Manchukuo’s Contested Sovereignty: Legal Activism, Rights Consciousness, and Civil Resistance in a “Puppet State”

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-376
Author(s):  
Ryan MITCHELL
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Legal Rhetoric ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
National Affiliation ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Rights Consciousness ◽  
Political Realities

AbstractThough often viewed as a mere stepping stone in Japan’s gradual early-twentieth-century military and economic encroachment on China, the “puppet state” of Manchukuo was also paradoxically characterized by a high degree of legitimizing legal rhetoric. While its political realities generally failed to reflect these idealized foundations, the latter did provide significant space for legal and other forms of civil society resistance, including by Chinese legal professionals. The germinal resistance movement of these actors demonstrates a complex relationship between the concepts of sovereignty, law, and national affiliation, both in the context of state repression and in the overlapping demands of competing identities. Though various theoretical understandings of resistance help to illuminate this activism, it is perhaps best seen as a radical challenge to the regime’s power to define the norms and exceptions of political and social life.

scholarly journals The role of clinical legal education in developing ethical legal professionals

De Jure ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
M A (Riette) du Plessis
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Training ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Ethical Decision Making ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Constructive Feedback ◽  
High Degree

Training in legal professionalism and ethics is a vital part of any legal education. Teaching these aspects according to the Socratic method generally proves to be ineffective in producing the desired result. A lawyer's actual life experience, which include happiness and career satisfaction, is rarely included. This article will explore on what it means to be an ethical human being and consider the teaching of professionalism and ethics by way of the clinical legal education methodology. Clinics have particular riches to offer and discussing professionalism, values and ethics in a clinical setting can assist students to begin to identify their own professional sense. University law clinics serve as a role model in legal practice about how a legal practitioner should behave and what ethical decision-making means. The link between culture and ethics, which informs a person's sense of morality and ethics, is explored, with application to diversity and multiculturalism. In clinical context, students assume a high degree of responsibility by taking instructions from clients and they will benefit from cooperative learning where they will begin to develop a deep understanding of professionalism and ethical practice. Through tutorials and debriefing sessions and later in their reflection assignments, students discuss and reflect on aspects of the law, the legal system, their own interviewing skills and the experience of the client. In their reflection assignments, students readily identify areas for improvement but also refer to what they are able to achieve in their interview, building their motivation and sense of autonomy. Ongoing reflection and constructive feedback thereon will support a commitment to ethical and professionally competent, self-directed and autonomous lawyering. Clinical training affords students the opportunity to explore their legal professional and ethical behaviours and values, allowing them to develop in capable, self-directed and independent practitioners who will not only assume responsibility for their individual clients, but also contribute to their communities.

State Repression and the Struggles for Memory

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Jelin
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
State Repression ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Past ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Disappeared

Opening the newspapers in South America at the beginning of the 21st century can feel like being caught in static time: so many of the contemporary news stories point to the persistence of a past which is definitely not "over". The attempts to try Pinochet, the continuing searches for the disappeared, or a child of murdered parents' struggle to discover their real identity, the Truth Commission in Peru - across the continent, societies continue to come to terms with the past. This book provides an introduction to the complexity of ideas and approaches which have been brought to bear on memory and its importance for understanding social and political realities. Elizabeth Jelin draws on European and North American debates and theories to explore the ways in which conflicts over memory shape individual and collective identities, as well social and political cleavages. The book exposes the enduring consequences of repression and enriches our understanding of the conflicted and contingent nature of memory.

Women’s Activism in the Civil Resistance Movement in Kosovo (1989–1997): Characteristics, Development, Encounters

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 843-860
Author(s):  
Itziar Mujika Chao
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Women's Organizations ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Gender Dynamics ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Characteristics Development

AbstractThis article analyzes women’s socio-political participation and activism within the nonviolent civil resistance movement in prewar Kosovo between 1989 and 1997, as well as the movement’s gender dynamics. This Albanian-led resistance movement emerged during the early 1990s with the principal goal of building a parallel state, seeking independence from Serbia, and offering means of survival for the population. This project required the participation of all Albanian citizens, and although the participation of women was massive, this has gone largely unrecognized. This article will explore the principal features of women’s participation and activism within this movement, what kind of gendered dynamics were developed, and the principal forms of resistance they encountered against their full and active participation through an analysis of women’s activism both within the Women’s Forum of the Democratic League of Kosovo and within independent women’s organizations.

Between openness and closure: Helmuth Plessner and the boundaries of social life

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Dobeson
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Degree Of Freedom ◽  
Specific Relation ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
High Degree

This article introduces the basic notions of the widely neglected Philosophical Anthropology of Helmuth Plessner. Instead of defining man as a privileged holder of consciousness, Plessner claims that all living organisms can be defined by their specific relation to their physical boundaries. In contrast to other living organisms such as plants and animals, however, the ‘eccentric’ nature of man allows for a comparatively high degree of freedom from the physical environment, which enables him to transcend, objectify, and deconstruct the boundaries of the same. The article concludes by outlining Plessner’s original contribution to contemporary debates in social theory, in particular constructivism and post-humanist studies.

Space, Action, and Images

2018 ◽  
pp. 15-94
Author(s):  
Tonio Hölscher
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Space Action ◽  
High Degree

The worlds of ancient Greece and Rome are characterized by a high degree of visuality of their social spaces. A theoretical fundament is laid out by the distinction between experienced and conceptual space, in interrelation with human actions. Fundamental is cultural practice, religious rituals, and political activities in interrelation with public architecture and urban spaces. Social life, as it developed in visually marked spaces, is exemplified in a concentric sequence: civic sanctuaries and agorai/fora, city areas and territories, empires, and liminal zones, comparing different concepts between Greece and Rome.

Organizing for self-determination, ethical de-Zionization and resisting apartheid

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 576-586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Barghouti
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Clear Vision ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Shared Society

This paper argues for a secular, democratic state in historic Palestine as the most morally coherent solution to the century-old colonial conflict because it offers the best hope for reconciling the inalienable right of the indigenous Palestinians to self-determination and the acquired rights of the colonial settlers to live in peace and security, individually and collectively. Accepting colonists as equal citizens and full partners in building and developing a new shared society is the most magnanimous offer any oppressed indigenous population can present to its oppressors, but for such to be attained, settlers must shed colonial privileges and character, accept justice, unmitigated equality, and conscious integration into the region. Building a just and lasting peace anchored in international law and universal human rights, conducive to ethical coexistence requires the ethical decolonization, or de-Zionization of historic Palestine. Such a process is premised on a revitalized, democratized Palestinian civil resistance movement with a clear vision for a shared, just society and effective worldwide support for reaffirming Palestinian rights and ending Israel's violations of international law and universal rights. By emphasizing the equality of humanity as its most fundamental principle, this paper shows that the proposed secular democratic state promises to transcend national and ethnic dichotomies that now make it nearly impossible to envision reaching any just solution to the most intricate questions.

scholarly journals State Repression and Democratic Dispensation in Uganda 1996–2016

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110306
Author(s):  
Sultan Juma Kakuba
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
State Repression ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Qualitative Research Design ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
Content Analysis Method ◽  
Resistance Movement

State repression covers several and many aspects such as wrongful detention, harassment, intimidation, torture, beating, and killings within state boundaries. This study adopted a desk survey qualitative research design to document state repression acts during five presidential elections. Secondary and primary data were gathered from Uganda Electoral Commission presidential elections results, African Elections Database, and Inter-Parliamentary Parline database. This was augmented by interviews carried out with purposively selected political activists from different political shades and members of civil society organizations. The data collected from documentary reviews and interviews were thematically analyzed using the content analysis method. The findings were that successive presidential elections won by National Resistance Movement (NRM) were characterized by state repression acts amounting to human rights abuse such as torture, denial of political gatherings, wrongful arrest, and detention, intimidation, and killings. Drawing from the study findings, the conclusion is that NRM has used state institutions to repress opposition to shield its regime and to lure mass support to remain in power, undermining democratic dispensation it restored in the country.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 159-162
Author(s):  
Dana Seitler
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
A Site ◽  
Political Realities

How should we think about the link between aesthetics and politics in the twenty-first century? Has the conjunction that seemed so forcefully to tie aesthetics, culture, and politics together over the past two centuries dissolved due to neoliberal changes in social life and the processes of advanced global capitalism? The idea that cultural forms and practices are a site at which political realities, hopes, challenges, and anxieties are not merely expressed (whether directly or symptomatically) but constitute a space in which politics are engendered has informed my treatment of art and culture and their social function throughout this study, but not only mine. Starting with the formulation of the connection between the beautiful and freedom in ...

scholarly journals A world threatened by populism. Remarks on security in modern times

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-34
Author(s):  
Tomasz Czura
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Simple Consequence ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The People ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Almost All ◽  
High Degree

The article is an attempt to answer the question about the importance of populism in contemporary reflection on security in its broadest sense. The author of these analyses tries to find the reasons for the growing populist trend, which occurs not only in the political dimension, but permeates almost all social life. In the context of such a goal, the connection between populism and ideology and nihilism is shown. As a consequence of the methodological principles adopted, two types of populism were distinguished: ideological and nihilistic. Ideological populism is characterized by a high degree of indeterminacy and makes far-reaching simplifications and generalisations. In this perspective, the enemies of the people are both newcomers, strangers, immigrants, as well as sexual, ethnic and other minorities.Nihilist populism is more depressing. It is based on the recognition of fragmentation as a basic indicator of values. The individual, detached from the wider background, is in a way the programme of populism understood in this way. A simple consequence of nihilistic populism is the uprooting of the individual, which results in consumerist attitudes. In this sense, one can say that nihilistic populism is aimed at justifying consumptionism, i.e. it provides an ideological foundation for the carefree use of material goods.

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