Commanding and Controlling Protest Crowds

Abstract

Police and authorities have increasingly adopted "command and control" strategies to the policing of intentionally peaceful protest crowds. These strategies work to close down access to a physical space in which a protest is to occur and thus in turn they effectively restrict the capacity of a citizen to engage in the democratic right of peaceful protest.     

The Path of Culture

Abstract

From the late seventeenth century on the idea of culture underwent a gradual transformation. Originally this concept referred essentially to the “refined” way of life of the ruling social elite (which certainly included among others also such activities as listening and making music, reading works of literature, commissioning works of fine art). Popular culture, on the other hand, refers to the usually collective practices of groups of rural and urban workers taking the form of performance. They were not only excluded from refined culture, but it was regarded as completely unsuitable for them, potentially creating dangerous social aspirations. It is with the great social transformation from feudal to bourgeois society that the idea of refined culture was replaced by that of “high culture” encompassing both the arts and the sciences: works claiming universal human significance. This “high culture” for a considerable time coexisted with the remnants of popular culture. It has been only due to the great technical advances that its true opposite, “mass culture” emerged, at the turn to twentieth century, claiming an empirical universality: being understandable and truly interesting to everyone. In economic respect, there is a competitive relation between high and mass culture. However, it is argued that there can be no cultural competition between them. For they posit differing and potentially co-existing receptive attitudes. The characterisation of this difference and the discussion of the seeming exceptions to the so-articulated conceptual scheme occupies the concluding part of this essay.     

校园流行文化在大学生思想政治教育工作中的作用探析

校园流行文化渗透到大学生的日常生活,对大学生的思维方式、行为方式和价值观念产生了积极和消极的影响,这就要求我们要辨析校园流行文化的表现形式和发展趋势,激发其积极影响,抑制其消极影响,发挥其在大学生思想政治教育中正能量的作用.     

从“人民主权”到“专制民主”——论卢梭民主观的歧变

“公意”是卢梭政治思想的核心概念,也是人民主权观产生的逻辑前提。由“公意”概念含混引起的争论与分歧,以及卢梭人民主权理论自身的矛盾和缺陷,使得人民主权有导向专制民主的可能与危险。专制民主的实质是政治权威凌驾于法律之上,国家权力不受限制和约束,以人治代替法治。历史的教训给我们以启示：成熟的法治是民主健康运行的制度保障。     

Popular Culture, Power Relations and Urban Discipline: The Festival of the Holy Spirit in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro

The Festival of the Holy Spirit was considered the most important religious celebration in nineteenth‐century Rio de Janeiro. I discuss the popular practices of music, dance and theatre during the festival. By merging European waltz and the African batuque, the heterogeneous public re‐created and re‐invented a number of new genres that are at the roots of twentieth‐century Brazilian popular music. The festival of the Holy Spirit allows an examination of elite strategies and municipal policies regarding popular culture. In this respect, it is remarkable how much political use the Brazilian Empire made of the festival of the Holy Spirit and how its revellers fought for their celebration.     

Speaking the City: Punishment,Performance and the Perception of London’s Public Space 1780--1840

The paper contends that in order to understand the role of punishment within the Georgian city we must challenge our own perceptions of space. A key difference I suggest between the Georgian and the modern city was that in the former most of the city space had yet to become functionally specialised. The competing demands placed upon it had not yet been, in the main, resolved by municipal authorities; since they were not, as yet, inclined to think in terms of functional efficiency. Consequently, punishment existed as but one activity, embedded within a general culture of public performance. Execution in particular, depended for its efficacy upon the creation of intense nodes of experience within the realm of the ordinary and found its place within a wider system of communication between the orders based upon the notional equality of violence. It was then, owned by the public in a way that was soon to be repudiated. That repudiation was, I suggest, inextricably connected with a reformation of urban space, which was in part motivated by the challenge to public order posed by popular radicalism and which was substantially driven by the application of principles of subjugation and manipulation derived from liturgy and religious practice. It was, I suggest, the subjugation of public space and the suppression of popular performance that in turn necessitated the re-conceptualisation of one of its elements, that is to say, punishment. Punishment was re-conceptualised by disenfranchising those who had formerly owned it in return for the offer of a new, but largely fictitious, form of social ownership of public space.     

Material Objects and Aura: Popular Culture Images against and for War

Surrealism, altered to fit the politics of marginalized people, helps to analyze popular culture's response to war and terrorism. Metaphors from surrealist art and sources from popular culture, including Fahrenheit 9/11 and the apocalyptic, violent, dispensationalist, Left Behind novel series, reveal many discussions of U.S. policy that are currently occurring. This article asks how political agendas are communicated and framed to society via images and how this influences debate over war. The overall conclusion is that the prowar movement uses images that dissuade U.S. society from critical thought and debate on foreign policy issues. While surrealist imagery provides metaphors for the analytic framework, imagery in support of war uses less thought and more violence, which is appropriately analyzed using German Romantic film as a metaphor.     

想象与守望:青年流行文化中的文学脉象

传统意义上的文学已式微,但作为青年流行文化中的文学我们仍有话说.对这一脉象进行梳理;对其间的一些文学现象之动因进行分析,透过书写策略、流行价值、精神指向、觅见社会思潮、经济发展、文化变迁等色彩,此乃本文之意旨.     

浅议民事抗诉案件证据的审查认定

《民事诉讼法》第185条第1款规定,人民检察院对人民法院已经发生法律效力的判决、裁定认定事实主要证据不足的,应当按照审判监督程序提出抗诉,而当前人民检察院在办理民事抗诉案件时对抗诉证据的审查认定上还存在着诸多问题,已影响了抗诉案件质量和改判成功率。针对此种情况,文章明确提出了审查认定抗诉案件证据的具体内容和方法以及完善抗诉案件证据审查制度的相关措施。     

论刑事诉讼中的管辖权异议制度

刑事诉讼管辖权异议是当事人的一项重要的救济性程序权利 ,国外普遍确立了刑事管辖权异议的制度 ,而我国的刑事管辖权异议在立法和司法中都处于缺失的状态。由于管辖权异议是当事人刑事诉讼诉权的体现 ,是获得公平审判权利的重要保障 ,有助于法院裁判权的确定和实现。因此 ,我国应当确立刑事管辖权异议制度。我国刑事管辖权异议的确立 ,应当从基本原则和具体程序上规范 ,形成一套独立的裁判体系 ,当然我们对该制度在我国实施的障碍和配套措施的建立也应予以足够的重视。