The Challenge for the Harmonization of Law

Under globalization and the rapid development of international trade and economic relationships, it is necessary to find common rules in private law. Nonetheless, an aspect that must be taken into account is that law is a mirror of a respective society and therefore it should also be considered that juridical fragmentation reflects these differences among societies. Hence, a ‘glocalized’ approach seems to be more suitable and, for it to be put it into practice, the efforts should be devoted to seeking legal harmonization instead of unification. The former, beside all the other things, is to be preferred in terms of feasibility. Harmonization does not equally show the same degree of difficulty in all the fields: it seems to be easier (and more urgent) to be achieved in obligations-contracts and commercial law than in family law or in property and real rights law. Considering this, our research, contains an overview on the advantages of legal harmonization and a brief survey on methods that have been employed and that are being employed now to reach this goal. Even at this preliminary stage, we have noticed that we should pay attention to a theoretical principles-based logic-systematic method and to the role played by jurists of reaching this goal.     

At the Edge of Chaos: Poetics of American Monsters,here and there

Although we often use the term “monster” in a self‐evident way, what that term signifies is highly varied and sometimes contradictory. What, in fact, is a monster? This paper explores various beings called “monsters,” from obese bodies on reality TV to occult lizard people in conspiracy theories. Taking off from classic anthropological theories of monsters as deconstructed and reassembled natural objects, I question their affective and meaningful associations in contemporary America, and explore why the idea of the monster, which has no stable referent, is nonetheless ubiquitous in a seemingly disenchanted world.     

Of Monsters and Men: Horror Film in Belarus,Ukraine, and Russia

Abstract

This article looks at recent horror films from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia through the notion of “cultural translation.” It argues that these films both mimic Hollywood horror tropes and subvert genre formula via engagement of local history and memory. Horror films, therefore, represent both the cinematic and cultural concerns of their times, reflecting the changing globalized realities of cinema as a medium, and the social and political dilemmas their viewers face beyond the movie theatre. The results are hybrid texts that engage the viewer in the polyphony of intertextual, global, and local connections.     

Teratology: "Monsters" and the Professionalization of Obstetrics

Abstract  This article examines obstetricians' professionalization efforts, focusing on the "gradient argument" employed: that those who have jurisdiction over the margins of professional territory should control the entirety. That margin was the birth of "monstrous" infants with atypical bodies, studied under the rubric of teratology. An analysis of 235 teratological articles published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynæcology of the British Empire from 1902–1925 reveals that they enhanced obstetricians' professional status but ignored health outcomes for mothers and infants. The normalizing, eugenic framework employed by obstetricians had negative implications for people with disabilities, some of which persist today.     

Jesus and Matthew: Monsters, Si[g]ns, and Wonders

In the American New Right's outraged war against all things anti-family, -nation, and -civilization, the authority of Jesus, crucified yet triumphant, is held out as potent augury against all forces of evil. For many evangelical Christian groups, one archenemy in particular exemplifies the forces of Satan and civil distress. The resulting scene of Manichean conflict can only be called Gothic Verite: The suffering, broken body of Jesus, whose blood is piously read as atonement, rebukes the demonized and monstrous homosexual, whose blood, Gothically read, contains the taint of private immorality, public domestic threat, and world-ending civic collapse. This powerful clash of images, cosmic worldviews and mundane politics can be observed at the funeral of Matthew Shepard—beaten to death, most observers conclude, because his assailants thought he was gay. In the tense confrontation of Christians and homosexuals at his funeral, one sees a historic tension within the heart of Christianity threatening, at whatever cost, to reconcile. That is, at issue is the recognition, however dim, that the angel and the demon, the prayerful and depraved, mirror each other more than they differ.     

Monsters in cyberspace cyberphobia and cultural panic in the information age

This paper explores popular attitudes toward the Internet (and computer-mediated communication more generally) by mapping some of the more threatening, transgressive and 'monstrous' images associated with cyberspace. An account of risk consciousness is developed in three parts: (1) comparisons with earlier information technologies reveals similarities and differences with regard to public attitudes toward cyberspace and its risks; (2) the development of a model of contemporary teratological space derived from images of boundary-dissolving threats, intrusive alterities and existential ambivalences created by the erosion of binary distinctions and hierarchies; and (3) possible historical and sociological explanations of cyberpanic drawing on recent theorizations of globalization (capitalism/information society theory, risk society theory, reflexive modernization theory, and alterity theory).     

Religious Cults, the Individual and the Family

Relatively little attention has been paid in the professional literature to the cult phenomenon: what it is, how it attracts converts, what differentiates the vulnerable youth from the non-vulnerable; the effects of cult membership on the convert's family, and, particularly, in what ways the family can be aided during and after involvement with the cult. The authors have drawn on clinical observations, interviews, and extant literature from a variety of disciplines in constructing a portrait of the vulnerable youth; the techniques used by cults to attract, recruit, and convert members; the dynamics of the recruits family; and the most effective modes of therapy for intervening. The intent of the article is to stimulate: 1) professional awareness of and knowledge about the cults, and 2) further research into related family dynamics and therapeutic techniques.     

Sustainability standards and certification: looking through the lens of Foucault's dispositif

Over the past few decades, sustainability standards and certification have come to play an important role in the global governance of production and trade. Their purpose is to address the environmental and social problems generated by the globalization of the economy. Yet, as scholars and actors alike have pointed out, framing these problems in terms of technical criteria and procedures might result in rendering some issues invisible and closing potential debate and contestation. Through the empirical analysis of a multi‐stakeholder initiative called the ‘Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil', our aim is to explore how civil society organizations and advocacy networks nevertheless draw new lines of power by using, putting to the test, correcting and constructing formalized knowledge. To shed light on these processes of resistance, we advance an analytic that restores the concept of dispositif coined by Michel Foucault in emphasizing both the disruptive and stabilizing lines that compose a dispositif.     

Curating the Soul: Foucault's concept of hupomnemata and the digital technology of self-care

This paper explores how online actions such as the practice of digital self-writing shape our offline identity. We start with an examination of the concept of hupomnemata – a practice of self-writing in which notes are kept as a ‘material record of things read, heard, or thought’ in the intent of shaping the self [Foucault (1997). Self writing. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics, subjectivity and truth. The essential works of Foucault, 1954–1984. Volume 1 (pp. 207–222). New York, NY: The New Press p. 209] – before arguing that the practice of digital content curation can be understood as a modern-day variant of the Greco-Roman hupomnemata. Although the work of the digital curator is conducted online, this paper positions contemporary curatorial practices as acts of self-exploration, self-cultivation, and self-care, which nourish offline identity and which ultimately work to shape the offline, corporeal self.     

挑战与精彩同在(英文)

For each person in the world,there are challenges --either against him/herself or others--throughout his/her life.In fact,life is like a sporting event.The spectators,who are fond of watching the fierce,but fascinating,competitions between the rivals may also enjoy the"games"during their lives.     

Individual,Group, and Community in the Behavior Sequence

In higher education today planning for the future is viewed as a difficult, yet essential task in relation to educational decision making. This paper identifies key components of a long-range planning process and argues that schools of social work must engage in thinking about the future in systematic and informed ways in order to reach their program objectives.     

Sailing With The Beloved in (the Academic) Sea of Whirlpools and Monsters

No abstract available for this article.     

Contracts, Individual Revenue and Performance

In some jobs individual workers have control over revenue, effort and productivity. These jobs include professional firms for law, medicine and consulting. They include personal services in areas from hair styling to taxi driving. The firm offers contracts that allow for a sharing of risks and rewards. These incentives include a split of output between the firm and worker and employee ownership. For U.S. real estate agents, a choice is available between splitting revenue with the firm or retaining 100?% above a fixed prepaid minimum. These are equity and sequential debt contracts. Under the sequential debt contract, effort increases but output per hour declines. Separately, agents increase effort and productivity if offered ownership in the firm, effectively a claim on others?? performance.     

Beyond Nation-State Paradigms: Globalization,Sociology, and the Challenge of Transnational Studies

Globalization has made it increasingly necessary to break with nation-state centered analysis in macrosociologies. Social structure is becoming transnationalized, and an epistemological shift is required in concurrence with this ontological change. A new interdisciplinary transnational studies should be predicated on a paradigmatic shift in the focus of social inquiry from the nation-state as the basic unit of analysis to the global system as the appropriate unit. Sociology's fundamental contribution to a transnational studies should be the study oftransnational social structure. This article does not establish a new transnational paradigm. Rather, it surveys and critiques nation-state-centrism in extant paradigms, provides a rationale for a new transnational approach, and proposes a research curriculum of a new transnational studies that may contribute to paradigmatic reconceptualization.     

Individual, Family, and Peer Correlates of Adolescent Gambling

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the individual, family, and peer factors that correlate with adolescent gambling. High school students from three states ( N = 1,846) completed an anonymous questionnaire assessing the behavior of themselves, their parents, and their peers. Participants also reported on their gambling behavior via the SOGS-RA, which was used to create five adolescent gambling groups (i.e., Non-Gamblers, Non-Problem Gamblers, At-Risk Gamblers, Problem Gamblers, and Probable Pathological Gamblers). In a discriminant function analysis using demographic, individual, family, and peer factors as potential discriminators, two functions emerged that accounted for 94% of the variance between groups. The first function was linear, with the Probable Pathological Gamblers reporting the highest level of peer and parent gambling, susceptibility to peer pressure, conduct problems, binge drinking, suicide attempts, drug use, and being male. The second function highlighted three unique qualities of individuals in the two outlying groups: Probable Pathological Gamblers and Non-Gamblers. These findings suggest that demographic, individual, family, and peer variables are all important correlates of probable pathological gambling in adolescents. Results also support the utility of a five-group classification scheme based on the SOGS-RA. The clinical implications of these results are discussed.     

Sexuality,Adolescence and the Criminal Law

SUMMARY

The provisions in the German Criminal Code protecting sexual self-determinationeven after several penal law reforms-are still criminologically not yet coherently structured and carry some contradictions. Recent research implies that in the section of the German Criminal Code establishing sexual offences three very divergent forms of deviant behavior are lumped together in an undifferentiated way: violent offences, infractions of moral norms and commercialization of sexuality (the latter in most cases in the form of organised crime). Some offences lack empirical justification in the sense of a concept of protection, for example due to the fact that damage caused to victims is not proven. In addition the establishment of age limits turns out as a difficult task, i.e., when consensual (love) relations of adolescents and of young adults are concerned. International efforts to approximate (sexual) offences legislation carry the risk that reasoned, criminologically analysed and empirically justified regulations are sacrificed to populistic diffused mainstream-thinking.     

Socioeconomic Status,Family Processes,and Individual Development

Research during the past decade shows that social class or socioeconomic status (SES) is related to satisfaction and stability in romantic unions, the quality of parent‐child relationships, and a range of developmental outcomes for adults and children. This review focuses on evidence regarding potential mechanisms proposed to account for these associations. Research findings reported during the past decade demonstrate support for an interactionist model of the relationship between SES and family life, which incorporates assumptions from both the social causation and social selection perspectives. This review concludes with recommendations for future research on SES, family processes, and individual development in terms of important theoretical and methodological issues yet to be addressed.     

Ede: Race,the Law,and I

In the context of the United States, interpellation is perhaps most visible, even tangible, in the arena of race and racism. Orna Guralnik tells us of Ede, a Nigerian immigrant suffering from depersonalization and struggling to be interpellated out of her postcolonial Blackness. This struggle manifests in the treatment relationship as Guralnik, experiencing her Whiteness, tracks their mutual run-in with racial interpellation at the nexus of class, ethnicity, money, and public power. In showing, also, how interpellation partners with dissociation, this vignette illuminates a dilemma found in many other domains of existence, including—perhaps especially—those central to this journal's focus, gender and sexuality.