十年来我国妇女/性别理论研究的发展--联合国第四次世界妇女大会产生的积极影响

从1995年第四次世界妇女大会在北京的筹备和召开,到后来举行的北京 5和北京 10等一系列相关的活动,世妇会的原则和理念得到了不断的强化,这些理念凝结和渗透在妇女理论研究领域,极大地推进了我国妇女/性别理论研究事业的发展。本文回顾了十年来妇女/性别理论研究在研究内容、研究视角及研究机制等方面的变化和进展,以期进一步推动我国的妇女/性别研究在社会科学研究领域的重要影响。     

Contesting land grabs,negotiating statehood: the politics of international accountability mechanisms and land disputes in rural Cambodia

Abstract

In Cambodia, rural citizens embroiled in protracted land grabbing cases with the state and private companies are turning increasingly to international accountability mechanisms for resolution. This article applies the interlinked concepts of hybrid governance and legal pluralism to understand the prospects and limitations of ‘forum-shopping’ through appeals to international mechanisms for rural communities affected by land grabs. Drawing on interviews and using process tracing, it examines the outcomes of a mediation case filed with the International Finance Corporation’s Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) involving indigenous groups and a Vietnamese rubber company in north-east Cambodia. It argues that while international accountability mechanisms yield platforms for dispossessed groups to assert claims, they also reify choices between entitlements and attainability without circumventing the problems associated with justice delivery under Cambodia’s authoritarian regime. Overall, this study highlights the interaction, competition and collaboration between distinct forms of regulatory authority exercised by national and transnational actors involved in land grabbing cases in Cambodia, demonstrating their role in ‘negotiating statehood’ by governing local claims to land.     

Toward Olympics 2008: China's development in the reform period

Owen Bennett-Jones presents ‘Newshour’ and ‘The Interview’ for BBC World Service Radio. He has reported from all over the world and was the BBC Correspondent in Islamabad between 1998 and 2001. He is currently preparing a second edition of his book Pakistan: Eye of the Storm.     

Hearts and Minds: War Neurosis and the Politics of Madness in Anna Kavan's I Am Lazarus

Abstract

Anna Kavan's fictional portrayals of psychiatric breakdown and its treatment provide a unique perspective on the patient's experience of early to mid twentieth-century psychiatry. This article looks in detail at Kavan's time working with soldiers suffering from effort syndrome during the Second World War, observing how the solider-psychiatric patient becomes a figurehead for her radical politics in her Horizon article ‘The Case of Bill Williams’ (1944), and a prominent protagonist in her stories. Through close reading of her correspondence, her journalism and her wartime stories collected in I Am Lazarus (1945), it examines how the intersection of psychological trauma and physiological symptoms characteristic of effort syndrome surfaces in Kavan's writing of this period and in her own psychic responses to the war. It observes the importance of figurative language to her portrayal of war trauma and psychological breakdown, as her characters embody metaphor in their psychosomatic symptoms, and explores a twisted reconception of mind–body dualism prevalent throughout her writing of this period. It goes on to examine how the peculiar interaction of the physical and the psychological extends to the relationship between Kavan's characters and their external environment in her Blitz stories. Against the backdrop of the war-torn city, mind and body engage in ongoing conflict, affect and emotion bleed into her physical landscapes, and everyday objects become animated and hostile towards her protagonists.     

世界大变局与中美日三国战略选择

在世界大变局中,战后国际格局重大变化的主要标志是“世界老二”易位。苏联、日本皆不例外;21世纪以来欧盟也由盛转衰。未来国际格局可能有三种前景:1.中美两极对抗体制;2.中美竞争合作的“两极多元体制”;3.世界各大力量多元并存,构建多元一体的人类命运共同体。这要看世界潮流是走向和平多边主义还是暴力多边主义。中国实现伟大复兴后的战略选择是“济弱扶倾”,为世界可持续发展与可持续安全做贡献。日本面临的战略选择是:继续在《日本国宪法》下走和平发展道路,还是修改宪法,成为“能战国家”的一员,加入暴力强权的多边主义?坚持开放的地区主义与国际协调,还是搞排他经济集团,远交近攻,以中国为竞争对手?利用中美对立从中渔利,还是促进中美协调而避免在中美之间“选边站”?妥善处理中日两国围绕钓鱼岛归属认知争议和台湾问题,还是重走历史老路?囿于冷战思维和传统权力政治的现实主义决策逻辑,同中国搞战略对抗,还是树立共同、综合、合作、可持续安全的新安全观,与中国加强合作?这些战略选择将关乎未来30年的中日关系。     

The governance of the World Bank: Lessons from the corporate sector

The World Bank Group (WBG) is a multilateral organization as well as a large financial conglomerate. The debate on its governance, however, has mainly focused on how to ensure more inclusive decision-making by strengthening the voice and representation of its entire membership. The WBG’s governance as a set of arrangements that enable the principal (shareholders) to oversee the agent (management) has so far been overlooked, even though the adequacy of such arrangements is relevant in all institutions wherein shareholders delegate to management the achievement of organizational objectives. In reviewing the institutional, historical, and current underpinnings of the WBG’s decision-making, we elaborate on the extent to which the Group follows best-practice corporate governance standards that have been designed with the aim of improving shareholders’ oversight. Drawing from a methodology developed by the IFC, an entity of the WBG, we analyze the Group’s internal governance, highlighting which aspects are furthest from (or closest to) current financial-sector best practices. In so doing, we provide a framework for prioritizing the most critical areas in which the WBG’s governance falls short of private-sector standards, and we identify the nature of possible remedies.

Rereading the Public: Isolationism and Internationalism Revisited

This is the first installment in what we hope will be a recurring series of Forums in ISP. In each segment we intend to provide an outlet for peer-reviewed dialogue and debate on important topics in the field and to allow our readers to discuss material previously printed in the pages of ISP. Below are two comments on "Challenging U.S. Policymakers' Image of an Isolationist Public" by Steven Kull and Clay Ramsay published in ISP 1:1. Both comments raise a number of important issues pertaining to the relationship of public opinion and foreign policy, and also address more general questions of domestic impact on foreign policy outputs and several significant methodological questions about approaches to polling. The Forum begins first with comments by Richard Clark and Kenneth Dautrich, is followed by comments from Shoon Murray, and concludes with a response from Kull and Ramsay.     

Forward Russia! Sports mega-events as a venue for building national identity

This paper contributes to the discussion of links between sports, nationalism, and globalization by focusing on the political aspects of the preparation of Russian national teams for sports mega-events staged in Russia. By analyzing the cases of the XXVII Summer Universiade in Kazan, the XXII Winter Olympics in Sochi, and the XXI FIFA World Cup scheduled to take place in 12 Russian cities, the paper provides a comparative study of the benefits that mega-events provide for the host nation in terms of building national identities. To involve the sports component in the study of the nation-building processes, the paper applies the concept of the “spillover effect” of sporting nationalism which presumes that nationalist sentiment or ideology configured and promoted through sports affects non-sporting political processes, actors, and institutions. The paper argues that the “spillover effect” of sporting nationalism allows for the converting of excellence in sports mega-events – the centerpiece of global sports – into political excellence and displays the strengths of the nation to both the global and domestic public. Therefore, showing excellence as the host nation is the main objective that Russian political actors pursue in both their rhetoric and course of action.     

Revolution,power and the Third World: a review of Michael Mann’s The Sources of Social Power,Volume 4

The fourth volume of Michael Mann’s The Sources of Social Power is the last in his historical sociological series, which has centred on an analysis of ideological, economic, military and political power in human societies from the start of civilisation. Mann’s final volume provides an important overview of the period of American hegemony and its worldwide effects, the rise and crisis of neoliberalism, the contrasting fates of the USSR and Maoist China, the vagaries of American empire, and modern revolutions. The implications of his study, particularly regarding the history and theory of revolutions, are of the utmost value to anyone on the Revolutionary Left today, especially in the Third World. While Mann’s study is primarily focused on the West, it provides important lessons to be drawn for the Third World.     

The role of global cities in land grabs

Key trends link a globally connected urban archipelago and its hinterlands, warranting new studies of power in its most contemporary forms. This article locates land power and where that power is exercised – looking at the burgeoning global land rush from the perspective of cities. Urbanisation continues to drive vast political transitions, uprooting longstanding agrarian modes of living while creating myriad inequalities within cities. Are the world’s most powerful agglomerations active agents in this transformation? Answering affirmatively, the article reframes urbanisation as a vast, global geopolitical transfer of power from rural to urban. Leading global cities like New York, London, Hong Kong, Chicago and Singapore are not merely impressive collections of factor endowments. They are also sites of concentrated power with coercive influences beyond municipal boundaries. The article asks how cities project power in the contemporary global system. Juxtaposing data on global connectivity with the location strategies of private firms, we learn that the world’s most successful global cities are also sources of exploitative accumulations of land.