American Approach Research Articles

The ownership of genetic data: from data to information

In France, genetic data are not covered by property laws. They are considered to be equivalent to a part of the human body, to be protected rather than as something of economic value. However, in this highly competitive world, France must find solutions to increase the scientific and economic values of its genetic data. One possibility would be to define genetic data as raw information with no value for use. The choice of such a value of use (clinical, scientific, economic, etc.), following various key analysis and treatment processes will thus transform genetic data into useful information. In this case, and under certain conditions, intellectual property law could consider this information to be an original creation with an economic value, whilst maintaining current levels of protection for genetic data. France thus faces a choice between changing its laws concerning the protection of genetic data, bringing them into line with the North American approach, according to which data are a form of capital that everyone has the right to increase or sell, and making the distinction between genetic data and information clearer.

New АСС/AHA and ESC/ESH arterial hypertension guidelines

The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association updated the guideline for the prevention, detection, evaluation and management of high blood pressure in adults in 2017 The European Society of Cardiology and the European Society оf Hypertension updated guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension in 2018. This article reviews new positions of these documents, compares approaches to current issues of managing of the patients with arterial hypertension, pro and contra with previous versions of similar documents. It is necessary to update the National guidelines for management of patients with arterial hypertension, which should include the dignity of both European and American approaches.

Continuing the dialogue: curriculum, Didaktik and theories of knowledge

ABSTRACTJoseph Schwab’s famous remark, that the field of curriculum is ‘moribund’—no longer able ‘to …contribute significantly to the advancement of education’—has long echoed in curriculum studies. Although its specific meaning has changed, it still rings in our ears today. It now applies as much to discussions in the United States and United Kingdom as it does to those in Northern Europe—where the cognate field of General Didaktik has been described as ‘quiet’, or more recently, by Zierer and Seel (2012), as ‘dead’. This ‘virtual issue’ of the Journal of Curriculum Studies brings together five articles of direct relevance to the contemporary ‘crisis’ in transatlantic studies of curriculum and instruction that also share a common focus on the question of curricular content. ‘None of the many traditional American educational approaches have paid serious attention to the “school subject” or “instructional content,”’ as Westbury and Doyle have pointed out (1992, p. 137); and others in curriculum studies see this as the underlying reason for its ongoing crisis. This introduction provides an overview of each article included and concludes by outlining a few of the possibilities and challenges presented by questions of ‘content’ and ‘knowledge’ in curriculum studies.

Working constructively toward an improved North American approach to wildlife management.

Mawdsley et al. (2018) respond disapprovingly to our 2018 review of 667 wildlife management systems across Canada and the United States, which found that many of these systems lacked the scientific hallmarks of clear objectives, evidence, transparency, and independent review. Although we strongly agree with several of Mawdsley et al.'s points about the role of science in management, their response suggests confusion about three elements of our approach that we clarify herein: (i) the selection of hallmarks, (ii) the role of science in wildlife management, and (iii) our engagement with wildlife agencies. We contend that both critics and defenders of the current approach to wildlife management in Canada and the United States similarly desire rigorous management that achieves social and ecological benefits. Our original study-which used a clear approach to define hallmarks of science-based management, employed a reasonable set of indicator criteria to test for them, and was based on data available to the general public on whose behalf management is conducted-found evidence that the current approach falls short. However, it also provided a framework for addressing shortcomings moving forward. We suggest that advancing discussion on the operational role of science in management, including clarifying what "science-based management" actually means, could curtail practitioners and critics of the status quo talking over each other's heads and encourage all parties to work constructively to improve the governance of wildlife at a continental scale.

Geopolityka jako światopogląd władzy w Rosji

<p>Celem artykułu jest analiza tendencji i motywacji rządzących elit politycznych Rosji w zakresie myślenia o współczesnych stosunkach międzynarodowych. Myślenie to warunkowane jest przede wszystkim przez czynniki geopolityczne. Klasa polityczna Rosji nie jest jedyną, która w postrzeganiu systemu międzynarodowego odwołuje się do geopolitycznych interpretacjach. Podobny sposób myślenia właściwy jest Stanom Zjednoczonym czy Chinom. Uznanie przez Stany Zjednoczone Południowo-wschodniej Azji i przylegającej przestrzeni Oceanu Spokojnego za istotny dla tego państwa obszar globalnej polityki jest potwierdzeniem tej tendencji. Jednakże w Rosji geopolityka staje się obszarem wiedzy, który został włączony do nowego mesjanizmu tego państwa, stając się jednym z kamieni węgielnych myślenia o jego historycznym przeznaczeniu. Geopolityka w Rosji stała się swoistą ideologią w warunkach ideologicznej próżni jaka się wytworzyła po upadku komunizmu. Nastąpiła ideologizacja geopolityki, która dla elit politycznych stała się narzędziem interpretacji otaczającego systemu międzynarodowego i myślenia w kategoriach stref wpływów. Stała się cechą kultury strategicznej Federacji Rosyjskiej.</p>

The Wild Differences in Law when Trading in Wild Animals: a US and EU Perspective

This paper aims to show the differences between a regular animal trade and trade in wildlife in the European Union (EU) and in the United States (USA/US). Although the ideas towards using the international sale of animals are similar in the US legal system and in the EU legal system, they have very different foundations. The European model aims for policy – neutral rules of private international law agreed on a multilateral basis, whereas the American approach uses unilateral rules of private international law based on a country’s own domestic interests. Even though there are still no binding international conflict of law rules that would apply to contracts between parties from the US and European countries, this problem could easily be solved in contract law by choosing the law applicable to the contract. However, though the conflict of law rules in the situation where one of the States of the USA is involved might be different in each case. That is the reason why the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was drafted. Unfortunately, the conclusion based on the material presented in the article is that CITES is not effective enough. Therefore, although the law on the sale of animals leads to similar solutions in USA and in EU, even though it is based on different legal systems (common law and civil law countries), it leads to totally different solutions concerning the law on wild animals.

Will Historical Archaeology Escape Its Western Prejudices to Become Relevant to Africa?

A major problem facing North American approaches to historical archaeology is the exclusionary manner in which the discipline is defined. By confining historical archaeology to the era of capitalism and colonialism, we declare that the indigenous histories of many areas of the globe are of no interest to such an intellectual agenda. If we practice an historical archaeology that only valorizes the colonial experience, then what happens to history making that engaged cultures in the pre-capitalist and pre-modern era? Such approaches separate the histories of people in Africa from those of the West, and, is in effect, academic apartheid. To remedy this disjuncture, we interrogate how historical archaeology may escape the bounds of implicit racism in its denial of historicity before literacy. We suggest that breaking the chains of exclusion is the only way to realize an inclusive archaeology sensitive to all history making projects.

Bringing Back Place: Exploring the Conceptions of Space, Time, and Place for Environmental Policy

This article examines the ways that American approaches to public administration and policy are heavily shaped by a Cartesian ontology that emphasizes abstract notions of time, space, and consequences that result. It proposes an alternative drawing on Heideggerian phenomenology. It examines the implication of moving our perspectives from abstracted notions time and space to authentic encounters in the world, and uses environmental policy as a reference point to investigate potential expressions. It concludes with several propositional claims regarding the implications of this shift for environmental policy narrowly and democratic governance more broadly.

EU-Iran Relations in the Post-JCPOA Period: Selected Political Aspects

After the 1979 revolution, Europe’s policy of engaging Iran differed from the American approach. The circumstances changed in 2002, when the international community learnt about the undeclared nuclear sites at Arak and Natanz, as well as the scale of the Iranian nuclear program. The situation became even more complex when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005. From that moment on, the European Union has changed its attitude toward Iran. Moreover, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected under controversial circumstances in 2009, the EU intensified sanctions against Iran, even in such cases when they were divergent from member states’ interests. Bilateral affairs began to normalize after the presidential victory of Hassan Rouhani in 2013. Two years later, the EU and other powers from the P5+1 group signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. Has the signing of the JCPOA had any impact on Iran-EU political relations as far as non-nuclear related issues are concerned? In order to answer this question, one has to analyze their political relations prior to and after the signing of the deal. Selected political aspects are taken into consideration, including proliferation related issues, attitudes toward changes in the Arab world, regional conflicts, especially in Syria and Yemen, combating the so-called Islamic State, humanitarian aid to undocumented Afghan refugees, as well as civil liberties and human rights violations in Iran.

Futuribles: Origins, Philosophy, and Practices—Anticipation for Action

Interest in the future blossomed on both sides of the Atlantic after World War II (WWII). Formalized methods were developed in the defense sector but swiftly spread to the corporate world. Various groups, public, private, and governmental, became enthusiastic about reflecting on the future. The American and European approaches to reflecting on the future, to applying foresight and la prospective varied; however, there was cooperation. A chronological overview, this article follows the philosophical gaze of Bertrand de Jouvenel, the French writer and futurist who coined the term futuribles and founded a center that would become Futuribles International. Its current president, his son, Hugues de Jouvenel, outlines the background of this Paris-based center for foresight thinking and studies, which aims to integrate a sense of the long term into decision making and action. To this end, Futuribles performs various scanning functions, publishes reports plus a specialized journal, and trains a diverse clientele in foresight methodology. Moreover, Futuribles International honors the tradition of public intellectual discussions (roundtable series) in the spirit of serving an informed citizenry. The author reminds readers of the necessity of foresight today when unelected multinationals play an unprecedented role yet fall through the cracks of almost all national and international regulation.

Conceptual foundations and categorical definition of «think tanks»: academic rethinking of traditional approaches

Analytical and research organizations known in the world as think tanks have become increas- ingly influential actors on the political scene in recent decades. In a context of constant change and erosion of the borders between internal and external policies, they are able to respond promptly, pro- viding timely, reliable, accessible and useful information for making substantiated political decisions. The definition of «think tanks», however, creates a conceptual gap that causes serious limitations on the development of this field of study. Excessive generality or inflexibility in the use of the concept raises questions about the validity of the category. Either way, the «trade offs» of the conceptual choices have delineated a not very useful concept of «think tanks» to both inter-contextual and inter-or- ganizational comparability and to differentiate think thanks from overlapping organizations. The article revisits some of these dilemmas. To do so, the treatment in the specialized literature of the analytic category, highlighting both the insensitivity of the traditional North American approaches to different national contexts and its obsolescence to the changes in the context of «think tanks» action, including their own context of origin, is explained. The reasons of «conceptual stretching» and separation of the analytic category «think tanks» from the evolution of the phenomenon as a whole are investigated. In shedding light on promising conceptual contributions to the study of the phenomenon in its con- temporary features, the main contribution of the present article is specifying the contents and the proposal of definition of «think tanks» with the peculiarities of their functioning in different national contexts.

Intellectual property protection for plants

The production of raspberries is an important and highly valuable part of the agroindustry, which provides direct use of fruits and their application in the food processing and confectionery industry. Acceptance of plant intellectual property protection additionally influences the introduction of new development programs in this field and expansion of new products. Two approaches in plant intellectual property protection have been developed on a global level: the American approach that allows patentability for plants and the European approach that includes an exemption in relation to the patentability of plant varieties. In both cases, the protection of new varieties is regulated by a special system of variety protection. This article presents a comparison of those two plant variety protection systems and the comparison between Serbian and US raspberry production and innovation in this field, since these countries are among the five major producers of raspberries and raspberry products in the world; therefore, intellectual property protection of raspberry varieties is an especially important issue to them. The area harvested with raspberries in the United States is over 3000 ha smaller than in Serbia, but the production of this fruit is significantly higher. The continuous development of new varieties, primarily adapted to the growing conditions in US regions, has strongly increased the yield of this fruit.

In Search of a Latin American Approach to Organizational Communication: A Critical Review of Scholarship (2010–2014)

In Search of a Latin American Approach to Organizational Communication: A Critical Review of Scholarship (2010–2014)

From Media to Buen Vivir: Latin American Approaches to Indigenous Communication

From Media to Buen Vivir: Latin American Approaches to Indigenous Communication

A Latin American Approach to Mediatization: Specificities and Contributions to a Global Discussion About How the Media Shape Contemporary Societies

Theories on mediatization have been developed in Latin America in parallel to those flourishing in the Global North. This article analyzes the former while keeping an eye on the more available theoretical production in English-speaking publications. The main part of the article covers Eliseo Veron’s initial reflections on the semantization of violence to his later development of an evolutionary approach to mediatization. The article then introduces the contributions made by Latin American researchers who have followed in Veron’s wake during the last decade. The article concludes with an overview of the parallelisms between the two theoretical strands, and considers their complementarities as well as the possible exchanges between them.

ENSURING SECURITY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE INFORMATION AND CYBER SPACE: LEGAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS

Introduction. The issue of ensuring state security, including security in the information sphere, is critical in the current conditions for the development of global information space, which is determined by the country’s long-term national interests in protecting interests of society, individuals and state from external and internal information threats. Ensuring state security in information sphere is becoming significantly relevant in connection with the increased number of cyber attacks, cyber espionage, theft of information, disclosure of information constituting state secrets, interference with privacy, etc. Protection of world community and countries from the use of information space by terrorist groups for criminal purposes, the use of information technologies for military or peaceful purposes by influencing mass consciousness are particularly important. The goal of the research is to explore law, political, economic mechanisms, and specifics of the countries’ approaches to ensuring state security in the information space. Materials and methods. The implementation of the research tasks was achieved through the study of official documents, including Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation (2016), Cybersecurity Strategy of the USA (2015), UNGA Resolution No. 55/63 of 4 December 2000 “Combating the Criminal Use of Information Technologies”, Convention Council of Europe on Cybercrime (2001). The research methodology is based on system approach; law and statistical methods. Results. The article analyzes approaches to ensuring security in the global information space - cyber security and information security; contains analysis of world trends in the field of cyber defense, Russian market of information security; comprehensive analysis of the American approach to ensuring cyber security and ensuring system of information security in Russia; threats to Russia’s information security and the USA’s cyber security. Discussions and conclusion. Today threats related to the use of ICT for military-political and military-strategic purposes come from global information space, and in recent years, they have become a powerful destabilizing factor that determines the focus of international relations. This requires the development of a legal framework and an international system for monitoring the global information security.

Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) Mechanisms: A Comparison of Evolving Legal Approaches in Brazilian and Latin American with the European Union

Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) Mechanisms: A Comparison of Evolving Legal Approaches in Brazilian and Latin American with the European Union

Caring for the Missing: Forensic, Humanitarian and Judicial Responses to Disappearance and Enforced Disappearance

Enforced disappearance in Latin America is simultaneously an ongoing reality; an emblematic crime of past authoritarian regimes, and a significant component of the human toll of internal armed conflict in some Central American and Andean countries. Recent accountability developments in Latin America and beyond have called on forensic science to trace, unearth and restore the remains of the disappeared: as part of a judicial process, or as a humanitarian imperative in its own right. Some consider that a distinctive Latin American approach to forensic work as human rights work has emerged, with experts from the region increasingly called upon to assist international tribunals or perform exhumations of mass graves. Technical-scientific forensic interventions are however only part of the story. Efforts to bring perpetrators to justice require exploration of the intersection between international legal norms, regional human rights systems, and domestic criminal justice. While Latin America was a pioneer in originating a regional Convention against Enforced Disappearance, and the Inter-American Human Rights system has been active around the issue since the 1970s, the tensions inherent in retrospective application of those principles to historic crimes have been addressed in varied ways around the region. Activists, relatives’ associations, and cause lawyers have been key actors in navigating domestic impunity, reinterpreting domestic amnesty legislation, and attempting to establish individual accountability for collective, institutional criminality. Meanwhile, democratization and legal reforms have produced state structures at least theoretically more open to complying with ex officio duties in truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition. Prosecutions of past perpetrators, both military and civilian, have however provoked social and political controversy. The entire enterprise of seeking remains is meanwhile inimical to historical demands for ‘aparicion con vida’. Some relatives’ associations, and associated political groups, accordingly refuse to recognize the search for remains or certification of death, whether by state or non-state actors. The existence in some countries of a generation of appropriated children, stolen from their forcibly disappeared parents and brought up under false identities, has added weight to these refusals and produced specific scientific innovation in the use of DNA mapping to trace even indirect biological relationships. Cultural, ethnic and religious cleavages that were often at the heart of conflict dynamics of conflict moreover complicate processes of truthtelling, reparation, and even physical identification. Attempts to trace and identify the disappeared therefore give rise to conflicts between ‘civic trust’ and scientific certainty, compounded by a legacy of mistrust between citizens and previously collusive or directly repressive states. This working paper collates and synthesises the results of three events stimulating dialogue between law, social science and forensic (natural) sciences around the issue of disappearance and enforced disappearance in contexts of past political violence. This dialogue, focused principally on Latin American experiences, took the form of two workshops and a set of academic panels carried out in January and April 2017, in Santiago de Chile and Lima, Peru. The events were designed, timed and targeted to contribute to ongoing policy processes in Chile and Peru, as both countries are in the process of designing national mechanisms or search plans in accordance with the terms of the 2006 International Convention against Enforced Disappearance. They also sought to inform ongoing academic and policy debates in and about El Salvador and Sri Lanka, to provide a platform for interaction with relatives’ associations - whose participation is key for successful national design processes - and to highlight the potential resource represented by key international and regional actors such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Latin American Forensic Anthropology Association (ALAF), and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH). The events, and subsequent academic and policy publications, were supported by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) through the LASA-Ford Special Grant ‘Caring for the Missing: Respuestas Humanitarias, Juridicas a la Desaparicion de Personas’, 2017; and in part through the Ulster University Research Challenge Fund project ‘Enforced and Involuntary Disappearance – Scoping Study’ (2017).

Introduction: American Quarterly in the Digital Sphere

Introduction:American Quarterly in the Digital Sphere Lauren Tilton (bio), Amy E. Earhart (bio), Matthew Delmont (bio), Susan Garfinkel (bio), Jesse P. Karlsberg (bio), and Angel David Nieves (bio) This special issue explores digital humanities as a designation, as an associated constellation of technologies and practices, and as a site of convergence for inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary scholarship. Propelled by the ever-increasing power of computing and grounded in the ongoing development of a networked new media, digital humanities scholarship has coalesced around a shared set of values: that theory can be engaged through practice, that scholarship should be open and accessible to all, and that collaboration is pivotal in American studies. At the same time, American studies scholars in the digital humanities have reinvigorated the important work of investigating cultural and political formations, excavating power relations, and expanding scholarly inquiry to encompass the everyday as much as the exceptional. With this special issue, we seek to open a new phase of discussion by overtly exploring the connections between critically engaged forms of American studies and the digital humanities. As American studies scholars have long recognized, disappointment, anger, and agitation can be generative. Work on this special issue began in the spring of 2016, shortly after American Quarterly announced a new initiative to engage more actively with the digital humanities, publishing a section titled "Digital Projects Review." This new initiative was encouraging to the American Studies Association Digital Humanities Caucus (DH Caucus) and other scholars who work at the intersections of American studies and digital humanities. However, the initial manifestation of the "Digital Projects Review" struck many scholars as being out of step with the vibrant and innovative American studies approaches to digital humanities that have emerged over the past two decades.1 This frustration found an outlet on social media, and on the DH Caucus email list, which eventually led the six of us to propose this special issue, "Toward a Critically Engaged Digital Practice: American Studies and the Digital Humanities." The diversity of institutional affiliations, research perspectives, disciplinary backgrounds, and professional roles within our [End Page 361] group of coeditors has enabled a collaboration that, we hope, both reflects and advances the synergies of exciting new work emerging at the intersections of American studies and digital humanities, as highlighted in the following pages. While the spark that catalyzed this special issue was recent, the archives of American Quarterly show that the intertwined roots of American studies and digital humanities are deep. In June 1999 American Quarterly published an experimental online issue and concurrent print symposium combining "hypertext and American studies scholarship." The project, wrote Roy Rosenzweig in his editor's introduction, "tried to bring together something rather old-fashioned and established—the scholarly journal article—with something new and still emerging—the networked and digital space of the World Wide Web."2 Nearly two decades later, scholars are still wrestling with questions about the relationship between print and online scholarship, and are exploring the possibilities enabled by digital tools, methods, and platforms. Several of the essays in the September 2006 special issue, "Rewiring the 'Nation': The Place of Technology in American Studies," edited by Siva Vaidhyanathan, also speak to issues that are of interest to scholars who work in American studies and digital humanities. Nicole Fleetwood, for example, examines how different technological narratives (e.g., news media, meteorology, and governmental reports) during and after Hurricane Katrina rendered African American residents of New Orleans as disposable, focusing on technological failures and solutions rather than examining human catalysts and responses. "Technology here should be understood as a media process of production and as a discursive tool by which particular narratives are naturalized and certain bodies made vulnerable," Fleetwood argues. "In this context, Hurricane Katrina reveals a different kind of determinism—the stark operations of technology in determining who lives and who dies."3 More recently, Lauren Klein's review essay "American Studies after the Internet" (December 2012) and Lisa Nakamura's "Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture" (December 2014) both offer models for what a deeper engagement by American Quarterly with digital humanities might look like. Nakamura shows how labor by women of color has...

Surveying contemporary latin American international security approaches and themes

The aim of this article is twofold: provide a brief review of the most recent handbooks of International Security in Latin America published in English language and, by doing so, provide a brief mapping and evolution of the main themes, issues and theories used to study the international security in Latin America as these are reflected in these handbooks. In a region where many scholars diagnose a theoretical and methodological gap/ deficiency, the four handbooks selected in this text pave the way to more powerful approaches to understand and explain security and defense in Latin America.