‘A Hazardous Task’: Britain and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations

In 2014, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations celebrated its fiftieth anniversary since its coming into force in 1964. Setting out the privileges and immunities accorded to diplomats and diplomatic missions, the negotiations of this convention were part of the United Nations' plan to strengthen the international rule of law. This article analyses the role of Britain, one of the major actors in the negotiation process. It explores how Britain's negotiation position was shaped by diplomatic realities of the 1950s, and the strategies used to ensure Britain's interests being reflected in the final convention. The focus will be on the overall political pressure that underlined Britain's negotiation position, in order to reveal the general UK position on the codification of diplomatic privileges and immunities. Despite the remarkably friendly atmosphere at the 1961 Vienna conference, Britain could not press through all its amendments which, through the concluding legislation process, protracted Britain's ratification process. The article shows while London was supporting the codification of international law, codification by convention was not its ultimate choice. Therefore, the subsequent legislation process was marked by an inter-departmental dispute between the Foreign Office and Treasury, inter alia, on the exemption of Scotch whisky from excise duties.     

Fl?chenmonitoring in der Regional- und Bauleitplanung Neue M?glichkeiten durch die Analyse von Satellitenbildern

Deutschland hat ein umfassendes und in der Praxis bew?hrtes Planungssystem einschlie?lich integrierter Umweltprüfung, das auch für zus?tzliche bzw. erweiterte Prüfinstrumente günstige Voraussetzungen bietet. Das Fl?chenmonitoring in der Regionalplanung, aber auch für die St?dte und Gemeinden in der vorbereitenden Bauleitplanung kann mit Hilfe einer gezielten Ver?nderungsanalyse der Landbedeckung als ein Baustein eines umfassenden Monitoringsystems und zur Unterstützung des Nachhaltigkeitsprinzips verstanden werden. Da jedoch insbesondere für einen l?ngeren Beobachtungszeitraum kaum bzw. keine (digitalen) Informationen über die Landbedeckung existieren, stellt die Auswertung von Satellitendaten einen L?sungsansatz dar. Inwiefern sich die semiautomatische Analyse von Satellitenbildern als ein geeignetes Instrument zur Bewertung und Ver?nderung der Nutzung eines Landkreises eignet bzw. worin Analyseprobleme sowie M?glichkeiten und Grenzen der Anwendung in der Regionalplanung existieren, soll im folgenden Beitrag am Beispiel des Landkreises Osnabrück thematisiert werden.     

Towards Situated Analyses of Uneven Peri-Urbanisation: An (Urban) Political Ecology Perspective

In this article we develop a novel analytical framework for situated studies of uneven peri-urbanisation that resist further dividing Marxist and Situated (Urban) Political Ecology. We conceptualise uneven peri-urbanisation as a process in which access to the resources mobilised for peri-urban developments, such as water or land, is rendered uneven. In a three-step approach we suggest, first, describing how peri-urbanisation unfolds in the case being studied and distinguish it from other processes, such as suburbanisation. Second, we propose analysing the transformations of nature on which the peri-urbanisation process is based; and third, examining the uneven power relations infusing inequalities into these transformations and consequently into the peri-urbanisation process described. To allow for a situated analysis this approach regards the study of practices as crucial, but they have to be embedded in wider socio-economic, political, and historical processes, since both contribute to transformations of nature and thus shape uneven peri-urbanisation.     

The Politics of Masculinity in the (Homo-)Sexual Discourse (1880 to 1920)

Masculinity became an important topic of discussion around 1900,not only as reaction to the growing women's movement, but alsoa result of new developments in the medical and sexual sciences.In the late nineteenth century medical doctors began to takea sustained interest in same-sex sexual relations between men,giving rise to the concept of the homosexual man as feminizedand dangerous to the social order. While the medical conceptof the ‘third sex’ could also be –and was– used for emancipatory purposes by early advocates ofhomosexual rights, a group of masculinists rejected these discriminatorycharacterizations by insisting on their masculinity and arguingthat state and society were in fact based on male bonding. Thesemasculinist strategies, which sought to integrate male–malesexuality into hegemonic masculinity, represented resistanceagainst discrimination, but they also served to shore up andmodernize hegemonic structures that discriminated against womenand Jews.