(Re)creating gender hierarchies within northern landscapes: a study of stories about nature and gender

This article examines how gender hierarchies are (re)created within the context of northern landscapes. We analyse data from fieldwork and interviews with middle-class female Russians having settled in a small town in northernmost Norway, most of them as marriage migrants. Inspired by the phenomenology of the body, feminist phenomenology and gender theory, the analysis shows how the participants talk about nature as ‘recreation’ and ‘poetry’, but also as a venue that is vital for (re)shaping their gendered identities. In particular, the Russian women talk about their strong, skilful outdoors Norwegian husbands as ‘experts’ in nature, and about themselves as ‘novices’. This ‘expert–novice’ relationship creates a hierarchical distinction between the Norwegian man and the Russian woman, but also attributes additional value to the equality-oriented, but in several cases neither highly educated nor highly paid, Norwegian husband. Through this ‘re-masculinisation’ of their Norwegian partners, the Russian women create a complementary, but subordinate space for themselves. The analysis reveals that our participants situate themselves in contrast to the Norwegian equality ideal while creating a room of their own where they can form a separate and unique Russian femininity. This illustrates how constructions of gender are interwoven in translocal ‘minoritising’ and ‘majoritising’ processes.     

Neutral or Biased? The Presentation of the Kyrgyzstan and Egypt Uprisings by RIA Novosti

Abstract

This article analyses the media coverage of the uprisings in Kyrgyzstan (February–April 2005) and Egypt (January–February 2011) by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. It aims to identify the features of two frame dimensions, namely the promotion of a particular problem and its causal interpretation. Our analysis uses 184 articles published online by the news agency during the two events and differentiates between three types of articles (news stories, opinion articles and commentaries by experts). The results indicate how several nuances of this framing dimension could bias public perception towards protesters or incumbents.     

Russia’s Neorevisionist Challenge to the Liberal International Order

Abstract

A conventional opinion is that Russia is trying to destroy the liberal international order. Russia indeed defies it, but also justifies its foreign policy with the liberal order’s normative frameworks and reproaches the West for not standing up to these norms. Moreover, Moscow does not present any alternative vision. Russia complains about the internal contradictions of the liberal order: sovereignty vs. intervention, pluralism vs. universality, US hegemony vs. equality and democracy, although it also exploits these contradictions. In fact Russia demands an adjustment of the liberal order rather than its eradication and should, therefore, be classified as a neorevisionist power. Two elements underlie Russia’s at times aggressive foreign policy conduct. The first one, its feeling of being ill-accommodated in the present order, predefines the direction of the policy. The second, the prioritisation of foreign policy over domestic reforms, explains the intensity of Russian discontent and its occasional aggressive manifestations. Russia’s domestic consensus regarding its foreign policy, including views on the liberal international order, facilitates this aggressiveness. Three policy conclusions can be drawn: acknowledging that Russia uses the inherent contradictions of the liberal international order opens up possibilities for dialogue and an eventual overcoming of the crisis; the survival and strengthening of the liberal order depends on its embrace of all major players, including Russia, and hence, the need for some adjustments to the order itself; and finally such adjustments presuppose Russia’s readiness to shoulder responsibility for the (reformed) liberal international order.     

Service Sector Productivity: B2B Electronic Commerce as a Strategic Driver

Information technology, and especially the Internet, are exerting an increasingly large and broad influence on industrial structures and measurement and evaluation of such fundamental concepts as risk, the value and benefits of intangibles such as intellectual capital, brand-related goodwill, and service sector productivity. Identifying the key value-adding factors underpinning productivity in the service sector has always been a significant challenge but with the advent of the WWW and the broad diffusion of Internet-enabled technologies and transacting modalities such as electronic commerce, this challenge has become even harder. In this paper, we compile a number of empirical case studies from industry where the use of electronic commerce has served as a strategic differentiator in pushing the service productivity envelop and in maximizing customer value added. Specifically, we examine the impact of electronic commerce on the process and petroleum industries. We profile in detail the role of electronic commerce as a strategy-enabling, infrastructural, path-breaking and general-purpose technology that if properly leveraged, can lead to radical improvements in both quality and productivity in services, thus helping re-define and re-shape the core structure and relationships in the industries it impacts. We end by identifying best practices in deploying electronic commerce as a strategic agent of change within and across firms and industries in the pursuit of increasingly higher levels of service sector productivity and quality.     

The impact of finance regulations on political parties: The case of Bulgaria

This article suggests that a successful explanation of the development of Bulgaria's post-1989 party system must include the rules governing funding of political organisations. By examining the composition of party incomes and spending practices, I evaluate patterns and trends in fund raising using official party self-reported accounts and other data for 2001 – 05. I conclude that the specific public funding regime led to the emergence of three tiers of parties. The case of Bulgaria suggests that in the absence of strict regulations for reporting and enforcement mechanisms, the image of parties as representatives of the public interest was seriously damaged.     

A Novel Forensic Tool for the Characterization and Comparison of Printing Ink Evidence: Development and Evaluation of a Searchable Database Using Data Fusion of Spectrochemical Methods

A searchable printing ink database was designed and validated as a tool to improve the chemical information gathered from the analysis of ink evidence. The database contains 319 samples from printing sources that represent some of the global diversity in toner, inkjet, offset, and intaglio inks. Five analytical methods were used to generate data to populate the searchable database including FTIR, SEM‐EDS, LA‐ICP‐MS, DART‐MS, and Py‐GC‐MS. The search algorithm based on partial least‐squares discriminant analysis generates a similarity “score” used for the association between similar samples. The performance of a particular analytical method to associate similar inks was found to be dependent on the ink type with LA‐ICP‐MS performing best, followed by SEM‐EDS and DART‐MS methods, while FTIR and Py‐GC‐MS were less useful in association but were still useful for classification purposes. Data fusion of data collected from two complementary methods (i.e., LA‐ICP‐MS and DART‐MS) improves the classification and association of similar inks.     

Evaluation of the Forensic Utility of Scanning Electron Microscopy‐Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy and Laser Ablation‐Inductively Coupled Plasma‐Mass Spectrometry for Printing Ink Examinations

Improvements in printing technology have exacerbated the problem of document counterfeiting, prompting the need for analytical techniques that better characterize inks for forensic analysis and comparisons. In this study, 319 printing inks (toner, inkjet, offset, and Intaglio) were analyzed directly on the paper substrate using scanning electron microscopy‐energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM‐EDS) and Laser Ablation‐Inductively Coupled Plasma‐Mass Spectrometry (LA‐ICP‐MS). As anticipated, the high sensitivity of LA‐ICP‐MS pairwise comparisons resulted in excellent discrimination (average of ~ 99.6%) between different ink samples from each of the four ink types and almost 100% correct associations between ink samples known to originate from the same source. SEM‐EDS analysis also resulted in very good discrimination for different toner and intaglio inks (>97%) and 100% correct association for samples from the same source. SEM‐EDS provided complementary information to LA‐ICP‐MS for certain ink types but showed limited utility for the discrimination of inkjet and offset inks.     

Multicultural Pedagogy Development in Modern Education

Although there is a growing interest in the influence of multicultural issues in education, there is still a lack of theoretically well-grounded comparative analyses of educational systems. Topics such as problems and prospects involved in the development of multicultural pedagogy are broadly discussed, but often suffer from an insufficient number of empirical and comparative studies. The lack of systemic or unified research in the field of multicultural education has reduced multicultural pedagogy within education to the simple implementation of individual training courses. As a result, multicultural pedagogy is generally oriented only toward the needs of a single country, rather than toward a system of multicultural interests that takes into account the interests of multiple countries. As a result, we must develop methods that will enable the realization of true multicultural pedagogy. The leading objective should be, firstly, the consideration of the individual as a subject of culture in a multicultural environment with a goal to determine the significance of the formation of an individual＇s multicultural qualities; secondly, the development of an integrative approach. Comparative studies are taking the lead in addressing this goal and recommending specific steps to incorporate multicultural pedagogy more systematically into an existing education system in every country. This paper addresses these problems by discussing theoretical questions behind the development of the ideological basis of multicultural pedagogy.