Parliament,public engagement and legislation in Bangladesh: a case study of Domestic Violence Act of 2010

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the process of enactment of the domestic violence bill in Bangladesh. One of the distinctive features of the bill, passed in 2010, was that it originated in civil society and widespread public engagement characterised its enactment process. The paper explores the factors that encouraged different actors to agree to enact the law. There are, however, not many examples of parliament–CSO interaction in the legislative process. The paper identifies reasons that discourage engagement in other areas of public concern. Prominent among the reasons underlying weak public engagement in the legislative process are: monopoly of the government in the legislative process and its eagerness to pass laws in haste, dominance of part-timers in parliament, legal restriction on ‘independent’ voting in parliament, over-centralization of power in political parties and politicisation of CSOs.     

Rapid Assessment Procedures

SUMMARY

Given the racialization of subjective, material and historical realities in South Africa, psychological training and practice in community raise crucial and often thorny ethical, epistemological and methodological questions. This article appraises the strengths and limitations of using Rapid Assessment Procedures (RAP) (Afonja, 1992) in the field training of postgraduate students in community-counseling psychology. Rooted in an activist participatory action research framework (Lykes, 1997), RAP provide a framework for the collective exploration of locally constructed representations of a community's needs and resources; joining the ‘community’ (negotiating a dialogical form of communication and a respect for the insider-outsider dialectic); working through one's ‘situated otherness’; and deracializing psychological training and practice.     

Driving South: The globalization of auto consumption and its social organization of space

ABSTRACT

Don Mitchell is one of the most influential contemporary cultural geographers and has long been at the forefront of scholarship on intersections of capital, nature and labor. His work engages the geo-historical processes of landscape co-production and discusses how social, political and labor struggles that formed landscapes have been hidden or erased. Mitchell’s research and work are informed by an urgency to uncover the forces shaping the human–land dialectic. It is difficult not to sense profound urgency at the current political–ecological conjuncture, which is why we turned to Don Mitchell to reflect on his research, intellectual practice and the state of academia and activism today. The first section of the interview centers on Mitchell’s research and the tools and methods he employs in his work. In the second section of the interview, we discuss strategies and tactics in resistance struggles, campus activism and radical scholarship. Infused throughout the interview are the influences that have shaped Mitchell’s unique approach to teaching, research and a critical academic life. We conclude with a section on current academic practice.     

The Future of Belgian Federalism Through the Eyes of the Citizens

How do Belgian citizens see the future of federalism? In the typical consociational Belgium citizens have not had much to say about the federalization process, which has been largely elite-driven. And actually not so much is known about the future of Belgian federalism through the eyes of the citizens. Survey research shows some differences in identity and in institutional preferences between the two language groups, but also a low salience of the issue when they cast a vote. This article, therefore, looks at alternative methods to capture the perceptions of the citizens: focus groups, deliberative experiments and mental maps.     

Hunting the Elusive Young Voter

Abstract

It is generally assumed that mobilizing young voters is infeasible. This belief can be broken into two separate questions: (1) Are young people responsive to Get Out The Vote appeals? (2) Is it possible to deliver the message to the intended audience? By pooling together the results of six GOTV field experiments, this paper demonstrates that young voters are equally responsive to blandishments to vote as mature voters, but that they are roughly three times more difficult to contact.     

充当学科带头人：意涵与要件

一个学科带头人，意味着他是一个统领、用贤、掌权和服务。衡量一个学科带头人的标准绝不仅仅是学术水平。在充当学科带头人的必要条件中，比个人学术水平更重要的，其实是与学术事宜有关的管理能力与人格品质。学科带头人是一项需要用心去做的工作，需要有一种境界。     

“She has done me no work”: language and power asymmetry in impoverished families in Poland

Based on an in-depth semantic analysis of interviews with poor Polish couples living in a foreclosed state farm and the examination of the so-called “linguistic sexism” of the Polish language, the author shows that despite a manifest change in the social context of poor households, power relations within impoverished rural married couples still remain the same. The traditional power imbalance can be observed at the level of the respondents’ utterances, especially with regard to gender roles, work and household duties, dowries and inheritance. In households with downwardly mobile men, husbands tend to assert even more symbolic power than in households in which the husbands have jobs, even if low-paying ones. Wives of downwardly mobile men in the community studied are inclined to verbally support their husbands and patriarchal family relations, despite the fact that often the traditional basis of patriarchy—economic providership—is now women’s responsibility also.     

台江县反排村当代苗族习惯法民族志

台江县是全国最集中的苗族聚居县,由于特殊的地理环境和历史背景,较好地保留了原始苗族习惯法文化。历史上传承下来的桥崇拜规范、牯脏节规范、婚姻习惯法规范以及神判制度等仍然发挥着重要的社会控制作用。由于国家实行村民自治制度,很多苗族习惯法规范以村规民约的形式表现出来。村民委员会和村民调解委员会成员代替传统上的寨老对民间纠纷进行调解。     

青少年实地研究面临的问题及对策

二十多年来的青少年实地研究表明,青少年实地研究面临着个案代表性、理论指导、科学态度、方法局限等问题的严重困扰,解决的基本出路是不断提高研究者的问题意识、方法意识、综合意识以及规范意识。