Conceptualizing the EU model of governance in world politics

While the field of EU studies has generated a rich theoretical literature, the usefulness of analyses of the EU for broader processes of regional governance has been questioned. At the same time much recent scholarship on the EU has examined the Union’s external relations as opposed to its internal governance. At stake in both of these debates are questions about the nature of the EU, what it represents and how it should be conceptualised. By examining the conceptual literatures on EU ‘actorness’, the governance of EU external relations and policy and academic discourses of comparative regional integration, this paper argues that approaches informed by broadly constructivist insights carry significant promise and can help to answer questions about the EU’s role in world politics that perplex both the policy and the academic imaginations

A study of the activities of eight clinical instructors teaching nursing students in clinical practice

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Open political science, methodological nationalism and European Union studies

The relationship between European integration and political science has always offered a very good case study of the intersection between novel developments in the ‘real world’ and the evolution of the academic study of politics. The area of political science now usually dubbed EU studies has, of course, been driven routinely by the unfolding story of the object it seeks to analyse. Put simply, without the EU there would be no EU studies. The emergence of integration theory in the 1950s and 1960s was a bold attempt to build a general comparative framework out of the inductive study of the European experience that commenced with the inauguration of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. Subsequent bursts of integrative activity such as the single market project of the mid 1980s and the progress towards monetary union and significant enlargement in the 1990s have provided cues for more analysts of politics to ply their trade (at least partly) in relation to the EU. The EU’s importance as a supplier of binding decisions and as perhaps the key agent for the governance of the European economy have demanded the study of the polity/governance system through which such authoritative outputs emerge. By any reckoning, the proliferation of specialist journals and the membership levels of relevant professional associations suggests a field in robust health, even if some sceptics openly question the overall quality or ‘scientific value’ of the aggregated output of EU studies

Understanding insertion and integration in a study abroad context: the case of English-speaking sojourners in France

This paper draws on a recent study of British students of languages undertaking a year abroad in France, in a variety of placements (as language teaching assistants, as exchange students, and as workplace interns). The data were gathered in the context of the 2011-2013 LANGSNAP project, a larger study undertaken which investigated both the language learning and social integration of British students spending an academic year abroad in France, Spain or Mexico Having made a positive choice to specialise in languages at university, and having already reached a relatively advanced level in French during their secondary school education, it could be assumed that these students were positively motivated to further develop their language skills, to deepen their intercultural understanding, and to integrate socially within the local society. Indeed, in pre-departure interviews (in French), the participating students unanimously expressed the wish to integrate and in particular to make French same-aged friends. The paper first of all presents an overview of the range of tools used to gather both quantitative and qualitative data on participants’ social integration. The paper then goes on to evaluate the degree of success of even such highly motivated participants in achieving this declared goal, and to consider social, sociolinguistic and personal factors which appear to influence the degree of social integration achieved by individual participants

Globalization, the ambivalence of European integration and the possibilities for a post-disciplinary EU studies

Using the work of Manuel Castells as a starting point, this article explores the ambivalent relationship between globalization and European integration and the variety of ways in which the mainstream political science of the EU has attempted to deal with this issue. The analysis here suggests that various 'mainstreaming' disciplinary norms induce types of work that fail to address fully the somewhat paradoxical and counter-intuitive range of possible relationships between globalization and European integration. The article explores critically four possible analytical ways out of this paradox—abandonment of the concept of globalization, the development of definition precision in globalization studies, the reorientation of work to focus on globalization as discourse, and inter- and post-disciplinarity. The argument suggests that orthodox discussions of the relationship require a notion of social geography that sits at odds with much of the literature on globalization and while greater dialogue between disciplines is to be welcomed, a series of profound epistemological questions need to be confronted if studies of the interplay between global and social process are to be liberated from their disciplinary chains

Mammy jazz : Me, oh, my! How I love that lullaby /

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/4795/thumbnail.jp

Computer Maths: Curiosity, Art, Story! The First International Conference on Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication

This is an invitation to the First International Conference on Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication, Computer Maths: Curiosity, Art, Story!