Globalisation masculinities,empire building and forced prostitution: a critical analysis of the gendered impact of the neoliberal economic agenda in post-invasion/occupation Iraq

Adopting a transnational feminist lens and using a political economy approach, this article addresses both the direct and indirect consequences of the 2003 war in Iraq, specifically the impact on civilian women. Pre-war security and gender relations in Iraq will be compared with the situation post-invasion/occupation. The article examines the globalised processes of capitalism, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism and their impact on the political, social and economic infrastructure in Iraq. Particular attention will be paid to illicit and informal economies: coping, combat and criminal. The 2003 Iraq war was fought using masculinities of empire, post-colonialism and neoliberalism. Using the example of forced prostitution, the article will argue that these globalisation masculinities – specifically the privatisation agenda of the West and its illegal economic occupation – have resulted in women either being forced into the illicit (coping) economy as a means of survival, or trafficked for sexual slavery by profit-seeking criminal networks who exploit the informal economy in a post-invasion/occupation Iraq.     

Gender awareness,symptom expressions and Irish mental health-care provision

Irish mental health policy and care provision is criticised for being gender-neutral despite gender being present in almost every aspect of illness; from risk to protection; symptom interpretation; diagnosing, ideology and knowledge of illnesses. The aim of this paper was to present the views of Irish service users and providers in relation to symptom expressions, gender awareness and care provision. A qualitative social realist design was used using Layder's (1998) adaptive theory and social domains theory. In-depth interviews (n = 54) with 26 service users and 28 service providers were conducted within one mental health service in Ireland. Dominant societal expectations for men and women are described in response to symptom expressions that reflect ‘categorical’ and ‘performative’ understandings of gender. A return of interest to symptoms-based research and practice from a gendered perspective is argued for.     

Surveying the agrarian question (part 1): unearthing foundations,exploring diversity

This two-part article surveys the origin, development, and current meaning of the ‘agrarian question’. Part one of the survey explores the history of the agrarian question, elaborating its origin in the work of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin, and its development in the work of Preobrazhensky, Dobb, Brenner, and others. Part two of the survey identifies seven current variants of the agrarian question and critically interrogates these variants in order to understand whether, and if so, how, the location of small-scale petty commodity food and farm production within contemporary capitalism has been reconfigured during the era of neoliberal globalisation. Together, the two parts of the survey argue that the agrarian question continues to offer a rigorously flexible framework by which to undertake a historically-informed and country-specific analysis of the material conditions governing rural production, reproduction, and the process of agrarian accumulation or its lack thereof, a process that can now be located within the law of value and market imperatives that operate on a world scale.     

跨语言和文化教学研究--在全球化背景下教育亚洲法律专业学生所面临的挑战

在过去的十年里,亚洲赴澳大利亚接受高等教育的学生人数几乎翻了一番.对于澳大利亚法律教育工作者来说,所面临的挑战是如何精心设计课程、讲授课程,使学生通过学习这些课程,掌握一些处理涉及全球复杂法律问题的方法;教师在讲课时如何尽可能地注意所讲课程的相关度,使学生获益最大.这就要求设计者采用多学科的、国际化的方法来设计课程.本文试图从教育工作者的视角,分析这些挑战,并通过教学中的两个实例,来探讨向亚洲学生讲授法律课程的教学方法,指出存在的问题,提出改进措施.     

Globalisation of Commodification: Legal Process Outsourcing and Indian Lawyers

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) refers to the contracting of legal work from regions where it is costly to perform, such as the US to areas where it can be performed at a significantly decreased cost. LPO has been made possible by the disaggregation of the legal processes into discrete units, each of which can then outsourced to cheaper service providers. Anecdotal evidence suggests a variety of benefits such as financial gains, opportunities to perform “global” work in a corporate atmosphere and acquisition of important skills and training that enhances the prestige of the host country lawyers. In India, which has played a significant role, LPO firms are viewed as important catalysts in the transformation of the country’s highly stratified legal profession based on social identities. This qualitative study, based on 38 interviews, concludes that the corporate culture was an attractive proposition for lawyers from non-elite backgrounds; however, the commodification of offshored work led to a deprofessionalisation of lawyers, reducing them to “glorified clerks.” As a result, LPO firms only provided parallel avenues for career mobility but did not destabilise the local legal market which at its core remains socially networked.     

International communication: shifting paradigms,theories and foci of interest

Abstract

This article aims to be a stock-taking exercise of the development of paradigms and foci of interest, in attempts to theorise the vast developments and far-reaching changes as well as the impact and effects of global communication in the world of today. Attention is firstly given to the current nature, impact and implications of global communication in the first decade of the 21^st century, as well as to a shift in emphases in the (sub)discipline of international communication. A critical overview is then given of discourses on the free flow of information, modernisation theory, dependency theory, the structural theory of imperialism, world system theory, hegemony, political economy, critical theory, the public sphere, cultural studies, the information society and globalisation. Since many of these paradigms have been borrowed or taken over from media studies, international relations or other (sub)disciplines, attention is given specifically to their application in theorising international communication. The article concludes with a critical overview of the current ‘state of the art’ with regard to the body of theory in international communication.     

Mexico: Cartels,corruption and cocaine: A profile of the Gulf cartel

This text constructs a profile of one of Mexico's most powerful organised crime groups, the Gulf cartel. The text analyses the power of the cartel in the international system, the effects globalisation has had on its operations, the threats it poses to the state, and the obstacles the state faces in countering transnational organised crime groups.     

Criminalisation,modernisation, and globalisation: the US and international perspectives on domestic violence

The growth of modernisation in a society is intimately connected to the growth of legal evolutions related to criminalisation. While modernisation expands the boundaries of tolerance in an open society, it also expands the boundaries of crime and criminalisation. As modernisation expands on a global scale, the process of redefining crime, criminalisation, and victimisation also occurs on a global scale. In the modern societies of the West, the advance of modern law and justice and the progress of the notions of human rights have expanded the boundaries of freedom. They have also expanded the boundaries of criminalisation in a number of social, cultural, political, and economic domains. One of the major areas of criminalisation that has rapidly expanded with modernisation and globalisation, particularly in the West, is domestic violence. During the last 30 years, a series of laws have evolved in these societies that criminalise a wide variety of behaviours related to domestic violence. A comparative study of legislative developments on domestic violence in the United States, Brazil, India, Japan, Bangladesh, and Ghana suggests that, in each, a relatively homogenous set of laws against domestic violence has evolved.     

Human trafficking: the need for human rights and government effectiveness in enforcing anti-trafficking

Human trafficking constitutes a global problem. Involving exploitation of individuals through forced labour, sex, or organ removal, trafficking is an egregious human rights violation and illegal in many countries. Although laws have arisen to combat trafficking, it has persisted and inconsistent enforcement of anti-trafficking measures has been a concern. Using new data on trafficking, the enforcement patterns of 168 countries from 2001 to 2011 are examined. Findings suggest enforcement is predicted by the interaction of states’ world culture ties and government effectiveness, trafficking flows, and other state-level political mechanisms. Theoretically important factors, such as female legislators or various economic measures, are insignificant.     

Technology,Reason and Globalisation?—O Brother!

The Coen Brothers' movie O Brother Where Art Thou is a ragbag of intertexts and gags that also pays very serious attention to questions of community and culture, class and race. In tracing the path of the protagonists through De-pression-era Mississippi, it takes its audiences through the experience of social transformation, from superstition and local concerns to a supposedly brave new (global and technological) world. Although the film is set in a distant time and place, it is informed by a very contemporary issue—the politics of technology, and its relation to the forces of globalisation. It is also a film that exemplifies what Certeau describes as the "cleavage which organizes modernity", a cleavage designated by the terms "science" (which is predicated on a law of rationality, and an imperative to explain, control and order) and "culture". We analyse the work of the film by drawing on the writings of Manuel Castells, Arjun Appadurai and Armand Mattelart to trace its explication of the questions of progress and communication in a world increasingly dominated by neo-liberal values.