Reproductive Governance in Nordeste/Northeast (Juan Solanas, 2005, Argentina/France/Belgium/Spain)

Juan Solanas's 2005 film Nordeste/Northeast problematised maternity by presenting two female characters who conform to cultural or trans-cultural norms of the Global North and South and personify the narratives of transnational trade. As Lynn M. Morgan and Elizabeth F. S. Roberts argue, ‘reproductive governance’ is a useful analytical tool for understanding how political rationalities affect the reproductive lives of women in Latin America and globally. Reproductive governance can also be used as a lens to analyse how contradictions and ambivalences are built into the lived experience of abortion and adoption as the complexity of maternity.     

PROGRAMME CIHAE/ICHRPI – PROGRAM ICHRPI/CIHAE

SUMMARY

In this article a set of sources and methodology are presented for analyzing contemporary Parliaments, based on a case study focusing on the representatives of some of the different parliamentary chambers constituted during the period of the Spanish Transition (1977–82). The use of oral sources is emphasized in particular, since a sound understanding and management of these historiographical sources is a requirement set by the specific characteristics of what is known as the history of the present, in order to obtain information for its study. Moreover, oral history sources acquire a greater degree of importance in this study, as they form a vital element for the broadest possible form of micro-biographies of parliamentarians that will later allow for an in-depth prosopographical study.     

IN/SECURITY

This article highlights the impact of international politics and war upon refugees' lives, asserting that the humanitarian aid that refugees receive is contingent upon interstate and intrastate politics. Indeed, the role of the state becomes contentious as it becomes the source of security as well as insecurity in the lives of refugees. This role is guided by self-interest rather than humanitarian concerns. In the Afghan case, we find that humanitarian aid has sometimes been used to perpetuate endless wars and violence in Afghanistan. This aid was also been used to portray a picture of Afghanistan pivoted on an anti-Soviet struggle through the strengthening of fundamentalist strains in Afghan thinking. The latter affected women and children negatively as different actors within the camps–the Afghan political leadership, donor agencies, and Pakistani administrative structures–manipulated particular images of the ideal family and of the role of women. Women have had to face multiple levels and layers of violence just as men have had to contend with an intensified view of masculinity that naturalizes inflicting violence upon others. Refugees have unnecessarily borne the brunt of the aftermath of regional and international politics, as they have had to contend with both direct and structural violence.     

CONTINUITY / DISCONTINUITY

Starting from issues Wang Hui raises in “The Dialectics of Autonomy and Opening” (Critical Asian Studies 43:2), the authors of this article focus on the problematic coexistence of continuities and discontinuities in modern and contemporary Chinese politics. China's present role in the international scene, they argue, cannot be assessed in terms of economic performance, but requires new perspectives for rethinking the search of China for an original path in domestic politics, as well as the universalistic attitude toward the various forms of thinking coming from all over the world.     

ICHRPI/CIHAE newsletter

ABSTRACT

When the Assemblée Nationale Constituante (ANC) adopted the first French constitution, delegates composed 11 articles whose purpose was to guide and govern the behaviour of members in a future legislative assembly. Procedures in three of these articles required that a bill receive three readings during its progress through the assembly. Beginning with works of René Descartes (1637) and Galileo Galilei (1638), I located sources for procedures that guide and govern the work of law-makers, applying their reasoning to the process of legislation. I explain how investigators went about identifying variables that captured conditions of possible experience. Narrowing my focus to three articles in the 1791 constitution, I extracted variables pertinent to the three readings of a bill, along with the permissible range of values that the text of these articles assigned to each variable. An Excel 3D Surface chart presents procedural choices which were available to French delegates to the Assemblée Nationale Constituante, the body responsible for drafting the 1791 constitution. The Excel chart is based on arrays of variables and the values assigned from the text of these three articles; these are located in Section II Tenue des Séances et Forme de Délibérer / Conduct of Meetings and Form of Deliberation’.     

An open letter/response

Abstract

I would offer a comment or two on your review of my book because I think that you did not interpret the book in the way in which I wrote it. I am writing in the hope of clearing up some things; of clarifying our areas of disagreement as opposed to misunderstanding.