Trade mark damages for infringement in multiple jurisdictions: a German court rules

A recent decision of the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg inGermany provides useful guidance as to which law applies whentrade mark infringements are committed in several EU memberstates; the Court found an effective and workable solution thatenhances Community Trade Mark Regulation enforcement and strengthensits unitary character throughout the Community.     

a feminist menagerie

This paper appraises the role of critical-feminist figurations within the environmental humanities, focusing on the capacity of figures to produce situated environmental knowledges and pose site-specific ethical obligations. We turn to four environments—the home, the skies, the seas and the microscopic—to examine the work that various figures do in these contexts. We elucidate how diverse figures—ranging from companion animals to birds, undersea creatures and bugs—reflect productive traffic between longstanding concerns in feminist theory and the environmental humanities, and generate new insights related to situated knowledges, feminist care-ethics and the politics of everyday sensory encounters. We also argue, however, that certain figures have tested the limits of theoretical approaches which have emerged as the product of dialogue between feminist theory and environmental studies. In particular, we explore how particular figures have complicated ethical questions of how to intervene in broad environmental threats borne of anthropogenic activities, and of who or what to include in relational ethical frameworks.     

How practices do not matter

Abstract

In his most recent work, Sangiovanni has retreated from his stronger claims about practice-dependence. Instead of claiming that principles of justice must be practice-dependent, he now expresses his claim in a modal form, arguing that there are several ways in which practices may matter. While merely mapping out the logical space of possibilities seems to look like a modest ambition, the conditions for when practices do matter according to Sangiovanni’s analysis are easily met in actuality. Consequently, if he is right, the practice-dependent approach covers a significant number of political theories. Sangiovanni’s main claim is that higher-level principles with an open texture, which include most higher-level principles in political philosophy, justify a practice-dependent method in the form of a mode of application called ‘mediated deduction,’ according to which a thoroughgoing investigation is made of the nature of the target practice. Our task in this paper is to reject this claim. This is done in two steps. First, we question Sangiovanni’s distinction between instrumental application and mediated deduction, arguing that it remains unclear whether it marks out two sufficiently distinct ‘modes’ to do any theoretical work. Second, we argue that the practice-dependent method is not required even if two such modes are established.     

The Czech Islamophobic movement: beyond ‘populism’?

ABSTRACT

Sla?álek and Svobodová’s paper focuses on the ideology of the Czech Islamophobic movement as seen during the 2015–16 migration crisis. In their analysis of interviews with demonstrators and speeches by leaders of the movement, they discuss first how the movement imagined its enemies, and then describe its vision of positive core values. They conclude that the movement’s key ideological features are: an emphasis on social and civilizational decline (declinism); a return to an assumed naturalness in economic and gender relationships (naturalization); and the open evocation of violence and severity (brutalization). In terms of Rogers Brubacker’s distinction between xenophobic ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe, and the xenophobic defence of liberal values in the West, Sla?álek and Svobodová find that the Czech case fits the allegedly western pattern better than the eastern one, which may cast doubt on the whole essentialization of distinctions between ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ populisms.     

Resisting Dignity Takings in China

In the course of urbanization in the People's Republic of China, tens of millions of citizens have experienced expropriations of collectively owned land, expropriations of privately owned buildings, and evictions from urban land in state ownership. Summarily characterizing these measures as takings, I argue, first, that some takings observed have denied evictees dignity, understood as respect for their intrinsic moral worth and moral autonomy, in addition to dispossessing them of their land and homes. Second, in dignity takings, monetary compensation and resettlement schemes may fail to reflect the harm done to evictees by framing disputes over takings as (forced) economic bargains. Third, some victims unable to seek redress through judicial avenues have been driven into extrajudicial protest and resistance. In some cases, resistance can be restorative of dignity, but where repressive state responses to resistance prevent this potential from being realized, the injustice of dignity takings can be further aggravated.     

Turn-taking in mother-adolescent conversations about sexuality and conflict

The current study examined the nature and style of mother-adolescent conversations, how these conversations differ by subject matter, and dyadic and individual differences. Thirty-one mother-adolescent dyads (17 boys, 14 girls) with a child between the ages of 11 and 14 had a nonstructured conversation, and conversations about conflict and sexuality. They also completed questionnaires on beliefs about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Conversations were measured for turn taking, total number of words, and conversational dominance, as well as nonverbal measures of affiliation, shame, and contempt. Conversations about sexuality involved less turn taking, fewer words, and more mother dominance than nonstructured conversations. Conversations about conflicts involved less turn taking but more words than nonstructured conversations. Some gender and age differences were found. More interactive conflict conversations contained higher levels of affiliation, and lower levels of child shame than conversations with fewer turns or higher mother dominance. In addition, children in more interactive dyads possessed a larger percentage of their mother's AIDS knowledge, and worried about AIDS a moderate amount.This research was supported by National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development Grant No. HD27035.Received M.A. from UCLA. Current research interests include parent-adolescent relationships, adolescent peer relations, and adolescent sexuality.Received Ph.D. from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Major research interest is in parent-adolescent communication and emotional development.Received Ph.D. from Boston University. Major research interest is in parent-child affective communication.     

Individual characteristics, institutional incentives and electoral abstention in Western Europe

Abstract. This article examines the interaction between individual characteristics and institutional incentives in non–voting, with a special focus on the interaction between these two types of explanatory variables. The analysis of survey and contextual data for parliamentary elections in 15 Western European countries shows that the effect of individual resources and motivations on abstention is not constant across different countries. Conversely, the effect of institutional incentives (compulsory voting, voting facilities, electoral thresholds of representation and preference expression) on non–voting depends on the elector's level of resources and motivations. One of the four institutional incentives considered has even opposite effects for citizens with different individual characteristics. The analysis also shows that when analysing interactions it is fundamental to distinguish between magnitudes and consequences of the effects of explanatory variables. This has important implications for the interpretation of the results of logistic regression analysis.