An ancient debate on urban renewal and built heritage: Dio Chrysostom and the city of Prusa

Scholarship on architecture and urbanism in antiquity has focused on building activity and investment in the fabric of cities as positive processes, typically starting from the assumption that such developments were welcomed by inhabitants – but were they? This article examines objections to urban renewal and the construction of monumental public building in the Roman world. Specifically, it focuses on the city of Prusa and the controversy surrounding the renovation of its civic centre by the local politician Dio Chrysostom in the early 2nd century AD. Using speeches and letters written at the time, the article presents both a new interpretation of this specific episode and brings to the fore the rarely articulated and yet highly controversial nature of building projects that are traditionally thought of as being beneficial. In the conclusion, we also see how this example contributes to research on the issue of heritage as a pre-modern phenomenon.

The Environmental Causes of Violence in the Middle East

This chapter investigates the environmental causes of violence in the Middle East. The Middle East is a desert and the desert is expanding due to the increase in population. This leads to the destruction of the semiarid lands next to the desert. As this happens, local residents are thrown into economic desperation. What do people in the Global South do when they cannot get a job and cannot economically survive? They can turn to crime, work for a local politician or warlord, or go to school. This is the power of the terrorist organizations: they are criminal gangs and warlord organizations and religious education organizations all at once. They cover all of the avenues taken by people who would otherwise be economically marginalized. It is entirely possible that the world will end because of an ecological catastrophe. However, it is also important to think about the effect of ecological loss on people's willingness to work together.

PROBLEMATIC ASPECTS OF LITHUANIAN LEGAL REGULATION OF IMPEACHMENT PROCEDURE TO A MEMBER OF LOCAL MUNICIPAL COUNCIL

Although members and mayors of municipal councils are not included in the list of persons who may be subject of Impeachment proceedings under the Constitution, a peculiar variant of the institute of Impeachment is the procedure of premature loss of authority of a mayor or a member of the local municipal council, which is established in Article 25 (1) of the Law on Local Self‐ Government of the Republic of Lithuania. In a democratic system it is vitally important that every local politician who takes an oath takes full responsibility, regardless of whether he works in the majority or minority of the municipal council and/or to which political force he belongs. The problematic aspect is that it is very complicated to initiate the impeachment proceedings on a politician who belongs to the majority and has broken the oath, and there are almost no practical possibilities to complete it as such possibilities remain only theoretical and very poorly feasible. The main tasks of the research is to determine practical and theoretical possibilities to initiate Impeachment proceedings against politiciansin the majority;to revealthe essential problematic aspects of legal regulation of Impeachment procedure to a member (or a mayor) of municipal council and to draw some solutions related to these questions analysed for Lithuanian legislator in order to improve national legal regulation. The research was carried out by employing logical, comparative, system analysis, monitoring, linguistic, empirical, synthesis and generalization methods.

Senses of Morality and Morality of the Senses

Non-verbal communication, while never separate from verbal communication, has a distinct signifying value in the context of Lamu. Because the exchange of verbal greetings carries implications for an individual’s respectability, individuals frequently rely on non-verbal language to communicate while in public. Chapter Five therefore looks at how material practices and the moving body are implicated in the negotiation of social change and the emergence of new social positionings. It examines how young men and women in Lamu differently use material and bodily practices—e.g. stride, walking route, hand greetings, gaze, clothing—to gradually redefine norms of proper conduct and social status. A closer look at young women’s use of handshakes, the ethnographic vignette of a young female professional accused of immoral conduct, and the story of a beach boy who becomes a local politician illustrate the different means through which young people negotiate a respectful positions within the Lamu community. The theoretical discussion in this chapter focuses on gender, material practice, and the moving body in relation to ideologies of moral personhood and notions of modernity.

“The Gay M.L.K.”: Harvey Milk

Chapter 1 compares Harvey Milk’s archival materials—his personal letters, speeches, and writings—to how gay activists posthumously constructed him into a national emblem for gay rights. The chapter highlights how the AIDS epidemic and the movement for same-sex marriage shaped Milk’s reconstructed image. Chapter 1 also considers how gay activists configured Milk, a Jew who, at times, promoted multi-partner sexual and romantic relationships, to fit within the standards of the Protestant Christian mainstream. In effect, the chapter explores how Milk, a local politician who served only eleven months in a city council position, became, over time, “The Gay M.L.K.”

Jumping Ship or Jumping on the Bandwagon: When Do Local Politicians Support National Candidates?

Local politicians are often expected to mobilize voters on behalf of copartisan candidates for national office. Yet this requirement is difficult to enforce because the effort of local politicians cannot be easily monitored and the promise of rewards in exchange for help is not fully credible. Using a formal model, we show that the incentives of local politicians to mobilize voters on behalf of their party depend on the proportion of copartisan officials in a district. Having many copartisan officials means that the party is more likely to capture the district, but the effort of each local politician is less likely either to be noticed by higher-level officials or to make a difference on the election outcome, thus discouraging lower-level officials from exerting effort. We validate these claims with data from federal elections in Mexico between 2000 and 2012. In line with the argument, the results show that political parties fail to draw great mobilization advantages from simultaneously controlling multiple offices.