Indian Architecture: Social and Political Challenges

The objective of this paper is to reassess the central factors which have shaped the Indian architecture. The author puts forward the concept of plurality introduced by Western art historians and argues that the diversity of the Indian architecture should not be explained in terms of religious differences, but in terms of the socio-economical situation in South Asia. He also elaborates on the Hindu caste system and its impact on the Indian architecture.

Political participation of non-national residents in Portugal

Em Portugal, novas medidas de participação política têm vindo a ser introduzidas tanto por força da transição para uma sociedade multicultural como pela sua participação na integração política europeia que se direcciona para um novo nível de cidadania. O presente artigo pretende mostrar até que ponto os residentes não-nacionais, de países terceiros e da União Europeia, efectivamente usam os seus novos direitos políticos e participam nos actos eleitorais em Portugal, conferindo-lhes a oportunidade de uma maior integração política no seu Estado de residência. In Portugal, new rules of political participation have been imposed by the transition to a multicultural society, in addition to the European political integration that is currently developing towards a new level of citizenship. This paper intends to show to what extent non-national residents, both from EU and non-EU countries, effectively use their new political rights and participate in the Portuguese electoral acts that give them the opportunity for a wider political integration in their state of residence.

The political principles of Mencius / by Francis C.M. Wei.

http://www.archive.org/details/thepoliticalprin00weicuoft

Missions the chief end of the Christian Church; also, the qualifications, duties, and trials, of an Indian Missionary: being the substance of services held on the 7th March, in St. Andrew's Church, Edinburgh, at the ordination of the Rev. Thomas Smith.

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC55772204

An analysis of political efficacy socialisation among threshold voters in the Republic of Ireland

The spread of democracy in the latter part of the twenty first century has been accompanied by an increasing focus on its perceived performance in established western democracies. Recent literature has expressed concern about a critical outlook among younger cohorts which threatens their political support and engagement. Political efficacy, referring to the feeling of political effectiveness, is considered to be a key indicator of the performance of democratic politics; as it refers to the empowerment of citizens, and relates to their willingness to engage in political matters. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the socialisation of political efficacy among those on the threshold of political adulthood; i.e., 'threshold voters'. The long-term significance of attitudes developed by time of entry to adulthood for political engagement during adulthood has been emphasised in recent literature. By capturing the effect of non-political and political learning among threshold voters, the study advances existing research frames which focus on childhood and early adolescent socialisation. The theoretical and methodological framework applied herein recognises the distinction between internal and external political efficacy, which has not been consistently operationalized in existing research on efficacy socialisation. This research involves a case study of 'threshold voters' in the Republic of Ireland, and employs a quantitative methodology. A study on Irish threshold voters is timely as the parliament and government have recently proposed a lowering of the voting age and an expansion of formal political education to this age group. A project-specific survey instrument was developed and administered to a systematic stratified sample of 1,042 post-primary students in the Cork area. Interpretation of the results of statistical analysis leads to findings on the divergent influence of family, school, associational, and political agents/environments on threshold voter internal and external political efficacy.

Police accountability in Ireland: an analysis of the problems posed by the legal, constitutional and political dimensions and how they might be addressed

The concept of police accountability is not susceptible to a universal or concise definition. In the context of this thesis it is treated as embracing two fundamental components. First, it entails an arrangement whereby an individual, a minority and the whole community have the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the formulation of the principles and policies governing police operations. Second, it presupposes that those who have suffered as victims of unacceptable police behaviour should have an effective remedy. These ingredients, however, cannot operate in a vacuum. They must find an accommodation with the equally vital requirement that the burden of accountability should not be so demanding that the delivery of an effective police service is fatally impaired. While much of the current debate on police accountability in Britain and the USA revolves around the issue of where the balance should be struck in this accommodation, Ireland lacks the very foundation for such a debate as it suffers from a serious deficit in research and writing on police generally. This thesis aims to fill that gap by laying the foundations for an informed debate on police accountability and related aspects of police in Ireland. Broadly speaking the thesis contains three major interrelated components. The first is concerned with the concept of police in Ireland and the legal, constitutional and political context in which it operates. This reveals that although the Garda Siochana is established as a national force the legal prescriptions concerning its role and governance are very vague. Although a similar legislative format in Britain, and elsewhere, have been interpreted as conferring operational autonomy on the police it has not stopped successive Irish governments from exercising close control over the police. The second component analyses the structure and operation of the traditional police accountability mechanisms in Ireland; namely the law and the democratic process. It concludes that some basic aspects of the peculiar legal, constitutional and political structures of policing seriously undermine their capacity to deliver effective police accountability. In the case of the law, for example, the status of, and the broad discretion vested in, each individual member of the force ensure that the traditional legal actions cannot always provide redress where individuals or collective groups feel victimised. In the case of the democratic process the integration of the police into the excessively centralised system of executive government, coupled with the refusal of the Minister for Justice to accept responsibility for operational matters, project a barrier between the police and their accountability to the public. The third component details proposals on how the current structures of police accountability in Ireland can be strengthened without interfering with the fundamentals of the law, the democratic process or the legal and constitutional status of the police. The key elements in these proposals are the establishment of an independent administrative procedure for handling citizen complaints against the police and the establishment of a network of local police-community liaison councils throughout the country coupled with a centralised parliamentary committee on the police. While these proposals are analysed from the perspective of maximising the degree of police accountability to the public they also take into account the need to ensure that the police capacity to deliver an effective police service is not unduly impaired as a result.

Principles and prejudice: The erosion of fairness in admissibility determinations relating to historic child sexual abuse trials in Ireland

This thesis interrogates the construction of fairness to the accused in historic child sexual abuse trials in Ireland. The protection of fairness is a requirement of any trial that claims to adhere to the rule of law. Historic child sexual abuse trials, in which the charges relate to events that are alleged to have taken place decades previously, present serious challenges to the ability of the trial process to safeguard fairness. They are a litmus test of the courts’ commitment to fairness. The thesis finds that in historic abuse trials fairness to the accused has been significantly eroded and that therefore the Irish Courts have failed to respect the core of the rule of law in these most serious of prosecutions. The thesis scrutinises two bodies of case law, both of which deal with the issue of whether evidence should reach the jury. First, it examines the decisions on applications brought by defendants seeking to prohibit their trial. The courts hearing prohibition applications face a dilemma: how to ensure the defendant is not put at risk of an unfair trial, while at the same time recognising that delay in reporting is a defining feature of these cases. The thesis traces the development of the prohibition case law and tracks the shifting interpretations given to fairness by the courts. Second, the thesis examines what fairness means in the superior courts’ decisions regarding the admissibility of the following kinds of evidence, each of which presents particular challenges to the ability of the trial to safeguard fairness: evidence of multiple complainants; evidence of recovered memories and evidence of complainants’ therapeutic records. The thesis finds that in both bodies of case law the Irish courts have hollowed out the meaning of fairness. It makes proposals on how fairness might be placed at the heart of courts’ decisions on admissibility in historic abuse trials. The thesis concludes that the erosion of fairness in historic abuse trials is indicative of a move away from the liberal model of criminal justice. It cautions that unless fairness is prioritised in historic child sexual abuse trials the legitimacy of these trials and that of all Irish criminal trials will be contestable.

The political and economic context of Keynes’s 1933 Finlay lecture: transforming a business practitioner’s ways of knowing

This thesis is structured in the format of a three part Portfolio of Exploration to facilitate transformation in my ways of knowing to enhance an experienced business practitioner’s capabilities and effectiveness. A key factor in my ways of knowing, as opposed to what I know, is my exploration of context and assumptions. By interacting with my cultural, intellectual, economic, and social history, I seek to become critically aware of the biographical, historical, and cultural context of my beliefs and feelings about myself. This Portfolio is not exclusively for historians of economics or historians of ideas but also for those interested in becoming more aware of how these culturally assimilated frames of reference and bundles of assumptions that influence the way they perceive, think, decide, feel and interpret their experiences in order to operate more effectively in their professional and organisational lives. In the first part of my Portfolio, I outline and reflect upon my Portfolio’s overarching theory of adult development; the writings of Harvard’s Robert Kegan and Columbia University’s Jack Mezirow. The second part delves further into how meaning-making, the activity of how one organises and makes sense of the world and how meaning-making evolves to different levels of complexity. I explore how past experience and our interpretations of history influences our understandings since all perception is inevitably tinged with bias and entrenched ‘theory-laden’ assumptions. In my third part, I explore the 1933 inaugural University College Dublin Finlay Lecture delivered by economist John Maynard Keynes. My findings provide a new perspective and understanding of Keynes’s 1933 lecture by not solely reading or relying upon the text of the three contextualised essay versions of his lecture. The purpose and context of Keynes’s original longer lecture version was quite different to the three shorter essay versions published for the American, British and German audiences.

The political philosophy of Miki Kiyoshi: A close reading of the philosophical foundations of cooperative communitarianism

The thesis is a historical and philological study of the mature political theory of Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) focused on Philosophical Foundations of Cooperative Communitarianism (1939), a full translation of which is included. As the name suggests, it was a methodological and normative communitarianism, which critically built on liberalism, Marxism and Confucianism to realise a regional political community. Some of Miki’s Western readers have wrongly considered him a fascist ideologue, while he has been considered a humanist Marxist in Japan. A closer reading cannot support either view. The thesis argues that the Anglophone study of Japanese philosophy is a degenerating research programme ripe for revolution in the sense of returning full circle to an original point. That means returning to the texts, reading them contextually and philologically, in principle as early modern European political theory is read by intellectual historians, such as the representatives of Cambridge School history of political thought. The resulting reading builds critically on the Japanese scholarship and relates it to contemporary Western and postcolonial political theory and the East Asian tradition, particularly neo-Confucianism. The thesis argues for a Cambridge School perspective radicalised by the critical addendum of geo-cultural context, supplemented by Geertzian intercultural hermeneutics and a Saidian ‘return to philology’. As against those who have seen radical reorientations in Miki’s political thought, the thesis finds gradual progression and continuity between his neo-Kantian, existentialist, Marxian anthropology, Hegelian and finally communitarian phases. The theoretical underpinnings are his philosophical anthropology, a structurationist social theory of praxis, and a critique of liberalism, Marxism, nationalism and idealism emphasising concrete as opposed to abstract theory and the need to build on existing cultural traditions to modernise rather than westernise East Asia. This post-Western fusion was imagined to be the beginning of a true and pluralistic universalism.

Reforming the legal framework for clinical trials with neonates in Ireland: a children’s rights approach

This thesis assesses the current regulatory framework regarding clinical trials with neonates in Ireland from a children’s rights perspective, as derived from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 (UN CRC) and its supporting instruments. The focus on neonates in the thesis is due to the particular need for clinical research with this group of children, their dependency on others for their protection and the lack of attention which has been given to them in the regulatory framework. The importance of children’s rights in this area is linked to the role of human rights in the regulation of clinical research in general. A rights-based approach is of great practical relevance in reforming law, policy and practice. For example, the CRC contains a set of commonly agreed legal benchmarks which can be used to assess the current framework and shape recommendations for reform. In this way, it provides a set of binding norms under international law, which must be complied with by states and state actors in all law, policy and practice affecting children. However, the contribution which a children’s rights approach could make to the regulation of research with children has not, to date, been explored in detail. This thesis aims to address this gap by developing a set of children’s rights-based benchmarks, which are used to assess the Irish regulatory framework for clinical trials with neonates and to develop recommendations for reform. The purpose of the analysis and recommendations is to assess Ireland’s compliance with international children’s rights law in the area and to analyse the potential of children’s rights to effectively address inadequacies in the Irish framework. The recommendations ultimately aim to develop a framework which will enhance the protection of neonates’ rights in this important area of children’s lives.

Depression and 'crises of meaninglessness' in the political-economic theology of the money-God

The thesis starts with a historical analysis of the development of depression as a concept. Through this inquiry, the controversies behind the apparent consensus about depression’s etiology and treatment are illuminated, suggesting that the understanding of the climbing rates of depression in contemporary Western civilization is still up for grabs. That’s what the thesis sets out to investigate. In order to accomplish this aim, the study builds upon the classical accounts of Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim and the more contemporary ideas of Dany-Robert Dufour, in dialogue with an array of supplementary theoretical sources. Navigating through this ‘sea’ of extraordinary and different theories, a new avenue of reflections arises, contributing for the sophistication of the questions made about the phenomenon of depression’s rates. The fundamental argument emerging from this theoretical undertaking is that ‘crises of meaninglessness’ that pervade the collective body of Western contemporary societies have, as one of its consequences, the expansion of depression rates. Meaninglessness in contemporary times is the primary object of investigation of the thesis. The concept, in the context of this study, is not understood as merely an effect of the historical decline of shared social norms due to processes of individualization. Rather, it is claimed, it originates from and is reinforced by the ‘political-economic theology of neo-liberalism’ which becomes virtually generalized in the West, erecting money as a God. The study concludes that by undermining culturally established values, ideals, institutions and principles that may block the dissemination of commodities this new transcendence has been challenging the task of signifying life, potentializing – among other subjective difficulties – the diffusion of depression.

Clinical outcome of breast cancer patients with liver metastases alone in the anthracycline-taxane era: a retrospective analysis of two prospective, randomised metastatic breast cancer trials.

Liver metastases have long been known to indicate an unfavourable disease course in breast cancer (BC). However, a small subset of patients with liver metastases alone who were treated with pre-taxane chemotherapy regimens was reported to have longer survival compared with patients with liver and metastases at other sites. In the present study, we examined the clinical outcome of breast cancer patients with liver metastases alone in the context of two phase III European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) trials which compared the efficacy of doxorubicin (A) versus paclitaxel (T) (trial 10923) and of AC (cyclophosphamide) versus AT (trial 10961), given as first-line chemotherapy in metastatic BC patients. The median follow-up for the patients with liver metastases was 90.5 months in trial 10923 and 56.6 months in trial 10961. Patients with liver metastases alone comprised 18% of all patients with liver metastases, in both the 10923 and 10961 trials. The median survival of patients with liver metastases alone and liver plus other sites of metastases were 22.7 and 14.2 months (log rank test, P=0.002) in trial 10923 and 27.1 and 16.8 months (log rank test, P=0.19) in trial 10961. The median TTP (time to progression) for patients with liver metastases alone was also longer compared with the liver plus other sites of metastases group in both trials: 10.2 versus 8.8 months (log rank test, P=0.02) in trial 10923 and 8.3 versus 6.7 months (log rank test, P=0.37) in trial 10961. Most patients with liver metastases alone have progression of their disease in their liver again (96 and 60% of patients in trials 10923 and 10961, respectively). Given the high prevalence of breast cancer, improved detection of liver metastases, encouraging survival achieved with currently available cytotoxic agents and the fact that a significant portion of patients with liver metastases alone have progression of their tumour in the liver again, a more aggressive multimodality treatment approach through prospective clinical trials seems worth exploring in this specific subset of women.

Clinical staging versus laparotomy and combined modality with MOPP versus ABVD in early-stage hodgkin's disease: the H6 twin randomized trials from the european organization for research and treatment of cancer lymphoma cooperative group

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Auriculotherapy for pain management: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

OBJECTIVES: Side-effects of standard pain medications can limit their use. Therefore, nonpharmacologic pain relief techniques such as auriculotherapy may play an important role in pain management. Our aim was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies evaluating auriculotherapy for pain management. DESIGN: MEDLINE,(®) ISI Web of Science, CINAHL, AMED, and Cochrane Library were searched through December 2008. Randomized trials comparing auriculotherapy to sham, placebo, or standard-of-care control were included that measured outcomes of pain or medication use and were published in English. Two (2) reviewers independently assessed trial eligibility, quality, and abstracted data to a standardized form. Standardized mean differences (SMD) were calculated for studies using a pain score or analgesic requirement as a primary outcome. RESULTS: Seventeen (17) studies met inclusion criteria (8 perioperative, 4 acute, and 5 chronic pain). Auriculotherapy was superior to controls for studies evaluating pain intensity (SMD, 1.56 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.85, 2.26]; 8 studies). For perioperative pain, auriculotherapy reduced analgesic use (SMD, 0.54 [95% CI: 0.30, 0.77]; 5 studies). For acute pain and chronic pain, auriculotherapy reduced pain intensity (SMD for acute pain, 1.35 [95% CI: 0.08, 2.64], 2 studies; SMD for chronic pain, 1.84 [95% CI: 0.60, 3.07], 5 studies). Removal of poor quality studies did not alter the conclusions. Significant heterogeneity existed among studies of acute and chronic pain, but not perioperative pain. CONCLUSIONS: Auriculotherapy may be effective for the treatment of a variety of types of pain, especially postoperative pain. However, a more accurate estimate of the effect will require further large, well-designed trials.