The Moral Theologian,Oliver O'Donovan and International Law

Abstract

Oliver O'Donovan renders a singular contribution to the theory and history of international law by identifying the spiritual impoverishment of the discipline following the triumph of state-centred contractarianism in the theory of international relations, with Hobbes, Locke, Kant and, for the present, John Rawls. This contractarian approach to international society has an inherent tendency, which O'Donovan highlights, to ground international order in the hegemonic claim of one or two countries to represent the values of the whole of humanity. With a combination of rational moral theology and biblical interpretation (Revelation), O'Donovan reasserts an international order grounded in the autonomous identities of the nations, which God has recognized as equal. With a theory of political legitimacy which rests upon representation of national identity, O'Donovan points the way to an international order based upon mutual respect among nations under natural law, in the classical medieval sense finally represented by Grotius and Suarez. This article describes again what the natural law tradition meant in the hands of Aquinas and Vitoria, in order to highlight the fact that the ontological dimension of natural law theory provides a way to meet the intolerable insecurities which theories of nationalism appear to generate. Then the article goes on to offer one way to bring natural law thinking up to date for contemporary audiences by drawing upon Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological theory of mutual recognition and respect among the nations as a way of going beyond the contractarian tradition in contemporary international law and relations theory.     

THE THERAPEUTIC STATE

State subsidy for the arts in Britain has been determined by a variety of political and social factors over the last two hundred years. This article examines the recent emergence of a therapeutic ethos that has come to shape arts policy in the United Kingdom. It begins with a survey of existing literature describing a shift in Britain’s arts policy since the 1970s. It examines the limitations of existing explanations and suggests another explanatory factor – the growing valorisation of the arts as a therapeutic tool to address social problems. This can be seen in two historically convergent trends: the challenge to cultural authority through the emergence of a therapeutic understanding of creativity, and the reorientation of political activism around issues of culture and wellbeing. Finally, the article considers how and why these ideas became institutionalised in Britain’s main arts policy body – the Arts Council.     

An economic analysis of a National Theatre: The case of the ‘Abbey’

Abstract: This article asks how a regional community is culturally constructed as a policy subject in the centre/periphery relation of Finnish cultural policy. The focus is on the options the cultural recognitions analysed from the cultural policy documents of central government and the provincial administration of North Karelia provide for different political interests. It is stated here that the democratisation of cultural policy can be open for and a vehicle of the interests the prevailing spatial dominance attempts to get within the population of peripheries. North Karelia has for centuries been a geographic and economic periphery without inner cultural distinctions. Yet it is regarded as a culturally rich and specific area. The analysis shows that the regional community has continuously been used as a partisan identity for maintaining and reinforcing the spatial integration of national projects. Public cultural image would provide a symbolic compensation for the economically underprivileged. Furthermore, the strong cultural identity of North Karelia has constantly been taken by the regional establishment as an instrument to fight the “opponents of common regional interests” in political conflicts. Thus the principles of democracy have not always meant the capability or attitude to notice cultural polyphony within the region abreast of cultural political decision-making.     

人文地理学研究中对空间的再认识

作为人文地理学的核心概念,空间在全球化、信息化、人文主义、后现代主义、地理学社会与文化转向等语境下需要重新认识。首先对空间认知转变的背景进行阐释,在此基础上重点辨析国内外研究成果中对于"空间"的核心论述,把对空间的认知转变归结为4点:(1)从科学的空间到人性的空间;(2)从物质的空间到非物质的空间;(3)单纯的空间到复杂的空间;(4)从"外壳"的空间到空间里面的空间。最后提出对我国当前人文地理学研究的3点启示:(1)注重学科基础概念的重新认识;(2)重视微观层面的细化研究;(3)加强跨学科的整合研究。     

交通区位演化与空间开发强度的时空协同关系及其弹性识别——重庆市案例实证研究

交通区位条件是反映区域发展潜力的重要指标,分析其与空间开发强度之间的时空协同关系对揭示区域发展的动力机制具有重要启示意义。以重庆市为例,通过指数建模、回归拟合及弹性系数等方法,揭示其间互动关系。研究发现：①研究区交通区位指数处于快速跃升阶段,区域差距有所缩小,空间集聚格局基本稳定;②空间开发强度指数数值整体偏低,增速差异较大,空间集聚格局呈单集聚中心向多集聚中心演进趋势;③不同类型的交通区位指数（内部、外部和综合）与空间开发强度指数均呈显著正相关,且关联性表现出不同状态;④交通区位演化与空间开发强度互动敏感程度较高,各弹性系数空间集聚格局基本一致,但其形成机理差异较大。     

基于可见光谱特征提取的敦煌壁画颜料识别方法研究

为了对壁画颜料种类进行无损识别,根据不同的物质对光的吸收特性不同,决定着光谱反射率不同这一特性,提出一种基于可见光谱的颜料识别方法,并对敦煌壁画所用颜料进行了分析。提取可见光谱曲线二阶导数负数部分表征曲线峰值区域的几何轮廓,利用中值金字塔对提取结果进行三层分辨率表征以突出曲线峰值位置信息,归一化三种表征尺度并组合构建特征空间F,以欧氏距离为准则对壁画采样点与颜料库样本进行相似度判别,从而识别出壁画用颜料信息。结果表明,本研究构建的识别方法能够对壁画颜料种类进行无损识别,在壁画数字存档及修复领域具有一定的应用前景。     

关于“满洲国”外交承认的几个理论问题

伪满洲国是世界反法西斯战争期间历时最长的伪政权,其控制范围也在日本、德国扶植的其他伪政权之上。伪满洲国存在期间,总计有二十余个国家和政权对其宣布承认。本文拟从多个角度深入分析伪满洲国的承认问题,以揭示围绕这个伪政权展开的国际关系的全貌,同时意在丰富对这一问题的国际法认识。     

需求弹性对产业活动的指示功能研究

需求弹性对产业活动有很强的指示功能。围绕需求弹性不同的商品的需求(量)对经济变量的依存关系,研究如何运用需求弹性指导产业活动行为有重要意义。本文概述了需求弹性的数学基础,结合需求弹性释义,从价格弹性、需求收入弹性和交叉(价格)弹性等方面讨论了需求弹性对产业活动的指示功能。     

A Political Ontology of Land: Rooting Syrian Identity in the Occupied Golan Heights

Questions of identity, belonging and place are heightened in societies under protracted military occupation. Bridging scholarship on territorial justice and settler colonialism, this paper examines the impacts of, and responses to, the misrecognition of Arab residents enacted by the Israeli state in the occupied Golan Heights. The injustice of misrecognition entails the imposition on the indigenous population of a Zionist ethnogeography consolidated through Jewish settlements, forced citizenship and discriminatory land and water policies. Focusing on the distinctive agricultural practices by which a Jawlani (Syrian Golani) identity is forged, we highlight the role of sumud (“steadfastness”) as a strategy of non‐violent resistance. Sumud here rests on the mobilisation of communal norms of land and water management, evident in the creation of counter‐infrastructures and water collectives supporting apple orchards. In the face of settler colonial misrecognition, Jawlani rootedness expresses a distinctive ontology on land with a conjoined right of resourcehood.     

The socionature that neo-extractivism can see: Practicing redistribution and compensation around large-scale mining in the Southern Ecuadorian Amazon

In this article I address the complex processes of transformation taking place due to industrial mineral extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon through a focus on state and company led practices of redistribution, social investment and compensation. The analysis of three empirical examples related to the Mirador industrial mining project is viewed in relation to a more extensive assembling of a mining surface. I introduce the concept ‘surfacing’ to refer to discursive and material practices that state and corporate actors make use of to manage, facilitate and enact a redistributive economic policy, and at the same time produce value in and for the global capitalist market. A main argument is that these practices make certain socio-natural relations visible to the project of large-scale mining while obscuring affected peoples' ‘place-based life projects’. Restricted by neo-extractivist modes of recognition, of ‘seeing’ and ‘not-seeing’, indigenous Shuar, and mestizo livestock peasants, colonos, respond to mining intervention based on their differentiated engagements and trajectories with the Amazonian landscape and ecology. The paper is an intent to understand geosocial transformations and the differentiated practices of non-recognition while analyzing these responses.