Business associations and the politics of contained participation in Vietnam

The development of the private sector in Vietnam since the mid-1990s has accompanied the emergence of organised business interests, which is recognised as vital to pursuing the agenda of economic modernisation. This article aims to explore the significance of the interactions between the state and business associations representing small-and-medium enterprises. It demonstrates that business associations have transformed state–business relations in a way that is distinguishable from state corporatism or societal pluralism. The analysis examines the interplay between state actors and emerging non-state entities, and the deliberative capacity of intermediary organisations in the policy-making process, specifically through the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises. It is argued that this process constitutes a new mode of political participation that reflects the entanglement of the state and private capital interests. It reveals features of contained participation and contributes to the research agenda on deliberative and governance practices in post-socialist transitional economies.

越南私有部门自1990年代中期以来的发展,伴随着管理有组织商业利益的立法的出台。而有组织的商业利益被视为实现经济现代化的关键。本文探讨了国家与商业协会在为中小企业打造适宜市场环境方面所进行的互动。商业协会成为具有战略意义的政治主体,以一种不同于国家统合主义或社会多元主义的方式改写了政府和商业的关系。本文探讨了国家主体与新兴非国家实体之间的相互作用,并评价了中间组织——尤其像越南中小企业协会——在政策制定过程中的协商能力。作者认为,该过程造成了一种新的政治参与方式,反映了国家和私人资本利益之间的纠结。它还揭示了其中所包含的参与的诸特点,并对于研究后社会主义转型经济体中出现的协商及治理实践,或能起到抛砖引玉的作用。     

论道教在越南的传播和影响

道教从中国传人越南后,与本地传统信仰相结合,具有越南的特点。近代时期,越南的道教逐渐衰落。越南道教比儒教和佛教的势力要小一些,但是它却有着多方面的影响。     

Women in prison: Ethnographic reflections on gender and the carceral state

The criminal justice system is increasingly becoming the subject of national dialogue throughout the United States due to the sheer number of people it impacts: according to the Department of Justice, nearly 7 million, or 1 in 35, U.S. residents are under some form of correctional control. The four books reviewed in this essay derive their findings from ethnographic methods that offer deep insights into the carceral state’s everyday operations in individual women’s lives, while raising profound theoretical and practical questions about gender and governance. We engage with these texts from unique situated standpoints as insider-outsiders with intimate knowledge of the U.S. criminal justice system gleaned from our respective lived experiences, services provision work, and research with currently and formerly incarcerated Wyoming women.     

澳洲华人的中产阶级地位及其参政诉求：2007年大选以来的变化

论文以2007年本尼朗选战为起点,分析了澳洲华人新获得的中产阶级地位及其对政治参与意向的影响,包括2007年大选以来出现在澳洲华人社区的参政、议政诉求,华人参与澳洲政治生活的各种形式以及影响他们参与的若干因素。认为在澳华人已经成为澳洲社会政治和经济生活中一个非常具有活力的组成部分。他们的政治参与程度及其影响力正在显著提高,并且已经成为各方关注的一个重要议题。     

Gendered division of labour and feminisation of responsibilities in Kenya; implications for development interventions

Analysing gender roles as a social organisation element of a community is critical for understanding actors’ rationales and agency with regard to allocation and use of resources. This article discusses gender relations and how they determine development outcomes, based on a highland-lowland case-study of participants of Farmer Field Schools in Kakamega Central Sub-County (highland) and Mbeere South Sub-County (lowland). The gender relations at stake include the gendered division of labour, gender roles and intra-household power relations as expressed in access and control of resources and benefits and their implications for agricultural development. The study used mixed methods, the Harvard Analytical Framework of gender roles and draws on the Neo-Marxist position on exploitation, categorisation and institutionalisation of power relations, empowerment and the critical moments framework to discuss the results. Results in both Sub-Counties show that patriarchy prevails, determining institutional design, access and control of resources and benefits. Social positions shape capabilities and strategies of actors in decision-making and use of resources to justify gender-specific institutional arrangements. In Kakamega, men get the lion share of incomes from contracted sugarcane farming despite overburdening workloads on women, while in Mbeere, both men and women derive incomes from Khat (Catha Edulis) enterprises. However, women are expected to spend their earnings on household expenditures, which were hitherto responsibilities of men, thereby contributing to the feminisation of responsibilities. Development policies and interventions thus need to be based on an understanding of men and women’s differential access and control over resources and the institutions underpinning men and women’s bargaining power in order to adopt more effective measures to reduce gender inequalities.     

Zopilotes,Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures,Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self‐employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste.     

Participatory video drama research in transitional Vietnam: post-production narratives on marriage,parenting and social evils

Based on two years of participatory video drama (PVD) research with men and women in the city of Hu?, this article explores perspectives on, and experiences of, socio-economic transition and its influence on domestic life in Vietnam. Through a combination of output analysis, group screening sessions and individual interviews, it concentrates on the themes of marriage, parenting and ‘social evils’ which emerged in the PVD. It demonstrates how familial tensions collectively identified in the workshop and told in a single video-narrative are complicated by the more nuanced discourses that emerge from co-produced analysis in the post-production period. These illuminate a greater plurality of voices towards the liberalisation of the Vietnamese economy and the new life choices that this brings.     

战后中日关系研究的概况与问题--以中日两国的学术专著为中心

中国的战后中日关系研究基本上在历史学领域中展开,但实证研究仍需进一步的努力.而日本学者注意到国际政治学方法论的采用,强调了国际政治结构对中日关系的制约,但在史学研究方面还有不断把新史料纳入视野、在史学研究的基础上建构自己的国际政治学理论等方面的发展空间.相信整体性的过程研究和实证经验理论总结将使我们能够有基础和有信心尝试建立一些规范的分析概念,并通过这些概念对历史和思想演变的深层规律进行某种程度的哲学分析,即所谓理论的建构.     

Local government reforms in Georgia and their impact on state-society relations

Abstract

This paper studies how the local governance reforms carried out between 1997–2014 shape state-society relations at Georgia’s local level. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, I analyze how the reforms shape practices and actors at the local level. Research interviews with state officials at the national and subnational levels and citizens of the Georgian district Marneuli highlight both government rationalities and how people react to them. I argue that the reforms, which have been declared to promote participation and accountability, hardly contribute to bridging the huge gap between state and society, particularly with respect to the case of the Azeri minority in Marneuli. Thus far, the newly introduced formal actors at the local level, the municipalities, lack power. Societal action in absence of the state and interaction with the state via informal networks remains dominant. The study contributes to literature on state-building and transformation in Georgia by shedding light on the often-neglected local level and to the debate on external democracy promotion and policy transfer by empirically studying the effect of a policy transfer.     

“Much in Blood and Money”: Necropolitical Ecology on the Margins of the Uganda Protectorate

Increasingly, political ecologists invoke the concept of “green grabbing” to refer to the ways in which processes of accumulation by dispossession articulate with various imperatives for environmental protection. This paper traces these contemporary processes to their roots in the colonial era, focusing on how dispossession in the name of environmental protection intersects with complex historical geographies of state formation and internal territorialisation. Drawing upon the case of Mount Elgon in Britain's Uganda Protectorate, in particular, we reconstruct the ways in which the interrelated “birth” of both conservation and transcontinental agrarian markets were intimately connected to the emergence and normalisation of the colonial state itself. In doing so, we propose the term necropolitical ecology as a framework to encompass the ways in which contemporary “green grabs” partially emerge from racialised modes of colonial appropriation, the violence of which often still lingers in agencies and institutions of environmental governance in the contemporary postcolony.     

邓承修与中法桂越段边界交涉——以台北“故宫博物院”典藏桂越段边界条约档案为中心

清中期以前,越南被视为藩属,清廷未曾与其划分明确界线。中法战争后清廷与法国签订《中法会订越南条约十款》,越南与清朝藩属关系断绝,划界之议遂启。光绪十一年,清廷派邓承修与法国官员进行划界事宜谈判,经过冗长的交涉辩论,最终双方签订界约、绘制界线舆图。台北“故宫博物院”藏邓承修与法国勘界官员所订条约、界图和相关档案,是还原这段桂越段边界交涉情形的重要资料。     

Gallantry on the Shankill road: the British ‘soldier-hero’ and state-media relations in Northern Ireland, 1969-1979

ABSTRACT

The study of the British ‘soldier-hero’ as a political and cultural icon after 1945 has been largely confined to literature concerned with the memory of historical figures. Rarely have scholars considered how post-war military deployments not only created contemporary soldier-heroes, but also transformed their place within politics and society as the moral interrogation of these wars threatened to encroach upon the prestige of these icons. This article examines how the soldier-hero interacted with one of Britain’s most contentious deployments, Northern Ireland, and how politicians sought to control narratives surrounding this figure to avoid public relations controversy in unusual political conditions.     

对2005年海峡两岸政党交往的回顾与思考

中华民族的血缘历史脐带,两岸对和平的共同诉求,使得2005年两岸政党交往有了现实可能。从国民党、亲民党、新党三党角度而言,两岸政党交往具有缅怀先烈、寻根祭祖、政党之间的政治和解、推动两岸的经贸合作等诉求和特点。两岸政党交往影响深远:增进了彼此的了解与理解,为发展两岸关系奠定了现实基础;建立了政党定期沟通平台,为两岸关系发展提供了新枢纽;促进了两岸的经贸合作,为发展两岸关系添加了润滑剂。