‘What can I do next?’: Cosmetic Surgery,Femininities and Affect

This article is based on a study of young people's understandings and experiences of body work (or body modification) in relation to gender and health. Drawing on feminist and Deleuzian–Spinozan approaches to the body, the article explores the embodied sensations, or affects, associated with the body's physical modification through cosmetic surgery as one practice of body work. This approach pursues a non-dualist analysis of the body and contributes to new understandings of body-modification practices such as cosmetic surgery as processes influenced, and informed, by affect. Through examples of differing experiences and trajectories relating to the practice of cosmetic surgery, which has long been a contentious issue in feminism, the article makes evident what a feminist Deleuzian approach means in practice and what it can contribute to analyses of the body in/and society. This approach can assist in exploring the complex ways in which gendered embodiments assemble, and in understanding the dynamics and processes informing differing bodily possibilities related to gender.     

Football Fan Subculture in Russia: Aggressive Support,Readiness to Fight,and Far Right Links

This article provides a characterisation of the right-wing football fan subculture in Russia, focusing on its relationship with the far right. It explores the virtual network across fans, hooligans, and the far right scene, and it identifies common narratives between the football fan subculture and Russia’s far right. Using the technique of the Grounded Theory Method, this article attempts to explain the link between the football subculture and the Russian far right, discussing the potential to mobilise football fans for right-wing actions. A key basis for interaction between the football subculture and right-wing activists is provided by the combination of the supporters’ readiness for fights and their sense of oppression from state policies.     

Urbanization through dispossession: survival and stratification in China's new townships

Rural land dispossession has become a dominant mechanism of capital accumulation in the Chinese economy. However, the Chinese economy continues to rely on a migrant labor system that enables enterprises to accumulate capital precisely by not dispossessing laborers, but instead enlisting rural communities in absorbing costs of workforce maintenance. These dual and contradictory mechanisms are particularly visible in China's urban construction sector, where enterprises require both low-cost labor and low-cost land for profitability. This contribution draws on long-term ethnographic research in Lan-ding Village, a labor-sending community undergoing land expropriations in Sichuan Province, to document a new system of class stratification resulting from these dual accumulation mechanisms.     

NATO: The View from the East

Abstract

Relations between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and NATO have placed more emphasis on cooperation than confrontation since the Cold War, and Ukraine has begun to move towards membership. At the popular level, on the evidence of national surveys in 2004 and 2005, NATO continues to be perceived as a significant threat, but in Russia and Ukraine it comes behind the United States (in Belarus the numbers are similar). There are few socioeconomic predictors of support for NATO membership that are significant across all three countries, but there are wide differences by region, and by attitudinal variables such as support for a market economy and for EU membership. The relationship between popular attitudes and foreign policy is normally a distant one; but in Ukraine NATO membership will require public support in a referendum, and in all three cases public attitudes on foreign policy issues can influence foreign policy in other ways, including the composition of parliamentary committees. In newly independent states whose international allegiances are still evolving, the associations between public opinion and foreign and security policy may often be closer than in the established democracies.     

关于蒙牛酸酸乳案的几点思考

2006年蒙牛乳业公司与河南安阳白公主乳业公司(以下简称"白乳业")的商标纠纷是中国知识产权界关注的一个焦点案件.随着内蒙古高级法院维持一审判决的判决公布,在中国诞生了首例法院认定的未注册驰名商标.这一判决虽然在相关产业界却引起了轩然大波,但在中国知识产权界却赢得一片叫好之声1.笔者从事商标代理多年,对本案的两审法院在认定事实和适用法律中有一些思考,愿与大家分享.     

Correction to: “Contingent power extension” and regional (dis) integration: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its consequences for the EU

Asia Europe Journal -     

Implementing PBB: Conflicting Views of Success

A modern budget reform, performance‐based budgeting (PBB) emphasizes the measurement of government performance by agencies and public servants. In this article we define PBB as requiring strategic planning regarding agency mission, goals and objectives, and a process that requests quantifiable data that provide meaningful information about program outcomes. Performance‐based budgeting requirements are now pervasive in the states. Of forty‐seven states with PBB requirements, thirty‐one have legislated the process to be conducted, while sixteen have initiated the reform through budget guidelines or instructions.¹What remains unknown, yet of vital interest to state administrators, their staff, legislators, and citizens, regards implementation status of PBB systems. How many states are utilizing a PBB process as prescribed by law or administrative directive? And if PBB has been implemented, has it been successful regarding improvement of agency effectiveness and decision making about spending? Perhaps most importantly, has PBB influenced appropriation decisions?. This research is based on responses to a mail survey of executive and legislative budgeters regarding the PBB system established in their state. Results discussed in this article consider budgeters’ response about PBB implementation status and effectiveness as conducted. We find that there are differing perceptions across the branches of government regarding both the extent of PBB implementation as well as its success. Results show that states with better‐known PBB systems have not necessarily realized greater success in terms of effectiveness from this budget reform than states with less popularly known systems, at least as perceived by the budgeters included in this article.     

Die Justiziabilität der Grundrechte-Charta nach dem Reformvertrag von Lissabon

Der vorliegende Beitrag befasst sich mit der Frage, welche Auswirkungen der neue rechtliche Status der EU-Grundrechtecharta auf den nationalen und gemeinschaftlichen Grundrechtsschutz haben wird. Behandelt wird insbesondere der Aspekt der Grundrechtsdurchsetzung und damit zusammenhängend, welche institutionellen Fragen sich hierfür im innerstaatlichen Recht ergeben.