Dismissal of strikers and industrial disputes: the 1985–1987 strike and mass sackings at Silentnight

The 1985–1987 dispute at Silentnight bed factories in the north of England was an exceptionally long and bitter strike, lasting for 20 months from June 1985 until February 1987. A total of 346 workers were sacked for taking part in the strike, which gained a high profile with remarkable levels of support and solidarity action, largely due to its emblematic status as an extreme example of punitive treatment of workers taking industrial action in the period immediately following the defeat of the miners in 1984/1985. Workers took lawful strike action in 1985 over the non-implementation of agreed pay rises and compulsory redundancies counter to an existing agreement between the firm and the union, with the company responding to the dispute with mass dismissals. Pickets were maintained at the two factories in question for nearly two years, with the strikers gaining wide-ranging support from across the labour movement, but the company stood firm against the dismissed strikers who were ultimately defeated. Based on archival research and interviews with participants in the strike, the article analyses in detail how the dispute was sustained for so long, the legal context and the weakness of legal protections for strikers in the period, and the widespread political mobilisation and networks of support and solidarity that arose around the strike and in opposition to the policies of the Conservative government of the day.     

Turkifying Poverty,or: the Phantom Pain of Izmir’s Lost Christian Working Class, 1924–26

This article shows that ‘Turkification’, a term widely used by historians of modern Turkey to refer to the forced transfer of property from Christian into Muslim hands, ought to be conceptualized not only in the sense of ‘enrichment’ but also, with regard to the working classes, as a process in which Muslim people inherited the poverty of their Christian predecessors. Taking ?zmir as a case in point, the article first describes the plight of the overwhelmingly Christian working class prior to 1922. It then studies reports and editorials that discussed the economic and social situation in ?zmir in the years 1923 to 1926, after the Turkish victory and forced migration of her Christian population. Over the course of these years, ?zmir experienced a serious economic crisis, and bread prices reached levels that led to widespread undernourishment and hunger among the city?s poor. Agricultural production was lagging behind pre-war levels, and positive effects of ‘Turkification? policies were failing to materialize. By analyzing the contemporary journalists? attempts at explaining the crisis, but also pointing out national and transnational factors that they were probably unaware of, the article makes an original contribution to the economic and social history of early republican Turkey.     

Bringing back the issues: Nigeria’s Afrocentric policy under President Olusegun Obasanjo

This article analyses President Obasanjo’s pursuit of Nigeria’s Afrocentric policy. While the general impression has been that Nigeria’s Afrocentric policy succeeded under the civilian administration of Obasanjo, this study contends that the record of performance is mixed. The administration’s diplomatic engagements in Africa produced a number of key upturns such as the deepening of democracy, peace and stability, and development through the framework of NEPAD. On the other hand, there were also major diplomatic setbacks. The study provides explanations for the mixed outcomes to draw important lessons that could aid the design of the policy in the post-Obasanjo era.     

Gender and Vernaculars in Digital Humanities and World Literature

Abstract

This article discusses the large-scale and world-encompassing aspirations of digital humanities and world literature and their methodological accordance with the analysis of literature in smaller languages and of texts understood in social, transnational, and gendered contexts. Are Digital Humanities and World Literature establishing themselves as fields utilizing analytical tools that are at odds with the aims and perspectives of feminist literary history and reception history as a part of literary history? We argue that gender research and theory is insufficiently developed in both computational literary history and World Literature. An unproblematic understanding of translations, canonization, English as a global language, and the use of large-scale computational methods and formalized interpretive models is in many cases not beneficial for the understanding of texts by women writers or from feminist perspectives. Drawing on feminist criticism of computational methods and arguments for specialized rather than generalized knowledge about literary history, we propose that digitization in some form, be it a bibliographical database or digitization of a corpus of texts, may be thought of as part of the research process in projects oriented towards gender and cultural exchange.     

马克思劳动关系理论与全球劳动关系的演变

马克思的劳动关系理论对于20世纪80年代以来全球劳动关系的演变过程具有很强的解释力,劳动关系内部权力结构及处理机制所发生的变化使劳动关系出现了极其严重的权力与利益分化,当代劳动关系的复杂性远远高于马克思所描述的19世纪的资本主义劳动关系。在马克思提出的劳动关系的理想模型中,不存在由劳权缺失所引发的矛盾、冲突与分化。在这种理想的劳动关系尚未实现的情况下,劳权保护机制是不能缺失的。在劳动关系内部,保护雇佣劳动者劳权的唯一途径依然是减弱资本优先权和管理优先权对劳动关系的过度控制。在劳动关系外部,完善的公共保障体系则能够同时保护雇佣劳动者和非雇佣劳动者的劳权。随着非雇佣劳动者数量的增长,劳权保护将对公共保障体系形成更多的依赖。     

Barriers to women’s access to decision-making positions in sport organizations: the case of establishing a girls’ volleyball academy in Israel

The aim of this paper is to highlight the nature of the barriers facing women in terms of their participation in decision-making in Israeli sport, and to identify and evaluate some of the strategies and tactics adopted to overcome these barriers. This is done by making reference to a particular case study, the case of the process of establishing a major policy initiative in Israeli sport – the founding of the national Volleyball Academy for Young Talented Girls. The case is analyzed in order to identify how and why the goal of establishing the Academy was successful, and to consider what may be learned in terms of the implications for the tactics and strategies used that might be adopted by other women in similar circumstances.     

发扬“工匠精神”对于振兴实体经济的现实意义

自2016年3月5日李克强总理作政府工作报告时首次正式提出"工匠精神"以来,党和国家领导人为振兴实体经济多次提出要发扬"工匠精神"。发扬"工匠精神"对于振兴实体经济有着重大的现实意义。我国实体经济在经济社会转型期表现出的发展缓慢问题,在国际市场上表现竞争力不强问题,根本原因之一就在于我国企业缺乏更多拥有"工匠精神"的高素质职工队伍。培育、关心尤其要大幅提高拥有"工匠精神"品牌职工的待遇和地位,是打造更多享誉世界的"中国品牌"的前提和基础。以弘扬"工匠精神"为目标的职工文化是振兴我国实体经济的有力抓手。     

To revise or not to revise: the ‘peace constitution’, pro-revision movement,and Japan's national identity

Why do conservative nationalists in Japan continuously seek to revise the constitution despite the past failures, and what is the likelihood of successful revision and its impact on Japan's norm of pacifism and its use of force? The article offers an analytical framework for the issue based on national pride and national security, and argues that the ‘revisionists’ seek to create a new national identity, one that infuses a greater sense of national pride among the public and enables the exercise of collective self-defense, thereby removing Japan's postwar psychological and institutional limitations on nationalism and military activities. The LDP's 2012 draft is most explicit and ambitious in this regard, with the current revision attempt under Abe having the highest chance of success since the 1950s. Successful revision would significantly expand Japan's security activities, particularly within the framework of the US–Japan Security Alliance, and entail the end of Japan's unique postwar institutionalized pacifism, although the norm of pacifism will linger on as a constitutional principle. For a smoother return to the international military scene, the Japanese government must distance itself from historical revisionism and utilize its enhanced military role to promote regional public goods rather than merely protecting its narrow national interests.     

Fostering Constructive Action by Peers and Bystanders in Organizations and Communities

Peers and bystanders play important roles in organizational and community conflict management. Bystanders often learn relevant information and have opportunities to act in ways that can affect three of the basic functions of a conflict management system (CMS.) They can help (or not help) to identify, assess, and manage behaviors that the organization or community deems to be “unacceptable.” Examples in which bystanders play important roles include sexual and racial harassment, safety violations, unethical research, national security violations and insider threats, cyber‐bullying and cyber‐sabotage, violence, fraud, theft, intimidation and retaliation, and gross negligence. Bystanders often are a missing link in conflict systems. For the purposes of this article, I define peers and bystanders as people who observe or learn about unacceptable behavior by others, but who are not the relevant supervisors, or who knowingly engage in planning or executing that behavior. I define CMS managers as all those people, including line managers, who have responsibility for managing conflicts. Conflict managers face many challenges in fostering constructive behavior from bystanders. The interests of bystanders may or may not coincide with the interests of conflict systems managers in an organization or community. Bystanders often have multiple, idiosyncratic, and conflicting interests, and experience painful dilemmas. In addition, peers and bystanders, and their contexts – often differ greatly from each other. Blanket rules about how all bystanders should behave, such as requirements for mandatory reporting, are often ineffective or lead to perverse results. Bystanders are regularly equated with “do‐nothings,” in the popular press. In real life, however, helpful bystander actions are common. Many bystanders report a wide variety of constructive initiatives, including private, informal interventions. In this article, I report on forty‐five years of observations on bystanders in many milieus. I present what bystanders have said are the reasons that they did not – or did – take action, and what can be learned to help organizations and communities to support bystanders to be more effective when faced with unacceptable behavior.     

Modern poetry,popular song and their dangerous liaisons

Abstract

In this article, Tsuboi Hideto examines the mutually entwined pursuits of modern poetry and music in interwar Japan, focusing especially on the work of Nakahara Chūya, Kitahara Hakushū, and the People's Poetry group. Cutting across their respective distinctions within the poetry establishment, Tsuboi draws attention to these figures’ shared investment in symphonic, folk and popular music. In so doing, he identifies among them a prevailing concern for curating a poetic voice that might harmonize the conflictual registers of individual and collective expression and thereby attune the work of the poet to that of the ‘people’ more broadly. Meanwhile, the essay traces the currents of modernist and avant-garde thought in Japan and Europe that framed these poets’ engagements with music and sound. Tsuboi then illustrates the varying degrees to which these voices, forged within the cosmopolitan milieu of the Taisho period, bent toward the nationalizing project and later gave way to the chorus of wartime fascism and imperial expansion.