Towards food sovereignty: interrogating peasant voice in the United Nations Committee on World Food Security

The goal of the direct participation of food producer constituencies – and other citizens – is a key component of food sovereignty, the policy framework first launched by La Vía Campesina and engendering the much wider food sovereignty movement. In this paper, I outline the reasons why the reform of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) can be regarded as historically significant to this goal. Focusing upon the CFS's aspirations for inclusivity, I outline a framework for interrogating the experiences of social movement activists representing food producer constituencies seeking to convert their formal right to participate in the CFS into substantive participation. Going beyond the capturing of their experiences, the framework also reveals the different ways in which their challenges in attaining substantive participation can be overcome, with a particular emphasis upon adjustments within the arena itself. The paper concludes with an overview of the research agenda suggested by Raj Patel (2009), amongst others, and alluded to further in the content of this paper.     

软实力视阈下的日本动漫外交

近年来,日本在经济持续低迷与少子老龄化的背景下,努力寻求通过文化"软实力"来提高国家影响力的新途径。受美国学者约瑟夫·奈的启发,日本政府认识到"动漫"是日本的软实力资源之一,并实施了一系列动漫外交。日本政府的动漫外交促进了日本文化产业的发展,对构建国家形象和提升国家软实力发挥了重要作用。     

The origins of severance pay in unemployment compensation: a comparative analysis

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to an under-developed field in the social policy literature through an analysis of the origins of severance pay (SP)/redundancy pay schemes and, more specifically, their first designs in nine countries—Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal. It has two objectives: first, to identify the key actors who shaped the design of the first SP schemes; second, to explain variations in terms of their mode of regulation, generosity and coverage. By building on the state-centric and power-resource perspectives, it identifies the conditions under which the state had an autonomous role vis-à-vis organized labour in SP reforms and the circumstances under which organized labour was the main actor. When the state was the key actor, it preferred legislation for the regulation of SP either to legitimize its apparatus in a ‘revolutionary’/‘potentially revolutionary’ context or to facilitate structural transformations of the economy in a ‘reformist’ context. When organized labour was the key actor, its preference was to regulate SP through ‘only collective bargaining’ or ‘legislation’, subject to the degree of unionization. Lastly, the paper argues that key actors (the state or organized labour) took into account the distributive structure of existing UI schemes when designing the coverage and generosity structure of the first SP schemes during the post-war era.     

论劳动者的休息权及其法律保障

休息权是劳动者所享有的宪法权利,具有自由权和社会权的双重属性.当劳动者享有休息权时,国家负有尊重和不干预的义务;在劳动者的休息权受用人单位侵害时,国家负有保护的义务;发展劳动者休息和休养的设施,国家负有给付义务.保障劳动者的休息权,立法机关需要完善相关立法,劳动行政部门需要切实履行法定监管职责,司法解释的举证责任分配规...     

People,power, change: three pillars of a food sovereignty research praxis

ABSTRACT

This article is situated within nascent debates on the role of academics within food sovereignty movements. Drawing on insights from a collective autoethnography, we report on our experiences conducting three food sovereignty research projects in different contexts and at different scales. We suggest that that the principles and practices of food sovereignty translate into a food sovereignty research praxis. This consists of three pillars focusing on people (humanizing research relationships), power (equalizing power relations) and change (pursuing transformative orientations). This article discusses these pillars and analyzes the extent to which we were able to embody them within our projects.     

‘Black letters’: problems and issues in the research,dissemination and reception of literature by Afro-Argentines and on Afro-Argentines

Afro-Argentines of colonial descent constitute one of the lesser known minority groups in the country. While scholarly research on this particular group is still scarce, recent studies account for the diversity of its past and current cultural practices. Aside from some exceptions, Afro-Argentine literature is virtually unknown to academia and, as it is usually the case regarding Minor Literatures, it has been excluded from the national literary canon. Towards the end of the twentieth century there was a resurgence not only of studies on Afro-Argentine literature, but also of the presence of Afro-Argentines themselves in fictional writing. This paper will chart the process of retrieval, analysis and dissemination of Afro-Argentine literature, examining some of the issues that arise both at the epistemic and editorial policy levels. We will account for the revival of a literature on Afro-Argentines, in order to explore whether they reproduce a ‘master narrative’ that, through the historical novel, relegates Afro-Argentines into oblivion and/or reduces the group to its stereotypes; or if, on the other hand, these voices can subvert Argentine historiography by positioning this group in a leading role that mirrors the vitality of their present-day social movements.     

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.     

Securitization,history, and identity: some conceptual clarifications and examples from politics of Finnish war history

This article shows how we can use the securitization framework to study extreme history politics. Securitization refers to a speech act or discursive process in which an actor makes a claim that some referent object, deemed worthy of survival, is existentially threatened. If successful, securitization justifies the use of extraordinary measures to counter the threat. After introducing the concept of securitization in detail, the article presents three ways in which history and securitization can be connected: history can serve as a facilitating condition of securitization; history can be explicitly used to strengthen a securitizing move; or history, or a particular interpretation of it, can be the referent object of securitization. The second half of the article is devoted to a discussion on the role of history in the securitization of national identities. Historical myths are the standard building blocks of national identities; challenging these myths can be presented as threats to the survival of the nation. The article also discusses potential forms of resistance against securitization of history/national identities. Illustrative examples from the political use of WWII history in Finland will be used to show the practical consequences of various conceptual choices.     

Education of the countryside at a crossroads: rural social movements and national policy reform in Brazil

This contribution explores the strategies used by popular movements seeking to advance social reforms, and the challenges once they succeed. It analyzes how a strategic alliance between the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) transformed the Ministry of Education's official approach to rural schooling. This success illustrates the critical role of international allies, political openings, framing, coalitions and state–society alliances in national policy reforms. The paper also shows that once movements succeed in advancing social reforms, bureaucratic tendencies such as internal hierarchy, rapid expansion and ‘best practices’ – in addition to the constant threat of cooptation – can prevent their implementation.     

Governing the souls of young women: exploring the perspectives of mothers on parenting in the age of sexualisation

The sexualisation of young women has emerged as a growing concern within contemporary western cultures. This has provoked adult anxieties that young women are growing up too fast by adopting inappropriate sexual practices and subjectivities. Psychological discourses have dominated, which position sexualisation as a corrupting force that infects the ‘true self’ of young women, so they develop in abnormal ways. This in turn allows psychological practices to govern how to parent against sexualisation within families. To explore this further, six mothers each with daughters aged between 8 and 12 took part in one to one semi-structured interviews designed to explore how they conceptualised and parented against the early sexualisation of young women. A Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis was employed, which suggested that the mother's talk was situated within a psychological discourse. This enabled sexualisation to be positioned as a corrupting force that disrupted the natural development of young women through deviant bodily practices (e.g. consuming sexualised goods), which prevented them from becoming their ‘true self’. Through the disciplinary gaze of psychology, class inequalities were reproduced where working class families were construed as ‘chavs’ who were bad parents and a site of contagion for sexualisation.