Stumbling among Giants: Europe's Frustrated Solidarity with Guatemala, 1979–1996

In the 1980s, Central America became the Cold War's centre stage as Western solidarity committees rushed to shine a global spotlight on the region's revolutionary movements. Drawing on archival research and activist testimony, this article explores the uncharted European solidarity movement with Guatemala (1979–1996) and its transnational structural weaknesses. Additionally, this contribution aims to revisit recent transnational approaches to solidarity movements that highlight the purposive role of actors of the Global South in generating and shaping solidarity. Instead, it argues that restricted political spaces severely constrained Guatemalan agency domestically, affecting the strategies and tactics deployed on the international front.     

努力建设一支高素质的统战干部队伍

在新世纪新阶段,要按照"学习型、思考型、民主型、创新型、实干型"干部的标准,努力建设一支高素质的统战干部队伍,把"五型"标准作为对统战干部的基本要求落实到工作中去.     

Heretical Conversations with Continental Philosophy: Jan Patočka, Central Europe and Global Politics

This article argues that the contributions of the Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka, have been overlooked in the study of International Relations (IR), and more generally international political theory. Attention here is drawn to the many distinctive ideas particular to Patočkian philosophy, such as the solidarity of the shaken and the care of the soul, which combine accounts of a Central European philosophy and dissident political reactions to totalitarian rule. The legacy of Patočka's work frames the latter part of the article, which examines Central European identity and 'samizdat' as often neglected reference points in IR. The article concludes by drawing these themes together in an account of rupture, inspired by the solidarity of the shaken and care for the soul.     

Knowledge of the Earthquake and School Education in the Perspective of Active Citizenship

This paper presents part of a larger research on the consequences of an earthquake on the scholastic life of children aged 3-11. In May, schools abruptly closed due to the earthquake in Emilia Romagna and Lombardy （Italy）. Children and teachers fled from them, leaving school backpacks and books in the classrooms. Daily life was disrupted and the community gathered in tents set up by civil defence. Immigrant families returned to their countries of origin or shared life in the tent cities. The focus of theoretical sources of the research considers mainly： the vulnerability of the persons concerned; measures for risk reduction; environmental sustainability; community resilience; controversial human development between freedom of the person and economic globalisation. From methodological point of view, the interviews with teachers, school rectors, and citizens revealed the impact of the earthquake on community identity. Unexpected human solidarity and local responsible participation were part of the new educational plan of reconstruction based on hope, active citizenship, and historical memory.     

Coombs’ Bastard Child: The Troubled Life of CDEP

In the mid 1970s HC Coombs was a major promoter of the idea behind the CDEP scheme: that rather than pay lots of Aboriginal people in remote areas unemployment benefits it would be more constructive for them to be employed part‐time by local Indigenous organisations to undertake socially useful tasks. From this simple idea was born one of the most significant and, in time, one of the largest Indigenous‐specific programs Australia has seen, the Community Development Employment Projects scheme. The birth was not easy and neither has been the subsequent life of what I have called, with great licence, Coombs’ bastard child.     

Young Voters at the 2005 British General Election

Pronounced declines in the number of young (non‐) voters casting their ballots in 1997 and 2001 has raised the question: are we witnessing a generational disengagement with electoral politics? It is generally understood that voter turnout is strongly related to closeness of electoral competition. This research report examines the results of the 2005 election in the context of the debate on declining youth turnout at general elections. Did a closer competition in 2005 encourage young voters back to the polls?     

失业保险预防失业功能的理论证成与制度构建

当前,我国的失业保险制度尚不能完全实现保障劳动者经济安全的基本目标,亟须拓展规范空间。在传统失业保险制度中引入预防失业功能,是进一步实现劳动者经济安全保障的可选路径。劳动法上的解雇保护制度和传统失业保险制度中部分失业救济的缺失构成引入预防失业功能的现实需求;社会连带和外部性理论构成其理论基础;《宪法》规定的劳动权和社会保障权条款为其立法依据。结合我国具体国情,失业保险引入预防失业功能,当下应采取部分失业补贴为主、职业技能补贴为辅的形式,将来则可考虑进一步引进行业经验费率制度。在此基础上,要确立以维护劳动者人性尊严为核心的立法理念,以辅助性和非核心性作为定位规则,并加强相关制度的设计。     

Why the intrinsic value of public goods matters

Abstract

Existing accounts of public-goods distribution rely on the existence of solidarity for providing non-universal public goods, such as the humanities or national parks. There are three fundamental problems with these accounts: they ignore instances of social fragmentation; they treat preferences for public goods as morally benign, and they assume that these preferences are the only relevant moral consideration. However, not all citizens unanimously require public goods such as the humanities or national parks. Public-goods distribution that is based only on citizens’ preferences, therefore, means that non-universal public good are at a constant risk of under-provision, and has negative implications for human flourishing. The paper, therefore, develops a complementary justification for the distribution of public goods, that decouples the distribution of public goods from ad hoc preferences, and grounds the distributive justification in the intrinsic value of these goods. There are three reasons to include intrinsic-value considerations in public-goods distribution: responding to crowding-out effects; promoting shared heritage and cross-fertilization. Finally, the intrinsic-value justification may indirectly promote solidarity. Thus, the intrinsic-value and the solidarity justifications need not be mutually exclusive, rather they can be mutually reinforcing.     

Sharing the struggle: constructing transnational solidarity in global social movements

ABSTRACT

Struggles for peace, self-determination and demilitarization are common near military installations around the world. Increasingly, these struggles have become linked in globe-spanning assemblages of activism. Based on interviews in South Korea, Okinawa, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, and Guåhan (Guam) this paper analyzes how activists in these locales develop a sense of shared oppression that serves as a basis for connecting geographically distant activist communities. Through visiting each other’s places – and participating in activities such as direct action protests, eating together and dancing – activists develop a recognition of shared circumstance not only through intellectual discussion, but also through the production of shared visceral and emotional states. This shared feeling of mutual oppression then serves as a basis for solidarity and mutual aid among social movements that protest militarization and challenge traditional conceptualizations of security in international relations.     

How can we better align private security with the public interest? Towards a civilizing model of regulation

How can we better align private security with the public interest? This question has met with two answers in the literature on private security regulation, one seeking to cleanse the market of deviant sellers, the other to communalize the market through the empowerment of buyers. Both models of regulation are premised upon a limited neoclassical economic conception of how market transactions map onto the public interest. This article makes the case for a new model of regulation, one that seeks to civilize the market. Drawing upon the insights of economic sociology, our model regards the market for security as a moral economy in which commodity and non‐commodity values jostle and collide. On this basis, we propose a regulatory architecture where buyers and sellers are cast not only as economic actors but also as moral actors, revealing new avenues through which to encompass private security within the democratic promise of security.