Must secession be rebellion?

Some constitutional theorists claim that secession is necessarily rebellion and that there cannot be a constitutional right to secession. I (1) try to show that these claims are implausible, (2) explore the non‐legal assumptions about the nature of the state and the citizen which make the acceptance or rejection of these legal claims plausible, (3) consider the desirability of incorporating a provision for secession in the constitution of liberal democratic states.     

怀着美好愿望let it be

亲爱的木木:俺今年虚岁30实岁28,老爸老妈吹响集结号。在单身的海洋里自在扑腾那么久也总得靠岸,有几个女青年也对我表达了爱慕之情。可比来比去不知道哪个合适,相貌身高性格家境,智商财富气质风度,选谁都怕吃亏。一怕不适合自己,二怕走不到最后。所以一直采用一网多鱼的策略,先兜着,不抓到篮里来,听其言观其     

Can't I be seen? Can't I be heard? Black women queering politics in Newark

What does it mean for a black female to negotiate urban space? How is her body read, her politics enacted, and her agency understood and interpreted? How do black women use their bodies and identities to challenge structural intersectionality in US cities? To answer these questions, I explore how black women embraced a set of oppositional spatial practices to resist the intersectional effects of misogyny, homo/transphobia, racism, and poverty in Newark, New Jersey. I reconstruct the creation of the Newark Pride Alliance, a local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer coalition that mobilized in 2003 and 2004, after the death of Sakia Gunn. Exploring migrations between ‘black women,’ ‘black queer’ and ‘black feminist,’ I examine how black women respatialized social capital and enacted resistance. Through semi-structured interviews and frame analysis, I explore how black women forged new relationships between queer youth and black vernacular institutions, and created political spaces in which honest engagement of issues of gender violence, poverty, and power could take place.     

Who Will be the Next Mālietoa? Will there be Another Mālietoa?

ABSTRACT

The appointment of successors to paramount chiefly titles in Sāmoa is typically a slow and troubled process. This is instanced by the failure, at the time of writing, for a successor to be appointed to the Mālietoa title, last held by Mālietoa Tanumafili II, who passed away in 2007. The task of choosing a successor to any title ideally rests with the family, though increasingly the Land and Titles Court is being pressed to make the final settlement. In contemporary circumstances, the difficulties of appointing a successor to a paramount title are illustrated in the travails of the ‘āiga Sā Mālietoā, or extended Mālietoā family, which has struggled to agree on either a candidate or a process. Unless the rules governing succession are reviewed and the Land and Titles Court is modernised and equipped to play a more proactive role, ancient family titles in Sāmoa may be destined for abeyance. Much hinges on the issue of chiefly succession, which has wide ramifications for Sāmoan society and development, and resonates more widely in the Pacific.     

To be a Bosniak or to be a citizen? Bosnia and Herzegovina's 2013 census as an election

Bosnia and Herzegovina's first post‐war population census, held in 2013, was accompanied by campaigns associated with each of the country's three main ethnic groups, which sought to maximise their share of the recorded population. These campaigns were challenged by a rival ‘civic’ campaign that instead stressed the right to freedom of self‐identification, however. This article compares the aims, methods and framings used by this civic campaign with those of the most prominent of the ‘ethnic’ campaigns – that of Bosniak ethnic entrepreneurs. It demonstrates that the two campaigns were each motivated by a combination of symbolic motives, centred on recognition and highlighting discrimination, and instrumental motives relating to the country's power‐sharing institutions. The limited success of the civic campaign in countering the messages of its rival ethnic campaigns demonstrates the difficulties that civic movements face in mobilising citizens in consociational democracies such as BiH.     

Would it be rude if I asked…

Esther N. Goody, ed. Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology 8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. viii + 324 pp. $7.95 paper; $29.95 cloth.     

‘Likewise no one shall be tortured’

The article deals with judicial torture, which was prohibited in the Danish legal system in the early modern period, essentially focussing upon the time from the Lutheran Reformation in 1536 to the introduction of a comprehensive statute book for the entire kingdom in 1683. The author’s perspective is comparative, especially looking for parallels and contrasts in Sweden during approximately the same period, but to some extent also including the case of England. The common feature of the three kingdoms is that they were outside the regions governed by the Romano-canonical ius commune.

The article is based upon an analysis both of Danish legislation relating to torture and of the limited number of cases in which torture was applied, in most of these cases in contravention of current legislation. The author concludes that if 16th- and 17th-century Denmark saw extremely little use of torture, the main reasons are: in the first place, an internal political climate that was far more stable and peaceful than in Sweden and England, both of which were affected by dynastic rivalries and succession crises during this period; secondly, the fact that commissions of inquisition with extraordinary judicial powers were not used in Denmark also contributes to the Danish development.     

1914 and 2014: should we be worried?

The outbreak of the First World War remains a great historical puzzle and a source of concern, for if we do not understand how it came about we run the risk of stumbling into a similar catastrophe. This article draws parallels between the world of 1914 and the present. It starts with comfortable assumptions made by so many, then and now, that a major conflict was impossible or improbable and then looks at the paradox that globalization not only made the world more interdependent and linked, but also fostered intense local and national identities. It suggests factors that propelled Europe to war in 1914, including national rivalries, imperialism, the arms race and a shifting power balance between rising and declining powers, as well as ideologies and assumptions such as Social Darwinism and militarism, and points out that similar forces and ideas are present today. The article also stresses the dangerous complacency that can arise as a result of decision‐makers having successfully dealt with a series of crises. European decision‐makers also assumed that they could successfully use war as an instrument of policy and largely ignored or explained away the mounting evidence that the advantage in conflict was swinging to the defence. Again, as the author points out, there are disquieting parallels with the present.     

Why Every Cluster Cannot be a Successful Community?

The study of clusters is an important area of academic research. Clusters are also an important tool for public sector economic development. Historically, many organically developed clusters were based around a community of like-minded people. This may have led to a commonly held assumption in the literature that all clusters are communities. We suggest that not every cluster is also a successful community, based on empirical findings for four biotechnology clusters. Three issues of interests to practitioners are causes for clusters not being communities, the link between cluster success and development of “community” and policy failure at creating community within clusters. The discussion also aims to extend theory, first, by dealing with the rarely discussed question of the lack of collaboration “across” communities, and secondly, by attempting to help develop a theory of community formation in clusters.     

Can UN arms embargoes in Africa be effective?

Calls in 2007 for new UN sanctions on Iran and Burma reflect a current swing back in favour of using sanctions as a way of putting pressure on a regime without resorting to direct military engagement. This article assesses the effectiveness of UN sanctions in Africa and in particular of the most commonly imposed form of sanctions—the arms embargo. The article argues for an analysis of what sanctions achieve and suggests that for the most part UN embargoes have not stopped weapons reaching Africa not only because of the lack of capacity to implement them in some states, but also because of the lack of political will in others. In some post‐conflict situations such as Liberia, UN sanctions have been adapted to support economic reconstruction and security sector reform effectively. However, in the future there is likely to be a decrease in the use of UN sanctions in Africa but an increase in their use by the Africa Union and some of Africa's Regional Economic Communities.     

To be or not to be in Europe: is that the question? Britain's European question and an in/out referendum

The idea of holding an in/out referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union has increasingly become a norm of British politics, an act seen as a necessary step for the country to answer what David Cameron described as the ‘European question in British politics’. A referendum, it is hoped, will cleanse British politics of a poisonous debate about Europe and democratically sanction a new stable UK–EU relationship, whether the UK stays in or leaves. Such hopes expect more of a referendum than it can provide. The European question is a multifaceted one and whatever the result of a referendum it is unlikely to address underlying questions that will continue to cause problems for UK–EU relations and Britain's European debate. A referendum can be a step forward in better managing the relationship and debate, but it is only that: a single step, after which further steps will be needed. Coming to terms with the European question and bringing stability to Britain's relations with the EU—whether in or outside the EU—will require comprehensive, longer‐term changes which a referendum can help trigger but in no way guarantee.     

Can Earthquake Loss Models be Validated Using Field Observations?

The occurrence of a damaging earthquake provides an opportunity to compare observed and estimated damage, provided that detailed observations of the earthquake effects are made in the field. A question that arises is whether such comparisons can provide the basis for validation of an earthquake loss model. In order to explore this issue, a case study loss model for the northern Marmara region has been set up and the losses have been calculated for various ground-motion fields that arise when different assumptions are made about the ground-motion variability. In particular, the influence of removing the inter-event variability for a scenario earthquake and modeling spatial correlation among ground motions is studied. Further analyses are conducted assuming that a number of accelerograms are available within the region and that knowledge of spatial correlations among ground motions can therefore be used to better predict the motions at sites in the vicinity of the recording stations. The results demonstrate that unless one has a dense network of accelerographs (commensurate with the geographical resolution of exposure), then the variability in the losses cannot be sufficiently reduced to allow validation of the loss model.     

“Refusing to be a victim,refusing to be an enemy”. Form-of-life as resistance in the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism

This paper focuses on practices of non-violent resistance as they are played out in the ongoing Palestinian struggle against the Israeli settler colonialism in the occupied West Bank. By looking at the resistance of expanding settlements, demolition and land confiscation orders, and livelihood destruction in two Palestinian sites, the paper shows how Israeli settler colonial apparatuses, and the variety of techniques and practices of erasure they mobilize, can be fruitfully studied through site-specific ways of Palestinian resistance. In order to do so, the paper turns to discuss a peculiar form of non-violent resistance grounded in what Giorgio Agamben calls ‘destituent power’. It shows how the acts of destituent resistance in the two sites under study function by playing with the apparatuses of control in creative but non-violent ways; namely, by using the potentialities of that form-of-life that the settler colonial apparatuses try to cancel, overrule, control, weaken, criminalize, and erase. The idea of ‘destituent play’ is hence elaborated, and special attention paid to its ability to slow down and hamper the repressive functions of the settler colonial apparatuses through the creative use of the potentialities of Palestinian everyday life.     

Too precarious to be inclusive? Hotel maid employment in Spain

ABSTRACT

Hoteliers have steadily been able to reduce costs and increase employees’ workload as a result of mass unemployment sparked by the financial crisis, beginning in 2008, and associated legislative reforms by the Spanish government. Outsourcing has been hotels’ main instrument in this drive. Hotel chambermaids are among the groups most affected by this phenomenon. This article analyses the impacts of outsourcing on hotel maids’ working conditions, while questioning the possibilities for achieving inclusive tourism given the current outsourcing trend. It is based on 44 in-depth interviews with a range of informants, including 24 hotel maids who have experienced the process of outsourcing, in major Spanish tourism destinations. This study aims to understand the changes these workers have experienced and perceived in their working conditions. The research results highlight a marked deterioration in hotel maids’ working conditions in recent years, most notably involving (a) a reduction in their salary and the loss of professional categories, (b) work overload, (c) greater uncertainty in the duration of employment, timetables and work schedule, (d) de-professionalisation, (e) segmentation, division and an increase in competition between hotel staff, (f) the accentuation of health problems and (g) a decrease in the capacity of representation and the defence of workers’ collective interests.     

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan: lessons to be learned?

This article examines the experience of the Soviet army's occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It draws heavily on the report of the Russian General Staff, which gives a unique insight into the Soviet–Afghan war by senior Russian officers, many of whom served in Afghanistan. The author then places this analysis in the broader geopolitical context of Soviet expansionism from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s. And the author proceeds to ask: Did Afghanistan account for the demise of the USSR? Finally, the issue of whether there are parallels with the failure of the Soviet Union's invasion and the current problems facing the USA in Afghanistan is examined.     

“If voting could change anything it would be illegal”∗

Colin Crouch (ed.), Participation in Politics, British Political Sociology Yearbook, Vol. 3, Groom Helm, London, 1977; $38.50.