Search

This paper explores how classed identities are constituted through the socio-sartorial inscriptions of a working-class school and community in an Irish city in the twenty-first century. The data of the paper were generated through a wider three-year critical ethnography of a school community. The focus here is upon the identity work of the participants as it is connected to the school and the wider community. The article makes a particular contribution to the conversation of cultural constructions of class; in this instance through socio-sartorialism and how cultural capital is embodied and performed through people. The paper offers illustrative cases formed from participant interviews and an analysis of how socio-sartorial inscription contributes to the making of class in educational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of China's economy has increased China's demand for imports required to meet the increased demand for raw materials in its industries. In 2006, China became the largest export destination for South Africa. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between China's economic growth and South Africa's exports to China. The paper aims to find out whether there is any significant relationship between China's economic growth and South Africa's exports to China. Using an import demand function for China, we employ an ARDL framework to analyze the research problem based on quarterly data covering the period 1992 to 2015. We find no evidence that there is a significant relationship between China's economic growth and South Africa's exports to China. However, the results do show that there is a positive long-run relationship between South Africa's exports to China and the price of South Africa's exports. The positive coefficient of South Africa's export prices indicates lack of price sensitivity in terms of South Africa's exports to China. Based on the results, we recommend that South Africa should find ways to enable its exports sector to benefit more from the high economic growth in China. Among other ways, this could be achieved through negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) between South Africa and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a localized conflict over a non-demarcated stretch of the Uganda–South Sudan boundary in 2014 as a starting point for examining the history of territorial state formation on either side of this border since its colonial creation in 1914. It argues that the conflict was an outcome of the long-term constitution of local government territories as patches of the state, making the international border simultaneously a boundary of the local state. Some scholars have seen the limited control of central governments over their borderlands and the intensification of local territorialities as signs of African state fragmentation and failure. But the article argues that this local territoriality should instead be seen as an outcome of ongoing state-formation processes in which state territory has been co-produced through local engagement and appropriation. The paper is thus of wider relevance beyond African or postcolonial history, firstly in contributing a spatial approach to studies of state formation which have sought to replace centre–periphery models with an emphasis on the centrality of the local state. Secondly it advances the broader field of borderlands studies by arguing that international boundaries have been shaped by processes of internal territorialisation as well as by the specific dynamics of cross-border relations and governance. Thirdly it advocates a historical and processual approach to understanding territory, arguing that the patchwork of these states has been fabricated and reworked over the past century, entangling multiple, changing forms and scales of territory in the ongoing constitution of state boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumen A partir de datos de encuestas de hogares, los autores observan que las primas por calificación aumentaron en toda China entre 1995 y 2002, pero solo en las provincias costeras entre 2002 y 2007, año en que estas también registraron mayor desigualdad salarial y contribuyeron más a la desigualdad salarial urbana total. Según un modelo de efectos fijos estimado, la privatización explica la evolución del primer periodo, y la integración de China en la economía mundial, la del segundo. Reducir la desigualdad exige, según los autores, la reforma del Registro de Población Hukou, que obstaculiza la movilidad de los trabajadores calificados y posiblemente también el crecimiento. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In British social mobility discourse, the rhetoric of fair access can obscure wider issues of social justice. While socio‐economic inequalities continue to shape young people's lives, sociological work on class dis‐identification suggests social class is less obviously meaningful as a source of individual and collective identity. This paper considers subjective understandings of the post‐16 education and employment landscape in this context, drawing on qualitative research exploring the aspirations of young men and women as they completed compulsory education in north‐west England, and the hopes their parents had for their future. It shows how unequal access to resources shaped the older generation's expectations for their children, although this was rarely articulated using the explicit language of class. Their children recognized they faced a difficult job market but embraced the idea that success was possible through hard work. Both generations drew moral boundaries and made judgments based on implicit classed discourses about undeserving others, while at the same time disavowing class identities. There was a more explicit recognition of gender inequality among the parents framed with reference to hopes for greater freedom for their daughters. Opportunities and inequalities were thus understood in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper pursues an inquiry into the relationship between ethnicity and development in the largest authoritarian country in the contemporary world, the People’s Republic of China. It engages the theoretical literature on ethnic diversity and development in general, but also pays special attention to political economy logics unique to authoritarian systems. Focusing on the western part of China over a decade since the launch of China’s Western Development Program ( xibu da kaifa ) in 2000, this paper utilizes the data from two censuses (2000 and 2010) together with nighttime streetlight imagery data to analyze the overall relationship between ethnicity and development provision. It also analyzes changes in such a relationship during this period. The paper finds that ethnic minority concentration negatively correlates with economic development in both the years 2000 and 2010 across the western provinces. It also finds that counties in non-autonomous provinces, which are historically more integrated with the rest of China than autonomous provinces, have a positive and systematic correlation between changes in ethnic minority concentration and changes in development during the 10-year period. The counties in autonomous provinces, on the other hand, show the opposite trend. Using three case studies of Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang, the paper concludes that although there is in general a tendency for ethnic minority concentrated areas to be less developed, ultimately which groups prosper more or less depends upon specific economic development and which political control logics the Chinese state implements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The axial age debate has put big questions of social and cultural change back on the agenda of sociology. This paper takes this development as an occasion to reflect on how social thought works with (and against) nineteenth-century intellectual traditions in its efforts to understand history on a macro scale. Karl Jaspers, who initially formulated the axial age thesis in The Origin and Goal of History, revised the Hegelian account of world history by broadening the scope of the narrative to encompass all civilizations participating in the events of the first millennium BCE that saw the rise of major philosophical and religious traditions. However, his account, like the earlier philosophical accounts he seeks to improve upon, privileges cognitive developments over material practices and social interactions, and as such offers little to those seeking to make sense of how cultural patterns interact with others and spread. Here another social theorist engaging with Hegel, W. E. B. Du Bois, provides a helpful contrast. His account of the development of double-consciousness in 'Of Our Spiritual Strivings,' the opening chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, helps us to understand experiences of encounter and the perduring historical effects they may have. Du Bois' relational theory reminds us of the importance of unpacking abstractions and understanding processes in terms of social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to analyse the contentious role of drone strikes in the context of the options available in the on-going fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and the Af-Pak region. There are significant legal issues here, both in terms of human rights and in terms of state sovereignty and independence, though there are those who argue that the concept of a “just war” provides adequate justification. Pragmatists focus on effectiveness. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, there are many individuals who lend their support to the drone attacks because they see no other alternative(s), given that the prospects for dialogue seems so unpromising. But however many jihadist leaders are killed, in drone strikes, other effective counter-insurgency action may provide a better option. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The UK prime minister is committed to leading the first government ‘in modern history to leave office having reduced the overall burden of regulation rather than increased it’. In our paper in Public Money & Management in 2012 (Vol. 32, No. 4), we set out the role of the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) in the government's better regulation agenda (Gibbons and Parker, 2012). Since then a number of changes to the regulatory process has been introduced. In this article we describe the main changes to the UK's regulatory processes introduced since July 2012, including changes to the way the RPC operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper is presented which was written for the 2010 conference the International Congress of Historical Sciences about the role in modern history of the global financial crisis. It discusses whether the period from 1989 to 2008 can be viewed as a definable era, the notion of learning from history, and the global financial crisis viewed as a crisis for capitalism.

In modern history Northern Ireland has been home to uneasy community relations. The construction of a collective identity which embraces ethnic and religious diversity, and attracts the politically antagonized protestant and catholic communities seems to be a key to the settlement of conflicts. One of the factors preventing a firmly established inclusive Northern Irish identity is disorientation among protestants concerning their national belonging. Although by now it is only political loyalty to the United Kingdom that most Ulster Protestants share in a sense if Britishness, they also feel distanced from a communion with Irishness. Some academics argue that the present alienation of Northern Protestants from Irish culture results from the policy of the early Irish Free State which in the 1920s restricted the scope of Irishness to the catholic population. In fact, a deeper insight into Irish nationalism at the turn of the 20th century will reveal that several leading intellectuals preoccupied with the construction of a liberated identity for a culturally and linguistically colonized Irish nation were, in fact, protestants. Drawing a conclusion from the failure of previous fights for political freedom, these protestant intellectuals attempted to define the Irish nation in a cultural sense thus aiming to shape an independent Irish self- consciousness. The following paper is concerned with approaches to an ethnically and religiously inclusive Irish identity present in protestant writings of a cultural-nationalistic orientation at the dawn of the 20th century, and explores those linguistic identities the authors, in their different nationversions, associate with a culturally sovereign but largely English-speakingIrish population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong tradition in democratic theory claims that only constitutions made with direct popular involvement can establish or deepen democracy. Against this view, we argue that new constitutions are likely to enhance liberal democracy when they emerge through a plural agreement among political elites with distinct bases of social support. Power dispersion during constitution writing induces the adoption of institutions that protect opposition forces from the arbitrary use of executive power without unduly impairing majority rule. However, since incumbents may renege on the bargain, the democratizing effect of politically plural constitutional agreements is likely to be larger in the short term, when the identity of negotiating political forces and the balance of power between them tend to remain stable. We find support for these arguments using an original global dataset on the origins of constitutions between 1900 and 2015 and a difference-in-differences design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a burgeoning literature on how to deal with populism in advanced liberal democracies, which puts a strong emphasis on legalist and pluralist methods. There is also a new and expanding literature that looks at the consequences of coups d'état for democracies by employing large-N data sets. These two recent literatures, however, do not speak to one another, based on the underlying assumption that coups against populists were a distinctly twentieth-century Latin American phenomenon. Yet the cases of Venezuela in 2002, Thailand in 2006 and Turkey in 2016 show that anti-populist coups have also occurred in the twenty-first century. Focussing on these cases, the article enquires about the extent to which military coups succeed against populists. The main finding is that although anti-populist coups may initially take over the government, populism survives in the long run. Thus, anti-populist coups fail in their own terms and they do not succeed in eradicating populism. In fact, in the aftermath of a coup, populism gains further legitimacy against what it calls repressive elites, while possibilities for democratisation are further eroded. This is because populists tap into existing socio-cultural divides and politically mobilise the hitherto underrepresented sectors in their societies that endure military interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The norm against chemical weapons (CW) is considered to be a strong and universal restraint against poisonous methods of warfare. Yet the repeated CW attacks during the Syrian civil war have raised questions about the robustness of this international norm. Under what conditions do third parties emphatically sanction violators of the norm? Adopting a historical approach, we analyse the discursive and contextual dynamics characterising the CW attacks since the early twentieth century. Employing process tracing, we consult a variety of rich archival resources including primary language documents to study a number of historical cases including late colonial wars during the interwar period, and Middle Eastern civil wars since the late twentieth century. Building on Judith Butler's distinction of grievable and ungrievable lives and Didier Fassin's notion of politics of life, we argue that the anti-CW norm has never had universal status and always remained conditional on a hierarchy of victims. CW attacks targeting certain groups have been more readily justifiable and generated ineffective and inconsistent third-party reactions. Consequently, certain groups, who are implicitly or explicitly perceived to be outside the pale of civilised order, remain more vulnerable to CW attacks than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to the article entitled "Is the present day post-medieval?," by James R. Dixon, which appears in this issue. He specifically responds to two issues raised, the practical and intellectual issues associated with applying archaeological methodologies to contemporary sites, and the role of the the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology in promoting such archaeological endeavors. Topics considered include history within living memory, the competing roles of anthropology and contemporary archaeology, and issues associated with politicizing archaeology.

Although the Taliban insurgency was internally divided and unable to coordinate its activities in 2014–2015, the Afghan security forces were not able to contain it and steadily lost ground throughout 2015. Until 2015, there had been little effort to develop an indigenous Afghan counterinsurgency strategy, but a sense of urgency emerged after a string of Taliban victories. At the beginning of 2016, it was still not clear if and when the National Unity Government would be able to produce a counterinsurgency strategy and, in any case, the need for a coherent counterinsurgency approach became questionable as the Taliban appeared to be transitioning towards conventional warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The existing conflict literature tends to treat interdependence between rebel groups as a binary category: either groups are allied or unallied, fragmented or unified, interdependent or independent. Yet much of our qualitative knowledge suggests that interdependence is better understood as a matter of degree where certain groups exert a disproportionate influence over their counterparts. The challenge is how to identify the degree of interdependence in practice. As a solution, I conceptualize interdependence as a property of a system of interactions between rebel groups and government forces within and across borders. My approach is to model the entire system of interactions in order to test hypotheses related to the directionality of influence and the potential for military coordination between groups. I demonstrate the utility of this approach by examining the relationship between Pakistan and the two major factions which make up the Taliban organization – the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. I analyze the triangular system with a vector autoregressive model and monthly time series data on violent actions initiated by each group from January 2008 to February 2013. The substantive findings support much of the received wisdom concerning Pakistan’s disparate relationship to both groups, which is characterized by antagonism with the Pakistani Taliban and collusion with the Afghan Taliban. The results also suggest that the claims of interdependence between the two Taliban groups have been overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the consolidation of public sector banks (PSUs) in order to enhance its net profit share in banking industry. Topics addressed include an increase in non-performing assets (NPAs) reduces PSBs' losses, bad loans' stock and absence of an Indian bank in the top global banks' list.

This study analyzes the effects of US drone strikes on terrorism in Pakistan. We find that drone strikes are associated with decreases in the incidence and lethality of terrorist attacks, as well as decreases in selective targeting of tribal elders. This matters for key ongoing debates. Some suggest that drone strikes anger Muslim populations and that consequent blowback facilitates recruitment and incites Islamist terrorism. Others argue that drone strikes disrupt and degrade terrorist organizations, reducing their ability to conduct attacks. We use detailed data on US drone strikes and terrorism in Pakistan from 2007-2011 to test each theory's implications. The available data do not enable us to evaluate if drone strikes resulted in increased recruitment, but the data do allow us to examine if these strikes resulted in changes in terrorist activities. While our findings do not suggest long-term effects, the results still lend some credence to the argument that drone strikes, while unpopular, bolster US counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion contributes to the history of the colonial rule of law that governed market practice in India using the South Asian indigenous credit institution known as hundi. A centuries-old artery of credit for Indian merchant networks, and a living institution that has largely been driven underground by twenty-first-century laws, hundi provides a window into the dynamics of colonial law from the commercial and financial legislation of the 1880s to the final attempt to codify hundi in the 1960s and 1970s in a bid to bridge the growing disconnect between the Indian indigenous banking sector and modern banking. I chart the British colonial and post-independence history of hundi as means of understanding the wider political, legislative and economic dynamics of colonial state formation and the legacies of legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World War I was an epoch making event and its legacies have exerted dramatic impact on the unfolding of history as well as the study of history itself. The article introduces a commemorative volume focused on those varied legacies and their places in history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We suggest, in a Coase-Demsetz perspective, that the social demand for individual rights-or freedoms (whether civil, political or economic)-is derived from, because complementary to, the changing size of hierarchical organizations. The general downsizing and decentralization process observed worldwide after 1975 is itself the result of the information revolution and the resulting abundance of information. It follows that social demand for freedoms depends in turn-and inversely-on the cost of information (and thus on market imperfection) as well as on traditional determinants such as the distribution of resources and human capital. This implies that freedoms are adopted, implemented, or 'produced' by various political regimes according to an objectively observable and contingent determinant. We believe this approach can shed light on the reason for the waxing and waning of freedoms in modern history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the rebirth of interest in the just war tradition, both academically and practically, over the last few years rests on a shaky foundation. It suggests that the character of the just war as a tradition is ill suited to certain aspects of the contemporary intellectual and political world and that historical developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have combined unhelpfully to narrow the tradition's concerns. It also suggests that, especially after 11 September, there is a growing temptation to resent the restraints that the tradition is held to impose on warmaking and thus to ignore or abandon the just war as a way of thinking about the relationship between war and politics. Nevertheless, the article argues, to abandon the just war tradition would still bring about more loss than gain and that as an aid to moral reflection and practice on the use of force, it is still a powerful tool and an invaluable aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of community pharmacy in America since the 1920s is one of slow progress towards greater professional standing through changes in pharmacy education and practice. The history of American community pharmacy in the modern era can be divided into four periods: 1920–1949 (Soda Fountain Era), 1950–1979 (Lick, Stick, Pour and More Era), 1980–2009 (Pharmaceutical Care Era), and 2010–present (Post-Pharmaceutical Care Era). As traditional compounding has waned, leaders within community pharmacy have sought to shift focus from product to patient. Increasing degree requirements and postgraduate training have enhanced pharmacists' ability to provide patient care services not directly associated with medication dispensing. However, the realities of practice have often fallen short of ideal visions of patient-focused community pharmacy practice. Positive trends in the recognition of the impact of community pharmacists on healthcare value and the need for more optimal medication management suggest that opportunities for community pharmacists to provide patient care may expand through the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]