Housing Squats as “Educational Sites of Resistance”: The Process of Movement Social Base Formation in the Struggle for the House

This paper aims to contribute to the scholarly work on the internal dynamics of contemporary housing movements. In particular, it explores the spatial strategies through which squat inhabitants change the configuration of the squat to turn an abandoned building into a house for multiple families. The main argument is that these strategies, requiring horizontal participation and solidarity, catalyse the transformation of a sum of people dispossessed of the house into a collective, political subject. Therefore, the author proposes to analyse housing squats as “educational sites of resistance”. The findings come from the author's participant observation of Rome's housing movement organisation Coordinamento Cittadino di Lotta per la casa. In addition to providing empirical knowledge, the paper aims to offer inputs for investigating to what extent the process of politicisation is shaped by the space and what constitute the peculiarities of a so‐recomposed collective subject.     

太平天国应对社会危机的政略实践及得失——兼谈太平天国的评价问题

江南是太平天国建立较稳定统治并有力推行各项政策方略的地区。太平天国政府作为该区域的政治实体,在应对社会危机和基层社会治理方面均有不同程度的尝试和努力,主要采取了“应变十策”,旨在完成由“打天下”向“坐天下”执政理念的转型。但因主客观条件限制,太平天国应对社会危机的成效不大,调控社会秩序的预期没有实现;但某些地区的太平天国地方当局在内忧外患的非常时期,仍能于社会建设领域有所建树,所以过去认为太平天国“重立不重建”的政权建设惯性也仅是相对而言的。政府调控和应对社会危机的政略实践,还是国家统治技术和社会战略的体现。太平天国的社会战略展现了太平天国时期国家与社会关系的特殊实态。我们发现太平天国的政治权力以较为积极的姿态向乡村社会渗透,不同于该时期绅权扩大的一般势态,占领区的绅权呈现被压缩的另面镜像。太平天国战争之后,清政府在重整社会秩序工作中有意识地继承江南绅权被压制的趋势,在更广范围内限制和约束绅权,激发了国家权力与地方社会的新一轮角逐,并对晚清政局产生了影响。这一视角还为我们客观理性地认知太平天国的历史地位提供了切入点,呈现了太平天国复杂多重的历史面相。     

新中国治淮方略演进研究

淮河流域是我国经济欠发达、生态环境较脆弱的区域,在我国生态环境演变中具有典型意义。淮河是新中国第一条进行系统治理的河流,也是第一条从立法层面进行污染综合治理和生态经济带建设的河流。新中国对淮河的治理,从提出“蓄泄兼筹”的治淮方针到贯彻“节水优先、空间均衡、系统治理、两手发力”的新时代治水思路,从关注行蓄洪区群众生产生活到脱贫攻坚,从治理污染到建设淮河生态经济带,对治理的规律性认识不断深化,治理方略不断演进,为探索河流治理、流域生态经济带建设、推动人与自然和谐发展等积累了宝贵经验,留下了深刻的历史启示。     

Diversity and diplomacy

ABSTRACT

Diplomats are the face of their country abroad. One way that a country can represent and benefit from its diversity is through the diversity of its diplomatic representatives. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has made a sustained effort to increase the diversity of its workforce and has improved the representation of some groups: for example, the increased number of women in senior positions in recent decades. A case study of DFAT’s Indigenous Recruitment and Career Development Strategy (2007–2015) identifies the following key factors needed for such efforts to succeed: sustained effort, high-level support, availability of peer support and a willingness to adapt programs over time. While there are challenges in implementing a diversity strategy, such as resource constraints and the broader organisational culture, the Indigenous Recruitment and Career Development Strategy provides a positive model of how to increase diversity among a country’s diplomats.     

Southern (Over) Exposure? Quebec and the Evolution of Canada’s Grand Strategy, 2002–2012

ABSTRACT

One of the most persistent themes in the debate on Canadian foreign policy over the past few decades concerns the influence Quebec is thought to possess over the design and implementation of Canadian foreign and defense policy. Our purpose in this article is to situate this general debate within a more specific context, of Canada’s grand strategic choices as they principally involve the country’s security and defense relations with the US. To do this, we adopt somewhat of a “counterfactual” tack; to wit, we inquire whether, in the absence of Quebec from the Canadian confederation, we should expect to have seen a fundamentally different grand strategy fashioned by Ottawa, one with different significance for relations with the US. We focus on two specific cases, both of which have figured prominently in recent Canadian–American strategic relations: the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. We conclude that while there is something to the claim that Quebec can and does boast of a certain “specificity” in the matter of Canada’s grand-strategic preferences, it is hardly the same thing as arguing that the country without Quebec would have adopted policies on both Afghanistan and Iraq that were fundamentally different from the ones it chose to follow.     

On Generalized Tian Ji’s Horse Racing Strategy

Abstract

Tian Ji’s horse racing strategy, a famous Chinese legend, constitutes a promising concept to be applied to important issues in today’s competitive environment; this strategy is elaborated on and analyzed by examining the general case. The mathematical formulation concerning the calculation of winning, drawing or losing combinations and probabilities is presented to illustrate the interesting insights on how ancient philosophies could promote thinking in business competitiveness, in particular, the wisdom behind sacrificing the part for the benefit of the whole or sacrificing the short-term objectives in order to gain the long-term goal.     

The geoarchaeology of Mycenaean chamber tombs

This study presents a revised methodology for the excavation and analysis of the stratigraphy in Mycenaean chamber tombs and other multi-use burials. For our excavation of chamber tombs at Ayia Sotira and Barnavos, Nemea, we followed a geoarchaeological approach to provide details about the process of backfilling and re-opening of the tombs and to identify the location, number, and slope of these re-openings.     

个体差异对大学英语学习影响的研究

从20世纪70年代开始,研究二语习得的学者越来越多,这方面的著作也是硕果累累。作为从事大学英语教育工作的一份子。我充分感受到了研究大学英语学习的重要性。关于大学英语学习的研究能够帮助学生更好的习得英语,并且也能够帮助他们提高英语实际操作和应用的能力。关于大学英语学习的研究有很多的方面,本文主要是针对学习者的个体差异方面。例如语言潜能、认知风格和学习策略等,来谈大学英语学习。期望本文对大学英语学习者能有些许启示,以便更好地进行大学英语学习。     

Underplaying the ‘Okinawa card’: how Japan negotiates its alliance with the United States

The US military bases in the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa have long been a source of domestic political opposition to the US–Japan alliance. As an alliance management issue, the ongoing troubles surrounding the bases raise questions as to when and why states adopt particular bargaining strategies when dealing with allies. Why, for instance, has the Japanese government not made greater use of this ‘Okinawa card’ when negotiating alliance issues with the USA? Even though highlighting particular domestic problems as a part of a negotiating strategy (known as tying hands) should appeal to a weaker ally such as Japan, this article argues that in the Okinawan case the reverse has been true. Japan has generally, though not always, sought to minimise or downplay domestic opposition to its alliance agreements, essentially preferring a cutting-slack to a tying-hands approach. The Japanese experience suggests that when states which are directly dependent on an alliance for their security see their security environment as unstable, they view tying-hands strategies as too likely to undermine their bargaining credibility. Maintaining credibility is important in an alliance bargaining context because it is a way for such states to signal their commitment to an alliance and so guard against abandonment.     

南京市对外交通节点与酒店之间游客流动空间特征分析

利用旅游攻略数据,构建关系网络,探讨南京市对外交通节点与酒店之间游客流动这一特殊旅游流的空间特征,研究表明:1在节点方面,酒店的流入度、流出度和中心度均呈现出较为明显的圈层结构,高数值区域分布在城市中心的南北两端,外围区域数值较低,游客选择的酒店集中于夫子庙街道、健康路街道、梅园新村街道、玄武门街道;对外交通节点中,南京火车站中心度最高,铁路在南京旅游对外交通中作用突出。2在网络方面,随着流量阀值增加,整个网络的连通性不断增强,且流量分布更加均衡;核心对外交通节点与酒店集中分布街道在整个网络中起着重要的支配作用。3游客选择酒店并非集聚在对外交通节点周边,距离在酒店选择中所起作用不强,而与景点空间分布存在较强相关性。