Browse
By Subject: Peace & Conflict Studies
View: By Date | Alphabetical
-
January 2018
The Partial Revolution
Labour, Social Movements and the Invisible Hand of Mao in Western Nepal
Hoffmann, M.
Located in the far-western Tarai region of Nepal, Kailali has been the site of dynamic social and political change in recent history. The Partial Revolution examines Kailali in the aftermath of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency, critically examining the ways in which revolutionary political mobilization changes social relations—often unexpectedly clashing with the movement’s ideological goals. Focusing primarily on the end of Kailali’s feudal system of bonded labor, Hoffmann explores the connection between politics, labor, and Mao’s legacy, documenting the impact of changing political contexts on labor relations among former debt-bonded laborers.
Subjects: Political Economy Development Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
November 2018
The CSCE and the End of the Cold War
Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972-1990
Badalassi, N. & Snyder, S. B. (eds)
From its inception, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) provoked controversy. Today it is widely regarded as having contributed to the end of the Cold War. Bringing together new and innovative research on the CSCE, this volume explores questions key to understanding the Cold War: What role did diplomats play in shaping the 1975 Helsinki Final Act? How did that agreement and the CSCE more broadly shape societies in Europe and North America? And how did the CSCE and activists inspired by the Helsinki Final Act influence the end of the Cold War?
Subjects: Postwar History 20th Century History Peace & Conflict Studies
-
May 2017
Conflict, Domination, and Violence
Episodes in Mexican Social History
Illades, C.
Conflict, domination, violence—in this wide-ranging, briskly narrated volume from acclaimed Mexican historian Carlos Illades, these three phenomena register the pulse of a diverse, but inequitable and discriminatory, social order. Drawing on rich and varied historical sources, Illades guides the reader through seven signal episodes in Mexican social history, from rebellions under Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship to the cycles of violence that have plagued the country’s deep south to the recent emergence of neo-anarchist movements. Taken together, they comprise a mosaic history of power and resistance, with artisans, rural communities, revolutionaries, students, and ordinary people confronting the forces of domination and transforming Mexican society.
Subjects: 18th/19th Century History Peace & Conflict Studies
-
October 2017
Children of the Camp
The Lives of Somali Youth Raised in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya
Grayson, C.-L.
Chronic violence has characterized Somalia for over two decades, forcing nearly two million people to flee. A significant number have settled in camps in neighboring countries, where children were born and raised. Based on in-depth fieldwork, this book explores the experience of Somalis who grew up in Kakuma refugee camp, in Kenya, and are now young adults. This original study carefully considers how young people perceive their living environment and how growing up in exile structures their view of the past and their country of origin, and the future and its possibilities.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
April 2017
On Retaliation
Towards an Interdisciplinary Understanding of a Basic Human Condition
Turner, B. & Schlee, G. (eds)
Retaliation is associated with all forms of social and political organization, and retaliatory logics inform many different conflict resolution procedures from consensual settlement to compensation to violent escalations. This book derives a concept of retaliation from the overall notion of reciprocity, defining retaliation as the human disposition to strive for a reactive balancing of conflicts and injustices. On Retaliation presents a synthesized approach to both the violence-generating and violence-avoiding potentials of retaliation. Contributors to this volume touch upon the interaction between retaliation and violence, the state’s monopoly on legitimate punishment and the factors of socio-political frameworks, religious interpretations and economic processes.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
July 2017
Managing Ambiguity
How Clientelism, Citizenship, and Power Shape Personhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brković, Č.
Why do people turn to personal connections to get things done? Exploring the role of favors in social welfare systems in postwar, postsocialist Bosnia and Herzegovina, this volume provides a new theoretical angle on links between ambiguity and power. It demonstrates that favors were not an instrumental tactic of survival, nor a way to reproduce oneself as a moral person. Instead, favors enabled the insertion of personal compassion into the heart of the organization of welfare.
Managing Ambiguity follows how neoliberal insistence on local community, flexibility, and self-responsibility was translated into clientelist modes of relating and back, and how this fostered a specific mode of power.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies Postwar History
-
August 2017
Gender, Violence, Refugees
Buckley-Zistel, S. & Krause, U. (eds)
Providing nuanced accounts of how the social identities of men and women, the context of displacement and the experience or manifestation of violence interact, this collection offers conceptual analyses and in-depth case studies to illustrate how gender relations are affected by displacement, encampment and return. The essays show how these factors lead to various forms of direct, indirect and structural violence. This ranges from discussions of norms reflected in policy documents and practise, the relationship between relief structures and living conditions in camps, to forced military recruitment and forced return, and covers countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies Gender Studies
-
November 2017
Cyprus and its Conflicts
Representations, Materialities, and Cultures
Doudaki, V. & Carpentier, N. (eds)
The Mediterranean island of Cyprus is the site of enduring political, military, and economic conflict. This interdisciplinary collection takes Cyprus as a geographical, cultural and political point of reference for understanding how conflict is mediated, represented, reconstructed, experienced, and transformed. Through methodologically diverse case studies of a wide range of topics—including public art, urban spaces, and print, broadcast and digital media—it assembles an impressively multifaceted perspective, one that provides broad insights into the complex interplay of culture, conflict, and identity.
Subjects: Media Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
October 2017
Silenced Communities
Legacies of Militarization and Militarism in a Rural Guatemalan Town
Esparza, M.
Although the Guatemalan Civil War ended more than two decades ago, its bloody legacy continues to resonate even today. In Silenced Communities, author Marcia Esparza offers an ethnographic account of the failed demilitarization of the rural militia in the town of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango following the conflict. Combining insights from postcolonialism, subaltern studies, and theories of internal colonialism, Esparza explores the remarkable resilience of ideologies and practices engendered in the context of the Cold War, demonstrating how the lingering effects of grassroots militarization affect indigenous communities that continue to struggle with inequality and marginalization.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Postwar History
-
November 2017
Peaceful Selves
Personhood, Nationhood, and the Post-Conflict Moment in Rwanda
Eramian, L.
This ethnography of personhood in post-genocide Rwanda investigates how residents of a small town grapple with what kinds of persons they ought to become in the wake of violence. Based on fieldwork carried out over the course of a decade, it uncovers how conflicting moral demands emerge from the 1994 genocide, from cultural contradictions around “good” personhood, and from both state and popular visions for the future. What emerges is a profound dissonance in town residents’ selfhood. While they strive to be agents of change who can catalyze a new era of modern Rwandan nationhood, they are also devastated by the genocide and struggle to recover a sense of selfhood and belonging in the absence of kin, friends, and neighbors. In drawing out the contradictions at the heart of self-making and social life in contemporary Rwanda, this book asserts a novel argument about the ordinary lives caught in global post-conflict imperatives to remember and to forget, to mourn and to prosper.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
November 2017
Difference and Sameness as Modes of Integration
Anthropological Perspectives on Ethnicity and Religion
Schlee, G. & Horstmann, A. (eds)
What does it mean to “fit in?” In this volume of essays, editors Günther Schlee and Alexander Horstmann demystify the discourse on identity, challenging common assumptions about the role of sameness and difference as the basis for inclusion and exclusion. Armed with intimate knowledge of local systems, social relationships, and the negotiation of people’s positions in the everyday politics, these essays tease out the ways in which ethnicity, religion and nationalism are used for social integration.
Subjects: General Anthropology Religion Peace & Conflict Studies
-
January 2016
Engaging with Strangers
Love and Violence in the Rural Solomon Islands
McDougall, D.
The civil conflict in Solomon Islands (1998-2003) is often blamed on the failure of the nation-state to encompass culturally diverse and politically fragmented communities. Writing of Ranongga Island, the author tracks engagements with strangers across many realms of life—pre-colonial warfare, Christian conversion, logging and conservation, even post-conflict state building. She describes startling reversals in which strangers become attached to local places, even as kinspeople are estranged from one another and from their homes. Against stereotypes of rural insularity, she argues that a distinctive cosmopolitan openness to others is evident in the rural Solomons in times of war and peace.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
August 2016
Deadly Contradictions
The New American Empire and Global Warring
Reyna, S. P.
As US imperialism continues to dictate foreign policy, Deadly Contradictions is a compelling account of the American empire. Stephen P. Reyna argues that contemporary forms of violence exercised by American elites in the colonies, client state, and regions of interest have deferred imperial problems, but not without raising their own set of deadly contradictions. This book can be read many ways: as a polemic against geopolitics, as a classic social anthropological text, or as a seminal analysis of twenty-four US global wars during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
March 2016
Post-Ottoman Coexistence
Sharing Space in the Shadow of Conflict
Bryant, R. (ed)
In Southeast Europe, the Balkans, and Middle East, scholars often refer to the “peaceful coexistence” of various religious and ethnic groups under the Ottoman Empire before ethnonationalist conflicts dissolved that shared space and created legacies of division. Post-Ottoman Coexistence interrogates ways of living together and asks what practices enabled centuries of cooperation and sharing, as well as how and when such sharing was disrupted. Contributors discuss both historical and contemporary practices of coexistence within the context of ethno-national conflict and its aftermath.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Sociology
-
August 2016
Violent Becomings
State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique
Bertelsen, B. E.
Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies Colonialism
-
June 2014
Weary Warriors
Power, Knowledge, and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers
Moss, P. & Prince, M. J.
As seen in military documents, medical journals, novels, films, television shows, and memoirs, soldiers’ invisible wounds are not innate cracks in individual psyches that break under the stress of war. Instead, the generation of weary warriors is caught up in wider social and political networks and institutions—families, activist groups, government bureaucracies, welfare state programs—mediated through a military hierarchy, psychiatry rooted in mind-body sciences, and various cultural constructs of masculinity. This book offers a history of military psychiatry from the American Civil War to the latest Afghanistan conflict. The authors trace the effects of power and knowledge in relation to the emotional and psychological trauma that shapes soldiers’ bodies, minds, and souls, developing an extensive account of the emergence, diagnosis, and treatment of soldiers’ invisible wounds.
Subjects: Sociology General History Peace & Conflict Studies
-
September 2014
Food in Zones of Conflict
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
Collinson, P. and Macbeth, H. (eds)
The availability of food is an especially significant issue in zones of conflict because conflict nearly always impinges on the production and the distribution of food, and causes increased competition for food, land and resources Controlling the production of and access to food can also be used as a weapon by protagonists in conflict. The logistics of supply of food to military personnel operating in conflict zones is another important issue. These themes unite this collection, the chapters of which span different geographic areas. This volume will appeal to scholars in a number of different disciplines, including anthropology, nutrition, political science, development studies and international relations, as well as practitioners working in the private and public sectors, who are currently concerned with food-related issues in the field.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Food & Nutrition General Anthropology
-
February 2013
Places of Pain
Forced Displacement, Popular Memory and Trans-local Identities in Bosnian War-torn Communities
Halilovich, H.
For displaced persons, memory and identity is performed, (re)constructed and (re)negotiated daily. Forced displacement radically reshapes identity, with results ranging from successful hybridization to feelings of permanent misplacement. This compelling and intimate description of places of pain and (be)longing that were lost during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as of survivors’ places of resettlement in Australia, Europe and North America, serves as a powerful illustration of the complex interplay between place, memory and identity. It is even more the case when those places have been vandalized, divided up, brutalized and scarred. However, as the author shows, these places of humiliation and suffering are also places of desire, with displaced survivors emulating their former homes in the far corners of the globe where they have resettled.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
April 2013
Irish/ness Is All Around Us
Language Revivalism and the Culture of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland
Zenker, O.
Focusing on Irish speakers in Catholic West Belfast, this ethnography on Irish language and identity explores the complexities of changing, and contradictory, senses of Irishness and shifting practices of 'Irish culture' in the domains of language, music, dance and sports. The author’s theoretical approach to ethnicity and ethnic revivals presents an expanded explanatory framework for the social (re)production of ethnicity, theorizing the mutual interrelations between representations and cultural practices regarding their combined capacity to engender ethnic revivals. Relevant not only to readers with an interest in the intricacies of the Northern Irish situation, this book also appeals to a broader readership in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history and political science concerned with the mechanisms behind ethnonational conflict and the politics of culture and identity in general.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies General Cultural Studies
-
March 2013
Cyberidentities At War
The Moluccan Conflict on the Internet
Bräuchler, B.
Conflicting parties worldwide increasingly use the Internet in a strategic way, and struggles carried out on a local level achieve a new dimension. This new kind of medialization results in a conflict’s expansion into global cyberspace. Based on ethnographic research on the online activities of Christian and Muslim actors in the Moluccan conflict (1999–2003), this study investigates processes of identity construction, community building and evolving conflict dynamics on the Internet. In contributing to conflict and Internet research, this study paves the way for a new cyberanthropology. A newly added epilogue outlines the directions in which the situation in the Moluccas has continued and discusses the advances and developments of theoretical and methodological concerns presented in the 2005 German edition.
Subjects: Media Studies General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
July 2013
Soldiering Under Occupation
Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada
Grassiani, E.
Often, violent behavior or harassment from a soldier is dismissed by the military as unacceptable acts by individuals termed, “rotten apples.” In this study, the author argues that this dismissal is unsatisfactory and that there is an urgent need to look at the (mis)behavior of soldiers from a structural point of view. When soldiers serve as an occupational force, they find themselves in a particular situation influenced by structural circumstances that heavily influence their behavior and moral decision-making. This study focuses on young Israeli men and their experiences as combat soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), particularly those who served in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” (OPT) during the “Al Aqsa Intifada,” which broke out in 2000. In describing the soldiers’ circumstances, especially focusing on space, the study shows how processes of numbing on different levels influence the (moral) behavior of these soldiers.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
August 2012
Who Owns the Stock?
Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals
Khazanov, A. M. & Schlee, G. (eds)
The issue of collective and multiple property rights in animals, such as cattle, camels or reindeers, among pastoralists has never been a subject of special cross-cultural and comparative study. Focusing on pastoralist societies in East and West Africa, the Far North and Siberia, and the Eurasian steppes, this volume addresses the issue of property rights and the changes these societies have undergone due to the direct or indirect influence of modernization and globalization processes. The contributors also investigate the interplay of older sets of rights and modern marketing policies; political, ecological and economic effects of collectivization and de-collectivization; the existence of collective and private property in the Soviet Union and its successor states; state taxation and destocking measures in African dry lands; and the effects of quarantine, as well as import and export regulations. The rich and well-researched ethnographic, historical, and economic data in these chapters provides new theoretical insights into the matter of property rights in animals.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
June 2012
Dark Trophies
Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War
Harrison, S.
Many anthropological accounts of warfare in indigenous societies have described the taking of heads or other body parts as trophies. But almost nothing is known of the prevalence of trophy-taking of this sort in the armed forces of contemporary nation-states. This book is a history of this type of misconduct among military personnel over the past two centuries, exploring its close connections with colonialism, scientific collecting and concepts of race, and how it is a model for violent power relationships between groups.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology General History
-
October 2011
Crude Domination
An Anthropology of Oil
Behrends, A., Reyna, S. P. & Schlee, G. (eds)
Crude Domination is an innovative and important book about a critical topic – oil. While there have been numerous works about petroleum from ‘experience-far’ perspectives, there have been relatively few that have turned the ‘experience-near’ ethnographic gaze of anthropology on the topic. Crude Domination does just this among more peoples and more places than any other volume. Its chapters investigate nuances of culture, politics and economics in Africa, Latin America, and Eurasia as they pertain to petroleum. They wrestle with the key questions vexing scholars and practitioners alike: problems of the economic blight of the resource curse, underdevelopment, democracy, violence and war. Additionally they address topics that may initially appear insignificant – such as child witches and lionmen, fighting for oil when there is no oil, reindeer nomadism, community TV – but which turn out on closer scrutiny to be vital for explaining conflict and transformation in petro-states. Based upon these rich, new worlds of information, the text formulates a novel, domination approach to the social analysis of oil.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
December 2011
War, Technology, Anthropology
Stroeken, K. (ed)
Technologies of the allied warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as remote-controlled drones and night vision goggles, allow the user to “virtualize” human targets. This coincides with increased civilian casualties and a perpetuation of the very insecurity these technologies are meant to combat. This concise volume of research and reflections from different regions across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, observes how anthropology operates as a technology of war. It tackles recent theories of humans in society colluding with imperialist claims, including anthropologists who have become involved professionally in warfare through their knowledge of “cultures,” renamed as “human terrain systems.” The chapters link varied yet crucial domains of inquiry: from battlefields technologies, military-driven scientific policy, and economic warfare, to martyrdom cosmology shifts, media coverage of “distant” wars, and the virtualizing techniques and “war porn” soundtracks of the gaming industry.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
April 2011
After the Event
The Transmission of Grievous Loss in Germany, China and Taiwan
Feuchtwang, S.
Two of the most destructive moments of state violence in the twentieth century occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and in China between 1959 and 1961 (the Great Leap famine). This is the first book to bring the two histories together in order to examine their differences and to understand if there are any similar processes of transmission at work. The author expertly ties in the Taiwanese civil war between Nationalists and Communists, which included the White Terror from 1947 to 1987, a less well-known but equally revealing part of twentieth-century history. Personal and family stories are told, often in the individual’s own words, and then compared with the public accounts of the same events as found in official histories, commemorations, school textbooks and other forms of public memory. The author presents innovative and constructive criticisms of social memory theories in order to make sense both of what happened and how what happened is transmitted.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology General History
-
August 2011
Grassroots Memorials
The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death
Margry, P. J. & Sánchez-Carretero, C. (eds)
Grassroots memorials have become major areas of focus during times of trauma, danger, and social unrest. These improvised memorial assemblages continue to display new and more dynamic ways of representing collective and individual identities and in doing so reveal the steps that shape the national memories of those who struggle to come to terms with traumatic loss. This volume focuses on the hybrid quality of these temporary memorials as both monuments of mourning and as focal points for protest and expression of discontent. The broad range of case studies in this volume include anti-mafia shrines, Theo van Gogh’s memorial, September 11th memorials, March 11th shrines in Madrid, and Carlo Giuliani memorials in Genoa.
Subjects: General Cultural Studies Peace & Conflict Studies Urban Studies
-
July 2011
The Annoying Difference
The Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World
Hervik, P.
The Muhammad cartoon crisis of 2005−2006 in Denmark caught the world by surprise as the growing hostilities toward Muslims had not been widely noticed. Through the methodologies of media anthropology, cultural studies, and communication studies, this book brings together more than thirteen years of research on three significant historical media events in order to show the drastic changes and emerging fissures in Danish society and to expose the politicization of Danish news journalism, which has consequences for the political representation and everyday lives of ethnic minorities in Denmark.
Subjects: General Anthropology Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
July 2011
Playing Different Games
The Paradox of Anywaa and Nuer Identification Strategies in the Gambella Region, Ethiopia
Feyissa, D.
Focusing on ethnicity and its relation to conflict, this book goes beyond sterile debates about whether ethnic identities are ‘natural’ or ‘socially constructed’. Rather, ethnic identity takes different forms. Some ethnic boundaries are perceived by the actors themselves as natural, while others are perceived to be permeable. The argument is substantiated through a comparative analysis of ethnic identity formation and ethnic conflict among the Anywaa and the Nuer in the Gambella region of western Ethiopia. The Anywaa and the Nuer are not just two ethnic groups but two kinds of ethnic groups. Conflicts between the Anywaa and Nuer are explained with reference to three variables: varying modes of identity formation, competition over resources and differential incorporation into the state system.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
September 2011
Headlines of Nation, Subtexts of Class
Working Class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe
Kalb, D. & Halmai, G. (eds)
Since 1989 neo-nationalism has grown as a volatile political force in almost all European societies in tandem with the formation of a neoliberal European Union and wider capitalist globalizations. Focusing on working classes situated in long-run localized processes of social change, including processes of dispossession and disenfranchisement, this volume investigates how the experiences, histories, and relationships of social class are a necessary ingredient for explaining the re-emergence and dynamics of populist nationalism in both Eastern and Western Europe. Featuring in-depth urban and regional case studies from Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Italy and Scotland this volume reclaims class for anthropological research and lays out a new interdisciplinary agenda for studying identity politics in the intensifying neoliberal conjuncture.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
December 2011
Legends of People, Myths of State
Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia
Kapferer, B.
The civil war in Sri Lanka and the part that nationalism seemed to play in it inspired the writing of this book some twenty-three years ago. The argument was developed through a comparative analysis of nationalism in Sri Lanka with the author’s native Australia. At the time this constituted an innovative approach to comparison in anthropology, as well as to nationalism and its possibilities. It was not based on differences but on the way in which perspectives from within the two nationalisms, when seen side-by-side, could present an understanding of their implication in producing the violence of war, racism, and social exclusion. The book has lost none of its importance and urgency as proven by the chapters in the Appendix, written by top scholars working in Sri Lanka and in Australia. These contributions bring together new material and critically explore the book’s themes and their continued relevance to the various trajectories in nationalist processes since the first publication of the book.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
January 2010
Contested Nationalism
Serb Elite Rivalry in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s
Caspersen, N.
"Only unity saves the Serbs" is the famous call for unity in the Serb nationalist doctrine. But even though this doctrine was ideologically adhered to by most of the Serb leaders in Croatia and Bosnia, disunity characterized Serb politics during the Yugoslav disintegration and war. Nationalism was contested and nationalist claims to homogeneity did not reflect the reality of Serb politics. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Serb politics and challenges widespread assumptions regarding the Yugoslav conflict and war. It finds that although Slobodan Milosevic played a highly significant role, he was not always able to control the local Serb leaders. Moreover, it adds to the emerging evidence of the lack of importance of popular attitudes; hardline dominance was generally based on the control of economic and coercive resources rather than on elites successfully "playing the ethnic card." It moves beyond an assumption of automatic ethnic outbidding and thus contributes toward a better understanding of intra-ethnic rivalry in other cases such as Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, Nagorno-Karabakh and Rwanda.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
April 2010
Deterritorialized Youth
Sahrawi and Afghan Refugees at the Margins of the Middle East
Chatty, D. (ed)
The Sahrawi and Afghan refugee youth in the Middle East have been stereotyped regionally and internationally: some have been objectified as passive victims; others have become the beneficiaries of numerous humanitarian aid packages which presume the primacy of the Western model of child development. This book compares and contrasts both the stereotypes and Western-based models of humanitarian assistance among Sahrawi youth with the lack of programming and near total self-sufficiency of Afghan refugee youth in Iran. Both extremes offer an important opportunity to further explore the impact which forced migration and prolonged conflict have had, and continue to have, on the lives of these refugee youth and their families. This study examines refugee communities closely linked with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and a host of other UN agencies in the case of the Sahrawi and near total lack of humanitarian aid in the case of Afghan refugees in Iran.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
July 2010
Politics of Innocence
Hutu Identity, Conflict and Camp Life
Turner, S.
Based on thorough ethnographic fieldwork in a refugee camp in Tanzania this book provides a rich account of the benevolent “disciplining mechanisms” of humanitarian agencies, led by the UNHCR, and of the situated, dynamic, indeterminate, and fluid nature of identity (re)construction in the camp. While the refugees are expected to behave as innocent, helpless victims, the question of victimhood among Burundian Hutu is increasingly challenged, following the 1993 massacres in Burundi and the Rwandan genocide. The book explores how different groups within the camp apply different strategies to cope with these issues and how the question of innocence and victimhood is itself imbued with ambiguity, as young men struggle to recuperate their masculinity and their political subjectivity.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies Development Studies
-
August 2010
The Early Morning Phonecall
Somali Refugees' Remittances
Lindley, A.
As migration from poverty-stricken and conflict-affected countries continues to hit the headlines, this book focuses on an important counter-flow: the money that people send home. Despite considerable research on the impact of migration and remittances in countries of origin - increasingly viewed as a source of development capital - still little is known about refugees’ remittances to conflict-affected countries because such funds are most often seen as a source of conflict finance. This book explores the dynamics, infrastructure, and far-reaching effects of remittances from the perspectives of people in the Somali regions and the diaspora. With conflict driving mass displacement, Somali society has become progressively transnational, its vigorous remittance economy reaching from the heart of the global North into wrecked cities, refugee camps, and remote rural areas. By ‘following the money’ the author opens a window on the everyday lives of people caught up in processes of conflict, migration, and development. The book demonstrates how, in the interstices of state disruption and globalisation, and in the shadow of violence and political uncertainty, life in the Somali regions goes on, subject to complex transnational forms of social, economic, and political innovation and change.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
December 2010
Displacement Beyond Conflict
Challenges for the 21st Century
McDowell, C. & Morrell, G.
There is growing political concern about the increasing numbers of people displaced both within the borders of their countries and internationally. This volume explores the interrelated drivers of contemporary global displacement with a particular focus on low-level conflict, climatic and environmental change and infrastructure development. The authors examine the governance of global displacement assessing the protection needs and responses of national governments and the international community. It further considers options for improving the humanitarian and political management of this growing problem.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Refugee & Migration Studies Development Studies
-
November 2010
Security and Development
McNeish, J.-A. & Sande Lie, J. H. (eds)
Since 9/11 ideas of security have focused in part on the development of ungovernable spaces. Important debates are now being had over the nature, impacts, and outcomes of the numerous policy statements made by northern governments, NGOs, and international institutions that view the merging of security with development as both unproblematic and progressive. This volume addresses this new security–development nexus and investigates internal institutional logics, as well as the operation of policy, its dangers, resistances and complicity with other local and national social processes. Drawing on detailed ethnography, the contributors offer new vantage points to understand the workings of multiple, intersecting, and conflicting power structures, which whilst local, are tied to non-local systems and operate across time. This volume is a necessary critique and extension of key themes integral to the security– development nexus debate, highlighting the importance of a situated and substantive understanding of human security.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
May 2009
Alarming Reports
Communicating Conflict in the Daily News
Arno†, A.
News stories provide an essential confirmation of our ideas about who we are, what we have to fear, and what to do about it: a marketplace of ideas, shopped by rational citizen decision makers but also a shared resource for grounding our contested narratives of identity in objective reality. News as a fundamental social process comes into being not when an event takes place or when a report of the event is created but when that report becomes news to someone. As it moves off the page into the community, news discovers - through its interpretations - its reality in the lives of the consumers. This book explores the path of news as it moves through the tangled labyrinth of social identities and asserted interests that lie beyond the page or screen. The language and communication-oriented study of news promises a salient area of investigation, pointing the way to an expansion, if not a redefinition of basic anthropological ideas and practices of ethnography, participant observation, and “the field” in the future of anthropological research.
Subjects: Media Studies Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
October 2009
Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-east Africa
Volume I: Ethiopia and Kenya
Schlee, G. & Watson, E. E. (eds)
Forms of group identity play a prominent role in everyday lives and politics in northeast Africa. Case studies from Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya illustrate the way that identities are formed and change over time, and how local, national, and international politics are interwoven. Specific attention is paid to the impact of modern weaponry, new technologies, religious conversion, food and land shortages, international borders, civil war, and displacement on group identities. Drawing on the expertise of anthropologists, historians and geographers, these volumes provide a significant account of a society profoundly shaped by identity politics and contribute to a better understanding of the nature of conflict and war, and forms of alliance and peacemaking, thus providing a comprehensive portrait of this troubled region.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology General Geography
-
November 2009
Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-east Africa
Volume II: Sudan, Uganda, and the Ethiopia-Sudan Borderlands
Schlee, G. & Watson, E. E. (eds)
Forms of group identity play a prominent role in everyday lives and politics in north-east Africa. These volumes provide an interdisciplinary account of the nature and significance of ethnic, religious, and national identity in north-east Africa. Case studies from Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya illustrate the way that identities are formed and change over time, and how local, national, and international politics are interwoven. Specific attention is paid to the impact of modern weaponry, new technologies, religious conversion, food and land shortages, international borders, civil war, and displacement on group identities. Drawing on the expertise of anthropologists, historians and geographers, these volumes provide a significant account of a society profoundly shaped by identity politics and contribute to a better understanding of the nature of conflict and war, and forms of alliance and peacemaking, thus providing a comprehensive portrait of this troubled region.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology General Geography
-
March 2009
Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development
Eritrea in the Twenty-First Century
O'Kane, D. & Hepner, T. R. (eds)
Bringing together original, contemporary ethnographic research on the Northeast African state of Eritrea, this book shows how biopolitics - the state-led deployment of disciplinary technologies on individuals and population groups - is assuming particular forms in the twenty-first century. Once hailed as the “African country that works,” Eritrea’s apparently successful post-independence development has since lapsed into economic crisis and severe human rights violations. This is due not only to the border war with Ethiopia that began in 1998, but is also the result of discernible tendencies in the “high modernist” style of social mobilization for development first adopted by the Eritrean government during the liberation struggle (1961–1991) and later carried into the post-independence era. The contributions to this volume reveal and interpret the links between development and developmentalist ideologies, intensifying militarism, and the controlling and disciplining of human lives and bodies by state institutions, policies, and discourses. Also assessed are the multiple consequences of these policies for the Eritrean people and the ways in which such policies are resisted or subverted. This insightful, comparative volume places the Eritrean case in a broader global and transnational context.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Development Studies General Anthropology
-
December 2009
Remembering Violence
Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission
Argenti, N. & Schramm, K. (Eds.)
Psychologists have done a great deal of research on the effects of trauma on the individual, revealing the paradox that violent experiences are often secreted away beyond easy accessibility, becoming impossible to verbalize explicitly. However, comparatively little research has been done on the transgenerational effects of trauma and the means by which experiences are transmitted from person to person across time to become intrinsic parts of the social fabric. With eight contributions covering Africa, Central and South America, China, Europe, and the Middle East, this volume sheds new light on the role of memory in constructing popular histories – or historiographies – of violence in the absence of, or in contradistinction to, authoritative written histories. It brings new ethnographic data to light and presents a truly cross-cultural range of case studies that will greatly enhance the discussion of memory and violence across disciplines.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology General History
-
December 2008
Impotent Warriors
Perspectives on Gulf War Syndrome, Vulnerability and Masculinity
Kilshaw, S.
From September 1990 to June 1991, the UK deployed 53,462 military personnel in the Gulf War. After the end of the conflict anecdotal reports of various disorders affecting troops who fought in the Gulf began to surface. This mysterious illness was given the name “Gulf War Syndrome” (GWS). This book is an investigation into this recently emergent illness, particularly relevant given ongoing UK deployments to Iraq, describing how the illness became a potent symbol for a plethora of issues, anxieties, and concerns. At present, the debate about GWS is polarized along two lines: there are those who think it is a unique, organic condition caused by Gulf War toxins and those who argue that it is probably a psychological condition that can be seen as part of a larger group of illnesses. Using the methods and perspective of anthropology, with its focus on nuances and subtleties, the author provides a new approach to understanding GWS, one that makes sense of the cultural circumstances, specific and general, which gave rise to the illness.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies Gender Studies
-
March 2008
The Practice of War
Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence
Rao† , A., Bollig, M. & Böck, M. (eds)
The fact is that war comes in many guises and its effects continue to be felt long after peace is proclaimed. This challenges the anthropologists who write of war as participant observers. Participant observation inevitably deals with the here and now, with the highly specific. It is only over the long view that one can begin to see the commonalities that emerge from the different forms of conflict and can begin to generalize. [From the Introduction]
More needs to be understood about the ways of war and its effects. What implications does war have for people, their lived-in communities and larger political systems; how do they cope and adjust in war situations and how do they deal with the changed world that they inhabit once peace is declared? Through a series of essays that move from looking at the nature of violence to the peace processes that follow it, this important book provides some answers to these questions. It also analyzes those new dimensions of social interaction, such as the internet, which now provide a bridge between local concerns and global networks and are fundamentally altering the practices of war.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
September 2008
How Enemies Are Made
Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflict
Schlee, G.
In popular perception cultural differences or ethnic affiliation are factors that cause conflict or political fragmentation although this is not borne out by historical evidence. This book puts forward an alternative conflict theory. The author develops a decision theory which explains the conditions under which differing types of identification are preferred. Group identification is linked to competition for resources like water, territory, oil, political charges, or other advantages. Rivalry for resources can cause conflicts but it does not explain who takes whose side in a conflict situation. This book explores possibilities of reducing violent conflicts and ends with a case study, based on personal experience of the author, of conflict resolution.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
October 2008
An Anthropology of War
Views from the Frontline
Waterston, A. (ed)
As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, power, lethal force, and injustice continue to explode violently into war, and the prospects for lasting peace look even bleaker. The horrors of modern warfare - the death, dehumanization, and destruction of social and material infrastructures - have done little to bring an end to armed conflict.
In this volume, leading chroniclers of war provide thoughtful and powerful essays that reflect on their ethnographic work at the frontlines. The contributors recount not only what they have seen and heard in war zones but also what is being read, studied, analyzed and remembered in such diverse locations as Colombia and Guatemala, Israel and Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti. In detailed reports from the field, they reflect on the important issue of “accountability” and offer explanations to discern causes, patterns, and practices of war. Through this unique lens, the contributors provide the insight and analysis needed for a deeper understanding of one of the greatest issues of our times.
Contributors:
Avram Bornstein, Paul E. Farmer, R. Brian Ferguson, Lesley Gill, Beatriz Manz, Carolyn Nordstrom, Stephen Reyna, Jose N. VasquezSubjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
May 2007
Identity Matters
Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict
Peacock, J. M., Thornton, P. M., and Inman, P. B. (eds)
In response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and war in Afghanistan, the Fulbright New Century Scholars program brought together social scientists from around the world to study sectarian, ethnic, and cultural conflict within and across national borders. As one result of their year of intense discussion, this book examines the roots of collective violence — and the measures taken to avoid it — in Burma (Myanmar), China, Germany, Pakistan, Senegal, Singapore, Thailand, Tibet, Ukraine, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe.
Case studies and theoretical essays introduce the basic principles necessary to identify and explain the symbols and practices each unique human group holds sacred or inalienable. The authors apply the methods of political science, social psychology, anthropology, journalism, and educational research. They build on the insights of Gordon Allport, Charles Taylor, and Max Weber to describe and analyze the patterns of behavior that social groups worldwide use to maintain their identities.
Written to inform the general reader and communicate across disciplinary boundaries, this important and timely volume demonstrates ways of understanding, predicting and coping with ethnic and sectarian violence.
Contributors: Badeng Nima, David Brown, Kwanchewan Buadaeng, Patrick B. Inman, Karina V. Korostelina, James L. Peacock, Thomas F. Pettigrew, Wee Teng Soh, Hamadou Tidiane Sy, Patricia M. Thornton, Mohammad Waseem.
Subjects: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
October 2007
On Perpetual Peace
A Timely Assessment
Senghaas, D.
Dieter Senghaas today is the world's leading figure in the field of conflict research, conflict management research, and the study of the prerequisites of lasting peace. The fact that virulent conflict within what Senghaas calls the OECD world, essentially the European Union, has become unthinkable over the past half-century encourages him in the face of violent conflict in many parts of the world to be reasonably optimistic about the prospect for our planet as a whole.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Development Studies
-
May 2006
Nationalism's Bloody Terrain
Racism, Class Inequality, and the Politics of Recognition
Baca, G.
As many scholars have argued, racism and its passions are created by and subordinated to the nation. This volume places the practices of racism at the center of analysis of so-called post-racist or multi cultural nation-states. This way, each contributor analytically treats racism and its related concepts of race, identity, culture, and naturalizing symbols of blood to highlight the manner in which governing institutions use nationalist precepts to create "races". In the end, it is racism - the actual political practices of domination - that makes "race" salient, especially in its multi-cultural and liberal-democratic form.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
August 2006
Neo-nationalism in Europe and Beyond
Perspectives from Social Anthropology
Gingrich, A. & Banks, M. (eds)
By the early twenty-first century neo-nationalist forces have established themselves in a number of the world’s large regions and subcontinents. From Australia to South Asia, in Eastern and Western Europe, comparable parties and movements have positioned themselves in national parliaments and governments, with some considerable impact on state power. In contrast to right-wing extremist parties in the past, these recent movements mostly operate within legal parliamentary channels, using essentialized notions of local culture to mobilize against real and alleged threats to local identities of status, gender, religion, nationhood and ethnicity.
Prompted by this near-simultaneous rise to political influence of more than a dozen apparently similar parties across Western Europe, this collection offers a range of European case studies with selected global examples, such as the Front National, the late Pim Fortuyn, India and the BJP, and Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party in Australia. It takes up the theoretical and methodological challenges posed by this phenomenon and asks what distinctive contributions anthropology might make to its study.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
November 2006
The Men We Loved
Male Friendship and Nationalism in Israeli Culture
Kaplan, D.
Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of heroic death. In his provocative study of interrelations between friendship in everyday life and national sentiments in Israel, the author follows selected stories of friendship ranging over early childhood, school, the workplace, and some unique war experiences. He explores the symbolism of friendship in rituals for the fallen soldiers, the commemoration of Prime Minister Yzhak Rabin, and the national infatuation with recovering bodies of missing soldiers. He concludes that the Israeli case offers an extreme instance of a much broader cultural phenomenon: declaring the friendship for the dead epitomizes the political “blood pact” between men, taking precedence over the traditional blood ties of kinship and heterosexual unions. The book underscores nationalism as a homosocial-based emotion of commemorative desire.
Subjects: Gender Studies Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology
-
August 2006
From Tax Populism to Ethnic Nationalism
Radical Right-wing Populism in Sweden
Rydgren, J.
During the last 15-20 years a new party family of radical right-wing populism (RRP) has emerged in Western Europe, consisting of parties such as the French Front National and the Austrian Freedom's Party, among many others. Contrary to the situation in the other Scandinavian countries, such parties have been largely unsuccessful in Sweden. Although Sweden saw the emergence of the populist party New Democracy - which partly can be classified as a RRP party - in the early 1990s, it collapsed in 1994, and no party has so far been successful enough to take its place. Most of the literature on populism and right-wing extremism deals with successful cases; this book takes the opposite direction and asks how one can explain the failure of Swedish radical right-wing populism.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Sociology
-
October 2006
A Different Kind of War
The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq
Sponeck, H.C. von
At a time when the international community is again threatening some countries with sanctions, this book comes as a warning. It should be mandatory reading for all those politicians and their foreign-policy advisors who continue to consider sanctions an effective form of policy. The author not only offers us a critical, lucid, and well-informed survey of political developments in Iraq, but also a heart-rending account of the suffering of the Iraqi people. It was they who bore the brunt of the 13-year's sanctions, while the members of Saddam's regime continued to live in luxury and accumulate huge fortunes.
H.-C. von Sponeck, the former “UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq,” explores the UN's sanction policies against Iraq, their consequences, and the domestic conditions during this period. His extensive research is based on previously unpublished internal UN documents and discussions with UN decision makers (such as General Secretary Kofi Annan), Iraqi officials and politicians (including Saddam Hussein), and ordinary Iraqis. The author’s findings question who really benefited from the program, what role the UN Security Council and its various member states played, and whether there were then and are today alternatives to the UN's Iraq policies.
Subject: Peace & Conflict Studies
-
August 2006
The Romani Movement
Minority Politics and Ethnic Mobilization in Contemporary Central Europe
Vermeersch, P.
The collapse of communism and the process of state building that ensued in the 1990s have highlighted the existence of significant minorities in many European states, particularly in Central Europe. In this context, the growing plight of Europe’s biggest minority, the Roma (Gypsies), has been particularly salient. Traditionally dispersed, possessing few resources and devoid of a common “kin state” to protect their interests, the Roma have often suffered from widespread exclusion and institutionalized discrimination. Politically underrepresented and lacking popular support amongst the wider populations of their host countries, the Roma have consequently become one of Europe’s greatest “losers” in the transition towards democracy.
Against this background, the author examines the recent attempts of the Roma in Central Europe and their supporters to form a political movement and to influence domestic and international politics. On the basis of first-hand observation and interviews with activists and politicians in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, he analyzes connections between the evolving state policies towards the Roma and the recent history of Romani mobilization. In order to reach a better understanding of the movement’s dynamics at work, the author explores a number of theories commonly applied to the study of social movements and collective action.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Refugee & Migration Studies Sociology
-
August 2006
Modernity and Secession
The Social Sciences and the Political Discourse of the lega nord in Italy
Huysseune, M.
The northern Italian, ‘Padanian’ identity, fostered by the Lega Nord, is rooted in the long-standing tradition, in political and scholarly discourse, of casting regional differences within Italy in terms of a North-South geographic divide. Trying to come to terms, in the late 1980s and 1990s, with Italy’s (real or presumed) inadequacies – such as inefficient government, corruption, and organized crime – this imagined geography acquired political centrality in that the North became associated with the virtues of modernity and the South with the vices of un-modernity. It was not only politicians but also social scientists, who fostered and perpetuated this conceptualization of the North-South divide, thus imposing a normative hierarchy between the two parts of the country.
In response to this discourse many scholars, both in Italy and abroad, have started to question this perception of the South as a “backward” and implicitly inferior society. Starting from this critical tradition, Michel Huysseune provides a new, systematic, and interdisciplinary approach that re-interprets the premises behind Italy’s imagined geography of modernity. He moves beyond an understanding of the South as a “backward” and implicitly inferior society and problematizes normative notions of modernity, thus offering a new perspective on the North-South divide, which has a significance well beyond the case of Italy.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Sociology
-
May 2005
Bodies of Evidence
Burial, Memory and the Recovery of Missing Persons in Cyprus
Sant Cassia, P.
In the course of hostilities between Greek and Turkish Cypriots between 1963 and 1974, over 2000 persons, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, went "missing" in Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean with a population distribution of 80% Greeks and 18% Turks. This represents a significant number for a population of only 600,000. Few bodies have been recovered; most will probably not be. All are still mourned by their surviving friends and relatives. The conflict has still not been resolved and the memories are still alive.
Subjects: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies
-
February 2005
Unsilencing the Past
Track-Two Diplomacy and Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation
Phillips, D.L.
The Turkish-Armenian conflict has lasted for nearly a century and still continues in attenuated forms to poison the relationship between these two peoples. The author, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations and previously advisor to the United Nations, undertook, as head of the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Committee, to bring the two sides together and to work with them towards a peaceful resolution of the enmity that had made any contact between them taboo.
His lively account of the difficult negotiations makes fascinating reading; it shows that the newly developed “track-two diplomacy” is an effective tool for reconciling even intractable foes through fostering dialog, contact and cooperation.
Subject: Peace & Conflict Studies
-
March 2005
Children of Palestine
Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East
Chatty, D. & Hundt, G. (eds)
Palestinian children and young people living both within and outside of refugee camps in the Middle East are the focus of this book. For more than half a century these children and their caregivers have lived a temporary existence in the dramatic and politically volatile landscape that is the Middle East. These children have been captive to various sorts of stereotyping, both academic and popular. They have been objectified, much as their parents and grandparents, as passive victims without the benefit of international protection. And they have become the beneficiaries of numerous humanitarian aid packages which presume the primacy of the Western model of child development as well as the psycho-social approach to intervention. Giving voice to individual children, in the context of their households and their community, this book aims to move beyond the stereotypes and Western-based models to explore the impact that forced migration and prolonged conflict have had, and continue to have, on the lives of these refugee children.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
March 2004
German Security Policy in the 21st Century
Problems, Partners and Perspectives
Mey, H.
"Berlin, 12 January 2030 – The crisis worsens. The Chancellor reaches for the telephone. He instructs his anteroom to put through a call to Germany's most important ally in order to discuss the situation and determine a further course of action." With whom would the chancellor speak? With the American, the French, or maybe even the Russian president? Or will the Chancellor only exercise representative functions while the real responsibility and decision-making authority lies with the President of the United Regions of Europe? This volume invites policy makers and politicians to use their imagination, to look beyond current events and take a long-term view on possible developments. Such projections, the author argues, lead to interesting conclusions for strategic planning.
Subject: Peace & Conflict Studies
-
October 2004
State, Sovereignty, War
Civil Violence in Emerging Global Realities
Kapferer, B. (ed)
The very institution of the state is widely conceived of as inseparable from war. If it constitutes peace within the borders or order of its sovereignty, this very peace may be the condition for its potential for war with those other states and social formation outside it. This volume represents different analytical standpoints and positions within global processes, inviting further discussion on contemporary realities and the development of new formations of war and violence.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology
-
June 2004
Refugees and the Transformation of Societies
Agency, Policies, Ethics and Politics
Essed, P., Frerks, G. & Schrijvers, J. (eds)
The refusal or reception of refugees has had serious implications for the social policies and social realities of numerous countries in east and west. Exploring experiences, interpretations and practices of 'refugees,' 'the internally displaced' and 'returnees' in or emerging from societies in violent conflict, this volume challenges prevailing orthodoxies and encourages new developments in refugee studies. It also addresses the ethics and politics of interventions by professionals and policy makers, using case studies of refugees from or in South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the Americas. These illustrate the dynamic nature of situations where refugees, policy- makers and practitioners interact in trying to construct new livelihoods in transforming societies.
Without a proper understanding of this dynamic nature, so the volume argues overall, it is not possible to develop successful strategies for the accommodation and integration of refugees.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Development Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
June 2004
Children and Youth on the Front Line
Ethnography, Armed Conflict and Displacement
Boyden, J. & Berry, J. de (eds)
War leads not just to widespread death but also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear, and economic devastation. It weakens social ties, threatens household survival and undermines the family's capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic, educational, health and social opportunities which most of us consider essential for children's effective growth and well being.
Based on detailed ethnographic description and on young people's own accounts, this volume provides insights into children's experiences as both survivors and perpetrators of violence. It focuses on girls who have been exposed to sexual exploitation and abuse, children who head households or are separated from their families, displaced children and young former combatants who are attempting to adjust to their changed circumstances following the cessation of conflict. In this sense, the volume bears witness to the grim effects of warfare and displacement on the young.
Nevertheless, despite the abundant evidence of suffering, it maintains that children are not the passive victims of conflict but engage actively with the conditions of war, an outlook that challenges orthodox research perspectives that rely heavily on medicalized notions of 'victim' and 'trauma.'
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
December 2003
The Populist Challenge
Political Protest and Ethno-Nationalist Mobilization in France
Rydgren, J.
During the last decade and a half a new political party family, the extreme Right-wing populist (ERP) parties, has established itself in a variety of West European democracies. These parties represent a monist politics based on ethnic nationalism and xenophobia as well as an opposition against the 'political establishment'. Being the prototypic ERP party, the French Front National (FN) has been a model for ERP parties emerging elsewhere in Western Europe.
This study presents a theoretically based explanation that combines the macro and the micro-level, as well as the political supply and the demand-side. More specifically, this study shows that it is necessary to consider both opportunity structures, created by demand and supply-side factors, as well as the ability of the FN to take advantage of the available opportunities. Of particular interest is the author's analysis of the sociology and attitudes of the FN-voters.
Subject: Peace & Conflict Studies
-
January 2003
Disputed Territories
The Transnational Dynamics of Ethnic Conflict Settlement
Wolff, S.
Ethnic conflicts have shaped the 20th century in significant ways. While the legacy of the last century is primarily one of many unresolved conflicts, the author contends that Western Europe has a track record in containing and settling ethnic conflicts which provides valuable lessons for conflict management elsewhere. Focusing on ethno-territorial crossborder conflicts in Alsace, the Saarland, South Tyrol, and Northern Ireland, Andorra and the New Hebrides, the author develops a four-dimensional analytical framework that synthesizes the distinct factors that influence the complex relationship between host-state, kin-state, actors in the disputed territory, and in the international context.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Sociology
-
November 2003
Radical Ethnic Movements in Contemporary Europe
Daftary, F. & Troebst, S. (eds)
Nation states and minorities resort more and more to violence when safeguarding their political interests. Although the violence in the Middle East has been dominating world politics for some time now, European governments have had their share of ethnic violence to contend with as this volume demonstrates. And as the case studies show, ranging as they do from the Basque Country to Chechnya, from Northern Ireland to Bosnia-Herzegovina, this applies to western Europe as much as to eastern Europe. However, in contrast to other parts of the world, instances where political struggles for power and social inclusion between minorities and majorities lead to full-fledged inter-ethnic warfare are still the exception; in the majority of cases conflicts are successfully de-escalated and even resolved. In a comprehensive conclusion, the volume offers a theoretical framework for the development of strategies to deal with violent ethnic conflict.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Sociology
-
June 2002
Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation
Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation
Abdo, N. & Lentin, R. (eds)
As the crisis in Israel does not show any signs of abating, this remarkable collection, edited by an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar and with contributions by Palestinian and Israeli women, offers a vivid and harrowing picture of the conflict and of its impact on daily life, especially as it affects women's experiences that differ significantly from those of men.
The (auto)biographical narratives in this volume focus on some of the most disturbing effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a sense of dislocation that goes well beyond the geographical meaning of the word; it involves social, cultural, national and gender dislocation, including alienation from one's own home, family, community, and society. The accounts become even more poignant if seen against the backdrop of the roots of the conflict, the real or imaginary construct of a state to save and shelter particularly European Jews from the horrors of Nazism in parallel to the other side of the coin: Israel as a settler-colonial state responsible for the displacement of the Palestinian nation.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Gender Studies General Anthropology
-
June 2002
Europe's New Racism
Causes, Manifestations, and Solutions
Evens Foundation
Europe has seen a tremendous rise in popularity of new rightist political parties in the last two decades or so, claiming cultural supremacy of the so-called native Europeans over foreign immigrants. In this volume, European scholars from Russian to Britain have come together to examine the media and social and legal policies in an effort to determine the causes of this resurgence of rightist and anti-democratic ideologies. They furthermore suggest actions that might help combat racism more effectively.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Sociology Urban Studies
-
August 2001
Demography and National Security
Weiner†, M. & Stanton Russell†, S. (eds)
Political scientists, demographers, legal scholars, and historians have come together in this volume, under the direction of the late Myron Weiner, one of the leading scholars in this field, to address three of the major sets of questions in the field of political demography: How changes in demographic variables - population size, growth, distribution, and composition - influence threats (real or perceived) to a country's political stability and security; how governments respond to demographic trends; and how governments attempt to change demographic variables in order to enhance national security.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
October 2001
Fear in Bongoland
Burundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania
Sommers, M.
Spurred by wars and a drive to urbanize, Africans are crossing borders and overwhelming cities in unprecedented numbers. At the center of this development are young refugee men who migrate to urban areas.
This volume, the first full-length study of urban refugees in hiding, tells the story of Burundi refugee youth who escaped from remote camps in central Tanzania to work in one of Africa's fastest-growing cities, Dar es Salaam. This steamy, rundown capital would seem uninviting to many, particularly for second generation survivors of genocide whose lives are ridden with fear. But these young men nonetheless join migrants in "Bongoland" (meaning "Brainland") where, as the nickname suggests, only the shrewdest and most cunning can survive.
Mixing lyrics from church hymns and street vernacular, descriptions of city living in cartoons and popular novels and original photographs, this book creates an ethnographic portrait of urban refugee life, where survival strategies spring from street smarts and pastors' warnings of urban sin, and mastery of popular youth culture is highly valued. Pentecostalism and a secret rift within the seemingly impenetrable Hutu ethnic group are part of the rich texture of this contemporary African story. Written in accessible prose, this book offers an intimate picture of how Africa is changing and how refugee youth are helping to drive that change.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies Development Studies
-
April 2000
Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World
Conflict, Resistance, and Self-Determination
Biesele, M., Hitchcock, R. & Schweitzer, P. (eds)
In an age of heightened awareness of the threat that western industrialized societies pose to the environment, hunters and gatherers attract particularly strong interest because they occupy the ecological niches that are constantly eroded. Despite the denial of sovereignty, the world's more than 350 million indigenous peoples continue to assert aboriginal title to significant portions of the world's remaining bio-diversity. As a result, conflicts between tribal peoples and nation states are on the increase. Today, many of the societies that gave the field of anthropology its empirical foundations and unique global vision of a diverse and evolving humanity are being destroyed as a result of national economic, political, and military policies.
Although quite a sizable body of literature exists on the living conditions of the hunters and gatherers, this volume is unique in that it represents the first extensive east-west scholarly exchange in anthropology since the demise of the USSR. Moreover, it also offers new perspectives from indigenous communities and scholars in an exchange that be termed "south-north" as opposed to " north-north," denoting the predominance of northern Europe and North America in scholarly debate.
The main focus of this volume is on the internal dynamics and political strategies of hunting and gathering societies in areas of self-determination and self-representation. More specifically, it examines areas such as warfare and conflict resolution, resistance, identity and the state, demography and ecology, gender and representation, and world view and religion. It raises a large number of major issues of common concerns and therefore makes important reading for all those interested in human rights issues, ethnic conflict, grassroots development and community organization, and environmental topics.
Subjects: Development Studies Environmental Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
April 2000
The Psychosocial Wellness of Refugees
Issues in Qualitative and Quantitative Research
Ahearn, F. (ed)
In recent years, scholars in the fields of refugee studies and forced migration have extended their areas of interest and research into the phenomenon of displacement, human response to it, and ways to intervene to assist those affected, increasingly focusing on the emotional and social impact of displacement on refugees and their adjustment to the traumatic experiences. In the process, the positive concept of "psychosocial wellness" was developed as discussed in this volume. In it noted scholars address the strengths and limitations of their investigations, citing examples from their work with refugees from Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Palestine, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Eastern Europe, Bosnia, and Chile. The authors discuss how they define "psychosocial wellness," as well as the issues of sample selection, measurement, reliability and validity, refugee narratives and "voices," and the ability to generalize findings and apply these to other populations. The key question that has guided many of these investigations and underlies the premise of this book is "what happens to an ordinary person who has experienced an extraordinary event?" This volume also highlights the fact that those involved in such research must also deal with their own emotional responses as they hear victims tell of killing, torture, humiliation, and dispossesion. The volume will therefore appeal to practitioners of psychology, psychiatry, social work, nursing, and anthropology. However, its breadth and the evaluation of the strengths and disadvantages of both qualitative and quantitative methods also make it an excellent text for students.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies
-
September 1998
Mastering Soldiers
Conflict, Emotions, and the Enemy in an Israeli Army Unit
Ben-Ari, E.
Studies of the military that deal with the actual experience of troops in the field are still rare in the social sciences. In fact, this ethnographic study of an elite unit in the Israeli Defense Force is the only one of its kind. As an officer of this unit and a professional anthropologist, the author was ideally positioned for his role as participant observer. During the eight years he spent with his unit he focused primarily on such notions as "conflict", "the enemy", and "soldiering" because they are, he argues, the key points of reference for "what we are" and "what we are trying to do" and form the basis for interpreting the environment within which armies operate. Relying on the latest anthropological approaches to cognitive models and the social constructions of emotion and masculinity, the author offers an in-depth analysis of the dynamics that drive the men's attitudes and behavior, and a rare and fascinating insight into the reality of military life.
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology Gender Studies
-
April 1996
Tolerance Between Intolerance and the Intolerable
Ricoeur, P. (ed)
It seems more urgent than ever before to fend off the rising wave of intolerance and at the same time determine the nature of tolerance and its limits. As Ricoeur says in his Foreword: "Tolerance is a tricky subject: too easy or too difficult. It is indeed too easy to deplore intolerance, without putting oneself into question, oneself and the different allegiances with which each person identifies." In order to explore these complexities, he has gathered together a number of prominent thinkers from various parts of the world and areas of activity and invited them to reflect on the "obstacles and limits to tolerance." The Declaration of Principles on Tolerance, issued by the United Nations in 1995, rounds up this remarkable collection of essays.
Contributors: Norberto Bobbio, Vaclav Havel, Jeanne Hersch, Bernard Williams, Octavio Paz, Ghislain Waterlot, Antoine Garapon, Mario Bettati, Yehudi Menuhin, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Hans Küng, Wole Soyinka, Ionna Kuçuradi, Monique Canto-Sperber, Paul Ricoeur, Desmond Tutu.
DIOGENES LIBRARY
Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Cultural Studies
-
August 1996
A Tamil Asylum Diaspora
Sri Lankan Migration, Settlement and Politics in Switzerland
McDowell, C.
During twelve years of ethno-nationalist secessionist violence in the north and east of Sri Lanka, insurrection in the south, and island-wide state repression, many Tamils were forced to seek political asylum overseas. At least 200,000 Tamils, primarily from the Jaffna Peninsula, have escaped to Europe of whom ca. 25,000 (the largest group relative to the population) have settled in Switzerland, the focus of this study. The author examines the conditions in Sri Lanka that led to the flight, the phases and technicalities of the emigration and resettlement in Switzerland. Based on anthropological fieldwork and on completely new archival material, the author not only looks at the development of the Tamil community in all its diversity but also at the impact of federal and cantonal policy and practice, at the economic situation and broader changes in Switzerland which led to demands for reforms to the country's asylum and immigration rules. In this respect, Switzerland set an example that other governments were soon to follow.
Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology