The Indeterminacy of Precedent: Negotiating the Admissibility of Victim Participant Testimony before the International Criminal Court

The icc represents a legal laboratory that is still consolidating itself, with multiple unclarities in evidence and procedural law requiring resolution through jurisprudence. Our paper draws on interaction analysis to unpack this process, focusing on the jurisprudential construction of ‘dual status’ victim participant testimony. To elucidate how this evidentiary/procedural element is locally negotiated, we examine an excerpt from the Ongwen hearing transcripts, in which the defense objects against the testimony by a dual status witness called by the victim participants’ legal representative. The analysis traces how the defense counsel’s objection is anchored in a trajectory of prior decisions, and demonstrates that the implementation of the criteria drawn from these decisions is mediated by deep-rooted common-sense assumptions about the ‘ownership’ of testimony. These unspoken assumptions open up a discursive space in which trial actors can discuss the interactional quality of testimony, which adds an element of contingency to the final decision.

Under-representation of visible minorities in Canada's political system : a case study of the Chinese community in Toronto

This study explores the role identity plays in Canadian politics, taking the Chinese community in Toronto as a case study. The study aims to answer two general questions: why is the Chinese community in Toronto statistically under-represented in Canada's municipal, provincial and federal elected positions? What is the community's perception of political representation and participation and their future role in Canadian politics? This study concludes that the patterns of racial minority political representation and participation are shaped by both their cultural tradition in their countries of origin and their experiences in Canadian society. The dual status of immigrants and visible minority has negatively affected their capacity to participation. Unfavorable political opportunity structure for visible minorities in general also constitutes systemic barriers for Chinese Canadians' political representation. The Chinese community is aware of their weak political status in Toronto and seeking ways to improve the situation.

Under-representation of visible minorities in Canada's political system : a case study of the Chinese community in Toronto

This study explores the role identity plays in Canadian politics, taking the Chinese community in Toronto as a case study. The study aims to answer two general questions: why is the Chinese community in Toronto statistically under-represented in Canada's municipal, provincial and federal elected positions? What is the community's perception of political representation and participation and their future role in Canadian politics? This study concludes that the patterns of racial minority political representation and participation are shaped by both their cultural tradition in their countries of origin and their experiences in Canadian society. The dual status of immigrants and visible minority has negatively affected their capacity to participation. Unfavorable political opportunity structure for visible minorities in general also constitutes systemic barriers for Chinese Canadians' political representation. The Chinese community is aware of their weak political status in Toronto and seeking ways to improve the situation.

The dual status of filled pauses: Evidence from genre, proficiency and co-occurrence

The present corpus study aims to contribute to the debate regarding the lexical or non-lexical status of filled pauses. Although they are commonly associated with hesitation, disfluency, and production difficulty, it has also been argued that they can serve more fluent communicative functions in discourse (e.g., turn-taking, stance-marking). Our work is grounded in a usage-based and discourse-functional approach to filled pauses, and we address this debate by examining the multiple characteristics of euh and eum in spoken French, as well as their co-occurrence with discourse markers. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, we analyze their distribution across different communication settings (prepared monologs vs. spontaneous conversations) and levels of language proficiency (native vs. non-native). Quantitative findings indicate differences in frequency, duration, position, and patterns of co-occurrence across corpora, and our qualitative analyses identify fine-grained differences, mainly two distinct patterns of distribution (initial position clustered with a discourse marker vs. medial position clustered with other hesitation markers), reflecting the different “fluent” and “disfluent” uses of filled pauses. We thus argue for a dual status of euh and eum based on formal, functional, and contextual features.

Commentary

As discussed in the paper, an issue that makes responding to compliments complex is the dual status of compliments. On the one hand, a compliment is an assessment to which agreement or disagreement is relevant. On the other hand, a compliment may be likened to a ritual gift that should be appreciated and accepted. However an agreement carries risks. Participants orient to the action of praising oneself as improper, which may warrant the inference that the speaker is immodest or boastful. With that orientation, recipients of compliments offer responses that avoid appearing immodest....

THE SYSTEMIC ROLE OF A CLASSICAL UNIVERSITY “WITH HISTORY” IN THE COLLEGE TOWN DEVELOPMENT

Рассматривается проблема малоизученности города-университета как социокультурного феномена и роли классического вуза «с историей» в его становлении. Применяется методологический комплекс, включающий теорию социальных аутопоэтических систем Н. Лумана; концепцию классического университета как открытой и одновременно закрытой системы М. Ленартович; социокультурный (Р. Парк), культурологический (Н. Федотова, Т. Ильина, И. Гревс, М. Каган) и историко-культурный (К. Керр) подходы; концепцию региона как социальной системы (Д. Докучаев). Анализируются понятия «город-университет» и «университетский город»; формулируется авторское операциональное определение города-университета; описываются ключевые отличия города-университета от университетского города, а также представляются основные характеристики, присущие городу-университету. Показывается, что город-университет представляет собой сложную социокультурную систему с двойным статусом (открытая/закрытая), основой идентичности которой является классический вуз «с историей», обеспечивающий функционирование культурных кодов города. Обосновывается системообразующая роль классического вуза «с историей» в становлении города-университета как особого социокультурного феномена и сохранении его культурной идентичности. The purpose of the article is justification of the systemic role of a classical university “with history” in the development of a college town as a special sociocultural phenomenon and the preservation of its cultural identity. The methodological complex, applied in the paper, includes the theory of autopoietic social systems (N. Luhmann); the concept of a traditional university as an open and closed system (M. Lenartowicz); sociocultural (R. Park), cultural (N. Fedotova, T. Ilyina, I. Grevs, M. Kagan) and historical-cultural (K. Kerr) approaches; the concept of the region as a social system (D. Dokuchaev). The paper presents an analysis of the “college town” and “a city with a university” concepts. It formulates the authors’ definition of a college town, describes the key differences between a college town and a city with a university, and demonstrates the main college town characteristics. The article demonstrates that a college town is a complex sociocultural system with a dual status (open/closed), whose identity is based on a classical university “with a history” that provides the functioning of the town’s cultural codes. Understanding a classical university “with a history” as a college town’s system-forming element provides an opportunity to understand the essence of this town type and its specific characteristics. It can be further used as a theoretical justification for the strategy of regional development. The ideas presented in this paper can contribute to the search for an authentic identity for some territorial entities, which is still in a “latent state”.

To Establish a Proper Kyrgyz Centre: National and Territorial Delimitation and the Capitals of Kazakhstan

This article considers the interconnection between national and territorial delimitation in the Central Asian region in the 1920s and the relocation of the Kazakh ASSR’s capital from Orenburg to Kzyl-Orda and then to Alma-Ata. Referring to documents, the author demonstrates how the Kazakh ethnopolitical elite used the new opportunities that emerged in this regard to ensure the national character of the Soviet autonomous region in the way that seemed the most appropriate to them. Orenburg, which became its capital upon the establishment of the Kazakh ASSR in 1920, did not look suitable; besides, the autonomous authorities had to take into account the presence of the independent authorities and management of Orenburg Province, whose representatives also experienced discomfort due to the city’s dual status. When interacting with the centre, represented by the Politburo and the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), the national leaders of Kazakhstan put forward various options for internal reorganisation and the accumulation of all possible resources in their hands. The so-called “Europeans”, i. e. Moscow envoys who led the autonomous region’s party organisation, were not only to mediate between the centre and the local elite but also establish a balance between the competing factions within it. The author also focuses on the rivalry between Kazakh politicians and the authorities of the Turkestan ASSR and the struggle for the inclusion of Tashkent and nearby Turkestan territories inhabited by Kazakhs into the Kazakh ASSR. This exposed intra-elite contradictions caused by the regional and ethno-social factors of nation-building and competition for financial, economic, administrative, and organisational resources. The article demonstrates that complex natural and climatic conditions, the nomadic nature of Kazakh society and its negligible degree of urbanisation, and a lack of proper infrastructure played a special role in the geography of Kazakhstan’s capital in the 1920s. In the context of accelerated modernisation, the government sought to combine the policy of national self-determination with ensuring the manageability and stability of a culturally complex region and strengthening interregional economic connections. The “migrations” of the Kazakh capital were also connected with the need to create an example of successful interaction between Moscow and national elites, as well as form an ethno-cultural centre that met symbolic requirements.

TREE IMAGE OF SIBERIA: LARCH

The dendroimage image of Siberia is considered in the context of geopoetics and ethnodendrology. For the first time the proposed analysis systematizes the motives associated with the image of larch, one of the main trees in the region. The research materials are scientific works on ethnography and folklore studies, Russian and Russian-language fiction about Siberia written in the XIX-XX centuries. The name of the tree reflects its dual status: coniferous and deciduous simultaneously. The “gender” of the larch is also indeterminate: male / female. The larch has an «intermediate» position in the system of the most important dendroimages of the Siberian text: between cedar and birch. It can be associated with universal tree mythologemes (World Tree, Tree of Life and Death, family tree, etc.), but it most clearly embodies the basic concept of Siberia as a space of violence, hard labor, exile, concentration camps.