The Jewish law of marriage and divorce in ancient and modern times and its relation to the law of the State

by M. Mielziner

Three Shades of Embeddedness, State Capitalism as the Informal Economy, Emic Notions of the Anti-Market, and Counterfeit Garments in the Mauritian Export Processing Zone

Purpose This paper furthers the analysis of patterns regulating capitalist accumulation based on a historical anthropology of economic activities revolving around and within the Mauritian Export Processing Zone (EPZ). Design/methodology/approach This paper uses fieldwork in Mauritius to interrogate and critique two important concepts in contemporary social theory – “embeddedness” and “the informal economy.” These are viewed in the wider frame of social anthropology’s engagement with (neoliberal) capitalism. Findings A process-oriented revision of Polanyi’s work on embeddedness and the “double movement” is proposed to help us situate EPZs within ongoing power struggles found throughout the history of capitalism. This helps us to challenge the notion of economic informality as supplied by Hart and others. Social implications Scholars and policymakers have tended to see economic informality as a force from below, able to disrupt the legal-rational nature of capitalism as practiced from on high. Similarly, there is a view that a precapitalist embeddedness, a “human economy,” has many good things to offer. However, this paper shows that the practices of the state and multinational capitalism, in EPZs and elsewhere, exactly match the practices that are envisioned as the cure to the pitfalls of capitalism. Value of the paper Setting aside the formal-informal distinction in favor of a process-oriented analysis of embeddedness allows us better to understand the shifting struggles among the state, capital, and labor.

The Jews in the making of America

by George Cohen

The influence of physical state on shikimic acid ozonolysis: a case for in situ microspectroscopy

Atmospheric soluble organic aerosol material can become solid or semi-solid. Due to increasing viscosity and decreasing diffusivity, this can impact important processes such as gas uptake and reactivity within aerosols containing such substances. This work explores the dependence of shikimic acid ozonolysis on humidity and thereby viscosity. Shikimic acid, a proxy for oxygenated reactive organic material, reacts with O3 in a Criegee-type reaction. We used an environmental microreactor embedded in a scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM) to probe this oxidation process. This technique facilitates in situ measurements with single micron-sized particles and allows to obtain near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectra with high spatial resolution. Thus, the chemical evolution of the interior of the particles can be followed under reaction conditions. The experiments show that the overall degradation rate of shikimic acid is depending on the relative humidity in a way that is controlled by the decreasing diffusivity of ozone with decreasing humidity. This decreasing diffusivity is most likely linked to the increasing viscosity of the shikimic acid–water mixture. The degradation rate was also depending on particle size, most congruent with a reacto-diffusion limited kinetic case where the reaction progresses only in a shallow layer within the bulk. No gradient in the shikimic acid concentration was observed within the bulk material at any humidity indicating that the diffusivity of shikimic acid is still high enough to allow its equilibration throughout the particles on the timescale of hours at higher humidity and that the thickness of the oxidized layer under dry conditions, where the particles are solid, is beyond the resolution of STXM.

The role of the state in investor-state arbitration

The Role of the State in Investor-State Arbitration is a collection of contributions from lawyers, arbitrators and political scientists on the development of the concept of the “State” in a field that currently presents an increasing number of controversial disputes: Investor-State Arbitration. The book analyzes the limits of the host State as a regulator, studying issues such as attribution and the role of State-Owned Enterprises and sub-State entities; the changing role of the home State in Investor-State disputes, including its direct participation in Investor-State arbitration and State to State dispute settlement; and the overall role that both home and host States can play in the improvement of Investor-State Dispute Settlement.

Cleverer than we thought: the change in discourse of the Georgian Orthodox Church

This paper will focus on three episodes of contemporary church-state relations in Georgia, in particular, the conflicting interaction between law and religion in the public space. The first episode will be an open confrontation between the church and the state over the law on Registration of Religious Minority organizations (2011) which allowed the religious minorities to freely register; second: the Law on Self-governance (2013) which Georgian Orthodox Church considered “a threat to territorial integrity of Georgia”; and lastly: the Law on Anti-discrimination (2014) which was deemed “legitimization of Sodomic sin”. By reflecting on the three examples where for the first time after the collapse of Soviet Union, the Georgian state openly confronted the church and made a decision notwithstanding its position, I will attempt to argue that the role of the Orthodox Church in influencing the law making process is in gradual decline. However, on the other hand, by presenting the results of an ethnographic study conducted in 23 eparchies and perishes in 7 regions of Georgia in 2014, I will also show that church has adapted to its declining role over policy making, and to regain its political influence it gradually started to employ a civic rather than ethno nationalist discourse on matters of religious freedom while engaging with government. The paper will suggest that both unilateral decision-making of the state and civic shift in the discourse of the church constitute an important change in understanding church-state dynamics in the post-communist Orthodox Christianity dominated society.

The World of Indicators. The Making of Governmental Knowledge through Quantification

The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governance. Combination of insights from anthropology of law, history of science, science and technology studies, sociology of quantification, economics and geography will appeal to those who are uncomfortable with the separation between 'theoretical' and 'empirical' approaches and with the current weakness of critique that address the main trends shaping the relations between capitalism, markets, law and democracy Theoretical discussion of the nature and historical formation of quantification will appeal to those who ask questions such as, 'What is new or different about our contemporary reliance on quantitative knowledge?' Groundbreaking empirical case studies uncover the social work and politics that often go into the making of indicators and explore the far-reaching effects and impacts of these numerical representations in specific settings