Group Buying on the Upsurge

正LAST month I was invited out for a Korean barbecue by a 23-year-old Chinese friend of mine,Huang Xuesong.I gladly accepted the invitation and we had dinner together.After a good meal,it was time to pay the bill.As I rummaged in my bag for my purse,my friend stopped me:"No,it’s okay.I’ve already paid over the Internet,"he said.I won-     

The Mujahideen in Bosnia: the foreign fighter as cosmopolitan citizen and/or terrorist

This article explores the idea of the Mujahideen in Bosnia as ‘cosmopolitan citizens’. During the Balkan War in the early 1990s, these foreign fighters flocked to Bosnia in order to take up arms alongside those whom they understood to be their besieged Muslim brethren. Although this act of transborder mobilization can be framed as an act of cosmopolitan citizenship, the subsequent ‘problem’ of the Mujahideen in a post-9/11 context destabilized their original cosmopolitan act through a re-enactment of borders and the revocation of their (literal) citizenship. Within the larger post-9/11 narrative, where the Mujahideen must necessarily be understood as terrorists/potential terrorists, they are an interesting point of study in an examination of what can be seen as the sinister side of transnational citizenship, and they expose what Appadurai (A. Appadurai, 2006. Fear of small numbers: an essay on the geography of anger. Durham: Duke University Press.) calls our ‘fear of small numbers’. Particularly compelling is that the post-9/11 Mujahid is an unsympathetic figure, and is always already a questionable candidate for ‘citizenship’ as it is commonly understood. Furthermore, his (sic) original ‘cosmopolitan’ act suggests that, although the ‘cosmopolitan ideal’ is the achievement of a citizenship that transcends or escapes borders, the cosmopolitical must nevertheless be assigned value in order to be ethically intelligible.     

(Im)possible citizens: Canada's ‘citizenship bonanza’ and its boundaries

This article discusses a recent amendment to the Canadian Citizenship Act, which retroactively restores or gives Canadian citizenship to ‘hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting foreigners, most of them Americans’ (P. Dvorak, 2009. Canada issues a wake-up call: you may be a citizen. The Wall Street Journal, 17 April. Available from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993183347727843.html) while also restricting the inheritance of Canadian citizenship to the first-generation born abroad. Aiming to redress past discriminations based on gender, marital status and dual citizenship while simultaneously curtailing modern citizenship's dubious ius sanguinis provision, the new law might be interpreted as perpetuating Canada's reputation as a world leader in interethnic relations and human rights. A contextual analysis of the new law, by contrast, shows that the opposite is the case: the boundaries that are being drawn by Canada's new citizenship regime follow the now common trend of re-ethnicization and securitization. Specifically, they conflate kinship and Whiteness, thereby leading, on the one hand, to the construction of possible citizens whose authenticity and loyalty to the nation are unquestioned. On the other hand, within the logic of the new laws and their surrounding discourses, non-White, non-Christian ‘impossible citizens’ emerge, whose lack of loyalty and instrumental use of their Canadian passport are said to be eroding the value of citizenship from within.     

Parental Smoking-specific Communication,Adolescents’ Smoking Behavior and Friendship Selection

In this study, we investigated whether parental smoking-specific communication is related to adolescents’ friendship-selection processes. Furthermore, we investigated whether adolescents and their best friends influence each other over time, and what role parents play in this process. In the present study we used data from the Family and Health project in which at baseline 428 full families participated. In this 2-year, three-wave longitudinal study data were available from fathers, mothers, early adolescents (aged M = 13.4 years, SD = .50), and middle adolescents (aged M = 15.2 years, SD = .60). The majority of the participating adolescents were of Dutch origin (>95%). There was an almost equal distribution of boys and girls, and adolescents with lower, middle, and higher educational levels were equally represented. Analyses were conducted by means of Structural Equation Modeling. Results demonstrate that a high quality of the smoking-specific communication is related to a lower likelihood of adolescent smoking, whereas the frequency is positively associated with adolescent smoking. Both the quality and frequency of parental smoking-specific communication were related to adolescents’ selective affiliation with (non-)smoking friends. The findings suggest that parental smoking-specific communication is associated with adolescent smoking directly but also indirectly by influencing the friends the adolescents will associate with.

论法院之友制度及其在我国的移植障碍

作为现代审判机构民主措施之一的英美法院之友制度,颇为我国诉讼法学界所关注与推崇,有论者甚至建议将之移植到我国以推动审判的民主化进程。然而,尽管该制度的某些观念和因素可用于完善我国现有制度,但从我国的现有国情来看,完整地移植法院之友制度尚无必要。     

“朋友·伙伴”意象下美国台海政策的局限—以美国对“入联公投”的政策态度为例

美国长期以来对台湾形成了“朋友·伙伴”的固有意象。在美国和台湾针对“入联公投”的博弈中，美国不断强渊“入联公投”不影响美台“朋友”与“伙伴”关系的性质，也没有对陈水扁当局采取有实质意义的惩罚措施，使美国的政策有不少保留的空间。美国对“朋友·伙伴”意象的盲目认知和坚持，无法阻止台湾某些政治人物和“台独”势力的挑衅行为，无法取信于中国政府和两岸人民，也不利于美国政府的决策者加深对台湾问题重要性和敏感性的认知，不利于台海地区长期的和平、稳定与发展。     

司法文明四辨

司法文明为制度文明应有之意。我国实现司法文明过程中 ,应当注意司法的消极性、中立性 ,法院不能主动发现已决案件确有错误进而依职权发动再审。法院在个案审理过程中 ,应当注意避免司法审判沦为权力审判、新闻审判的附庸 ,当前特别要注意我国普遍存在着的以民意关注程度 ,决定案件裁判结果的非正常现象 ,建议以法官之友的制度设定形式 ,将民意关注司法纳入正当法律程序     

Winter Flings

正Summer flings.Those summer days of fun under the sun,careless and worryfree,drifting away into those breezy summer nights. It's a concept somewhat romanticized by the media but still pretty common in Western societies,and seemingly other cultures infiltrated by Western media.One can only imagine my surprise when my friend told me there were such things as winter flings too. That's right,winter flings.Strange as it seems, this was introduced to me by a friend from Toronto,a city on the east coast of Canada.     

If You Are the One: Love at First Sigh

正"Let’s go out for a drink tonight,what do you say?"I ask my friend Anne-Sophie.She answers:"Oh no,sorry,I’d prefer to stay home tonight,to watch Feicheng Wurao on TV."THIS conversation made me realize just how enthralling this show must be,for many people.Indeed,each episode–broadcast on Jiangsu TV every Saturday and Sunday evening–scores almost 40 million viewers,not including those who watch it online after its initial airing.Feicheng Wurao,translated into English as If You Are the One,is among the three most popular TV shows in China.     

"法庭之友"与公益诉讼

在我国公益诉讼的制度设计中,"法庭之友"已经成为一个新元素被纳入制度构想.根据"法庭之友"制度,非案件当事人可以向法庭提供与案件相关的背景信息、不为法院所知的案件事实或法律适用意见.将该制度与我国现有的专家辅助人制度进行比较,有助于我们更进一步了解"法庭之友".在公益诉讼中引进"法庭之友"不仅有助于实现司法民主,更具体体现了"支持起诉"原则.