Economic opening and society endogamy: migratory and reproduction logic in the Insubric mountains (18th and 19th centuries)

This article illustrates the character of the alpine and prealpine societies of the Insubric area, which is both open and closed. In these mountains, various migratory forms (periodic, temporary, and definitive) could be both exclusion and stability factors. Even if under a lineage model, family reproduction forms were close to a “unilineal” system. Yet, emigration left open pluriestablishement, the intensity of which depended on the openness of the local economy and demographic configuration of the households.     

行政法视野下的公众参与制度

参与民主理论的发展,催生参与式行政的兴起,使之逐渐成为各国所普遍接受和采用的现代行政管理模式。参与式行政将公众纳入行政过程,促进行政的民主化、理性化、科学化。处于社会转型时期的中国,参与式行政是一项逐渐发展中的系统工程。通过分析公众参与的行政法价值,探讨构建公众参与制度的关键,为行政领域公众参与的法治化提供有价值的参考。     

Catastrophe risk

This paper examines the recent emergence of initiatives involving the reinsurance industry and the capital markets to develop mechanisms to finance the losses arising from catastrophic events. These initiatives are discussed from two perspectives. One perspective explores these financing mechanisms from the contention that catastrophic events are becoming increasingly non-insurable within contemporary risk society. In this regard the paper addresses issues relating to the coherence and sustainability of the risk networks underpinning efforts to maintain the insurability of catastrophic events. These catastrophe-financing initiatives are also discussed from a second, although related perspective. This refers to the very emergence of these different financing mechanisms. In this regard the moving potential of liberal government or the inventive mechanics driving the development of different ways to manage catastrophic risk become significant. The paper argues that the emergence of these different catastrophe-financing mechanisms is occurring at the intersection of concerns over the non-insurability of the catastrophic and the extremes of capitalist ingenuity, suggesting both perspectives might offer insights into some of the possible future trajectories of risk society.     

The founders of the association for the study of nationalities: the case of Stepan Horak (1920–1986) and the Shevchenko Scientific Society,USA

The present article critically evaluates the contribution of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA, and the founder of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), Stepan Horak, to the genesis and development of the ASN.     

Dynamics of multi-local gifts: practices of humanitarian giving in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

This paper explores the paradox of gift giving in privately initiated forms of post-disaster aid. The paradox emerges from the gap that arises between ideals of the altruistic gift, and its practices in the actual implementation in a complex and multi-local humanitarian aid arena. An ethnographic study of a privately initiated post-tsunami housing project illustrates the paradox. While initiators presented the project as opposite to the mundane world of development aid, they increasingly came under pressure to deliver and perform visible success, such that their practices resembled this mundane world of humanitarian aid and its logics of patronage, favouritism, and politics.

La dynamique de dons multi-locaux: la pratique de donation humanitaire au Sri Lanka d'après-tsunami

Cet article étudie le paradoxe de donations sous des formes d'assistance d'après-désastre lancées par des organisations privées. Ce paradoxe est engendré par le vide qui s'ouvre entre l'idéal du don altruiste et sa pratique d'implantation dans l'arène d'aide humanitaire à la fois complexe et multi-locale. Il est illustré par une étude ethnographique d'un projet de logement mis en place par une organisation privée. Tandis que ceux qui ont lancé ce projet l'ont présenté comme le contraire du monde banal de l'aide développementale, ils ont de plus en plus subi une pression pour qu'ils livrent et finalisent une réussite visible, cela à un tel point que leur pratique a fini par ressembler à ce monde banal d'aide humanitaire et à sa logique du mécénat, du favoritisme et de la politique.

La dinámica de los regalos multi-locales: prácticas de donaciones humanitarias en el Sri Lanka de la fase post-tsunami

El presente artículo examina la paradoja que encierra el hecho de que particulares entreguen regalos como forma de ayuda post-desastre. La paradoja surge como consecuencia de la brecha creada entre los ideales que conlleva el regalo altruista y el modo en que son implementadas las prácticas en un ámbito de ayuda humanitaria complejo y multi-local. Para ilustrar dicha paradoja, el presente artículo se apoya en un estudio etnográfico realizado en torno a un proyecto de vivienda impulsado por particulares durante la fase post-tsunami. Quienes iniciaron este proyecto lo presentaron en contraposición al ámbito mundano de la ayuda de desarrollo. Sin embargo, se vieron cada vez más presionados a tener que demostrar éxitos palpables, al punto de que sus prácticas terminaron pareciéndose a las del ámbito mundano de la ayuda humanitaria y a su lógica de clientelismo, de favoritismo y de politiquería.

Dinâmica de mercadorias de vários locais: práticas de doações humanitárias no Sri Lanka após o tsunami

Este artigo explora o paradoxo das doações de mercadorias nas formas de ajuda iniciadas privadamente no pós-desastre. O paradoxo surge da distância que é criada entre os ideais da doação altruísta e suas práticas na implementação real em uma arena de ajuda humanitária complexa e multi-local. Um estudo etnográfico de um projeto de moradia pós-tsunami iniciado privadamente ilustra o paradoxo. Embora os iniciadores apresentaram o projeto como sendo oposto ao mundo mundano de ajuda ao desenvolvimento, eles foram cada vez mais pressionados para implementar e desempenhar iniciativas de sucesso visível, de forma que suas práticas parecessem com este mundo mundano de ajuda humanitária e sua lógica clientelista, de favoritismo e política.     

Civil Society and Good Governance in Bangladesh

Many of the recent ideas and concepts of ‘good governance’ and ‘civil society’ in Bangladesh have been generated by the international aid agencies and their ‘good governance’ policy agenda in the 1990s, but there are also local meanings to the terms derived from the independence struggle and the construction of a Bangladeshi state. This article aims to obtain a clearer analytical understanding of the processes and institutions of civil society in Bangladesh that can develop workable strategy to improve governance for helping the poor and moving beyond the patron–client relationships on which they have depended historically. It also focuses attention and debate on those aspects of civil society which can enhance the quality of governance and democracy by overcoming the western top-down approach; and can strengthen the role of civil society organisations to further enhance their impact on better governance for fair distribution of public goods and ensuring social justice for the poor.     

Local Governance under the Coalition Government: Austerity,Localism and the ‘Big Society’

The Coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, formally created on 11^th May 2010, has introduced a range of initiatives which affect local governance, from the announcement of a new Localism Bill through to the abolition of the Audit Commission and the arrival of the ‘Big Society’ agenda. This article reviews the key policy announcements of the Coalition's first year and analyses the underlying themes and trends which are emerging. It argues that the Coalition's reforms do show traces of an ideological commitment to localism and a new understanding of local self-government; there is an ideological agenda which has the potential to deliver a radically different form of local governance. However, the reform process is far from coherent and the potential for radical change is heavily constrained by: conflicts in Conservative thinking and the failure of the Liberal Democrats to assert their own ideology; the political expediency of budget cuts during an era of austerity and; the problems of implementing an apparently radical agenda after 13 years of New Labour.     

论先进文化与社会主义和谐社会的构建

构建社会主义和谐社会是一项庞大而复杂的系统工程,其中一个重要方面就是要不断发展先进文化。当前,我国的文化建设事业还存在着诸多现实的、具体的问题。这些问题将不同程度地影响和制约着社会主义和谐社会的构建。我们要立足于构建社会主义和谐社会的伟大实践,更加自觉地推进社会主义先进文化建设。     

Normalization of antisemitism, 1880–1900: the case of a Jesuit community in Rome

The significance of the political antisemitism of the 1880s and 1890s for developments in the twentieth century remains controversial. Researchers have been divided as to whether the antisemitism of the nineteenth century, or even earlier, was one of the factors that made the Holocaust possible, or whether it was a phenomenon with little or no relevance for subsequent events. The decline of most antisemitic political parties at the beginning of the twentieth century appears to support the latter point of view. Yet some commentators, such as Shulamit Volkov and Peter Pulzer, have convincingly suggested that the importance of nineteenth-century antisemitism lies less in the political fortunes of antisemitic parties than in the way antisemitism came to penetrate civil society. Thus, they have argued, antisemitism came to form a component of a widespread conservative and anti-liberal world-view. Following Pulzer and Volkov, it might be desirable to investigate the processes by which antisemitism could have been transformed from an extremist political position into a common element in the outlook of broad portions of European society: mechanisms that have remained largely unexplored. Dahl's article studies the normalization of antisemitism in the two last decades of the nineteenth century through a scrutiny of shifts in the attitudes to Jews of a restricted group of Italian Jesuits. The analysis is based on a detailed study of La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit community in Rome that published a journal of the same name. Since its foundation in 1850 this institution has been an authoritative exponent of Catholic policy and is generally perceived as having been a protagonist in the formulation of a Catholic stance towards the ‘Jewish question’ in the later nineteenth century. Dahl shows that, while in the early 1880s, most members resisted or opposed the use of antisemitic propaganda, through the following two decades the attitudes of virtually all of them became tinged with antisemitism, supporting the hypothesis that antisemitism became part of a widespread ‘culture’. In his analysis, Dahl does not focus on the wider circulation of ideas that influenced the Roman Jesuits, but on the dynamics within the institution that made possible the gradual acceptance of antisemitism, arguing that a debate over antisemitism among the Jesuits in the early 1880s was a crucial moment in this development. As they failed at this early stage to formulate an anti-antisemitic response, they allowed antisemitism to become part of the culture of their institution, and rendered its later rejection practically impossible.     

Civil society

The idea of civil society has proved very elusive, escaping conceptual grasps and evading sure-footed negotiation of the concept itself. Resurrected in a very definite historical setting, that of authoritarian states, the concept of civil society came to signify a set of social and political practices that sought to engage with state power. The close connection with the re-emergence of the concept and the collapse of dictatorial states made civil society attractive to a variety of political agents pursuing different agendas: expanding the market at the expense of the state, transiting from mass politics to single-issue and localised campaigns, undermining confidence in accepted modes of representation such as political parties, and in general shrinking the domain of the state and that of accepted modes of politics. That the concept of civil society could suit such a variety of different political projects is cause for some alarm, for it might well mean that civil society has come to mean everything to everyone remotely interested in it.