Do Minorities Trust Less? Understanding Differences in Social Trust among Canada’s Major Ethno-Racial Groups

Using data from Canada’s General Social Survey, this article assesses ethno-racial differences in social trust. Bivariate findings reveal that the three most culturally distinctive minorities—visible minorities, the French, and Indigenous Peoples—exhibit the lowest trust of all groups. Multivariate analyses show that controls for “ethno-cultural markers” (religion, language, immigration status), socioeconomic influences (education, income), and social engagement indicators (voluntary association activity, ethnic diversity of friendships) explain the lower trust between the French and, less so, among visible minorities. Socioeconomic factors partly account for lower trust among Indigenous Peoples, but they still express comparatively low social trust even with controls. The article discusses how interpretations focusing on “social distance” and “social boundaries” processes help in understanding social trust differences across Canada’s major ethno-racial communities.     

Between a principled and a consequentialist logic: theory and practice of secession in Catalonia and Scotland

This paper inquires into whether the three types of arguments usually formulated in the normative literature on the legitimacy of secession – i.e. communitarian, choice, and remedial arguments – are articulated (or not) by separatist parties in Catalonia and Scotland. It concludes that these actors do use such arguments, but they tend to merge them in different combinations making a pluralist case for independence rather than developing monist reasoning as most political philosophers do. Furthermore, it finds a fourth type of argument which is under‐theorised in the relevant literature. This is an instrumental argument whereby independence is depicted not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieve better welfare and governance for the national population. It further proposes a fourfold theoretical scheme that links communitarian and choice arguments to a principled logic based on the belief in the existence of an absolute right to self‐determination and remedial and instrumental arguments to a consequentialist logic that legitimates secession on the condition that it serves the achievement of specific ends.     

Practices of Illegalisation

This article contributes to theorising the often unrecognised continuities between the illegalisation of migrant and refugee mobilities as an effect of lawmaking or other state practices of border policing and immigration law enforcement and the illegalisation of the rights, claims, and juridical status of minoritised citizens. Against a backdrop of resurgent right-wing nationalisms, we pursue this transversal analysis of state practices of illegalisation to draw attention not only to labour subordination and disposability but also the more fundamental relationship between law and terror. The making of such regimes of citizenship takes place in obvious ways at the ostensible outer edges of nation-state territories. They are also replicated in the various spatial arrangements that ensure racialised dispossession within global cities, cities that are better understood as reconfigurations of settler-colonial cities. We argue that the study of practices of illegalisation allows critical poverty scholarship to better discern how sociopolitical categories and classifications that are central to wider processes of marginalisation and domination may arise or be reinforced as effects of the state’s legal productions of illegality.     

民族地区政区调整与民族区域自治的实现路径--以20世纪50年代广西都安瑶族自治县设置为中心的探讨

20世纪50年代初期,以民族为名称的各层级自治区非均衡地建立,致使政府在已建立民族区域自治的地区与尚未建立区域自治的民族地区执行经济政策时出现偏差,经济政策偏差产生的优惠差异引发了都安瑶族群众谋求民族区域自治的问题。为了解决瑶族谋求民族区域自治问题,在采取经济政策调整和相应政治措施调整无果之后,为配合民族区域自治政策的落实,政府继而采取政区调整的方式,通过一系列行政区划调整的探索,最大限度地将瑶族纳入瑶族自治县内。最终,通过政区调整满足了少数民族对民族区域自治的需求,实现了民族地区各民族的和解与社会稳定。     

The Great Physician: mainline Protestant ministers’ expectations of doctors, 1840–1900

I argue that mainline Protestant clergymen adapted to the scientific and cultural developments of the post-Darwin era by encouraging a separation of bodily healing and spiritual healing that was unprecedented in Christianity. I use ministers’ depictions of Jesus in their addresses to physicians to illustrate this change. In 1840 ministers insisted that doctors’ value lay in their willingness to mimic Jesus’s example by healing both bodies and souls. As doctors gained authority in the late 1800s, the clergyman’s new ideal doctor stayed abreast of scientific developments and stuck to healing bodies. Ministers increasingly portrayed Jesus as an exclusively spiritual healer.     

科技创新是西部少数民族地区全面建设小康社会的第一推动力

科技创新作为科学技术中最活跃、最革命的因素,是科技进步的前提和核心．是西部少数民族地区全面建设小康社会的火车头和第一推动力。西部少数民族地区必须通过科技创新,调整发展思路,转变生产方式,培育新的优势;必须依靠科技创新,抢占发展的制高点,提高综合竞争力,促进西部少数民族地区全面小康社会建设,构建和谐社会。     

C.S. Lewis: an Irish writer

This article examines the effect of C.S. Lewis's Irish background on his work. It attempts to contradict the assumption that this Belfast-born writer should be included in the English and not the Irish canon. It emphasises that Lewis saw himself as Irish, was seen by others as Irish, and that his Irish background, contrary to what some have written, was important to him throughout his lifetime. It goes on to demonstrate the ways in which his work was influenced by his youth in Ireland and by the Irish mythology that he loved. Furthermore, this article maintains that, as a child of pre-partition Ireland with roots throughout the island, Lewis was influenced by the country as a whole, not just his native Ulster. Finally, it attempts to understand why Lewis, a proud Irishman, did not do more to promote himself as an Irish writer.     

The Protestant working class in Belfast: education and civic erosion – an alternative analysis

This paper explores and reassesses the issues of social decline, educational underachievement and civic erosion in relation to the Protestant working class in Belfast. Prior to the ‘Troubles’ the Protestant working class in Belfast had at its heart a civic-mindedness which was in tune with working-class communities across the UK at the time. This civic-mindedness encouraged the growth of extended communities and placed an importance on church attendance and educational achievement; something which has been conveniently ignored in most analyses. Owing to population movements in Greater Belfast which followed the violence that followed the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971 Protestant church congregations dwindled and school attendances dropped significantly. The paper ultimately seeks to provide a ‘long view’ of the Protestant working-class experience in order to assist those who are concerned with the problems facing it in the current era.     

Civic or ethnic nation? Two competing concepts in interwar Latvia

This article examines the historical development of the two different concepts of the Latvian nation: the one that included the equal participation of all ethnic groups residing in Latvia, and the one that put them at the margins of the new state. In 1919, citizenship was granted to all Latvian residents irrespective of their ethnicity, while the Law on Minorities' Schools established a framework for cultural autonomy. National unity was perceived as being crucial to state independence, and remained central to political debates in the first republic. However, similarly to elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, the creation of the political nation faced a number of serious domestic and international challenges. The worldwide economic depression and the parliamentary crisis of the 1930s finally tipped the scale in favour of the ethnic version of the Latvian nation. Nevertheless, even seventy years later, the brave multicultural experiment in this small Baltic country resonates with modern debates on nation‐building and minority rights.