Privileged Relationship Research Articles

Pressuring the Politburo: The Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement and State Socialist Feminism

National women's organizations were a ubiquitous feature of all of the eastern European communist nations. Although the specificities of these organizations varied from country to country, they were all state-run mass organizations variously charged with mobilizing domestic women and representing their nations at international forums concerning women's rights. In the west, these state women's organizations were treated with suspicion; they were often viewed as tools of authoritarian control, mobilizing women to fulfill party goals. It is rarely considered that eastern bloc women may have used their privileged relationship with the Communist Party to promote policies that actually helped women, or that they could push back at male patriarchal elites by appealing to higher communist principles regarding the woman question. This article is a case study of the Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement. It demonstrates that this organization, despite its entanglement with the state bureaucracy, was relatively successful in pressuring the Bulgarian Politburo into expanding rights and entitlements to women between 1968 and 1990.

Aux origines de la privanza: mots et modèles politiques

This article examines the interplay of influences whereby the words privado and privanza - which do not refer to a specific office, but to a position of proximity to the king - none the less come to constitute a means of identifying certain protagonists in Castilian politics from the thirteenth century onwards. The analysis of historiographical and literary sources from the period makes it possible to pinpoint, in particular, those moments at which there appears to operate an appropriation of those terms. To begin with, this occurs hesitantly, as can be seen in the Libro de Alexandre and in certain passages of the Primera crónica of Alfonso the Wise, and via a whole range of models that act as mirrors, such as the privatz, or courtly lover, of Occitan lyrics; Dior, Charlemagne’s paladin; the Arab wasir; and various positions within the power structure of ancient Rome that implied a privileged relationship with the caesar. From all of these, the Castilian privado borrows some characteristics, while rejecting others.

Prensa periódica, política y campo cultural en el Río de la Plata: Pedro de Angelis, «escritor oficial»

El periodista y bibliófilo italiano Pedro de Angelis constituye un ejemplo emblemático de las relaciones privilegiadas que la prensa periódica y el campo intelectual han entablado con el poder político a lo largo de la primera mitad del siglo xix. Desde esta perspectiva, y atendiendo a las relaciones lógicas que pueden reconocerse entre el campo cultural y el poder político, el estudio examina la labor del letrado napolitano en el seno de la prensa periódica del Río de la Plata a lo largo del segundo cuarto de la centuria. La constante colaboración con las diversas administraciones —desde Rivadavia hasta Rosas— y las innumerables iniciativas llevadas a cabo en el campo del periodismo, de modo especial a través de las páginas de El Lucero y el Archivo Americano, confirman su función como propagador de saberes y legitimador de los discursos que en campo cultural enhebra el poder político. Su itinerario intelectual, desde su inicial colaboración con el proyecto rivadaviano de promoción cultural, hasta su vinculación estrecha con Rosas, para erigirse en propagandista y vocero del régimen, revelan una trayectoria moldeada en torno a constantes mutaciones, protecciones y reacomodamientos en su vínculo con el poder. Su labor en la prensa rioplatense, que reconoce un inmutable apego a los ámbitos del poder político, como intelectual y «escritor público», corrobora su papel como promotor y difusor de saberes, orientados a la legitimación del discurso del poder en la fase que se corresponde a los epígonos del neoclasicismo y los albores del romanticismo en el Plata.

Marital Privileges Rationales: A Suggestion to Reconsider the Status Quo

This article examines rationales of marital privileges. Although marital privileges are firmly established concepts, they are also heavily criticized. Much of this critic comes from the uncertain policy justifications of the privileges. The article demonstrates through an analysis of relevant law and doctrine that the current rationales for the privileges do not account for many complexities present in marriages as compared with other privileged relationships and therefore, are not adequate for the marital privileges. The article argues that, unlike other privileges, marital privileges should be grounded on human dignity. This leads in turn to important amendments like unification of the privileges into one, eliminating some of the current restrictions, and extending it to other categories.

Pharmacists’ Role in the Continued Care of Patients under Opiate Substitution Treatment

ContextIn France, over 170 000 persons benefit from opiate substitution treatment. The treatment delivery is most often assured by community pharmacies spread out throughout the territory. The aim of this study is to better know the continued care of individuals treated by methadone or high-dose buprenorphine in community pharmacies in Lille (North of France). MethodThis was a cross-sectionnal descriptive study with hand-delivered questionnaires. All pharmacies (n=65) in Lille were included. ResultsFifty-eight of pharmacies (89%) responded to the suvey and 55 of them (95%) followed patients treated by opiate substitution treatment. Addiction was considered as an illness by 53 of pharmacists (91%). Confidential discussions could only be conducted at one of every two treatment delivery work station. ConclusionPharmacists are active in the continued care of individuals treated by opiate substitution treatment. They have a privileged relationship with the general practitioner. A rearrangement of pharmacies’ premises could foster the development of therapeutic patient education within the pharmacy.

Wrestling and cinema, 1892–1911

While professional wrestling is a form of moving image media most commonly associated with television, its origins date back to the earliest experiments in American cinema. This article traces out the early history of wrestling films over the period 1892–1911, during which, despite widespread national popularity, the legitimate wrestling contest failed to catch on as viable cinematic genre. In tracing wrestling’s shift from the ‘shoot’ film of the early 1900s to the ‘worked’ style that would come to dominate in the televisual era following the financial failure of films of legitimate contests, this essay offers an important counterpoint to largely ahistorical definitions of wrestling as an inherently melodramatic or spectacular mode. Despite the seemingly close parallels between the sports of wrestling and boxing at the turn of the last century, this paper asserts that television wrestling should rather be understood as a mode akin to early cinema genres like slapstick comedy and cartoons, genres that film theorists have long understood as having a privileged relationship to the reconfiguration of the modern sensorium wrought by the introduction of cinema.

An Introduction to Said Nursi: Life, Thought and Writings by Ian S. Markham and Suendam Birinci Pirim, and: Theodicy and Justice in Modern Islamic Thought: The Case of Said Nursi ed. by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘ (review)

Reviewed by: An Introduction to Said Nursi: Life, Thought and Writings by Ian S. Markham and Suendam Birinci Pirim, and: Theodicy and Justice in Modern Islamic Thought: The Case of Said Nursi ed. by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘ Hamid Algar An Introduction to Said Nursi: Life, Thought and Writings by Ian S. Markham and Suendam Birinci Pirim, 2011. Farmingham, Surrey & Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 204 pp., £19.99. ISBN: 978-1-40940-771-3 (pbk). Theodicy and Justice in Modern Islamic Thought: The Case of Said Nursi edited by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘, 2010. Farmingham, Surrey & Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 281 pp., £19.99. ISBN: 978-1-40940-617-4 (pbk). The Risale-i Nur, a body of writings almost exclusively in Turkish assembled over some thirty-five years by Bediüzzaman Said Nursî (1878-1960), proclaims as its general purpose the vindication of the essential teachings of Islam in a manner consonant with the needs of an age heavily contaminated by atheistic materialism. Topics reflecting the particular concerns and circumstances of the author, distantly if at all related to that supreme goal, also occur in its pages with great frequency. The result is a huge opus that in a relatively recent two-volume edition runs to not less than 2344 pages (Risale-i Nur Külliyatı) [Istanbul, 1996]. In Nursî’s lifetime, the Risale-i Nur remained largely unknown outside Turkey, partly for reasons of linguistic inaccessibility, and even within the country its circulation was hindered by the sporadic prosecution – not to say persecution – of its author in the name of preserving secularism. Matters have, of course, long since changed within Turkey: the Risale-i Nur is now freely available, and the movement to which it gave rise is now divided into several competing branches, each with a somewhat different agenda. Much effort has also been invested in recent years in making the Risale-i Nur known to a broader international audience, both Muslim and non-Muslim, and it is in this context that the two books under review are to be placed. [End Page 337] Both describe the Risale-i Nur as ‘a thematic commentary’ on the Qur’an: it is essentially a work of exegesis, they claim, even if it does not examine the entire text in a traditional and orderly fashion (An Introduction to Said Nursi, 18; Theodicy and Justice in Modern Islamic Thought, ix & 15). This characterization may be questioned. Many sections of the Risale-i Nur are almost entirely lacking in Qur’anic references, and others deal with themes peculiar to aspects of the Sufi tradition with which Said Nursî was deeply involved. Others again record his musings on events or scenes that presented themselves to him; by way of random example we may cite his confident prediction that the bare legs of schoolgirls he once noticed from his jail cell in Eskişehir frolicking in their playground would become glowing embers in hellfire (Iman ve Küfür Muvazeneleri [Istanbul: Tenvir Neşriyat, 1987], p. 161). In the same work, he suggests that one reason for women to cover themselves appropriately (tesettür) is that six or seven out of every ten women are either old or ugly and wish therefore to conceal their appearances, an explanation difficult to reconcile with Qu’ran, 24:31, which attributes ‘adornment’ (zinatahunna) to all women (147). The absence of a structured approach to the principal doctrines of Islam is also reflected in titles given to its various parts such as Sözler (‘Words’), Lem’alar (‘Flashes’), Şualar (‘Rays’), Mektuplar (‘Letters’), extracts from these being in turn reassembled to form yet other books; thus Iman ve Küfür Muvazeneleri (‘Comparisons of Belief and Unbelief’) includes thirty-two ‘words,’ the first, twenty-fourth and twenty-ninth ‘flashes’, the third part of the fourth ‘letter,’ and so forth. More importantly, Said Nursî claimed for the Risale-i Nur a uniquely privileged relationship with the Qur’an and the Prophet that transcended by far the claims to attention made by simple exegesis. ‘This exalted work,’ he once asserted, ‘contains a sublime effusion and infinite perfection that have never been encountered in any similar book. It has inherited, in a fashion unattained...

Attachment and Personality Disorders: A Short Review

Attachment theory is a biopsychosocial model referring to a person’s characteristic ways of relating in close relationships, such as with parents, children, and romantic partners. These ways of relating are learned during early infancy and mold subsequent intimate relationships. An adult who is securely attached has internalized a reliable relationship to his/her caregivers in infancy, and thus is capable of adapting to different social contexts and, more importantly, of maintaining an adequate equilibrium between self-regulation and interpersonal regulation of stress. Insecure adult attachment styles are divided into 1) anxious/preoccupied (individuals are hypersensitive to rejection and show compulsive care- and attention-seeking behavior); 2) avoidant/dismissing (individuals are hyposensitive to social interactions, and are socially isolated); and 3) unresolved/disorganized (individuals are unable to cope under stress, thus suffering pervasive affective dysregulation). This review discusses the theoretical, psychological, neuroscientific, and developmental aspects of attachment from an evidence-based perspective. It provides an updated account of the science regarding attachment and its relevance to the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness. It examines the privileged relation between attachment and personality disorders (PDs) from multiple angles in order to introduce the most recent psychotherapeutic advances, based on attachment research, for the treatment of PDs, particularly borderline PD. Three effective, evidence-based psychotherapeutic interventions are described: Mentalization-Based Treatment, Transference-Focused Psychotherapy and Schema-Focused Therapy.

Royal Ancestor Worship and Buddhist Politics: The Hyŏnhwa-sa Stele and the Origins of the First Koryŏ Tripitaka

Abstract There is a general consensus in research on the First Koryŏ Tripitaka (aka Ch’ojo taejanggyŏng) that it began in 1011 in fulfillment of a vow: King Hyŏnjong had sworn to undertake the project if the Khitan invasion force would withdraw. The only scholar who has challenged this view is Ikeuchi Hiroshi, who claimed that the First Koryŏ Tripitaka was carved to pray for the repose of King Hyŏnjong’s parents’ souls. Ikeuchi based his arguments on a reading of the Hyŏnhwa-sa stele, erected by King Hyŏnjong as a memorial temple to his parents. This article reexamines Ikeuchi’s thesis and shows that though it is based on a mistaken reading and a colonial agenda, it is still the only research that offers some perspectives that allow us to move beyond single cause theories. His paper is a useful starting point to examine all of the different possible causes and motives that lay behind the project of carving the entire Buddhist canon on wooden printing blocks. Irrespective of whether or not the wish to repel the invaders was the primary cause, this article shows that there were many deeper motivations and contributing factors that irrevocably pushed Hyŏnjong to undertake this project. One of the more important contributing factors, it is argued, was the rebuilding of his legitimacy through a reassertion of the privileged relation the ruling Wang Dynasty enjoyed with Buddhism.

Popular Performance, the Broadside Ballad, and Ophelia's Madness

Triangulating genre, gender, and performance, this paper expands Hamlet criticism by examining Ophelia's mad ballads through the lens of popular culture. While ballads perpetuated the vigorous performance practices that Hamlet disparages as vulgar, this paper argues that Shakespeare exploits precisely these "low" aspects of the ballad to produce the tragedy of Ophelia's madness. Shakespeare uses ballads to establish a privileged relationship between Ophelia and the audience and to stage a gender-based critique of Elsinore. In conversation with Hamlet's elitism, Ophelia's ballads demonstrate that Shakespeare simultaneously delegitimizes popular performance and embraces its theatrical possibilities.

A Bad Case of ‘Peanut Envy’: Concessions Markets and Monopoly Power at Chicago’s United Center

In recent decades, sports franchises have exploited their privileged relationship to the state in order to expand the scope of their local monopoly powers. This article examines efforts by the owners of the United Center, the home arena of the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks, to eliminate competition from local peanut vendors. The owners benefited from court rulings rejecting the legitimacy of government intervention in local markets at the same time that they successfully lobbied municipal politicians to intervene on their behalf by passing anti-vendor legislation. This story not only offers a case study in how teams’ monopolistic privilege has extended to concessions markets, but also contributes to a broader understanding of how the neoliberal state works to minimize risk and maximize profitability for large-scale real estate investments like sports arenas. The methodological approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on legal and business history, urban geography and sociology, and radical political economy.

Italy and Mozambique: Science, Economy & Society within a History of an Anomalous Cooperation

In this article the authors aim at showing how an “anomalous” international and very intense cooperation between Italy and Mozambiquewas born. In fact, Italy has not a strong colonial tradition, especially in Mozambique, so it seems interesting to try to understand the reason why this former Portuguese colony has become the Italian most important partner in its cooperation activity. This analysis is based on the main hypothesis related to the birth of international bilateral cooperation: they have been seriously considered in order to explain the origin of this strange relationship, but they cannot completely clarify this particular case. According to the Italian social and political recent history, the privileged relationship with Mozambiqueis due more to a “bottom up” process than to geo-strategic or economic reasons. The fact that Mozambique had belonged to a weak Western power such as Portugal certainly gave Italy the opportunity to penetrate more easily in this country than in the ones which had been under the strong dominion of France or England. One of the most important results of this “anomalous” cooperation has to be found in the scientific fields (such as geology, architecture, biotechnologies) and in its impact on the development of Mozambique.

NG2+ Oligodendrocyte Precursor Cells (OPCs) take part in neurovascular unit remodelling during EAE

NG2+ Oligodendrocyte Precursor Cells (OPCs) are an abundant glial population in mammalian adult Central Nervous System (CNS) committed to oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelin repair (1). Our previous studies in a model of murine Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis (EAE) revealed demyelination of cerebral cortex subpial areas together with an increased number of OPCs and Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) breakdown (2,3). The observation of several EAE activated OPCs in tight contact with EAE cortex microvessels prompt us to further analyse the nature of this association and ascertain if during EAE, OPCs establish a privileged relationship with BBB microvessels. Laser confocal microscopy and morphometric analyses were applied to immunohistochemically revealed cell- (OPCs, endothelial cells, pericytes, astrocytes) and vascular basement membrane- (collagen type IV and VI) specific antigens. The main vessel/OPC assessed parameters were OPC vascular coverage (OPC number/vessel length) and raw integrated density (OPC area x mean gray value)/vessel density which were calculated in brains from both healthy control and EAE affected mice. The results confirmed the increased number of EAE OPCs, their enhanced branching and frequent perivascular location. Compared with healthy mice, in EAE the OPC coverage and the integrated density, as well as the evaluated minimal vascular OPC distance were significantly increased. These data suggest that in EAE, OPCs assume a critical position with respect to the vessel wall, remaining distinct from GFAP+ astrocytes, as an additional cell component of the neurovascular unit. In this position, the increased vascular subset of EAE NG2+ OPCs may interfere with neurovascular unit cell-cell signalling in turn affecting BBB regulation and maintenance.

Translational Approach to Behavioral Learning: Lessons from Cerebellar Plasticity

The role of cerebellar plasticity has been increasingly recognized in learning. The privileged relationship between the cerebellum and the inferior olive offers an ideal circuit for attempting to integrate the numerous evidences of neuronal plasticity into a translational perspective. The high learning capacity of the Purkinje cells specifically controlled by the climbing fiber represents a major element within the feed-forward and feedback loops of the cerebellar cortex. Reciprocally connected with the basal ganglia and multimodal cerebral domains, this cerebellar network may realize fundamental functions in a wide range of behaviors. This review will outline the current understanding of three main experimental paradigms largely used for revealing cerebellar functions in behavioral learning: (1) the vestibuloocular reflex and smooth pursuit control, (2) the eyeblink conditioning, and (3) the sensory envelope plasticity. For each of these experimental conditions, we have critically revisited the chain of causalities linking together neural circuits, neural signals, and plasticity mechanisms, giving preference to behaving or alert animal physiology. Namely, recent experimental approaches mixing neural units and local field potentials recordings have demonstrated a spike timing dependent plasticity by which the cerebellum remains at a strategic crossroad for deciphering fundamental and translational mechanisms from cellular to network levels.

Tippers and Tippees: Brokerss Pre-Release of Price-Sensitive Information to Their VIP Clients

Using proprietary high-frequency trading data, I analyze information leakage of financial analyst recommendations to their elite clients and characteristics of the institutional investors receiving such advance knowledge. I find that investment managers who have an established relationship with their brokers, on average buy more than other investors in the 5-day period before a positive analyst recommendation initiation. My results suggest that clients who enjoy a privileged relationship with their broker receive and use the pre-released information in their trades.

Fighting against the Moral Agenda of Zapatero's Socialist Government (2004–2011): The Spanish Catholic Church as a Political Contender

AbstractEven though not all European churches can be ascribed a political profile, moral issues have unleashed the protest of some of them alongside Christian-inspired groups and advocacy coalitions. Mobilization against these issues is not surprising in democracy but the different role that churches might play is. Unlike other European churches, the Spanish Catholic Church has acted as a political contender under Zapatero's rule (2004–2011). The new Socialist agenda, with its emphasis on morally-liberal reforms, has triggered a protest in which the church has invested significant resources and helped mobilize the more Conservative quarters of the Catholic society. This adversarial role is distinctive but not unique: the Italian and Polish churches have also opted for confrontational strategies in the face of similar challenges. However, the Spanish case is most relevant because, unlike other predominantly Catholic societies (Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and Poland), it has experienced a most profound and fastest secularization process. Confrontation can then be explained by the supply (a well-endowed Church that enjoys a privileged relationship with a non-confessional state) and not by the demand.

Basic science, translational research and surgery: an unresolved controversy

During the centuries, surgeons have contributed to the advance of the medicine improving the surgical outcomes in daily clinical practice and participating to the progress of the basic research science. In 1909, Dr. Teododor Koker was the first surgeon to win the Nobel Prize, and in 1990, Dr. Joseph Murray was the seventh and the last surgeon to reach the award [1]. Therefore, together with other academic figures traditionally more oriented towards basic science, the surgeon always had an irreplaceable role in the development of medical science from both points of view, practical and intellectual through a process of gradual awareness and participation in the development of the research projects [2]. In recent years, the explosion of molecular biology has shown that this discipline, often confined to basic research, occupies an important place in surgical research. The impact on clinical practice varies from the analysis of molecular biomarkers and genetic risk of cancer to the application of transgenic technologies in xenografts [3]. Playing in this scenario, the question about the role of the surgeon in translational research and basic science becomes every day more urgent to plane the future of the Academic Departments of Surgery, whose central mission is to produce new knowledge and validate the laboratory results in the clinical practice. Therefore, looking at this radical change of perspective, the academic surgical community is called to answer several questions. Is it sufficient for us to be a good surgeon focused only on the quality of care or worth equipping and accepting the challenge, playing a game in an integrated research system? Could the strong practical experience of the surgical disciplines improve the theoretical approaches of basic sciences? Could the privileged relationship with the patient help to humanize the research interpreting the deepest need of the human being? Could the surgeon contribute to drive the results of basic science towards clinical applications in the era of genomics and proteomics? All these questions converge towards the conclusions that in the future academic surgeons will have a key role in the development of translational research program, and the surgical community needs to re-address our own vision of the research [4].

Jennifer Summit, Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern EnglandMemory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England. Jennifer Summit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. x+343.

<i>Jennifer Summit</i>, Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England<i>Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England</i>. Jennifer Summit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. x+343.

From the Languages of Art to mathematical languages, and back again

Mathematics stand in a privileged relationship with aesthetics: a relationship that follows two main directions. The first concerns the introduction of mathematical considerations into aesthetic discourse. For instance, it is common to mention the mathematical architecture of certain artistic productions. The second leads from aesthetics to mathematics. In this case, the question is that of the role and meaning that aesthetic considerations may assume in mathematics. It is indeed a widely held view among mathematicians, of whatever socio-historical context, not only to see their discipline as presenting a strong aesthetic dimension, but also to consider that this dimension plays a fundamental role in the process of developing and understanding mathematics. The main ambition of this paper is to show how Nelson Goodman’s aesthetics can be used to justify this point of view and to propose a thesis concerning the aesthetic functioning of mathematics. This first result allows to resituate Goodman’s aesthetics within a very classical tradition that will be described. Finally, the underlying ambition is to show the keys provided by Goodman’s theory for the philosophy of mathematics.

The Nature of the Chinese Formation and the Making of Its Welfare Regime

The driving forces of the Chinese economy since the reforms of 1978 are the subject of intense scholarly debate. Some emphasize the role of private entrepreneurship; others identify the public/collective sector, local or central state as the engine of Chinese growth. This article suggests that the first decade of the Chinese reform was entrepreneurial. During the 1980s, the transformation stemmed “from below.” Since the 1990s, the change has been state-led, “from above.” With the privatization/marketization of the corporate sector the revenues of state-owned/controlled firms increased, but the source of these revenues was the privileged relationship of the public sector to the state, hence state-owned enterprises collected rents rather than earned profits. The “Chongqing model” has used some of these rents to fund welfare provisions with remarkable success, but a sustainable welfare system in a market economy has to be based on taxes collected from market-generated incomes and profits rather than rents of state-owned enterprises.