Between the lines: Surf texts,prosthetics, and everyday theory

The texts of surfing have been largely neglected in serious cultural commentary. Surfing, as with other texts in popular culture, cannot be adequately explained through the deployment of existing theoretical and analytical paradigms. We must move beyond de Certeau's psychoanalysis and Fiske's semiotic essentialism in order to explain satisfactorily the ideo‐political and consumer dimensions of textual surfing.     

The governmentalization of living: calculating global health

Abstract

The contemporary global health agenda has shifted emphasis from mapping disease patterns to calculating disease burden in efforts to gauge ‘the state of world health’. In this paper, we account for this shift by showing how a novel epidemiological style of thought emerged in the closing decades of the twentieth century. As is well known, the compilation and tabulation of vital statistics – death-rates, birth-rates, morbidity rates – contributed to the birth of the ‘population’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The population is reformatted from the middle of the twentieth century by ‘modified life tables’ made up of disability weightings, health state valuations, quality of life scores, disease burden estimates, etc. The problem of morbid death gives way to that of morbid living, made calculable through a metrics of ‘severity’, ‘disability’ and ‘impairment’. A series of new indices and scales (e.g. the QALY and DALY) has contributed to a governmentalization of living, in the course of which the social and personal consequences of living with disease come to be an object of political concern, and made knowable, calculable and thereby amenable to various strategies of intervention. We conclude by showing how this style of epidemiological thought has generated a new global visibility for brain disorders as their impact on individuals, health care systems and nations are calculated in novel ways.     

从真实权利人角度审视善意取得制度

善意取得制度,作为一项国家立法的政策取向,在通说以及我国的立法中,是以牺牲真实权利人的利益为基础来保证交易的安全和便捷,从而维护善意第三人的利益.而对于真实权利人而言,最直观的一点是对已有的物权的丧失,让真实权利人的利益受到了损害.应站在真实权利人角度,从另一个视角审视善意取得制度.     

文化建设要实现一元主导与多元共荣的均衡

主导文化建设是多元文化背景下确保文化秩序的时代课题。基于文化本性建设主导文化是文化建设的立足点,促进人类进步是其终极关怀,为此,必须克服文化权力化和文化功利化两大偏见,直面主导文化主导与多元文化发展间的张力关系,通过文化构成机制,既发挥主导文化的主导作用,又营造主导文化与多元文化共生共荣的文化情境。主导文化建设惟此才能步入正途。     

试析诸善冲突的根源和意义

所谓“诸善冲突”是指在人们意欲的各种好东西之间存在着对立抵触.由于它导致了人们只有通过取舍选择才有可能以放弃某种善为代价实现另一种善,从而形成善恶之间不可分割的紧密交织,结果就迫使人们不仅要诉诸善恶好坏的价值标准,而且还要诉诸是非对错的价值标准,并且从根本上决定了人的存在无法摆脱的内在有限性.     

哲学伦理学视野中的警察生活方式

追求幸福和快乐是人类最根本的生活目标,是人类社会发展的内在动力.警察生活方式,是指警察群体在一定的社会环境中如何生存和生活.警察生活的最高境界在于有效履行保障公众安居乐业职能的过程中,实现自身工作的快乐与生活的幸福.     

Diasporic citizenship and militarization: Punjabi soldiers in the world wars

This article delves into the uses of history and examines how the enlisting of Indian soldiers – particularly from Punjab – into the British Indian Army during the First and Second World Wars has been memorialized and remembered in contemporary Britain. This issue has become particularly salient in the light of the politics of the so-called ‘war on terror’ or ‘new imperialism’, which Paul Gilroy and Vron Ware argue has heightened tendencies towards militarism in British society. Using examples from the public sphere – remembrance day events, TV documentaries and army recruitment fairs – as well as interview material, I argue that Britain's Punjabi communities have been organizing in order to weave themselves into the national tapestry by memorializing role played by Punjabis in the First and Second World Wars – iconic to the national fantasy, using this forgotten history to demand recognition from the state and stake a claim for citizenship. In the ‘new imperialism’, however, it is not equally possible for Sikh and Muslim Punjabis to argue for their inclusion on the terms of militarized citizenship, and the various chords within the diaspora seem to be increasingly disharmonious, effacing their composite and shared colonial history.     

Everyday Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Spaces: The Creation of Social Legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina's Cultural Arenas

Abstract

The international community has long been criticized for its lack of social legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina and its creation of a dysfunctional public space in the light of people's everyday experiences of peace. This article contends that, as a result, legitimacy has been moved from such public spaces to semi-public spaces, wherein the public and the private are interrelated. One example is local cultural arenas, where hopes emerging in people's everyday lives are projected onto alternative visions of peace and a corresponding social contract. In that sense, cultural agencies have served as alternative social locations of legitimacy due to their closer connection to people's lives and needs.     

‘Big Men’ Rule: Presidential Power,Regime Type and Democracy in 30 African Countries

This article provides a systematic overview of the institutional basis of presidential power in 30 sub-Saharan African countries, using a broad comparative scheme to assess presidential power developed by Siaroff (2003). The dual purpose is, first, to compare the power of African presidents to patterns found by Siaroff for countries worldwide, looking particularly at the relation between regime type and presidential power; and second, to make a preliminary analysis of the political consequences of high levels of presidential power in the light of earlier theoretical claims associating it with regime problems such as democratic breakdown.

The article's comparative framework illustrates the high levels of institutional power of presidents in 30 African countries. As argued by Siaroff, regime type tells us little about presidential power; in these African cases, semi-presidential systems score even higher than presidential systems. One ‘parliamentary’ system also shows a high degree of presidential power. Moreover, there is very little difference in presidential power between democracies and non-democracies, and ‘minimal’ electoral democracies score higher on average than non-democracies and liberal democracies.

Examination of the consequences of high levels of presidential power also shows that more than a quarter (28.6 per cent) of such regimes experienced a democratic breakdown, although this is not a statistically significant level. A weak correlation is found between presidential power and freedom and democracy ratings, again not at a statistically significant level, while correlations with governance ratings are strong and statistically significant. A repeated measures test, however, does show a statistically significant relation with freedom and democracy. Although more research is needed, including a larger N and more variation in the independent variable, the evidence supports intuitive knowledge: a high degree of presidential power bodes ill for democracy and good governance in Africa.     

MASCULINITIES,PERSISTENCE, AND DESISTANCE

In life‐course criminology, when gender has been the focus of study, it has predominantly been treated as a variable. Studies that explore the gendered nature of criminal careers through the lived experiences of offenders are rare, even though these studies can make important contributions to our understanding of crime and the life course. Analyzing qualitative data, this article uses life‐history narratives of a small sample of male juvenile delinquents (N = 25), born in 1969–1974, to explore the possible link among masculinities, persistence, and desistance from crime. The findings of the study suggest that processes of persistence and desistance are imbued with age‐specific norms of what it means to “be a man” and successfully do masculinity in different stages of life. Analyzing these gender‐specific practices gives a deepened understanding of processes that underlie the offenders’ lives as they go through stages of continuity and change in crime. The findings of the study further suggest a complex intersection between gendered biographies and gendered structures, with fruitful contributions to life‐course criminology. The implications of these findings are discussed.