时尚杂志的未来

也许和其他平面媒体相比,时尚杂志的日子还不算太糟。但让我们直面事实——与20年前不同,现在,成千上万的青春期少女们不再捧着厚厚的时尚杂志作为化妆打扮的唯一权威指导了——她们有更加经济适用的选择,比如网站。而传媒业的不断发展也让那些外人曾经无法介入的,代表着权威和品位的时尚私密小圈子走向大众。人们发表自己的观点,     

China's Exceptionalism and the Challenges of Delivering Difference in Africa

This article explores the notion of ‘China's exceptionalism’ in Africa, a prominent feature in Beijing's current continental and bilateral engagement. ‘China's exceptionalism’ is understood as a normative modality of engagement that seeks to structure relations such that, though they may remain asymmetrical in economic content they are nonetheless characterised as equal in terms of recognition of economic gains and political standing (mutual respect and political equality). This article considers the burden that the central Chinese government has assumed through its self-construction and mobilisation of a position of exceptionalism and, concurrently, the imperatives that flow from such rhetorical claims of distinctiveness in terms of demonstrating and delivering difference as a means to sustain the unity and coherence of these rhetorical commitments.     

Latency – Time for lawyers to get up to speed?

While latency issues have always existed in IT systems, it is only in recent years that latency has become a significant focal point for both IT suppliers and customers. This paper will provide an overview as to how latency arises in IT systems, why latency is becoming important across a variety of business sectors and then explores some of the prominent legal issues inherent in contracting for low-latency solutions.     

Values in international development organisations: negotiating non-negotiables

Values are an important theme in discussions in international NGOs, helping to create the conditions for solidarity among staff. But at the same time they are also frequently a source of demoralisation and destructive conflict. This is because the prevailing perceptions of values as instruments of management or as elements in some inchoate mystical whole render the power relationship between staff and managers undiscussable. Values need not be thought of as an instrument of management, and they are above all idealisations. An alternative theory of values is that they are emergent and intensely social phenomena that arise daily between people engaged in a collective enterprise. They are idealisations, but they must be discussed in the everyday context. Conflict is inevitable, but the exploration of the nature of this conflict in daily practice is the only way of ensuring that the discussion about values is an enlivening process.     

Nationalism and party competition in the Basque country and Catalonia

The party systems which have developed in Catalonia and the Basque Country since Franco's death are distinguished from the Spanish one, and also from each other, in three areas: the leading role of the largest nationalist member of each; the secondary one of Spain's ruling Socialist Party; and the presence of smaller nationalist parties. Analysis of these three factors shows that, despite appearances, the systems’ initial structures did indeed reflect the historical nature of nationalism in the two regions. It also indicates how the dynamics of competition within them have in turn affected the nature of contemporary nationalism.