EFFECTIVE GLOBAL GOVERNANCE WITHOUT EFFECTIVE GLOBAL GOVERNMENT: A CONTEMPORARY MYTH

Although the recent collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union has significantly reduced the near-term probability of nuclear disaster, it constitutes wishful thinking to imagine that meaningful and effective global governance is possible in today's world. The term “global governance” suggests and implies a degree of order and control in the international community far beyond that which presently exists, and that in fact could only be achieved by means of a global government. The global governance myth has emerged to help people cope with the uncongenial and presumably unavoidable reality that we are living in a world in which global government is impossible, and in which therefore the international condition is most accurately described as “international anarchy.” A dysfunctional myth is a belief that not only is false, but that discourages and deters thought and action toward overcoming uncongenial realities which are not, in fact, unavoidable. Global governance, in all likelihood, falls into the category of dysfunctional myth.     

The globalization of human rights

The argument of this article is that what I term generic globalization has created unprecedented opportunities for advances in human rights universally, but that the dominant actually existing historical form of globalization – capitalist globalization – undermines these opportunities. Substantively, I argue that taking the globalization of human rights seriously means eliminating the ideological distinction that exists between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic and social rights on the other. Doing this systematically undermines the three central claims of capitalist globalization – namely, that globalizing corporations are the most efficient and equitable form of production, distribution and exchange; that the transnational capitalist class organizes communities and the global order in the best interests of everyone; and that the culture-ideology of consumerism will satisfy our real needs.     

The Roles of Religion in National Legitimation: Judaism and Zionism's Elusive Quest for Legitimacy

Why and how do nations turn to religion to justify claims for statehood? This article addresses this question in both theory and practice, showing that religion plays multiple legitimating roles that shift dynamically according to the success they yield for national movements. I posit four legitimating models: (1) nationalism instead of religion (“secular nationalism”), (2) nationalism as a religion (“civil religion”), (3) religion as a resource for nationalism (“auxiliary religion”), and (4) religion as a source of nationalism (“chosen people”). Empirically, I analyze the roles of religion in Zionist efforts to legitimate a Jewish state in Palestine. I argue that Zionism has responded to persistent delegitimation by expanding the role of religion in its political legitimation. The right of self‐determination, which stands at the core of the “secular Zionism” legitimation, has given way to leveraging Judaism, which in turn has been eclipsed by constructing a Zionist civil religion and a “chosen people” justification.     

帛书《易之义》键川、阴阳、刚柔、文武思想合论

帛书《易之义》通过对《周易》卦象的分析,探讨了键川、阴阳、刚柔、文武的意蕴,凸显了阴阳协调、刚柔相济、中和的思想。作者将这些思想的阐述,导入人生实践,这样便与《中庸》的庸常之道、道家贵柔主张具有相关性。其阴阳调和、刚柔有体而文武兼备的思想倾向,很能说明作者在人生领域的折衷态度和价值取向。     

How Civil Society Organisations Changed the Regulation of Clinical Trials in India

ABSTRACT

In 2005 India changed its pharmaceutical and innovation policy that facilitated a dramatic increase in international clinical trials involving study sites in India. This policy shift was surrounded by controversies; civil society organisations (CSOs) criticised the Indian government for promoting the commercialisation of pharmaceutical research and development. Health social movements in India fought for social justice through collective action, and engaged in normative reasoning of the benefits, burdens and equality of research. They lobbied to protect trial participants from structural violence that occurred especially in the first 5–6 years of the new policy. CSOs played a major role in the introduction of new regulations in 2013, which accelerated a decline in the number of global trials carried out in India. This activism applied interpretations of global social justice as key ideas in mobilisation, eventually helping to institutionalise stricter ethical regulation on a national level. Like government and industry, activists believed in randomised controlled trials and comparison as key methods for scientific knowledge production. However, they had significant concerns about the global hierarchies of commercial pharmaceutical research, and their impact on the rights of participants and on benefits for India overall. Pointing to ethical malpractices and lobbying for stricter ethical regulations, they aimed to ensure justice for research participants, and developed effective strategies to increase controls over the business side of clinical research.     

Globalization and the Evolution of Democratic Civil Society: Democracy as Spatial Discourse

At its core, the evolution of democratic civil society is a process of transcending existing, historical social space, a process that desires to dissolve “political society” into “civil society” and with it to reformulate space as more democratic, participatory public space, and global spheres of interaction. In this article, the author examines the implications of globalization and the evolution of democratic civil society. Drawing on the work of French theorists de Certeau and Lefebvre, the author examines the nature of space as a social construct and the importance of understanding space as a practiced place in relation to the evolution of democratic civil society that makes transnational space a practiced place for global civil society. The author argues that as globalization spreads across nation-states, spatial forces produced by economic, cultural, and political discourses and practices give way to the potential for the evolution of democratic civil society.     

The affective spaces of global civil society and why they matter

Many early-career researchers aim at making research socially engaged. In the initial stages of my research on international volunteering for development I learnt very quickly that any push towards social justice has been blunted by the damaging mechanisms of neoliberal power. The temptation is therefore to make research socially engaged by exposing such malign presences of power in volunteering organisations. This paper grows out of this interest and builds an argument of how researchers can engage power and write into being a better future. This brings into contrast the capitalocentric orientation of fieldwork preparation against the micro-processes of meeting and being with other bodies come together to constitute work in the field. Through work with an NGO in New Delhi the case is put that such meetings of bodies are affective and this is central to making research socially engaged. Affective moments give rise to love, solidarity and hope. Making research sensitive to such intersubjective moments writes into being the possibilities of a better and more just future. The paper makes an attempt to put this approach to research into practice.     

Advancing Shūrā: A Social Agent for Democratization

ABSTRACT

This study is an analytical comparison between Islamic articulations of shūrā (consultation) and notions of representative democracy. It emphasizes various epistemic understandings of shūrā in light of qur’anic exegesis and historical precedents of consultative rule in Islam. In particular, it identifies shūrā as an agent for democratization in contrast to its more familiar manifestation as a top-down consultative system. This is examined together with the works of influential Muslim scholars from modernist, Islamist and pro-democratic backgrounds to elucidate what aspects of democracy they accept and/or reject. The article does not exhaustively analyze each scholar’s interpretation of democracy. Rather, it selects scholars from different historical epochs with distinctive theoretical positions on shūrā. Overall, the study finds shūrā remains largely under-utilized as a result of post-colonial discourses on Islam and authoritarian political systems in Muslim-majority countries. The article finally examines how shūrā can be better facilitated as a social agent to renew civil society and combat authoritarian rule.     

Loi de bioéthique du 2 août 2021 : analyse critique des dispositions relatives à l’assistance médicale à la procréation (AMP)

Whereas in France assisted reproductive technology (ART) was intended to respond to pathological infertility or the risk of transmitting a serious disease, the bioethics law of 2 August 2021 opens up technological procreation to fertile couples, to single women and women's couple. Procreation is thus disconnected from the carnal reality of the begetting of a child and is based solely on the will of the adult to realise his or her parental project. This is not without consequences for the rights of the child born of these technologies but also for the meaning of filiation in general.     

The presence of the absence in Kjell Westö’s novel: “Hägring 38”

ABSTRACT

The word ‘hägring’ (in English. ‘mirage’) can be understood in different ways: as an unrealistic hope or wish that cannot be achieved (wishful thinking); as an image in a mirror of something that is not there, but in another place, and as a sign of something that has not yet become visible, for instance, the first rays of sunlight on the horizon before the sun has risen. These meanings represent different ways in which presence and absence interplay, and are all illustrated in Kjell Westö’s impressive novel from 2013 for which he received the Nordic Literature Prize in 2014.

The action of the novel takes place during eight months in Helsinki from March to November 1938 and unravels how the past and present are woven together on a historical, societal and individual level. The present article will try to illustrate this.