Human rights in the overseas territories: in policy but not in practice?

Since the late 1990s emphasis has been placed by the UK government on enhancing human rights in its Overseas Territories. Some early changes were enforced, but more recently persuasion and capacity building have been prioritised. However, due to the complexity of the bilateral relationships and the cultural diversity that exists, fostering and embedding reform is difficult. These challenges are seen most clearly in two examples: the rights of the child to be protected from sexual exploitation, and the securing of equality in relation to sexual orientation with reference to LGBT rights. The article analyses the constitutional and legal changes that have been made in regard to these two issues, and whether the creation of stronger human rights principles has led to enhanced rights in practice.     

Utopia in Crisis? Subaltern Imaginations in Contemporary Bihar

Abstract

The Subaltern Studies Collective inaugurated an important point of departure in Indian historiography and social sciences by demanding that attention be directed to subalterns (a term adapted from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks) as makers of their own destinies. Their scholarship raises three issues, which are discussed in this article. The first of these relates to the empirical observation about subaltern resistance to elites. The second pertains to the analytical dichotomy between elite and subaltern modes of conducting politics. The third centres on the valorisation of a putatively coherent fragment that seeks autonomy from the totality of the state. The fundamental problem with the perspective advanced by the subaltern studies scholars stems from their implicit assumption that utopian ideals centred on reclaiming dignity and asserting social equality are necessarily derivative of European Enlightenment ideals.     

Dynamics of Trade in Value-Added in “Factory Asia”

ABSTRACT

Trade patterns in East Asia are termed the “Factory Asia” model, whereby Asia functions as a “global factory” that imports intermediate goods from its regional networks and then assembles and exports them as finished goods to higher-income developed countries. In 2001, China’s accession into the World Trade Organisation consolidated this pattern by becoming the core economy in this model. However, is this pattern still valid after more than a decade of rapid development in East Asian countries? The main objective of this article is to examine the evolution of this pattern of trade in East Asian countries. Although the key findings of this study show that the Factory Asia model continues, it is changing as different East Asian countries capture more value in global value chains. The gaps in the rate of upgrading are identified and mainly attributed to differences in government policies and competition. However, the dependence on foreign inputs still remains an important part of high-technology production in East Asian countries. Hence, the idea that East Asia is evolving from a “factory” into a “Research & Development hub” remains far-fetched.     

Justice in Moscow?

The article explores Russians’ satisfaction with their experiences in court and with the legal system more generally. The analysis draws on a nationally representative survey of Russians, fielded by the Levada Center in 2010. The results show that most court veterans believe that the decision in their case was just, and that the judge treated them well. But these positive feelings do not extend beyond their case. Russians who have no court experience tend to have more favorable views about the legal system than do court veterans. These findings serve to remind us of the difficulty of building confidence in the legal system in post-Soviet Russia.     

Reading the spirits in Julia Alvarez’s A Wedding in Haiti

Dominican writer Julia Alvarez’s 2012 memoir, A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship, documents her first-time travel from the Dominican Republic to Haiti over land in order to attend the wedding of Piti, a young Haitian man who had worked for her and her husband for a number of years. She deploys the literary non-fiction genre of memoir, a genre that is relatively new to her, to explore both the Dominican (collective) relationship with Haiti and her individual relationship with both Haiti and its people centering on her connection to Piti and his family. Drawing on Vodou, a nature religion that strives for balance, this article explores Alvarez’s memoir through several lwa. I argue that the lwa are deployed and manifest as mechanisms from within Vodou epistemology to restore balance to a world relationship between Haiti and the DR that reverberates in the metaphysical world. Examinations of this unequal relationship between the two nations are even more prescient contemporarily considering the recent decision by the Dominican Constitutional Court to strip children of “irregular” migrants born in the DR after 1929 of their Dominican citizenship.     

Music education literature in German-language polyethnic schools in Estonia, 1860–1914

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on music education literature in German-language schools in Estonia from 1860 to 1914. Music education literature in Estonian schools with German as a language of instruction has been an unexplored field of research. As a result of this systematic research, a representative sample of music education literature was formed: 30 German-language editions and 2,330 songs. The songbooks and music textbooks were considered as signs of German culture being dominant. The profound social, economic, and political changes, characteristic for the nineteenth century, caused tensions, which were expressed in the content of music literature.     

Engaging an Elephant in the Room? Locating Africa in Australian Foreign Policy

Africa has traditionally been marginal to the Australian foreign policy agenda, aside from British colonial and Commonwealth ties and later efforts to end minority rule in southern Africa. Yet a resources boom, strong economic growth, increasing democratisation and reformed governance institutions have created new international interests in engaging with Africa and made it difficult for aspiring global players like Australia to ignore the continent's opportunities and challenges. Under Labor (2007–13), Canberra pursued substantial “new engagement” with this “new Africa”, enhancing political and diplomatic relations, supporting major Australian commercial interests and quadrupling the Africa aid budget. Following the election of the Abbott Coalition government in September 2013, the article argues that while commercial opportunities and some specific security and humanitarian concerns will keep the Coalition interested in Africa, the enhanced level of engagement with the continent pursued under Labor is unlikely to be sustained.     

Human Capital Flows in Taiwan’s Technological Catch Up in Integrated Circuit Manufacturing

This paper examines how knowledge gained by the diaspora abroad played a strategic role in driving technological catch up in the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan. The evidence shows that efforts led by the government created conditions for the return and circulation of strategic human capital and the evolution of the absorptive capacity necessary to drive technological catch up. The integrated circuit industry was successful in getting human capital endowed with tacit and experiential knowledge to return and to circulate with considerable rooting in Hsinchu Science Industrial Park, which helped propel the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan to the technological frontier.     

Performing ethnic relations in Russia's North Caucasus: regional spectacles in Stavropol’ krai

Using materials gathered during fieldwork carried out in Russia in 2008 and 2009, this paper examines the ‘Day of Stavropol’ krai 2009’ celebration and links it to debates on ethnic relations, identity and nationalism in post-Soviet Russia. It is argued that celebrations, festivals, parades and other ‘spectacles’ are significant, yet often overlooked, influences on ethnic relations. Although authorities at national and regional scale play a prominent role in governing ethnic relations, it is often the case that they revert to Soviet-era practices – such as the ‘folklorization’ of ethnic groups – and produce a narrative that proclaims the ‘eternal harmony’ of ethnic relations. Given widespread ethnic tensions that exist in Russia, such a representation of ethnic relations is far from the reality lived by people in everyday life. Thus, this paper explores how citizens' understandings of ethnic relations relates to that portrayed by state authorities.     

Lion in the Sand: British Policy in the Middle East, 1945–67

The crisis that unfolded after Iran's June 2009 presidential election exposed the absolutist nature of the state's highest religious authority (wali-ye faqih), Ayatullah ‘Ali Khamena'i. It also revealed the urgent need to critically interrogate Ayatullah Khomeini's doctrinal justifications for the governance of the jurist (wilayat al-faqih) in light of how ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shi‘i Imam, assumed the caliphate: divine bestowal (nass) combined with public investiture that took the form of bay‘a (oath of allegiance). Ayatullahs Husayn ‘Ali Montazeri, Mohsen Kadivar, Yousef Saanei, Bayat Zanjani and Mehdi Karrubi have attempted to devise a model in which sovereignty belongs to the public and limits the clergy's role in daily matters of the state to oversight and guidance. In contrast, Ayatullahs Kazemeyni Boroujerdi and Mojteba Shabestari argue for a clear-cut separation between the church and the state so that the public can choose its form of government since no specific form is prescribed in Islam. On the other hand, Ayatullah Mesbah Yazdi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, has consistently been a passionate advocate of the absolute authority of the jurist in its most comprehensive form and a vehement opponent of any dissenting discourse on this subject.     

From the national state to the rational state and back? An exercise in understanding politics and identity in Germany in the twentieth century

The end of the East‐West conflict and the unification of Germany in 1990 have dramatically altered the geopolitical shape of Europe. Speculations abound, in particular as regards Germany: have the spectres of German nationalism been banished for good? Is the new Berlin Republic different from the Bonn Republic? This article traces the national idea in Germany since the early nineteenth century and argues that the Bonn years have been crucial in the development of a civic culture which transcends the concept of a nation dominant in Germany from 1871 to 1945. Rather than marking a return of traditional nationalist concepts, the unification of Germany may well open the way for a lasting reorientation towards a civic concept of national identity in Germany.     

The Bedouins in the Galilee in the War of Independence of Israel 1948–1950

The relations of the Bedouins with the Jewish population during the War of Independence were very complex. The Bedouins were both opponents and friends. Bedouin groups helped the Jews in their struggle against the Palestinian national movement and against the Arab armies like Arab-al-Hib. Before the foundation of the state, these Bedouins had already participated in the protection of the security of the Jewish population. They supplied intelligence on events of the Arab and Palestinian sides, and also fought by the side of the Jews in the War of Independence, but at that time other groups joined the Palestinian national movement and took part in the struggle against the Jewish population, more so after the declaration of the partition plan in the United Nations. Subsequently, Bedouin fighting gangs were established and they joined the Palestinian struggle with the Jewish population.

The Bedouin positions during the war had implications for their fate in the State of Israel. The War of Independence allowed a significant part of the Bedouin tribes to escape to the neighbouring Arab states – Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Many of the Bedouin tribes that escaped did so as they were connected with fighting with the Arab gangs and the Arab Liberation Army. The Bedouins who were in the Zionist camp during the war or who adopted a neutral position stayed in the territory of the borders of the State of Israel.     

‘We wander in your footsteps’—reciprocity and contractility in Lebanese personality-centred parties

Abstract

This contribution questions the widespread assumption of Lebanese parties being mere ‘instruments’ in their leaders’ hands by asking what partisans see through their chairmen. It describes an informal social contract between partisans and leaders, outlining reciprocity in interpreting the ‘cause’, being symbolized by the latter. The core of this contract is made up by a particular interpretation of a global normativity of the modern nation-state and reciprocity. Whereas the latter might be deeply felt, it often lacks institutionalized control within the party. Finally, the contribution highlights some noticeable restrictions of this informal contractility.     

South Africa’s Inclusion in BRICS: Challenges and Prospects for Development in Africa

Abstract

The forming of alliances on the international scene has reflected a provisional arrangement in the world economy. Amongst such alliances was the formation of BRICS by the five world economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa into what is commonly known as BRICS. BRICS is considered a joint initiative, aimed at shifting conventional norms in international economic and political cooperation to create a new trans-continental platform for these actors. Each member country in BRICS has, in one way or another, reflected growth either through its economy foreign policy, and developmental pursuit. However, South Africa is portrayed by some researchers as lagging behind, when compared to the other member countries. Hence, this study sought to analyse the potential mediumand long-term implications of South Africa's inclusion in BRICS. The study also aimed to underscore the benefits and risks associated with South Africa's membership in the alliance in the area of development; specifically poverty reduction, foreign policy, trade, and global partnership. The researchers collected secondary data to analytically critique the inclusion of South Africa in the BRICS alliance, its benefits, and shortcomings for development in South Africa, and in Africa as a whole. We argue that as a global player under BRICS, South Africa has opened a new vista of opportunities, including transnational gateways to Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with the attendant inflow of infrastructural and developmental investments, enriching educational exchanges and technology transfers. The article concludes by stressing the need for South Africa and other African countries to formulate policies that will drive meaningful development in their respective countries. The authors recommend that African leaders should come up with innate policies that are Africa-centred, that would incite development internally.     

‘Bid’ for Altalena: France's Covert Action in the 1948 War in Palestine

Based on documents recently discovered in French archives, the article sheds new light on the role of France, especially of its Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, in providing arms and ammunition to the Etzel – the pre-state underground Zionist movement in Israel. The ship Altalena, which was sunk by the newly-formed Israel Defence Forces in the midst of the 1948 War of Independence, remains a centre of historiographical and political controversy in Israel. France's role in this affair is examined in the wider context of its clandestine intelligence, military and diplomatic assistance to Israel, as well as its rivalry with Britain in the Middle East. The article argues that Bidault's decision was intended to undermine Britain's secret support during the war in Palestine for King Abdallah of Jordan's occupation of Jerusalem. Documents, including a report of a committee of inquiry of the French Ministry of Defence into the Altalena affair, are annexed.