Introduction

Author(s):  
Tina K. Ramnarine

This Introduction outlines various examples of ensemble performance to highlight diverse practices in the world of orchestras. It poses a fundamental question: What is an orchestra? It raises issues around collective creativity and social agency, which provide thematic foci in relation to a diversity of orchestral practices. Discussion on the conceptual aspects of adopting global perspectives on orchestras highlights comparison as a mode of theorization. The relevance of a comparative approach lies in its capacity to draw together diverse ethnographic case-studies. The Introduction thus provides a framework for reading this volume and it points out some of the conceptual connections between its chapters.

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Bova

This article makes a case for viewing the politics of regime transition in communist states as a subcategory of the more generic phenomenon of transition from authoritarian rule. Drawing on case studies from Latin America and Southern Europe and from the more theoretical literature on postauthoritarian transitions that those cases have generated, the article reexamines the politics of reform in the Gorbachev-era USSR. This comparative approach shows that the dynamics of the liberalization process in the USSR adhere to a model of political change previously manifested in other parts of the world. Specifically, it provides a clearer understanding of the initial vitality and subsequent disintegration of Gorbachev's centrist reform program, as well as a new perspective from which to reevaluate Gorbachev's often-criticized program of regime democratization.


Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Gisa Jähnichen

The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work “People of Sri Lanka” in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people’s groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.


Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 320-322
Author(s):  
Robert E. Bjork

During the logocentric Middle Ages, etymology and wordplay helped exegetes, philosophers, theologians, and poets understand the world and the world’s relationship to the divine. The case studies presented in this useful and fascinating collection of essays demonstrate how.


Communicology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-148
Author(s):  
NATALIA MALSHINA ◽  

This study examines the ontological problems in the aspect of the ratio of different cognitive practices and their mutual conditionality in the context of communication and their socio-cultural prerequisites, which is possible only if the traditional approach to the distinction between epistemology and faith is revised. Based on the idea of identity of common grounds of cognitive practices “belief” is included in the understanding of interpretation in the communicative situation for true knowledge in each of the modes of being. Belief in the philosophical tradition reveals the ontological foundations of hermeneutics. Three reflections are synthesised: the hermeneutic concept of understanding, the structuralist concept of language, and the psychoanalytic concept of personality. It is necessary to apply the method of phenomenological reduction to the ontological substantiation of hermeneutics in the Christian Orthodox tradition. Hence, the very natural seems the meeting of semantics, linguistics, and onomatodoxy, with the ontology language of Heidegger, the origins of which resides in in Husserl phenomenology. Fundamental ontology and linguistics, cult philosophy - both in different ways open the horizons of substantiation of hermeneutics. The beginning of this justification is the hermeneutic problem in Christianity, which has appeared as a sequence of the question of the relationship between the two Covenants, or two Unions. In the paper, the author attempts to identify the stages of constructing the philosophical concept of Pavel Florensky. As a result, the substantiation of the birth of the world in consciousness by the cult is revealed. Ontological tradenote words can be seen in Florensky through symbols. The symbol makes the transition from a small energy to a larger one, from a small information saturation to a greater one, acting as a lumen of being - when by the name we hear the reality. The word comes into contact with the world that is on the other side of our own psychological state. The word, the symbol shifts all the time from subjective to objective. The communicative model acts as a common point uniting these traditions. The religious approach as part of semiotic approach reveals the horizons of ontological conditionality of language and words, and among the words - the name, as the name plays a central role in the accumulation and transmission of information, understanding of the commonality of this conditionality in the concepts of phenomenology and Christian, Orthodox tradition.


Author(s):  
Anthea Roberts ◽  
Martti Koskenniemi

Is International Law International? takes the reader on a sweeping tour of the international legal academy to reveal some of the patterns of difference, dominance, and disruption that belie international law’s claim to universality. Both revealing and challenging, confronting and engaging, this book is a must-read for any international lawyer, particularly in a world of shifting geopolitical power. Pulling back the curtain on the “divisible college of international lawyers,” the author shows how international lawyers in different states, regions, and geopolitical groupings are often subject to differences in their incoming influences and outgoing spheres of influence in ways that affect how they understand and approach international law, including with respect to contemporary controversies like Crimea and the South China Sea. Using case studies and visual representations, the author demonstrates how actors and materials from some states and groups have come to dominate certain transnational flows and forums in ways that make them disproportionately influential in constructing the “international”—a point which holds true for Western actors, materials, and approaches in general, and Anglo-American ones in particular. But these patterns are set for disruption. As the world moves past an era of Western dominance and toward greater multipolarity, it is imperative for international lawyers to understand the perspectives of those coming from diverse backgrounds. By taking readers on a comparative tour of different international law academies and textbooks, the author encourages international lawyers to see the world through others’ eyes—an approach that is pressing in a world of rising nationalism.


Author(s):  
Tim Bartley

Activists have exposed startling forms of labor exploitation and environmental degradation in global industries, leading many large retailers and brands to adopt standards for fairness and sustainability. This book is about the idea that transnational corporations can push these rules through their global supply chains, and in effect, pull factories, forests, and farms out of their local contexts and up to global best practices. For many scholars and practitioners, this kind of private regulation and global standard-setting can provide an alternative to regulation by territorially bound, gridlocked, or incapacitated nation states, potentially improving environments and working conditions around the world and protecting the rights of exploited workers, impoverished farmers, and marginalized communities. But can private, voluntary rules actually create meaningful forms of regulation? Are forests and factories around the world being made into sustainable ecosystems and decent workplaces? Can global norms remake local orders? This book provides striking new answers by comparing the private regulation of land and labor in democratic and authoritarian settings. Case studies of sustainable forestry and fair labor standards in Indonesia and China show not only how transnational standards are implemented “on the ground” but also how they are constrained and reconfigured by domestic governance. Combining rich multi-method analyses, a powerful comparative approach, and a new theory of private regulation, this book reveals the contours and contradictions of transnational governance.


Author(s):  
Susanna Braund ◽  
Zara Martirosova Torlone

The introduction describes the broad landscape of translation of Virgil from both the theoretical and the practical perspectives. It then explains the genesis of the volume and indicates how the individual chapters, each one of which is summarized, fit into the complex tapestry of Virgilian translation activity through the centuries and across the world. The volume editors indicate points of connection between the chapters in order to render the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Braund and Torlone emphasize that a project such as this could look like a (rather large) collection of case studies; they therefore consider it important to extrapolate larger phenomena from the specifics presented here


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document