Balancing domestic regulation and trade liberalisation under the GATS: universal access issues in South Africa's telecoms sector

The service sector increasingly has become the cornerstone of a great number of economies in both the developed and developing world. The main barrier to trade in services is the imposition of domestic regulations which are aimed at ensuring the affordability, availability and efficiency of services. Such domestic regulations are important for services and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) consequently recognises the right of countries to regulate in order to achieve these goals. The GATS, however, also seeks to discipline such regulations to ensure that they do not hinder trade in services. This article seeks to assess these seemingly competing interests in the context of South Africa's history and its burgeoning telecommunications sector.     

灵渠申报世界文化遗产与桂林国际旅游胜地建设

2012年以来,灵渠“申遗”备受广西特别是兴安人民的关注,经过共同努力,已经取得了重新进入《中国世界文化遗产预备名单》的阶段性重大成果。《桂林国际旅游胜地建设发展规划纲要》得到国家发改委批复,标志着桂林发展已经上升到国家战略,灵渠申遗也迎来了千载难逢的大好机遇。灵渠“申遗”与桂林国际旅游胜地建设可谓密不可分,相互促进,将会取得多赢效应。     

The political economy of China and Japan's relationship with Africa: a comparative perspective

China and Japan's policies towards Africa in the 1990s have converged, ostensibly around enhanced economic interaction with the continent based on the premise of integrating the continent into the global economy. At the same time, both countries view Africa as a useful buttress to their respective political and diplomatic goals in the international system. Connected to this and in order to garner support for their agendas, both countries promote themselves as possessing specific pro-South identities. This identity is premised around the notions of ‘non-Westernness’ and, in the case of China, in resistance to the North's hegemony. Yet paradoxically, by pursuing their respective policies in Africa, both states act to further deepen the penetration of the West into Africa. The inherent contradictions in Chinese and Japanese policies towards Africa raises questions as to the long-term viability of the current agendas being pursued by the two countries in Africa.     

The World Bank as Knowledge Bank: Analyzing the Limits of a Legitimate Global Knowledge Actor

The World Bank has always sold ideas, not just loans. Starting in 1996, then president James Wolfensohn rebranded the Bank by articulating a formal vision of a “Knowledge Bank”—a provider of state‐of‐the‐art expertise on development. After a number of internal changes and assessments, the Bank is acknowledging that it needs to be more humble, pluralistic, and practical. Why do some regard the Bank as a legitimate knowledge actor, whereas others contest that authority? We offer an analytical framework that can explain stakeholders' uneven recognition of the Bank's knowledge role. When stakeholders define knowledge as products, the Bank generally obtains recognition for the quality and quantity of the information it generates. This is the output dimension of legitimacy. On the other hand, when knowledge only counts as such to users who have been part of the process of creating it, the Bank finds itself with limited recognition.     

Latin American ‘free-trade unionism’ and the cold War: an analysis based on educational policies

The political education of workers and their leaders was viewed as a strategic concern in the cold war period’s bipolar world. This article discusses how this issue was dealt with by Latin American reformist trade unions grouped together in the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT, for its Spanish acronym), analyzing the educational policies promoted by its Inter-American Institute for Labor Studies (IIES), focusing specifically on its educational program for trade union instructors. We argue that the nature of the education provided changed, shifting from a rationale based on explicit ideological confrontation to a more focalized technical type of training. We claim that this shift started in the early 1960s, when the Alliance for Progress was launched.     

Exploring the Realm of the Unconscious in Anna Kavan’s Sleep Has His House

Abstract

Sleep Has His House, one of Anna Kavan’s most radically experimental novels, appeared in Britain in 1948, in the wake of the Second World War. An objection levied at the novel on its publication was that it bore no relationship to external ‘reality’. However, this article argues that the novel’s focus on the oneiric realm, contrary to what hostile contemporary reviews claimed, does not take place in isolation of larger society. Portraying modernist, surrealist and psychoanalytical influences, the novel is namely concerned with the representation of a nocturnal realm that emphasizes the osmotic relationship between the external world and an individual’s subjectivity. Focusing on the ways in which violent images of war infiltrate the dream world, this article suggests that Sleep Has His House can in fact be understood as reflecting and responding to the pressures of British war-torn society in the mid twentieth century.     

《身见录》与《海国闻见录》之比较

鸦片战争以前中国人对世界的认识十分贫乏。康熙六十年（1721）,山西人樊守义著《身见录》。雍正八年（1730）,福建人陈伦炯著《海国闻见录》。这是18世纪上半叶中国人开眼看世界的珍贵文献。有必要从作者身世、写作背景、撰著经过、写作目的、内容特色等方面,对这两部书进行比较分析。     

The Vietnam Women's Movement for the Right to Live: a non-communist opposition movement to the American war in Vietnam

This article examines the political and diplomatic struggles in urban South Vietnam from the perspective of women in the Vietnamese Women’s Movement for the Right to Live (WRL) during the Vietnam War. This movement was a timely response to the American war of aggression, which had destroyed the fabric of South Vietnamese society and drastically diminished women’s position within it by 1970. Under the leadership of Mrs. Ngô Bá Thành, the WRL fought for peace and women’s liberation through political action and shrewd diplomacy. Unlike female guerrilla fighters, the WRL maintained political autonomy and neutrality throughout the conflict. As a result, it was violently repressed by the Saigon government and quickly disbanded after the communist victory in 1975. Nevertheless, studying these politically sophisticated women’s anti-war efforts is crucial to understanding the symbiotic yet destructive relationship between Third World women and American imperialism during the twentieth century. It also helps dismantle essentialist assumptions about Asian women as inherently submissive and politically naïve. The WRL is a sterling example of Vietnamese women’s ingenuity in their dual struggle for national liberation and gender equality.     

History and hero-making: patriotic narratives and the Sovietization of Kazakh front-line propaganda, 1941–1945

This article analyses Soviet agitprop that was produced for Kazakhstani soldiers during the Great Patriotic War. The author argues that one of the main goals of this propaganda was to cultivate a complementary Soviet-Kazakh identity. Conditions at the front made this difficult to accomplish, but Soviet propagandists persisted in tailoring their propaganda for the benefit of Kazakh soldiers. As the war progressed, Kazakh front-line propaganda acquired a more unambiguously Soviet orientation, a consequence of the elimination of key themes derived from Kazakh national history and considered too politically volatile by the Communist Party. The article concludes by suggesting that the narratives articulated during World War II by Soviet propagandists went a long ways towards setting the contours of a prescribed Soviet-Kazakh identity.     

试论邓小平侨务思想的实践意义

邓小平侨务思想是邓小平理论的重要组成部分。邓小平从中国的国情和实际出发,立足于当今世界的新格局和中国的现代化这一宏伟目标,形成了有利于中国现代化建设的侨务思想,具有很强的现实意义。