bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Diagnosis, Intervention, and Cure: The Illness Narrative in the Discourse of the Failed State
Authors: Manjikian Mary
Published: April 2011

Failed-states discourse rests on an illness narrative. As the failing state battles against invasion by the terrorism “virus,” the United States serves as physician, diagnosing, treating, and sometimes “curing” the patient. The well state exists in a dominant power relationship vis-à-vis the sick state and the sick state has no voice in decision making regarding its future. Just as sick people have less autonomy than those who are well, sick states have less sovereignty than healthy ones. An uncooperative patient may be deemed incompetent and treated without his consent. Constructivist and feminist analyses of the medical process can shed light on and help in our creation of a revisionist/feminist analysis of the failed-state paradigm.
Western Europeans and Others: The Making of Europe at the United Nations
Authors: Götz Norbert
Published: April 2011

This article examines the emergence of the so-called Western European and Others Group as well as that of the caucus of European Communities at the General Assembly of the United Nations based on a study of documents from Nordic foreign ministries in the period 1945 to 1975. It shows that the global entanglement of Western Europe both stimulated and inhibited the development of closer subcontinental collaboration during the Cold War, and it demonstrates that a European core was necessary for facilitating common political action. The hesitant and reactive evolution of Western European collaboration at the United Nations, the arbitrariness of its geographical scope, and the alienation of its members provide a key to understanding European identity in the second half of the twentieth century.
Global Justice Meets Local Civil Society: The International Criminal Court's Investigation in the Central African Republic
Authors: Glasius Marlies
Published: April 2011

As a new justice institution, the International Criminal Court (ICC) needs to gain legitimacy not just with states but also in civil society, both at the global level and in the societies in which it intervenes. This article, based on interviews, NGO documents, newspaper articles, and participatory observation, looks at civil-society relations with the ICC in relation to its most recent and least publicized investigation—that in the Central African Republic (CAR). It charts the role of civil-society organizations, local and international, in the opening of the investigation, and it discusses the initial responses to the investigation of civil-society figures and victims in the CAR. It finds that unlike in any of the other situations, the ICC's involvement in the CAR has been largely instigated by local civil-society figures and that, as a result, it operates in a quite receptive context. However, the slow pace of investigations and trials, the meager outreach to date, and the court's probable lack of capacity to provide victims with physical and material security are long-term challenges for its ability to meet local expectations of justice.
A Model for Homeland Defense? the Policing of Alterglobalist Protests and the Contingency of Power Relations
Authors: Gibson John
Published: April 2011

This article analyzes the policing of the protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement in Miami in November 2003. Specifically, it uses the case to develop a theoretical understanding of the contingencies, weaknesses, and unpredictable consequences of ostensibly repressive applications of power in transnational summit spaces. It then evaluates participants' modes of resistance to critique ongoing assertion among academic and activist circles concerning the unity of activists in alterglobalist space, in favor of a view of power relations as constitutive of complex forms of social identity, and which require greater reflection on the part of activist circles in order to translate the experience of repression into a source of activist commonality.
Wilson Victorious? Understanding Democracy Promotion in the Midst of a “Backlash”
Authors: Acuto Michele
Published: April 2011

Many authors have issued anxious warnings about a disturbing “backlash against democracy”—this in spite of the growing affirmation of democracy as an international standard against which other systems are measured. This article considers the role of democracy promotion, which is understood as activities aimed at assisting in consolidating, disseminating, and advocating democratic governance in this context. The theoretical framework in which the promotion debate occurs is highlighted in order to show how the concept of “democracy” is socially constructed and interpreted in different ways by the various promoters. The article examines the main targets of this activity (state structures and civil societies) and compares two major supporters of democracy (the European Union and the United States). On this basis, claims about a “democratic rollback” are challenged by reference to hybrid regimes that contrast the idea of democracy with that of civilization. The backlash is better understood as resistence to some of the methods of promotion and some promoters, rather than as being against democracy itself, and the article holds that the best way to promote good governance worldwide is through an oblique, cosmopolitan or European-style democracy that fosters the multiple and processual grounds on which democratic polities can flourish.
From Borders to Margins: A Deleuzian Ontology for Identities in the Postinternational Environment
Authors: Parker Noel
Published: April 2011

While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations, the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can coexist in a common field in the first place. This article draws upon Deleuze's philosophy to set out an ontology in which the continual reformulation of entities in play in “postinternational” society can be grasped. This entails a strategic shift from speaking about the “borders” between sovereign states to referring instead to the “margins” between a plethora of entities that are ever open to modifications of identity. The concept of the margin possesses a much wider reach than borders, and focuses continual attention on the meetings and interactions between a range of indeterminate entities whose interactions may determine both themselves and the types of entity that are in play.
Tracing the Russian Hermeneutic: Reflections on Tarkovsky's Cinematic Poetics and Global Politics
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: April 2011

This article makes a contribution to hermeneutic explorations in global politics. Taking as its points of departure the growing body of work on film and the turn to aesthetic and intertextual IR, the article argues that a further conversation with cinema and poetics can be used to develop the interpretive canon in global politics. In particular, the analysis draws upon the idea of cinematic poetics, and more generally the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, who, throughout his films and written work, articulates a particular form of Russian interpretivism. The article explores Tarkovskian cinema and engages in debates about artistic creativity and aesthetics, filmic representations of belonging and spiritualism, all shaped by a Russian hermeneutic tradition. The final sections apply these themes, illustrating how the icon presents a way to read the themes of suffering and salvation, inscribing the formation of identities in global politics.
Cosmopolitanism as Hospitality: Revisiting Identity and Difference in Cosmopolitanism
Authors: Baker Gideon
Published: April 2011

For many cosmopolitans, an emergent global civil society is re-framing the relationship between the universal and particular in world politics in ways that do justice to both. This article disputes this claim, finding that the concept of global civil society shares the same fundamental problem as state sovereignty, namely that it is better at articulating global identity than difference because it reproduces in different form statist attempts to describe a universal structure of particularity. It then argues that to avoid reducing difference to identity while remaining true to the cosmopolitan impulse to ethical universality, that is, to recognition of moral obligations to foreigners, it is necessary to take cosmopolitanism as synonymous with an ethics of hospitality enabling a nondialectical account of identity and difference in cosmopolitanism. As Derrida affirms, hospitality deconstructs the binary of identity and difference in our ethical relations with strangers. This dialectic-defying quality of cosmopolitanism-as-hospitality requires a greater decisionism than dialectical liberal-cosmopolitanism, turning cosmopolitanism away from the pure ethics of its liberal variants and transforming it into an ethicopolitics.
Change vs. Order: Shijie Meets Tianxia in China's Interactions with the World
Authors: Barabantseva Elena
Published: April 2011

This article examines how China, understood as a construct made up of multiple identities, constantly negotiates its relationships with the world. The oppositions—between tradition and modernity, the past and the present, China and the West— that are often presumed or reproduced in our thinking about China's place in the world are called into question. China's relationship with the world must be understood through the interplay between history and present, and thus through the particular uses of history in practice. The article especially explores how the world and China's place in it are seen in Chinese popular culture and visual expressions of state initiatives to promote Chinese culture. It focuses on the way images of the ever-changing world are depicted in two visual narratives: a promotional video of the Confucius Institute and the film The World (Shijie).
Rogue Specters: Cuba and North Korea at the Limits of US Hegemony
Authors: Gordy Katherine , Lee Jee Sun E.
Published: April 2011

The United States continues to label North Korea and Cuba “rogue states” of unique international distinction even though their economic, political, and military power has declined steadily since 1990. The authors argue that persistence of the label and accompanying US behavior is best understood by expanding upon a Schmittian frame of analysis to demonstrate that the designation of rogue state determines the normative weight given to certain behaviors, rather than the other way around. Examining the distinctive mode of politics practiced by North Korea and Cuba shows that they do pose threats to the United States, but not in the ways traditionally recognized by liberal states. Rather, through the anomalous role they play in the US-led system, their relentlessly polemical political discourse, and their excitable speech and ideological unmasking, they highlight the primacy of the political dimension determining their relationship with the United States and the contradictions underlying the universalism of US hegemony.
Roads and Riddles? Western Major Power Metaphors of Nonviolent Conflict Resolution
Authors: Kuusisto Riikka
Published: April 2011

Our conceptual systems are metaphorical in nature: We understand complex issues by comparing them with relatively straightforward and familiar ones. Renowned experts of nonviolent problem solving, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Luthuli, and Martin Luther King, Jr., have structured difficult conflicts in terms of roads, gardens, building projects, and riddles. The conflict rhetoric of leaders of the major Western powers—the United States, Britain, and France—is most often studied in violent contexts, vis-à-vis epic battles and tragic catastrophes. However, when dealing with mundane disputes among fundamentally like-minded parties, disagreements with petty challengers and debates with major powers with different political systems, for example, US, British, and French leaders employ many of the metaphors that nonviolence activists do. Understanding and expanding this sphere of comic conflict resolution—where ingenuity and reflection instead of black-and-white juxtaposition are the norm— is essential in the search for a more peaceful, yet vibrant world.
On the Aporetic Borderlines of Forgiveness: Bereavement as a Political Form
Authors: Weisband Edward
Published: April 2011

This article focuses on representations of forgiveness as adopted or assumed by processes of collective amelioration experienced in the aftermath of mass atrocity. It seeks to demonstrate how each representative approach to forgiveness captures some of the torment, pain, and suffering of survivor and successor generations, but also that each fails to accommodate the depths and complexities of personal grief and collective mourning. Too often transnational justice in the aftermath of political evil becomes grounded in assumptions of justice, truth, and apology that are severely delimited. Such strategic and theoretical perspectives are insufficiently attuned to the needs of bereavement as a political form because they fail to promote social solace by means of collective atonement on the part of survivor and successor generations who inherit the legacies of sorrow. If political bereavement conducive to collective amelioration is to occur in any one polity, it should be legitimated by a transnational system of “transnational legacy sites” exclusively devoted to the designation, protection, and intercultural connection of all the many places where political evil may be said to have occurred.
Understanding the Histories of Peoples on the Margins: A Critique of “Northeast India's Durable Disorder”
Authors: Khongreiwot Rammathot
Published: April 2011

This article examines the often misconceived problem of insurgency and various political, social, and law and order problems

of northeast India, which Sanjib Baruah calls “Northeast India's Durable Disorder.” The region has been stereotyped by the postcolonial state of India as a “disturbed area” infested with insurgents and militants. In its attempts to resolve this “durable disorder,” India fails to engage with its underlying causes in the construction of new political boundaries in both the colonial and postcolonial eras.
Negativity and Open-Endedness in the Dialectic of World Politics
Authors: Brincat Shannon
Published: April 2011

This article illustrates the importance of negativity within the dialectical method, aiming to bring clarity to what has been rendered unnecessarily mystical within recent revisions of dialectics, particular in the conception of “meta-dialectics.” The negative element in dialectics, where in the movement of sublation the subject remains undetermined and nonidentical, is argued to be the productive moment in the dialectical movement that leads to open-ended and ongoing processes of change. The article argues that considerable conceptual difficulties arise if one attempts to counterpose negative dialectics to positive dialectics and particularly in interpretations of Hegel's Logic and Adorno's Negative Dialectics that attempt to do so. The two moments of positivity and negativity are shown to be mutually related. If conceived in this manner, dialectical analysis can provide radical insights into processes of social change in world politics that are, and remain, open ended.
Parity of Esteem: A Conceptual Approach to the Northern Ireland Conflict
Authors: Ruohomäki Jyrki
Published: April 2011

This article applies a method of conceptual analysis to understand peace processes in a divided society. Through the analysis of the concept of parity of esteem, this article examines some neglected dimensions of conflict studies, including politicizations, contestations and politicking involving key concepts in peace processes and conflict resolution. The analysis focuses specifically on politics in Northern Ireland, but it also seeks to inform a more general understanding of the dynamics of peace processes and conflict reconciliation.
From Cyberspace to Offline Communities: Indigenous Peoples and Global Connectivity
Authors: Belton Kristy A.
Published: April 2011

This article examines how indigenous peoples use two unique spaces of a globalizing world–-cyberspace and the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues–-to make their claims, foment alliances, and assert their right of self-determination. It describes how indigenous peoples’ use of these two spaces positions them so they are no longer simply reacting to globalizing processes and events but are situated so that others will have to contend with their alternative visions of the world. KEYWORDS: Internet, funding, globalization, Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, self-determination, United Nations
The Children of 1990
Authors: Becker Marc
Published: April 2011

In June 1990, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) led a massive uprising against their social, economic, and political marginalization. The protest altered the political landscape of Ecuador and gave that country a reputation as home to some of the strongest and best-organized social movements in South America. Two decades later–-this year, 2010–-the children of the leaders of that historic uprising continued to lead mobilizations against the government. This time, however, Rafael Correa, whom many saw as emblematic of Latin America's shift to the left, was in power. What explains indigenous protest against a leftist government? Was Correa not a true leftist, as some militants alleged? Or was this yet another example of a white urban left failing to take the concerns of rural indigenous communities into account? Recent developments point to an alternative explanation: Indigenous movements have become more conservative and have discarded a strategy of building coalitions that had brought them so much success in the twentieth century.
Peace as War
Authors: Polat Necati
Published: April 2011

This article seeks to reimagine peace against the backdrop of a Foucauldian understanding of politics. Most conventional accounts are based on a sharp distinction between war and peace and alternate between two broad positions; namely, peace as absence, the absence of war, and peace as presence, as an essential condition. These two visions of peace are often assumed to have found their classical statements in, respectively, Hobbes and Spinoza. The article resists such a binary treatment, bringing Hobbes and Spinoza close together through Spinoza's view of peace as potentia and Hobbes's view of war as process. The result is one that seems to vindicate Foucault: peace is war.
Citizenship as Absolute Space, Citizenship as Contingent Trace
Authors: Mhurchú Aoileann Ní
Published: April 2011

Using the distinction that Richard Ashley and Rob Walker drew in 1990 between two possible critical responses to crisis and the question of sovereignty, this article argues that two strands of thought can be identified, each producing a different understanding of what it means to become a citizen in Ireland. One strand articulates citizenship in terms of sovereign autonomous subjectivity, and thus in terms of horizontal or territorial relations between here and there, us and them, inside and outside. The other strand (re)articulates citizenship in terms of ambiguous paradoxical subjectivity that challenges the modern framing of the politics of citizenship as necessarily needing to be conceptualized in terms of absolute space. This divergence is explored through the 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum. The concept of citizenship as “trace” is introduced in an attempt to capture how citizenship is reconceptualized differently in the second strand. It is argued that understanding this divergence is necessary in order to consider how classical conceptions of time and space are specifically integral to structures of sovereign power and how perspectives that take these as their starting point fail to account for the increasing emphasis on the nonsovereign manner in which citizenship is being experienced vis-à-vis migration.
Dividing Practices, Subjectivity, Subalternity
Authors: Suetsugu Marie
Published: April 2011

Beginning with some autobiographical reflections on divisions between self and other, this article draws on Trinh T. Minh-ha, Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Giorgio Agamben in order to engage with the relation between dividing practices, subjectivity, and subalternity. The article concludes with some observations about the relevance of this relation for a specific development project in Kenya.
Global Cities: Gorillas in Our Midst
Authors: Acuto Michele
Published: April 2011

This article calls for greater attention to global cities in the study of world affairs so as to promote a more holistic reading of global governance as a multiscalar set of processes composed by overlapping spheres of authority. The article shows how international studies have been insufficiently sensitive to the strategic role of global cities and how they are capable of acting on the global stage by exerting network power. This sheds light on the multilayered governmentality of global governance from an urban perspective. Looking through a lens of global cities, it is argued, will enable theorists to connect macro processes to micro dynamics across a far wider spectrum of governance and political agencies.
When Peace Prevails: The Management of Political Crisis in Ecuador, Madagascar, Tunisia, and Venezuela
Authors: Hauge Wenche
Published: April 2011

This article presents a comparative study of four countries that experienced severe political crises during the past two decades—Ecuador, Madagascar, Tunisia, and Venezuela. Despite this, peace prevailed in three of them. Only in Madagascar was there an armed conflict in 2009. Based on a comparison of these cases, the article identifies a set of factors deemed crucial as constituents of a country's domestic capabilities for peaceful conflict management. The article also explains why—in the case of Madagascar in 2009—these capabilities became weakened and the crisis culminated in a military coup. The factors identified as crucial for the preservation of intrastate peace are channels of political participation, the identity and loyalty of the military, a culture of constructive conflict management, and the structure of conflict fault lines in a country. The comparative study revealed that strength in one or more of these factors could substitute for weaknesses in the others. Conflict-prevention research and conflict-prevention efforts therefore need to pay attention to all of these factors, and to the balance between them.
Barry Hindess and the Critique of Democracy
Authors: He Baogang
Published: April 2011

In the wake of the collapse of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union, liberal democracy was triumphantly celebrated as the “end of history.” Against this backdrop, Hindess wrote a number of critical essays launching his intellectual critique of liberal democracy. His approach was primarily conceptual, highlighting the problems and weaknesses of the conceptualization of democracy and democratization. This article reviews and offers a brief assessment of the key arguments made in Hindess' writings on democracy and democratization. In particular, it attempts to summarize the methodological steps through which Hindess engages conceptual critique. While offering an appreciation of Hindess'analysis, insight, and intellectual integrity, it also addresses some difficulties in his arguments.
Prehistoric Modes of Textual Production, or, Books Begat by Other Books
Authors: Beilharz Peter
Published: April 2011

It all happened a long time ago. In 1975 a very serious book arrived from London. It was entitled Precapitalist Modes of Production, and its authors were Barry Hindess and Paul Q Hirst. It was hard work, though we were steeled for it by long hours spent with Althusser and Reading Capital as well as by reading Capital. No sooner had we finished this book, and puddled sideways through the accompanying journal Theoretical Practice, than another book arrived. It was called Mode of Production and Social Formation, and it was an autocritique of the first-mentioned book. There were invisible arrows in all this, and they pointed to Foucault rather than to Althusser, even if one of our authors was to follow that turn via political theory (Hindess) and the other, something more recognizably historicist (Hirst). As texts begat more texts (as medieval mice grew from moist cheesecloth) there were soon two more texts, these called Marx’s “Capital” and Capitalism Today, and involving two more authors, Cutler and Hussain. In this article, I revisit this remarkable experience, hoping that our guest of honor might help throw light on this moment.
Debating the Categories of Remote Indigenous Sociality
Authors: Rowse Tim
Published: April 2011

In The Use of Official Statistics in Sociology (1973), Barry Hindess distinguished between two critical approaches to official statistics: technical and theoretical. In this article I will elucidate Barry’s distinction and then apply it to a recent body of research by social scientists at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Research. In Making Sense of the Census (2002) and Agency, Contingency and the Census Process (2007), the CAEPR authors give a critical account of the enumeration of remote-living Indigenous Australians. I will offer a reading of these two publications that is faithful to Barry’s distinction between “technical” and “theoretical” critique.
Anti–Anticorruption
Authors: Larmour Peter
Published: April 2011

The article puts the work of Barry Hindess in the context of other strands of research on corruption and anticorruption. This work can be found in a chapter of a book on Antipolitics, in a report he wrote for his Department’s “Democratic Audit” of Australia, and in an article in Third World Quarterly. It has also been part of his doctoral supervision and teaching and his encouragement of the work of younger scholars. Running through his engagement with the history of the idea of corruption, and with definitions and deployments of the idea of corruption by the anticorruption nongovernmental organization (NGO) Transparency International (TI), were arguments with modern forms of liberalism and democracy as they operate internationally and in Australia.
Terror, Reason, and History
Authors: Hunter Ian
Published: April 2011

A striking feature of Barry Hindess' political thought is its unflinching application of theoretical reason to concrete problems. In recent discussion of terrorism, Hindess thus argues against the restricted application of the term to nonstate actors and for its expansion to cover the political violence of territorial states. This self-consciously polemical argument displays Hindess' commitment to theoretical reason and his preparedness to assess historical politics on this exacting basis. In this article, I argue for a more “timid” form of political analysis, that gives more room to compromised historical–political norms, and that has greater sympathy for the restricted application of the notion of terrorism.
Civilized Fictions
Authors: Buchan Bruce
Published: April 2011

In range of recent articles, Barry Hindess has explored the intellectual foundations of European perceptions of other peoples as different from and in need of European models of government and society. In particular, he has focused on the European “conceit” of superior, more rapid, and more sophisticated historical development or civilization. In this article, I will take up Hindess' view of European civilization as a conceit, and explore its deployment in relation to the influential idea of civilized war in Enlightenment political thought. In particular, I will trace the articulation of this conceit in Voltaire’s account of the battle of Fontenoy on May 11, 1745. I will argue that Voltaire’s account of the battle shows that the European notion of civilized war was not only a conceit but a fiction.
Moving On From The Developmental View Of Humanity
Authors: Bargh Maria
Published: April 2011

For many Indigenous people’s questions relating to development and how development should occur are commonplace. In particular, which types of institutions Indigenous peoples should privilege and establish in order to manage resources and maintain cultural and political institutions is of paramount concern. While different models of development are mooted, the notion of a developmental view of humanity is less often unpicked. The aspects of Hindess' work which I would like to explore in this article are those that illuminate the cultural and political biases and bases which underpin the notion of a developmental view of humanity and the consignment of Indigenous peoples, while in the “present,” to the “past” less-advanced stage of this continuum. I use Maori corporations as an illustration to argue that they are part of a diverse economy, the existence of which challenges the developmental view of humanity.
Cancer clinical trials in the era of genomic signatures: Biomedical innovation, clinical utility, and regulatory-scientific hybrids
Authors: Kohli-Laven Nina , Bourret Pascale , Keating Peter , Cambrosio Alberto
Published: April 2011

The paper examines two large-scale, North American and European clinical trials designed to validate two commercially available genomic tumor signatures that predict a patient’s risk of breast cancer recurrence and response to chemotherapy. The paper builds on empirical evidence from the two trials to explore the emergence of diverse regulatory-scientific hybrids; that is, the paper discusses configurations of genomic practice and bioclinical work that depend on linkages between technical, commercial, patient, clinical, and legal interests and institutions. The development of the genomic signatures for each trial — Onco type DX and MammaPrint — has followed quite different routes. Onco type began as a commercial platform: the company that produced it did not discover a signature but rather constructed it by asking users at every step what clinical question they wanted the signature to answer and what data would be credible in that regard. The test has been designed to minimally disrupt existing clinical workflows. MammaPrint , on the other hand, began as a breast cancer signature: the researchers who discovered it, at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), established a company to commercialize it as a test after the fact. MammaPrint requires a change in pathologists’ routines. Thus, while these two trials signify a new departure for clinical cancer trials on a number of levels — they both incorporate new models of interaction between biotech companies and public research, and they both aim to establish the clinical relevance of genomic markers — they also embody different socio-technical scripts: one attempts to accommodate established routines, while the other openly challenges prevailing evidential hierarchies and existing biomedical configurations.
Amazon deforestation: Rates and patterns of land cover change and fragmentation in Pando, northern Bolivia, 1986 to 2005
Authors: Marsik Matthew , Stevens Forrest R. , Southworth Jane
Published: April 2011

Much research has focused on deforestation in the Amazon, particularly with proximity to roads and population centers as proximate causes. This research presents the analysis of rates and patterns of land cover change in Pando, northern Bolivia, an area with most of its tropical humid forest still intact. Using a decision tree classifier, five forest/non-forest (FNF) classifications were created for 1986, 1991, 1996, 2000, and 2005 from 40 Landsat images that were preprocessed and mosaicked. FNF trajectory images were created for each date pair to indicate areas of stable forest and non-forest, and areas and rates of de/reforestation. Mean patch size, perimeter-area ratio, fractal dimension, and aggregation index metrics were calculated for the FNF trajectory images based on increasing buffer distances from road and along the main access road. In 2005, forest covered 95% of the area in Pando. Large areas of aggregated deforestation occur nearest the department capital of Cobija, along the border with Brazil, and about 50 km west and east of Cobija along the principal access road. Deforestation becomes patchier with increased distance from the population center and laterally from the road. Multiple non-linear relationships exist between the fragmentation metrics and distance from road. The results have implications for understanding and managing the spatial contiguity of these forests, which provide valuable ecological services as well as the livelihood base for many inhabitants.
Measurement and prediction of fatigue crack growth from cold expanded holes Part 2: Prediction of fatigue crack growth from cold expanded holes
Authors: Stefanescu D
Published: April 2011

In this paper a linear elastic fracture mechanics approach was used to predict fatigue crack growth from an open cold expanded hole. Predictions were made for two cases: by using the initial cold expansion residual stress distribution, assumed to be unaffected by fatigue crack growth, and by using the residual stress distribution corresponding to each crack length. The estimated fatigue crack growth rates were compared with experimental results and it was found that taking into account the residual stress change due to fatigue crack growth significantly improved the prediction accuracy.
Application of the generalized images method to contact problems for a transversely isotropic elastic layer
Authors: Fabrikant V. I
Published: April 2011

The idea of image charges, widely used in electrostatics, is applied to solution of a contact problem for an arbitrary punch acting on a transversely isotropic elastic layer resting on a rigid smooth foundation. The governing integral equation obtained is mathematically equivalent to that of an electrostatic problem of infinite row of coaxial charged discs in the shape of the domain of contact. Since the charge sign varies, each truncation gives either the upper or the lower bound to the exact solution. Simple and accurate engineering formulae are obtained for estimation of the resultant force and tilting moment acting on a punch of arbitrary shape and circular domain of contact. The case of isotropy is considered as well.
Unusual strain rate sensitive behaviour of AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel
Authors: Langdon G. S , Schleyer G. K
Published: April 2011

This paper presents the results of quasi-static and dynamic tensile tests on 2, 3 and 4 mm thick 316L austenitic stainless steel. It details the test conditions and discusses the results, particularly focusing on strain rate sensitivity and methods of employing the tensile properties in the finite element package, ABAQUS. The results show that the stainless steel is moderately strain rate sensitive in the region of yield. At the ultimate tensile strength (UTS), some negative strain rate sensitivity was observed, which previous researchers for this grade of steel have not reported. Two main conclusions were drawn, namely (a) the strain rate sensitivity was too complex to be modelled accurately by a constitutive equation such as the Cowper-Symonds relation and (b) the properties of the tested materials could be accurately described by a few (true stress, logarithmic strain) coordinate pairs, as linear strain hardening was observed, for a given strain rate.
Computational studies of variations in Poisson's ratio for thermoviscoelastic solid propellant grains
Authors: Chyuan S-W
Published: April 2011

In this article, the results of an investigation on solid propellant grains considering the effect of Poisson's ratio v under thermal loading are presented. Traditionally the v value of solid propellant grains is assumed to be a constant (e.g. 0.4999) for engineer, but the real v value is dependent on the real chemical recipe design of solid propellant grains. In order to simulate the time-temperature-dependent behaviour of thermoviscoelastic propellants under various Poisson's ratios, concepts of the time-temperature shift principle and reduced integration were used for finite element simulation. Results show that the effect of Poisson's ratio is important for structural integrity of solid propellant grains because the type of polymer material is changed from incompressible ( v ≈ 0.5) to compressible ( v ≠ 0.5). Under thermal loading, the difference between the maximum principal thermal strains for v = 0.4999 and v = 0.470 is 68.8 per cent, that between the maximum principal thermal stresses for v = 0.4999 and v = 0.470 is 73.5 per cent and that between the maximum shear thermal stresses for v = 0.4999 and v = 0.470 is 74.8 per cent. In addition, there are differences in the quasi-elastic analysis because the effect of Poisson's ratio becomes more and more predominant as the material type of solid propellant grains changed from incompressible to compressible.
Quality of Life in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: The Subjective Impact on Children and Parents
Authors: Baiardini Ilaria , Minetti Carlo , Bonifacino Simona , Porcu Anna , Klersy Catherine , Petralia Paolo , Balestracci Sara , Tarchino Filippo , Parodi Stefania , Canonica Giorgio Walter , Braido Fulvio
Published: April 2011

Duchenne muscular dystrophy results in a broad spectrum of physical and psychosocial consequences, both to patient and caregivers. This study was aimed to explore health-related quality of life and its possible determinants in Duchenne muscular dystrophy children and in their parents. Caregivers (21 mothers and 6 fathers; mean age, 40.04 years) of 27 Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients (mean age, 11.26 years) completed the validated Children Health Questionnaire-Parent Form 50 and the Family Strain Questionnaire. Children reported significantly lower scores than normative group in 10 of 15 Children Health Questionnaire dimensions. Only the use of wheelchairs (P = .02) and ventilators (P < .001) was significantly associated to lower health-related quality of life in Physical Functioning. On the contrary, Family Strain Questionnaire scores were not influenced by children’s characteristics. Despite the presence of Duchenne muscular dystrophy deeply impairs health-related quality of life, some areas of well-being are present both in children and caregivers.
The irony of immaturity: K’iche’ children as mediators and buffers in adult social interactions
Authors: Berman Elise
Published: April 2011

In Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan adults constantly face the threat of resentment from other members of their community. Evading others’ resentment requires concealing one’s possessions, a feat that in turn entails the immoral act of speaking untruths. Children, however, can utter falsehoods that adults cannot because adults do not see children as principals of harmful words. It is argued in this article, therefore, that K’iche’ children in Santa Catarina are in the ironic situation of having influence on the adult social world precisely because adults do not view children as influential. The article shows how children’s very status as supposedly unimportant individuals gives them the pragmatic power to mediate malicious feelings between adults via their words and actions.
Social bundles: Thinking through the infant body
Authors: Brownlie Julie , Sheach Leith Valerie M.
Published: April 2011

Drawing on a UK research study on immunization, this article investigates parents’ understandings of the relationship between themselves, their infants, other bodies, the state, and cultural practices — material and symbolic. The article argues that infant bodies are best thought of as always social bundles, rather than as biobundles made social through state intervention; and concludes that, while the natural/cultural divide may now be widely accepted as artificial within the social sciences, we need to scrutinize how people in their everyday lives work out, and invest in, the distinction between the two.
Experimental study and model validation of selective spinal cord and brain hypothermia induced by a simple torso-cooling pad
Authors: Smith K D
Published: April 2011

In vivo experiments have been performed to test the effectiveness of a torso-cooling pad to reduce the temperature in the spinal cord and brain in rats. Coolant was circulated through the cooling pad to provide either mild or moderate cooling. Temperatures in the brain tissue, on the head surface, and on the spine and back surfaces were measured. During mild cooling, the temperature on the back surface was 22.82 ± 2.43 °C compared to 29.34 ± 1.94 °C on the spine surface. The temperature on the back surface during moderate cooling was 13.66 ± 1.28 °C compared to 24.12 ± 5.7 °C on the spine surface. Although the temperature in the brain tissue did not drastically deviate from its baseline value during cooling, there was a difference between the rectal and brain temperatures during cooling, which suggests mild hypothermia in the brain tissue. Using experimental data, theoretical models of the rat head and torso were developed to predict the regional temperatures and to validate the rat models. There was good agreement between the theoretical and experimental temperatures in the torso region. Differences between the predicted and measured temperatures in the brain are likely to be the result of imperfect mixing between the cold spinal fluid and the warm cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain.
What Constitutes Torture?
Authors: Nordgren Loran F. , McDonnell Mary-Hunter Morris , Loewenstein George
Published: April 2011

Torture is prohibited by statutes worldwide, yet the legal definition of torture is almost invariably based on an inherently subjective judgment involving pain severity. In four experiments, we demonstrate that judgments of whether specific interrogation tactics constitute torture are subject to an empathy gap: People who are experiencing even a mild version of the specific pain produced by an interrogation tactic are more likely to classify that tactic as torture or as unethical than are those who are not experiencing pain. This discrepancy could result from an overestimation of the pain of torture by people in pain, an underestimation of the pain of torture by those not in pain, or both. The fourth experiment shows that the discrepancy results from an underestimation of pain by people who are not experiencing it. Given that legal standards guiding torture are typically established by people who are not in pain, this research suggests that practices that do constitute torture are likely to not be classified as such.
The quality of the evidence for dietary advice given in UK national newspapers
Authors: Cooper Benjamin E. J. , Lee William E. , Goldacre Ben M. , Sanders Thomas A. B.
Published: April 2011

Introduction:

Newspaper reports advocating dietary intake changes may impact on dietary choice and food related health beliefs. The scientific basis and quality of evidence underpinning these reports is uncertain.

Objective:

To evaluate the scientific quality of newspaper reporting related to dietary advice.

Design:

Articles offering dietary advice from the top ten selling UK newspapers for a randomly selected week were assessed using two established evidence grading scales: developed by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN).

Results:

Of 111 dietary health claims identified, 72% and 68% (assessed by WCRF and SIGN criteria respectively) had levels of evidence lower than the convincing or probable categories that are recommended for dietary health claims.

Conclusions:

Misreporting of dietary advice by UK newspapers is widespread and may contribute to public misconceptions about food and health.
The doping of athletes in the former East Germany: A critical assessment of comparisons with Nazi medical experiments
Authors: Dimeo Paul , Hunt Thomas M
Published: April 2011

A number of prominent writers on the social history and policy of sports doping in the former East Germany have compared that system with the atrocities of Nazi medical experimentation. This article draws from a range of primary and secondary sources to discuss and challenge the Nazi comparison argument. We argue that while there were many cases of secretive abuse and experimentation that led to severe side-effects, there are also examples of athletes who knew what they were taking. Moreover, the doping administrators did not have complete control over how doctors and coaches implemented the system – it was not a closed, totalitarian system that denied individual agency. We further argue that when set in the wider context of crimes within the former GDR, sports does not register as the most serious. The comparison with Nazi Germany is an over-statement constructed by writers whose emphasis on traditional sporting ethics had led them to exaggerate their argument. As such, the discussion of individual experiences opens up dilemmas, contradictions, and the space for agency, that simplistic top-down sociological and political models have so far denied.
Gaining a foothold in football: A genealogical analysis of the emergence of the female footballer in New Zealand
Authors: Cox Barbara , Pringle Richard
Published: April 2011

In this article we adopted Foucault’s genealogical approach to examine the emergence of the female footballer in the early 1970s. Results from in-depth interviews and document analyses indicated that these female footballers were discursively constructed as submissive, heterosexual, non-feminists, who were supportive of male football and entertainment. We relatedly argue, in a seemingly paradoxical manner, that female footballers emerged into the male domain because they were disciplined by discourses of normalized femininity and, as such, were understood as bodies not worthy of serious consideration. The power effect of this positioning was that female football was not perceived as a threat to the existing gender order and, accordingly, there was no need to invest political concern or future money to their existence. This miscalculation, or accident of history, provided a window of opportunity that allowed the neophyte players to taste the pleasures of ‘running with the ball at their feet’ and to develop a love of the game. We concluded that the pleasure that these women gained from their involvement in football, plus the prevailing discourses of liberal feminism, acted as productive forces that enabled them to endure and eventually challenge gender inequities.
Moderating Perceptions of Bother Reports by Individuals Experiencing Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms
Authors: Botelho Elizabeth M. , Elstad Emily A. , Taubenberger Simone P. , Tennstedt Sharon L.
Published: April 2011

We compared reports of symptom bother for the same urinary symptoms to understand why symptom severity and bother do not correspond in a straightforward manner. We used a grounded theory approach to analyze qualitative data from 123 individual interviews and developed a conceptual framework, identifying three symptom perceptions that might moderate symptom bother: causal, relative, and uncertainty. Symptom bother was lower for respondents who viewed symptoms causally (symptoms seemed explainable or “normal”) or relatively (urinary symptoms were compared to other symptoms or conditions). Bother tended to be higher for respondents who viewed symptoms with uncertainty (when symptom etiology and course were unknown). A greater portion of respondents in the causal perception group had not sought health care for their symptoms. This conceptual framework is useful for understanding the relationship between reactions to and health care seeking for other symptoms.