Liberal Legitimacy and the Question of Respect

In a modern pluralist society, the idea of liberal legitimacy as proposed by John Rawls offers a promising foundation for the further historic advancement of democracy. However, liberal legitimacy still seems to lack one key element—a unique type of respect at its foundations—without which such democratic advancement may not be achieved. Nor, on closer inspection, could the idea of liberal legitimacy succeed without this particular type of respect. When further refined at its foundation, arguably liberal legitimacy could open doors to previously unattainable improvements in democracy and legitimacy.     

Three Modes of Thinking and Policy Orientation of Cultural Security

Three types of relations are entangled nowadays in dealing with issues concerning national cultural security on both the theoretical and practical levels: (1) the relation between one’s own culture and that of other ethnic groups; (2) the relation between advanced and underdeveloped parts of culture; (3) the relation between one’s ethnic culture and so-called foreign advanced culture as related to the previous two. Accordingly, three modes of thinking are likely adopted in handling issues concerning national cultural security: to antagonize one’s own culture with that of other ethnic groups, that is, taking the “me or you” attitude; to dualize cultures as the “advanced” and the “underdeveloped”, that is, believing things to be good if not bad, or vice versa; and to assert that the ethnic are the advanced, that is, taking the “only-megood” stance. It is a very demanding job to maintain national culture and to pursue cultural development at the same time. Only when cultures are grouped into those without distinction between the advanced and the underdeveloped and those with such distinction can the relation between the ethnic and the advanced be properly handled. With the former, it is essential to maintain the ethnicity of one’s own culture before the cultural security is safeguarded. With the latter, however, the pursuit of advanced cultures and the advocacy of the advanced part of a particular culture is a key to ensuring and safeguarding the national cultural security. Hence, it is important to enhance the public awareness of cultural security, and more essentially for the government to offer scientifi cally appropriate orientation towards cultural security and to frame related policies.     

On Value Security and the Overall National Security System

The universality of human nature determines the universality of values and its particularity determines the diversity and plurality of values that is the fundamental determinant of security problems among different value systems. In a narrow sense, value security refers to a situation in which value concepts of a state, region, or a nation, social class are not under threat from the external adversaries, which is called conceptual value security. In a broad sense, value security refers to the consistency between the system of realistic value security and that of conceptual value security. National value security encompasses both value security in a nation-state and security of national values, in which the former is featured by the recognition and acceptance of a prevailing value in a nation-state, and the latter is characterized by the sovereignty of national values. Due to the fact that the issue of value system is a meta-theoretical one and the security of conceptual value system is part of cultural security, value security holds a core position in cultural security and is an important component of overall national security system. Additionally, value security embodies the security of value pursuits and value criteria in different spheres of the overall national security system and therefore, it is also an indispensable and flexible support to the overall national security.     

Youth activism and dignity in post-war Mostar – envisioning a shared future through heritage

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at youth activism in Mostar through a specific action occurring in 2016, when an electric substation was overpainted in the neighbourhood of Rudnik. The project highlighted the rights of the miners to emphasize that other than ethnic identities can be brought forward through cultural heritage. The paper aims to broaden the spectrum of heritage values to encompass the concept of dignity. The monument served to induce a sense of dignity on two levels. Firstly, people were given the agency to influence the monument. Secondly, the monument emphasized workers’ identity, which is currently silenced in the public space.     

Traumatic testicular displacement in motorcycle drivers

Testicular displacement is a rare clinical presentation of blunt scrotal injury that may take place in road traffic accidents involving motorcycle occupants. We are presenting two cases of motorcycle occupant fatalities, 21 and 24 years of age, where testicular displacement and other signs of groin trauma have been determined. In both cases, discrete external signs of scrotal trauma were noted on examination, while unilateral and bilateral traumatic testicular displacement, respectively, have been documented at autopsy. For motorcycle occupants involved in collision, it is necessary to perform a thorough analysis of injuries, in particular to look for specific trauma arising from fuel-tank impact to genitalia and/or groin. These injuries are of great medico-legal importance both at postmortem and in clinical cases involving motorcycle occupants involved in collision.     

北京市机动车排污权交易机制初探

与传统的行政管理和排污收费模式相比,排污权交易模式在治理环境污染中具有突出的优势。机动车排污交易机制的运行应在综合性的环境治理模式中发挥自己的特殊作用,最终实现机动车市场与大气环境保护的协调可持续发展。北京市机动车排污权交易面临着一些困难,我们应通过出台政策和试点的方式循序渐进地探索和建立机动车排污权交易机制。