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The outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine thrust book publishing into the role of cultural warrior.
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The outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine thrust book publishing into the role of cultural warrior.
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Marianna Charountaki, Iran and Turkey: International and Regional Engagement in the Middle East, London, I.B. Tauris, 2018, 349 pp., (9781838604714). Reviewed by David Romano, Missouri State University, USA. Mehmet Kurt, Kurdish Hizbullah in Turkey: Islamism, Violence and the State. London, Pluto Press, 2017, 188 pp., (978 0745399348). Reviewed by Guney Yildiz, University of Cambridge, UK. Bahar Baser, Mari Toivanen, Begum Zorlu, Yasin Duman, eds., Methodological Approaches in Kurdish studies: Theoretical and Practical Insights from the Field, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2019, 254 pp., (9781498575218). Reviewed by Michiel Leezenberg, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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This paper concentrates on a particular example of cooperation between European cities and indigenous peoples of the Amazon river basin, namely that of Climate Alliance. The New Urban Agenda adopted at the UN Habitat III conference in October 2016 emphasizes that cities and other human settlements should meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities for current and future sustainable and economic inclusive development. Cities should also take measures to address climate change and protect and manage their ecosystems, water resources, the environment and biodiversity. Indigenous peoples, just like cities play a crucial role in the fight against climate change. 80 % of the territories with high biodiversity level are indigenous lands. Their indigenous ecological knowledge may serve as a valuable tool in initiatives aimed at fighting climate change. The aim of the paper is to show whether there are any benefits of such cooperation and what is its significance in the fight against climate change. The main research question is: what are the forms of cooperation between European cities and Amazonian indigenous peoples in the framework of Climate Alliance? In which way can European cities support indigenous peoples in their fight for their rights and consequently for the nature’s preservation? The hypothesis is that European cities may learn from indigenous peoples of the Amazon how to combat climate change.
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This paper presents selected conclusions related to the theoretical underpinnings of international humanitarian law, with special focus on the understanding of considerations of humanity and the dictates of public conscience (the Martens clause) and their impact on the regulation of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Despite the fact that different positions can be found in the doctrine, it is argued herein that the general principles of international humanitarian law are not sufficient to properly regulate the disruptive military technologies (new means and methods of warfare) and a new international norm is needed. Consequently, the paper agglomerates extra-legal and cross-cutting arguments stemming from other normative regimes that point to prioritization of the value of human life and the role and quality of the human factor in decision-making procedures relating to the health and life of victims of modern armed conflicts, which should be incorporated in it.
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The financial crisis started in 2008 and touched the whole world but some countries experienced its consequences more than others. The European Union and in particular eurozone, slid into a stage of economic recession. Five of 28 EU countries faced the edge of financial fall, named PIIGS-Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Multidimensionality of the global crisis have caused that international economic organizations faced a great challenge, For them it was a test of efficiency and effectiveness. The leading role in this period belonged to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is standing on the guard of the whole international currency system. The aim of the article is to draw and analyze the most important IMF activities towards PIIGS, especially what instruments were proposed as a help and what changes had to be made by receiving states in order to receive the financial support. The ten-year perspective taken in the article allows for the more comprehensive assessment of the issue.
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On October 17, 2017, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan paid an official visit to Warsaw upon the invitation of the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda. The main subject of the talks was political, economic and cultural cooperation. Issues of security were also addressed. President Erdoğan had last visited Warsaw during the NATO summit on July 8–9, 2016. During the meeting in October, the two presidents signed five bilateral agreements. This paper provides an analysis of the effects of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit and prospects regarding the development of friendly relations between Poland and Turkey from Ankara’s perspective. In the paper we applied the test analysis method, the historical method and the institutional and legal one. We pose a thesis that the aim of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit was to identify mutual relations in the economic, political and cultural dimension. According to the Turkish government, these relations are beneficial for both sides. What should be particularly important for Poland is the prospect of opening new cooperation opportunities in the economic sphere. Turkey, in turn, apart from defining the broad framework of business cooperation, is undoubtedly determined to find a partner which could be its ally in the European Union.
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The aim of this article is to discuss an issue that has been on my mind for several years: the fear that fuels the rightist populist movements in Europe and America. As we all know, xenophobia is at the heart of the political rhetoric of Lega in Italy, Vox in Spain, Rassemplement National in France, UKIP in UK, Die Freiheitspartei in Austria, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Partij voor de Vrijheid in Holland, the nationalist parties of Eastern Europe and the Nordic countries, and, of course, the Republican Party led by President Trump in the US. In Europe, anti-Muslim sentiments have become a driver of rightist populism in many countries, and in America, Mexicans and other Latino groups are recurring targets of Trump’s many tweets. But even though I agree that xenophobia is crucial to the surge of populism in the Western world, I believe other equally important sentiments of fear co-produce the image of foreigners as a threat. Two such elements are the threats that a future climate disaster and the introduction of AI (artificial intelligence) represent to our lives and livelihoods.
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Call for reconciliation: Muslim faith and French Republic’s values by Tareq Oubrou. [Appel à la réconciliation: foi musulmane et valeurs de la République française], Tribune Libre, Plon, 2019, 360p. ISBN-13: 978-2259268431. Reviewed by Hélène Syed Zwick.
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This set of articles is the result of a panel held at the 78th annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology from April 3-7, 2018, in Philadelphia, United States of America. The title of the panel, during which the four authors presented papers, was “Forced Migration as Liminal Experience: Policy and Agency.” The articles highlight forced migration to the United States, illustrated by Hispanic women without legal immigration status near Chicago, Illinois; resettled Syrian refugees in Austin, Texas; resettled Cambodian refugees living near Mobile, Alabama; Karen refugees resettled near Atlanta, Georgia; and Karenni refugees who were resettled in Omaha, Nebraska. These articles reveal lives of both refugees with legal status and forced migrants without legal documentation. This set of articles also represents national and ethnic groups from Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, regions with large numbers of forced migrants. The articles focus on the intersection of three concepts with complex and varying definitions: migration, resilience, and wellbeing. These concepts highlight differing social and cultural contexts but also shared experiences and struggles. We briefly describe our understanding of these concepts and then highlight how these are useful conceptual frameworks to see commonalities and differences among the four different case studies.
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In this article will be treated different skills for public administrators, during the process of decision making, which affect the effectiveness of their decisions, and thus will also affect the fulfilment of the objectives of the organizations they lead. The main purpose of the article is to identify the skills that demonstrate public administrators during decision making in order to define how good are their decision making process. On the basis of secondary and primary research, the authors would discuss the findings in order to identify the problems faced during these processes of decision-making public administrators.
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Migrants and organizational collectives, such as hometown associations (HTAs), have sent remittances to their countries of origin in an attempt to alleviate unmet health care needs. Additionally, migrants will use collective funds to rehabilitating roads; improving sewage systems and water quality; constructing recreational facilities; and refurbishing community buildings. All of these projects contribute to public health. The question explored in this paper is how remittances from abroad potentially contributes to the health of hometown communities. This focus on health and related issues allows for exploring HTA cross-border work as particularly informative in understanding state/society relations. In effect, we bring light to how a migrant transnational social movement can attempt to address health needs in its hometown. The Comparative Immigrant Organization Project (CIOP) is used to answer this question. For this paper, the level of analysis for the CIOP is organizational.
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Research is scant on the everyday sense of belonging of refugees in South Africa. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the everyday discourses of belonging of Eritrean refugees in South Africa. Purposive sampling technique was used to recruit participants, and qualitative data was gathered from 11 participants in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, through open-ended interviews and focus group discussions. Analysis of data resulted in three dominant discourses: 1) ‘we feel like outsiders’; 2) ‘we are neither here nor there’; and 3) ‘South Africa is home’. Drawing on the participants’ discourses, I argue that in the South African context, refugees’ sense of belonging tends to be varied mirroring multifaceted lived experiences. Participants’ construction of South Africa as their home also counters previous research that portrayed foreign nationals in South Africa as ‘excluded’.
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Human Security and Migration in Europe's Southern Borders by Susana Ferreira. Palgrave Macmillan: Springer Nature, 2018, xvii + 211 pp. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-77947-8. Reviewed by Diotima Chattoraj. Borders and Mobility in South Asia and Beyond by Reece Jones and Md. Azmeary Ferdoush (eds.), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, Netherlands, 2018. PP.277, Price: € 99,00 (Hardback), ISBN: 9789462984547. Reviewed by Saleh Shahriar. Migration, Refugees and Human Security in the Mediterranean and MENA edited by Marion Boulby and Kenneth Christie, Palgrave Macmillan (2018, ISBN: 978-3319707747). Reviewed by Gül Oral. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2018, 372 pp. ISBN: 978-1787330672. Reviewed by Uzi Rebhun.
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Corporate governance is a very actual subject. After the financial world has faced during the 2000s several financial scandals, developing principles of corporate governance became necessary at international level. The 2008 financial crisis has highlighted the need for the existence of effective codes of corporate governance, which is why the OECD principles of corporate governance suffer changes, as well as national codes. The paper aims to highlight the application of corporate governance but also the role of internal audit in the company's activity. We appreciate that an effective, high-quality internal audit is the thing that, applying the rules of International Standards on Auditing, manages to detect the risks which may be subjected to the work of the Organization, to take action to reduce them so that the value of the company would not diminish.
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The paper aims to contextualize the elements that define the peculiarities of the nonprofit nonprofit sector. In a general note, there is provided a series of answers to the following questions: ‘Which ones are the factors that influenced the establishment of the nonprofit sector?’, and ‘Of what consists the object of the conceptual delineations regarding the nonprofit sector?’. In a particular sense, the first part of the paper refers primarily to the aspects regarding the necessity to optimize the manner of organizing the society, along with the one related to the establishment of a distinctive framework in terms of organizational infrastructure of the civil society. The second part of the paper begins with the structural-operational definition of the nonprofit sector and continues with its general characteristics.
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Employee wellness is one of the key and most essential antecedents to employee and organizational performance. Organisational performance heavily depends on the health and wellness of employees and their attitude towards their work. The study explored the relationship between wellness programs and job satisfaction for workers in armed conflict societies. The study focused on one wellness program; that is the establishment of organizational onsite health centers. A quantitative research methodology was employed to carry out the study. A questionnaire was used to solicit data from 50 people who witnessed or directly or indirectly participated in the war of liberation in Zimbabwe and the civil war in Mozambique. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the collected data. The study established that there is a strong relationship between the establishment of onsite health centers and job satisfaction. All the major services of health clinics such as provision of health services to the injured during the war, provision of counseling services, provision of physical fitness programs and provision of ill-health prevention services showed a strong relationship with job satisfaction. It was recommended that all organizations operating in armed conflict societies should establish health centers within their premises to provide health services to the physically and emotionally injured employees.
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This text will offer a mapping of the cultural and creative hubs in Vietnam, its roles and purposes. It would question the ethics of knowledge transfer through direct concept transmission from Global North to Global South, without understanding contextual differences. It studies 12 creative hubs in Ho Shi Minh City (6), Hanoi (2) and from different provincial cities (4), taking in consideration results of the overviews and analysis done previously by British Council. The survey has shown limits of the concept application, as creative economy in Vietnam is not developed enough to enable its practitioners to rent spaces and services on commercial basis. Thus, the concept of creative industries in practice is limited on bars and restaurants (creative gastronomy), or advertising and PR services, joined by several exhibition spaces that might offer excellent international exhibitions (foreign curators looking for such places) or temporary art residency. This text represents a plaidoyer for a new ethics in international cultural relations, where foreign aid will be based on recipient needs and its cultural values (context understanding).
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This article aims to explain the reasons behind Charles de Gaulle’s rejection of British membership in the European Economic Community. Britain applied to join the organisation twice, first in 1963 and then again in 1967, but was rejected by the French president Charles de Gaulle. The rejection seems relevant now since Britain intends to disengage itself from the EU. The cause of rejection, however, was the British close relationship to the United States, which, in de Gaulle’s opinion, was a threat to a united Europe. This article also aims to explain the various factors that motivated Britain, which was fundamentally against a united Europe, to join the EEC while knowing that the EEC was based on the concept of a united Europe. Using a historical causal method and a political approach, the writers conclude that while Britain was more or less forced to act by economic issues, de Gaulle’s rejection was rather political in nature.
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