Military Power and Food Security: A Cross-National Analysis of Less-Developed Countries, 1970–1990

Addressing the long-standing debate over the social impact of military power and recent discussions of military-induced famine, we conduct a panel analysis of aggregate food supply and child hunger rates in 75–79 less-developed countries (LDCs). Distinguishing between militarization , as the growth of military resources, and militarism , as the use of military force to handle political conflicts, we show that militarization is both beneficial and detrimental to food security, whereas militarism is consistently detrimental. Arms imports and associated increased military spending plus praetorianism and military repression reduce food security, whereas increased military participation and arms production boost food security. Increased food supply reduces child hunger and is largely confined to the more developed of the LDCs. These military power effects show net economic growth, which "trickles down" to improve food supply and reduce child hunger among the more developed LDCs, reflecting the growth of global economic inequality. Contrary to views that see militarization as a single unified process, use of armed force is not strongly rooted in either praetorianism or militarization.     

A Survey of Perspectives on Intergovernmental Relations: A Comparative Analysis of the Czech and Slovak Republics

The results of a survey of local government officials from the Slovak and Czech Republics taken in December of 2005 are presented and analysed. Attitudes about and perspectives on intergovernmental fiscal relations in the two republics are probed. Differences and similarities in Czech and Slovak views are established regarding some of the perceptions of local autonomy and the sufficiency of available funds; whether or not public services are supplied by the appropriate levels of government; the potential benefits of adopting a serious rather than a nominal property tax; and the flexibility of local budget planning in Czech and Slovak cities and towns.     

Resistance and Creativity in Social Interaction: For and Against Memory in Poland, Israel–Palestine, and the United States

In this paper, I present an analysis of Adam Michnik’s notion of “Amnesty without Amnesia”. His was a wise political judgment presented at a critical moment in the struggle to constitute a democratic polity in Poland. Mine is an appreciation of his political position, along with a sociological analysis that highlights the empirical difficulties of its realization in practical action. I will show how at critical moments of social change creative political action works to erase memories of the relevant past, which act as a repressive force, while “re-remembering” (to use Toni Morrison’s formulation). Three cases will be compared, Michnik’s, after the fall of the communist regime in east central Europe, and cases drawn from the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and the American presidential campaign. A paper prepared for presentation at Cerisy, France, Summer, 2008.     

Population in Motion: Salvadorean Refugees and Circulation Migration

The profound socio-political crisis in El Salvador fully revealed itself in the events of 1979 and 1980, developing into an open civil war beginning on 10 January 1981. The conflict generated a series of profound changes in the social structure of the country (Segundo Montes, 1988:107).     

美国未成年人司法制度的发展

本文旨在介绍美国的未成年人司法制度。文中除了介绍其不同于成年人的司法制度之处以外,还特别介绍此制度近期的发展,着重于停止按未成年人司法程序审判(移交成年人法庭)、校园暴力、未成年人团伙及“三击不中”政策等。     

Gender,ethnicity and feminism: an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences feminist academic women in UK higher education

Studies have begun to explore how those women academics committed to social justice, namely feminist academics, are navigating the increasingly managerial Academy. To understand how these multiple social identities, including gender and ethnicity, interact and intersect, this paper adopts an intersectional approach to understanding the heterogeneity of women’s experiences in academia. Five focus groups with feminist academics (n = 6–10 in each focus group) reveal concerns of hampered career progression as a consequence of being female and openly feminist. Some ethnic minority academics felt that they were forced to choose between a feminist identity or that of their ethnic background. For some women, their feminist identity provided opportunities for challenging dominant practices. The paper concludes that the heterogeneity of feminist academics’ experiences within academia is under-researched and that the lens of intersectionality helps to illuminate this. This paper advances understanding of multiple identities at work, though demonstrating that intersectionality can lead to the accumulation of advantage as well as disadvantage in relation to social identities such as gender and ethnicity, and a political identity such as feminist.     

Transformative Illegality: How Condoms ‘Became Legal’ in Ireland, 1991–1993

This paper examines Irish campaigns for condom access in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, activists campaigned against a law which would not allow condoms to be sold from ordinary commercial spaces or vending machines, and restricted sale to young people. Advancing a conception of ‘transformative illegality’, we show that illegal action was fundamental to the eventual legalisation of commercial condom sale. However, rather than foregrounding illegal condom sale as a mode of spectacular direct action, we show that tactics of illegal sale in the 1990s built on 20 years of everyday illegal sale within the Irish family planning movement. Everyday illegal sale was a long-term world-making practice, which gradually transformed condoms’ legal meanings, eventually enabling new forms of provocative and irreverent protest. Condoms ‘became legal’ when the state recognised modes of condom sale, gradually built up over many years and publicised in direct action and in the courts.     

State Facilitated Economic Abuse: A Structural Analysis of Men Deliberately Withholding Child Support

Economic abuse is well established as a widespread and damaging element of intimate partner violence. However research largely addresses cohabiting couples, with few detailed explorations of women’s longer-term experiences after separation. Further, researchers have not developed a gendered analysis of child support related economic abuse. Such an analysis requires understanding gender as a framework that organises institutions and relationships in ways that build and reproduce hierarchical relations of difference. In this paper, I present data from in-depth interviews with 37 single mothers to pursue a structural analysis of how men’s deliberate withholding of child support (termed child maintenance in some countries) can be a form of economic abuse that is facilitated through gendered state processes and institutions that order child support transfers. I argue that masculine financial discretion structures policy and organizational practices in ways that legitimate men’s financial agency at the expense of women’s financial autonomy. On-going compliance issues are not the result of a failure of Australia’s Child Support Program, but suggest that the state’s role can be one of regulation, not prevention, of economic abuse. Thus, Australia’s Child Support Program normalises the potential for post-separation economic abuse.     

Globalised Imaginaries of Love and Hate: Immutability,Violence, and LGBT Human Rights

The U.S.-led global LGBT human rights campaign, formalised on International Human Rights Day 2011, sutures human rights policing with a politics of protection. Centred on a singular LGBT victim of violence, the campaign’s multiple projects legitimate military and financial intervention under the auspices of human rights. This article examines the regulatory production of globalised LGBT rights through the nexus of international LGBT human rights/hate crime laws, U.S. asylum law, and equal protection treatment of sexual orientation. I argue that the juridical and ideological frameworks that guide state action in each of these areas converge in the construction of an immutable LGBT identity that is the object of racialised, culturally othered violence. This rendering of sexual difference through the flattening of culture elides structural violence and advances human rights imperialism.