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41. Protecting India's Children: Vulnerabilities and Challenges

Author:
Asha Bajpai
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
India is a land of paradoxes. There is no other country in the world that embraces such an extraordinary profusion of ethnic groups, mutually incomprehensible languages, topography and climate, religions and cultural practices, and levels of economic development. This largest democracy in the world is also home to the largest number of children in the world. Children constitute more than 400 million of the one billion plus population of India. The country has twenty percent of the 0–4-year-old child population of the world.
Political Geography:
India

42. Response

Author:
Hanna Zimnitskaya
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Professor Asha Bajpai’s essay, “Children in India: Law, Policy and Practice,” commences by stating that India is the largest democracy in the world, and that by virtue of this title, one of the country’s main preoccupations is to remediate the law, policy, and practice related to the protection of children’s rights. However, her discourse overlooks an essential component of a flourishing democracy: participation. A nation is democratic to the extent to which all of its citizens are involved. As Amartya Sen points out, “if people are involved in making their own decisions and running their own lives, their actions are more likely to result...in achievement of their well-being freedoms.”
Topic:
Law
Political Geography:
India

43. Response

Author:
Erik Larson
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Professor Asha Bajpai's essay engages a multitude of issues that influence the well-being of people under eighteen years of age in India. It argues that legal and policy interventions in India can improve protection of children's rights. Her essay makes a number of contributions. First, the detail about the myriad influences on the status of 400 million young people in India provides a wealth of information about the real situations that influence people's life chances. Second, the focus on India provides insight about a case that is critically important for substantive and theoretical reasons. India is an emerging economic power, the world's largest democracy, and a diverse society; understanding the influences on children in India enables us to draw lessons that may apply elsewhere. Additionally, as I will briefly explain later, in some respects, India is an outlier in models that predict the pace of legal change. As such, understanding more about the country can build theoretical knowledge about how global developments influence national legal changes. Third, Bajpai's article provides details about a variety of legal processes that seek to improve the realization of children's rights. Analysis of how these legal processes have played out can yield insights about the prospects for legal change. Finally, uniting each of these contributions, the paper demonstrates a passionate commitment to the issues of the status of children.
Political Geography:
India

44. Table of Contents

Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
Globalization
Political Geography:
Europe

45. Between "Autistic" Courts and Mob Justice: Theorizing the Call for More "Democratic" International Criminal Justice

Author:
Marlies Glasius
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
In the last few years, the literature on international criminal courts has shifted from legal enthusiasm over the exciting new frontiers in legal and institutional development to a more critical debate in which anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and many interdisciplinary scholars also participate. There are three interrelated lines of critique, pursued to different degrees by different authors. The first is a general questioning of whether the exclusive focus on punitive “trial” justice is in fact helpful for the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the wider societies that have suffered from such atrocities. The second points out that in ongoing conflicts, the pursuit of such justice may get in the way of the pursuit of peace through negotiations. The third concerns the “remoteness” of these courts from the lived realities of the populations affected by the crimes they prosecute.
Topic:
Crime and War
Political Geography:
Yugoslavia and Cambodia

46. Queers and Muslims: The Dutch Case

Author:
Gert Hekma
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
For about a decade, antagonisms have been mounting between Muslim and gay men. In particular, when El Moumni spoke out against homosexuality in 2001, many politicians and gays reacted angrily. White Dutch got the feeling that Muslims did not respect or accept gays, lesbians, and women in general because of their supposedly homophobic and sexist views. That a disproportional part of the anti-gay violence can be attributed to male Moroccan youngsters has become another ground upon which to attack Muslims. Pim Fortuyn, the right- wing leader who was murdered in 2002, exploited the anti-homosexuality stance of a large portion of the Muslim religious leaders and the queer bashing attributed to ethnic minority youth, using it as a stick to beat the Muslims for their backwardness. They should not be able to sufficiently integrate in a Dutch society that is defined, in the eyes of the right wing, by its longstanding support for the emancipation of women, gays, and lesbians. Although the issue of gay-Muslim relations is continuously discussed in Dutch society and politics, the political answers have been unconvincing up until now. Rhetoric has been more important than doing something. In this article, I will first discuss the early history of the gay-Muslim debate, then the subsequent rise of antagonism since the interventions by El Moumni and Fortuyn, and finally the contemporary social and political answers on the issue.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Algeria, Netherlands, and Tunisia

47. The Dutch Golden Age and Globalization: History and Heritage, Legacies and Contestations

Author:
Joop de Jong
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
In 1579, seven of the seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands unenthusiastically declared their independence from the Habsburg King of Spain, to form the United Provinces, also known as the Union or the Dutch Republic. The new country achieved full international recognition in 1648, even though many states recognized its sovereignty much earlier.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
Spain, Netherlands, and Dutch

48. Global Citizenship and the European Milieu: Contested and Considered

Author:
Frank J. Lechner
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
The Dutch have long thought that they are an exemplary nation, a guide and a beacon to the world, or as they used to put it, a “gidsland” for others to follow. As early as the 1600s, they vaunted their commitment to freedom and tolerance; later, they displayed a special zeal for peace, especially international peace. Since the 1960s, they have claimed a place in the front ranks of progressive nations, building a caring welfare state and expanding the rights of citizens—including the right to shop for things other than coffee at numerous “coffee shops.” Of course, they were not always consistent in acting out these virtues, as the Dutch themselves are well aware, which is one reason why most would now use the term gidsland with a healthy sense of irony, as a way to skewer pretensions to moral superiority. These days, in fact, the Dutch have a relative low opinion of their influence.2 They may be right: the outside world has not necessarily taken much notice of the stellar example set in the low countries—and when outsiders paid attention at all, they did not always like what they saw. To Dutch regret, the City in the Polder was not quite as visible or inspiring as the City on a Hill.
Political Geography:
Europe and Dutch

49. Memory and Urbanism in the Constitution of Global Citizenship: Heritage, Preservation, and Tourism in Amsterdam and Rotterdam

Author:
Ernesto Capello
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
One of the most exciting areas in the cultural study of globalization concerns heritage preservation and heritage tourism. This subfield has grown out of the studies of collective memory by sociologists, historians, and art historians attentive to the relationship between capital, spectacle, and place. Whereas traditional studies of collective memory by figures like Maurice Halbwachs emphasized group social interaction, contemporary scholars have underscored the produced nature of what Pierre Nora terms “sites of memory.” Christine Boyer, for example, distinguishes between what she terms “vernacular topoi,” or sites tied to memory due to repeated use, and “rhetorical topoi,” sites intended to instruct, often at the behest of the state, a local elite, and, increasingly, global financial concerns. These latter sites tend to demarcate not only official narratives of local history but also cater to visitors seeking to encounter pasts both nostalgic and contested. As such, they lay at the intersection of heritage, preservation, and tourism.
Topic:
Globalization
Political Geography:
Amsterdam

50. Immigration Status (Art Print)

Author:
Ruthann Godollei
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
While on our faculty seminar in the Netherlands we studied issues of immigration and human rights. Prior to our return to the United States, the Netherlands held general elections in which right-wing politicians, running on an anti-immigrant platform, gained additional seats in government. In our own country, anti-immigrant sentiments are again on the rise. A northern suburb of the Twin Cities passed an “English Only” ordinance that is not only unwelcoming, but anti-immigrant and racist at its core. Ignoring the First Amendment Right to Freedom of Religion, the former governor of our state has joined other right-wing pundits in declaring where mosques shall and shall not be built. Clearly some people are freer to practice their language, culture, and religion than others.
Topic:
Immigration
Political Geography:
United States and Netherlands