever-present arms trade. Not only do arms transfers play a key role in the foreign policies of many democratic countries, but many developing countries continue to purchase arms from abroad at a steady rate. From the perspective of the developing recipients, this study seeks to empirically assess the impact of the arms trade on democratization. To this end, this paper utilizes an exploratory data technique, locally weighted scatterplot smoother (LOWESS) to examine data for developing countries between 1982 and 1992. By exploring graphically the patterns and distributions revealed by these indicators, the implications of the international arms trade for the spread of democracy are assessed.     

The destruction of liberty in French Guiana: law,identity and the meaning of legal space, 1794–1830

Abstract

This article examines the colonial legal culture of French Guiana from 1794 to 1830 during a period marked by dramatic historical rupture; slaves in the colony who were liberated by decree of the French legislature in 1794 were returned to slavery under Napoleon. People who managed to remain free in the nineteenth century endured humiliating legal handicaps as well as challenges to their free status. In Guiana during this period, a person's access to the ‘rights of man and citizen’ depended on intricate and ultimately fragile legal structures. The perils besetting Guiana's freed people during and after the French Revolution often arose from the highly adjustable character of legal space – the legal status of imperial territory in relation to domestic soil. This article draws on archival materials including notarial documents and trial records to reconstruct the role of law and legal discourse in mediating everyday life, familial relationships and social encounters on the French colonial frontier.     

The “Socialization of Elderly Hospitalization” in China: Development,Problems, and Solutions

ABSTRACT

Objectives to analyze the development of the elderly patients with chronic diseases and to make some suggestions for the elderly social hospitalization. Methods By using yearbook data and theoretical analyses, the paper respectively presents the problems and furthermore solutions of China's elderly services. Results The elderly patients with chronic illnesses have formed a new group, and the phenomenon of “socialization of elderly hospitalization” has become a major social risk. Discussions China needs to promote the idea of “long-term care” in elderly social security, establishing long-term care insurance and fostering a private, professional elderly service system.     

“Civilization” and “State”: An Etymological Perspective

在西欧文字词源学的角度上,找不到将“文明”与“国家”被一些学者那样区别 来看的理由,更找不到将“文明”区别为“文化”与“社会”两大部分的根据。“文 明”就是“国家”,本义就是“国家”。将“文明”区别为“文化”与“社会”两大部 分,正如将“文明”与“国家”解读为两个完全不同的概念,来解决文明起源问题, 同样没有根据。因此,研究文明起源的重点只有一个,那就是社会及其管理结构的变 化,也就是生活在一定地域范围之内的人与人之间的社会关系的变化。 关键词:文明 国家 文化 社会

There is no evidence in the etymology of Western European languages to support the distinction between “civilization” and “state” stressed by some scholars, nor any to support the division of “civilization” into a dichotomy of “culture” and “society.” The original meaning of “civilization” is “state.” In discussing the origin of civilization, it is groundless to divide “civilization” into “culture” and “society,” or to interpret “civilization” and “state” as two different concepts. Given such considerations, there can only be one focus in studies of the origin of civilization, namely, changes in society and its management structure, or in other words, the changing social relations among people who live within a given territory.     

Linkage leverage democratization and liberalization: is promoting democracy the same as promoting human rights?

Research on transnational human rights promotion and democratization often assumes that human rights promotion and democratization promotion are the same. But evidences from recent studies give reasons to question this assumption. This article compares the EU’s influence on democratization and human rights reforms in 29 countries in East-Europe West-Asia, the Middle East, and North-Africa. The results indicate that the impact of the EU on human rights protection is more notable than its impact on democracy levels. The article explains these results based on the lower level of threat to regime survival as a result of human rights reform, compared to democratization; the transmission of a clear message regarding the importance of the issue of human rights to the EU and to the member states; and the strong economic leverage the EU possess. The article draws policy implications including matching each policy goal with the most effective instruments to achieve it. The most effective human rights promotion instrument is economic pressure whereas democratization is more influenced by emulation processes than by economic pressure.     

Perfumer,chemist, machine: gas chromatography and the industrial search to “improve” flavor

Abstract

Drawing from published accounts of the use of gas chromatography (GC) in the food industry, found in industry-specific journals, this article examines the role of GC in changing how perfumers and flavorists think about and shape the sense-able world. It shows that the development of a novel twist on GC – the use of an expert’s nose as a detecting device directly connected to the exit gasses of the gas chromatograph, rather than an instrumental detector – opened the door to a new way of categorizing aromatic molecules that changed the purpose of expert practices of smelling within the industrial context. The marriage of human and machine not only offered those tasked with developing the perfect flavor the tools for gaining information about what aspects of a flavor they wished to keep, it also helped identify what aspects they ought to discard or obfuscate in their search to improve the natural world of tastes and smells.     

The New “Bridge to Adulthood”: Searching for Meaning and Cohesion in the Nexus of “Hook-ups,” Internet Porn,and Instant Messages

The transition from adolescence to young adulthood has sometimes been referred to as the “bridge to young adulthood.” This period is critically important for consolidating identity and for developing a deeper capacity for sexual and nonsexual intimacy. However, widening reliance on cyber technology, social media websites, and instant text messaging, in combination with newly emerging patterns of sexual relations and recreational drug and alcohol use, has complicated the navigation of the developmental transition to young adulthood. We review psychoanalytic theory pertaining to the transition from adolescence to adulthood with a focus on Erikson’s theory of psychosexual/psychosocial epigenesis in order to explicate the developmental tasks specific to this transition. This developmental stage will also be examined through the lens of developmental neurobiology. Recent theorizing on Internet-mediated sexuality will be discussed as it relates to the case studies presented. Case material will demonstrate difficulties with the transition to adulthood, manifested in part-object relating, and the use of cyber-mediated and compulsive sexuality to resolve dysphoric self-states.     

“Habits of employees”: smoking, spies, and shopfloor culture at Hammermill Paper Company

As cigarette smoking expanded dramatically during the early twentieth century, it brought more and more workers into conflict with the policies and demands of the manufacturers who employed them. As this paper shows, addiction to nicotine ignited daily struggles over workers’ shopfloor rights and the ability of employers to set rules, establish discipline, and monitor behavior. A specific set of records from the archives of the Hammermill Paper Company, a paper manufacturer once based in Erie, Pennsylvania, provide a unique opportunity to explore the impact of cigarette consumption on labor relations during the era of mass production, as two nosy factory spies probed and documented worker actions and attitudes in the summer of 1915. As a result of their intelligence gathering, the spies discovered a factory-wide work culture rooted in the addictive pleasure of cigarette smoke. This discovery worried them. Worker-smokers needed to dampen their hunger for nicotine with frequent, and often clandestine, breaks from work, typically in defiance of “no-smoking” rules, employer designations for the uses of factory space, and bosses’ demands for continuous production. Highlighting the intersections of the histories of labor, smoking, and addiction, this paper argues that cigarettes were a key battleground in workers’ and managers’ intensifying struggles over who really controlled the industrial shopfloor during the early 1900s.     

To abolish the law of castes: merit,manhood and the problem of colour in the Puerto Rican liberal movement, 1873–92

Abstract

This article traces the involvement of three men of low social rank and partial African ancestry in the evolution of liberal politics in Puerto Rico during the final decades of Spanish colonial rule. In both literary and political writings Ramón Marín, Sotero Figueroa and Francisco Gonzalo Marín argued that social equality should be at the centre of colonial reforms. Yet they construed the question of equality as a matter of unfettered manhood – all men to be judged on their merit not on their rank – rather than as a politics of racial solidarity. Rather than characterize this emphasis as ‘silence’ on matters of race imposed by elite liberalism, this article seeks to understand this egalitarian variant of Puerto Rican liberalism on its own terms. It situates these authors within three overlapping contexts: a colonial state that was ambivalent about race; a liberal movement built on fragile alliances that included artisans and men of lower-middle status; and complex local systems of social acceptance and exclusion that shaped these writers' own identities as men in public and private.     

Separation of powers and the Ecuadorian Supreme Court: exploring presidential–judicial conflict in a post-transition democracy

In 2005 ongoing political conflict between the executive and legislative branches of government in Ecuador culminated in a struggle over the judiciary. These events resulted in the dismissal, re-constitution, and dismissal again of the Ecuadorian high court (the Corte Suprema de Justicia) and the impeachment of the president. This paper uses the political crisis surrounding the dismissal of the Ecuadorian Supreme Court of Justice to examine the broader phenomenon of executive branch attacks on the judiciary in South American and Africa. We make three general observations: (1) the longevity of the judiciary alone (time without attack) does not guarantee a sufficiently deep reservoir of diffuse support to protect it from successful efforts at structural change or dissolution, (2) despite previous evidence that multilateral constitutional processes result in increased court independence (Dargent, 2009), we conclude that multi-party institutional arrangements are more vulnerable to the types of crisis that cause them to seek to use courts and their legitimacy to achieve political goals thereby limiting previous gains in independence, and (3) a court's institutional legitimacy is enhanced when it survives political threats from other branches of government. The crisis in Ecuador is used to demonstrate the challenges facing newer democracies with continuing multilateral conflict as well as the utility of thinking about how, why and when political institutions attack high courts and how the judiciary and citizens respond.     

“Altered Observation of Modern Eyes”: Mina Loy's Collages,and Multisensual Aesthetics

ABSTRACT

This article traces the emergence of a multisensual aesthetic in the works of modernist avant-garde artist and poet Mina Loy. Loy's creative efforts were heterogeneous, spanning multiple media: a poet and painter, she was also a designer, actor and inventor. Seeking to instantiate herself in a cultural climate which tended to objectify the female body, Loy's multisensual art aimed to make the viewer/listener/reader sense as she did, and, in so doing, made important advances in the cultural configuration of women as whole, complex beings worthy of intellectual, physical, artistic and spiritual presence in the world.

Loy's assemblage art of the 1950s is shown to be a radical attempt to push the medium of collage into a more complex dimensionality in an effort to represent emerging understandings of perception and consciousness, positioning her as a major contributor to a defining art form of modernism. Bolstered by an appreciation of her own body as sensually charged and relational, Loy ascertained the simultaneity of present absence, connectivity and juxtaposition characterizing collage. This article articulates how, by troubling normative conceptions of dimensionality Loy's assemblages underscore the material and textual aspects of language explored in her collage-inflected poetry.