Taboos and denial in government responses

The most striking fact about HIV/AIDS is that it continues to spread even when the means of prevention are well known and do not demand costly technology to implement. This article argues that the fundamental barriers to effective prevention are social and cultural, and that many authorities place more emphasis on preserving traditional norms and social arrangements than on saving lives. The case is argued with particular reference to the impact of globalization on sexual behaviours, and the attempts by conservatives to deny existing behaviours and vulnerabilities. Current debates around abstinence, homosexuality and harm minimization are discussed to demonstrate the deeply political nature of HIV prevention.     

Empire by denial: the strange case of the United States

The issue of empire has once again become a major political question in American foreign policy discourse. But whereas in the 1960s the discussion was one that mainly concerned the radical left, over the past few years the debate has largely been conducted within neo-conservative circles. The discussion is one that should be taken seriously-in part because of its intrinsically interesting character and in part because of what it tells us about the Bush grand strategy. In the end, though, the issue of whether or not there is-or is not- an American empire, is perhaps of less importance than the fact that most Americans deny that such an empire exists. This has consequences both for the conduct of American foreign policy and for its successful execution.     

Security in Latin America

This article provides an overview of recent trends in Latin American security and examines three common assumptions that underpin both academic analysis and policy debate—assumptions about the links between political democracy, economic integration and regional stability, and about the need to broaden the agenda of regional security. In contrast to the liberal orthodoxy, there is little reason to believe that the promotion of political democracy and economic liberalization and integration will automatically tend towards regional stability, especially given the weakness of regional institutions, the fragility of many states, the inequality of power among states, and the lack of consensus over the meaning and implications of the 'new security agenda'.     

在美国“扫街”

<正>对于东方人来说,西方世界的一切都似乎那么新奇、有趣。在欧美,单是在大街上走,就足以让你眼花缭乱。但如果跟旅行团走马观花会让"色友"着急上火、难以尽兴。笔者有幸在美国芝加哥留学一年,休息日就可以带上"长枪短炮"在大街上"扫"一天,过足了"清洁工"的瘾,实乃大快特快之事。     

在美国所读《碛砂藏》

早已耳闻美国普林斯顿大学葛思德书库藏有甚多宋元版的《碛砂藏》,惜未经眼,适有哈佛大学燕京学社图书馆邀请参加该馆75周年馆庆,于是趁此良机,到纽约、普林斯顿、华盛顿等地访读中文古籍,遂得以见到若干种《碛砂藏》.     

Woman in Nineteenth-Century America

The political use of Woman as a universal category, transcending social divisions, has fallen into disrepute. Yet it is necessary, in looking at gender history, to understand not just its obfuscations but its sources and political effects. The essay proposes an intellectual and political history of the uses of the term Woman and a social history of the heterogeneous mixtures of women from different social groups who seized the term and gave it force. Discussing recent scholarship on white and Afro-American women, Stansell argues for the importance of moments of extravagant universalising to the history of women in politics.     

Belittled America

Martina Marazzi (1997) Little America: Gli Stati Uniti e gli scrittori italiani del Novecento. (Milan: Marcos y Marcos), 22,000 lire, ISBN 88–7168–181–9.     

Successful Performance in North America

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Multiculturalism in Europe and America

Abstract. Although there is a popular discourse about multiculturalism in Europe and North America which suggests that there is a single set of problems, the political problems which multiculturalism addresses are different in these two contexts. As outlined here the problem in Western Europe is that in liberal democracies and social democratic welfare states two questions have to be addressed. One is that of equality, the other the recognition of cultural diversity. As is shown here a number of important European social scientists have feared that the acceptance of cultural diversity will actually undermine important and valued political structures without improving the condition of minorities. In the United States a different set of problems has arisen. While the Civil Rights movement appeared to be helping Blacks to achieve equality in the sixties, by the late eighties there was a sense of disillusion about this process and the emergence of ideologies based upon separatism which appeared to point to the ‘disuniting’ of America. Some of these ideologies were what was being discussed under the heading of multiculturalism. A further contrast has to be made with Canada which is often thought of as an arch-exponent of multiculturalism, but in which all problems of ethnic equality are tied up with the specific problems generated by Quebecois nationalism.