Export processing zones and corporate environmental performance in emerging economies: The case of the oil,gas, and chemical sectors of Trinidad and Tobago

Export processing zones (EPZs) are increasingly being established to promote economic growth in developing countries. However, they remain controversial and are often criticized for being associated with a “race to the bottom” characterized by the easing of labor and environmental standards. This paper investigates whether the decision to locate facilities inside these zones is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. Findings indicate that facilities operating in Trinidad and Tobago’s EPZs are more likely to show higher corporate environmental performance than those outside. Additionally, firms in state-managed zones appear to show higher corporate environmental performance than those located in privately managed zones. Enhanced institutional pressures from regulators, local communities, and fellow tenant firms may explain these differences. These results suggest that environmental policy makers and environmentalists can take advantage of already established EPZs to promote enclave enhanced institutional pressures associated with superior corporate environmental performance.

Teaching Obama: history,critical race theory and social work education

ABSTRACT

Barack Obama's first autobiography, Dreams from My Father (1995), explores themes of race and identity up to the late 1980s in the life of the first African American president. The book emphasizes Obama's personal struggle as the son of an interracial couple, and the social and environmental context that shaped his growth and transformation. Using the tools of critical race theory, Freeman illustrates how Obama's autobiography can be used in the classroom to explore an individual's developing racial consciousness in the 1970s and 1980s, and as a prism through which students can understand what it means to live in the post-civil-rights-movement era. Obama's life history illuminates how the ideas and meanings of racial progress in the United States are contested and struggled over on a daily basis at both the micro and macro level.     

Tensions in Belgium

ABSTRACT

Musolff's study applies methods of cognitive metaphor analysis to Hitler's antisemitic imagery in Mein Kampf, especially to the conceptualization of the German nation as a (human) body that had to be cured from a deadly disease caused by Jewish parasites. The relevant expressions from the conceptual domains of biological and medical categories form a partly narrative, partly inferential-argumentative source ‘scenario’, which centred on a notion of blood poisoning that was understood in three ways: a) as a supposedly real act of blood defilement, i.e. rape; b) as a part of the source scenario of illness-cure; and c) as an allegorical element of an apocalyptic narrative of a devilish conspiracy against the ‘grand design of the creator’. The conceptual differences of source and target levels were thus short-circuited to form a belief-system that was no longer open to criticism. The results cast new light on central topics of Holocaust research, such as the debates between more ‘intentionalist’ and more ‘functionalist’ explanations of the origins of the Holocaust, and the question of how the Nazi metaphor system helped gradually to ‘initiate’ wider parts of the German populace into the implications of the illness-cure scenario as a blueprint for genocide. The Nazi antisemitic metaphor system thus provides a unique example of the cognitive forces that can be unleashed in the service of racist stigmatization and dehumanization.     

十六大以来中央领导集体党建理论的新发展

十六大以来,以胡锦涛为总书记的党中央坚持以马列主义、毛泽东思想、邓小平理论和"三个代表"重要思想为指导,在党的建设问题上进行新的探索,及时总结党建新经验,取得了一系列重大的理论成果。     

关于新形势下党的理论工作的探索与思考

党的理论工作是党的建设的首要任务,关系到我党的生死存亡和国家事业的兴衰;随着社会经济的发展尤其是经济全球化的加速,价值观的全球化和多元性、社会主义事业跨入新阶段和党的队伍的新变化等因素使党的理论工作面临新挑战。因此,加强党的理论建设,为党的理论工作建设提供新方法、新视角,开拓新思路、新渠道,是当前党建工作的一项重要内容。     

论现代生命科技发展对我国刑法基础理论的冲击

现代生命科技的迅猛发展对刑法处罚范围、刑事立法的稳定性、刑法法益保护范畴、刑法解释理论等刑法基础理论提出挑战。面对现代生命科技,我国刑法必须针对性地作出调整,以便能有的放矢地进行应对,其主要路径一是强化刑法解释,拓展刑法适用空间;二是增设大量生命科技类别的犯罪。     

民事诉讼调解制度的未来——回归其本质

诉讼调解是一种传统的解决纠纷方式,它在彻底解决纠纷、维护社会稳定方面发挥着重要的作用,但是随着社会的转型,审判方式的逐渐改革以及人们权利意识的增强,诉讼调解在解决纠纷方面也暴露出了种种弊端,这些弊端已经使调解制度在一定程度上发生了异化,基于此有必要对诉讼调解制度进行完善,使其回归其本质——纠纷解决方式.     

我国刑罚体系改革的现代化坐标：以检视主附加刑模式为支点

刑罚体系改革是刑罚制度改革的基点与核心。主附加刑模式存在诸多缺陷。应根据犯罪分层理论建立以自由刑和财产刑为主的轻重自然人刑罚体系。独立的法人犯罪刑罚体系可以参照自然人刑罚体系规定刑种及轻重。应发挥广义保安处分制度的整合性机能,与改革后的传统刑罚体系融合为二元刑罚制裁体系。     

浅析解决南海争端的策略——基于博弈论的视角

南海地区自古就是中国领土。随着南海地区丰富资源的发现,周边国家纷纷染指南中国海,侵占南海海域,对我国的主权提出了严峻挑战。对于南海相关各方,如何在维护地区和平的前提下解决南海争端就成了备受关注的话题。本文基于博弈论的视角,就相关各方解决南海争端的策略进行简要分析,以期为解决南海问题建言献策。     

危险个人概念的产生溯源

危险个人概念产生于19世纪中后期.当时,工业经济快速发展,人口迅猛增加,但社会环境恶化,危险个人大量涌现,严重威胁着社会安全.这一概念的产生还受到了实证主义、达尔文进化论以及精神病学的发展的影响,而且与国家惩罚权力的转型密切相关.