Discourse in Development: Viewing the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights through the Post-Colonial Lens

This article uses post-colonial theory to examine the cluster of international human rights known as economic, social and cultural rights. The article surveys the jurisprudence of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, making it relevant for scholars of international human rights as well as post-colonial theory. Traditionally, international human rights divide into two branches: 1) civil and political rights, and 2) economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). ESCRs were virtually ignored during the cold war era, but they now receive expanded attention at the international and regional levels. The creation of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the mid-1980s began this process. The Committee has been highly influential in ESCR norm development. Post-colonialism is a branch of critical theory aimed at exposing the exploitative and paternalistic legacy of the international community's relationship to former colonies in the developing world. There is a small body of post-colonial theory literature examining international human rights, but it focuses on civil and political rights. The author, a specialist in ESCRs, seeks to engage theorists with another branch of human rights. ESCRs should be of interest to post-colonial theorists because these rights implicate economic national sovereignty, most importantly social spending. Developing country social spending has been uniquely politicized in post-colonial north-south relations through controversies over structural adjustment and trade liberalization. Post-colonial theorists should acknowledge that emerging ESCR jurisprudence and Committee procedures are responsive to north-south concerns on many levels. For example, the Committee's Concluding Observations concentrate on recommendations rather than on "violations." This modality permits sensitivity to differential southern budgetary realities while facilitating critique of wealthy egalitarian countries. A second example is that the Committee is progressive, within its limited means, about facilitating participation by "subaltern" southern groups. An important challenge post-colonial theory presents to the emerging ESCR regime is the Committee's record on encouraging southern governments to protect social welfare spending from external pressure. What does it mean for a country to cut social spending by IMF mandate, incur external debt for large-scale development projects through World Bank, and lower trade barriers pursuant to the WTO, only to be condemned by a UN human rights body for any resulting intensification of hunger, ill health and population displacement? The Committee could adjust its processes to better address this conundrum by routinely pursuing and analyzing information about the status of international negotiations.

A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee, reviewed by Andrew Higgins

Book review of A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien (2014), edited by Stuart D. Le

The Importance Of Fortran In The 21st Century

A brief discussion on the history and purpose of Fortran for scientific and engineering computing is given. This leads to the role Fortran, in its various environments, will likely play well into the 21st century

Reflection 1

Message from the President, Opening Ceremony Speech, Institute Overview, Organizational Chart, Membership, Some Preliminary Observations on the History of Chinese and Japanese Cultural Interaction, First International Symposium Considering the Potential of Cultural Interaction Studies, Activity Report, Notices and Editor’s Not

Contemporary Art and Historical Archives: Collaborations and Convergences in a Digital Multicultural Age

Literature illuminating the relationship between contemporary art and historical archives around the turn of the twenty-first century and how these interactions inform the evolution of archives in a digital multicultural age is the topic of this review. The literature reveals the extent to which art has been a means for members of marginalized groups to address their representation in historical archives, and also a means for archives to connect with a broader audience. Collaborations between artists and historical archives add new dimension to the debate about the nature of the archive as a creation in and of itself, and in turn the question of whether participatory culture may be a necessary component in achieving more complete representation of all segments of the community. Types of relationships explored in this review include: the questioning of and re-imagining of the archive by artists, particularly those from marginalized groups; the blending of art and digital archives; and how such collaborations have informed the mission and practical concerns of archives. As digitization leads to increasing convergence of previously distinct cultural heritage collections and enthusiasm for participatory platforms accelerates, interactions between individual artists, people from marginalized communities, and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) will continue to evolve and expand. From this literature review emerge observations about prior collaborations from around the world as they inform future developments

500 Year Documentation

Museum visitors today can regularly view 500 year old art by Renaissance masters. Will visitors to museums 500 years in the future be able to see the work of digital artists from the early 21st century? This paper considers the real problem of conserving interactive digital artwork for museum installation in the far distant future by exploring the requirements for creating documentation that will support an artwork\u27s adaptation to future technology. In effect, this documentation must survive as long as the artwork itself -- effectively, in perpetuity. A proposal is made for the use of software engineering methodologies as solutions for designing this documentation

From manuscript catalogues to a handbook of Syriac literature: Modeling an infrastructure for Syriaca.org

Despite increasing interest in Syriac studies and growing digital availability of Syriac texts, there is currently no up-to-date infrastructure for discovering, identifying, classifying, and referencing works of Syriac literature. The standard reference work (Baumstark's Geschichte) is over ninety years old, and the perhaps 20,000 Syriac manuscripts extant worldwide can be accessed only through disparate catalogues and databases. The present article proposes a tentative data model for Syriaca.org's New Handbook of Syriac Literature, an open-access digital publication that will serve as both an authority file for Syriac works and a guide to accessing their manuscript representations, editions, and translations. The authors hope that by publishing a draft data model they can receive feedback and incorporate suggestions into the next stage of the project.Comment: Part of special issue: Computer-Aided Processing of Intertextuality in Ancient Languages. 15 pages, 4 figure

Perspectives on linguistic documentation from sociolinguistic research on dialects

The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how sociolinguistic research can be applied to endangered language documentation field linguistics. It first provides an overview of the techniques and practices of sociolinguistic fieldwork and the ensuring corpus compilation methods. The discussion is framed with examples from research projects focused on European-heritage English-speaking communities in the UK and Canada that have documented and analyzed English dialects from the far reaches of Scotland to the wilds of Northern Ontario, Canada. The main focus lies on morpho-syntactic and discourse-pragmatic variation; however, the same techniques could be applied to other types of variation. The discussion includes examples from a broad range of research studies in order to illustrate how sociolinguistic analyses are conducted and what they offer for understanding language variation and change.National Foreign Language Resource Cente