Nationalism versus civilisations: an assessment of alternate theories on the future of ethnic identity and conflict

The end of the Cold War has caused a reassessment of the future basis for conflict and identity. While Samuel Huntington predicts that super-national ‘civilisations’ are becoming the basis for identity and conflict, many dispute this arguing that either past ethnic and national bases for identity and conflict will remain the norm or that world integration and interdependence will cause the world to unite. This article examines an aspect of this debate using data on ethnic conflict from the Minorities at Risk data set, as well as data collected independently. Specifically, it assesses whether post-Cold War ethnic conflict, and by inference ethnic identity, is more influenced by civilisational or ethnic variables. The analysis shows that separatism, a nationalist variable, is considerably more strongly associated with ethnic rebellion than are civilisational differences. Furthermore, in the multi-variate analysis civilisational differences are, if anything, associated with less ethnic rebellion. Also, separatism and various political variables more strongly influence ethnic rebellion than do civilisational differences. Thus, this study strongly supports the contention that, at least as of the late 1990s, identity continues to be based on national end ethnic factors rather than civilisational ones.     

The multiethnic state-building dilemma: national and ethnic minorities' identities in the Crimea

This article examines the process of national identity formation among ethnic minorities in the Crimea – specifically, how a new common identity develops in the system of existing identities, what meaning group identities have for different minorities group and how this process influences attitudes and stereotypes toward the ingroup and outgroup. Based on surveys in the Crimea, results show that formation of a common national and regional identity leads to developing of positive stereotypes toward members of other groups, who now are involved in a new group identity, but also is connected with formation of negative attitudes and stereotypes toward other groups. The meaning of identity depends on its position in the system of identities and can be used as a criterion for early warning of conflicts.     

Rhetorical Theory and the Critique of National Identity Construction

A striking feature of scholarship on national identity is the relative absence of rhetorical theory, or theory related to the persuasive dimensions of discourse, especially given the fact that rhetorical theorists have been concerned with the manufacturing of public opinion and collective identity for over two millennia. To address this absence, this article discusses how rhetorical theories dealing with narrative theory, the social construction of publics, rhetorical constraints, ideology critique, public memory, political history and post-national identity help both to illuminate and critique emergent patterns of national identification.     

Violent civic nationalism versus civil ethnic nationalism: Contrasting Indonesia and Malay(si)a

In 1963 the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah formed the Federation of Malaysia. In the same year Indonesia gained control over West Papua. In the first case the integration was accomplished participatory and peacefully, in the second violence reigned supreme. I argue that different visions of community, nation and state, developed during the decades of decolonisation and the early years of state- and nation-building, are responsible for the different outcomes. Contrary to the expectations of the predominant theories on nationalism the ethno-cultural variant of nation-building in Malaysia proved to be much more integrative than the civic variant espoused by the Indonesian nation-builders.     

硕士研究生入学英语考试英译汉试题的特点及翻译技巧

深入分析历年硕士研究生入学英语考试英译汉试题的特点,总结四方面特点,提出具有针对性的翻译方法和技巧作为对策:(1)试题中的词汇难以见词明义,需根据上下文选择确定词义或对词义进行引申;(2)句子的理解与翻译对上下文的依赖性很强,需使用还原法对原文中的替代、省略、变换等表达进行还原翻译;(3)句子较长,结构复杂,需采用分译法;(4)很多句子的表意方式和语序体现出英美人的思维习惯和特点,需作语序调整。     

坚持和完善人民代表大会制度探析

人民代表大会制度是与我国国体相适应的根本政治制度。文章探讨了坚持和完善人民代表大会制度的思路与途径 :一是要弄清它同三权分立政治体制的本质区别 ,适当借鉴其权力监督制约机制 ;二是要处理好法治与人治 ,党的领导与发挥人民代表大会最高权力机关的作用的关系 ,把党的领导、人民当家作主与依法治国相结合 ,推进党的领导体制和执政方式的转变 ;三是要改革和完善人民代表大会的选举制度和组织结构 ,更好地发挥其国家权力机关的作用。     

试论党的二大纲领的提出对我们的历史启示

党的“二大”在中国革命史上第一次提出了民主革命的纲领 ,标志着中国共产党对中国国情认识的进一步深化。历史启示我们 :在中国革命与建设过程中 ,必须坚持马克思主义基本原理与中国实际相结合 ;必须正确处理党的最低纲领与最高纲领的辩证关系 ;必须脚踏实地地实践党在现阶段的基本纲领。     

试析布哈林国民经济综合平衡发展理论

列宁逝世以后,布哈林继续坚持和捍卫列宁的新经济政策思想,并结合俄国的实际,针对当时苏联国民经济发展中出现的一系列问题,总结过去经济建设中的经验教训,系统地阐发自己的观点,从而形成了关于国民经济综合平衡发展的比较全面系统的理论。他认为,要使国民经济持续健康发展,必须尊重客观经济规律,重视市场调节的作用,使工业和农业、重工业和轻工业、农业内部、积累和消费之间保持综合平衡。在建设有中国特色社会主义的今天,重温布哈林的国民经济综合平衡发展理论,无疑会给我们以很好的教益和启迪。     

Popular music and urban regeneration: The music industries of Merseyside

In this article I address the origins of America's national parks, particularly as they figure in the environmentalist discourse surrounding the institution of Yosemite Valley as a public park. Although technically speaking Yosemite did not become a national park until 1890, its cession to the State of California in 1864 provides an important cultural site for the emergence of environmentalism as part of a broader concern with the relations between aesthetic, social and natural agency. In mapping out these relations in Frederick Law Olmsted's 1865 report on the management of Yosemite, I claim that the preservation of Yosemite reproduces nature as a public park in which human agency can be simultaneously produced and elided by means of the aesthetic agency of nature. I read Olmsted's report as a discursive site on which we can trace the structural parallels between the preservation of Yosemite and several related cultural practices in which the origins of American environmentalism are embedded. I also read it as sketching out the configurations of human and natural agency within which these parallel practices are articulated.

My study operates from the assumption that science and technology need to be understood not simply by explaining how they are socially or culturally constructed, but also by looking at how certain fundamental ideas of metaphors (like natural agency or the reproduction of nature) are worked out at the same historical moment in different discursive practices. In taking up the idea of America as it both defines and is defined by the network of relations among science, technology and culture, I outline certain myths of American environmentalist origins as played out across a number of diverse and heterogeneous discourses and technologies of representation and reproduction. I hope also to illuminate the way in which American cultural origins are simultaneously constructed and destabilized through the act of reproducing nature.     

Weighing the Success of a National Alzheimer's Disease Service Demonstration

Summary

As the need for long-term care services within the United States has grown dramatically, Congress has consistently deflected the primary responsibility for such care to state governments, local organizations, and, ultimately, the family. This paper examines the impact of the Alzheimer's Disease Demonstration Grants to States (ADDGS) program, a small federally funded initiative within the context of this trend. Although the demonstration can be deemed a huge success relative to the goals of creating new services for an underserved target population, questions are raised about the merits of the program relative to the exploding need for an effective network of long-term care services.