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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Peace studies > General
In this second book of the Global Healing trilogy, Vipin Mehta takes us on the sacred journey to awaken spirituality beyond organized religions so that we can consciously create global healing by using metaphysical tools. The journey shows how spirituality will lead humanity by raising the level of human consciousness from nationalism to globalism and from patriotism to humanism.
Although much has been written about the Arab-Israeli conflict and about general theories of negotiation, this analysis and history is unique in linking major issues and peace plans to negotiation theory and strategy. Feste studies the basic structures of conflict and negotiation, offering no suggestions for radical solution but arguing for changes in approach that may bring about steps forward. This overview of all major peace efforts since 1947 and of negotiating strategies is intended for undergraduate and graduate courses in conflict resolution, Middle Eastern politics, and international relations; and for the use of political scientists, sociologists, students, and teachers concerned with ethnoconflict. The text analyzes the framework of the Arab-Israeli conflict, how it has built up, and how it has been maintained. The structure of the negotiation process is then viewed in the same way. Key elements in the Arab-Israeli conflict are considered historically and related directly to the process of negotiation and to theories about positional and principled bargaining and tactics needed in a pre-negotiation period and during negotiation to produce more successful results.
Water is a key issue on the agenda of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The circumstances in which Gaza gained its autonomy leaves it in a disadvantageous position with respect to water, and a deal on the hotly contested issue of the West Bank aquifers will be a protracted process. This book brings together the work of individuals involved directly in the negotiations and experts from various disciplines who have devoted their professional lives to the study of water and its management in the Jordan Basin. It looks at the issue from many different perspectives, offers new ideas and presents a realistic picture for the future.
For much of the last half century, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has seemed the outlier in global peace. Today Iraq, Libya, Israel/Palestine, Yemen, and Syria are not just countries, but synonyms for prolonged and brutal wars. But why is MENA so exceptionally violent? More importantly, can it change? Exploring the causes and consequences of wars and conflicts in this troubled region, Ariel Ahram helps readers answer these questions. In Part I, Ahram shows how MENA's conflicts evolved with the formation of its states. Violence varied from civil wars and insurgencies to traditional interstate conflicts and affected some countries more frequently than others. The strategies rulers employed to stay in power constrained how they recruited, trained, and equipped their armies. Part II explores dynamics that trap the region in conflict--oil dependence, geopolitical interference, and embedded identity cleavages. The catastrophic wars of the 2010s reflect the confounding effects of these traps, culminating in state collapse and intervention from the US and Russia, as well as regional powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Finally, Ahram considers the possibilities of peace, highlighting the disjuncture between local peacebuilding and national and internationally-backed mediation. War and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa will be an essential resource for students of peace and security studies and MENA politics, and anyone wanting to move beyond headlines and soundbites to understand the historical and social roots of MENA's conflicts.
Mike Ferner, a peace activist and journalist from Ohio, traveled to Baghdad twice, once just before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and once again a year later. In this book, he profiles Cliff Kindy of the Christian Peacemaker Teams; Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness; and other peace activists, soldiers, journalists, and ordinary Iraqis he met during his two extended visits to what became known as the Red Zone, the area outside the protected Green Zone enclave. He provides a rare inside look into the daily life of Iraqis before and after the war as well as a collective profile of segments of the contemporary American peace movement that have thus far been hidden from public view. These stories have been gathered on the dusty streets of Baghdad and from tiny farming villages in the Sunni Triangle. They were not collected from the lobby of a five-star hotel, nor from behind the tinted windows of an armored SUV. We meet activists who are unarmed, trained civilians who put their bodies in between rival factions to promote peace, sitting in front of tanks and bulldozers and fasting in the desert on the Iraq-Kuwait border shortly before 130,000 U.S. troops invaded in 2003. We also are given an unvarnished view of everyday people in Iraq—cab drivers, an unemployed engineer, a newspaper editor, farmers in a rural village—all living their lives as normally as possible in the cauldron their country has become. The humanity of the people in these stories will resonate with people of all political persuasions because they go beyond the portrayal of Iraqis we're used to seeing in the news—as casualties, victims, grieving parents, and shell-shocked children. Instead, when Ferner gave presentations upon his return from Iraq, the comment he most often heard was, These people are just like us. They're just like people we know.
Over the last decade, asymmetric warfare and terrorism have become prevalent threats to the United States. National security, today more than at any other time, demands decision-making under uncertainty. The issues presented in this book demonstrate that the value of planning depends on how well the USA can prepare for a perpetually unpredictable future. Each chapter examines pertinent management, leadership, and accountability issues related to U.S. national security and places readers at the centre of difficult decisions. Although the cases collected in this volume revolve around policy questions, they also illustrate more general policy dilemmas and are designed to stimulate new ideas. Endorsement: A] diverse and rich set of cases that explore many of the new challenges that confront U.S. national security policymakers today. Drawing on a team of established scholars and experienced practitioners, this book provides both an assessment of new threats and challenges and a case-based examination of decision-making processes... a compelling argument for the case-study approach and a fruitful blending of academic and practitioner perspectives and approaches. and decision-making processes as well as to our grasp of the security challenges of the 21st century. - Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D., Professor of National Security Policy and Strategy, and Chairman, Department of National Security and Strategy, U.S. Army War College.
This is the annual volume in a continuing UNESCO series that addresses a range of issues in the field of peace and conflict resolution. It provides an up-to-date overview of research on disarmament within the social sciences as well as background information to the new thinking about global security that emerged in 1988 and which has spurred the relaxing of international tensions. The volume also presents an invaluable comparison of viewpoints on the post-Cold War future and on the linking of disarmament to development issues. Changes in enemy perception, the problems of conversion (both economic and psychological) from military to peaceful production, and the growing danger of non-military threats to peace are among the phenomena analyzed here by a group of the world's leading scholars of peace and conflict studies. Information and insights into current conditions and a survey of the potential problems that could negatively affect the evolution of the new thinking and common security ideologies are offered by each author in chapters that represent important contributions to the discourse and discussion on peace and conflict. Following an introductory chapter that places the individual articles of the Yearbook in the context of the new thinking, Anatoli Leonidovich Adamichin demonstrates how the new thinking of Soviet policy makers is already reversing dangerous elements of the Cold War--a fact underlined by recent events in Eastern Bloc countries. The concepts of creative space and creative internationalism are investigated by Robert C. Johansen in his article on U.S.-Soviet security. K. Subrahmanyam considers disarmament and development, focusing on the imperatives of the interdependence of issues and peoples, and Hans Gunter Brauch surveys recent and on-going international research on disarmament in the social and human sciences. Chapters on regional developments and on the Unesco peace and disarmament programs complete the volume. For researchers, teachers, and students of peace and conflict resolution, this review of basic concepts, issues, and literature is an essential tool. Activists, concerned general readers, government and political leaders, and members of the diplomatic corps will find it not only factual but a source of inspiration and an incentive to practical action in the promotion of peace and security.
This up-to-date collection of documents, essential for understanding the evolution of the conflict and efforts to resolve it, avoids presenting one perspective or another. A brief introductory essay is followed by a chronology of major events and developments over the last century. The more than 100 documents or their extracts are arranged chronologically, and short introductions briefly discuss the place of the document in the history and evolution of the conflict. A selected bibliography points to important sources for further reading, and the index further enhances the use of this research tool, making this historical record easy to use for broad interdisciplinary courses. This is also an important reference acquisition for college, university, institutional, and public libraries and a companion volume to Bernard Reich's "The Arab-Israeli Conflict: An Historical Encyclopedia" (Greenwood Press, 1996).
Roudometof provides an in-depth analysis of inter-ethnic relations in the southern Balkans. He examines the evolution of the Macedonian Question and the production of rival national narratives by Greeks, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. He introduces the concept of a national narrative in order to account for the production and proliferation of different forms of collective memory among the rival nation-states. Roudometof deconstructs the national narratives of the competing sides and shows the limits of these narratives and their biases. He also develops an alternative interpretation of Macedonian national formation. The contentious issue of Macedonian national minorities in the southern Balkans is examined as well as the issue of the Albanian movements toward self-determination and succession in Kosovo and western Macedonia. Roudometof argues that the Macedonian minority groups are not as numerous in the neighboring states as it is conventionally assumed. With regard to the Albanian national question, he provides a review of the post-1945 relations between Albania and Greece, the Albanians of Kosovo and the Serbs, and the Albanians and Macedonians. He argues that the Albanian nationalist movements have grown out of the interaction between Albanians and their neighboring nations and ethnic groups. An important resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with the Balkans and ethnic conflict resolution in general.
The book examines how the Belfast Agreement came about and its effect on unionism, nationalism, the paramilitaries, electoral support for local parties and the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. It also considers the extent to which the Agreement may be regarded as an exercise in political cynicism or the basis for lasting peace.
As we continue our Sacred Journey in this third book of his Global Healing Trilogy, Vipin discovers and unfolds the Nature and State of Hope and then explores the Seven Treasures hidden within the Core of Fear. These Seven Treasures work together Creating the Resonance of New Vistas of Hope of Dawning the New Age of Dominion
This book uses Securitisation Theory to explore how Muslims have been constructed as a security issue in Africa after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. These attacks became the rationale for the US's Global War on Terror (GWOT). The centrality of Africa as an arena to execute the GWOT is the focus of this book. This book explores, particularly, how western-centred security discourses around Muslims has permeated South African security discourse in the post-apartheid period. It claims that the popular press and the local think-tank community were critical knowledge-sites that imported rather than interrogated debates which have underpinned policy-initiatives such as the GWOT. Such theorisation seems contrary to the original architects of securitisation theory who maintain that issues become security concerns when institutional voices declare these as such. However, this book confirms that non-institutional voices have securitised the African Muslims by equating them with terrorism. This book illustrates that such securitisation reproduces partisan knowledge that promote Western interests.
This volume of essays explores the long-unstudied relationship between religion and human security throughout the world. The 1950s marked the beginning of a period of extraordinary religious revival, during which religious political-parties and non-governmental organizations gained power around the globe. Until now, there has been little systematic study of the impact that this phenomenon has had on human welfare, except of a relationship between religious revival to violence. The authors of these essays show that religion can have positive as well as negative effects on human wellbeing. They address a number of crucial questions about the relationship between religion and human security: Under what circumstances do religiously motivated actors tend to advance human welfare, and under what circumstances do they tend to threaten it? Are members of some religious groups more likely to engage in welfare-enhancing behavior than in others? Do certain state policies tend to promote security-enhancing behavior among religious groups while other policies tend to promote security-threatening ones? In cases where religious actors are harming the welfare of a population, what responses could eliminate that threat without replacing it with another? Religion and Human Security shows that many states tend to underestimate the power of religious organizations as purveyors of human security. Governments overlook both the importance of human security to their populations and the religious groups who could act as allies in securing the welfare of their people. This volume offers a rich variety of theoretical perspectives on the nuanced relationship between religion and human security. Through case studies ranging from Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, to the United States, Northern Ireland, and Zimbabwe, it provides important suggestions to policy makers of how to begin factoring the influence of religion into their evaluation of a population's human security and into programs designed to improve human security around the globe.
"Conflict, Complexity and Mathematical Social Science" provides a foundational mathematical approach to the modelling of social conflict. The book illustrates how theory and evidence can be mathematically deepened and how investigations grounded in social choice theory can provide the evidence needed to inform social practice. Countering criticism from constructivist viewpoints it shows how discourse is grounded in mathematical logic and mathematical structure. The modelling of social conflict is viewed as an application of mathematical social science and relevant models are drawn from each field of mathematical psychology, mathematical sociology, mathematical political science and mathematical economics. Unique in its multidisciplinary focus the book brings together powerful mathematical conceptualisations of the social world from a wide range of separate areas of inquiry, thereby providing a strong conceptual framework and an integrated account of social situations. It is a vital resource for all researchers in peace science, peace and conflict studies, politics, international relations, mathematical modelling in the social sciences and complexity theory.
This ground-breaking political history of the two Irish States provides unique new insights into the 'Troubles' and the peace process. It examines the impact of the fraught dynamics between the competing identities of the Nationalist-Catholic-Irish Community on the one hand and the Unionist-Protestant-British community on the other.
This textbook introduces students to the sub-field of critical security studies through a detailed yet accessible survey of emerging theories and practices. This third edition contains two new chapters - on 'Ontological security' and '(In)Security and the everyday' - and has been fully revised and updated. Written in an accessible and clear manner, Critical Security Studies: offers a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to critical security studies locates critical security studies within the broader context of social and political theory evaluates fundamental theoretical positions in critical security studies against a backdrop of new security challenges. The book is divided into two main parts. Part I, 'Approaches', surveys the newly extended and contested theoretical terrain of critical security studies: constructivist theories, Critical Theory, feminist and gender approaches, postcolonial perspectives, poststructuralism and International Political Sociology, Ontological security, and securitisation theory. Part II, 'Issues', examines how these various theoretical approaches have been put to work in critical considerations of environmental and planetary security; health, human security and development; information, technology and warfare; migration and border security; (in)security and the everyday; and terror, risk and resilience. The historical and geographical scope of the book is deliberately broad and each of the chapters in Part II concretely illustrates one or more of the approaches discussed in Part I, with clear internal referencing allowing the text to act as a holistic learning tool for students. This book is essential reading for upper level students of critical security studies, and an important resource for students of international/global security, political theory and international relations.
Concepts and policies deriving from political and social movements in support of liberal nationalism are hotly debated today. Civil society has actively engaged in controversies over intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Lebanon. Pugh investigates the role of popular liberal internationalism as a social movement in Britain, addressing the use of force for peace through an examination of the impact of civil society actors in between wars. The interwar social movements had a massive and lasting influence on British approaches to international politics and influenced the UN's approach to peacekeeping, use of force and peace-building. This book considers social movements for peace and security which probe below the level of state policies. Using Gramscian and Foucauldian ideas of civil society and society, it critically examines the factions and fluidities of a movement that was suffused with values at once humane and superior, tolerant and dogmatic, universalistic and imperial. Pugh explores one of the most powerful social movements for collective security in modern history, a movement which trespassed conventional political boundaries and provided innovative ideas for constructing peace through collective security.
The first comprehensive analysis of Britain's complex relationship with UN peacekeeping operations during two formative decades. It charts the evolution of British views on an international organization running its own military forces and examines policy-makers' efforts to influence, contain and exploit individual operations: in Palestine, Kashmir, Egypt (following the Suez Crisis), Lebanon, Congo and Cyprus. Benefits included shedding colonial responsibilities, containing conflicts, face-saving, and burden-sharing; perceived risks included interference in remaining colonies and threats to postcolonial interests.
This book is a study of local grassroots activism in two major political areas, the peace and environmental movements, over a period of five years. Interviews with leaders of 166 different groups in five states (Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, California, and Oregon), supplemented by personal observation and participation in several of those groups are the foundations of this analysis. The major concerns are the components of group and movement successes, both short-run and long-run, and activist group adaptations to change in the larger social and political world in light of political upheaval in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and several environmental crises that occurred during the period in question. Finally, Zisk focuses on the growing convergence (and barriers to convergence) of the movements. After examining short run accomplishments, Zisk concludes that most of the groups in both movements are faring poorly: few of their concrete goals are achieved, media attention is poor, and membership growth is problematic. For both movements, the transformational wings (those that press for basic changes, use consensus decision making, have few paid staff members) are not doing so well as the incremental wings (those seeking limited goals, using traditional decision techniques, employing larger staffs). This book should be of interest to students and teachers of political science and sociology.
This volume brings to the fore the spatial dimension of specific places and sites, and assesses how they condition - and are conditioned by - conflict and peace processes. By marrying spatial theories with theories of peace and conflict, the contributors propose a new research agenda to investigate where peace and conflict take place.
This book explores the role of horizontal inequalities - inequalities that exist between ethnic, religious or racial groups - as a source of violent conflict. This study shows how political, economic and cultural status inequalities have contributed to conflict, drawing on econometric evidence and in-depth studies of West Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. It points the way to policies which would reverse inequality and thus reduce the risk of conflict.
Yakinthou throws light on the challenges of adopting political settlements in frozen conflicts and divided societies by focusing on the conflict in Cyprus, the resolution of which has for years been held up, in large part by elite intransigence. The book offers answers for why elites in Cyprus are so unwilling to adopt a power-sharing solution.
This work traces the attempts by the United Nations to bring about
the reunification of Cyprus prior to the island's accession to the
European Union on 1 May 2004. In addition to charting the course of
previous efforts to solve the Cyprus issue, the book recounts the
direct discussions between the two sides from January 2002 through
to April 2004 and analyses the reasons why the UN plan was rejected
in a referendum.
Israelis and Palestinians have been caught in what seems a "forever war" with routine terror in the promised land for more than 100 years. This book is the first to bring together commentary and anguished personal insights from people on both sides of the battle. Readers get a personal look at--and a clearer, more nuanced understanding of--the psychological trauma that is common for men, women and children there. Psychologists in the regions, as well as scholars from across disciplines, tell their personal stories, interwoven with academic reflections on important issues fueling the conflict such as humiliation, revenge, hate, and the need for a homeland and identity. Readers are brought face-to-face with controversial issues, like the psychological impact of Israel's Separation Wall, and unique perspectives, including the stories of eight Palestinian female martyrs, the insights of a young student helping to save blasted bodies after the bombing of a bus, the compassion of a Jewish doctor treating suicide bombers, the thinking of a Jidhadist woman raised to hate Jews but now working for peace with Israelis, and a doctor bringing together Palestinians and Israelis using meditation to find peace. |
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