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Topic Review
Neutral Country
A neutral country is a state that is neutral towards belligerents in a specific war or holds itself as permanently neutral in all future conflicts (including avoiding entering into military alliances such as NATO or CSTO). As a type of non-combatant status, nationals of neutral countries enjoy protection under the law of war from belligerent actions to a greater extent than other non-combatants such as enemy civilians and prisoners of war. Different countries interpret their neutrality differently: some, such as Costa Rica, have demilitarized, while Switzerland holds to "armed neutrality", to deter aggression with a sizeable military, while barring itself from foreign deployment. Not all neutral countries avoid any foreign deployment or alliances, as Austria, Ireland, Finland and Sweden have active UN peacekeeping forces and a political alliance within the European Union. Sweden's traditional policy is not to participate in military alliances, with the intention of staying neutral in the case of war. Immediately before World War II, the Nordic countries stated their neutrality, but Sweden changed its position to that of non-belligerent at the start of the Winter War. There have been considerable changes to the interpretation of neutral conduct over the past centuries. During the Cold War, Yugoslavia claimed military and ideological neutrality, and that is continued by its successor, Serbia.
  • 7.8K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Objectivism and Libertarianism
Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been and continues to be a major influence on the libertarian movement, particularly in the United States. Many libertarians justify their political views using aspects of Objectivism. However, the views of Rand and her philosophy among prominent libertarians are mixed and many Objectivists are hostile to libertarians in general.
  • 1.2K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
CUNY Academic Commons
The CUNY Academic Commons is an online, academic social network for community members of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Designed to foster conversation, collaboration, and connections among the 24 individual colleges that make up the university system, the site, founded in 2009, has quickly grown as a hub for the CUNY community, serving in the process to strengthen a growing group of digital scholars, teachers, and open-source projects at the university. As stated in the site's Terms of Service, members "seek to use the Academic Commons as a means of fulfilling our highest aspirations for integrating technology into our teaching, learning, and collaborating."
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  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Picture Bride
The term picture bride refers to the practice in the early 20th century of immigrant workers (chiefly Japan ese, Okinawan, and Korean) in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States and Canada selecting brides from their native countries via a matchmaker, who paired bride and groom using only photographs and family recommendations of the possible candidates. This is an abbreviated form of the traditional matchmaking process and is similar in a number of ways to the concept of the mail-order bride.
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  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Participation (Decision Making)
Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions – and ideally exert influence – regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision-making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including economic (i.e. participatory economics), political (i.e. participatory democracy or parpolity), management (i.e. participatory management), cultural (i.e. polyculturalism) or familial (i.e. feminism). For well-informed participation to occur, it is argued that some version of transparency, e.g. radical transparency, is necessary but not sufficient. It has also been argued that those most affected by a decision should have the most say while those that are least affected should have the least say in a topic.
  • 345
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Crip Theory
Disability studies is an academic discipline that examines the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability. Initially, the field focused on the division between "impairment" and "disability", where impairment was an impairment of an individual's mind or body, while disability was considered a social construct. This premise gave rise to two distinct models of disability: the social and medical models of disability. In 1999 the social model was universally accepted as the model preferred by the field. However, in recent years, the division between the social and medical models has been challenged. Additionally, there has been an increased focus on interdisciplinary research. For example, recent investigations suggest using "cross-sectional markers of stratification" may help provide new insights on the non-random distribution of risk factors capable of acerbating disablement processes.[clarification needed] Disability studies courses include work in disability history, theory, legislation, policy, ethics, and the arts. However, students are taught to focus on the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities in practical terms. The field is focused on increasing individuals with disabilities access to civil rights and improving their quality of life. Disability studies emerged in the 1980s primarily in the US, the UK, and Canada. In 1986, the Section[clarification needed] for the Study of Chronic Illness, Impairment, and Disability of the Social Science Association (United States) was renamed the Society for Disability Studies. The first US disabilities studies program emerged in 1994, at Syracuse University. The first edition of the Disabilities Studies Reader (one of the first collections of academic papers related to disability studies) was published in 1997. The field grew rapidly over the next ten years. In 2005, the Modern Language Association established disability studies as a "division of study". While Disability Studies primarily emerged in the US, the UK and Canada, disability studies were also conducted in other countries through different lens. For instance Germany, looks at Queer Disability Studies since the beginning of the early 20th century. The Disability Studies in Germany are influenced by the written literary works of feminist sexologist who study how being disabled affects one's sexuality and ability to feel pleasure. In Norway, Disability Studies are focused in the literary context. A variation emerged in 2017 with the first Accessibility Studies program at Central Washington Univeristy with an interdisciplinary focus on social justice, universal design and international Web Accessibility Guidelines (WAG3) as a general education knowledge base.
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  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Forbes Family
The Forbes family is a wealthy extended American family long prominent in Boston, Massachusetts . The family's fortune originates from trading between North America and China in the 19th century plus other investments in the same period. The name descends from Scottish immigrants, and can be traced back to Sir John de Forbes in Scotland in the 12th century. Family members include businessman John Murray Forbes (1813 – 1898), part of the first generation who accumulated wealth, and politician John Forbes Kerry (born 1943).
  • 1.2K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Button Pusher
A button pusher (Ukrainian: кнопкодав, Knopkodav) is a term in Ukrainian politics and society related to a member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (the parliament of Ukraine) who votes on a motion by using own identity card as well as ones belonging to other deputies. This voting is done either with or without the consent of the absent deputies. On 2 March 2021 sensor technologies were installed in the Ukrainian parliament that were designed to make it impossible for MP's to vote on behalf of absent colleagues (since they need now to use both their hands for a single vote).
  • 452
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Westfailure
In 1999, international relations scholar Susan Strange introduced the term Westfailure in her posthumously published article entitled The Westfailure System. The term Westfailure is a portmanteau (West + failure) and a pun on the term Westphalian system. Commonly used in international politics, the Westphalian system refers to the system of state sovereignty that emerged from treaties signed during the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Strange describes the Westphalian system as one that perpetuates non-intervention, the universal recognition of state sovereignty, and the "legitimate use of violence within a given territory." Put simply, the Westphalian system promotes a system where each individual state has the inalienable authority to govern their own internal affairs (laws, market, resources, etc.) without interference from other states or non-governmental actors. The principal aim of Strange's article is to highlight how this system of international governance is failing and does not "satisfy the long-term conditions of sustainability."
  • 1.3K
  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Like Sheep to the Slaughter
"Like sheep to the slaughter" (Hebrew: כצאן לטבח‎) is a phrase which refers to the idea that Jews went passively to their deaths during the Holocaust. It derives from a similar phrase in the Hebrew Bible which positively depicts martyrdom in both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. Opposition to the phrase became associated with Jewish nationalism due to its use in Josippon and by Jewish self-defense groups after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. During the Holocaust, Abba Kovner and other Jewish resistance leaders used the phrase to exhort Jews to fight back. In postwar Israel, some demonized Holocaust survivors as having gone "like sheep to the slaughter" while armed resistance was glorified. The phrase was taken to mean that Jews had not tried to save their own lives, and consequently were partly responsible for their own suffering and death. This myth, which has become less prominent over time, is frequently criticized by historians, theologians, and survivors as a form of victim blaming.
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