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Islamic Member State justification for the use of the death penalty within the Universal Periodic Review
No full textThe aim of the project is to analyse the legitimacy of justifications for the continued use of the death penalty which are grounded in Islamic law. The context for the study is the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR is a mechanism of the Human Rights Council and was created through the UN General Assembly on 15 March 2006. It is a unique process that reviews the human rights records of all UN member states. Each UPR cycle runs for a period of four and a half years.
Under the UPR, countries that apply the death penalty justify its application by claiming that the punishment does not violate ICCPR Articles 6, 7 and 14. These arguments are generally aimed at demonstrating either that the punishment is a legitimate expression of state sovereignty, and/or that it is an effective administration of penology. Article 6 states that “in countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes.” It is within this framework that the use of the punishment specifically by Islamic states will be studied.
Ultimately, the research will engage and contribute to the exegesis of punishment under Islamic Law, based on human rights principles. It will aim to influence government policy of Islamic states and result in a reduction of the death penalty
“Before Darkness Falls, It Is Not Futile to Collect:” Responses to a Threatened Culture in the Creation of Ethnographies of Haiti, 1928-1937
No full textThe creation of North American anthropology was significantly driven by the attempt to collect what could be gathered of Native American culture before the horrors of Manifest Destiny consigned it to the ages (Stocking, 1982). During the US Occupation of Haiti and the years immediately following, Haitian popular culture, especially that which was connected to Haitian Vodou, became similarly threatened. Brutal military suppression on behalf of the US Marines, together with a hostile elite, meant that Haitian rural practice was increasingly marginalised. Ethnographic study once again became a tool of preservation, and also of resistance, in response to this threat.
Ramsey (2011) has looked in detail at the role of Haitian anthropology during the Campagne anti-superstiteuse of 1941, when the Church and government united in a kulturkampf against Vodou. Yet this was not the first time ethnography housed a response to increased insecurity of everyday Haitian life, and it manifested itself through various means within fieldwork and dissemination of research.
This paper will look at three specific examples wherein creative responses to a threatened culture are found within the creation of Haitian ethnography. The first will analyse the celebrated work of Haitian ethnographer Jean Price-Mars as a response to the “tragic uncertainty” of occupation life, before investigating the role of anthropological “informant” Galbert Constance, who emphasised the precariousness of Haitian existence to Melville and Frances Herskovits. Finally we shall look at the transformation of the Pont Beudet Insane Asylum, founded and administered by the US occupation, into a site of anthropological pilgrimage for those interested in Haitian Vodou. These examples shall furnish our understanding of how ethnographical work shaped and catalysed responses to external cultural threats in early-twentieth century Haiti
Long-Run Growth Uncertainty
No full textObserved macroeconomic forecasts display gradual recognition of the long-run growth of endogenous variables (e.g. output, output per hour) and a positive correlation between long-run growth expectations and cyclical activities. Existing business cycle models appear inconsistent with the evidence. This paper presents a model of business cycle in which households have imperfect knowledge of the long-run growth of endogenous variables and continually learn about this growth. The model features comovement and mutual influence of households' growth expectations and market outcomes, which can replicate the evidence, and suggests a critical role for shifting long-run growth expectations in business cycle fluctuations.
JEL classifications: E32, D8
Coherent control of group index and magneto-optical anisotropy in a multilevel atomic vapor
No full textRethinking Scholarship In Nurse Education
No full textThe nursing profession is undergoing significant change. The most apparent being: the recent progress to an all-graduate profession; the continued reforms following the findings of the Francis Report (2013) and the sustained restructuring of the health service that seeks to effectively manage the increasing demands placed upon it (NHS 2014).
Educational programmes in nursing have developed curriculum that places self- determined learning at the heart of professional practice. This heutagogical approach extols the value of reflective practitioners that empower the development of evidence based practice. Throughout this process students are supported by scholarly mentors.
In light of the significant changes and the continued challenges to nurse education this paper will seek to critically analyse the seminal work of Boyer, (1990) in which he sought to challenge the out-moded ideology of scholarship and propose a more enlightened contemporary framework, which all academics can utilise in order to encourage a more dynamic, systematic approach to learning
Hazelwood School – A Catalyst For Reformatory Education?
No full textHazelwood School was established at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in Birmingham, by the Hill family. This paper argues that the ethos and unique practices adopted at the school by the Hills, together with their individual activities, which were influenced by a series of socially-minded individuals with whom they came into contact, can be seen as contributing to the choice of Birmingham as the location for the first national conference on the reform of juvenile criminals, held in 1851, and to the development of the reformatory and industrial schools that were later established to accommodate criminal children. Additionally, the efforts of successive generations of the Hill family, who continued to work to improve the treatment of neglected and criminal children, were so progressive that their influence extended beyond Victorian Britain
“I Use Half Nepali, Half English, The Hybrid Language!” – Translanguaging For Pedagogy In A Nepali Literacy Class
No full textThis paper will discuss the pragmatic use of translanguaging as a pedagogical practice within a Nepali literacy class setting. Translanguaging, a term first used in Wales in the 1980’s by Williams and Baker to describe a pedagogical practice for teaching two languages together (Lewis et al., 2012), has developed to describe a process in which both languages are used in a dynamic and functionally integrated manner to organise and mediate mental processes in understanding, speaking, literacy, and, not least, learning. Translanguaging concerns... function rather than form, cognitive activity, as well as language production
(Lewis et al., 2012: 641).
Translanguaging therefore, as a ‘flexible bilingual pedagogy’ (Blackledge and Creese, 2010), has been seen to offer ‘learners the possibility of accessing academic content with the semiotic resources they bring, while acquiring new ones’ (Garcia and Wei, 2014: 66).
Translanguaging is identified by the Nepalese teacher in this study as a valuable tool in her pedagogical toolkit.
The example of translanguaging discussed in this paper is taken from ethnographic data gathered over one academic year as part of a PhD study of multilingual literacy learning of Nepalese children growing up in the UK. Participants are Nepalese Nepali speaking children and their teacher
The ‘humanity’ of the secular legal subject’: Reading the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions over the practice of veiling
No full textThe debate over the Muslim headscarf has become an arena of fervent discussion in Europe. Much of the debate reveals an attempt to explain the issue in binary terms, between modern, ‘secular’, universal and ‘religious’, traditional, local values. In this context, the hijab has become the symbol and mirror of the so called ‘clash of civilisations’. Through the analysis of two cases sentenced by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), my argument is that the passionate debate over the veil is a false one as the hijab emerges as a visible symbol of a clash between two legal-political systems, similar but contingently dissimilar: in fact, both Islamists and liberals aim at establishing a singular, universal (positivized) law within the same territory through women’s body. Thus, what the analysis of the ‘hijab cases’ reveals, is not only the emergence of a specific fixed and monolithic Christian/secular/liberal law’s subject, but also that the universality of western thought has precluded the possibility of imagining different forms of humanities and, along with it, a legal pluralism able to deal with a new multi-religious Europe
Oxygen insertion reactions within the 1-D channels of phases related to FeSb2O4
No full textThe structure of the mineral schafarzikite, FeSb2O4, has one-dimensional channels with walls comprising Sb3+ cations; the channels are separated by edge-linked FeO6 octahedra that form infinite chains parallel to the channels. Although this structure provides interest with respect to the magnetic and electrical properties associated with the chains and the possibility of chemistry that could occur within the channels, materials in this structural class have received very little attention. Here we show, for the first time, that heating selected phases in oxygen-rich atmospheres can result in relatively large oxygen uptakes (up to ~2% by mass) at low temperatures (ca 350°C) whilst retaining the parent structure. Using a variety of structural and spectroscopic techniques, it is shown that oxygen is inserted into the channels to provide a structure with potential to show high one-dimensional oxide ion conductivity. This is the first report of oxygen-excess phases derived from this structure. The oxygen insertion is accompanied not only by oxidation of Fe2+ to Fe3+ within the octahedral chains but also Sb3+ to Sb5+ in the channel walls. The formation of a defect cluster comprising one 5-coordinate Sb5+ ion (which is very rare in an oxide environment), two interstitial O2- ions and two 4-coordinate Sb3+ ions is suggested and is consistent with all experimental observations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of an oxidation process where the local energetics of the product dictate that simultaneous oxidation of two different cations must occur. This reaction, together with the wide range of cation substitutions that are possible on the transition metal sites, presents opportunities to explore the schafarzikite structure more extensively for a range of catalytic and electrocatalytic applications.
The neutron diffraction data are contained in two folders corresponding to the instruments:
1. HRPT with one data file and the instrument parameter file.
2. D20 with one instrument parameter file and five sub-folders containing the datasets for the temperature ranges indicated. The individual file names can be used to deduce the temperature for that particular measurement. For example, the sub-folder 50-145_degC contains 20 datasets for which the first (run 895262) relates to 50C and the last (run 895281) to 145C. All data files have had background due to the quartz tube subtracted. The inclusion of run number in the file name means that they can immediately be used for sequential refinement using seqgsas.
The Mössbauer data contain two columns that correspond with the experimental x-axis (mm s-1) and y-axis (−absorption / %) points for the collected raw data. The heating temperature is included in the file name
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