Necessary fictions: indigenous claims and the humanity of rights

Indigenous right insistently challenges the surpassing arrogations of sovereign right. In so doing, it affirms dimensions of being-together denied or stunted in sovereign modes of political formation. This force of Indigenous right is amplified here through legal and literary instantiations. These, in turn, uncover the continuously created and fictional quality of rights, revealing them to be necessary fictions

The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism

Deep Eutectic Solvents: The Organic Reaction Medium of the Century

This microreview summarizes the use of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) and related melts in organic synthesis. Solvents of this type combine the great advantages of other proposed environmentally benign alternative solvents, such as low toxicity, high availability, low inflammability, high recyclability, low volatility, and low price, avoiding many disadvantages of the more modern media. The fact that many of the components of these mixtures come directly from nature assures their biodegradability and renewability. The classification and distribution of the reactions into different sections in this microreview, as well as the emphasis paid to their scope, easily allow a general reader to understand the actual state of the art and the great opportunities opened, not only for academic purposes but also for industry.This work was supported by the University of Alicante, Spain (VIGROB-173 and UAUSTI13-09)

Philosophy of action

The philosophical study of human action begins with Plato and Aristotle. Their influence in late antiquity and the Middle Ages yielded sophisticated theories of action and motivation, notably in the works of Augustine and Aquinas.1 But the ideas that were dominant in 1945 have their roots in the early modern period, when advances in physics and mathematics reshaped philosophy

Professional development programmes for teachers moving from majority to minoritised language medium education:Lessons from a comparative study

Education through the medium of a minoritised language is widely regarded as a critical component of language revitalisation initiatives. Given the demographic and social position of many minoritised languages, however, it may not be easy to find teachers who are fluent and literate in the language, confident about using and teaching it, and prepared for the demands of working in classrooms where the language is the medium of instruction. This article presents findings from a comparative study of teacher education programmes adopted in Catalonia, the Basque Autonomous Community, Wales and New Zealand, to prepare teachers to teach through the media of Catalan, Basque, Welsh and Māori respectively. The research was conducted to inform new professional development initiatives in Scotland, designed to enable qualified teachers to transfer from English-medium to Gaelic-medium education. The findings have wider relevance for other contexts in which the recruitment, professional development and retention of teachers to work in minoritised language medium education represent a challenge