Thousands of people died in Rotterdam during the Second World War in more than 300 German and Allied bombardments. Civil defence measures had been taken before the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 and these efforts were intensified during the country’s occupation as Allied bombers attacked Rotterdam’s port, factories, dry docks and oil terminals. Residential neighbourhoods were also hit through imprecise targeting and by misfired flak grenades. Inadequate air raid shelters and people’s reluctance to enter them caused many casualties. The condition of the corpses and their post-mortem treatment was thus co-constituted by the relationship between the victims and their material circumstances. This article concludes that an understanding of the treatment of the dead after war, genocide and mass violence must pay systematic attention to the materiality of death because the condition, collection and handling of human remains is affected by the material means that impacted on the victims.
The article will present the findings of ethnographic research into the Colombian and Mexican forensic systems, introducing the first citizen-led exhumation project made possible through the cooperation of scholars, forensic specialists and interested citizens in Mexico. The coupling evolution and mutual re-constitution of forensic science will be explored, including new forms of citizenship and nation building projects – all approached as lived experience – in two of Latin America‘s most complex contexts: organised crime and mass death.
FAD3 10/17/2002 5:42 PM Page 29 3 Federalism and constitutional asymmetry As Taras notes, ‘Establishing a constitutional framework that sets out the political rules of the game and the institutions that allocate values in society is the most daunting challenge for a new regime’.1 For Maravall and di Tella, two features of constitutionalism are particularly important. First, constitutions seek to define, ‘the future substance as well as the form of politics by placing certain political, social and economic, rights beyond the reach of democratic uncertainty
FAD10 10/17/2002 6:04 PM Page 172 10 Conclusions Article 1 of the Russian Constitution states that the Russian Federation ‘is a democratic federative rule of law state with a republican form of government’. However, as this study has shown, whilst many of the structural prerequisites of a federal state have undoubtedly been formed, a federal and democratic culture has still to emerge. Thus, as Kempton notes, ‘although Russia inherited a federal structure, it did not inherit a federal tradition’.1 Centre–periphery relations in Russia have been determined
FAD9 10/17/2002 6:03 PM Page 157 9 From constitutional to political asymmetry: crafting authoritarian regimes in Russia’s regions and republics Russia’s constitutional asymmetry has prevented the development of universal norms of citizenship and human rights in the federation. As long as republic and regional leaders pledged support for Yeltsin and ‘brought home the bacon’, in the way of ethnic stability, tax revenues and electoral support, federal authorities have been quite happy to turn a blind eye to the flagrant violations of the Russian Constitution by
Chapter summary In Chapter 1 we introduced Osler's injunction – “Just listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis”. In this conclusion we examine how far Osler is heeded in today's NHS. We assess the value of gathering stories in this way as a contribution to truly listening to patients and their families. We reflect on the extent to which the spirit of the NHS Constitution is being upheld. From the stories we identify five dimensions of care which is organised around patients: kindness
, is essential to the overall constitution of food quality. I call these cognitive paradigms, and identify a central tension between two fundamental tendencies: the tendency towards experimental decomposition and combination; and the tendency towards holistic quality based on identity. I thus see the social process of qualification as a dynamic one, in which quality conflicts and quality hybridisation are central features of global food markets, provisioning and consumption. The ‘quality turn’ The differentiation of food by quality concerns the whole system of food
co-constitution of human and non-human elements such as sexual desire, past and current relationship experiences, gendered spaces, cultural ideas regarding masculinity and femininity and (shared) values and interests. I further analyse the multiple affective intimacies that emerge as an effect of the different elements and relations coming together in these gender assemblages
FAD2 10/17/2002 5:41 PM Page 17 2 The Soviet legacy and Russian federalism, 1991–93 Russian federalism and the Soviet legacy According to the 1977 Constitution, ‘the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ was a ‘unified, federal, multinational state formed on the principle of socialist federalism’. The federation, which was established according to the dual principles of ethnicity and territory, encompassed fifteen ethnically defined union republics, twenty autonomous republics, eight autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, and 159 territorially based
collapse into anarchy and ethnic turmoil. Moreover, Putin was able to win over key oligarchs to his view that the only way to bolster Russia’s flagging economy was to reduce the anarchic powers of the governors, and to strengthen, ‘the power-vertical’. As Putin stated in his message to the Federal Assembly: ‘It’s a scandalous thing when a fifth of the legal acts adopted in the regions contradict the country’s Basic Law, when republic constitutions and province charters are at odds with the Russian Constitution, and when trade barriers, or even worse, border demarcation