Separating Church and State: Transfers of Government Land as Cures for Establishment Clause Violations

The note examines one of the issues currently before the Supreme Court in Salazar v. Buono, the case concerning a Latin cross war memorial in the Mojave desert. The issue is whether the government may, by transferring land to private parties, cure Establishment Clause violations caused by permanent displays that contain religious imagery. The article surveys the Court\u27s Establishment Clause jurisprudence as it applies to permanent displays, discussing the sometimes-used and sometimes-ignored Lemon-endorsement standard and the potential shift to a coercion standard. It concludes by arguing that even under the Lemon-endorsement standard, courts should often allow the type of remedial transfer at issue in Buono, and it suggests how judges can police such sales in order to ensure that they pass constitutional muster

Separating Church and State: Transfers of Government Land as Cures for Establishment Clause Violations

The note examines one of the issues currently before the Supreme Court in Salazar v. Buono, the case concerning a Latin cross war memorial in the Mojave desert. The issue is whether the government may, by transferring land to private parties, cure Establishment Clause violations caused by permanent displays that contain religious imagery. The article surveys the Court\u27s Establishment Clause jurisprudence as it applies to permanent displays, discussing the sometimes-used and sometimes-ignored Lemon-endorsement standard and the potential shift to a coercion standard. It concludes by arguing that even under the Lemon-endorsement standard, courts should often allow the type of remedial transfer at issue in Buono, and it suggests how judges can police such sales in order to ensure that they pass constitutional muster

To Pandemic or Not? Reconfiguring Global Responses to Influenza

ESR

Populations, volaille et pandémie : Communication des risques et engagement communautaire en Indonésie

This SSHAP Case Study illustrates how the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) worked in 2006-07 to support the Indonesian government in response to avian influenza outbreaks. The agency provided social mobilisation and education programmes to schools and villages in affected communities and provided media relations support and training for Indonesian journalists. Learning from this case study can be used by public health officials and response workers to further their understanding on how to coordinate interactions with affected communities during similar events.Cette étude de cas réalisée par la SSHAP décrit la manière dont le Fonds des Nations unies pour l’enfance (UNICEF) a oeuvré en 2006-07 pour soutenir le gouvernement indonésien en réponse aux flambées épidémiques de grippe aviaire. L’agence a fourni des programmes de mobilisation sociale et d’éducation aux écoles et aux villages au sein des communautés affectées ainsi qu’un accompagnement et des formations en matière de relations avec les médias aux journalistes indonésiens. Les enseignements tirés de cette étude de cas peuvent être utilisés par les autorités sanitaires et les intervenants de la riposte pour approfondir leur compréhension de la manière de coordonner les interactions avec les communautés affectées lors d’événements similaires.UNICEFUSAI

The political economy of avian influenza in Indonesia

Why is the response to H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) so challenged in Indonesia? Why did the virus spread so fast, and why has the disease persisted? Are there features of the country and its culture that encourage or inhibit the disease? Is the internationally led response appropriately sensitive to local contexts? This paper suggests that distinctive social, cultural, economic and political factors work against a technocratic response such as has been employed in Indonesia. The paper explores the interactions between global bio-medicine, a mesh of power relations linking health, industry, institutionalism and governance, and Indonesia’s diverse and complex political and social contexts. How is an infectious zoonotic disease controlled in a dynamic environment where modernist models of authority and rationality are unproven? Since H5N1 was first detected in central Java in mid-2003, it has spread to 31 of Indonesia’s 33 provinces, caused the death or destruction of at least 150 million poultry birds, and killed over 110 humans. The international response, which began in mid-2005, has focused on animal surveillance, control and vaccination, human health system capacity building, and information and behaviour change communications. The response is challenged by the size, geography and infrastructure of the country, an exuberant democracy and extensive decentralization. Other diseases, sectarian tensions and regular natural disasters overshadow the threat of HPAI to human health and food security. Nevertheless, issues of trust between science, government, business and civil society, and nationalism, are shown to be key, as are the varying constructions of risk, public goods and governance associated with the international organizations driving the response, and the people affected by the disease.ESRC; FAO Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative; Pro-Poor Risk Reduction Project; DFID; World Bank

Risk, modernity and the H5N1 virus in action in Indonesia A multi‐sited study of the threats of avian and human pandemic influenza

This thesis examines the Influenza A/H5N1 virus in action through an ethnographic study focused on the entwined concepts of risk and modernity. The objective is to explain why the response to the virus has been challenged in Indonesia. Concerned with policy formulation, and everyday practice, the thesis argues that assemblages of historical, political, institutional and knowledge‐power processes create multiple hybrid constructions of risk and modernity, which challenge technical responses based on epistemological positions and institutional arrangements that do not allow for such hybridity. The thesis is organised into four sections. The first section (chapters 1 – 3) introduces the virus and its terrain, outlines a constructivist position, and argues that conceptually risk and modernity have multiple, dynamic, power‐laden forms. The second section (chapters 4 – 6) contrasts constructions of risk and modernity among the actors and networks responding to the emergence, spread and persistence of the H5N1 virus, with the constructions of affected people in Indonesia. The third section (chapters 7 – 9) investigates the multi‐directional processes that occur when ‘global’ policies and practices encounter ‘local’ social and political settings, and vice versa, through three empirical case studies of the response to H5N1 in Indonesia between 2005 and 2010. The final section (chapter 10) provides a set of reflections and conclusions. Given the conceptual plurality of risk and modernity, and the multiple overlapping interacting hybrid constructions that have been empirically demonstrated in the case of H5N1, it is concluded that reductive, science‐based, governmentally‐orientated responses which treat nature as a matter of separate, fixed identity do not allow for such hybridity. The virus in action in Indonesia shows that any divide between nature and society is artificial and deceiving. Technical disease control responses need to incorporate understandings which accept the dynamics of culture, politics, and powe

Community, Consensus And Progress: Problems In Pragmatism From Peirce And Dewey To Putnam And Rorty

This thesis deals with an antinomy in debates among contemporary Pragmatists. Lodging the authority of rationality in the context of evolving traditions raises problems of relativism. Yet attempts to preserve the transcendence of reason raise epistemological problems Pragmatism was designed to circumvent. This thesis adjudicates disputes among contemporary Pragmatists, through a discussion of the historical origins of the issues that divide them.;Chapter I summarizes the structure of the argument. Chapter II describes the cultural context in which Pragmatism emerged. It is argued that even for Peirce, despite his emphasis on formal logic, Pragmatism cannot be understood apart from issues in ethics, religion and metaphysics.;Chapter III discusses Peirce\u27s realism in relation to his opponents. Peirce\u27s limit theory of truth is shown to successfully circumvent the opposition of realism and idealism.;Chapter IV details Peirce\u27s view that science is self-corrective. The consistency of Peirce\u27s claim is defended from objections by various commentators. The integration of logic, morals and metaphysics is again established.;Chapter V argues that there is an irreducible tension between Peirce\u27s fallibilism and his vindication of science as the sole epistemic authority. His attempt to resolve the antinomy between the immanence and the transcendence of reason thus fails in its own terms. The attempts by Putnam and by Jardine to resurrect Peirce\u27s limit theory of truth are also shown to be inadequate. In rejecting many of Peirce\u27s least defensible epistemological claims Putnam and Jardine only amplify Peirce\u27s problems.;Chapter VI shows that Dewey\u27s notions of conduct and community provide the basis for a view of epistemic authority that is immune from Peirce\u27s problems and from problems of relativism. Chapter VII describes Dewey\u27s view of inquiry. His thesis that the aim of inquiry is warranted assertability is defended.;Chapter VIII uses this reading of Dewey to defend Rorty\u27s view of the meaning and significance of Pragmatism from the criticisms of Putnam and Prado

Bound non-locality and activation

We investigate non-locality distillation using measures of non-locality based on the Elitzur-Popescu-Rohrlich decomposition. For a certain number of copies of a given non-local correlation, we define two quantities of interest: (i) the non-local cost, and (ii) the distillable non-locality. We find that there exist correlations whose distillable non-locality is strictly smaller than their non-local cost. Thus non-locality displays a form of irreversibility which we term bound non-locality. Finally we show that non-local distillability can be activated.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur