‘Let's Win this Game Together’: Children's Rights Violations,Macro‐Securitisation and the Transformative Potential of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil

Sport's transformative potential is known to support marginalised children, to deal with traumatic experiences and instil positive values; yet hosting mega sporting events (MSEs) can have negative impacts. Drawing on participatory research with favela‐based children during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this article argues that MSEs bring a macro‐securitisation of urban life, which causes considerable harm. This paper also suggests that the inclusion of children's voices in advocacy debates can challenge top‐down securitisation and might allow MSEs to foster further positive social transformation. Therefore, juxtaposed with causing harm, macro‐securitisations can open opportunities for children to take action and have their voices heard.     

Gaughran vs the UK and public acceptability of forensic biometrics retention

This commentary provides a response to the European Court of Human Rights ruling in the case of Gaughran vs the United Kingdom on 13 February 2020. The Court ruled that the indefinite retention of DNA, fingerprints and facial images from all convicted adults was disproportionate. Using data from a survey on public attitudes, we examine the public acceptability of the police retention of forensic biometrics from the population.     

Does fertiliser use improve household welfare? Evidence from Ghana’s cocoa industry

This article analyses welfare impacts of fertiliser adoption using data collected from 838 cocoa farm households in the four key cocoa-producing regions in Ghana. Using propensity score matching (PSM), the study indicates that application of fertiliser leads to significant gains in farm yields, farm income, consumption expenditure, consumption expenditure per capita, and value of productive farm assets. The article concludes that cocoa-specific programmes such as Cocoa High Technology (Cocoa Hi-tech), initiated to intensify the application of improved farm technologies such as fertiliser, should be strengthened through effective and efficient management systems.     

State transformation goes nuclear: Chinese National Nuclear Companies’ expansion into Europe

Abstract

Most of the literature on state transformation focuses on China’s relations with African, Asian and Latin American countries and the National Oil Companies’ overseas expansion to show that China has become fragmented, decentralised and internationalised. This article contributes novel findings by focusing on China’s relations with Europe and the actions of China’s National Nuclear Companies (NNCs). It shows that NNCs, which have become relatively autonomous actors, often pursue their agendas of expansion into Europe without much coordination with, or even in contradiction to, other ministries’ agendas and interests, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Instead of being orchestrated by the central government, their expansion reflects considerable disorganisation and sometimes undermines China’s official strategy. The article demonstrates this through case studies of NNCs’ involvement in the UK and Romania.     

Analysis of off-farm work decisions among smallholder farm households in Burkina Faso

This article investigates off-farm work decisions by smallholder farm households. Using data on 1,101 households from Burkina Faso, it demonstrates that in addition to the usual household socio-demographic characteristics, remittances, access to information and beneficiary of specific training affect off-farm work decisions, as well as rainfall factors and idiosyncratic health shocks. Community characteristics such as accessibility and number of inhabitants are also key factors. While suggesting that off-farm work is less likely to be undertaken for accumulation purposes, these results have important policy implications. In particular, policy measures should consider each segment as a separate entity.     

Peace-building Through Space-making: The Spatializing Effects of the African Union’s Peace and Security Policies

ABSTRACT

This article is discussing how the peace-building practices of the African Union have distinct ordering and space-making effects. Taking a socio-spatial perspective, it is argued that the peace and security projects through which the African Union, as a spatial entrepreneur, is addressing the scourge of ‘terrorism and violent extremism’ are geared towards (re-)establishing sovereignty that member states have lost in the past over their territories. While the African Union is favouring a spatial format that could be called ‘multiple networked regionalism’, the actual socio-spatial orders that are emerging around Africa’s transregional conflicts are far less clear cut.     

基于系统变量改进的产业结构成长对策研究——发达国家的经验借鉴

产业结构的成长是每个发展阶段的国家都会遇到的问题。各种影响因素之间的博弈决定了产业结构成长的未来走向。该文基于系统科学的思想方法,认为产业结构的成长是多要素共同作用的过程,并且是一个快慢变量共同作用的过程,科技进步是产业结构系统中的快变量,而心智模式则是产业机构系统中的慢变量。通过对发达国家的产业结构成长的经验总结发现,"以科技进步促进产业转型"的同时,还要持续改进产业系统中的序参量,才能够持续推动中国产业结构的健康成长。     

Adopt or Not and Innovation Variation: A Dynamic Comparison Study of Policy Innovation and Diffusion Mechanisms

Abstract

Policy innovation and diffusion literature mainly focuses on the decision to adopt a new policy, while ignoring the differences among new policies. This study divides the decision-making process of policy innovation diffusion into two phases: in the “innovate or not” phase, governments make the decision to adopt or reject the new policy, while “how to innovate” is the process by which governments formulate specific content for the new policy. A dynamic comparative analysis finds that effects of internal determinants and diffusion mechanisms vary during these two phases and that internal determinants moderate the effects of diffusion mechanisms.     

Pursuing the allure of combat: an ethnography of violence amongst Iraqi Shi’I combatants fighting ISIS

The social sciences speak of violence through its meaning, performances, manifestations and representations; however, the inner workings of violence are less explored. In order to suggest a different mode of seeing violence, I explore the inner workings of violence through the pleasures of and fun among Shi’i volunteer combatants. I apply Walter Benjamin’s motion of pure means to explain how violence becomes self-referential and non-representational via combat-zone ethnography amongst Iraqi Shi’i militants who fought against ISIS in Iraq. I address the fine line between pleasure and fun in order to highlight the inner workings of violence during combat and to encourage a fresh bottom-up anthropological perspective in assessing the parameters of the persistence and resilience of volunteer combatants. My approach advocates moving beyond recruitment and ideological interpolation by questioning the allure of combat through an ontological framework that includes combatants’ perspectives and narratives.     

Terrorist violence and the enrollment of psychology in predicting Muslim extremism: critical terrorism studies meets critical algorithm studies

Discourse on terrorist violence has long facilitated an especially liberal form of securitisation. Originally evoked in reference to anarchists and communists, a rational consideration of terrorist violence, inaugurated by the concept, asks for deferred judgement about the nature of, or reasons behind, violence related to terror on the premise that state and international legal norms governing the legitimate use of violence fail to circumscribe the proper capacities of the state to regulate and explain terrorism. Where sovereign powers along with their military and civilian instruments of coercion are deemed unable to regulate violence effectively, analysts of terrorist violence and their readership are invited to consider and cultivate new sensibilities. Beginning in the 1980s, studies by psychologists found renewed urgency among a growing cadre of interdisciplinary terror experts who found religion, Islam especially, a key variable of analysis. I situate their contributions in a longer history of secular and racialising discourse about terrorist violence. Central to this history are practices of reading, translating, interpreting and archiving texts. Evidence for the argument is based on the analysis of an algorithm that allegedly predicts the likelihood of terrorist strikes by counting words spoken by al-Qa?ida leaders and correlating their frequency with over 30 psychological categories.