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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Peace studies > General
The book ventures into the explanation of intra-state communal conflict, more narrowly of the conflict between majority and minority communal groups, and develops arguments that highlight the causal impact of intergroup economic inequality. Its quest for empirical support has led to the compilation of three large, inter-related datasets, typifying the condition of minorities worldwide. They are mainly based on the Ethnic Power Relations, Minorities at Risk, and Quality of Government data, yet also involve information from a multitude of other sources, such as national statistics, cross-national demographic surveys, and the World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples. The group-level data, featuring 860 communal groups, show that an impressive forty-five percent of the world's population do not belong to the majority communal group in their country. As reasonably feared, minorities are in general politically less empowered than their pluralities, and also poorer. Results from multivariate regression analysis corroborate the deleterious impact of horizontal economic inequality on inter-group hostility, measured either as group grievance or violent conflict. The double measurement substantiates the intuition that not all low-to-medium strength hostility is doomed to develop into violent conflict. In fortunate conditions, intergroup disputes can be solved, or compromises may be reached without turning to violence. Part of the analytical efforts have been directed towards detecting the differences between the causes of communal and non-communal social conflicts; and also towards deciphering which institutional conditions aggravate and which mitigate communal conflicts. A large number of variables in the regression models attempt to operationalize constellations that influence the evolution of conflicts either toward peaceful solutions or toward armed collision. The policy implications of the findings are not trivial. Positive discrimination, which in the United States is known as Affirmative Action, is often resisted by denying the unfortunate facts that make it necessary. In addition, currently the policies recommended for heterogeneous societies are also fiercely debated between advocates of power-sharing arrangements and those who would like to facilitate the communal homogenization of each state. This latter type of constitutional engineering is at variance with the political empowerment of minorities, a measure that could alleviate tensions rooted in economic disadvantages.
This book examines the extent to which Russia's strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin's own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book's analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin's statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin's agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.
This book examines the extent to which Russia's strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin's own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book's analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin's statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin's agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has elaborated its own philosophy of security. Driven by emergencies and increasing risks, both in the region and globally, Emirati authorities have developed a sense of anticipation as well as an agility to react promptly to new threats through the ability to assess the risks in any given situation. War and the avatars of conflict are a constant reality in the Middle East. Transnational threats, including the regional context, the war in Yemen, insecurity in the Levant and tensions with Iran affect the overall stability of the Peninsula and consequently that of the UAE. Owing to the inclusion of the UAE in the networks of globalization, non-traditional security issues are not relegated to the background. Issues such as COVID-19, immigration, cybersecurity and human trafficking need to be addressed domestically as well as globally. This volume offers a comprehensive and multifaceted examination of the traditional and non-traditional security measures present in the UAE that allow the country to remain politically stable in an otherwise volatile region, and aims to offer a comprehensive overview of all forms of security in the UAE.
This book examines the theory and practice of interactive peacemaking, centering the role of people in making peace. The book presents the theory and practice of peacemaking as found in contemporary processes globally. By putting people at the center of the analysis, it outlines the possibilities of peacemaking by and for the people whose lives are touched by ongoing conflicts. While considering examples from around the world, this book specifically focuses on peacemaking in the Georgian-South Ossetian context. It tells the stories of individuals on both sides of the conflict, and explores why people choose to make peace, and how they work within their societies to encourage this. This book emphasizes theory built from practice and offers methodological guidance on learning from practice in the conflict resolution field. This book will be of much interest to students and practitioners of peacemaking, conflict resolution, South Caucasus politics and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Today, international security issues are slowly being reconsidered through the lens of human security, which refers to a combination of political, economic, social, nutritional, environmental, physical health, and personal safety issues. When first mentioned in 1994, the concept of human security represented a significant first step in understanding that security dilemmas could no longer be seen as purely geopolitical phenomena that revolve around the nation-state. This book explains the progress made toward human security since then and the steps that remain to be taken to achieve it fully. It begins by addressing how the nation-state is both the source and the solution of security problems in the world before demonstrating how the meaning of security itself is being reconsidered and traditional approaches are being challenged. Building on the concept of human security, the book looks at how we are slowly moving toward large-scale political and social change. It argues that it is time for a "security 2.0" approach, different from the traditional models of national security. Thus Security 2.0 addresses new challenges and their political responses, pointing toward alternatives to what is referred to as "permanent war." It highlights such themes as cooperation, the multi-dimensionality of security issues, and the continuing pressures towards democratization, global markets, and multilevel governance and how these contribute today to make a safer world. Further, it shows how environmental threats, global corporations, identity issues, and international regimes such as the EU, are also fostering a fundamental rethinking of the concept of security. Including a variety of perspectives, and written in a jargon-free, accessible manner, the work will provide students with new insights on conflict processes and international security.
After war, does truth telling lead to more peaceful attitudes between former enemies? This book is the first to study the over-time effect of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process on people's attitudes towards peace. Focusing on the Solomon Islands TRC process, one of the least known or studied TRC processes in the world, and using surveys, focus groups and in depth interviews, the book reveals some critical issues for peacebuilding. For example, while support of the TRC was consistently quite strong over the two years of the study, there was a sharp decline in trust in the process as well as a significant increase in distrust and suspicion towards ex-combatants over the two-year period. The book shows that the ex-combatants did not feel safe to tell the truth in the TRC and had therefore decided beforehand what to say in the hearings. A systematic telling of untruths thereby took place, severely undermining relationships and peacebuilding in the country. The book weaves the findings from the Solomon Islands with experiences of other post-conflict truth telling process around the world, and suggests practical guidelines for future TRC processes after war.
This book focuses on the Indo-Pacific region's growing prominence as the world's major powers gravitate toward this space to expand their influence. With dynamic shifts taking place in the globe's most strategically volatile region, Indo-Pacific Strategies aims at clarifying the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, expounded both as a strategic concept and nascent region, thus contributing to the burgeoning policy and academic debate. The book offers indispensable insights and appropriate remedies to maintain the rules-based international order as threatened by China's increasingly assertive and bellicose posturing. It offers up-to-date analyses of Covid-19-related geopolitical trends, the strategies of various Indo-Pacific states against the backdrop of great power competition, the increasingly confrontational stance of Indo-Pacific states against China and the 2020 US election results. This unique book presents deep insights into the roles of Eurasia, small island states, the Middle East and Africa, in addition to Australia, India, Japan and the US, thereby providing much needed comparative studies. It also closely investigates the strategic and tactical operationalization of the Indo-Pacific, making it an essential read for scholars, policymakers, students, and strategists in the field of international politics and Area Studies. Excerpt from the foreword by ABE Shinzo, (former) Prime Minister of Japan "I think this book is the timeliest attempt to bring together the wisdom of eleven people to present a multifaceted view of the FOIP [Free and Open Indo-Pacific]. As a reader, I would like to express my gratitude to the editors and contributors for their valuable intellectual contributions." See the preview function on this website to access the full text.
International commissions, academics, practitioners, and the media have long been critical of the UN's development efforts as disjointed and not fit for purpose; yet the organization has been an essential contributor to progress and peacebuilding. This handbook explores the activities of the UN development system (UNDS), the largest operational pillar of the organization and arguably the arena in which its ideational endeavors have made the biggest contribution to thinking and standards. Contributions focus on the role of the UNDS in sustainable social, economic, and environmental development, describing how the UNDS interacts with the other major functions of the UN system, and how it performs operationally in the context of the new 2030 development agenda focused on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The volume is divided into three sections: Realizing the SDGs: opportunities and challenges; Resources, partnerships, and management; and Imagining the future of the UN in development. Comprised of chapters by knowledgeable and authoritative UN experts, this book provides cutting-edge and up-to-date research on the strengths and weaknesses of the UNDS, with each chapter focusing on different operational and ideational aspects. Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license at https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780367186852_oachapter11.pdf
This book investigates why Chile suddenly confronted a violent social revolt in October 2019, after almost thirty years of political stability, during which time the country was broadly regarded as Latin America's most successful nation. Since democratic restoration in 1990, Chile's relatively high levels of political stability, increasing prosperity and social modernisation have stood out in a region shaken by political convulsion and economic malaise. In early October 2019, President Sebastian Pinera confidently claimed that Chile represented a true 'oasis' of political stability and economic vitality in Latin America. However, just weeks later, the announcement of a small increase in the price of Santiago's underground transport system unleashed an unprecedented wave of violent anti-government protests in the country, with protestors ultimately demanding Pinera's resignation and the end of neoliberalism and the 1980 Constitution, among many other demands. This book analyses the causes of Chile's socio-political upheaval, arguing that the fast social and economic modernisation produced by the neoliberal system led to a series of destabilising socio-political processes in the country. At a time when much analysis of the October uprising tends to be superficial or polarised on ideological grounds, this book provides a much-needed sociological and institutional analysis of the crisis. It will be an important read for scholars of Latin American politics and development, as well as those with a broader interest in state legitimacy, social movements and political contestation against neoliberalism.
This book is about the courageous decision taken by the Government of a Ceara, Brazil, to tackle the painful economic and social conflict caused by the enormous gap between rich and poor. Instead of confining their attempts to easy solutions like transfer payments, the Governor of the State, Tasso Ribeiro Jereissati, decided in 2001 to cut straight into the roots of the problem, aiming to develop a genuine understanding of the conflict between growth and distribution, and thereby provide real, long-term solutions to the state's problems. Pedro Sisnando Leite, then Secretary of Rural Development, led this effort together with other state secretaries, particularly Monica Clark Nunes Cavalcante, Carlos Matos Lima and Alex Araujo.The book presents the results of a unique harmonic integration between academic research, public policy elaboration, and concrete implementation of public measures. The policies devised, implemented and evaluated in this book are focused on potential solutions to this market failure, at both the regional level and the local level. Studied and endorsed by many academics and policy makers around the world, the model of Ceara provides a unique and exemplary solution to conflict and inequality.
Religion was thought to be part of the problem in Ireland and
incapable of turning itself into part of the solution. Many
commentators deny the churches a role in Northern Ireland's peace
process or belittle it, focusing on the few well-known events of
church involvement and the small number of high profile religious
peacebuilders. This new study seeks to correct various
misapprehensions about the role of the churches by pointing to
their major achievements in both the social and political
dimensions of the peace process, by small-scale, lesser-known
religious peacebuilders as well as major players. The churches are
not treated lightly or sentimentally and major weaknesses in their
contribution are highlighted. The study challenges the view that
ecumenism was the main religious driver of the peace process,
focusing instead on the role of evangelicals, it warns against
romanticising civil society, pointing to its regressive aspects and
counter-productive activities, and queries the relevance of the
idea of 'spiritual capital' to understanding the role of the
churches in post-conflict reconstruction, which the churches
largely ignore.
How Children Understand War and Peace is a landmark book that examines these two vital questions and provides a solid framework on which to build answers. Written by an international panel of experts in the fields of developmental, social, and educational psychology, How Children Understand War and Peace presents a collection of the most current thoughts and insights into how children and adolescents develop an understanding of war, conflict, and peace. Based on research studies done in Australia, Canada, Finland, Holland, Israel, Portugal, Northern Ireland, Sweden, and the United States, this comprehensive volume presents evidence that perceptions of war and peace formed during childhood relate directly to adult perspectives on these critical issues. The contributors present persuasive evidence that our knowledge about how youngsters from around the globe develop and form worldviews can be used to create educational programs that teach children peace education, conflict management, and conflict resolution.
Contesting conventional assumptions of the modern nation-state, this book challenges us to rethink the segmentation of the political realm and its underlying economic and social processes. Cognizant of the historical context of systemic change, Lilyblad reconstructs how illicit social order arises from agonistic competition over territory, authority, and institutions. Immersive empirical investigation traces this bottom-up process in local conflict zones, detailing how spontaneous configurations of violence, socioeconomic resources, and legitimacy transcend the divide between public and private. Ultimately, the analytical vantage of global governance assesses the sobering implications for sovereignty to more accurately reflect the world we have, not the one we may want. By showing how these inherently local illicit social orders develop apart from - not below - the state within a global anarchic society, this book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including political scientists, economists, sociologists, geographers, as well as researchers in interdisciplinary fields such as International Development, International Political Economy, and Global Governance.
In case of security threats there is a need for temporal access to complete, updated, reliable information, in a dedicated form, is an essential prerequisite to effectively counter security threats. Currently the necessary information exists in a multitude of forms and formats geographically and physically scattered over different countries, institutes and organisations, and are subject to widely different data policies and management schemes. Moreover, there is no complete and updated overview of the existing information, e.g. in the form of a metadata catalogue. As a result, integration of this information in case of emergencies has proven to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Although in some cases, interesting and impressive "demonstrations" have been shown of the possibilities of the integration of information, for a number of reasons these have reached the "operational" stage.
This book examines the political and military dynamic between threatened local regimes and Western powers, and it argues that the power of informal politics forces local regimes to simulate statebuilding. Reforms enabling local states to take care of their own terrorist and insurgency threats are a blueprint for most Western interventions to provide a way out of protracted internal conflicts. Yet, local regimes most often fail to implement reforms that would have strengthened their hand. This book examines why local regimes derail the reforms demanded by Western powers when they rely on their support to stay in power during existentially threatening violent crises. Based on the political settlement framework, the author analyses how web-like networks of militarized elites require local regimes to use informal politics to stay in power. Four case studies of Western intervention are presented: Iraq (2011-2018), Mali (2011-2020), Chad (2005-2010), and Algeria (1991-2000). These studies demonstrate that informal politics narrows strategic possibilities and forces regimes to rely on coup-proofing military strategies, to continue their alliances with militias and former insurgents, and to simulate statebuilding reforms to solve the dilemma of satisfying militarized elites and Western powers at the same time. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, international intervention, counter-insurgency, civil wars, and international relations.
This volume explores the paramount importance of family to jihadism in France, Spain and in Europe more generally. In France, special focus is given to the Mohammed Merah paradigmatic case study in the Toulouse region. In Spain, attention is given to the North and to Catalonia. With attention to both the concrete family - often in crisis - and the imaginary family invented by radicalized youth to substitute, this book shows the fundamental need among many jihadists to reconstitute the family, whether in the form of a clan or the imagined Caliphate (or neo-Ummah): a form of shared existence that offers escape from societies in which jihadists feel ill-at-ease. Demonstrating the failure of an emphasis on the individual actor to capture the meaning of jihadism, Family and Jihadism reveals the fundamental importance to our understanding of jihadist activity of the family (in an extended anthropological sense) - real or imagined - into which the individual is inserted. A study of the crisis of family and the re-creation of a new, enlarged family in the lives of young jihadists, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, politics and security studies with interests in radicalisation, political violence, social movements and religious violence.
Unlike much of the previous literature that have covered small states' channels of influence, this book focuses on the tensions created by the interaction of the national and international levels. The book is innovative in focusing on the domestic dimension involved in determining the performance of small states in European security organisations, while not ignoring the transnational and international structural factors that shape the domestic level. Offers new conceptual tools to advance the study of small states as well as detailed empirical material on various aspects of small states' security policy in Europe.
This book examines the phenomenon of paramilitarism across Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, offering a nuanced perspective while identifying key patterns in the way paramilitary violence is implicated in processes of capital accumulation, state-building, and the reproduction of social power. Paramilitary violence, a key modality of coercion in the era of globalization, has been pursued by states and dominant classes in the Global South, to reproduce or extend their power over subaltern groups. Paramilitary groups are responsible for atrocities, including extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture, rape, and forced displacement. The book integrates empirically rich investigations into an emergent theory of political violence, capturing the relationship between parastatal armed actors, capital, and the state. The analysis sheds light on globally relevant phenomena such as the end of the Cold War, the shifting role of US hegemony, and evolving nature of the nation-state. The book is suitable for academics, graduate and upper-year undergraduate students, and policy-makers in development, human rights, and violence prevention. Given its interdisciplinary subject, it appeals to scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including political science, sociology, political anthropology, development, peace and conflict, security and terrorism, international relations, and global studies.
The book offers an interdisciplinary qualitative study of the history of policing in Brazil and its colonial underpinnings, providing theoretical accounts of the relationship between biopolitics, space, and race, and post-colonial/decolonial work on the state, violence, and the production of disposable political subjects. Focused empirically on contemporary (1985-2015) police killings and disappearances in favelas, particularly in Rio de Janeiro, the books argues that the invisibility of this phenomenon is the product of a colonial mindset - one that has persisted throughout Brazil's experience of both dictatorship and re-democratisation and is traceable to the legacies of the Portuguese empire and the plantation system implemented. Analysing the development of the police as a colonial mechanism of social control, Villenave shows how the "war on drugs" reproduces this same colonial logic and renders some, overwhelmingly black, lives disposable and thus vulnerable to unchecked police brutality and death. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics and also contributes to critical security studies, postcolonial and de-colonial thought, global politics, the politics of Latin America and political geography.
The book analyzes the elite-led efforts to transform the Brazilian legal order in the period between 1930-1975 and how U.S. Power played a major role in such a process. Besides the global circulation of ideas, the book discusses the Brazilian institutional development in the period. A profound "Crisis of Civilization" marked the first decades of the century: the references of space and time vanished with the vertiginous expansion of cities and industries, while a myriad of immigrants and former slaves were alleged to be threatening the country's traditions. Brazilian elites blamed liberalism for such a "Crisis". Based on a decade of research, this book centralizes Brazilian history in liberalism and offers a genealogy of the jurisprudential and institutional struggles to correct the culture of laissez-faire. Using archival sources, it shows the direct U.S. influence on Brazilian thought and development. Recasting the history of legal ideas in the 20th century and providing novel interpretations on major political processes, it offers a rigorous and fresh look at the development of liberalism in the country. Covering five decades of history and offering a transnational approach involving the U.S. hegemonic role in Brazil, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of law, U.S. foreign policy, area studies and international relations.
This book investigates rival narratives about the conflict in Syria from 2011 onwards. It examines the starkly different narratives about the Syrian conflict told by mainly Western mainstream and alternative media, and contrasts these narratives with the equally polarized but more nuanced narratives of mainly Western scholars and long-form journalists. Differences of narrative concerning the conflict include: what is deemed relevant context in trying to explain the war; whether the war is best seen as a civil conflict or as a proxy war fought among external powers; the degree of emphasis given to the alleged crimes of the Syrian regime as opposed to the alleged violence of Salafist militia; the accuracy of the "origin" story of the conflict in Daraa; the extent to which the initial protestors were secular campaigners calling for democracy or whether they were Muslim extremists seeking a sectarian society governed by sharia law. Several case studies of propaganda institutions are examined here, including the journalism of Marie Colvin; the role of government-funded NGOs; the controversies surrounding each of three major instances of alleged regime use of chemical weapons, and the politicization of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This book will be of much interest to students of media and communication studies, propaganda studies, Middle Eastern politics, and International Relations in general.
This volume explores the paramount importance of family to jihadism in France, Spain and in Europe more generally. In France, special focus is given to the Mohammed Merah paradigmatic case study in the Toulouse region. In Spain, attention is given to the North and to Catalonia. With attention to both the concrete family - often in crisis - and the imaginary family invented by radicalized youth to substitute, this book shows the fundamental need among many jihadists to reconstitute the family, whether in the form of a clan or the imagined Caliphate (or neo-Ummah): a form of shared existence that offers escape from societies in which jihadists feel ill-at-ease. Demonstrating the failure of an emphasis on the individual actor to capture the meaning of jihadism, Family and Jihadism reveals the fundamental importance to our understanding of jihadist activity of the family (in an extended anthropological sense) - real or imagined - into which the individual is inserted. A study of the crisis of family and the re-creation of a new, enlarged family in the lives of young jihadists, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, politics and security studies with interests in radicalisation, political violence, social movements and religious violence.
This book makes the case for why cooperation is the key to security within and between states, and for dealing with complex threats and challenges to international peace and security. It argues that cooperation is not altruism or liberal internationalism, rather it is in the self-interest of states. Drawing on both theory and practice, it looks at how cooperation can be promoted within and between states as well as in the global community. It explains the concept of 'cooperative security' and its potential contribution to promoting integration against the current of fragmentation. Furthermore, the book explores the potential impact of technology on cooperation. It makes an urgent call for new ideas and approaches to encourage people and states to work together to deal with complex threats and challenges. This book will be of particular interest to students of diplomacy studies, foreign policy and international relations, and to practitioners dealing with security issues.
This book examines the role of the United States in Greek-Turkish relations and fills an important gap in alliance theory regarding the guardian's dilemma. The strategy of a great power involves not only tackling threats from enemies, but also dealing with problems that arise between allies. Every time Greece and Turkey threatened to go to war against each other, the United States had to effectively restrain its two strategic allies without straining relations with either one of them. This book explores how the United States responded to the guardian's dilemma in six crises during the Cold War, pursuing a policy of dual restraint to prevent an intra-alliance conflict, mitigate the consequences of each crisis, and maintain effective control of the Rimland Bridge. From a neoclassical-realist standpoint, the book examines how the United States responded to each Greek-Turkish crisis, for what reasons, and with what results. It will be of interest to scholars of foreign policy, security studies, geopolitics, and international relations. |
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