The Double-Facing Constitution


Book Description

Explores how constitutional orders engage with and are shaped by their exteriors.




The Challenge of Migration in a Janus-Faced Europe


Book Description

This book critically investigates the origins and consequences of the Janus-faced character of attitudes and policies towards migrants that seek to penetrate “Fortress Europe”. Beginning with an examination of its founding ambitions, it locates the roots of an ingrained ambivalence in the legacies of the post-war period and the unresolved tension between the economicism of the European approach to labour migration and the philosophy of rights and solidarity embedded in the EU project. It highlights how the formalization of citizenship rights has produced both formal pathways towards inclusion for migrants and, in their selective eligibility criteria, exclusive systems of civic stratification. The author links this oscillation between positions of closure and openness to the paradoxical trade-offs in migration policies, in particular labour market integration, demonstrated through unequal labour market outcomes, lower social mobility and educational attainments. The issues faced by migrants’ offspring in Europe are examined as paradigmatic of the struggle to balance competing calls for both pluralism and uniformity: to create a diverse society that can also project a homogenous collective identity. This balanced overview will provide an invaluable resource for students of migration studies, European politics, public policy, international relations and the sociology of racism.




Rights in Exile


Book Description

Of the estimated 12 million refugees in the world, more than 7 million have been confined to camps, effectively "warehoused," in some cases, for 10 years or more. Holding refugees in camps was anathema to the founders of the refugee protection regime. Today, with most refugees encamped in the less developed parts of the world, the humanitarian apparatus has been transformed into a custodial regime for innocent people. Based on rich ethnographic data, Rights in Exile exposes the gap between human rights norms and the mandates of international organisations, on the one hand, and the reality on the ground, on the other. It will be of wide interest to social scientists, and to human rights and international law scholars. Policy makers, donor governments and humanitarian organizations, especially those adopting a "rights-based" approach, will also find it an invaluable resource. But it is the refugees themselves who could benefit the most if these actors absorb its lessons and apply them. Guglielmo Verdirame is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is also the author of a forthcoming book on the accountability of the United Nations. Barbara Harrell-Bond, Founding director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, has, after retirement, been Visiting Professor at Makerere University and at the American University in Cairo. In 1996, she received the Distinguished Service Award of the American Anthropological Association. She is the author of Imposing Aid (Oxford, 1986).




The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine


Book Description

Preeminent historian of medicine Owsei Temkin brought to his writing an awesome range of scholarship, for he was at home in the classical, the medieval, and the modern eras. The essays gathered in this volume deal with all the topics that Temkin considered most important in his work. They were widely commended for their originality, intelligent analysis, and impressive continuity of thought. Temkin explores the history of basic medical sciences, of health and disease, and of surgery and drug therapy, as well as general questions concerning the historical and philosophical approach to medicine from antiquity to the early twentieth century. In a retrospective introduction which gives the book its name, Temkin relates his writings to his career as a scholar in Germany and the United States. He situates the writings against the background of the development of the study of medical history and provides recollections of such prominent figures as Karl Sudhoff, Henry E. Sigerist, William H. Welch, and Richard H. Shryock.




Why Nationalism


Book Description

The surprising case for liberal nationalism Around the world today, nationalism is back—and it’s often deeply troubling. Populist politicians exploit nationalism for authoritarian, chauvinistic, racist, and xenophobic purposes, reinforcing the view that it is fundamentally reactionary and antidemocratic. But Yael (Yuli) Tamir makes a passionate argument for a very different kind of nationalism—one that revives its participatory, creative, and egalitarian virtues, answers many of the problems caused by neoliberalism and hyperglobalism, and is essential to democracy at its best. In Why Nationalism, she explains why it is more important than ever for the Left to recognize these positive qualities of nationalism, to reclaim it from right-wing extremists, and to redirect its power to progressive ends. Provocative and hopeful, Why Nationalism is a timely and essential rethinking of a defining feature of our politics.




Legacies of State Violence and Transitional Justice in Latin America


Book Description

Legacies of State Violence and Transitional Justice in Latin America presents a nuanced and evidence-based discussion of both the acceptance and co-optation of the transitional justice framework and its potential abuses in the context of the struggle to keep the memory of the past alive and hold perpetrators accountable within Latin America and beyond. The contributors argue that “transitional justice”—understood as both a conceptual framework shaping discourses and a set of political practices—is a Janus-faced paradigm. Historically it has not always advanced but often hindered attempts to achieve historical memory and seek truth and justice. This raises the vital question: what other theoretical frameworks can best capture legacies of human rights crimes? Providing a historical view of current developments in Latin America’s reckoning processes, Legacies of State Violence and Transitional Justice in Latin America reflects on the meaning of the paradigm’s reception: what are the broader political and social consequences of supporting, appropriating, or rejecting the transitional justice paradigm?




The Janus Faces of Genius


Book Description

In this major re-evaluation of Isaac Newton's intellectual life, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs shows how his pioneering work in mathematics, physics, and cosmology was intertwined with his study of alchemy. Directing attention to the religious ambience of the alchemical enterprise of early modern Europe, Dobbs argues that Newton understood alchemy - and the divine activity in micromatter to which it spoke - to be a much needed corrective to the overly mechanized system of Descartes. The same religious basis underlay the rest of his work. To Newton it seemed possible to obtain partial truths from many different approaches to knowledge, be it textual work aimed at the interpretation of prophecy, the study of ancient theology and philosophy, creative mathematics, or experiments with prisms, pendulums, vegetating minerals, light, or electricity. Newton's work was a constant attempt to bring these partial truths together, with the larger goal of restoring true natural philosophy and true religion.




The Janus-Face of Language: Where Are the Emotions in Words and the Words in Emotions?


Book Description

Language has long been considered independent from emotions. In the last few years however research has accumulated empirical evidence against this theoretical belief of a purely cognitive-based foundation of language. In particular, through research on emotional word processing it has been shown, that processing of emotional words activates emotional brain structures, elicits emotional facial expressions and modulates action tendencies of approach and avoidance, probably in a similar manner as processing of non-verbal emotional stimuli does. In addition, it has been shown that emotional content is already processed in the visual cortex in a facilitated manner which suggests that processing of emotional language content is able to circumvent in-depth semantic analysis. Yet, this is only one side of the coin. Very recent research putting words into context suggests that language may also construe emotions and that by studying word processing one can provide a window to one’s own feelings. All in all, the empirical observations support the thesis of a close relationship between language and emotions at the level of word meaning as a specific evolutionary achievement of the human species. As such, this relationship seems to be different from the one between emotions and speech, where emotional meaning is conveyed by nonverbal features of the voice. But what does this relationship between written words and emotions theoretically imply for the processing of emotional information? The present Research Topic and its related articles aim to provide answers to this question. This book comprises several experimental studies investigating the brain structures and the time course of emotional word processing. Included are studies examining the affective core dimensions underlying affective word processing and studies that show how these basic affective dimensions influence word processing in general as well as the interaction between words, feelings and (expressive) behavior. In addition, new impetus comes from studies that on the one hand investigate how task-, sublexical and intrapersonal factors influence emotional word processing and on the other hand extend emotional word processing to the domains of social context and self-related processing. Finally, future perspectives are outlined including research on emotion and language acquisition, culture and multilingualism. In summary, this textbook offers scientists from different disciplines insight into the neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective mechanisms underlying emotion and language interactions. It gives new impulses to existing theories on the embodiment of language and emotion and provides new ways of looking at emotion-cognition interactions.




Faces of Nationalism


Book Description

In "The Modern Janus", Nairn argued for the democratic necessity of nationalism in the modern world. In this work, he addresses the subsequent upheavals caused by nationalism.




Janus-Faced Justice


Book Description

In his study of the treatment of political criminal suspects and prisoners from 1868 to 1945, Richard H. Mitchell makes a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of Japan's criminal justice system at a most critical juncture in that country's history. Through careful research and sensitive evaluation of the source materials, Mitchell identifies two contrasting themes--a high degree of state repression and a concern for human rights--and shows how a system that clearly involved considerable brutality, torture, and illegal detention also exhibited elements of humanity and fairness. He argues that this contradiction is best understood by viewing prewar Japan as a "paternalistic police state," in which brutality was the other side of benevolence. The scope of inquiry of this study encompasses a broad range of issues. It assays laws for control of political dissent as well as the origins of the movement for human rights of criminal suspects and convicts, giving special attention to the behavior of defense lawyers. It sorts out the actors and their roles in upholding or violating individual rights and does a superb job of conveying the subtle difficulties faced by judges as well as the markedly "un-American" legal context of political trials. It describes and makes critical distinctions between conditions in prisons and facilities for special detention and surveillance, and it challenges a number of common assumptions, including long-cherished views about the differences between the 1920s and 1930s. Numerous cases of alleged police brutality are evaluated and police actions analyzed. Tenko (conversion), a novel method of dealing with political criminal suspects and convicts, is explored together with the little-known Criminal Compensation Law. Throughout, the yardstick by which treatment of accused and convicted criminals is judged is the state's own laws and regulations. In addition to evaluation by these internal standards, Mitchell devotes his final chapter to a very useful comparison with the situation in Europe during the same period. There is no other work in English on precisely this subject and no other related work of this scope. Although Mitchell's focus is on political offenders, there is enough material on the overall system to make this volume easily the best available resource on prewar Japanese criminal justice.