Exercising control and gathering information: the functions of interpellations in Hungary (1990–2014)

The article investigates the factors shaping the number and content of interpellations, a form of parliamentary questions by members of parliament (MPs) in post-regime change Hungary. Four theoretical propositions regarding the functions of interpellations are examined in this context: political control; policy-oriented information seeking; parliamentary group leadership; and constituency service. A new database of 4096 observations for the period between 1990 and 2014 is compiled in order to analyse these hypotheses. Computer-assisted content analysis techniques and count data regressions are used to describe the text of interpellations in terms of their geographical and policy content. Results show that opposition MPs interpellate more, whereas representatives of single-member districts and regional lists interpellate less than their peers. Representatives from single-member districts and regional lists make more reference to local issues in general, but not to their own district or county. Finally, policy specialisation increases the likelihood of submitting pertinent parliamentary questions.     

The freedom of navigation in international law and the utility of international society discourse

In the international law of the sea, the emergence of new actors and systems influencing relations between states has lead to evolving rules and calls for the redefinition of the traditional issues such the allocation of jurisdiction and rights to states in its maritime zones. In the maritime domain, this is seen thrice in the evolution of the various maritime zones in the United Nations Conferences for the Law of the Sea （UNCLOS I, II and III）. In the maritime domain, there are certain actions that are not dependent on any state＇s consent. One of such is the rule of freedom of navigation. This paper, argues for the possibilities of concomitance between international law and studies in international society based on the growing recognition of the importance of examining the sociological and historical element in rule development. This paper focuses on a rule in the international law of the sea with the aim of determining the extent to which norms have caused changes in rule development, if any. This method, known as the English School method of international relations, acknowledges the benefits of international law positivism in highlighting generality with the benefits of a normative discourse in highlighting alternatives and the utility of compliance. So, although the maritime domain is rooted in a state system, one where the parts interact as a whole, a branching-out analysis towards the normative discourse in the development of this rule will facilitate more understanding, as the case-specificity of most issues in the maritime domain cannot be overemphasised.     

新时代中国工会学学科建设思路与实现路径研究

进入新发展阶段,加强工会学学科建设具有重大战略意义,是丰富中国特色哲学社会科学学科体系的重要内容,是建构中国工会自主知识体系的迫切需要,是推进新时代中国工运事业和工会工作稳定创新发展的时代要求,是提高工会干部队伍专业化建设的现实需要。研究认为,中国工会学主要应用马克思主义的理论和方法 ,研究中国工会的产生和发展过程以及工会活动的规律,是马克思主义工会理论中国化的成果,应当依托马克思主义理论一级学科进行培育和建设。中国工会学学科理论体系的逻辑结构应当以“工会学”的本体研究为核心,以“工会+”的相关研究为支撑。研究建议,新时代推动中国工会学学科建设,要加强组织领导,推动学位学历教育,加强学术研究和教材建设,并在全国高校形成工会学学术共同体。     

孙复《春秋》学思想探源

北宋的孙复是庆历前后著名的《春秋》学者,所著《春秋尊王发微》具有浓重的尊王攘夷倾向。细绎之,《春秋尊王发微》在基本观点、尊王倾向,尤其是以日月时例解经等方面都与《毂梁传》有明显的继承关系。从这个角度讲,孙复丰富和发展了《毂梁传》的思想,对《毂梁传》的传承起到了重要作用。     

Un-Packing Packaged Cultures: Chinese-ness in International Business

This paper focuses on how the Chinese are represented in the international business literature. Chinese cultures are packaged to make knowledge about the Middle Kingdom more accessible to a general audience. The ways in which these packaged cultures are framed and constructed will be questioned here. Drawing inspiration from Foucault, this article identifies four traits of a packaged culture – it mediates, it asserts the uniqueness of the culture, it selectively packages the culture and it claims that cultural differences matter in business. These traits will form the basis for comparing and examining three methods of packaging a culture, namely the general-macroscopic, ethnographic present and critical emergence approaches. This paper concludes that researchers should reflect on the power they yield when they represent another culture, and that the general public may privilege theories that are accessible rather than sound.

Bad math: calculating bodily capacity in Cassils’s Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture

This article reads Cassils’ 2011 durational performance piece Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture alongside the messy arithmetic of Karl Marx’s Grundrisse in order to ask after the place of measurement within theories of bodily capacity and living labor.     

New media and old stereotypes. Images and discourses about drunk women and men on YouTube

Female alcohol consumption has long been judged more harshly than male behaviour of the same nature. Scholars have shown that traditional mass media contribute to strengthening these stereotypes. The hypothesis of the present study is that new media, especially Web 2.0 environments, provide room for rewriting gender roles in relation to alcohol. To test this hypothesis, 2000 videos were retrieved on YouTube using a list of Italian keywords relating to drunkenness. The 142 most frequently viewed clips were then analysed through a multilayer visual ethnography method. It was found that representations of drinking practices on YouTube seem to reflect the conventional double standard. Female drinking is mainly interpreted as a sign of sexual willingness, and is strongly stigmatised. In most cases, moreover, women themselves actively contributed to creating the sexual meaning, both as video protagonists and as commenters. Analysed materials seem to show that even in a user-generated content medium such as YouTube, old gender stereotypes about drinking fail to be deconstructed. Conversely, the images and discourses that were analysed reinforce these stereotypes, reproducing the messages conveyed by mainstream media in an even more explicit and risky manner.     

Surveying the agrarian question (part 1): unearthing foundations,exploring diversity

This two-part article surveys the origin, development, and current meaning of the ‘agrarian question’. Part one of the survey explores the history of the agrarian question, elaborating its origin in the work of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin, and its development in the work of Preobrazhensky, Dobb, Brenner, and others. Part two of the survey identifies seven current variants of the agrarian question and critically interrogates these variants in order to understand whether, and if so, how, the location of small-scale petty commodity food and farm production within contemporary capitalism has been reconfigured during the era of neoliberal globalisation. Together, the two parts of the survey argue that the agrarian question continues to offer a rigorously flexible framework by which to undertake a historically-informed and country-specific analysis of the material conditions governing rural production, reproduction, and the process of agrarian accumulation or its lack thereof, a process that can now be located within the law of value and market imperatives that operate on a world scale.     

North American field guide: Kenneth Pietrobono's queer landscape of US Empire

“North American field guide: Kenneth Pietrobono's queer landscape of US Empire” offers a meditation on the photographic and exhibition strategies of Queens-based artist Kenneth Pietrobono. Chambers-Letson argues that Pietrobono builds a critique of the imperial and exclusionary practices of the US state by appropriating and (re)deploying the state's appurtenances of power, resignifying the landscape on which US nationalism is constructed and over which US power is exercised. As a point of critical entry, Pietrobono builds upon feminist and queer representational strategies, refusing direct figuration of the body while emphasizing the body of the spectator in the art encounter. Inviting the spectator to project a range of bodies into the landscapes that Pietrobono offers up, the artist asks the spectator to make connections between embodied experiences of race, gender, and sexual difference and the exercise and expansion of US Empire.     

Mythical enjambment in The Hungry Woman: nation,desire, and Cherríe Moraga’s utopic turn

In her play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (2001), Cherríe Moraga makes use of a technique I call “mythical enjambment”: the insertion of a myth, story, or cultural context into another where it “doesn’t belong,” a willful act of making the unexpected out of the expected. Moraga utilizes mythical enjambment to illuminate how mythologies become entrenched and perpetuate harmful ideologies. Interrupting the traditional aesthetics of Western theater by drawing attention to the ways queer women of color are erased from the narrative, Moraga also challenges the absence of queer women of color from the Chicano movement by embedding her play within some of the most dearly held myths of Chicana/o culture. Ultimately, the use of mythical enjambment gestures toward the utopic and revolutionary potential of theater. The Hungry Woman shatters myths on multiple, intersectional levels: from the critical gaze of interpretive authority to the myths that cohere Chicana/o identity along masculinist and heterosexist lines.