Expansive Intervention as Neo-Institutional Learning: Root Causes in the Merida Initiative

Interventions since the 1990s have greatly expanded in policy scope. While neo-liberals understand expansion as an attempt to work on the enabling preconditions of liberal market democracy, Foucauldian governmentality studies see in expansion a set of increasingly intrusive disciplinary techniques of responsibilization. This paper introduces an alternative lens: neo-institutional learning. Through a case study of the Merida Initiative, a US–Mexican security cooperation agreement, the paper argues that expansion grows serendipitously out of the repetitive discovery of new, ‘deeper’ unknowns within a neo-institutional framework of analysis. Importantly, downward penetration requires deconstructing reductionist liberal-universal knowledge claims. Paradoxically, then, the more statebuilders learn (empirically), the less they know (analytically).     

From sacrum to profanum: reinterpretation of communist places of power in Baltic cities

Places always represent the social and cultural dimensions of societies, seen through relationships between ideas, beliefs, and hopes. Places and their social practices are interwoven into the urban fabric and have become vital components of urban and ideological identities. Ideological systems create unique arrangements and classifications of those special places, which can be called “hallowed” or “profaned.” This project focuses on the recent transformation of the communist system of “sacral” spaces and their recent “profanation.” The transformation of meaning, together with the use and attitude toward landscape, has become visible due to spatial and functional manifestations of post-socialist cities.     

Moving from nos/otros to nosotros: a transcendent approach to sustainable development

Traditional top-down approaches to community development reinforce nos/otros binaries within provider/recipient relationships; transcendent approaches, on the other hand, create space for nosotros collaborative development. This article describes an instance of the nos/otros binary, in which a foreign volunteer in a rural community in Ecuador assumed the role of practitioner and limited community members’ roles to recipients or beneficiaries of her development projects. Inspired by findings from this experience, the article presents a case study highlighting an alternative, transcendent, nosotros approach in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where community members work together to imagine, implement, and sustain projects.     

When actions speak louder than words: examining collective political protests in Central Asia

What explains the dynamics of contentious collective political action in post-Soviet Central Asia? How do post-Soviet Central Asian citizens negotiate the tensions between partaking in and abstaining from elite-challenging collective protests? By analysing cross-national attitudes in two Central Asian states, this article (1) systematically analyses the variation in collective protests by testing rival macro-, meso-, and micro-level theories; (2) reintroduces a conceptual and empirical distinction between low-risk and high-risk collective protests; and (3) examines the conditions under which individuals participate in two distinct types of elite-challenging collective actions. Three conclusions are reached. First, the evidence suggests that nuanced consideration of multi-level theoretical perspectives is necessary to explain contingencies of elite-challenging actions. Second, economic grievances and resource mobilization emerge as leading factors driving both low-risk and high-risk protests. Third, Islamic religiosity and social networking robustly predict participation in high-risk collective action.     

Animal liberation,American anti-terrorist culture and Denis Hennelly’s Bold Native

Since its birth in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the animal liberation movement has attempted to expose the transnational, global character of speciecism and institutionalised forms of exploitation. Within the American panorama, however, the “war against terror” following 9/11 had such a profound effect on (radical) activism at a legal and legislative level that the movement found itself in the position of having to reassess their focus, leading to theoretical and aesthetic responses to anti-terrorist rhetoric. The aim of this article is (1) to examine the manner by which anti-terrorist rhetoric affected the movement and how the movement appropriated such rhetoric to reinvent their own discourse, and (2) analyse the audiovisual semiotics employed by Denis Hennelly in his 2010 film, Bold Native, so as to address how issues central to the movement’s current struggle and assimilation of concepts such as “terrorism” and “patriotism” translate at an aesthetic level.     

A Comparison of Dental Chartings Performed at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Central Identification Laboratory and the Kokura Central Identification Unit on Remains Identified from the Korean War

During the Korean War, the Office of the Quartermaster General's Graves Registration Service (GRS) was responsible for the recovery, processing, identification, and repatriation of US remains. In January 1951, the GRS established a Central Identification Unit (CIU) at Kokura, Japan. At the Kokura CIU, postmortem dental examinations were performed by the dental technicians. Thirty‐nine postmortem dental examinations performed at the CIU were compared to the findings documented in the Forensic Odontology Reports written at the JPAC Central Identification Laboratory (CIL). Differences were noted in 20 comparisons (51%). The majority of the discrepancies was considered negligible and would not alter the JPAC decision to disinter a set of unknown remains. Charting discrepancies that were considered significant included the occasional failure of the Kokura technicians to identify teeth with inter‐proximal or esthetic restorations and the misidentification of a mechanically prepared tooth (i.e., tooth prepared for a restoration) as a carious surface.     

繁荣发展农村文化 建设社会主义新农村——学习党的十七届三中全会精神的体会

加强农村文化建设,是新农村建设的必然要求和全面建设小康社会的需要,贫瘠的文化不会孕育出高速增长的经济,没有文化的现代化,就不可能实现真正意义的现代化。加强农村文化建设,是促进农村经济、政治、社会全面发展建设社会主义新农村的重要手段和有效措施。     

胡锦涛反腐倡廉思想初探

通过解析胡锦涛在第二、三、五、六、七和第十七届二次等六次中纪委全会上的重要讲话,来透视胡锦涛的反腐倡廉思想。     

Gender and the academic profession in contemporary Tajikistan: challenges and opportunities expressed by women who remain

This article attempts to describe the deleterious impact of higher educational changes affecting female faculty members working in Tajik universities in the post-Soviet era. Over the past two decades, the social and economic position women gained during Soviet times has significantly eroded, bringing enormous challenges to education and higher education access, completion and staffing. The demographic and cultural marginalization of women here has negatively impacted university teaching opportunities and the status of women faculty members. Ethnographic interviews – along with relevant secondary data – reveal that despite various official gender-equity policies announced by the state, female participation issues remain prominent in the university. Our interviewees also report continued difficulty entering higher faculty ranks and leadership positions in university. However, significant numbers of women are still to be found there, and they report a workable compromise between being professional educators and trying to navigate a local culture that is becoming more ‘traditional’.     

Russia’s energy relations in Southeastern Europe: an analysis of motives in Bulgaria and Greece

Although officially Russian state-owned energy companies operate as independent entities, their actions often lead to suspicion that they are acting as a tool of Russian state foreign policy. Countries on the southeastern borders of Europe – Bulgaria and Greece – are prime examples of where this might be the case, since they not only have a central position in Russia’s plans to penetrate European markets through new transport infrastructure but are also part of competing plans for routing non-Russian gas to Western markets. The main focus of the present research is on the natural gas and oil sectors, as these are the traditional foundation of Russian energy exports to Europe. The aim of this paper is thus to provide an objective, evidence-based analysis of Russian activities in the natural gas and oil sectors of Greece and Bulgaria in order to establish whether its actions have been implicitly or explicitly politicized and have served to strengthen Russian influence in the region.