When leadership traits meet historic success: Hassan Rouhani and the nuclear deal of 2015

This study aims to show how dispositional characters of political leaders are affected by situational developments during the time‐in‐office. Although newly emerging literature of leadership traits demonstrate that significant events alter leaders’ traits, they mainly focus on the measurement of shocking events on dispositional features, leaving the effect of achievements underexplored. The Iranian nuclear deal of 2015 is one of the most significant successes in the last decade of world politics. Gambling his political career on nuclear talks by promising the Iranian people to solve Iran's decades‐long isolation, President Hassan Rouhani played a momentous role in negotiating the deal. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was globally recognized as a success of Rouhani's leadership. Using the Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA), this article will show the role of Rouhani's personality in the realization of the historic nuclear deal and measure the effect of such a success on Rouhani's leadership traits.     

Intimations of democratic impatience: The Book of Job

This article challenges democratic theorists’ disregard for democratic impatience by showing that the Book of Job not only defends impatience but that it intimates the merits of democratic impatience. Job is impatient along four dimensions that should speak to democratic theorists: he refuses to suffer, identifies his suffering as unjust, seeks to hold arbitrary power accountable, and recognizes patience’s irrationality in the face of injustice. Critically, I demonstrate that Job remains impatient in his mind, and thus does not abandon impatience – not even in an epilogue designed to stifle his impatient voice. While Job’s impatience is justified, it is not yet democratic, for it reneges on broader democratic claims, is not shared, and is undermined by his social privilege. I thus turn to Job’s wife – who is “Everywoman” both in a feminist and more generally democratic sense – to more fully develop a concept of democratic impatience.     

Revisiting the growth coalition concept to analyse the success of the Crossrail London megaproject

There is a common perception that infrastructure megaprojects are difficult to implement, as they face many obstacles (cost overruns, political barriers and time delays). This was particularly the case in the UK where many projects were difficult to develop given a complex, centralized and turbulent financial context (e.g. the jubilee Line extension, the Eurostar project). Despite this complex British system, London is developing the Crossrail mega infrastructure project which is recognized to be on time and built within a planned budget. The paper aims to analyse the reasons for the development of this project in a turbulent political and financial British system. The main argument I defend is that Crossrail benefited from the constitution of a specific and localized growth coalition. Revisiting the notion developed by Logan and Molotch, I show how the aggregation of different interests (political and economic) has been essential in the concretization of this project. Actors motivated by the will to promote the growth of London and to sustain the growth of population and jobs have been at the forefront to defend Crossrail. These elements have put Crossrail on a route of success. The paper concludes by characterizing and analysing such a success.     

A geography of repoliticisation: Popularising alternative housing models in Oslo

The question of the political has gained renewed relevance in recent years. New movements are challenging what has been called ‘the post-political consensus’ and have facilitated the repoliticisation of a wide range of social, political and cultural phenomena—both on the left and the right. One task for geographers is to understand this repoliticisation spatially. The housing sector is a prime example of how such a repoliticisation occurs. With an emerging global urban housing affordability crisis, housing is becoming an important arena for engaging in emancipatory democratic politics. In this paper, we use Oslo as a case to analyse how housing, which has long been governed through liberal consensus, is being repoliticised. We investigate Oslo's agenda of establishing a ‘third housing sector’ beyond the privatised model, and its role in popularising alternative models in housing. We focus on the mobilisation and rearticulation of the genealogy of failure of housing in Oslo and the alternative housing solutions brought together in the city. Discussing the emerging geographical referencescape of housing as a distinctly spatial process of politicisation we show how arguments and positions gain legitimacy by situating references to other situations and places in a multiplicity of local and foreign arenas.     

明清铜镜的时代特征

明清铜镜在继承宋金民间铸镜传统的同时,其纹饰及铭文更多地反映了当时普通人士的心态,融入了市井文化内容,形成独特的时代风格。乾隆时期,清宫内府铸制了一批独具特色的宫廷用铜镜,其工艺精湛,纹饰别具一格,是铜镜艺术的一枝奇葩。本文通过对明清铜镜造型、纹饰、款识与铭文、特殊工艺镜、仿古镜以及清宫内府造镜等几个方面进行分析比较,勾划出其时代特征,并对形成这一特征的社会根源作进一步的探讨。     

浅议我国职务犯罪现状及相关刑法实务

职务犯罪是司法部门和法学理论界提出的一个概念,从主体角度认为是身份犯或者特殊主体的犯罪,强调主体定罪的作用,只有犯罪行为与其职务相关联,才能称为职务犯罪。职务犯罪侵害了职务的正当性或廉洁性、侵害了国家对职务活动的管理职能。     

被拐儿童生命历程变迁与原生家庭融入研究——基于寻亲成功案例的实证

被拐儿童的生命历程变迁与寻亲成功后的原生家庭融入境遇值得关注.本文通过实地调研访谈寻亲成功后的被拐儿童及其家乡社会网络成员,以生命历程理论为指导,揭示被拐儿童的生命历程变化,考察寻亲成功后的原生家庭融入情况.研究发现:被拐儿童的生命历程主要经历被拐、被收养、寻亲与寻亲成功4个重大生命事件.被拐儿童寻亲成功后的原生家庭融...     

Divergence of the Book of Job from Deuteronomic/Priestly Torah: Intertextual Reading between Job and Torah

The book of Job prominently portrays the motif of the pious sufferer and the confrontation between Job’s three friends who claim the retribution principle and Job who witnesses the undermined moral order in reality, and indicates finally Yahweh’s speech which marginalises issues of justice and judgment which Job vehemently called for. On the one hand, these distinct features to some extent may reflect a critical and belittling idea of Deuteronomic Torah, although it does not deny the entire concept of Torah and traditional laws about divine judgment. On the other hand, while it has been argued that the book of Job reflects the Priestly context in the Pentateuch, in a closer examination the author of Job hardly has the creational order, rituals, and ideology that priestly materials in general imply.     

Job’s Enemies in 30,17-18

Verses 30,17-18 in Job’s final speech are notoriously difficult for interpretation. Typically offered understandings of these verses by modern exegetes cannot be anchored in the text, and appear to be too simplistic for the Jobian context. The purpose of this paper is to understand vv. 17-18 from the perspective of the contradictory objectives that the ailing Job and his fearful community have. It is being argued that a cogent understanding of these verses can be obtained if it is assumed that they deal with Job’s closest circle of intimates (apart of his three friends) and his tragic disappointment in them, perhaps because of their effort to isolate him and prevent contagion. Such reading can be obtained by assuming only the revocalizations of just two words (????, ??????) in the MT.     

“Have You Considered My Servant Job?” A Reflection on the Book of Job

Abstract

The Book of Job is often viewed as a story of unnecessary and undeserved suffering. A man who is “blameless” in the eyes of God is put through senseless anguish and misery simply because God and the Adversary have a wager. It is a story of a whimsical God who does not understand or care about human beings and their sufferings, and of an insignificant and yet defiant being who epitomizes human dignity and fortitude. This and other similar accounts make God villainous and human sufferings mysterious and incomprehensible. This article seeks to cast these issues in a different light by exploring some of the key terms in the Prologue and the speeches of God in the Theophany. The exploration ends with some reflections on Job in the Epilogue of the Book.