Consuming and Certifying Quality

This article explores the use of the term alta qualità across two third-party certification (TPC) realms. TPCs assure that foods have certain qualities such that they are sourced within a national boundary, reduce environmental damage, or promote healthy living. In Europe, many TPCs support the economically and socially significant sector of artisanal foodways. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Milan, north Italy, the article provides context to understand how, when, and why alta qualità is uttered. Relying on the pragmatic economic sociological theory of qualification, I show that alta qualità is an important way to signify that a food is good, but this does not always mean it is consumable. For those institutionalising qualities, alta qualità signifies elements of taste, marketing, and organisational structure.

Combating Modern Slavery: The Strategy of Indonesian Government to Protect Migrant Workers

Economic migration create opportunities as well as humanitarian challenge. People travel across national boundary looking for work in the country destination. They would benefit their hosted as well as sending high amount of remittance for home. However, those dream were not applicable to all economic migrant when some of them fall victim into human trafficking. This research would investigate the strategy as well as challenges by Indonesia government and NGOs to promote protection of Indonesian migrant worker. It is imperative to evaluate state policies, state diplomacy, transnational advocacy network, and the nature of companies as agent of service provider. It would show how current practices and law has loopholes that create challenges for public private partnership to provide adequate support for Indonesian migrant worker. Investigation is conducted through interview, observation and literature review. The struggle to end modern slavery shall be one among priority in protecting civilian abroad, if the government is serious to minimize economic inequality and to change itself into welfare nation.

National Indifference in Post-Ottoman Spaces: A Case from Northwest Bulgaria

This study represents an application of the concept of national indifference in the Post-Ottoman Balkans. It addresses the question of why two minority communities in Northwest Bulgaria in the first half of 20th century – the Protestant Voyvodovo community and the Catholic community of Bărdarski Geran, both marked by a strong principle of religious endogamy, intermarried. The author maintains that the main reason why these two communities intermarried was – despite all the differences between them – their national indifference, a parameter that both communities shared. These marriages did not cross the ethno-national boundary (the communities were nationally indifferent and thus ethno-national borders did not divide them). Contrary to standard understandings of the concept of national indifference, the author emphasizes that national indifference can be said to have two sides. On the one hand, nationally indifferent groups represent those in which the “we-they” opposition does not follow national lines, while on the other hand these groups identify and organize themselves on the basis of principles other than national ones. In the example of the inhabitants of Voyvodovo and Bărdarski Geran, this principle was religion. The appreciation of the “positive” side of national indifference enables us to grasp “the native’s point of view,” how people themselves perceived and understood their reality, their identities, and loyalties.

Homonationalism Revisited

As various “right kind of queers” make their way into the social mainstream, researchers have moved their attention from compulsory heterosexuality as queer theory’s main other towards the new normativities created by these “exclusive integrations”. This article looks at existing critiques of homonormativity, homonationalism and homocolonialism and asks how we can develop these concepts, in order to maintain their relevance for well-needed analyses of the role LGBT rights play in projects of (national) boundary-making, as well as the ways in which LGBTQ people are variously positioned to deal with these. I argue that we need to take into account the ways in which these concepts have developed as they have entered new academic disciplines while also re-engaging with one of the central aspects of Puar’s initial framing of homonationalism: The racialized nature of sexualised/gendered difference. The article discusses the excessive potential of “gay-rights-as-human-rights” discourses, Cynthia Weber’s “plural logics of and/or” in order to challenge seemingly straightforward narratives of homonationalism, homonormativity and homocolonialism. It also draws on Alexander Weheliye’s “Habeas Viscus” in order to renew our theoretical engagement with questions of racialisation and colonialism, and to expand our view beyond issues of (legal) recognition.

Boundary issues and inadequate government policies in conflict Resolution in akwa ibom state, Nigeria

Issues associated with boundaries abound nationally and internationally. It engulf almost all facet of life especially, property ownership. Boundaries are line that delineates surface area for the purpose of facilitating coordination and deconfliction of operations between adjacent units, formations or areas. These bounds are often than not dispute prone. Ownership claim seems to be the major cause of the conflict; and land mostly the object. Border conflicts however intensify due to inadequate government policies to curb incessant boundaries issues. The Nigerian Land Use Act of 1978 and the constitution of National Boundary Commission with its subsidiaries are still wanting in promoting peaceful coexistence especially, among those along border line. This research aims to draw government attention to gaps which need to be bridged in its policies concerning border issues. Descriptive data analysis was employ in this research.

Rivers

The Amazon is a river of unparalleled vastness. Born high in the southern Andes of Peru, the Amazon flows north and then east, forming a national boundary with Colombia before crossing much of northern Brazil and then emptying into the Atlantic, draining an area of...

Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak on the World and the Inspirations

The paper uses the balanced analysis method to systematically study the impact of the global coronavirus outbreak on the world, analyzes in depth the challenges posed by COVID-19 on global governance capacity, analyzes the causes of the pandemic at the macro level and especially proposes the strategic thinking for enhancing global governance capacity and the countermeasures against the pandemic. The coronavirus knows no national boundary, which requires humankind to stand closely together. Under the pandemic, “home quarantine” seems a most primitive traditional measure, but is actually the most effective approach that is about life or death. COVID-19 may change some ways human behave, pose severe impact on global production and demand, foster unilateralism, intensify geopolitical conflicts, undermine global economic integration, challenge global governance capacity and push China and U.S. closer to cold war.

TURKESTAN ASSR: WHAT KIND OF STATE IT SHOULD BE?

his article analyzes the work of Bolsheviks on strengthening Soviet rule in the country by granting autonomy to Turkestan in national and Russian publications in 1918-1924. It has also been shown that the national boundary of Central Asia was important to the people of Turkestan, but this issue was excluded from them.

Mobilizing Gendered Piety in Sri Lanka’s Contemporary Bhikkhun? Ordination Dispute

Since the late 1980s, in defiance of Sri Lanka’s major monastic fraternities (nik?yas) and the government, Buddhist women and men have begun to organize across distinctions of national boundary and Buddhist tradition to reinstate a defunct bhikkhun? ordination lineage for renunciant women. Drawing on fieldwork from the winter of 2015–16, this article considers some of the strategies by which Sri Lanka’s bhikkhun?s and their supporters constitute the burgeoning lineage(s) as both legitimate and necessary for the continued health and vitality of an otherwise ailing Buddhist s?sana. I argue that Sri Lanka’s bhikkhun?s engage in highly-visible forms of adherence to vinaya rules and social expectations for ideal monastic behavior set against a popular discourse about the laxity of male renunciants. Such engagement is both political and soteriological; while it is aimed at fulfilling legitimizing gendered expectations of women’s piety, it is expressed primarily in terms of the eradication of personal and societal suffering through forms of practice that accord with the ideal of a pious monastic. Thus, in contrast to discourses which locate bhikkhun?s as subjects whose presence weakens the s?sana’s duration and strength, in this new discourse Sri Lanka’s bhikkhun?s become virtuous agents of social service and moral restoration. The article concludes by identifying emerging connections between this discourse and an alreadygendered xenophobic Buddhist nationalism.