This book reflects on major themes present at the interface between religion and human security in Africa. It probes the extent to which religion is both a threat to and a resource for human security in Africa by examining specific issues occurring across the continent. A team of contributors from across Africa provide valuable reflections on the conceptualisation and applicability of the concept of human security in the context of religion in Africa. Chapters highlight how themes such as knowledge systems, youth, education, race, development, sacred texts, the media, sexual diversity, health and others have implications for individual and group security. In order to bring these themes into perspective, chapters in the first section reflect on the conceptual, historical and contextual factors at play. The chapters that follow demonstrate the theories put forward by means of case studies from countries such as Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana and Ghana that look at African religion, Islam and Christianity. This is a detailed and informative volume that provides new insights into the discourse on religion and human security. As such, it will be of significant use to any scholar of Religion and Violence, Religion in Africa and Religious Studies, as well as African and Security Studies more generally.

Following the ICC intervention in 2005, northern Uganda has been at the heart of international justice debates. The emergent controversy, however, missed crucial aspects of Acholi realities: that the primary moral imperative in the wake of wrongdoing was not punishment but, instead, the restoration of social harmony. Drawing upon abundant fieldwork and in-depth interviews with almost 200 women, Holly Porter examines issues surrounding wrongdoing and justice, and sexual violence and rape, among the Acholi people in northern Uganda. This intricate exploration offers evidence of a more complicated and nuanced explanation of rape and its aftermath, suggesting a re-imagining of the meanings of post-atrocity justice, whilst acknowledging the role of sex, power and politics in all sexual experiences between coercion and consent. With its wide investigation of social life in northern Uganda, this provocative study offers vital analysis for those interested in sexual and gender violence, post-conflict reconstruction and human rights.

Arguing that we only have democracy when systems of power are held to account, Kaufman examines the real work being done to challenge the operations of power that underlie four unruly social problems: climate change, sweatshop labour, police abuse, and economic deprivation. In Challenging Power, Kaufman pairs each of these issues with an operation of power -- the large scale influence of multinational corporations; the power of governments; the authority of financial markets; and the control inherent in systems of meaning -- and using case studies like the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh and the killing of Eric Garner, forcefully demonstrates what is involved in challenging these operations of power. Advancing a positive message, Kaufman maintains that these networks are not omnipotent and can be challenged if we develop 'mechanisms of accountability' which allow us to conceptualise the nature of these problems and the actions required to resist them. Kaufman provides then, a model for ethical action that allows us to investigate and appreciate our own connections to the powerful forces that control our world.

Drawing data from multiple sources, Un argues that following the 1993 United Nations intervention to promote democracy, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) perpetuated a patronage state weak in administrative capacity but strong in coercive capacity. This enabled them to maintain the presence of electoral authoritarianism, but increased political awareness among the public, the rise in political activism among community-based organizations and a united opposition led to the emergence of a counter-movement. Sensing that this counter-movement might be unstoppable, the CPP has returned Cambodia to authoritarianism, a move made possible in part by China's pivot to Cambodia.

The war in Europe was reaching its cataclysmic final months with Germany surrounded on all sides. Most of Hitler's forces had been driven from Poland by the Red Army and the Soviets were poised a short distance from Berlin, while the Western allies, having repulsed the Fuhrer's Ardennes offensive, were preparing to cross the Rhine. More than ever Hitler needed his people to stiffen their resolve for the coming onslaught. To demonstrate what will be expected of the German people, and what they could achieve if they refused to acknowledge defeat, a major feature film would be shown, featuring the legendary place which held out against Napoleon when he invaded Prussia in 1806 - the city of Kolberg. After crushing the Prussian Army in 1806, French forces swept into the Prussian province of Pomerania. One by one most Prussian fortresses surrendered, mostly without offering any resistance, but Kolberg stood firm. The small and weakly-fortified city held out for almost four months, despite being surrounded by Napoleon's forces, with Major von Gneisenau organising a citizen's militia to aid the army in its defence. Though much of the city was blasted into ruin, Kolberg remained in Prussian hands until the war with France ended with the signing of the Peace of Tilsit, by which time its defence had become legendary. Even though the Third Reich was literally entering its death-throes, in attempting to reproduce the siege of Kolberg on film, thousands of experts, extras and horses were taken from the war effort by the Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. The film's emphasis was to show how civilians and the military can work together to save Germany - just as Kolberg had been saved from the French. The result has been stated to be the most expensive feature film ever made in Germany. This book examines the dramatic conditions under which the film was produced, and the scale of the resources needed to do so, followed by its first showing on 30 January 1945. All Goebbels' efforts, though, were to no avail, as the film never went on general release. A month later, as the author reveals, Kolberg found itself under siege once again, but this time, after bitter house-to-house fighting, it fell to the Soviets in just two weeks.

This collection investigates the sharpening conflict between the nation state and the internet through a multidisciplinary lens. It challenges the idea of an inherently global internet by examining its increasing territorial fragmentation and, conversely, the notion that for states online law and order is business as usual. Cyberborders based on national law are not just erected around China's online community. Cultural, political and economic forces, as reflected in national or regional norms, have also incentivised virtual borders in the West. The nation state is asserting itself. Yet, there are also signs of the receding role of the state in favour of corporations wielding influence through de-facto control over content and technology. This volume contributes to the online governance debate by joining ideas from law, politics and human geography to explore internet jurisdiction and its overlap with topics such as freedom of expression, free trade, democracy, identity and cartographic maps.

Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen.
The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.

A preoccupation with the subject of freedom became a core issue in the construction of all modern political ideologies. Here, Wael Abu-'Uksa examines the development of the concept of freedom (hurriyya) in nineteenth-century Arab political thought, its ideological offshoots, their modes, and their substance as they developed the dynamics of the Arabic language. Abu-'Uksa traces the transition of the idea of freedom from a term used in a predominantly non-political way, through to its popularity and near ubiquity at the dawn of the twentieth century. Through this, he also analyzes the importance of associated concepts such as liberalism, socialism, progress, rationalism, secularism, and citizenship. He employs a close analysis of the development of the language, whilst at the same time examining the wider historical context within which these semantic shifts occurred: the rise of nationalism, the power of the Ottoman court, and the state of relations with Europe.

This book examines a series of questions associated with the increasing application and implications of biometrics in contemporary everyday life.

In the wake of the events of 9/11, the reliance on increasingly sophisticated and invasive technologies across a burgeoning field of applications has accelerated, giving rise to the term 'biometric state'. This book explores how these 'virtual borders' are created and the effect they have upon the politics of citizenship and immigration, especially how they contribute to the treatment of citizens as suspects. Finally and most importantly, this text argues that the rationale of 'governing through risk' facilitates pre-emptory logics, a negligent attitude towards 'false positives', and an overall proliferation of borders and ubiquitous risk, which becomes integral to contemporary everyday life, far beyond the confined politics of national borders and frontiers.

By focusing on specific sites, such as virtual borders in airports, trusted traveller programs like the NEXUS program and those delivered by airlines and supported by governmental authorities (TSA and CATSA respectively), this book raises critical questions about the emerging biometric state and its commitment and constitution vis-a-vis technology of 'governing through risk'.

This book will be of interest to students of biopolitics, critical security, surveillance studies and International Relations in general.

Benjamin J. Muller is assistant professor in International Relations at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. He completed his PhD in the School of Politics and International Studies at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2005."

The US government spends billions of dollars every year to reduce uncertainty: to monitor and forecast everything from the weather to the spread of disease. In other words, we spend a lot of money to anticipate problems, identify opportunities, and avoid mistakes. A substantial portion of what we spend--over $50 billion a year--goes to the US Intelligence Community.
"Reducing Uncertainty" describes what Intelligence Community analysts do, how they do it, and how they are affected by the political context that shapes, uses, and sometimes abuses their output. In particular, it looks at why IC analysts pay more attention to threats than to opportunities, and why they appear to focus more on warning about the possibility of "bad things" happening than on providing the input necessary for increasing the likelihood of positive outcomes.
The book is intended to increase public understanding of what IC analysts do, to elicit more relevant and constructive suggestions for improvement from outside the Intelligence Community, to stimulate innovation and collaboration among analysts at all grade levels in all agencies, and to provide a core resource for students of intelligence. The most valuable aspect of this book is the in-depth discussion of National Intelligence Estimates--what they are, what it means to say that they represent the "most authoritative judgments of the Intelligence Community," why and how they are important, and why they have such high political salience and symbolic importance. The final chapter lays out, from an insider's perspective, the story of the flawed Iraq WMD NIE and its impact on the subsequent Iran nuclear NIE--paying particular attention to the heightened political scrutiny the latter received in Congress following the Iraq NIE debacle.

This book examines and critiques the fact that Chile's claims to economic exceptionalism have been embodied, often quite aggressively, in a heterosexual, and primarily male, ideal. Despite the many shifts Chilean economics and politics have undergone over the past fifty years, the country's view of itself as a "model" in contrast to other Latin American countries has remained constant. By deploying an artistic, literary, and cinematic archive of queer figures from this period, this book draws parallels among the exceptionalisms of Chile's economic discourse, the subjects deemed most (and least) apt to embody it, and the maneuvers of its cultural production between local and global ideas of gender and politics to delineate its place in the world. Queering the Chilean Way thus sheds light on the sexual, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of exceptionalism-at its heart, a discourse of exclusion that often comprises a major element of nationalism-in Chile and throughout the Americas.

Mexico's movement toward independence from Spain was a key episode in the dissolution of the great Spanish Empire, and its accompanying armed conflict arguably the first great war of decolonization in the nineteenth century. This book argues that in addition to being a war of national liberation, the struggle was also an internal war pitting classes and ethnic groups against each other, an intensely localized struggle by rural people, especially Indians, for the preservation of their communities.
While local and national elites focused their energies on wresting power from colonial authorities and building a new nation-state, rural people were often much more concerned about keeping village identities and lifeways intact against the forces of state expansion, commercialization, and modernization. Conventional wisdom says that Mexican independence was achieved through a cross-class and cross-ethnic alliance between creole ideologues, military leaders, and a mass following. This book shows that this is not only an incomplete explanation of what went on in Mexico during the decade of armed confrontation that led to Mexico's independence, but also a distortion of Mexican social and cultural history.
The author delves deeply into life histories, previously unexamined texts, statistical social profiling, and local historical ethnography to examine the dynamics of popular rebellion. He focuses especially on Mexico's Indian villages, but also considers the role of parish priests as insurgent leaders; local conflicts over land, politics, and religious symbols; the influence of messianism and millenarianism in popular insurgent ideology; and the everyday language of political upheaval.

This Element argues that after twenty years of democratization, Indonesia has performed admirably. This is especially so when the country's accomplishments are placed in comparative perspective. However, as we analytically focus more closely to inspect Indonesia's political regime, political economy, and how identity-based mobilizations have emerged, it is clear that Indonesia still has many challenges to overcome, some so pressing that they could potentially erode or reverse many of the democratic gains the country has achieved since its former authoritarian ruler, Soeharto, was forced to resign in 1998.

The Dayton Accords brought the Bosnian war to an end in November 1995, establishing a detailed framework for the reconstitution of the Bosnian state and its consolidation through a process of democratisation. In Bosnia David Chandler makes the first in-depth critical analysis of the policies and impact of post-Dayton democratisation. Drawing on interviews with key officials within the OSCE in Bosnia and extensive original research exploring the impact of policies designed to further political pluralism, develop multi-ethnic administrations, protect human rights and support civil society, Chandler reveals that the process has done virtually nothing to develop democracy in this troubled country. Political autonomy and accountability are now further away than at any time since the outbreak of the Bosnian war.

Rwanda and Bosnia both experienced mass violence in the early 1990s. Less than ten years later, Rwandans surprisingly elected the world's highest level of women to parliament. In Bosnia, women launched thousands of community organizations that became spaces for informal political participation. The political mobilization of women in both countries complicates the popular image of women as merely the victims and spoils of war. Through a close examination of these cases, Marie E. Berry unpacks the puzzling relationship between war and women's political mobilization. Drawing from over 260 interviews with women in both countries, she argues that war can reconfigure gendered power relations by precipitating demographic, economic, and cultural shifts. In the aftermath, however, many of the gains women made were set back. This book offers an entirely new view of women and war, and includes concrete suggestions for policy makers, development organizations, and activists supporting women's rights.

"Constructing Cassandra" analyzes the intelligence failures at the CIA that resulted in four key strategic surprises experienced by the US: the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Iranian revolution of 1978, the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks--surprises still play out today in U.S. policy. Although there has been no shortage of studies exploring how intelligence failures can happen, none of them have been able to provide a unified understanding of the phenomenon.
To correct that omission, this book brings culture and identity to the foreground to present a unified model of strategic surprise; one that focuses on the internal make-up the CIA, and takes seriously those Cassandras who offered warnings, but were ignored. This systematic exploration of the sources of the CIA's intelligence failures points to ways to prevent future strategic surprises.

Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen.
The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.

This book examines security in three cities that suffer from chronic violence: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Medellin, Colombia; and Kingston, Jamaica. In each, democratic states contend with subnational armed groups that dominate territory and play important roles in politics even as they contribute to fear and insecurity. Through a nested three-city, six-neighborhood analysis of the role of criminal groups in governance, this research provides a deep understanding of the impact of crime on political experience. Neighborhoods controlled by different types of armed actors, operating in the same institutional context, build alliances with state officials and participate in political life through the structures created by these armed actors. The data demonstrates the effects criminal dominance can have on security, civil society, elections, and policymaking. Far from reflecting a breakdown of order, varying types of criminal groups generate different local lived political experiences.

How can people of diverse religious, historical, ethnic, and linguistic allegiances and identities live together without committing violence, inflicting suffering, or oppressing each other? Western civilization has long understood this dilemma as a question of toleration, yet the logic of toleration and the logic of multicultural rights entrenchment are two very different things. In this volume, contributors suggest we also think beyond toleration to mutual respect, practiced before the creation of modern multiculturalism in the West. Salman Rushdie reflects on the once mutually tolerant Sufi-Hindu culture of Kashmir. Ira Katznelson follows with an intellectual history of toleration as a layered institution in the West and councils against assuming we have transcended the need for such tolerance. Charles Taylor advances a new approach to secularism in our multicultural world, and Akeel Bilgrami responds by urging caution against making it difficult to condemn or make illegal dangerous forms of intolerance. The political theorist Nadia Urbanati explores why the West did not pursue Cicero's humanist ideal of concord as a response to religious discord.The volume concludes with a refutation of the claim that toleration was invented in the West and is alien to non-Western cultures.

This latest volume in the august Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change series carries on a long tradition of featuring only the best data-driven and multi-method research upon which useful theory can be painstakingly built. Part one focuses on old and new media platforms and their intersections with mobilization issues, highlighting protest websites and the US Tea Party movement. Part two investigates the roles elites play in advancing movement campaigns for increased rights and decreased inequalities in the US and Peru. The third section spotlights best and worst practices in conflict transformation and peacebuilding ventures in Croatia and Israel/Palestine, while the fourth section interrogates the use of consensus building processes in Local Social Forums and in the Occupy Movement. Finally, on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Neil Smelser's A Theory of Collective Behavior, we close with a creative combining of Smelser's structural functionalist approach with social identity models for understanding crowd behaviors in the context of university party riots.

In most non-democratic countries, today governing forty-four percent of the world population, the power of the regime rests upon a ruling party. Contrasting with conventional notions that authoritarian regime parties serve to contain elite conflict and manipulate electoral-legislative processes, this book presents the case of China and shows that rank and-file members of the Communist Party allow the state to penetrate local communities. Subnational comparative analysis demonstrates that in 'red areas' with high party saturation, the state is most effectively enforcing policy and collecting taxes. Because party membership patterns are extremely enduring, they must be explained by events prior to the Communist takeover in 1949. Frontlines during the anti-colonial Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) continue to shape China's political map even today. Newly available evidence from the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) shows how a strong local party basis sustained the regime in times of existential crisis.

An exploration of the overwhelming complexity of Afghan politics, this title explains how it came in to being, how it is sustained and how Osama bin Laden has risen to such a figure of absolute power. Ahmed Rashid clarifies the often confusing racial and religious tensions that dominate the fractious land, and describes why the drug trade has exacerbated an already untenable situation. Rashid argues that Taliban is incapable of reform, and that, in the crisis after the autumn 2001 suicide plane bombings, it may implode due to defections. With the Northern Alliance an unpredictable alternative, Rashid concludes that without a multi-tribal government in which bordering states do not seek predominant influence, there will never be peace.

21st Century Urban Race Politics begins by offering a twenty-first-century understanding of minority representation in historically majority-Caucasian cities and draws on case studies in cities throughout the United States. The aim of this volume is to take stock of what we know about the advantages and disadvantages of the "racialized" and "deracialized" approaches to governance and to describe a third approach, the "universalized interest approach." The authors argue that minority elected officials, when given the power and resources to do so, often do more than represent constituent interests without acknowledging the representation of members of their racial/ethnic group in urban communities. Contributors describe how mayors of various backgrounds have sought to represent minority interests in electoral and governing contexts. In each case, the mayors are found to represent minority interests. In most cases, the representation of minority interests is accomplished without deemphasizing the significance of race and as the mayor maintains support from whites within their electoral and governing coalitions. With case studies from across the country, in medium-sized and large cities, and mayors of various backgrounds, the volume provides a vivid account of how different minority mayors have handled minority representation in historically majority Caucasian cities and what lessons academics and politicians can learn from them.

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you've never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by "rotten girls," swaggering literary popstars, millionaire e-writers churning out the longest-ever novels, underground comics, the surreal works of Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, and Nobel laureate Mo Yan, and what is widely hailed as a golden age of Chinese science fiction. Chinese online fiction is now the largest publishing platform in the world. Fueled by her passionate engagement with Chinese literature and culture, Megan Walsh, a brilliant young critic, shows us why it's important to finally pay attention to Chinese fiction-an exuberant drama that illustrates the complex relationship between art and politics, one that is increasingly shaping the West as well. Turns out, writers write neither what their government nor foreign readers want or expect, and they work on a different wavelength to keep alive ideas and events that are either overlooked or off limits. The Subplot vividly captures the ways in which literature offers an alternative-perhaps truer-understanding of the contradictions that make up China itself.

War causes death, disability, and disease. It damages the health-supporting infrastructure, displaces populations, violates human rights, and diverts resources. And it subsequently leads to more violence. From Horror to Hope documents the health consequences of war, primarily for noncombatant civilians but also for military personnel and veterans, and outlines what can be done to minimize these consequences. Written by a public health physician engaged with this subject for decades, the book also describes positive developments in addressing the health impacts of war, including new initiatives to protect civilians during war, reduce gender-based violence and mental trauma, and control the international arms trade and nuclear weapons. In addition, From Horror to Hope profiles inspiring health professionals who are providing healthcare for war-affected populations and participating in education, research, and advocacy to reduce the health impacts of war. Finally, the book demonstrates how traditional public health frameworks and new paradigms can be applied to the prevention of war and the promotion of peace. Given the current peak in armed conflicts and the increasing threat of future wars, From Horror to Hope provides an extremely timely overview for anyone seeking to better understand and address the health consequences of war.