Discursive Illusions in Legislative Discourse: A Socio-Pragmatic Study

This paper takes the position that interpretations of legal discourse are invariably taken in the context of socio-pragmatic realities to which a particular instance of discourse applies. What makes this process even more complicated is the fact that social realities themselves are often negotiated within the mould of one’s subjective conceptualisations of reality. Institutions and organisations, including people in power, often represent socio-political realities from an ideologically fuelled perspective, engendering many ‘illusory’ categories often a result of contested versions of reality. To substantiate this view, we discuss interpretations of a number of interesting contemporary and controversial laws, including America’s Patriot Act and Hong Kong’s proposed Article 23 of the Basic Law. Both laws can be seen as illustrative of the definitional conflict that abstract concepts such as democracy and human rights are subjected to in their own specific socio-political contexts. While America crowns itself with democracy and Hong Kong struggles to achieve it in effective synthesis with its unique political arrangement, the laws produced by both contrasting political systems are unexpectedly similar, aiming for the moderation of basic rights. The actions of both governments set against their beliefs and discourses, and furthermore set against one another and other media voices, particularly those of non-governmental organisations, political activists, and other socio-political groups, demonstrate contestation of realities, giving rise to ‘discursive illusions’, which seem to be interpreted not so much on the basis of their linguistic construction but more on the basis of socio-pragmatic factors, such as trust, belief, transparency, control and power.     

Microcredit and development: a multi-level examination of women’s participation in microfinance institutions

International organisations promote microcredit as a tool for socio-economic development by targeting women’s entrepreneurial capabilities. There is limited research, however, on the variation in women’s participation in microcredit in developing nations. To understand this variation, this article examines the relationship between a country’s gender equality levels and women’s microcredit participation. The results indicate that participation is higher when loans are small; however, with increases in gender equality levels, participation decreases. Women in countries with higher gender inequality are limited to very small loans and questionable economic improvements, suggesting that microcredit needs to be utilised contextually to be an effective developmental tool.     

Do Police Body-Worn Cameras Reduce Citizen Fatalities? Results of a Country-Wide Natural Experiment

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - This study assesses the effects of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on rates of fatalities arising from police-citizen encounters. While existing experimental research...     

The human organisation: challenges in NGOs and development programmes

It is frequently contended that NGOs and the wider context of development are intrinsically different from other organisational settings within which Human Resource Development (HRD) is believed to play an important role. The author outlines the basic concepts underpinning human development within organisations, and organisational development, and sets out the arguments for greater investment in people. While this can raise ethical and practical issues in organisations that depend on external funds rather than generating their own income, the failure to develop the staff on whom a development organisation ultimately depends carries far greater risks. Management and specifically HRD are not desk-bound activities that can be pursued through the application of protocols and sanctions, but require vision, leadership, and hands-on engagement.     

Making the organisation learn: Demystification and management action

The learning organisation (LO) is both a concept and a particular methodology within the larger domain of organisational development (OD). To fully appreciate the premises of LO, it is necessary to fall back on the main premises of OD, beginning with the view of the organisation as an open system. Many of the established concepts of systems science as applied to organisational systems--such as system robustness, system intelligence, and system proactivity-- have a direct bearing on the capacity for continuous learning in the organisation. Moving on from concepts to action, an organisation needs a set of working practices to acquire the characteristics of a learning organisation. One particularly useful 'gateway' for the LO process is a comprehensive performance management system that compels the organisation's membership to re-examine ideas of performance and the assumptions about organisational processes underlying management practices. The gateway follows the action-research paradigm and appears well suited to non-profit development NGOs.     

Y-chromosomal STR haplotypes in two endogamous tribal populations of Karnataka, India

POPULATION: Approximately 5.0 mL of blood sample was collected from a total of 150 men belonging to two tribal populations of coastal Uttar Kannada district of Karnataka, with their informed written consent. Both the populations are endogamous and they belong to the Dravidian linguistic family. Halakki is a tribal group having a population size of c. 3383. They claim that they originally belong to Gujarat and Rajasthan, and migrated through Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka. Kunabhi is also a tribal population, c. 35,214 in number. They were hunters and gatherers but presently they practice agriculture.     

Accidental death resulting from acetylene cylinder impact

Acetylene is an inflammable gas commonly used for welding in small-scale industries. We present a case of a 34-year-old male welder who died following injuries sustained from explosion of an acetylene gas-welding cylinder. In this case report, we discuss the circumstances leading to the explosion of the welding cylinder, the autopsy findings, and a brief review of the literature on deaths resulting from blasts of acetylene cylinders.