The role of the European Parliament in Turkey-EU relations: A troublemaker or a useful normative actor?

This article analyzes the role of the European Parliament (EP) in Turkey–EU relations. More specifically, it explores the reasons why in practice EP’s role in promoting fundamental values of the European Union (EU) in Turkey remained largely limited. Drawing on the broader socialization literature, it concludes that a combination of factors related to the socializer (EP) and to the socializee (Turkey) limits the EP’s effectiveness to emerge as a normative actor in its relations with Turkey. In particular, the study points to the mismatch of values promoted by the EP and those embraced by the Turkish political elite as the real obstacle that prevents any socialization mechanism from being triggered.     

The dog that did not bark: the army and the emergency in India

In June 1975, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency rule, capping off a decade long process of the ‘deinstitutionalisation’ of the founding Congress party, increased social mobilisation, and political instability – factors generally considered conducive to military intervention in politics. Organisational factors encouraging military praetorianism, such as military involvement in internal security missions and the growth of ‘rival’ paramilitary institutions, accompanied this process of political decay. But the Indian military did not exploit this window of opportunity. This article offers an institutionalist explanation of the military’s political restraint based on two factors. First, institutionalised mechanisms of civilian control, forged during the critical juncture following independence, insulated the military from politics and the politicians from the military despite the weakening of the political system under which these were created. Second, military internalisation of the norm civilian supremacy, continually reinforced via professional socialisation processes, acted as an internal barrier to military role expansion.     

延胡索块茎生长发育过程观察

目的 观察延胡索不同生长期新生块茎和母块茎的特点。方法 用定点连续观察和石蜡切片法,跟踪观察延胡索块茎形成过程及新生块茎、母块茎的生长变化。结果 由地下茎产生的新生块茎生长起点在母株的茎节处,其形成需要某些必要的条件;母块茎退化成更新块茎的周皮,其脱落需要几个月的时间;栽培品产生双生及多生块茎较野生品常见;块茎中含有荧光生物碱。结论 新生块茎的形成方式具多样性;退化的周皮对更新块茎具保护作用;栽培品无性繁殖能力较强;荧光生物碱在延胡索成熟块茎中的分布广泛,没有聚集性。     

Examining the immanent dilemma of small states in the Asia-Pacific: the strategic triangle between New Zealand,the US and China

ABSTRACT

Small states throughout the Asia-Pacific are confronted by a growing dilemma over how to balance their traditional security ties with the US and rapidly growing trade with China. This gives Washington and Beijing potential leverage over small states to use within their competition with one another. This article explores the implications of this for New Zealand – a small South Pacific state that prides itself on maintaining an independent foreign policy. Situated within the small state literature, it utilises a material-based strategic triangle to illustrate the fundamental facets of New Zealand's position. Relatedly, the article examines how Wellington has managed its burgeoning relations with China and the US over the past decade and critically considers New Zealand's independent foreign policy. It finds that New Zealand has adopted a mixed set of strategies to manage its position between the US and China, closely aligning itself with Washington while remaining nonaligned on some key security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. New Zealand has certainly not opted for neutrality. The article concludes that New Zealand and other small states must remain vigilant, may want to consider alternative strategies of alignment, and outlines a number of areas where additional research could prove fruitful.     

非法种植毒品原植物罪的犯罪形态研究

非法种植毒品原植物罪的数额犯应以收获毒品原植物作为既遂标准;在收获前的整个生长过程中,只要是基于种植者本人意志以外的原因导致没有收获的,都是犯罪未遂;在收获前自动铲除的,成立犯罪中止。     

Tian Longxin's Musical Journey

正Tian Longxin is known today as the "living soul of Tujia music" and "leader of aboriginal Tujia folk music in China."Born in Hunan Province,Tian is fluent in the Tujia language and an expert in Tujia folk music.Having devoted himself to preserving traditional Chinese culture,     

Iran’s Latin America Strategy: 2005 to Present

Iran has expanded its trade relations with Latin America since 2005. Many argue that the reasons for such activities are for financial gain and to bypass the sanctions. This article argues that economic gain are miniscule and that the primary objectives of Iran are two-fold: first, to assist its nuclear program; and second, to develop deterrence against the U.S. possible military option against Iran.     

Militarizing civilians in Singapore: preparing for ‘Crisis’ within a calibrated nationalism1

The Singaporean polity has created the ‘militarized civilian’. This policy phenomenon beckons the question: How is this cross-fertilization carried out in Singapore's civil–military relations? Militarization is in the first sense meant to inculcate a calibrated dual personality within the civilian whereby being an effective soldier requires indulging in simulated military suffering as a badge of pride; at the same time, the citizen soldier has to believe that military and civilian values are perfectly interchangeable and contribute equally to the maintenance of peace. In a second sense, militarization is equally about permanently ritualizing sacrifices for a communitarian defence. We argue that while mostly successful, militarization also produces the tension arising from the need to appear pugnaciously vigilant while avoiding the casualties that must logically arise from heightened simulated combat. This tension is explained through two dimensions of ongoing crises: the parameters of a politically dramatized National Service ritual; and the constant propaganda of geopolitical dangers threatening the Republic.     

Reassembling Gender: On the Immanent Politics of Gendering Apparatuses of Bodily Production in Science

Abstract

Arguing that new feminist materialist work has insufficiently attended to how gender is differently materialized and embodied in practices with non-human others, this article examines ethnographically what genderings come to matter in the knowledge-making practices of mass spectrometry and peer review in a Czech research laboratory. The article returns to Donna Haraway's analytics of the ‘apparatus of bodily production’ and its extension by Karen Barad as a productive device for tracing the situational making and unmaking of gender in specific human–technology assemblages and the sedimenting histories of such intra-actions. Through a triple movement of disassembling, contextualizing and reassembling particular embodiments, the author brings unstable, implicit and absent genderings, and their affective textures, affordances and valuations to the fore, including the corporeal orientations associated with enterprising adrenalin-driven masculinity and denigrated forms of embodiment such as shame and defeat. The article shows how these (de)genderings render present tensions and exclusions in prevailing apparatuses of knowledge production and pose questions of responsibility.     

A farewell to urban/rural bias: peripheral finance capitalism in Mexico

Based on a discussion of the structural transformation of the Mexican economy, this paper investigates the impact of financialization on agriculture’s role in capitalist development. It argues that the peripheral financialized economy is a rural–urban economy. On the one hand, agriculture and industry are bifurcated into a growing export sector and a stagnating local economy, and there are no functional ‘developmental’ links between capitalist agriculture and industry. On the other hand, the economic structures have resulted in the consolidation of a huge mass of rural–urban ‘classes of labour’. Capitalist agriculture and industry are linked through and dependent on cheap labour sustaining the export economy. I argue that the current economic formation is not due to ‘urban bias’, ‘rural bias’ or any misallocation of resources among economic sectors. Rather, it can be explained in relation to ‘finance bias’: the taking over of debt relations as the key driving force of economic activities. A major contradiction in peripheral finance capitalism arises from the financing of cheap labour through debt. This is likely to result in new financial crisis, when the contradictions between increasing levels of (private and public) debt, a stagnating domestic economy, and below-subsistence level wages become too large.