Law of assisted reproductive surrogacy in Malaysia: a critical overview

Both traditional and gestational surrogacy are now entering the public mind as a major public policy issue, because of concern for apparent truncation of the surrogate mother’s rights. This article sets out to investigate some key relevant rights, the policy issues as yet unresolved, and the character of the current regulatory regime. Modern medicine, specifically assisted reproductive technology, has made legislation obsolete in many jurisdictions around the world, including in Malaysia. These new medical practices present many significant legal problems, with which the courts and legislators still struggle. A proposed statute, the Assisted Reproductive Technique Services Act, aimed at regulating reproductive technologies, including surrogacy arrangements, will be introduced in the Malaysian parliament soon. The proposed Malaysian Act will address issues such as surrogacy, sperm or egg banking, and sperm donation. Malaysia is moving cautiously towards regulation on this issue and is trying to avoid becoming a ‘rent-a-womb country’. Thus, this article asks the question as to what policy considerations are in place, in the current Malaysian regulatory regime, to care for the rights of the surrogate mother? It will try to show that there is still a danger that Malaysia could become a ‘rent-a-womb country’, with its necessary implications of property rights over surrogate mothers. The article employs section-by-section synthesis to reach its conclusions. Argument will suggest that the current state of the law in Malaysia, as to both traditional and gestational surrogacy, seems to be that the regulatory regime is a combination of the general law, private ordering, registration and enforceable professional ethics. However, there is no Malaysian statutory law in place, in the contemporary social context, expressly prohibiting a term in a surrogacy contract that might imply property rights over the surrogate mother. This is a serious apparent lacuna in the law, and might suggest that the laws of transnational crime be considered, as an alternative, as applicable to the surrogacy agreement.     

Effect of tourism on economic growth of Sri Lanka: accounting for capital per worker,exchange rate and structural breaks

We explore the nexus between tourism, exchange rate and economic growth in Sri Lanka over the period 1980–2014. Using the augmented Solow (Q J Econ 70(1):65–94, 1956) framework and the ARDL bounds procedure whilst accounting for structural breaks using Bai and Perron (J Appl Econ 18(1):1–22, 2003) multiple break tests, the short-run and long-run association and impacts are examined. The results confirm the presence of a long-run association between tourism receipts (% of GDP), exchange rate, capital per worker and output per worker. The regression results show a 1% increase in tourism receipts results in a 0.03 and 0.06% increase in output per worker in the short-run and long-run, respectively. A unidirectional causality is noted from tourism to output per worker; from exchange rate to output per worker and capital per worker; and from output to capital, in per worker terms. Finally, we note that although structural breaks periods have negative association with economic growth, they are not statistically significant.     

Followers＇ characteristics and leadership styles： An empirical fit among employees of Pakistan

Over the years, leadership researchers have focused on personality traits and behaviors of the leaders that determine their effectiveness. Contingency theorists, however, argued that ＂effectiveness of leader in any given situation is dependent on the followers＇ characteristics＂, while studying the followers＇ characteristics, most of them were concerned with followers＇ work related characteristics （e.g., ability and willingness to perform their tasks, and dependency of the followers） and needs （need for clarity, need for support, need for supervision, need for independence, and need for leadership）. But very few studies have explored the relationship between followers＇ personality traits and leadership characteristics, and how these personality traits influence the leader＇s ability to adjust their leadership styles. Moreover, the earlier studies either focusing on followers＇ traits or studying the leadership characteristics/styles were based on the data from western countries. Especially, this has been the most neglected area among the behavioral scientists of Pakistan. Therefore, the present study aims at examining the relationship between followers＇ personality characteristics and leadership styles of Pakistani workers and management. For this purpose, the study will utilize personality inventory proposed by Hofstee and de Raad （t992）, and as a result, it will fulfill the stipulations of researchers and practitioners from follower centered approach to leadership.     

Wither the ‘development contract’? Historical conjunctures in Naomi Hossain’s The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success

This paper examines methodological avenues for a historical sociology of development through a close reading of Naomi Hossain’s recent book, The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success (2017). Hossain’s conjunctural perspective, the formative moment of Bangladesh in environmental catastrophe, war and famine in the 1970s, establishes a novel account of the country’s development trajectory. Contingencies of the moment and consequent political uncertainties committed an emergent national elite to a largely informal but substantive social compact against future crises of subsistence. The result was a specific, transnational power configuration rendering Bangladesh a test case for developmental interventions and the production of knowledge regarding them. Debates in critical development studies have often posited that such ‘elite commitment’ is a consequence and not so much a precondition for social improvement, brought about through struggles from ‘below.’ How might these positions be reconciled by shifting the temporal frames of reference? By rendering historical processes legible as conflicting and complementary interactions between different social forces and actors? How can such actors be envisaged without presuming their identities and interests as fixed or given, but rather, as shaping and being shaped by such processes? These questions motivate the immanent critique and reappraisal of Hossain’s timely work, highlighting its significance for dynamic analyses of historical capitalism today through the ‘universal particularities’ of the national case.     

The Effects of Youth Mentoring Programs: A Meta-analysis of Outcome Studies

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Mentoring programs, which pair youth with caring, non-parental adults with the goal of promoting positive youth development, are an increasingly popular strategy...     

Sustainable development challenges in a war‐torn country: Perceived danger and psychological well‐being

The laborer's physical and mental health, well‐being, and happiness are among the major indicators for measuring each nation's sustainable development. A conflictive and hostile external environment (war zone) poses considerable difficulty and psychological distress to workers and nonworkers. Therefore, working in such a physically dangerous business environment may hurt worker's well‐being and happiness that in turn may reduce the workers' productivity at the workplace. A high level of laborers' productivity in public and private sectors is essential for achieving sustainable development in the long term. Therefore, this paper examines the effects of perceived danger on employees' psychological well‐being in war‐torn Afghanistan, an issue being addressed for the first time. We tested the moderating role of social support from coworkers on this effect in order to have a broader vision of which individuals are healthier and happier in a physically dangerous working environment. Two survey data sets were collected from 190 employees working in various small private and public businesses in Herat, Afghanistan. Our results reveal the negative impact of perceived danger on employees' psychological well‐being and that employees who receive little or no social support from their peers feel the negative effects of a physically dangerous working condition even more acutely.     

Persistence and polarisation in rural Bangladesh: Response to a debate

The authors here respond to the various comments on their original article in Vol.13, No.3 of The Journal of Peasant Studies. Their differences with the more traditional understanding of the process of differentiation of the peasantry are stressed and certain points arising from the comments are clarified. It is stressed that theirs is not an ‘equilibrium analysis’, but, rather, an analysis of the slow dynamics of differentiation, as opposed to the fast dynamics implied in classical Marxist models (including Lenin's).     

Introduction to Lavigne: Money and Socialism

In a continuation of his earlier work on the history and structure of psychiatry and psychoanalysis Bercherie examines Frued's views on epistemology and then identifies the presence of four metapsychological models in his writings. The models are then related to the four major currents in post-Freudian psychoanalysis: Kleinian analysis, ego-psychology, Lacanianism and the more diffuse ‘marginal’ current. He ends by expressing the hope that the prevailing climate of theoretical dogmatism will give way to a new spirit of synthesis and tolerance which will lead to major developments in both the theory and the practice of psychoanalysis.