Contending regionalisms: hubs and challengers in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific

As regions become more institutionalized, they are characterized by two competing trends. First, key regional institutions can become hub institutions that act as transmitters of a comprehensive set of norms. Second, as regional institutions increase in number, regions themselves are liable to become more fragmented. How these trends have played out is explored in two key regions, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific. It is concluded that regions are not static entities but are ever-changing structural arrangements. Hub institutions can be challenged and the consequences can be significant as regions gain in importance on the international stage.     

Longitudinal Examination of the Bullying-Sexual Violence Pathway across Early to Late Adolescence: Implicating Homophobic Name-Calling

The Bully-Sexual Violence Pathway theory has indicated that bullying perpetration predicts sexual violence perpetration among males and females over time in middle school, and that homophobic name-calling perpetration moderates that association among males. In this study, the Bully-Sexual Violence Pathway theory was tested across early to late adolescence. Participants included 3549 students from four Midwestern middle schools and six high schools. Surveys were administered across six time points from Spring 2008 to Spring 2013. At baseline, the sample was 32.2% White, 46.2% African American, 5.4% Hispanic, and 10.2% other. The sample was 50.2% female. The findings reveal that late middle school homophobic name-calling perpetration increased the odds of perpetrating sexual violence in high school among early middle school bullying male and female perpetrators, while homophobic name-calling victimization decreased the odds of high school sexual violence perpetration among females. The prevention of bullying and homophobic name-calling in middle school may prevent later sexual violence perpetration.     

Auckland,New Zealand – fair game for central party politics

This paper explores the influence of central party politics in Auckland local government, in New Zealand’s largest city, following the 2010 amalgamation. Political parties have been an accepted and dominant presence in European representative democratic local government, throughout the 20^th century. Not so, however, in New Zealand and Australia, where citizens have ‘flocked to the banner “Keep Politics out of Local Government”. Our analysis of the self-declared party accreditation status of candidates and elected members demonstrates that political affiliation, at least in the main centre Auckland, is on the rise, counter to assumptions that New Zealand local government is largely removed from central politics.     

This Time it's Different: Legitimacy and the Limits of Differentiation after Brexit

British political debate since the EU referendum has hinged on what type of Brexit to pursue: hard or soft. Yet, unlike in instances of treaty rejection, the EU made no counter offer to avoid a breakdown in relations that would follow the hardest of exits. This remarkable unity in not discounting the possibility of a hard Brexit demonstrates that UK withdrawal is very distinct from previous wrangles over EU reform. Drawing on the work of Kissinger, this article argues Brexit is a revolutionary act that denies the legitimacy of the EU order. Hence this process does not conform to other episodes of differentiation. When Westminster sought opt‐outs, it did not reject the core principles of integration. By not seeking to oppose a hard Brexit, Brussels has forced the UK government to find a new legitimising principle to govern EU–UK relations, transferring the burden of adjustment to London.     

Performing blackness in the “Rainbow Nation”: Athi-Patra Ruga’s The Future White Women of Azania

This article applies Saidiya Hartman’s framework of performing blackness to South African performance artist Athi-Patra Ruga’s performance series, The Future White Women of Azania, to consider the ways in which the performances index the convoluted imbrications of colonialism, specifically Apartheid policy in South Africa, and postcolonialism, specifically the anti-Apartheid struggle(s) and the current political and economic structure of South African democracy. It argues that Ruga’s performance makes evident political and economic systems that tout black and queer liberation while perpetuating black queer death. Ruga’s work also relocates Hartman’s framework to a transnational, postcolonial context, expanding the notion of performing blackness (and the entangled processes of domination and subordination that it maps) beyond the trans-Atlantic paradigm, suggesting that performing blackness could be used to understand the correlation between broader spatial and temporal phenomena that shape blackness. Finally, situating The Future White Women of Azania as not only a performance of blackness, but of queerness as well, postulates that layering sexuality onto Hartman’s model reveals that the dynamics articulated under performing blackness are evident between oppressors and oppressed and between members of each of these groups as Hartman notes, but also between the contingent axes of subjectivity within an individual’s experience.     

What is Bhāvanā?

Bhāvanā, “bringing into being,” is one of Mīmā?sā’s hallmark concepts. It connects text and action in a single structure of meaning. This conjunction was crucially important to Mīmā?sā’s own interpretive enterprise, and functioned— controversially but influentially—in a broader theory of language. The goal of this paper is to outline bhāvanā’s major contours as it is developed by Kumārilabha??a and some his followers (Ma??anami?ra, Pārthasārathimi?ra, Some?varabha??a, Kha??adeva, and āpadeva) and to examine some of the arguments they marshaled in support of it. Bhāvanā is shown to open up, for these Mīmā?sakas, an understanding of the “deep structure” of Vedic injunctions and the vocabulary for systematically representing it; it accounts for both what people do when they perform an action that is enjoined (ārthī bhāvanā) and what the injunction itself does when it motivates people to performance (?ābdī bhāvanā). Bhāvanā has resonances with, and relevance to, contemporary discussions of the nexus of language, understanding, and action, and its value as a carefully-elaborated concept of hermeneutical significance should not be overlooked.