Transnational activists,news media representations,and racialized ‘politics of life’: the Christian Peacemaker Team kidnapping in Iraq

In late 2005, four antiwar activists with a group called Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) were kidnapped in Baghdad. Two of the men were identified as Canadian citizens, and the other two were an American and a Briton. In March 2006, after nearly four months in captivity, three of the men were rescued through a military operation involving British, American, Canadian, and Iraqi forces, and they were returned to their countries of residence. This essay explores the racialized privileges of Western citizenship status, and in particular, its deployment in transnational (referring to the physical crossing of national borders) interventions made by such activists. Moreover, this essay seeks to understand and reveal the vast distinction between those who carry the privilege of Western citizenship and those who do not, and the subversive possibilities within such asymmetrical power relations. By using media representations of this kidnapping as the focal point of the analysis, this essay explores how racialization and sexuality work together to construct both Western citizenship and national identity.     

Autonomous peasant struggles and left arts of government

I argue that self-organisation cannot account for how grassroots struggles can pursue transnational political change. I develop an account of some ‘left arts of government’ through which resistance is facilitated and organised without reintroducing oppressive and hierarchical forms of rule. I do so by focusing on the practices of autonomous peasant mobilisations. Land occupation movements facilitate the ability of people to engage in ongoing resistance on their own behalf. They organise resistance through horizontal communication and through transnational networks involving representative structures. Finally, peasant mobilisations engage with states and international institutions to solidify gains made.     

韩中建交二十一年——论充实、拓展韩中关系与学术交流的重要性

韩中建交以来,双边关系分别经历了"发展阶段"(1992~1998年)、"构建阶段"(1998~2003年)、"提升阶段"(2003~2008年)等三个历史过程。现在,两国关系已经开始进入"强化阶段",即"充实、拓展两国关系内涵阶段"。中国外交部韩半岛事务副代表徐步对韩中建交20年给予了积极的评价。他指出:"在过去二十年间,两国加强了政治互信和战略沟通,韩国是第一个承认中国的完整市场经济地位的国家,是中国主要的贸易伙伴。两国间人员往来十分频繁,在处理国际和区域问题时始终坚持相互沟通与合作的原则。"建交21年来,两国关系取得了飞跃发展,但在诸多领域仍存在矛盾、摩擦。因此,本文在回顾两国关系发展过程中的一些摩擦,并为消除两国关系未来发展障碍提供两点建议。     

Chapter 6: Essential Orientations and Practices

SUMMARY

In civic youth wouth work program staff focus on larger outcomes and do not often attend to the importance of seemingly mundane and simple tasks. Young people talk about how these simple tasks have powerful meaning for them and their work even as adult volunteers talked about the challenges of working democratically with young people. To integrate these perspectives there are some practices that describe how this work is done: co-creation, contributory, interrogatory, contextual, caring-for-the-world, processual, open, invitational, and a commitment to more than the self.     

Untimely Economies of Survival

This article takes the recent turn against hope in breast cancer activism as a point of entry into a broader examination of speculative economies of science that creatively imagine, materialize, and manage futures in the present. It argues that untimeliness – anticipatory, simultaneous, porous, and prognostic in its articulation – captures these alternate arrangements of life and action as they are mobilized in cancer research that hails healthy women as experimental subjects to participate in clinical studies.     

从制度主义转向行动主义的社会治理--读张康之教授《公共行政的行动主义》

近代以来的社会治理突出了制度主义的逻辑,社会治理的一切活动都是在制度的框架下开展的。制度主义逻辑中的社会治理依附于中心—边缘的社会结构,政府位于社会治理的中心,通过制度对社会进行普遍性的统一的治理,结果却在对技术理性的追求中把社会治理导向了精英治理的格局。自20世纪80年代起,人类社会进入了高度复杂性与高度不确定性的历史阶段,政府垄断社会治理的局面受到了挑战,依靠制度的社会治理出现了失灵,因而需要谋求新型社会治理模式的建构。就现实的社会治理过程来看,由于社会治理主体的多元化,行动与制度之间的逻辑关系被重置。民主的内涵从制度转向行动,专注于行动会把社会治理引向合作治理的方向。张康之教授的《公共行政的行动主义》为我们展示了社会治理从制度主义到行动主义的转向,并创造性地描述了走向合作治理的图景。     

Is the genie out of the bottle? Digital platforms and the future of clinical trials

Is it possible to conduct impartial clinical trials in a world full of digital networking tools that patients can use to coordinate themselves and act against research protocols? This paper builds on an ethnography of PatientsLikeMe, a company running an internet social media network where patients with different conditions share their clinical data with standardized questionnaires. The company faced a serious dilemma in 2011 when some ALS patients, members of the site, started sharing data about a phase II clinical trial of an experimental drug (NP001) in which some of them were participating, to anticipate the experiment’s outcomes and understand each one’s allocation over trial arms. In parallel, some other patients were using the site and other web tools to coordinate and run their own replication of the trial with homebrew mixes of industrial grade chemicals. PatientsLikeMe researchers reflected on their position as networks managers and eventually decided to use the collected data to develop their own analysis of the efficacy of the original compound, and of the homebrewers’ compound. They presented the NP001 events as a case in point for articulating a new social contract for clinical research. This paper analyses these events, first, by understanding the clinical trial as an experiment organization form that can succeed only as long as its protocol can be enforced; second, we observe how web networks make it dramatically easier for the trial protocol to be violated; finally, we point out how a potentially dangerous confluence of interests over web networks could incubate developments that disrupt the status quo without creating a robust and safe alternative for experimentation. We conclude by warning about the interests of the pharmaceutical industry in exploiting patients’ methodological requests to its own advantage.     

关于20世纪中国史学发展道路的对话

20世纪中国史学名家辈出,成就巨大,今天对其发展道路认真地反思、总结,具有重要的学术价值和现实意义。首先,应当树立动态发展的眼光,从宏观上做出“新史学流派”的新概括,研究它如何由“思潮”发展到“流派”,研究这一群体所取得的重大成就,这一群体学者的共性和各自的学术个性;并进而形成20世纪史学“三大干流”（新史学流派、新历史考证学派、马克思主义史学流派）平行发展和相互影响的总体研究思路,取代以往“两大干流”的认识。其次,应进一步探究新历史考证学如何继承了乾嘉考证学的优良传统,同时又因获得进化史观等新的理论指导而成为一门近代学术;至1949年以后,又因为接受唯物史观的指导,而推进到新的境界。再次,对于马克思主义史学,应如实地总结它取得的巨大成就,同时深刻反思其经历过的曲折;要开掘出“传统思想的精华如何通向唯物史观”一类的新课题;对于建国后“十七年”史学,应抓住“两种对立的学风”这一关键做观察、分析,既认真总结教条主义一度盛行的深刻教训,又恰如其分地总结正直学者发扬优良学风而取得的巨大成绩,以此坚定我们坚持和发展唯物史观、用以指导史学研究的信心。     

“We Need to Have a Meeting”: Public Housing Demolition and Collective Agency in Atlanta,Georgia

The last two decades have witnessed widespread demolition of public housing and a large-scale relocation of public housing residents. Much of the current literature has examined the impact of demolition on relocated residents, focusing primarily on individual outcomes such as employment, housing quality, and health. This article examines the potential collective consequences of relocation by using data from 40 in-depth interviews conducted with relocated public housing residents in Atlanta, Georgia, to examine experiences of civic engagement and tenant activism before and after relocation. Participants describe frequent experiences of civic engagement and tenant activism in their public housing communities prior to demolition and also discuss how these collective actions often translated into meaningful gains for their communities. Participants also describe challenges associated with reestablishing these sources of collective agency in their new, post demolition, private-market rental communities where opportunities for civic engagement and tenant activism were perceived to be limited, where stigma was a barrier to social interaction, and where they experienced significant residential instability.     

‘We are Jamaicans:’ living with and challenging the criminalization of homosexuality in Jamaica

Today, some 80 countries around the world have legislation criminalizing homosexuality, while those who engage in same-sex relations risk mob violence resulting from cultural intolerance. Despite this, gay rights advocacy within these countries exists. This paper examines gay rights advocacy in Jamaica – a nation which criminalizes same-sex relations and which has been identified by observers as among the most intolerant of same-sex relations. Using interviews with gay rights activists working with Jamaica’s leading gay rights organization, this paper describes the gay rights movement in a climate of repression. It begins with an overview of Jamaican sexual values, tracing its condemnation of homosexuality to a history of plantation slavery. Next, it discusses the emergence of a gay pride movement and the development of a broad-based association for all sexual orientations and identities. Finally, it examines the advocacy and activism of the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays, a voice for Jamaica’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community. Throughout, the paper reveals how even an oppressed identity may find a voice and thrive despite the greatest of legal and cultural challenges.