Culture and Symbols as Tools of Resistance

In 1918, when Estonia was proclaimed an independent republic, nearly one-sixth of all Estonians were living beyond its eastern border. The possibility of returning to Estonia was offered to these tens of thousands of people with the conclusion of the Peace Treaty of Tartu between Estonia and Soviet Russia in February 1920. The Republic of Estonia, which had just emerged from a war and was only beginning to rebuild its public sector, had to arrange this vast re-emigration. This article illustrates the problems that arose for Estonian state authorities in connection with offering citizenship to Estonians living in Soviet Russia and arranging their re-emigration in 1920–1923.     

中华和谐精神的形成原因、特征及在抗日民族解放战争中的作用

和谐是中华民族民族精神和文化传统的核心内容,对中国的历史发展起了重要的作用。抗日民族解放战争的胜利是中华民族团结抗战、一致对外的和谐精神的胜利,从逼蒋抗日到淞沪和福建抗战、察哈尔抗战、桂林抗战文化城的形成,充分体现了和谐团结在抗战中的作用。抗战胜利的历史经验对今天构建社会主义和谐社会提供了诸多启迪。     

Extending the Reach of Human Rights to Encompass Victims of Rape: M.C. V. Bulgaria

This note analyses a recent case of the European Court of Justice in which the applicant, a 14-year old rape victim, alleged that Bulgarian criminal law violated her rights under Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights in pursuing a practice of only prosecuting rape where there was evidence of the use of physical force and active resistance. In upholding the applicant’s claims, the Court re-affirmed the positive obligation on states to adopt measures to ensure that fundamental rights under the Convention were secured. In particular, in the case of rape, this required the enactment and application of criminal laws effectively prescribing all acts of non-consensual sex and not just those involving physical violence. In this way the Court affirmed not only that rape was, in essence, a violation of personal sexual autonomy but also that legal systems which failed adequately to protect against all forms of rape risked operating in breach of Convention obligations.Application no. 39272/98, 4 December 2003.     

朱德与太行精神的孕育和发扬

朱德同志在革命战争年代,曾率领八路军总部和三师主力,转战山西并指挥华北战役,和山西解放区军民共同度过了长达两年零七个月的峥嵘岁月。为太行精神的孕育和发扬做出了巨大的贡献,主要体现在朱德指挥华北抗战坚韧不拔的精神是太行精神的最初孕育、朱德指挥八路军与华北人民血肉相连的团结精神是太行精神的重要内容、朱德与华北军民顾全抗日大局的奋斗精神是太行精神的拓展发扬三个方面。     

Paraíso terrenal, mujeres bellas, gente cordial: Gender Performances and Narratives of Modernity in La Sierra

La Sierra (Martínez and Dalton, 2005), a portrait of a paramilitary-run community on Medellín's eastern edge, is both anthropological study and self-conscious creator of narratives. The documentary is both globally and locally inserted, and straddles both generic and public/private boundaries. The article discusses the film's self-conscious examination of gender performances, describing the way it plays out the conflicting demands of masculinity on the male body. It argues that the responses of feminine desire and identity to the various masculine models may subvert dominant codes through (re) citation and failed interpellation. Central to the article's argument is the notion that through female desire, the film performs Colombian undecidability surrounding masculine violence.     

Justice Under Global Capitalism?

Under conditions of polycentric globalisation, a positive concept of justice is definitively impossible. Justice is aimed at removing unjust situations, not creating just ones. The justice of fundamental rights coerces expansive social systems into self-restriction. Human rights in particular take the role of counter-principles to communicative violations of body and soul, a protest against inhumanities of communication, without it ever being possible to say positively what the conditions of humanly just communication might be. The article analyses some consequences of this view for social counter-movements and counter-institutions.

Weberian Public Administration Versus New Public Management in Eastern Europe: The Case of Romania

As a recent member of the European Union (EU), Romania aligned its public policies to Westernized models of civil service reform. This article critically analyzes the impact of Human Resource Management (HRM) models as compared to a Weberian Easternized public administration culture, which continues to display strong hierarchical relationships, rather than the “networked” governance favored by some Western European countries.

The focus will be on the development of HRM policies and practices, taking as a set of case studies Romanian central government organizations. The key problem to be addressed is to understand why such organizations remain locked in ineffective systems of personnel administration. Yet, Romania, along with other Eastern European states, has been exposed to international reform movements in public management through policy transfer. The article will look for evidence of New Public Management (NPM)-type practices, in addition to HRM.

Moreover, the countries of Eastern Europe are far from homogeneous, and so an understanding of both the institutional and cultural context is crucial to ascertain the acceptability of NPM. In the case of Romania, this article considers HRM developments in a multi-culturally influenced state, which has also experienced Socialist regimes. However, policy innovations have started to appear, not only as a consequence of the international diffusion of “good practice” and “policy learning, ” but also stemming from the demands of European directives. Thus, the aim of this article will be to assess the role of policy learning in relation to HR reform in the public service.     

Executive action to combat the rise of drug-resistant bacteria: is agricultural antibiotic use sufficiently addressed?

On September 18, 2014, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order titled Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria. The order demands a ‘strategic, coordinated, and sustained effort’ to detect, prevent, and control antibiotic resistance. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic-resistant infections are a rising health concern that result in at least two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths each year in the United States. The Executive Order and accompanying documents have been criticized for taking a weak stance against the use of antibiotics in agriculture; however, they include goals to promote antibiotic stewardship on farms, better surveillance of antibiotic use, and the development of alternatives to antibiotics. The criticisms are also unwarranted based on the current state of scientific evidence; nevertheless, there remain compelling reasons to limit the use of antibiotics in agriculture, and if fully implemented, the executive action is set to achieve this goal. This paper will explore why the criticisms are unwarranted, present the conflicting evidence on whether antibiotic use in farm animals poses a significant health threat to humans, offer other reasons to limit the use of antibiotics in livestock, and suggest ways that the government can maximize the efficacy of the proposed actions.     

Victim resistance and offender weapon effects in robbery

What happens when victims resist robbers? Logistic regression analysis of over 4500 sample robbery incidents reported in the 1979–1985 National Crime Surveys reveals the following about various forms of victim resistance. Self-protection (SP) of any kind apparently reduces the probability of the robbery being completed, i.e., the robber getting away with the victim's property. Armed resistance is more effective than unarmed resistance, and resistance with a gun, though relatively rare, is the most effective victim response of all. Resistance with a gun also appears to reduce the likelihood of the victim being injured, while two types of resistance appear to increase it: (1) unarmed physical force against the robber and (2) trying to get help, attract attention, or scare the robber away. The robber's possession of a gun appears to inhibit victim resistance, which can sometimes provoke a robber to attack; robber gun possession thereby reduces the probability of victim injury. However, even controlling for victim resistance, robber gun possession, is associated with a lower rate of injury to the victim. Finally, robbers with handguns are much more likely to complete their robberies, and those with knives and other weapons are somewhat more likely to do so, compared to unarmed robbers.     

Subalterns and the State in the Longue Durée: Notes from “The Rebellious Century” in the Bhil Heartland

Abstract

Focusing on recent debates over the ways in which subaltern groups engage with the state in India, the article proposes that it is imperative to historicise our conceptions of subaltern politics in India. More specifically, the argument is made that it is imperative to recognise that subaltern appropriations of the institutions and discourses of the state have a longer historical lineage than what is often proposed in critical work on popular resistance in rural India. The article presents a detailed analysis of Adivasi rebellions in colonial western India and argues that these took the form of a contentious negotiation of the incorporation of tribal communities into an emergent “colonial state space.” The conclusion presents a sketch of a Gramscian approach to the study of how subaltern politics proceeds in and through determinate state–society relations.