High food prices in urban Cameroon: coping strategies and suggested policy actions

Governments tend to focus on short-term policies to address the immediate effects of high food prices when spikes occur, while in the long term, urban residents are left to their own devices struggling to ensure adequate household food consumption. Using data collected in three cities in Cameroon among 300 households, this article documents participants’ opinions on appropriate policies to address high food prices as well as how households cope with chronic high food prices. It emphasises the importance of long-term government strategies such as improved farm-to-market roads and agricultural sector supports as means to improve food security.     

Valuations – or How to Say the Unsayable

In this paper, the author revisits the emotive theory of value and argues that values are not entities but nothing other than linguistic fictions. Accordingly, valuations—i.e., valuing actions—can be defined as approving or disapproving attitudes of a subject to some object. In this perspective, values cannot be true or false: What we can do is just compare them with regard to strength. As a consequence, value judgments are to be understood as sentences which are used either to say that a subject s values an object o positively or negatively, or to express (evince) a valuation. The author then shows some relations between normative and evaluative discourses. First, he claims that norms as well as valuations are not true or false. Second, he argues that both may be explained or justified, even if the former are usually justified teleologically whereas the latter are explained referring back to the subject's background and life-style. Third, he notes that a legal order originates from the fact that valuations crystallize into norms. Finally, the author examines some further questions related to his analysis. In particular, he argues that the different realms of values, e.g., morals, aesthetics, politics, etc., do not correspond to different evaluative attitudes, but to different phenomena and diverse spheres of human life.     

Towards a new quality of cooperation? The EU,China, and Central Asian Security in a Multipolar Age

Asia Europe Journal - Against the background of ever stronger linkages between the EU and China as well as their emphatically voiced objective to jointly shape the increasingly multi-polar world,...     

Identifying Counterfeit Cigarettes Using Environmental Pollen Analysis: An Improved Procedure*

Traditional pollen preparation techniques provide clear residues for pollen identification; however, such methods are time-consuming, requiring repeated centrifugation, heating, and digestion with high-concentration hazardous chemicals. Tobacco leaves can effectively trap environmental pollen due to hairy surface and terpene-rich exudates. A new tobacco sample processing method was developed by using different extraction chemistry with surfactant. Marlboro Gold cigarettes were employed as model samples for method development. Parameters critical for pollen extraction, which include number of cigarette sticks used, extraction solution, and extraction temperature, were optimized. By using 1% dishwashing detergent to treat three cigarettes at room temperature, the improved method was able to recover sufficient pollen for microscopic analysis in three repeated centrifuge-washing steps and omit hazardous chemicals involved in traditional methods. We focused on the pollen of common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), a plant native to North America, as an indicator to differentiate genuine and counterfeit U.S. brand cigarettes. Results from analyzing randomly purchased genuine (authenticated by forensic examination) and known counterfeit Marlboro Gold provided by law enforcement revealed that a significant amount (39%) of Ambrosia were consistently present in all genuine samples, while counterfeit contained none or only trace count. Similar results were found in other counterfeit U.S. brand cigarettes (all seized in the U.S.) involved in this study as well. Lack of Ambrosia in cigarette strongly indicates the product was not originated in the United States.     

Zur Passivlegitimation des Betreibers bzw Hausverwalters eines Einkaufszentrums für die Negatorienklage

Da ein unter Umst?nden langwieriges Verfahren abzuführen ist, um die Einflu?nahme der Mehrheit der Wohnungseigentümer auf die St?rungshandlungen Dritter verwirklichen zu k?nnen, ist eine direkte M?glichkeit des Mehrheitseigentümers, die klagsgegenst?ndliche St?rung rechtlich und faktisch alleine verhindern zu k?nnen, zu verneinen. Damit liegt aber der für die Bejahung der Passivlegitimation des Mehrheitseigentümers für die Negatorienklage erforderliche unmittelbare Zusammenhang zwischen Sachherrschaft und St?rung nicht vor. Von der rechtlichen M?glichkeit des Hausverwalters zur Verhinderung der St?rungshandlungen Dritter als Voraussetzung für die Passivlegitimation für die Negatorienklage kann nur die Rede sein, soweit es sich um Ma?nahmen handelt, die der ordentlichen Verwaltung zuzuordnen sind.     

An age of uncertainty: Building a post-cold war U.S. security strategy for east and Southeast Asia

The contours of the future U.S. security policy in the Asia-Pacific is a vexed question both in research literature and among American elites. There is no conformity either in threat perceptions or concrete methods of security policy. However, the region is recognized by all competitive groups as a critical area for U.S. national interests presently and in the foreseeable future. This article explores the major security challenges that America faces in the region; including China-Taiwan and other local conflicts, conventional arms race and nuclear proliferation, generational transition and nontraditional threats. The article reviews Clinton administration policy in the region and explains the nature of the U.S. domestic debate on the Asia-Pacific.