Nation-Building Narratives in Viet Nam: A Memoir on B-52s and Their Aftermath

In late 1972 (December 18-30), the Christmas Bombing of Hanoi in the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam by the U.S. Air Force took place. Three weeks later, the American author arrived and witnessed the destruction and how the Vietnamese had already fitted this 'Battle of the B-52s' into their centuries old narrative of resistance to foreign invasion. This article recounts the people and situations that he met on this visit and the ways Vietnamese of all kinds viewed the battle as a great victory for their land, one reinforcing their sense of past, present, and future.     

F. Maupain,The Future of the International Labour Organisation in the Global Economy,Hart Publishers,Oxford 2013, xix + 300 pp. ISBN 978-1-84946-502-1.

Netherlands International Law Review -     

The Fall and Renewal of the Commission: Accountability, Contract and Administrative Organisation

The fall of the Santer Commission, prompted by the Report of the Committee of Independent Experts, sent shock waves throughout the entire Community. This article seeks to examine the nature of the problems which beset the Commission, to place these within the broader context of decision-making by public bodies, and to consider also the responsibilities of the Council and European Parliament for the delivery of agreed Community policies. The article analyses in detail the Reports of the Committee of Independent Experts, and the subsequent reforms initiated by the Prodi Commission, in order to assess the prospects for improved service delivery in the future.     

Plasticity and Post-Colonial Recognition: ‘Owning,Knowing and Being’*

In this article the author traces the limits of the philosophy and politics of recognition as manifest in colonial settler contexts. Forms of property ownership and ways of being, sutured by the racial body, are contained by a restricted economy of owning, knowing and being. Bringing the concept of plasticity to bear on the relationship between the body, property and the colonial, the author illuminates the ways in which practices of ownership that exceed the restricted economy of recognition exhibit a temporal and spatial plasticity in the context of the Palestinian struggles over land in the West Bank.