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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
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.
Fourth in the annual series, this volume reviews the transformative changes which have emerged in the armed conflicts in South Asia in 2010, several of these with long and convoluted histories, including the conflicts in Jammu & Kashmir, northeast India and the Naxalite movement in central India; as also issues of autonomy in Balochistan, the FATA region in Pakistan, the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, and the Terai foothills in Nepal. The book examines whether armed conflicts have transformed since their inception; or only metamorphosed into the sullen acceptance that could usher future violence. While conflicts in South Asia have been interspersed with peace efforts, the book looks at the complex trajectories that such attempts have taken. Specifically, it identifies three regions where most significant transformative trends were witnessed in South Asia in 2010: conflict-ridden Sri Lanka, Af-Pak and the Naxalite regions of India.
This book aims at a deeper understanding of social processes, dynamics and institutions shaping collective violence. It argues that violence is a social practice that adheres to social logics and, in its collective form, appears as recurrent patterns. In search of characteristics, mechanisms and logics of violence, contributions deliver ethnographic descriptions of different forms of collective violence and contextualize these phenomena within broader spatial and temporal structures. The studies show that collective violence, at least if it is sustained over a certain period of time, aims at organization and therefore develops constitutive and integrative mechanisms. Practices of social mobilization of people and economic resources, their integration in functional structures, and the justification or legitimization of these structures sooner or later lead to the establishment of new forms of (violent) orders, be it at the margins of or beyond the state. Cases discussed include riots in Gujarat, India, mass violence in Somalia, social orders of violence and non-violence in Colombia, humanitarian camps in Uganda, trophy-taking in North America, and violent livestock raiding in Kenya. This book was originally published as a special issue of Civil Wars.
The book begins with an agenda-setting introduction which will provide an overview of the central question being addressed, such as the circumstances associated with the move towards a political settlement, the parameters of this settlement and the factors that have assisted in bringing it about. The remaining contributions will focus on a range of cases selected for their diversity and their capacity to highlight the full gamut of political approaches to conflict resolution. The cases vary in: the intensity of the conflict (from Belgium, where it is potential rather than actual, to Sri Lanka, where it has come to a recent violent conclusion); in the geopolitical relationship between the competing groups (from Cyprus, where they are sharply segregated geographically, to Northern Ireland, where they are intermingled); in the extent to which a stable constitutional accommodation has been reached (ranging from the Basque Country, with a large range of unresolved problems, to South Africa, which has achieved a significant level of institutional stability). This book ranges over the world's major geopolitical zones, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe and will be of interest to practitioners in the field of international security. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.
This book examines the major armed conflicts in South Asia. The articles study conflict management, look at the direction the armed conflict is likely to take and provide a set of alternative measures that could be pursued by the actors. Designed as an annual series, the articles provide a brief historical sketch of the emergence of armed conflict, outlining its various phases. This volume examines the various armed conflicts in South Asia in 2009 in Afghanistan, FATA and NWFP, J&K, North-East India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and sectarian and Naxalite violence in Pakistan and India respectively. The volume also includes an exclusive chapter on the continuing story of suicide terrorism in Pakistan. This important collection discusses India 's geo-strategic importance and its common borders with its neighbours; the psychological and economic costs of violence and the problem of refugee migrants; treaties, memorandums and ceasefire agreements signed over the past several years across countries; the role of the United Nations and other peacekeeping forces; and the future of failed and failing states.
This book analyses the root causes of suicide terrorism at both the elite and rank-and- file levels of the Hamas and also explains why this tactic has disappeared in the post-2006 period. This volume adopts a multi-causal, multi-level approach to analyse the use of suicide bombings by Hamas and its individual operatives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It uses extensive fieldwork and on-the-ground interviews in order to delve beneath the surface and understand why and how suicide operations were adopted as a sustained mechanism of engagement within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Three core factors fuelled Hamas's suicide bombing campaigns. First, Palestinian suicide operations are a complex combination of instrumental and expressive violence adopted by both organisations and individuals to achieve political and/or societal survival, retaliation and competition. In other words, suicide bombings not only serve distinct political and strategic goals for both Hamas and its operatives but they also serve to convey a symbolic message to various audiences, within Israel, the Palestinian territories and around the world. Second, suicide operations perform a crucial role in the formation and consolidation of Palestinian national identity and are also the latest manifestation of the historically entrenched cultural norm of militant heroic martyrdom. Finally, Hamas's use of political Islam also facilitates the articulation, justification and legitimisation of suicide operations as a modern-day jihad against Israel through the means of modern interpretations and fatwas. This approach not only facilitates a much needed, multifaceted, holistic understanding of suicide bombings in this particular region but also yields policy-relevant lessons to address extreme political violence in other parts of the world. This book will be of much interest to students of Hamas, terrorism, Middle East politics and security studies.
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.
The book begins with an agenda-setting introduction which will provide an overview of the central question being addressed, such as the circumstances associated with the move towards a political settlement, the parameters of this settlement and the factors that have assisted in bringing it about. The remaining contributions will focus on a range of cases selected for their diversity and their capacity to highlight the full gamut of political approaches to conflict resolution. The cases vary in:
This book ranges over the world's major geopolitical zones, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe and will be of interest to practitioners in the field of international security. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.
Small arms and light artillery are the primary weapons of most armed conflicts. International responses have been shaped by the view that they are abundantly available and easily accessible to all on a global illicit market. This book argues that the arming of conflict is complexly structured and highly dynamic. It uncovers and describes the construction and interaction of structures and dynamics at global and regional levels, which shape the arming patterns of both state and non-state actors.
The close and complex relationship between conflict and communication has been vividly illustrated in work spanning the writings of Homer and Thucydides to blogs bashed out on contemporary battlefields. And in recent decades there has been a huge growth in scholarly and popular interest in the subject. As serious research flourishes as never before, this new two-volume collection from Routledge's acclaimed Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies series has been assembled by the field's leading thinker to meet the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of cross-disciplinary literature. Drawing on disparate, and sometimes less accessible, sources, the two volumes gather together canonical and the very best cutting-edge scholarship to cover a diverse range of key themes, including: the theory and reality of journalistic practice; the effects of conflict communication on the policy process; and the impact of technology on the very nature of war and conflict. The collection also includes a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. War and Conflict Communication is an essential work of reference and will be welcomed as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.
The essays in this volume are concerned with armed conflicts in South Asia and the conflict management efforts made to mitigate them. Articles in the volume study conflict management, look at the direction armed conflict is likely to take and provide a set of alternative measures that could be perused by the actors. It addresses five key issues: history of the armed conflict, identifying the principal actors of the conflict, describing the course of the conflict and its major trends, evaluating conflict management measures undertaken, if any, presenting appropriate conclusions. It also includes additional chapters on Naxalism and sectarian strife in Pakistan. Designed as an annual series, this important collection discusses India's geo-strategic importance including its common borders with its neighbours; the psychological and economic costs of violence, and the problem of refugee migrants; treaties and ceasefire agreements signed across countries; the role of the UN and other peacekeeping forces; and the future of failed and failing democracies. The book makes an important contribution to analysing armed conflicts and conflict resolution.
This edited volume is the first detailed exploration of the last phase of the Cold War, taking a critical look at the crisis of detente in Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The transition from detente to a new phase of harsh confrontation and severe crises is an interesting, indeed crucial, phase of the evolution of the international system. This book makes use of previously unreleased archival materials, moving beyond existing interpretations of this period by challenging the traditional bipolar paradigm that focuses mostly on the role of the superpowers in the transformation of the international system. The essays here emphasize the combination and the interplay of a large number of variables- political, ideological, economic and military - and explore the topic from a truly international perspective. Issues covered include human rights, the Euromissiles, the CSCE (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe), the Revolution in Military Affairs, economic growth and its consequences.
This textbook offers an accessible introduction to the historical, technical, and strategic context of global cyber conflict. The second edition has been revised and updated throughout, with three new chapters. Cyber warfare involves issues of doctrine, strategy, policy, international relations (IR) and operational practice associated with computer network attack, computer network exploitation and computer network defense. However, it is conducted within complex sociopolitical settings alongside related forms of digital contestation. This book provides students with a comprehensive perspective on the technical, strategic and policy issues associated with cyber conflict, as well as an introduction to key state and non-state actors. Specifically, the book provides a comprehensive overview of several key issue areas: The historical context of the emergence and evolution of cyber warfare, including the basic characteristics and methods of computer network attack, exploitation and defense An interdisciplinary set of theoretical perspectives on conflict in the digital age from the point of view of the fields of IR, security studies, psychology and science, technology and society (STS) studies Current national perspectives, policies, doctrines and strategies relevant to cyber warfare An examination of key challenges in international law, norm development and deterrence; and The role of emerging information technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing in shaping the dynamics of global cyber conflict This textbook will be essential reading for students of cybersecurity/cyber conflict and information warfare, and highly recommended for students of intelligence studies, security and strategic studies, defense policy, and IR in general.
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER MEDAL FOR MILITARY LITERATURE** **SHORTLISTED FOR BRITISH ARMY BOOK OF THE YEAR** In the wars in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and in recent conflicts more generally, liberal powers have blurred the line between military and political activity. Operationally, such blurring is highly effective: it works on the ground. Conversely, in strategic terms, it erases the distinction between war and peace. This, Simpson contends, is undesirable: how can policy control armed force, if armed force is a direct extension of policy? As the information revolution reinforces the politicisation of combat, this is likely to be an irreversible trend. The question this book seeks to answer is not whether the West should engage in such practices, but how to manage, gain advantage from, and mitigate the associated risks. Liberal powers need to win conflicts on the ground, and yet preserve a healthy distinction between war and peace. Failure to preserve that distinction will result in those powers being caught in endless conflicts for which they are operationally ill-equipped. War From The Ground Up offers a distinctive perspective in its consideration of the concept of contemporary warfare. While most accounts of conflict survey the battlefield from an academic perspective, or across it as a personal combat narrative, Simpson looks up from the front line to consider the concepts that put him there, and how they played out.
When not at war, armies are often used to control civil disorders, especially in eras of rapid social change and unrest. But in nineteenth century Europe, without the technological advances of modern armies and police forces, an army's only advantages were discipline and organization-and in the face of popular opposition to the regime in power, both could rapidly deteriorate. Such was the case in France after the Napoleonic Wars, where a cumulative recent history of failure weakened an already fragile army's ability to keep the peace. After the February 1848 overthrow of the last king of France, the new republican government proved remarkably resilient, retaining power while pursuing moderate social policies despite the concerted efforts of a variety of radical and socialist groups. These efforts took numerous forms, ranging from demonstrations to attempted coups to full-scale urban combat, and culminated in the crisis of the June Days. At stake was the future of French government and the social and economic policy of France at large. In Controlling Paris, Jonathan M. House offers us a study of revolution from the viewpoint of the government rather than the revolutionary. It is not focused on military tactics so much as on the broader issues involved in controlling civil disorders: relations between the government and its military leaders, causes and social issues of public disorder, political loyalty of troops in crisis, and excessive use of force to control civil disorders. Yet somehow, despite all these disadvantages, the French police and armed forces prevented regime change far more often than they failed to do so.
This book offers an original assessment of the ways in which the sociocultural code of blood revenge and its modern remnants shape irregular warfare. Despite being a common driver of communal violence, blood revenge has received little attention from scholars. With many civil wars and insurgencies occurring in areas where the custom lingers, strengthening our understanding of blood revenge is essential for discerning how conflicts change and evolve. Drawing upon extensive multidisciplinary evidence, this book is the first in the literature on civil war and insurgency to analyse the impact of blood revenge and its modern remnants on irregular warfare. Even when blood revenge undergoes erosion, its unregulated version still shapes the social fabric of insurgency, although in different ways than its institutionalised counterpart. At times of political instability, the presence of a culture of retaliation weighs heavily on the dynamics of violent mobilisation, target selection, recruitment, and disengagement. The book brings in evidence from dozens of conflicts, providing unprecedented insights into how a better understanding of blood revenge can improve military blueprints for irregular warfare. This book will be of much interest to students of insurgency, terrorism, military and strategic studies, anthropology, and sociology, as well as to decision-makers and irregular warfare professionals.
This book is a critical study of incentives commonly used to induce non-state armed groups to engage in peace negotiations. It offers a closer analysis of these incentives, which offer such groups a place or a stake in governance, suggesting that not only are they frequently ineffective, but that they can have unintended and dangerous side effects.
The conflict in cultures between the Arabs and the Israelis is brought to life in the first person accounts, letters, memoirs, and stories of ordinary people caught in the strife. Mired in the tangled past of the history of the region, and fired by the events of the past fifty years, the Arab-Israeli conflict must be viewed as both a long-standing and a recent development. Against the background of the changes that have characterized that society, Goldscheider, a leading authority on the social history of Israel, examines the perspectives of both sides in the conflict and the impact that it has on the daily lives of families and individuals. Twelve primary source documents give voice to the feelings of ordinary Arabs and Jews who have experienced this conflict in their own lives. Comprehensive and engagingly written essays on the historical background of the conflict and portraits of the Arab and Jewish communities in Israel and in the diaspora will help the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the struggle that put the first person accounts in historical, social and cultural perspective. The primary documents are organized thematically into sections on ethnic clashes among Jewish immigrants, voices of the new Israeli settlers, voices of the Palestinians, and issues of identity. Students will be able to compare and contrast the points of view and deep feelings of people on both sides of the conflict, which will enrich their appreciation of the complex issues involved in understanding what life is really like for the people of the region. Ideas for exploration will help students and teachers to focus on thematic issues for research papers and class debate. A selection of official documents such as the Declaration of the State of Israel, the Palestinian National Charter, UN Security Council Resolution 242, and the Camp David Accords, plus an annotated bibliography of recommended books and web sites, offer additional reference value.
In Gambling with Violence, Yelena Biberman tackles a global problem that is particularly consequential for Pakistan and India: state outsourcing of violence to ordinary civilians, criminals, and ex-insurgents. Why would these countries gamble with their own national security by outsourcing violencearming nonstate actors inside their own borders? Drawing on over 200 interviews, archival research, and fieldwork conducted across Asia, Europe, and North America, Biberman introduces the "balance-of-interests" thesis to deepen our understanding of state-nonstate alliances in civil war. This framework centers on the distribution of power during war and shows how various combinations of interests result in distinct types of coalitions. Incorporating case studies of civil war and counterinsurgency, her book sheds light on how militias, alliances, and South Asian security connect today.
In this edited volume, experts on conflict resolution examine the impact of the crises triggered by the coronavirus and official responses to it. The pandemic has clearly exacerbated existing social and political conflicts, but, as the book argues, its longer-term effects open the door to both further conflict escalation and dramatic new opportunities for building peace. In a series of short essays combining social analysis with informed speculation, the contributors examine the impact of the coronavirus crisis on a wide variety of issues, including nationality, social class, race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. They conclude that the period of the pandemic may well constitute a historic turning point, since the overall impact of the crisis is to destabilize existing social and political systems. Not only does this systemic shakeup produce the possibility of more intense and violent conflicts, but also presents new opportunities for advancing the related causes of social justice and civic peace. This book will be of great interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, public policy and International Relations.
The First Northern Ireland Peace Process covers the various attempts to end the 'Troubles' from 1972-76. These attempts included secret talks with the Provisional IRA and a parallel process to build a political consensus between the British and Irish Governments and the main constitutional parties in Northern Ireland.
One of the most crucial issues to affect national policy in the
state of Israel is that of relations between its Jewish and Arab
citizens. The confrontation of October 2000 demonstrated the
explosive potential of the unresolved dilemmas posed by these
relations.
After decades of striving to prevent international conflict, major armed conflicts in the 1990s have taken place within national boundaries. After the series of national independence wars in the 1950s and 1960s and frequent geopolitical wars in the 1970s and 1980s, a category of 'wars of the third kind' prevailed. The aim of this book is to consider the root causes of recent internal conflicts, and to develop long-term conflict prevention strategies from here. New insights suggest the central role of politico-economic inequalities in ethnic, religious and cultural conflict. The United Nations system has just started to adjust to this new reality of conflict and make long-term conflict prevention a priority issue on international agendas. Whereas development practitioners should principally conceive their work through a conflict prevention lens, there is a shift in focus to United Nations agencies that deal with the economic characteristics of conflict. The unbroken significance of a sustainable industrial development process in developing countries, may allow the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) a particular vantage point and role in the long-term prevention of conflict.
This book examines ethnoterritorial conflict and reconciliation in Ireland from the 1916 Rising to Brexit (2021), including the production and consequences of the island's two distinct political units. Highlighting key geographic themes of bordering, unity, division, and national narratives, it explores how geopolitical space has been employed over time to (re)define divided national allegiances throughout Ireland and within Irish-British relations. The analysis draws from in-depth interviews and archival research, and spans supranational, state, municipal, neighborhood, and individual scales. The book pays particular attention to uneven power structures, statecraft, perceived truths, lived experiences, reconciliation efforts, and renegotiations of national narratives in the production of symbolic landscapes, divided cities, and "shared" space. An Introduction to the Geopolitics of Conflict, Nationalism, and Reconciliation in Ireland provides readers with an analysis of geopolitical power relations and different spatial productions of conflict and peacebuilding in Ireland. Offering deeper understanding of these historic and contemporary geopolitical intersections, this book makes a valuable contribution to the fields of Political Geography, Border Studies, Irish Studies, European Studies, International Relations, Cultural Geography, and Regional Studies. |
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