The Texture of Livelihoods: Migration and Making a Living in Hanoi

Abstract

Through the experience of 30 rural migrants to Hanoi, this paper reconstructs their livelihood histories, linking the experience of our migrant subjects with wider transformations in Vietnam’s economy and society. We argue for an ‘everyday’ political economy that recognises the fluid connections between the state, society and economy, and the individual. While highlighting the indeterminacy and contingency of life, we recognise the wider context that contributes to the production of the livelihood textures we discern. The characteristic livelihood pathways of the migrant households are shown to echo research undertaken in rural, often less economically vibrant, contexts.     

African corporate lawyering and globalization

Influenced by processes of globalization and localization, many fields of social and commercial practice – including legal services – across Africa are undergoing rapid transformation. It should come as no surprise that these processes of globalization and transformation include the ongoing transformation of corporate lawyering. Lawyers from Johannesburg to Algiers – not to mention Khartoum and Ouagadougou – are experiencing and participating in rapid global change in their profession and everyday work. This article identifies some of the questions and issues that emerge from this process, as well as providing a vignette of the South African corporate legal sector and tentatively outlining the emergence of an African corporate lawyering field. It does so in order to propose a research agenda into the trends and potential pathways of growth in this field. It does so in four steps, moving from a theoretical frame to one of the Global South to a portrait of the South African jurisdiction and ending with an agenda for African corporate lawyering.     

Community Commitment in Special Districts

ABSTRACT

Special districts now constitute about 42% of all U.S. jurisdictions, yet little is known about them. Some critics are concerned that special districts and their staffs have insufficient community commitment. This study, based on a national survey of senior managers in large special districts, examines activities and programs of special district managers that foster community building and engagement, including correlates of these. Study results reveal that special districts are committed to their communities and several strategies and conditions are associated with increased community commitment, such as jobs that focus on community interactions, service type, and ethics management, as well as, to a lesser extent, graduate degree qualifications and charters that specify the role of managers in promoting the public interest and in relation to the board.     

Marginalization as non-contribution

This paper examines the phenomenon of marginalization through the lens of the relatively neglected concept of contribution. It argues that the opportunity to contribute positively to others’ lives is an important component of human well-being which promotes the goods of meaning, self-respect and reliance. Where individuals enjoy that opportunity, they are on that account less marginalized. Contributory practices channelled through publicly recognized median institutions (between the state and the personal sphere) are especially valuable.     

Mirroring Risk: The Cuban Missile Estimation

The Cuban Missile Crisis is by this point well known to all scholars of international politics. Yet, although it has yielded countless lessons over the years, one critical aspect of the case has remained unexamined: the failure of estimation prior to the crisis that led US officials to discount the possibility of a missile deployment in Cuba. This article re-examines US intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis in light of the concept of ‘mirroring risk’, introduced in this article. I present a framework for understanding a class of intelligence failures that are caused by the mis-assessment of how an adversary frames a decision and the risks that they are willing to take. I also present a new two-stage process for understanding how individuals assess the risk-propensity of adversaries in international politics.     

Chinese migration: still the major focus of Russian Far East/Chinese North East relations?

Abstract

In contrast to Sino-Russian relations at the state-level, regional cooperation between the contiguous Russian Far East and Chinese North East has been difficult to achieve, despite the existence of seemingly natural economic complementarities. This article asks why this is the case and argues that one important stumbling block, i.e. negative reactions to Chinese labour migration, has become less problematic. Situating Russian Far East/Chinese North East relations in a regionalist framework the article compares the salience and framing of major issues in regional relations in Chinese and Russian media at the national and regional levels. Contrary to earlier research, the findings suggest that economic and regional development issues, and not Chinese migration into the Russian Far East, are by far the most salient sets of issues on both sides. However, significant differences in the framing of these issues suggest that a convergence of opinion on the desirability of regional cooperation masks contradictory expectations for the direction of regional development.     

Sex Determination from the Second Cervical Vertebra: A Test of Wescott’s Method on a Modern American Sample*

Abstract: Numerous methods for establishing a biological profile exist; however, many of these methods rely on the recovery of several specific bones or on fragile skeletal elements that are sometimes irrecoverable. It is for this reason new methods utilizing other previously under‐documented bones should be established and tested by the forensic anthropological community. This study tests the accuracy of Wescott’s (J Forensic Sci 2000;45(2)) method for determining sex from the second cervical vertebra. Specimens were drawn from the donated skeletal collection curated at the Hamilton County Forensic Center (n = 57) and the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection (n = 243). Both intra‐ and inter‐observer error rates were low and accurate classifications ranged from 78% (females‐Function 1) to 90.6% (males‐Function 5). Of the five functions, Function 4 achieved the highest overall accuracy, with 260 individuals (86.7%) falling into the correct category. Overall, this method is an effective classificatory tool for sex estimation.