Military twists and turns in world politics: downsides or dividends for UN peace operations?

Russia’s challenge to the post-cold war order, and the rise of Islamic State have resulted in a call for increased military spending among NATO members. Despite the increased demand for UN peace operations, any expansion is unlikely to benefit the world organisation. Instead we see an increasing reliance upon regional organisations like the African Union, European Union and NATO, in particular, for robust peace operations. An analysis of Western states (France, Germany and the USA) suggests that future investments in weaponry, technology and staff will primarily benefit NATO and the EU, but not the United Nations.     

少数民族地区乡村旅游发展与和谐社会构建研究

乡村旅游已成为我国旅游业新的增长点和亮点。我国少数民族地区的绝大多数乡村有条件、有市场顺应国际国内旅游业发展的潮流发展乡村旅游。实践证明,少数民族地区开展乡村旅游对构建和谐社会起着多方面的积极作用。少数民族地区乡村应把握好乡村旅游的开发原则,探索其开发的有效途径,实现少数民族地区乡村的经济发展与全面和谐。     

谈对贵州历史与民族文化资源的创造性解读

任何文化资源的价值都是解读出来的,是不同的人对之加以不同的介入、选择、改造、重构的结果。本文以贵州著名的历史与民族文化事实为例,作一番探索。     

近代西南地区少数民族基督徒群体社会心态探析

目前,学术界对基督教在西南少数民族地区的传播史的研究大多集中在教会活动方面,而对少数民族基督徒群体社会心态研究还很不够。其实他们的社会心态五彩缤纷,互相交织,内容极其丰富。所以,有必要对对其社会心态进行探析,以利于我们更好地把握西南少数民族社会的整体变迁。     

析宗教极端主义及其对国家安全的危害

宗教极端主义是一种与宗教有密切联系的极端主义。它主要有两种类别:第一类是指宗教内部的极端主义倾向;第二类是指在宗教名义下的极端主义。宗教极端主义对国家安全的危害,主要表现在危及国家主权和领土完整,破坏国家现有政治体系、经济体系和社会秩序,干扰国家可持续发展。为此,严厉打击、有效治理这一国际公害已成为当前维护国家安全的重要任务之一。     

‘I Want to Wear It’: Fashioning Black Feminism in Mahogany (1975)

ABSTRACT

In this article I focus on the portrayal of fashionable clothing in the 1975 film Mahogany and connect it to the history of African American women engaging with sartorial self-representation as a means to assert their visibility in American culture. My aim is to analyse Mahogany’s emphasis on brightly-coloured highly-ornamented clothing, which has a long history of signifying bad taste and became part of accusations of racial and sexual inferiority. I want to show how Mahogany’s representation of fashion undermines the historically entrenched bias against colourful, highly adorned clothing while also revealing how this bias has played a subtle but significant role in the racism and sexism black women have encountered, further (but not finally) impeding them from the forms of recognition the category of femininity offers. Mahogany represents those impediments and repeats the sexual and racial commodification underlying them, but also resists them (albeit quite subtly) through the film’s loving display of fashion and its attention to the work of designing and making clothes. Mahogany tells a story of bright sartorial resistance that can be understood as an articulation of black feminist desires for women of colour to be able to compose the images through which their bodies are perceived.     

Perceptions of Racism and Depressive Symptoms in African American Adolescents: The Role of Perceived Academic and Social Control

Experiences with racism are a common occurrence for African American youth and may result in negative self perceptions relevant for the experience of depressive symptoms. This study examined the longitudinal association between perceptions of racism and depressive symptoms, and whether perceived academic or social control mediated this association, in a community epidemiologically-defined sample of urban African American adolescents (N = 500; 46.4% female). Structural equation modeling revealed that experiences with racism were associated with low perceived academic control, which in turn was associated with increased depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that experiences with racism can have long lasting effects for African American youth’s depressive symptoms, and highlight the detrimental effects of experiences with racism for perceptions of control in the academic domain. Implications for intervention are discussed.

The Seattle Teamsters and the procedural state, 1935–1942

The Teamsters Union often clashed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Seattle between 1935 and 1942. At times the Seattle Teamsters resisted the NLRB, yet in other cases the union worked within the agency's procedures to expand. In the years after the Wagner Act, the Teamsters exploited the NLRB to block employees from choosing their own union. This article uses archival records to explore cases where the Seattle Teamsters successfully adapted to federal regulation of collective bargaining between 1935 and 1942. Seattle workers opposed to the Teamsters bravely fought to protect their right to organize, yet these employees faced a union skilled at working with the procedural state. These cases show the increasing ability of the Seattle Teamsters to enroll workers wary of the union by complying with NLRB rules.     

Divergent fates: company unions and employee involvement committees under the railway labor and national labor relations acts

Well known is that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, 1935) in the United States places a largely per se ban on nonunion employee representation (ER) groups which deal with employers over a term or condition of employment. Much less well known is that America’s other labor law, the Railway Labor Act (RLA, 1926), takes a different approach and permits employers to operate such councils and committees as long as they do not perform a collective bargaining function or interfere with workers’ free choice of a bargaining agent. Thus, under the RLA Delta Air Lines is able to operate what is today the closest living approximation to a 1920s-style ER plan while hundreds of other companies (e.g. Polaroid) under the jurisdiction of the NLRA have been forced over the years to disband similar groups on grounds they are a proscribed company union. No study to date has explored the history behind the RLA and NLRA’s divergent treatment of nonunion ER groups so this article takes a first look. The main part of the story covers the 1920–1935 period and examines the events, people, and experiences associated with company unions and ER in, respectively, the rail and manufacturing industries and why the legislative outcome in the former was a permissive stance on nonunion committees but prohibitive in the latter. The last part of the paper fast-forwards the RLA-NLRA story from the 1930s to contemporary law and practice in order to demonstrate how “history matters” when it comes to what employers can and cannot do with nonunion representation groups, such as works councils, participation and involvement committees, and dispute resolution forums.     

Rhetoric and Praxis: Nigeria’s Africa Diplomacy and the Shaping of the African Union

Although Nigeria has always promoted multilateral diplomacy in the African context, the civilian administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo made it a cardinal objective of its Africa policy. Through his foreign policy speeches, President Obasanjo emphasised the readiness of his administration to play a leading role in African continental organisation – the African Union (AU). Using data collected through the secondary and interview methods, and thematic analysis, this study analyses Obasanjo’s diplomatic outing in the AU. While there were some encumbrances (such as the failure on occasion to make wider consultations within the AU framework and the absence of a well coordinated inter-ministerial approach to project Nigeria’s leadership in the AU), the paper contends that the administration’s diplomacy in the AU was successful. This showed in the role the administration played in shaping the structures that currently define the existence of the organisation. The transmutation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to AU, the recalibration of its peace and security architecture, and the funding of the organisation benefited immensely from Nigeria’s diplomacy under President Obasanjo.