Reviews

Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment By Tim Etchells, 1999. New York: Routledge

Up Your Ass Written by Valerie Solanas, Directed and Presented by George Coates, Performance Works at P.S. 122, New York City, February 7–25th, 2001

Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera Edited by Mary Ann Smart. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

The Garden An installation by Paul McCarthy, Dietch Projects, New York City

39 MICROLECTURES: in proximity of performance by Matthew Goulish, London: Routledge, 2000     

Changing Relations between Government and Citizen: Administrative Law and the Work of the Australian Commonwealth Ombudsman

This article examines the individual complaint‐taking role of the Australian Commonwealth Ombudsman over a 28 year period between 1977–2005. This study was conceived through a curiosity to determine how a 30 year old administrative law institution is reacting to accommodate a dramatically altered legal, political and economic environment. The suspicion was that, in the absence of legislative amendment to its jurisdiction and role, the Commonwealth Ombudsman must strategically change due to the demands of these external forces. The overall quantitative finding from the data analysis is that the internal strategic direction of the Commonwealth Ombudsman is indeed altering. In terms of dispute resolution it is increasingly using its discretionary powers to turn individual complainants back to government departments/agencies. The data analysis reveals that this administrative law institution is shifting from a reactive individual complaint taker to a proactive standard setter for government administration. This article suggests that this movement may impact upon citizen ‘rights’ or perceptions of their rights to have their individual complaints heard against government. This in turn may have a ripple effect for notions of democratic accountability and the relationship between the citizen and the state.     

Repression Technology: Internet Accessibility and State Violence

This article offers a first subnational analysis of the relationship between states' dynamic control of Internet access and their use of violent repression. I argue that where governments provide Internet access, surveillance of digital information exchange can provide intelligence that enables the use of more targeted forms of repression, in particular in areas not fully controlled by the regime. Increasing restrictions on Internet accessibility can impede opposition organization, but they limit access to information on precise targets, resulting in an increase in untargeted repression. I present new data on killings in the Syrian conflict that distinguish between targeted and untargeted events, using supervised text classification. I find that higher levels of Internet accessibility are associated with increases in targeted repression, whereas areas with limited access experience more indiscriminate campaigns of violence. The results offer important implications on how governments incorporate the selective access to communication technology into their strategies of coercion.     

Adjudication of Islamic banking and finance cases in the civil courts of Malaysia

The adjudication of Islamic banking and finance (IBF) laws in Malaysia is unique given the Malaysian parallel legal systems. Although IBF is a branch of Islamic law, the civil court has the appropriate jurisdiction to decide the cases. This is due to the fact that banking falls under the items 7 and 8 of the Federal List of the Federal Constitution. The trails of decided cases showed that there are problems in resolving IBF cases in the civil courts. This paper aims to discuss the adjudication of Islamic Banking in the civil courts. The authors employed the method of legal documents analysis in analyzing the IBF cases. The analysis highlighted four obstacles in adjudicating IBF in civil courts, namely; inadequacy of existing legal framework, complications of legal documentation, competency of civil court judges and expert evidence. It also analysed the four approaches adopted by the civil courts in deciding IBF cases; the ‘parties to be bound by their agreement’, the ‘strict adherence to civil law’, the ‘justice and equitable’ and the ‘looking into the substance’.     

Disciplinary labor regimes in Chinese factories

Using a survey the authors initiated in fifty-four footwear factories in China, this article investigates the extent to which Chinese workers today are subjected to coercive workplace discipline. The authors compare the management practices of state-owned and collective factories, private factories owned by mainland Chinese, and those owned by investors from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The survey selects five indicators of a disciplinary labor regime: corporal punishment, compulsory overtime, discipline vis-a`-vis bodily functions (such as toilet-going restrictions), imposition of monetary penalties, and bonding of labor through mandatory deposits.     

The Role of Group Identity and Personality Domains as Indicators of Self-Reported Delinquency

We investigated the impact of personality factors and group identity factors on self-reported delinquency among high school students. Respondents were 420 Australian youth with a mean age of 15.22 r yrs. The sample comprised 224 males and 196 females. The strongest predictors of delinquency among both males and females were Eysenck's Psychoticism factor and an identity with so-called "rebels". In addition, Extraversion (males) and low self-reported academic achievement (females) were also found to be important factors. It was further concluded that Psychoticism, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness have little in common in their prediction of delinquency. The results are discussed with reference to previous research on the role of personality and group identity factors, and some suggestions for future research are also made.     

Mitochondrial DNA control region population data from Macedonia

Mitochondrial DNA sequences of the entire control region were analyzed in 200 unrelated individuals from Macedonia. A total of 163 different haplotypes were found as determined by 177 polymorphic sites. The probability of a random match was calculated as 1:121 (0.83%). The basic phylogenetic structure of the Macedonian population as derived from its haplogroup distribution is in agreement with other West-Eurasian populations. Upon publication, the population data are going to be available in the EMPOP database (www.empop.org) [W. Parson, A. Dür, EMPOP—a forensic mtDNA database, FSI:Genetics 1 (2) (2007) 88–92; W. Parson, A. Brandstätter, A. Alonso, N. Brandt, B. Brinkmann, A. Carracedo, et al., The EDNAP mitochondrial DNA population database (EMPOP) collaborative exercises: organisation, results and perspectives, Forensic Sci. Int. 139 (2–3) (2004) 215–226.].     

Switzerland – Really Europe's Heart of Darkness?

Immigration is a prominent and contested global topic of contemporary politics. Several recent popular votes targeting migration such as the minaret initiative, the automatic deportation initiative, and most recently the vote on “mass immigration”, evoke however the impression that Switzerland sets particularly harsh standards in migration policy. Based on historical evidence on Swiss migration policy making and comparative analyses on current cantonal integration policy outputs, I argue that ‐ while far from being a new phenomenon ‐ immigrant scepticism has become a more relevant factor of Swiss migration policy making than ever. Yet, immigration and immigrant scepticism do not only challenge direct democratic Switzerland, but all destination countries of immigration.