Right to Life and Capital Punishment in Transnational Judicial Dialogue

In this article, I bring the constitutional jurisprudence of major East Asian courts into reconstructive dialogue with that of the United States, South Africa, and several former Soviet-bloc countries, on per se review of capital punishment. This fills in a gap in the literature, which has failed to reflect new developments in Asia. Besides analysing various review approaches, I extrapolate recurrent analytical issues and reconstruct dialogues among these court decisions. Moreover, I place the analysis in historical perspective by periodising the jurisprudential trajectory of the right to life. The contextualised reconstructive dialogues offer multilayered understanding of my central analytical argument: for any court that may conduct per se review of capital punishment in the future, the highly influential South African Makwanyane case does not settle the lesson. The transnational debate has been kept open by the Korean Constitutional Court's decisions, as well as retrospectively by the US cases of Furman and Gregg. This argument has two major points. First, the crucial part of the reasoning in Makwanyane, namely that capital punishment cannot be proven to pass the necessity test under the proportionality review, is analytically inconclusive. The Korean Constitutional Court's decision offers a direct contrast to this point. Second, the exercise of proportionality review of the Makwanyane Court does not attest to the neutrality and objectivity of proportionality review. Rather, what is really dispositive of the outcome are certain value choices inhering in per se review of capital punishment.

Social class, intensive parenting norms and parental values for children

As the global trend towards both middle- and working-class families raising their children intensively increases, social class differences in parenting beliefs and choices for their children have become more subtle. In light of the proliferation of intensive parenting norms, however, few studies have explored particular mechanisms underlying the subtle class differences linked to parental values. Drawing on in-depth interviews of 51 Hong Kong Chinese parents, this study investigated how parents contended with competing values in socialization, which in turn shaped their parenting choices. Three common values emerged from the interviews – academic excellence, hard work and happiness – showing that the middle and working classes managed their values for children in two different ways, termed here as ‘values coupling’ and ‘values juggling’, respectively. Middle-class parents were able to make their value choices cohesive through a ‘twist’ to reconcile between competing values. However, working-class parents were inclined to ‘drift’ their value choices in the face of unreconciled value tensions as well as structural constraints. Subtle differences in parental values were found to be tied to class position, and contributed to maintaining class inequality and social reproduction.

Emotional Rationality: A Study on the Adolescents’ Socialization in Education Based on Sang Language

Sang language is an important manifestation of Sang subculture which refers to a cultural trend formed by a large scale of young people born in the 90s and 00s expressing or showing their frustration in various forms on social platforms. In recent years, Sang subculture has evolved from a form of network subculture that initially aroused the inner resonance and self-deprecation of middle school and college students, and has developed into a complete industrial chain formed under the combined effect of the deliberate catering of online media and the active marketing of businesses. Its existence eventually caused the mainstream ideology to be impacted, and the ideals, beliefs and value choices of some students were greatly affected. This article takes Sang language as an anchor, pays attention to the thought changes and behavior characteristics of middle school and college students, as well as the channels and methods of Sang language and subculture communication, and then deeply analyzes its motivation. This article finds that Sang language, due to its inherent unique form of mimicry, reflects the emotional and rational characteristics of youth groups in the process of socialization. In the end, it shows that the timely transformation of mainstream cultural discourse on the Internet, guiding the youth student groups to cultivate and practice positive values, and accurately locating life development goals, should become an important task for school youth cultivation.

Hallgatók infokommunikációs szokásai értékválasztásuk mentén

Alapvető célunk, hogy számos korábbi vizsgálat adatbázisát felhasználva megalkossunk egy kategóriarendszert, amelynek felhasználásával megismerhető a fiatalok – szűkebben véve a felsőoktatásban részt vevő hallgatók – értékválasztása, annak motivációi. Ehhez elengedhetetlen, hogy a korábbi elemzéseink során kialakított értékrendszerek érvényességét ellenőrizzük. Tervezett előadásunkban arra keressük a választ, hogy a „kapcsolatorientált” hallgatók valóban aktívabbak a közösségi média által kínált lehetőségek kihasználásában, infokommunikációs szokásaik összhangban vannak-e értékválasztásukkal? A kérdőívvel történt adatfelvételek során használt értéksor a World Value Survey (WVS) által használt értékeken, értéksoron alapszik (Inglehart, 2000 és Inglehart – Baker, 2000). A Regionális Egyetem Kutatócsoport 2005-ös és 2010-es kérdőíves lekérdezésen alapuló adatbázisát felhasználva korábban meghatároztuk a hallgatói „értékcsoportokat”, feltártuk a hallgatók értékstruktúráját. A 2016-os Magyar Ifjúságkutatás adataira támaszkodva (A Kutatópont Kft. engedélyével) lehetőségünk nyílik arra, hogy az eddigi eredményeinket, kategóriáinkat összevessük egy jóval nagyobb minta, azaz a Kárpát-medence fiataljainak értékstruktúrájával, az általunk felállított kategóriák érvényességét ellenőrizzük. Az eredményekből kiderül, hogy az értékválasztás során felmért attitűd jellegű választások, vagyis az értékek rangsora milyen mértékben jár együtt az infokommunikációs eszközök használatából következtethető közösségiorientált viselkedéssel. Másként fogalmazva a „kapcsolatorientált” hallgatók mennyivel aktívabbak „anyagias” társaiknál? Nagyobb ívű elméleti vonatkozású vállalásunk, hogy megalkossunk egy, az ifjúságra alkalmazható értékrendszer-kategóriát, amely az ifjúság megváltozott társadalmi körülményei között is alkalmazható. Gyakorlati szempontból az értékrendszerek megfelelő alátámasztottság mellett egyéb társadalmi cselekvések esetén is prediktív funkcióval bírhatnak, vagyis az értékválasztás alapján regisztrálható különbségek a társadalmi élet különböző színterein (oktatás, munka világa, közösségi kapcsolatok) eltérő viselkedéseket vetítenek előre. .----- Students' info communication habits along their value choice ----- Our basic aim is to establish a category system using the database of many previous research, and by using this category system to learn about the value choice, and the motivation behind that value choice of the youth – more narrowly the value choice of students in higher education. To do so, it is essential to check the validity of the value systems established during our previous analysis. In our planned presentation we are looking for the answer whether “relationship-oriented” students are really more active in taking the advantages of the opportunities offered by social media, and whether their infocommunication habits are in line with their value choices. The values used in the survey are based on the values, value- lines applied by the World Value Survey (WVS) (Inglehart 2000 and Inglehart -Baker, 2000). Using the database of the 2005 and 2010 survey of the Regional University’s research team, we determined the „value groups”, and we explored the value structure of the students. Relying on the data from 2016 Hungarian Youth Research (with the permission of Kutatópont Kft.) we have the opportunity to compare our current results and categories against a considerably greater sample, namely against the value structure of the youth of the Carpathian Basin, therefore we can check the validity of the categories we established. The results show the extent to which the attitude-type choices assessed during value-selection, namely the ranking of values, are associated with community-oriented behaviour, that can be concluded from the use of infocommunication tools. In other words, how much more active “relationship-oriented” students are than their “material-oriented” peers. Our broader theoretical commitment is to create one value system category valid for the young which can also be applied in the changed social circumstances of the youth. From a practical point of view, value systems, with adequate support, can have a predictive function in case of other social actions, namely the differences registered in value choice project different behaviours in other spheres of social life (education, world of work, community relations).

Az okos vidékfejlesztés lehetőségei és korlátai Magyarországon

Regional inequalities in Hungary, which have been conserved for decades, are well documented by human geography and regional science. However, changing policy frameworks, policy decisions, and finally, local decisions and value choices influence the development trajectories of regions that lean on new approaches. For example, the concept of smart settlements is a relatively new policy tool, which builds on the use of information-communication technology not only in urban, but also in rural areas. In this paper, we investigate the topic of smart rural development from a policy and regional development perspective, giving insights into the influencing factors of the spread of smart villages in Hungary, and how the actors interested in Hungarian rural development interpret the smart village concept. Based on qualitative analysis of expert interviews and online questionnaire survey, we describe what factors influence the feasibility of smart projects. We point out the shortcomings of technology-oriented, top-down, project-based development and planning practice, and building on our results, we provide policy recommendations.

GBD

This chapter describes the motivation behind and history of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) and the approach it uses to measure population health. It discusses several of the value choices involved in the GBD (including choice of life expectancy, disability weights, comorbidity, and incidence vs. prevalence perspective), technical details involved in producing GBD results (including modeling techniques, data synthesis, and data analysis), several key metrics used by the GBD, and the GBD’s online data visualization tools. It concludes by briefly discussing some important empirical results from the most recent GBD study, before reflecting on the future of the GBD.

Normative and Institutional Dimensions of Rights’ Adjudication Around the World

The implications of incommensurability for rights’ adjudication tend to be overlooked in much of contemporary constitutional theory. This paper criticizes the dominant “one right-answer” approach to conflicts of rights, and develops an alternative approach that is better suited to constitutional rights’ adjudication in contemporary pluralistic legal orders. It is submitted that the normative reasons for having courts undertake the value-choices implicit in constitutional rights’ adjudication, and for preferring certain legal methodologies over others, must reflect the role of courts in resolving social disputes in the light of specific aspects of the economic, social, and legal life of the polities in which those courts operate. It is further argued that any theory that builds from this approach needs to answer two inter-related questions: when is constitutional rights’ adjudication by courts appropriate, and how rights’ adjudication should be pursued.

Weber, Max (1864–1920)

Max Weber, German economist, historian, sociologist, methodologist, and political thinker, is of philosophical significance for his attempted reconciliation of historical relativism with the possibility of a causal social science; his notion of a verstehende (understanding) sociology; his formulation, use and epistemic account of the concept of ‘ideal types’; his views on the rational irreconcilability of ultimate value choices, and particularly his formulation of the implications for ethical political action of the conflict between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility; and his sociological account of the causes and uniqueness of the western rationalization of life. These topics are closely related: Weber argued that the explanatory interests of the historian and social scientist vary historically and that the objects of their interest were constituted in terms of cultural points of view, and that consequently their categories are ultimately rooted in evaluations, and hence subjective. But he also argued that social science cannot dispense with causality, and that once the categories were chosen, judgments of causality were objective. The explanatory interests of the sociologist, as he defined sociology, were in understanding intentional action causally, but in terms of categories that were culturally significant, such as ‘rational action’. Much of his influence flowed from his formulation of the cultural situation of the day, especially the idea that the fate of the time was to recognize that evaluations were inescapably subjective and that the world had no inherent ‘meaning’. The existential implications of this novel situation for politics and learning were strikingly formulated by him: science could not tell us how to live; politics was as a choice between warring Gods. Weber’s scholarly work and his politics served as a model for Karl Jaspers, and a subject of criticism and analysis for other philosophers, such as Karl Löwith, Max Scheler, and the Frankfurt School.