Up and Down the Zoning

In a specific downzoning situation, the question is not so much whether the new classification reduced the value of the property in comparison to the prior zoning, but rather whether the new classification is reasonable. Since the landowner has no right to expect zoning to continue, the courts are more concerned with the reasonableness of the new zoning as applied to the specific property and not the diminution in value under the new classification.     

Mothering as a citizenship practice: an intersectional analysis of ‘carework’ and ‘culturework’ in non-normative mother–child identities

In this article, a comparative analysis is presented of two ethnographic case studies on mothering practices in Belgium. Interviews with, and participant observation among, both undocumented migrant mothers from the South and Belgian white adoptive mothers of black Ethiopian-born children provide an insight into the way in which mothering plays an important role in the pursuit of citizenship. In our analysis, we draw on critical theorizations of citizenship from feminist, multicultural and globalization perspectives, and of care, intimacy and the affective in order to show how mothering can be viewed as a citizenship practice that transcends boundaries of the private, public and the nation. In their ‘carework’ and ‘culturework’, both undocumented migrant and white adoptive mothers negotiate prevalent ideologies of mothering that are often exclusionary of their own and their children's sense of identity and belonging. Their mothering involves building new networks and strengthening their children's identities in culturally creative ways. We argue that although these mothering practices are embedded in a multiplicity of intersecting privileges and inequalities, within restraints imposed by the nation-state context, this carework attests to the agentic capacity of mothering and its potential to affect politics of inclusion, recognition and changing hegemonic understandings of citizenship and belonging.     

A Critique of the Universalisability of Critical Human Rights Theory: The Displacement of Immanuel Kant

While the critically oriented writings of Immanuel Kant remain the key theoretical grounds from which universalists challenge reduction of international rights law and protection to the practical particularities of sovereign states, Kant’s theory can be read as also a crucial argument for a human rights regime ordered around sovereign states and citizens. Consequently, universalists may be tempted to push Kant’s thinking to greater critical examination of ‘the human’ and its properties. However, such a move to more theoretical rigour in critique only solidifies the subversive statism of Kant’s apparent universalism, as long as it remains embedded in his prior theory of critical philosophy that privileges a singular form of reason. Universalist theories of human rights can break with this contradiction only insofar as they also displace the right to philosophy from the subject and site of ‘civil’ man to a politics of theory where no such subject or site is guaranteed.     

Waste pickers and collectors in Delhi: Poverty and environment in an urban informal sector

Waste pickers and collectors constitute the bottom layer of waste recycling in the metropolis of Delhi. Pickers collect waste just by picking them up from public places such as garbage dumps and streets, whereas collectors purchase waste from waste producers such as households and shops for sale to higher-level waste traders. Most pickers have incomes below the poverty line set by the Planning Commission of India, whereas the majority of collectors earn marginally higher than the poverty-line income. The poverty of pickers is not transitory, but chronic as they have no connection to enter the community of collectors and higher-level waste traders within which the community mechanism works effectively to reduce risk and transaction costs. Despite their low economic and social status, pickers and collectors are making important contributions to society. It is found that pickers and collectors are adding more value than their own income to waste producers' income and to the saving of the city government's expenditure for disposing waste. Increased public support not only for social services, but also production services and infrastructure can be justified not only for the purposes of reducing poverty but also for furthering their positive contribution to society.     

The Social Outcomes of Education and Feedbacks on Growth in Africa

Most of the effects of education included in the complete model presented here are shown to be consistent with those found in the mainstream of the research on each outcome using microeconomic data. This, however, is a first effort to estimate net education effects more comprehensively, beyond just growth and health effects on other key measures of development in Africa, and also a new view of indirect feedbacks on economic growth and of externalities. After developing the conceptual framework, the regression estimates are presented together with a discussion of the net direct and indirect effects of education on each outcome. These are shown to improve infant mortality, increase longevity, strengthen civic institutions and democratisation, increase political stability, and increase investment in physical capital, which in turn have positive delayed feedback effects on the economic growth process. The effects also lower fertility rates and population growth rates but the latter occurs only after long delays because of the short-term positive effects of education on health. There are significant net education effects reducing poverty, inequality and crime, the latter after netting out negative externalities from growth and white-collar crime. Education effects reducing poverty and substituting skills for extractive exports also contribute to environmental sustainability. Simulations solve the complete model endogenously and iteratively over time for all of the direct and indirect (largely externality) effects. They reveal that indirect feedback effects including those on non-market outcomes are larger than the direct effects. Some effects are immediate, but many of the lags are long. So policy options for a continent in crisis that consider these lags are considered.     

DISCUSSION - Agricultural Policy Reform and Rural Livelihoods in Central Mexico

This contribution examines the impact of profound changes to agricultural policy implemented since 1988 on the livelihoods of Mexico's rural population. Detailed studies in four villages show that rural incomes are very unevenly distributed within communities leaving half of households in poverty. During the last decade key factors affecting village economies have been international and national, rather than specific changes to farm policy. Most changes have been to the detriment of the communities studied, but peasant households have adapted and survived, at a price. If the worst fears about the consequences of economic liberalisation have not been realised, neither have the hopes. Depressed markets for basic goods and services have limited the growth of the rural economy. Private investment and provision of services have not been stimulated.     

Rich doctors and poor patients: Market failure and health care systems in developing countries

This article argues that, in developing countries, health care systems (HCS) have been facing the problem of market failure, implying that the fair rules of market principles do not apply and patients often become losers. Explaining the theoretical issues involved, the article examines various causes of market failures in HCS, including: rent-seeking activities by doctors, asymmetric information between doctors and patients, between patients and insurance companies, and the oligopolistic behaviour of health care practitioners. The policy implications of the study suggest that, in many cases, government intervention is essential to eliminate market failures in the HCS in developing countries.     

EVACUATION OF SMYRNA (IZMIR) TURKEY, 1922

I. N. Duncan Wallace, QC studied law at his father's old college, Oriel, Oxford University, before spending the war years in the Navy. After the war he completed his law course, was called to the Bar in 1948 and took silk in 1973. His legal career involved practice in Pacific Rim countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as stints as ‘visiting’ Scholar and Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and King's College, London. Aged 80, he is still active in producing legal textbooks.     

The Effects of Political Talk Radio On Political Attitude Formation: Exposure Versus Knowledge

The effects of political news on the mass audience are usually difficult to establish empirically. Recent models of mass communication effects have held that political knowledge is a better indicator of media reception than traditional measures of exposure. This claim is tested in two studies of attitudes toward Democratic and Republican leaders during the 1996 U.S. presidential primary campaigns. The impact of messages from three types of political talk radio (PTR) is examined: Rush Limbaugh, other conservative hosts, and liberal/moderate hosts. Political knowledge and exposure to talk radio are found to be equally good predictors of attitudes toward political leaders when studied separately. However, when tested against one another, exposure is the more effective measure. Agreement between Rush Limbaugh's messages and his audience's attitudes toward political figures is consistent and strong. Biased processing of PTR content by audience members with partisan predispositions contrary to those of the host is also examined.