Law, "Tradition" and Legitimacy: Contesting Driglam Namzha.

A critical examination of diglam namzha and the production of "tradition".

The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations

Williams, Mike, Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp.ix+236 RAE2008

Roots and wings: orthodoxy, tradition, and creativity in Irish folk Catholicism

The present work is an exploration of the beliefs and practices of three lay Catholic devotional communities in and around the city of Cork, Ireland. The research is guided by the theory that folk, or popular, religion is a dynamic process in which individuals and groups utilise the resources of orthodoxy, popular tradition, and personal creativity, to better interpret, articulate, and create religious experiences. Ethnographic fieldwork was the principal method of data collection. Four areas of folk religion are given special attention: the use of religious narrative to represent and reproduce religious experience, the use of material artefacts to create channels for sacred presence and activity, the use of ritual and pilgrimage to establish sacred time and space, and the use of prayer to accomplish all of these goals. These sections are followed by a more holistic analysis of the material, a critical examination of the work, and suggestions for further research.

A cultural study on communication and technology with specific reference to media in China

This dissertation examines the role of communications technology in social change. It examines secondary data on contemporary China arguing that many interpretations of events in China are unsuitable at best and at worst conceptually damages our understanding of social change in China. This is especially the case in media studies under the ‘democratic framework’. It proposes that there is an alternative framework in studying the media and social change. This alternative conceptual framework is termed a zone of interpretative development offering a means by which to discuss events that take place in a mediated environment. Taking a theoretical foundation using the philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin this dissertation develops a platform with which to understand communication technology from an anthropological perspective. Three media events from contemporary China are examined. The first examines the Democracy Wall event and the implications of using a public sphere framework. The second case examines the phenomenon of the Grass Mud Horse, a symbol that has gained popular purchase as a humorous expression of political dissatisfaction and develops the problems seen in the first case but with some solutions. Using a modification of Lev Vygotskiĭ’s zone of proximal development this symbol is understood as an expression of the collective recognition of a shared experience. In the second example from the popular TV talent show contests in China further expressions of collective experience are introduced. With the evidence from these media events in contemporary China this dissertation proposes that we can understand certain modes of communication as occurring in a zone of interpretative development. This proposed anthropological feature of social change via communication and technology can fruitfully describe meaning-formation in society via the expression and recognition of shared experiences.

TRADITION AND INNOVATION: ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE OF SELECTED COMPOSITIONS FOR VIOLONCELLO BY HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) began his musical career as a cellist. When he was only twelve years old, it became imperativeupon the sudden and untimely death of his fatherthat the young Villa-Lobos earn money as a cellist to provide financial support for his mother and sisters. Villa-Lobos's intimate relationship with the cello eventually inspired him to compose great music for this instrument. This dissertation explores both the diversity of compositional technique and the evolution of style found in the music for cello written by Villa-Lobos. The project consists of two recorded recital performances and a written document exploring and analyzing those pieces. In the study of the music of Villa-Lobos, it is of great interest to consider the music's traditional European elements in combination (or even juxtaposition) with its imaginative and sometimes wildly innovative Brazilian character. His early works were greatly influenced by European Romantic composers such as Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin, and the virtuoso cellist/composer David Popper (whom Villa-Lobos idolized). Later, Villa-Lobos flourished in a newfound compositional independence and moved away from Euro-romanticism and toward the folk music of his Brazilian homeland. It is intriguing to experience this transition through an exploration of his cello compositions. The works examined and performed in this dissertation project are chosen from among the extensive number of Villa-Lobos's cello compositions and are his most important works for cello with piano, cello with another instrument, and cello with orchestra. The chosen works demonstrate the evolving range and combination of characteristic elements found in Villa-Lobos's compositional repertoire.

Environmental and technology policies for climate mitigation

We assess different policies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and promoting innovation and diffusion of renewable energy. We evaluate the relative performance of policies according to incentives provided for emissions reduction, efficiency, and other outcomes. We also assess how the nature of technological progress through learning and research and development (R&D), and the degree of knowledge spillovers, affects the desirability of different policies. Due to knowledge spillovers, optimal policy involves a portfolio of different instruments targeted at emissions, learning, and R&D. Although the relative cost of individual policies in achieving reductions depends on parameter values and the emissions target, in a numerical application to the U.S. electricity sector, the ranking is roughly as follows: (1) emissions price, (2) emissions performance standard, (3) fossil power tax, (4) renewables share requirement, (5) renewables subsidy, and (6) R&D subsidy. Nonetheless, an optimal portfolio of policies achieves emissions reductions at a significantly lower cost than any single policy. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conference report: 7th Annual Congress of International Drug Discovery Science and Technology

This is a report on the 7th Annual Congress of International Drug Discovery Science and Technology held in Shanghai, China from 22–25 October, 2009. The conference, organized by BIT Life Sciences, comprised several parallel sessions, keynote presentations and a selection of selection of 20-minute presentations covering a range of therapeutic areas, including general medicinal chemistry, oncology, inflammation, receptors and ion channels, drug, metabolism and pharmokinetics, and fragment-based drug discovery. There were also sessions devoted to genomics, biomarkers, immunology, cell biology, molecular imaging and biochips. Supported by an exhibition of services/products and posters, the conference underlined the marked presence of Asian CROs.

Welten Institute, Research Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology

This presentation gives an overview of the Welten Institute Research Portfolio.

The Creative Life of Law: Improvisation, Between Tradition and Suspicion

Originally applying solely to chefs, waiters, dishwashers and the like, New York City (NYC) regulations governing cabaret employees were altered in 1943 to include musicians and entertainers, who until the late 1960’s would be required to hold a NYC Cabaret Employee’s Identification Card. The introduction of these notorious “police cards” occurred roughly contemporaneously to the emergence in after-hours night clubs in Harlem of a new and supposedly “wild”, improvisatory brand of jazz: bebop. This article adds to the many rather practical theories on why these cards were introduced a more abstract discussion coined in terms of the relationship between suspicion and tradition and focusing on differing essences of law and improvisatory jazz. While law breathes tradition and is suspicious of improvisation and unpredictability, the converse is true of jazz. Allusion to tradition in jazz improvisation is often viewed as a betrayal of its creative and spontaneous nature. And yet it is only through its departure from the stable transmission of past meaning that improvisation gains meaning. Law, in contrast, while appearing to be entirely composed of tradition, to transmit some sort of determinate and fixed meaning, is constantly betraying itself. As no two legal actions can be exactly the same, judges must improvise on tradition and past precedent every time they are asked to decide a case. Law can thus neither dispense with nor be completely determined by tradition. The legal decision instead lies on the border between what it “is” and what it otherwise could be and every judicial act is, in some sense, a species of improvisation. This article uses the cabaret cards to explore this uncertain terrain between law and improvisation, between tradition and suspicion.