Patterns of Conflict in the Great Lakes Region

The African Great Lakes Region (GLR) has witnessed some of the most intense violence and protracted conflict of the last half-century. There has been spiralling and sometimes over-lapping conflict in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (hereinafter Zone 1 conflict states). Yet their neighbours—Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia (hereinafter Zone 2 peaceful states)—have remained generally peaceful. This article asks what makes the difference in conflict outcomes between these neighbouring states? It has one goal: to identify a set of structural and historical factors (if any), that differentiate the zone 1 from the zone 2 states and which can explain the incidence of conflicts across time and countries. We set out to document and estimate the impact of a common set of structural factors that underpin the outbreak of wars in this region over the past fifty years, while controlling for time and country specific effects.

Keeping Our Distinctions Straight: A Response to “Originalism: Standard and Procedure”

For half a century, moral philosophers have distinguished between a “standard” that makes acts right and a “decision procedure” by which agents can determine whether any given contemplated act is right, which is to say whether it satisfies the standard. In “Originalism: Standard and Procedure,” Stephen Sachs argues that the same distinction applies to the constitutional domain and that clear grasp of the difference strengthens the case for originalism because theorists who emphasize the infirmities of originalism as a decision procedure frequently but mistakenly infer that those flaws also cast doubt on originalism as a standard. This invited response agrees that the basic distinction Sachs highlights is important, but argues that it’s already well understood in the constitutional theory literature under different labels, such as the familiar distinction between theories of legal content and of adjudication, and the less familiar distinction between “constitutive” and “prescriptive” theories of constitutional interpretation. It argues further that, nomenclature aside, the distinction does not lend originalism the support that Sachs claims for it because we remain without good reason to believe that originalism is our constitutional standard

Wat maakt het verschil? Een genderkritisch perspectief op het thema intersekse

What makes the difference? A gender-critical perspective on the theme of intersex In this article the different meanings are explored from a gender-theoretical perspective that have been attributed to the phenomenon of intersex in western thought. While pre-modern thought was characterised by a ‘one-sex-model’ and relative tolerance towards perceived deviations from the masculine and the feminine, from the eighteenth century, the rise of biology, medicine and the two-sex-model led to a more strict classification of what are seen as normal and abnormal bodies. The second half of the twentieth century shows the rise of social constructionist thought and the malleability of gender role and identity. Despite the split between sex and gender, the binary sex/gender model remains unquestioned, until the contribution of critical gender studies in the nineties. However, the binary heteronormative model has long determined the modern medical treatment of intersex births. In the new millennium the medical field increasingly takes the criticisms from the growing intersex movement into account against unnecessary surgery, and in favour of more scientific research, evidence-based knowledge and sound follow-up of chirurgical and/or hormonal intervention in children with intersex/DSD, without their informed consent. The contribution of a gender-critical perspective is to keep exposing the limitations of binary thought and to strive for more consciousness-raising about sex and gender variation, among stakeholders and the broader society

Poverty Among Senior Citizens: A Canadian Success Story

Lars Osberg makes the case in his paper that the major success story of Canadian social policy in the twentieth century has in fact been the reduction of poverty among senior citizens. According to Osberg, the poverty rate, defined with the poverty line measured as one-half median equivalent income after taxes and transfers, for households headed by a person 65 or over fell from 28.4 per cent in 1973 to 5.4 per cent in 1997, while the poverty gap or income shortfall below the poverty line fell from 26.2 per cent to 15.8 per cent over the same period. In contrast, the elderly poverty rate and gap before tax and transfer income are much higher and show no downward trend. Osberg attributes the difference between the before and after transfers and taxes poverty rate and gap to the introduction of the Old Age Security in 1952 and Guaranteed Income Supplement in 1968 and the reduction in poverty after 1973 to the maturing of the Canada/Quebec Pension Plan regimes established in 1966. Osberg notes that income trends capture only part of the improvement in well-being enjoyed by seniors over the past several decades. Many of the current elderly population received significant capital gains from a large run up in housing prices in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, the elderly have not been hit by the labour market insecurity that has affected the non-elderly, particularly youth, in the 1980s and 1990s. They have also greatly benefited from the introduction of universal medicare. Osberg also finds that relative to the United States, Sweden and the United Kingdom, Canada has done the best job in boosting the income levels of seniors above the poverty line. In his view, Canada has done a remarkable job in ensuring that senior citizens receive an income sufficient to prevent poverty.Poverty, Elderly Poverty, Canada, Retirement, Income, Low Income, Low-income, Wealth, Capital Gains

Animacy in early New Zealand english

The literature suggests that animacy effects in present-day spoken New Zealand English (NZE) differ from animacy effects in other varieties of English. We seek to determine if such differences have a history in earlier NZE writing or not. We revisit two grammatical phenomena — progressives and genitives — that are well known to be sensitive to animacy effects, and we study these phenomena in corpora sampling 19th- and early 20th-century written NZE; for reference purposes, we also study parallel samples of 19th- and early 20th-century British English and American English. We indeed find significant regional differences between early New Zealand writing and the other varieties in terms of the effect that animacy has on the frequency and probabilities of grammatical phenomena

Automible advertising in Le Soir, Brussels 1905-1950

Without denying the importance of symbolic values inherent in modern advertising, I try to argue that arguments used in advertisements should be linked to commercial strategies as well as to broader cultural backgrounds. Advertising is never just advertising, it is always advertising for something. The presence —or absence— of appeal arguments has been a function of production techniques, commercial positions and the general situation on the market for the product involved. Arguments used in advertising do not just come into existence as an outcome of a natural process of evolution. Within an expanding market, the product-introducing force of appeal arguments can be useful. Yet producers will be likely to return to price/quality arguments whenever the market becomes stagnant, and competitive pressure rises

Greek love, orientalism and race : intersections in Classical reception

Classics has been characterised as both a radical and a conservative discipline. Classical reception studies has enjoyed exploring this paradox: antiquity has provided an erotic example for modern homosexual counter-culture as well as a model for running exploitative empires. This article brings these aspects of reception studies together, to examine how the Victorian homosexual reception of the ancient Greeks was framed and worked out in a particular imperial context at the end of the nineteenth century

Historical psychology, utopian dreams and other fool’s errands

Copyright 2008 @ the author. Originally published open access by Birmingham University. Journal now published by Edinburgh University Press.No abstract availabl