Terrorism and lethal moralism in the United States and United Kingdom, 1970–2017

The current paper examines terrorism as a special form of moralistic violence, with several key features that distinguish such behaviour from other types of violence. The theory of lethal moralism highlights the importance of social polarization, characterized by vast differences in social space and inequality between adversaries as crucial to explaining deadly terrorist attacks. Where the differences are more permanent or chronic – and the groups in question define and justify their existence specifically in contradistinction to ‘other’ groups – then the polarization intensifies and attacks tend to be more lethal. In contrast, groups that appeal to broader audiences or the general public as potential allies more often use non‐lethal terrorism to their strategic advantage. The study examines the United States and the United Kingdom to classify each of more than 8,000 attacks between 1970 and 2017 in terms of their ideological orientations. The evidence highlights the arc of terrorism in relation to different types of groups, as well as confirms the more lethal nature of terrorism linked especially to radical Islam, right‐wing religious extremists, hate groups, ethno‐nationalist sectarian violence, and anti‐government anarchists. Yet apart from the extensive use of terrorism associated with ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the majority of terrorist attacks in the US and the UK have not produced deaths. Most terrorism instead has been perpetrated by groups aiming to rally support for a general cause and has been far less deadly on balance. The implications of these findings are discussed with a view toward developing more powerful explanatory models that focus on the socio‐cultural contexts and justification frameworks that inspire extremism and the use of lethal moralism to settle disputes.     

In search of unity: a new politics of solidarity and action for confronting the crisis of global capitalism

ABSTRACT

This essay is an introduction to a Special Forum by critical scholar-activists responding to the late Samir Amin’s call for the establishment of a new political vehicle that would be capable of uniting diverse progressive and revolutionary movements consisting of the workers and peoples of the whole world. The purpose of this vehicle would be to confront and radically transform a global capitalist order in deep crisis. The authors of these essays tend to agree that Amin was a profound contributor to the global justice movement, and to the reformulation of Marxism to address the evolution of global capitalism and imperialism that took place in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However, some are critical of Amin’s stance. The essayists differ about whether they see Samir Amin’s proposal for the establishment of a global party as a good or bad idea. Among those who think it is a good idea there are differences regarding the organizational nature and issue focus of the proposed organization. There are also different attitudes toward the institution of the nation-state and regarding the sources of progressive revolutionary political forces in the contemporary world. We briefly review the main issues under contention.     

元巩昌汪总帅府二十四城考

巩昌汪总帅府为元代唯一允许世袭罔替的漠南地方军政官府。降蒙初汪总帅府所辖二十四城的地盘,应该是癸卯春皇子阔端手札付秦、巩等十九州,再加原属金熙河、庆阳二路而后割出的安西、河、泾、邠、宁五州。五府二十七州、四府十五州及五十余城说,则反映元世祖朝至元五年等不同时段,因汪氏军功权势及其与蒙古诸王、脱思麻宣慰司等彼此消长而造成的地盘扩张或缩小的状态。     

An analysis of corporate environmental responsibility on the global corporate Web sites and their dialogic principles

This study investigated how corporations use their Web sites as a way of helping to build corporate environmental responsibility. A content analysis of 2008 Fortune Global corporate Web sites compared environmental concerns and the use of dialogic principles across three regions (i.e., Asia, Europe, and North America). Results show that about 71% of Web sites have a stand-alone environmental menu as a central location for environmental information, and that Europe is the highest, followed by North America and Asia. The environmental concerns of ‘resources/waste management’ and ‘climate changes’ are more commonly highlighted than are ‘ecosystem’ and ‘environmental governance.’ Furthermore, most Web sites do not fully employ dialogic features, regardless of region.     

PROXIMITY POLITICS

'Proximity politics' refers to a certain set of new political-cultural problems and issues that the globalization process confronts us with. Specifically it refers to the sort of engagements globalization entails as it draws us all closer together: both 'structurally', via the complex institutional interconnections of globalization, and 'phenomenologically' via the sort of experienced proximity that is provided in time-space bridging technologies - particularly communications and media technologies. The article contends that this 'relational closeness' - in a complex set of interactive modalities which do not abolish, but, in some contexts, actually intensify cultural differences - presents its own distinct order of politics. It attempts to map some of this emergent terrain, focusing on some recent debates about cosmopolitanism . Here it explores, for instance, problems of conflicting cultural-political principle thrown up by the structural impact of enforced proximity: principles of universalism and humanism vs the demands of cultural difference; ethical interventionism vs the principle of sovereignty; 'global governance' vs the claims of localism. It concludes, optimistically, by suggesting that the grosser fears of incompatibility of such principles may often be exaggerated and that there is, in fact, a good deal of room for (at least theoretical) manoeuvre on the emergent terrain of cosmopolitan politics.     

Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and performativity

In this article I suggest that while recent sociolinguistic work focusing on crossing, styling the Other or language boundaries is raising significant questions concerning how we relate language, identity and popular culture, these insights have largely passed by the sociolinguistics of world Englishes. This latter work is still caught between arguments about homogeneity and heterogeneity, between arguments based on liberal accommodationism, linguistic imperialism or linguistic hybridity that do not allow for sufficiently complex understandings of what is currently happening with global Englishes. Focusing particularly on rap music, I suggest that we need, at the very least, a critical understanding of globalization, a focus on popular cultural flows, and a way of taking up performance and performativity in relationship to identity and culture.     

Prague,Present Meets Past

In the first, socio-historical part of the study, the main periods of Prague's twentieth century history are described and explained, i.e. the period of Hapsburg monarchy, the period of the interwar Czechoslovak Republic, the Second World War years and Nazi occupation, the 41 years of the communist regime and the years after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. It was a century of unprecedented discontinuities and the city and its people went through seven different political and economic orders. This kind of history makes legitimate the following question: how were the city and its residents able to retain identity and stability. Different mechanisms were used, e.g. separating culture from politics, inventing civic identity, identity linked to the locality as well as to its history and to the local ways of life, and to stress monument protection. The study hints also at the risks of such defensive mechanisms. The last part tries to exploit the experience of Prague and similar cities for stimulating the interest in urban theory.     

一种Volterra方程的极限环问题

中科院数学所井竹筠同志研究过方程的情况,本文进一步研究一般情况．通过定性分析,研究该系统极限环的存在性、唯一性．     

当前全球学理论研究的特点

全球学是当前国内外学术领域关注的一个热点。当前对全球学理论研究表现出片面性、矛盾性、滞后性和缺乏协调性等特点,这些特点限制了对全球学研究的开放性、纵深性和＂全球化＂。