BEYOND POLITICS AND POSITIONS: A CALL FOR COLLABORATION BETWEEN FAMILY COURT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROFESSIONALS

The domestic violence advocacy and family court communities have each grown dramatically over the last three decades. Although these professional communities share many values in common, they often find themselves at odds with one another on a host of issues. This article examines the practical, political, definitional, and ideological differences between the two communities and calls for them to join forces and collaborate on behalf of children and families.     

Differentiation: old controversies,new insights

There is a long-standing debate about the nature, impact and significance of processes of differentiation in driving agricultural development. This contribution discusses three ways in which such processes have been conceptualized: modernization theories that put markets centre stage, Marxist theories that focus on class, and Chayanovian approaches that highlight the dynamics within farming families. The empirical evidence for testing these concepts is normally derived from agricultural censuses. This paper uses a different database that covers all Dutch farms between 1980 and 2006 and enables us to follow the changes on individual farms. Examination of this data reveals that the actual processes of differentiation that have occurred in this 25-year period differ greatly from the classic conceptualizations. It also challenges the conventional wisdom that agricultural development is mostly driven by larger farms.     

Political Brands: Can Parties Be Distinguished by Their Online Brand Personality?

This paper investigates whether five English political parties are differentiating themselves based on the brand personality they are communicating through their websites. The relative brand positions of five English political parties are analyzed using Aaker's brand personality scale. The text from each party website is analyzed using content analysis and a dictionary-based tool. The results are plotted in relation to one another on a correspondence analysis map. We find that the two main dimensions on which parties’ brand personalities differ relate to the trade-offs between communicating competence and communicating sincerity and between communicating sophistication and communicating ruggedness. We find that parties’ brand personalities are distinctive, with the exception of the Green Party, and that the position of one party, the United Kingdom Independence Party, is particularly distinctive. Our research uses Aaker's existing framework for thinking about brand personalities, rather than creating a new framework for politics. By using an existing framework, we are able to use tools developed in other disciplines and show their usefulness for the study of political marketing.     

Land grabbing,social differentiation,intensified migration and food security in northern Ghana

This paper argues that large-scale land appropriation is displacing subsistence farmers and reworking agrarian social relations in northern Ghana. The recent wave of farmland enclosure has not only resulted in heightened land scarcity, but also fostered a marked social differentiation within farming communities. The dominant form of inequality is an evolving class of landless and near-landless farmers. The majority of households cope with such dynamics by deepening their own self-exploitation in the production process. The fulcrum of this self-exploitation is gendered property rights as part of the conjugal contract, with men exerting a far greater monopoly over land resources than had previously been the case. Due to acute land shortages, women’s rights to use land as wives, mothers and daughters are becoming insecure, as their vegetable plots are being reclassified as male-controlled household fields. The paper further documents the painful choices that landless farmers have to make in order to meet livelihood needs, including highly disciplined, yet low-waged, farm labor work and sharecropping contracts. In these livelihood pathways, there emerge, again, exploitative relations of production, whereby surplus is expropriated from land-dispossessed migrant laborers and concentrated with farm owners. These dynamics produce a ‘simple reproduction squeeze’ for the land-dispossessed. Overall, the paper contributes to the emerging land grabbing literature by showing geographically specific processes of change for large-scale mining operations and gendered differentiated impacts.     

Obtaining Differentiation Premiums in the Presence of Fee Regulation in the Residential Real Estate Appraisal Industry

In the context of the customary and reasonable pricing standard imposed by the Dodd–Frank Act, this article considers whether residential real estate appraisers are able to obtain differentiation premiums for their services. Regression models estimated using data from the Commonwealth of Virginia offer some evidence that professional certifications and the complexity of an appraisal task are positively associated with fee levels in this type of regulatory environment. However, differentiation premiums appear more difficult to obtain across geographies and when an appraisal is procured by an appraisal management company. The findings suggest appraisers can differentiate themselves from competitors, but also that policymakers should be mindful of the potential for commodification on the residential appraisal industry in select market settings. Since appraisals are a critical component of the mortgage underwriting process, and the majority of housing transactions utilize mortgage debt, developing new understanding of how policies influence appraisers and how the appraisal process makes an important contribution to the housing policy literature.     

非星级旅游饭店产品民族特色化创新路径探究

非星级旅游饭店产品民族特色化创新在遵循市场导向性、特色性、参与性、经济可行性、文化性、环保性原则的基础上,走创建民族特色型主题酒店、民族特色型产品、产品部分功能民族特色化道路,是非星级旅游饭店实现可持续发展的主要路径。     

Intravenous Drug Use and HIV in Estonia: Socio-Economic Integration and Development of Indicators Regarding the Right to Health for its Russian-Speaking Population

This article seeks to highlight some potential indicators and benchmarks for the right to health under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ratified by Estonia. These potential key indicators, as part of a human rights based approach to health indicators being developed by the UN Special Rapporteur, are argued to be particularly important in the context of the exceptionally high HIV rates among the Russian speaking population in Estonia. The historical emergence of the HIV epidemic in Estonia is traced, comparing its development with the situations in Latvia and Lithuania. This article describes the current extent of the HIV epidemic in Estonia which is the country with the highest reported number of HIV infections per capita in Europe, a number impacting in an extremely disproportionate fashion on its Russian-speaking population, particularly in North-Eastern Estonia. Understanding of the HIV epidemic in Estonia cannot exclude the social contextual factors of the social marginalization of many among the Russian-speaking population, the ‹alien’ status of those without citizenship of Estonia or any other State, and other failures of Estonian State policy with regard to intravenous drug use and HIV in the recent past. HIV among the prison population is also examined as disproportionately impacting upon Russian-speaking prisoners. It is argued that the language and logic of the Estonian State Integration Programme, as well as Estonia’s Second Report on the implementation of the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (2004) which refer to its Russian-speaking citizens as ‹non-Estonians’ is discrimination based on ethnic origin. In order to develop a system of State accountability in relation to the right to health, candidate indicators and benchmarks are proposed as structural, process and outcome indicators relevant to Estonia regarding the right to health and HIV, intravenous drug use, socio-economic integration and its Russian-speaking population. Dr. Paul Downes is Director of the Educational Disadvantage Centre, St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin, Ireland.     

公司治理模式演化争论的法律思维根源

对全球公司制度的演化趋势,统一论与分化论的两种观点针锋相对。争论的根源在于论者法律思维的差异,并突出表现在现象与标准、法律与事实、宏观与微观、技术与社会等几对范畴上。立足于法律的本质并关注公司制度的选择问题,分化论有说服力;而统一论则因把法律问题简单技术化、混淆事实与规范选择的差异而有明显局限。因此,应当坚持理性的法律思维,坚持公司制度国际演化的"功能统一、形式分化"二元观。     

分辨矩阵法约简中医辨证要素初探

目的 应用分辨矩阵法对慢性支气管炎辨证要素进行约简。方法 对100例慢性支气管炎患者的口唇、发热、呼吸、脉、舌、苔、咳、痰8个决策属性进行初步数字化、数据预处理和试探性挖掘,以得到最简规则。结果 在决策属性的约简中,脉、舌、痰共同构成知识的核,口唇、呼吸两个决策属性被约简。结论 应用分辨矩阵法可得到慢性支气管炎辨证分型的最小决策规则,可作为一种中医诊断数字化的新方法。     

Output,surpluses and ‘stressed commerce’: a study on farm viability and agrarian transition in West Bengal,India, in the new millennium

This paper intends to evaluate at the farm level, in the current millennium, the nature of surpluses and the emerging exchange processes in agrarian West Bengal through the lenses of socio-economic class differentiation. The paper concentrates on the structure and pattern of gross value added, farm labour and farm-disposable surplus that accrue to the peasants along with their repercussions on farm viability. Finally, it addresses the consequences of stressed commerce (carried out through price shocks) on the ratio of retention of surplus at the farm level as a larger question of farm viability, agrarian transition and conflicts. The study emphasises the region with higher capitalistic¹ development. The change in this region is found to be more significant in the context of agrarian transition. The same analysis is also followed for the more backward region, but just to put forward the distinction between the processes working in the two regions.