Precarious Relationship Research Articles

Everlasting flower: a history of Korea

South - a democratic high-tech Asian Tiger and flamboyant host of the 2002 World Cup; North - a secretive dictatorship on Bush's notorious 'axis of evil', with a controversial nuclear program and a poverty stricken population. These two Koreas seem worlds apart, separated along the 38th parallel by the last active 'cold war' frontier. But North and South share a common history and culture of which both are deeply proud. The poignant scenes of reunited families when the borders were opened in 2000 show that, even though frustrated, the links between the two populations remain strong. Keith Pratt tells the story of this common heritage from the ancient states of Old Choson and Wiman Choson to the present relics of Cold War politics. He describes the physical and cultural landscape in which this history unfolds, dealing with religious identities and social aspects like food and drink, as well as more controversial issues such as punishment and torture, and the 'comfort women' of the Japanese occupation. In a series of short picture essays he introduces particular aspects of Korea's past, including the world's oldest observatory and the country's famous turtle boats. Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea reveals a country which, although sandwiched between the more familiar worlds of China and Japan, has a distinct and rich cultural identity of its own. With the DPRK's precarious relationship with the outside world brought to increasingly frequent crises in the aftermath of 9/11, the Korean peninsular looks certain to remain a geopolitical hotspot. The importance of understanding this part of the world has never been greater.

Translating Sor Juana

Translating Sor Juana Glenna Luschei (bio) Who was this Sor Juana, whose name appears everywhere in Mexican and in world literature? In her book Mujer que sabe latín, Rosario Castellanos points out that in an era of uneducated women, the extraordinary Sor Juana emerged as un monstruo because there was no way to classify her. Rosario adds that many small stars sparkled in the firmament before this supernova appeared. In order to know Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648?–1695), I undertook a translation of her Enigmas, guided by the preeminent Sor Juana scholar, Dr. Sara Poot-Herrera. I also had the leadership of Dr. Suzanne Jill Levine, in her translation workshop at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Dr. Enrique Martínez-López, who rediscovered Sor Juana's Enigmas after they had been lost for almost three centuries. Understanding that this endeavor could be a lifetime's work, I promised myself to publish and then abandon it. The history of the Enigmas is a puzzle in itself. Their author and her writings came in and out of favor throughout the centuries. While researching in Portugal in 1966, Enrique Martínez-López found two copies of the Enigmas hidden within manuscripts dated 1716 and 1726–1748. In the handwritten text there was the following Portuguese inscription: Ignimas varios de Soror Joana Ignés da Crus Freira de Míxico, feitos em Redondilhas. These are the first English translations of the twenty riddles. Sor Juana's beginnings were inauspicious. She was born Juana Ramírez Asuaje (alternately Asvaje, Asbaje), to a Criollo mother in San Miguel Nepantla, at the foot of Popocatepetl. She became Mexico's famous seventeenth-century feminist poet and writer, whose craving to learn led her to take religious vows, the only way a woman could acquire an education at that time. Sor Juana's passion for knowledge began as a child reading in her grandfather's library. Later she dressed as a boy in hopes of [End Page 21] attending the university. Every experience contributed to her studies. She found chemistry in cooking, and geometry in observing the crossbeams of her cell. Because Sor Juana lived in confined society, it can be inferred that she was accustomed to speaking in a secret language and may have developed a code with her friends. I believe it was this secret language that impelled her naturally in the Enigmas. Since coded language is often used by the oppressed, the cryptic language of the Enigmas may be the result of her precarious relationship with religious authorities in Mexico. The Enigmas, composed in her last years, are stark, reduced to the simplest thought. While they are poems of disenchantment, they are also playful and witty. From what we speculate, the Countess of Paredes, at the request of the Casa del Placer Portuguese nuns, brought the Enigmas to Lisboa in 1693. Sor Juana's cryptic riddles provided entertainment for the nuns, who tried to solve their mystery. These occult redondillas have enticed many readers and critics to decipher their meanings. In working them, we think back to the predictions of the I Ching and to the voice of the Oracle of ancient Greece. The Delphic Oracle, the highest religious authority in the world—and also a woman—went underground to inhale laurel leaves before offering her predictions. From her earliest years, Sor Juana enjoyed the protection of royalty, such as the Señora Condesa de Paredes. The most famous story about her youth tells that the Viceroy Mancera invited forty learned scholars to question Sor Juana, his wife's protégé. The self-educated Sor Juana defeated them like a Spanish galleon. This test was to aid her in entering the severe order of the Carmelites. Her confessor, Padre Núñez, although having concerns about her "pride," helped her to enter San Jerónimo Convent, where she took her final vows and spent the rest of her life. Because of the challenges she continued to face, Sor Juana cultivated a diplomatic relationship with the viceroys. From her quarters, she invited them for musical and literary evenings. Sor Juana's sensitivity to the royal position is revealed...

Transições e duração do desemprego: uma revisão da literatura com novas evidências para Belo Horizonte

Este trabalho investiga os fluxos entre os estados do mercado de trabalho - ocupação, desemprego e inatividade - e a permanência no estado de desemprego na Região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte, com base nos dados da PME, entre 1997 e 2001. Entre as características individuais, os resultados apontam que o comportamento do desemprego para jovens e mulheres é afetado muito mais pela maior incidência desses grupos nesse estado, porque são observadas maior intensidade e maior freqüência dos fluxos entre os outros estados de ocupação - desemprego e inatividade - do que por um longo período de permanência no desemprego. No caso de longa duração, os indivíduos mais escolarizados que estão há mais tempo sem trabalho e que, na última ocupação, tinham carteira de trabalho assinada são os mais atingidos. Percebe-se que a seletividade do mercado de trabalho, as formas precárias de inserção e o comportamento da atividade econômica dessa região contribuem para o aumento tanto do desemprego quanto da rotatividade entre os grupos com menor estabilidade no mercado de trabalho. Nesse sentido, conclui-se que o fenômeno do desemprego na RMBH é afetado não só por fatores individuais, como também pelo comportamento da atividade econômica, confirmando, assim, o predito pelos modelos de busca de emprego.

Reforming Intelligence: Identity and Security in Taiwan

Abstract: The intelligence and security services of the Republic of China on Taiwan have been transformed by democratization and Taiwanization. After decades as “political police” answering to the Nationalist Party, in the 1980s they began to focus on threats to the state, ending the use of coercion, and accepting external supervision. Like all aspects of political change on Taiwan, however, institutional reform of these agencies, particularly the National Security Bureau, became caught up in the island’s unresolved dilemmas of national identity and its precarious relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Such conflicts threaten to undermine the effectiveness of these agencies.

Commodification and Urban Development: A Case Study of Taiwan

This paper aims to identify the processes of commodification of land and housing in Taiwan during the era of rapid economic development since the Second World War. On paper, Taiwan has a quite extraordinarily socialistic philosophy of landownership, based on the teachings of Sun Yat-sen and his doctrine of equalization of land rights. However, there is a very large discrepancy between policy and practice and as a consequence urban development and housing delivery are intensely commodified sectors of the Taiwanese economy. The beneficiaries of urban development have primarily been the middle class and powerful development factions. The specific economic and political institutions, related primarily to its precarious relationship with Mainland China, have shaped the perplexed trajectory of commodification of land and housing in Taiwan.

Extração e comercialização de folhagens ornamentais da Mata Atlântica: o caso da verdes (Rumohra adiantiformis) no RS

Este trabalho restitui os resultados de uma pesquisa sobre a comercialização de samambaia-preta (Rumohra adiantiformis (G. Forst) Ching), também conhecida como verdes, que é extraída na região da Encosta Atlântica do Rio Grande do Sul. Além de ser considerada uma das maiores regiões produtoras desta folhagem no Brasil, um número significativo de agricultores familiares desta região tem na extração desta espécie sua principal fonte de renda. Os resultados deste estudo permitem perceber a existência de uma remuneração bastante diferenciada entre os diferentes agentes envolvidos, salientando o predomínio de relações de cunho comercial precárias e informais, e a inexistência de representação e organização dos atores envolvidos. Tal situação pode ser imputada, em grande parte, ao caráter ilegal e clandestino desta atividade, tendo em vista a legislação ambiental vigente no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul.

Abstracts of the XXV Congress of the International Academy of Pathology. 2004.

Pathology InternationalVolume 54, Issue s1 p. S1-S9 The autopsy in modern society: A precarious relationship First published: 24 September 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1827.2004.01691.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume54, Issues1October 2004Pages S1-S9 RelatedInformation

After 9/11

In light of the events of 9/11 and the subsequent actions and reactions on the part of nation-states in the West and “terrorists” in the East, this paper discusses the concepts of Islamophobia (political and media-manufactured) and multiculturalism in the British context. Rising Islamophobia, state actions, and media reactions to 9/11 have led to changing definitions of the “good multicultural society.” British Muslims are caught in a quagmire: Their loyalties are questioned by a society and polity that is still in the processes of establishing its “Englishness” from its “Britishness,” while growing Islamic political radicalism undermines the already precarious relations between British Muslims and the state.

After 9/11

In light of the events of 9/11 and the subsequent actions and reactions on the part of nation-states in the West and “terrorists” in the East, this paper discusses the concepts of Islamophobia (political and media-manufactured) and multiculturalism in the British context. Rising Islamophobia, state actions, and media reactions to 9/11 have led to changing definitions of the “good multicultural society.” British Muslims are caught in a quagmire: Their loyalties are questioned by a society and polity that is still in the processes of establishing its “Englishness” from its “Britishness,” while growing Islamic political radicalism undermines the already precarious relations between British Muslims and the state.

A Case Study of Primiparous Maternal and Infant Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) Behavior

A primiparous mother and her infant were subjects of a longitudinal behavioral study at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Illinois. From November 1998 to November 1999, we collected a total of 100 hr of focal nonhuman animal instantaneous point sampling and all occurrence data on the mother and her infant. After 8 months, we introduced the 4-member focal group to an 8-member gorilla group, thus providing an opportunity to study the effect of the introduction on mother-infant behavior. Overall, time the pair spent physically apart was notably high with contact and proximate scores steadily decreasing over time. The infant was largely responsible for maintaining social proximity, rarely leaving the mother and frequently approaching her. In contrast, the mother left the infant frequently and approached the infant minimally. Maternal affiliative and nonaffiliative behaviors fluctuated throughout the study. Over time, both decreased. Despite a precarious maternal relationship, infant developmental trends were typical for captive gorillas. The results of this study suggest that allowing flexibility in judging maternal conduct can be of benefit to successful gorilla husbandry.

The Precariousness of Argentine Labor Relations in the 1990s

The increasing precariousness of Argentine labor relations in the 1990s was the result of transformations in the logic of the economic system as a whole, especially with regard to the labor market, with adverse effects for large sectors of society. During that decade, the fragility and polarization of the various modes of labor participation amounted to a kind of exclusion that extended even to the workers typically linked with capitalism-wage earners. Generally, exclusion is understood as the inability of society to incorporate all of its members, particularly into the economic system and the provision of basic social benefits (Barros, de los Rios, and Torche, 1996). I shall show that precariousness of labor relations can be understood as a condition that creates exclusion-that the worsening of conditions for a significant sector of workers contributes to an increase in the number of persons excluded. I shall begin by presenting a model of the precariousness of labor relations as a process of exclusion, including an examination of the instruments historically used to alleviate the most noxious social effects of capitalism and the role of work as a mechanism for social integration. I shall go on to analyze the evolution of precarious labor relations on the basis of all the data from a household survey conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Censos (National Institute of Statistics and Censuses-INDEC) covering the period from 1990 to 1999.1

Erkundung der Finsternis: Wucherungen im poetologischen Diskurs in der Literatur der Moderne. Döblin, Conrad, Céline

Around 1900 European civilization passed through a “crisis of darkness.” The representation of real expeditions into the “dark” Tropics became an investigation of the contradictions and inconsistencies in the modern cultural image of man. Narrative recreations of these expeditions in literature highlight those aspects in the history of the imaginary that were repressed in the colonial and eurocentric perspective of these expeditions. In literature this precarious relationship is used and acted out: the tropics/tropes (which coincide in the German “Tropen”) figure in a double sense the experimental status of literary meaning making: in literature, established categories of narration and metaphor are broken down and set free to enable a new way of poetic speech.

Comments on the Precarious Relationship between History and Philosophy of Science

The four papers in this issue illustrate both the extent of mutual entanglement between history of science and philosophy of science and the difaculty of achieving consensus on how the interchange between history of science and philosophy of science should work. They reveal some of the tensions between the aims and interests typical of historians and philosophers, tensions that often make exchanges like these unproductive. To overcome this problem, it is important to set the contexts and perhaps even the ground rules of collaboration so that the legitimate tensions involved are put to creative use. In order to make better sense of this suggestion, I address what was accomplished, and what was not, by the papers in this issue. To begin, consider the differences in the aims of philosophy and history. A few stereotypical generalities are useful here, though the stereotypes need to be treated skeptically. Philosophical investigation tends to focus on abstract questions, formulated sharply in terms of larger philosophical issues and views. When philosophers turn to particular historical materials or case studies, they often begin with pre-established concepts and sometimes with expected conclusions in mind. The concepts employed often contain presuppositions about the nature of theory, evidence, and explanation, about the relation of experiment to theory, the objectivity and intellectual autonomy of scientiac work, and the like. For this reason, philosophers working with historical materials risk overriding or misunderstanding the categories of the scientists whose work they study, especially when that work is historically or conceptually distant. To avoid the resultant traps, it is crucial to enforce close attention to the context of the work under investigation, to the categories, concepts, and aims of the historical protagonists, and to key features of the contexts

Racialised Schooling, 'Ethnic Success' and Asian-Australian Students

Based on discussions with Asian-Australian young women at a mixed-sex, Australia State high school, this article argues that the pro-school conformity of Asian-Australian young women sets them in a problematic and precarious relationship to the material and symbolic and processes of racialisation. The first part of the article identifies the limitations of research into the pro-school/anti-school orientations of minority students, arguing that most accounts are based on theories of culture, acculturation, class and gender, and class and race that neglect an analysis of race and sex. I then argue that practices of racialisation and sexualisation actually sustain pro-school culture and Asian female group associations. While these formations are effective in securing Asian female educational success, they are also problematic because they limit the educational possibilities and employment opportunities of Asian young women in Australia.

Power and partnership: a critical analysis of the surveillance discourses of child health nurses.

To explore surveillance discourses within New Zealand child health nursing and to identify whether surveillance practices have implications in this context for power relations. In New Zealand child health nurses are called Plunket nurses, who are employed by a voluntary organization, the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society (RNZPS). These nurses primarily work in the community with the families of new babies and preschool children. Their work is called child health surveillance and this is considered to involve routine and unproblematic practices, which are generally carried out in homes and clinics in the context of an ongoing relationship between the Plunket nurse and the mother of a baby. However, suggestions in the literature that surveillance, wherever it is practised, has implications for power relations cast doubt on official claims that this nurse-mother relationship is mediated through a partnership model of care. Five experienced and practising Plunket nurses were each interviewed twice. The texts generated by these semi-structured interviews were analysed using a Foucauldian approach to critical discourse analysis. In contrast with the conventional view of power as held and wielded by one party, this study revealed that, in the Plunket nursing context, power is exercised in various and unexpected ways. Although the relationship between the mother and the nurse cannot be said to operate as a partnership, it is constituted in the nurses' discourses as a dynamic relationship in which the mother is actively engaged on her own terms. The effect of this is that it is presented by the nurses as a precarious relationship that has significant implications for the success of their work.

La famille contemporaine ⪡ fait ⪢-elle de nouveaux enfants ?

Over the thirty last years, couples have much changed — no more wedding, a precarious relationship — and parenthood is no more the same with a trend toward symmetry in parent-child-rapport, no more authority to organise life in the family, and its replacement by consensus, hedonism instead of duty, easiness to see representations of sex, importance of the instant. Children reared in these new families seemed not to be conscious of their suffering, they have behaviour disorders, do not stand frustration, cannot stand waiting for anything. They are very dependant to their surroundings, they do not invest much language, have an “operating thinking”, they are very sensible to sensation, have sexual behaviours which are not very socialised, they have no courtesy and have no pleasure in body functioning. They have a fragile self esteem, weak internalizations, a superego which is no efficient, nearly no feelings of guilt, no ability to displacement, nearly no ability of sublimation, no imagination. In face of such psychic functioning, we hypothesise that now we have to kinds of basic personality: a dependant basic personality with a depressive tendency and a great dependency to the surroundings, and a narcissistic-perverse basic personality, with well integrated adults, with an efficient cynicism, taking in account the others only to utilise them.

A Theoretical Model for Examining the Link between Governance and Philosophy in Higher Education

Nearly all of the literature and research surrounding the idea of a university attempts to define and explain the role of the university in our current times. One area of burgeoning interest in this field is the precarious relationship among the provincial governments, the private sector, and the universities. As these stakeholders develop more involved relationships, university administrators must clearly define that institution's academic philosophy so that they can maintain a distinction between internal educational objectives and external socio-political and economic mandates. In order to accomplish this, it is essential that university administrators clearly understand the link between educational philosophy and administrative practice. This paper develops a theoretical model which describes the importance of recognizing the link between philosophy and administrative practice in university institutions.

School Effectiveness and the Displacement of Equity Discourses in Education

An essential aspect of school effectiveness theory is the shift from the social to the organisational context, from the macro- to the micro-culture. The school is represented largely as a bounded institution, set apart, but also in a precarious relationship with the broader social context. It is ironic that at a time when social disadvantage appears to be increasing in Britain and elsewhere, school effectiveness theory places less emphasis on poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. Instead, it places more emphasis on organisational factors such as professional leadership, home/school partnerships, the monitoring of academic progress, shared vision and goals. In this article, the authors evaluate the extent to which notions of effectiveness have displaced concerns about equity in theories of educational change. They explore the extent to which the social structures of gender, ethnicity, sexualities, special needs, social class, poverty and other historical forms of inequality have been incorporated into or distorted and excluded from effectiveness thinking.

Not green belts but green wedges: the precarious relationship between city and country

Not green belts but green wedges: the precarious relationship between city and country

Not green belts but green wedges: the precarious relationship between city and country

This paper originated from a contribution to the Green Belt Seminar organised by the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland, September 1999 in Glasgow. It is based on the understanding that many of those concerned about the protection of Rural Britain are apprehensive of the expansive development of cities. City and country are seen to be in conflict, and the culprit is the city, the growth of which has to be contained with the help of green belts. This paper is about the relationship between city and country; it argues that there is indeed a conflict to do with urbanisation and decentralisation but that today the green belt is an inadequate concept to deal with these processes. The paper investigates first the origin and objectives of the green belt concept and its application up to the inter-war period and examines then the immediate post World War II plans for London and Glasgow in which the green belt concept played an important role. It concludes that the combination of urbanisation on the one hand and of decentralisation, for which the green belt concept was partially responsible, on the other have generated metropolitan and conurbation structures which today require a new planning and urban design approach. The final part of the paper discusses shortly the two concepts that are suggested: (a) the return to the compact city or (b) the acceptance and improvement of the decentralised structure of the city region. It suggests that the return to the compact city is economically unmanageable and socially unacceptable; the structure of the conurbation that emerged needs to be made to work and the concept that might help achieve this is based on compact neighbourhoods, districts and towns as micro-structural elements of the city region and a mutually supportive, i.e. symbiotic relationship between built-up areas and open land.