Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Political Implications (political + implication)
Selected AbstractsGlobal Lessons from the AIDS Pandemic: Economic, Financial, Legal and Political Implications,by Bradly J. Condon and Tapen SinhaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2009Karunesh Tuli No abstract is available for this article. [source] Demographic Change and Asian Dynamics: Social and Political ImplicationsASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Takashi INOGUCHI J11; D63; F2; H55; H56 This article describes the demographic change and its social and political implications in East and South-East Asia with a trajectory up to 2050. It selectively touches on inequalities, migration, social policy, and international security. In the course of this exercise, I present two hypotheses: one relating to the formation of the new middle class, and the other relating to the geriatric peace argument. The first hypothesis posits that when the growing inequalities in terms of per capita income aggravate the sense of happiness among the low- and middle-income strata as contrasted to high-income strata, the formation of a new middle class becomes more difficult. The second hypothesis posits that when the aging population carries a large demographic weight, it tends to be transformed into strong political voice, which is, in turn, translated into larger government spending on social policy items often accompanied by a likely decline in the defense expenditure budget. These hypotheses paint a provocative picture of East and South-East Asia in the next four decades, especially in the wake of the deepening economic difficulties prevailing over the entire globe. I present these hypotheses for further conceptual elaboration and empirical analysis. [source] Comment on "Demographic Change and Asian Dynamics: Social and Political Implications"ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Siow Yue CHIA No abstract is available for this article. [source] Comment on "Demographic Change and Asian Dynamics: Social and Political Implications"ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Takashi SHIRAISHI No abstract is available for this article. [source] Critical Evidence: The Politics of Trauma in French Asylum PoliciesETHOS, Issue 3 2007Didier Fassin However obvious it might seem today that victims of persecutions suffer from psychological consequences of the violence inflicted on them, its political implications are a recent phenomenon. In the last decade, asylum seekers in France, as in other European countries, have been more and more often subject to demands of psychiatric expertise to prove the cogency of their claim to the status of refugee. This social innovation results from the convergence of two processes: on the one hand, the rapid decline in the legitimacy of asylum, leading to increasing expectations for evidence to establish the reality of persecutions; on the other hand, the emergence of trauma as a nosographical category legitimizing the traces of violence. At the crossroads of these two histories, a social field, mainly occupied by NGOs, has developed to answer this new need for proof from state institutions, with an increasing specialization on victims of torture and on psychic trauma, the two dimensions being partially independent. The final paradox is, however, that in a context of generalized suspicion toward refugees, the recognition of trauma at a collective level is counterbalanced by its limited impact on the evaluation of individual cases. [source] An International Comparison of Socially Constructed Language Learning Motivation and BeliefsFOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 2 2009Sandra G. Kouritzin French; Japanese; relevant to all languages Abstract: In our global economy, it is important to understand all factors influencing successful language learning. A survey of more than 6,000 university students in Canada, Japan, and France revealed differences in language learning beliefs, attitudes, and motivations in the three countries. Learners in Canada and France exhibited primarily instrumental and integrative motivation, respectively, whereas learners from Japan displayed a different form, social capital motivation, in which knowledge of a foreign language carries value in and of itself. Knowledge of these different forms of motivation has pedagogical and political implications for language teachers. [source] ,GLOCAL' MOVEMENTS: PLACE STRUGGLES AND TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZING BY INFORMAL WORKERSGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2009Ilda Lindell ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the scalar practices of collectively organized informal workers and the political implications of such practices. It illustrates how the studied group organizes across scales , hence, a ,glocal movement', and stresses the importance of an analysis that integrates these multiple scales of collective organizing, as they may have a bearing on each other. In so doing, it contests a common tendency to analytically privilege one or other scale of resistance and agency. In particular, I argue that networking across scales may be of significance for local struggles and thus play a role in local politics. The transnational activities of the studied group assist it in challenging local power relations and dominant place projects that repress informal livelihood activities. This paper comprises a conceptual discussion of notions of scale, of conceptions of the spatialities and scales of resistance as well as of place, followed by an empirical illustration that refers to an association of informal vendors in Maputo, Mozambique, and its international connections. The analysis is based on interviews with vendors, leaders of the association and with the international partners of the association. [source] Historical and political implications of haemophilia in the Spanish royal familyHAEMOPHILIA, Issue 2 2003C. Ojeda-Thies Summary. ,The political implications of haemophilia in the marriage of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Princess Victoria Eugenie Battenberg of England have been reviewed in recent books on history. However, the fact that they had haemophilic sons also affected their personal relationship. In this article, we review the consequences haemophilia bore on their lives. We feel great compassion for families who suffer the illness, be it ordinary people or members of royalty; however, in this case, it can be said that when the disease affected a royal couple, the political consequences were great. [source] The household and entourage of Charles I of Anjou, king of the Regno, 1266,85HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 197 2004Jean H. Dunbabin This article attempts to reconstitute from the scrappy surviving records Charles I's household and court. For a conqueror, the choice of companions could have serious political implications. While Charles's immediate domestic circle was French in origin and organized on the example of Louis IX's household, he deliberately encouraged and paid for the attendance of men from Provence and the Regno, both in his travelling entourage and at his great court appearances at liturgical feasts. Beyond these intimates, he accepted into his fidelity, and therefore into his broader court circle, a wide range of talented individuals from all parts of his ,empire'. [source] Pharmacotherapy to Blunt Memories of Sexual Violence: What's a Feminist to Think?HYPATIA, Issue 3 2010ELISA A. HURLEY It has recently been discovered that propranolol,a beta-blocker traditionally used to treat cardiac arrhythmias and hypertension,might disrupt the formation of the emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and consequently prevent the onset of trauma-induced psychological injuries such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. One context in which the use of propranolol is generating interest in both the popular and scientific press is sexual violence. Nevertheless, feminists have so far not weighed in on propranolol. I suggest that the time is ripe for a careful feminist analysis of the moral and political implications of propranolol use in the context of sexual violence. In this paper, I map the feminist issues potentially raised by providing propranolol to victims of sexual assault, focusing in particular on the compatibility of propranolol use and availability with an understanding of the social and systematic dimensions of rape's harms. I do not deliver a final verdict on propranolol; in fact, I show that we do not yet have enough information about propranolol's effects to do so. Rather, I provide a feminist framework for evaluating the possibilities and perils opened up by therapeutic memory manipulation in the context of sexual violence against women. [source] Transforming Sacrifice: Irigaray and the Politics of Sexual DifferenceHYPATIA, Issue 4 2002ANNE CALDWELL This essay examines Irigaray's analysis of politics and the political implications of her critique of sacrificial orders that repress difference/matter. I suggest that her descriptions of a fluid "feminine" can be read as an alternative symbolic not dependent on repression. This idea is politically promising in opening a possibility for justice and a nonantagonistic intersubjectivity. I conclude by assessing Irigaray's concrete proposals for sexuate rights and a civil identity for women. [source] "More English than England itself": the simulation of authenticity in foreign language practice in JapanINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 3 2005Philip Seargeant This article examines the way in which the concept of ,authenticity' operates as a key motif in the construction of the symbolic cultural meaning of English as a foreign language in Japan. It reviews the way the term is used in a technical sense in language teaching and the political implications of its competing definitions within this context, then contrasts this with examples drawn from language institutions in Japan in which ideas of ,authenticity' are central to the way that English is sold to society. It is argued that the presentation of the language within these terms constructs and maintains elaborate simulations of English-language society within Japan, which produces an ideology that may be in direct conflict with the prevailing conception of the role of English as an international language. The article considers the effect that such social practice has on the role of English within Japan and the implications of this for theoretical discussion of the relationship between this global language and local culture. [source] Mortuary patterns in burial caves on Mangaia, Cook IslandsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 3 2003S. C. Antón Abstract The behavioural, cultural, and political implications of archaeological human remains in non-mortuary, possibly culinary, contexts requires that we understand the range of mortuary practices in a particular region. Although several rockshelter sites on Mangaia, Cook Islands have yielded burned, fragmentary human bones in earth ovens that seem to support archaeological models and ethnohistoric accounts of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism, the absence of data on the range of Mangaian mortuary patterns obscures these interpretations. We describe burial patterns based on 40 above-ground interments representing at least 92 individuals in caves of Mangaia, Cook Islands, in order to begin to develop an island-wide perspective on mortuary patterns. Sampling both pre- and post-European contact sites we found that multiple interments dominate probable pre-contact burials (73%, 19 of 26) and single interments dominate post-contact contexts (80%, eight of ten burials), probably reflecting the influence of Christianity on mortuary ritual. Subadults were more frequent in all post-contact contexts suggesting alternative burial places, probably church cemeteries, for adults. Burial cave remains are broadly consistent with ethnohistoric accounts of interment in caves, however, they also illustrate additional burial practices and differences between time periods, such as primary body position and the role of multiple-individual interments, which are not discussed ethnohistorically. The mortuary practices in Mangaian burial caves differ from burials associated with marae and seem completely unrelated to the presence of highly fragmentary and burnt human remains in pre-contact rockshelter middens elsewhere on the island. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Mumbai's Development Mafias: Globalization, Organized Crime and Land DevelopmentINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2008LIZA WEINSTEIN Abstract For over a decade, researchers have analyzed the effects of liberalization and globalization on urban development, considering the local political implications of shifts at the national and global scales. Taking the case of Mumbai, this article examines how the past 15 years of political reforms in India have reshaped property markets and the politics of land development. Among the newly empowered actors, local criminal syndicates, often with global connections, have seized political opportunities created by these shifts to gain influence over land development. The rise of Mumbai's organized criminal activity in the 1950s was closely linked to India's macroeconomic policies, with strict regulation of imports fuelling the growth of black market smuggling. Liberalization and deregulation since the early 1990s have diminished demand for smuggled consumer goods and criminal syndicates have since diversified their operations. With skyrocketing real estate prices in the 1990s, bolstered by global land speculation, the mafia began investing in property development. Supported by an illicit nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and the police, the mafia has emerged as a central figure in Mumbai's land development politics. The article examines the structural shifts that facilitated the criminalization of land development and the implications of mafia involvement in local politics. Résumé Depuis plus d'une décennie, les chercheurs ont analysé les effets de la libéralisation et de la mondialisation sur l'aménagement urbain en étudiant les implications politiques locales de transformations effectuées à l'échelle nationale et planétaire. Prenant le cas de Mumbai, cet article examine comment les réformes politiques des quinze dernières années en Inde ont reconfiguré les marchés immobiliers et les politiques d'aménagement foncier. Parmi les nouveaux acteurs, les syndicats du crime locaux, opérant souvent dans des réseaux internationaux, ont saisi les occasions politiques créées par ces changements pour gagner en influence sur l'aménagement foncier. A Mumbai, l'activité accrue du crime organisé dans les années 1950 était étroitement liée aux politiques macroéconomiques de l'Inde, une réglementation stricte des importations alimentant l'essor de la contrebande sur le marché noir. Depuis le début des années 1990, libéralisation et déréglementation ont réduit la demande pour les biens de consommation de contrebande, poussant les syndicats du crime à diversifier leurs opérations. Face à la montée en flèche des prix de l'immobilier dans les années 1990, aidée par la spéculation foncière mondiale, la mafia a investi dans la promotion immobilière. Soutenue par un réseau illégal de politiciens, bureaucrates et policiers, elle est donc devenue un personnage central des politiques d'urbanisme à Mumbai. L'article étudie les transformations structurelles qui ont facilité la criminalisation du secteur foncier, et les implications de la présence de la mafia dans la politique locale. [source] Immigrant Communities and Civil War*INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2009David D. Laitin This paper explains why international migrants, who face numerous security and cultural threats in their host societies, are almost never implicated in civil war violence. This is quite different from situations of internal migration, which often set off violence that escalates to civil war proportions. The paper first lays out the stark contrast between the political implications of external and internal migration based on data adapted from the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset. It then explores the reasons for the low incidence of civil war violence for international migrants through an examination of three cases: Bahrain, which has a large expatriate community without political rights that has been politically quiescent; Estonia, where some 30 percent of the population are disaffected Russian-speakers linked to post-World War II migrations from other republics of the Soviet Union; and Pakistan, where the immigrant Muhajirs are a partial exception to the general pattern outlined in this paper. It concludes with a general statement of the relationship between immigration and rebellion, where the level of grievances is less consequential than the conditions that make insurgency pay off. [source] The Globalization of Taxation?INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2003Electronic Commerce, the Transformation of the State The anticipated growth of new communications technologies, including the Internet and other digital networks, will make it increasingly difficult for states to tax global commerce effectively. Greater harmonization and coordination of national tax policies will likely be required in the coming years in order to address this problem. Given that the history of the state is inseparable from the history of taxation, this "globalization of taxation" could have far-reaching political implications. The modern state itself emerged out of a fiscal crisis of medieval European feudalism, which by the 14th and 15th centuries was increasingly incapable of raising sufficient revenues to support the mounting expenses of warfare. If new developments in the technology of commerce are now undermining the efficiency of the state as an autonomous taxing entity, fiscal pressures may produce a similar shift in de facto political authority away from the state and toward whatever international mechanisms are created to expedite the taxation of these new forms of commerce. [source] Unemployment May Be Lower if Unions Bargain over Wages and EmploymentLABOUR, Issue 1 2002Hartmut Egger This paper addresses the question under which circumstances unemployment can be lower if unions bargain over wages and employment in a general equilibrium framework. Thereby, it turns out that the unemployment rate may negatively depend on the wage rate, if the unemployment compensation scheme contains a constant real term in addition to the replacement ratio component. This is, compared with a pure replacement ratio scheme, the more plausible formalization of the real world's compensation systems, at least for European countries. Besides the theoretical analysis, the paper also derives political implications by identifying the relevant parameters for the decision on whether weakening unions will be a good strategy for an economy to overcome its unemployment problem. [source] The Reintroduction of Ethics to Eighteenth-Century Literary StudiesLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 7 2010Elizabeth Kraft The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a ,turn to ethics' in literary criticism in general and in criticism of the literature of the long 18th century in particular. Wayne Booth's The Company We Keep was instrumental in turning our attention to the relationship between books and readers, a relationship that he figured as a ,friendship' with the kinds of ethical demands that attend all friendships. A highly regarded work, Company influenced subsequent studies, such as my Character and Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Comic Fiction, but it was not until critics such as Melvyn New and Donald Wehrs began to situate literary analysis in terms drawn from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas that ,ethical criticism' of the field would become an identifiable ,school' of 18th-century studies. Building on, but diverging from, the political emphases of race, class, and gender, ethical critics insist on the ,otherness' of the text and its resistance to our ideologies and assumptions. My Women Novelists and the Ethics of Desire, for example, reads the works of women writers as statements of ethical agency rather than as evidence of political objectification. Edward Tomarken's Genre and Ethics similarly attends to the voices of literary works in their own contexts, meeting them face-to-face (in Levinasian terms) before asking questions regarding political implications or assumptions. The ,turn to ethics' is not a turn away from politics, however, for the impact of the ethical encounter will have real-world consequences. Therefore, ecocriticism and disability studies are likely to become growth areas in 18th-century ethical readings in the near future as these concerns surfaced in the period itself and are two subjects that dominate our own social, political, and ethical lives as well. [source] Power, Politics, and Pecking Order: Technological Innovation as a Site of Collaboration, Resistance, and AccommodationMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005JAMES N. DAVIS The author summarizes and interprets data collected while he was a visiting scholar in a foreign language (FL) department at a large U.S. public research university. This qualitative case study focuses on: (a) the process of developing widely acclaimed Web-based beginning FL teaching software, and (b) the political implications of the development team's success within their host department. As the team forged strategic alliances across the campus and received substantial funding through their university's technology initiatives, certain traditional intradepartmental power relationships (especially between language- and literature-teaching faculty) were destabilized. The most striking outcomes of the events described here were the subversion of longstanding rules and procedures for granting tenure and promotion and the empowerment of the beginning program coordinator and his associates. The findings of the present research are framed in terms of theoretical constructs proposed by Jordan (1999) and Bourdieu (1988). The conclusion includes suggestions for consumers and creators of large-scale technology projects. [source] Linguistic Anthropology in 2008: An Election-Cycle GuideAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2009Paja Faudree ABSTRACT Loosely following the structure of the U.S. election cycle, I identify some of the more important institutions and events that have recently served as venues for field-building scholarly practices and processes in linguistic anthropology. I examine various trends and concerns animating recent publications on language and social life. I discuss the ongoing impact on the field of recent major works that attempt to codify methodological and theoretical approaches to the intersection of language and society. I also consider some of linguistic anthropology's emergent ventures, including new collaborative projects and new proposals for interdisciplinary work. Finally, I discuss some of the political implications of academic specialization, disciplinary boundaries, and impending "generational shift," both in the subdiscipline and the academy generally. I close by raising questions about future directions and possibilities for research in linguistic anthropology and other interdisciplinary enterprises. [Keywords: linguistic anthropology, interdisciplinarity, linguistic ideology, semiotic practices, linguistic variation] [source] Articulated Knowledges: Environmental Forms after Universality's DemiseAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 1 2005TIMOTHY K. CHOY Critiques of universalism require rethinking when confronted with environmental political arenas, in which the very concepts of "universality" and "particularity" are in a constant process of self-conscious deployment. In this article, I attend to the analytic and political implications of such deployments in a recent incinerator controversy in Hong Kong. I suggest that an aesthetic of local appropriateness and its formal requirement of simultaneous universal and particular truth value normalize the politics of environmental expertise such that the only legible form for counterknowledge is one of articulated knowledges. To understand how the knowledges emergent in an NGO,village collaboration were scaled, linked, and mobilized, I analyze a translation of expert knowledge and the event's metapragmatic effects. A subsequent account of unarticulated knowledges emphasizes the political-economic conditions that limit whose knowledges can count as particular in articulations of counterexpertise. [source] Citizen minds, citizen bodies: the citizenship experience and the government of mentally ill personsNURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2010Amelie Perron RN PhD Abstract The concept of citizenship is becoming more and more prominent in specific fields, such as psychiatry/mental health, where it is constituted as a solution to the issues of exclusion, discrimination, and poverty often endured by the mentally ill. We argue that such discourse of citizenship represents a break in the history of psychiatry and constitutes a powerful strategy to counter the effects of equally powerful psychiatric labelling. However, we call into question the emancipatory promise of a citizenship agenda. Foucault's concept of governmentality is helpful in understanding the production of the citizen subject, its location within the ,art of government', as well as the ethical and political implications of citizenship in the context of mental health. [source] People's Exit in North Korea: New Threat to Regime Stability?PACIFIC FOCUS, Issue 2 2010Kyung-Ae Park As suggested in a growing literature that securitizes the phenomenon of refugee migration and analyzes it as a national as well as a regional security issue, the growing number of North Korean border-crossers has far-reaching political implications for both North Korea and the international community. Studies have argued that refugees could contribute significantly to democratic change in their home countries by assisting and actively participating in the struggle of the domestic opposition, even sparking regime instability and eventual regime breakdown. Much of the North Korean refugee research has focused on the human rights issues faced by the refugees, but a largely unexplored area of the refugee research concerns the political consequences of the refugee flight for the current regime in Pyongyang. This article examines whether North Korean refugees are expected to play the role of political opposition in exile by raising the following four questions: (i) Are the refugees political dissidents? (ii) Are they a resourceful critical mass? (iii) Does exit always lead to regime instability? and (iv) Would China and South Korea encourage exile politics against the current North Korean regime? The article contends that the North Korean refugee community does not currently represent a critical mass that can trigger instability of the Pyongyang regime. Most of the North Korean refugees are not political dissidents, nor have they organized into any resourceful critical mass capable of generating a threat to their home country. In addition, people's exit does not necessarily destabilize the regime as it can sometimes yield a positive political effect by driving out dissidents' voices. Furthermore, several of the receiving countries, in particular, China and South Korea, would not encourage exile dissident movements against North Korea for fear of Pyongyang's collapse. The North Korean regime's stability does not seem to be threatened by the current refugee situation, although the potential of refugees becoming a critical threat should not be discounted should people's exit ever reach the point of developing into an uncontrollable mass exodus. [source] Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition I: Foundational ConceptsPHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2010Mary I. Bockover Confucianism conceives of persons as being necessarily interdependent, defining personhood in terms of the various roles one embodies and that are established by the relationships basic to one's life. By way of contrast, the Western philosophical tradition has predominantly defined persons in terms of intrinsic characteristics not thought to depend on others. This more strictly and explicitly individualistic concept of personhood contrasts with the Confucian idea that one becomes a person because of others; where one is never a person independently or in and of oneself but develops into one only in community. This article surveys some differences between Confucian and Western ideas of self and their connection to ethics mainly in light of the relational self of the Confucian Analects and Mencius. A Philosophy Compass article called Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition: A Comparative Analysis of Personhood (CEWII) will follow, that examines how the more individualistic way of conceiving of personhood in the West has had moral and political implications that differ, and even conflict, with those of Confucianism. [Correction added after online publication 31 May 2010: Sentence changed.] [source] If Mozart had Died at Your Age: Psychologic Versus Statistical InterencePOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2006Richard Ned Lebow In an alternative world, Mozart lived to 65 and, as a result, neither World War nor the Holocaust happened. Two contemporary Germans in this world debate the implications of the counterfactual of Mozart dying young and cannot begin to conceive of the horrors of our twentieth century. A imaginary critic with a structural orientation reviews the story and challenges its premise. He denies that artistic changes could have far-reaching political implications and uses the laws of probability to show the vanishingly low likelihood of the alternate future described by the main character of the story. The author responds with a defense of his counterfactual as an exercise in psychologic, where credibility is achieved through vividness. [source] Trauma as a metaphor: the politics of psychotherapy after September 11PSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 1 2005Karen SeeleyArticle first published online: 9 JAN 200 Abstract This paper explores the links between mental health practice and politics by examining the implications of turning persons harmed by an act of mass violence into patients with psychiatric disorders, and of prescribing psychotherapy to treat reactions to terrorism. It first considers the interpretative aspects of diagnosis, the social and political implications of particular diagnostic categories, the history of PTSD, and the phenomenon of medicalization. It then looks at the ways psychotherapists privatize social and political experience by emphasizing the personal consequences of community catastrophes, and by helping individuals transform collective history into personal narratives. In closing, it asks whether mental health discourses depoliticize experience, thereby discouraging political engagement and the development of political consciousness. Copyright © 2005 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source] Speculating on mysteries: religion and politics in King LearRENAISSANCE STUDIES, Issue 2 2002Frankie Rubinstein In a play about a pagan king and a mismanaged kingdom, where immorality, betrayal, civil strife and expectation of foreign intervention were omnipresent and the political landscape was beset by intrigue and domestic and foreign spies, Shakespeare created a surrogate for sixteenth and seventeenth century England. King Lear deals with theological ,mysteries' and doctrinal disputes and their political implications. Shakespeare exploits the fused religious and sexual language that was a tool in the deadly disputes, daringly conflating the sacrilegious and the religious: cannibalism is shorthand for the mystery of the Eucharist, and astrology, for divine influence. The pivotal speech of Act V, sc. iii, 9,20, alludes metaphorically to the profound religious and political issues of the Catholic,Protestant controversy; for example, King Lear takes upon himself ,the mystery of things' in his role as one of ,God's spies', in which we hear, also, ,God's (s)pies' or magpies, whose black and white plumage led to their being a frequent contemporary mockery of bishops in their black and white garb. Such crucial phrases and the punning changes Shakespeare rings on them lead to the core of the play and the divine denouement to come. Man's , and woman's , passing judgement on their fellows, presumptuous playing at God, and pretensions to the mantle of Christ are treated with a religious irony and irreverent levity in proportion to the moral falseness and religious and political bigotry of the times. [source] The Afghan War and ,postmodern' memory: commemoration and the dead of Helmand1THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2010Anthony King Abstract Since 2006, Britain has been fighting an intense military campaign in Helmand in which over 200 soldiers have been killed. The article examines the way in which twentieth-century commemorative rituals, which mourned the sacrifice of anonymous individual soldiers for the nation, have been superseded by new lapidary conventions which fundamentally revise the status of the soldier in public imagination. In acts of remembrance today, soldiers are personalized and domesticated, remembered as fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. The article concludes by considering the political implications of this revision of public understanding. [source] Economic Inequality and Intolerance: Attitudes toward Homosexuality in 35 DemocraciesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2008Robert Andersen Using hierarchical linear models fitted to data from the World Values Survey and national statistics for 35 countries, this article builds on the postmaterialist thesis by assessing the impact of economic inequality across and within nations on attitudes toward homosexuality. It provides evidence that tolerance tends to decline as national income inequality rises. For professionals and managers, the results also support the postmaterialist argument that economic development leads to more tolerant attitudes. On the other hand, attitudes of the working class are generally less tolerant, and contrary to expectations of the postmaterialist thesis, are seemingly unaffected by economic development. In other words, economic development influences attitudes only for those who benefit most. These findings have political implications, suggesting that state policies that have the goal of economic growth but fail to consider economic inequality may contribute to intolerant social and political values, an attribute widely considered detrimental for the health of democracy. [source] Demographic Change and Asian Dynamics: Social and Political ImplicationsASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Takashi INOGUCHI J11; D63; F2; H55; H56 This article describes the demographic change and its social and political implications in East and South-East Asia with a trajectory up to 2050. It selectively touches on inequalities, migration, social policy, and international security. In the course of this exercise, I present two hypotheses: one relating to the formation of the new middle class, and the other relating to the geriatric peace argument. The first hypothesis posits that when the growing inequalities in terms of per capita income aggravate the sense of happiness among the low- and middle-income strata as contrasted to high-income strata, the formation of a new middle class becomes more difficult. The second hypothesis posits that when the aging population carries a large demographic weight, it tends to be transformed into strong political voice, which is, in turn, translated into larger government spending on social policy items often accompanied by a likely decline in the defense expenditure budget. These hypotheses paint a provocative picture of East and South-East Asia in the next four decades, especially in the wake of the deepening economic difficulties prevailing over the entire globe. I present these hypotheses for further conceptual elaboration and empirical analysis. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||