Islamism,secularism and post-Islamism: the Muslim world and the case of Bangladesh

This paper provides a historical overview of the emerging post-Islamist phenomenon in the Muslim world and discusses the scope for sustainable democratic politics in Bangladesh. In the process, a model is proposed that purports to exhibit a level of compatibility with the perceived political landscape in Bangladesh. The model adopts a version of the Hotelling–Downs principle of democracy and sets it within the ‘post-Islamist’ paradigm in such a way that, if it can be implemented, even if only partially, may lead to the sustained political stability of Bangladesh. The paper highlights illiberal and undemocratic practices of the two dominant Bangladeshi political parties as a major feature of the present status quo. These practices dominate Bangladeshi politics through the continuous attempts of their exponents to impose monopolistic views on the various symbols of national identity, despite the multi-racial, multi-religious nature of Bangladesh society. The paper concludes that a democratic system of politics, which accommodates aspects of secularism, language, Muslim identity and post-Islamist ‘Islamic ethical–moral–legal codes’, remains the feasible political discourse for forming and consolidating the country’s multi-racial, multi-religious national identity over the long run and its survival as a sovereign state.     

The Functions of Class at the Present Time: Including Taste,or Sex and Class as Culture

Gagnier provides an analytic account of current uses of gender, sex and sexuality, and of class as objective condition, role, identity, subjectivity, performance, product of cultural formation, pain and pleasure. She concludes that we shall do better today to take from the history of political economy a focus on the division of labour, the kinds of work people do, including women's unpaid labour at home, and the ways that work structures identity and subjectivity, than on more abstract class identity (e.g. wage-labourers and capitalists), and to see that both local and global divisions of labour or work patterns are along race and gender lines as much as along class lines. The introduction of consumption models of taste and status draws together both class and gender, for consumption and leisure, the realm for most wage-labourers of pleasure, is as significant in the formation of identity and subjectivity as work, production or pain. We should account for people's pleasures and desires as well as their pain and place in narrowly conceived 'productive' relations. Class is no less significant than it always was, but future work should disaggregate the concept along these lines, mindful of gender salience in the division of labour and the reproduction of class. And it should include critical analysis of the realms of taste, pleasure, consumption, leisure and status.     

试论影响当前中日关系的文化与心理因素

在国际关系中,人们一般总是把政治、经济和军事作为国与国关系的首要考量因素,而把文化认同、民族心理等要素置于次要地位.但相对于前者的易变性、表层性,文化和心理要素更能在深层次上发挥潜在的影响作用.中日作为同属东亚文明圈的两个大国,两国关系的发展一波三折,令人困惑.究其原因,除却双方之间的现实利益冲突之外,在更深层次上,它与中日民族间的文化及心理认同的差异是分不开的.     

俄罗斯国家身份定位与认知视角下的俄美关系困境

苏联解体近二十年来,俄罗斯与美国的关系经历了几次较大的波动,而每次波动都伴随着俄罗斯对自己国家身份定位的变化.叶利钦时期的俄罗斯没能融入西方,普京与美国在反恐行动中的合作也没能使其成为西方的一部分.俄罗斯东西方身份定位的不断摇摆和对大国身份一味地过度追求,对其国家利益建构和对外战略选择产生了重大影响,并在一定程度上阻碍了俄美关系良性互动的形成.同时,美国对俄罗斯身份定位的认同与否,也影响着俄美关系.     

Identity orientation and stakeholder engagement—the corporatisation of elite schools

Identity orientation provides a means to understand the social motivations of organisational relationships and organisational policy and practices. This study uses identity orientation to understand the highly marketised context of independent ‘elite’ schools in Australia and how they relate to stakeholders to straddle their roles as social institutions that are increasingly required to operate in a corporate manner. Interviews with managers in quite new school roles such as marketing communication and business management were conducted in non‐government schools to understand the schools' external orientations, coveted internal member traits, and frames of reference. The study shows that, in contrast to existing literature on the rhetoric of schools as focusing on ‘the child’, there was a strong emphasis on individualistic orientations in schools that saw stakeholders in instrumental terms of resources and connections, saw teachers as providing an innovative and leading edge, and used other prestigious schools as their frame of reference. To a lesser extent, schools would also be interested in the relationships with families, teachers, and the community for their own means. There were very few instances where the identity orientation was contributing to society, instead, focusing on university and network outcomes for pupils. Using identity orientation provides a theoretical lens to connect organisational governance to stakeholder engagement by providing insights into an organisation's identity including practices and behaviours, in relation to others. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

试论数字化警务中居民身份识别与管理构想

数字化警务是指警察机关的社会行政管理和刑事执法活动借助计算机信息和数宇信息技术手段进行管理的警务方式方法。从社会管理和刑事执法的角度来讲,确认公民的个人身份及有关信息是非常重要的。在现代数字化警务工作中,必须把居民的身份识别与社会信息数字化管理有机地结合在一起。     

The politicization of education: Identity formation in Moldova and Transnistria

This article examines how education, linguistic and citizenship policies have influenced the development of Moldovan identity and relations with the breakaway region of Transnistria. The article explores the influence of three specific education policies (Russian language instruction, an integrated history course and Romanian language school closures in Transnistria) on the debate concerning Moldovan identity and ultimately Moldovan statehood. The Romanian language school closures in Transnistria demonstrate that education is not only an important agent of identity formation, but also that such crude political tactics as school closures ultimately affect other education policies, reinforce negative stereotypes and make meaningful dialogue impossible. The larger issue than the school closures in Transnistria is whether devolution of authority on issues such as education policy is possible no matter how autonomy is granted.     

Kinship assignment with the ForenSeq™ DNA Signature Prep Kit: Sources of error in simulated and real cases

Kinship recognition between anonymous DNA samples is becoming a relevant issue in forensics, more so with the increasing number of DNA profiles in databanks. Also, NGS-based genotyping is being increasingly used in routine personal identification, to simultaneously type large numbers of markers of different kind. In the present work, we explored computationally and experimentally the performance of the ForenSeq™ DNA Signature Prep Kit in identifying the true relationship between two anonymous samples, distinguishing it from other possible relationships. We analyzed with Familias R series of 10,000 pairs with 9 different simulated relationships, corresponding to different degrees of autosomal sharing. For each pair we obtained likelihood ratios for five kinship hypotheses vs. unrelatedness, and used their ranking to identify the preferred relationship. We also typed 21 subjects from two pedigrees, representing from parent-child to 4th cousins relationships. As expected, the power for identifying the true relationship decays in the order of autosomal sharing. Parent-child and full siblings can be robustly identified against other relationships. For half-siblings the chance of reaching a significant conclusion is already small. For more distant relationships the proportion of cases correctly and significantly identified is 10% or less. Bidirectional errors in kinship attribution include the suggestion of relatedness when this does not exist (10–50%), and the suggestion of independence in pairs of individuals more than 4 generations apart (25–60%). The real cases revealed a relevant effect of genotype miscalling at some loci, which could only be partly avoided by modulating the analysis parameters. In conclusion, with the exception of first degree relatives, the kit can be useful to inform additional investigations, but does not usually provide probatory results.     

从基础规范看现代立宪转型之道

效法西方国家立宪是后发现代国家的通例却往往效果不彰,如何诊断这一现代病就变得非常关键。凯尔森的基础规范概念为此提供了重要工具。文章由此出发,先是批判性重述这一理论,认为凯尔森内容中立的基础规范无法胜任从实然向应然转换的功能;进而探讨基础规范证立所经历的三阶段,这实际上构成了立宪转型的内在逻辑结构;之后考察49年《共同纲领》的立宪实践。最后再次回到立宪转型之功能,当代思想中有两个与之相对应的典型范式：契约合意与商讨合意。在检讨了康德所代表的契约合意论之后,文章最终指出,通过商讨合意来实现立宪转型是更为优选的理论范式。     

Theory and Practice of Public Administration in the Philippines: Concerns for an Identity Crisis

Abstract

The discipline of public administration in the Philippines has been undergoing its version of an ‘identity crisis’ over the past decade. This crisis has been manifested in four areas: (1) the inordinate influence of mostly American public administration theories and concepts upon Philippines public administration has led Filipino academics in the early to mid-1980s to ask the question ‘is there a Philippine public administration?’; (2) the perceived disconnect between theories of public administration as taught in schools and the realities in the outside world has raised questions of the relevance of the discipline to real world challenges; (3) the continued frustration over the perception that in spite of many public administration and governance reforms, the Philippines continues to be among the more corrupt nations in the region; and (4) the recent fascination of academics in other disciplines, especially economists, that ‘institutions matter’, has led some public administration scholars to argue that their discipline has been arguing precisely the same point since the 1950s.