Outsourcing War and Security

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ori Swed ◽  
Daniel Burland
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
Military Contractors ◽  
Early Case ◽  
The Right ◽  
National Governments ◽  
Security Companies

The phrase outsourcing war has been used since the late 1990s to describe the trend toward the hiring of private military and security companies (PMSCs) by national governments to perform functions that previously had been assigned only to members of national military forces. These private companies, in turn, hire employees, usually on limited-term contracts, to carry out the missions that the companies have agreed to accomplish. PMSCs may undertake combat missions independently or in direct cooperation with deployed national military forces. They may be assigned to security missions in secret or to meet a highly visible demand, as in the case where the United States contributed private military contractors to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Kosovo in 1998. This was an early case in which privately contracted military employees were hired by one nation to function cooperatively with uniformed members of other national military forces. During the 20th century, private military forces had been considered a form of organized crime populated by mercenaries, a delinquent group at the fringes of the social order who traded in violence to advance the interests of anyone willing to pay them. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, the outsourcing of war and security functions to private companies had become commonplace, transforming the previously prevailing belief that only states had the right to wage war. States often deployed their militaries alongside PMSCs who were contracted to provide support to forces on the ground. In other cases, private companies would pay representatives of other private companies to defend their assets, such as oil fields or diamond mines. During this period at the turn of the 21st century, PMSCs came to be perceived as representatives of a legitimate industry. With this transformation, the nature of security and modern conflict changed as well. Private military and security companies became an important instrument in war-making and the projection of power.

Conservatism

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kivisto
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Right

Conservatism refers to one of the constituent political positions found in all contemporary democracies. It can be construed as a philosophy, an ideology, a political party, a movement, a disposition, a mode of discourse, performance style, and an emotional relationship to the political. Since the birth of modern democracies in the aftermath of the French Revolution, it has become commonplace to describe the range of political options available to the citizenry as occupying a spectrum from left to right, with a range of alternatives between the extreme poles, including a centrist position in the middle that straddles the divide. The left was associated with promoting challenges to established authorities and existing hierarchies, along with calls for increased economic equality and expanded social and political rights to all citizens, including the heretofore marginalized. This contrasts with the right, which was defined as defending inequalities and differential entitlements, concentrating matters involving rights around preserving property rights, shoring up public and social order, and promoting traditional values and conventional social relations. In this context, liberalism became a mark of political identity associated with the left, as did socialism, while conservatism, broadly construed, represented the right. This framing of politics also includes the possibility of underminings by extremism on both the left and right. For the former, the main threat since the Russian Revolution has been posed by revolutionary communism, while right-wing extremism has manifested itself in reactionary movements, including fascism and illiberal populism. Since liberalism and conservatism must be understood in relational terms, the spatial and temporal settings for the politics of opposition will vary considerably. It is impossible to do justice to the vast literature on conservatism in a bibliography such as this. What follows is a more delimited, and thus manageable examination of work on conservatism. First, it focuses on conservatism in the United States, and not elsewhere. Second, it is chiefly concerned with conservatism since the end of World War II. Third, it concentrates on the study of conservatism by sociologists and those working in cognate disciplines; while not all the authors are card-carrying sociologists, their works reflect a sociological character, although the exception to this third point is the overview section, which presents key readings by advocates of conservatism, and thus offers insider depictions of the meaning of conservatism. Fourth, this article does not concentrate solely on extremist right-wing movements; rather, in surveying the relevant literature on American conservatism broadly construed, it points to a growing consensus that the radical right wing has pushed mainstream conservatism increasingly further to the right.

scholarly journals The ancient Roman ius vitae ac necis (the right to life and death) and modern abuse of women (femicide)

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 693-708
Author(s):  
Nataša Deretić
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Male Sex ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
The Right ◽  
Abuse Of Women

This paper attempts to answer the question as to whether the right to "life and death" of a woman (ius vitae ac necis) at the hands of male family members or partners is indeed a timeless category. Is it possible that in Serbia of the 21st century there is still a struggle to promote the "right to life" of women to the level of "basic human rights"? What contributed to the fact that the concept of innate human dignity based on "human rights", which dates back from the feudal social order, has not as yet fully come to life in Serbia as far as women are concerned. What social circumstances contributed to the Roman ius vitae ac necis to outlive centuries and take root especially in Serbia, only under a different name - that of femicide? This notion has been defined as "gender based murder of women, girls, and babies of female sex by persons of the male sex". The murderers in cases of femicide include partners (ex / current, spouses or extramarital), family members or relatives: father, father-in-law, son, son-in-law, etc. Both expert and general public wander whether enforcing more stringent norms by authorities or acting towards changing the consciousness of the abusers or both at the same time, can contribute to eradicating this devastating phenomenon in the 21st century.

The Birth Control Movement BeforeRoe v. Wade

1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-52
Author(s):  
James W. Reed
Keyword(s):  
Birth Control ◽  
Social Order ◽  
State Level ◽  
Married Couples ◽  
First Trimester ◽  
The United States ◽  
Majority Opinion ◽  
Birth Control Movement ◽  
Induced Abortions ◽  
The Right

Beginning in the 1970s, historians and social scientists published a great deal on the birth-control movement in the United States, a subject that had been neglected. They were seeking perspective on the issues raised by profound changes in society that rendered problematic the gender system and family values of previous generations. It is no fluke that these scholars began to write the history of the effort to promote the separation of sex from procreation during the same decade that Congress removed contraception from the practices and information prohibited by the national obscenity laws (1971), and the Supreme Court ruled that married couples had a constitutionally protected right to practice contraception (1965), that the unmarried had a similar right of “privacy” (1972), and that pregnant women had the right to induced abortions performed by physicians during the first trimester of their pregnancies (1973). The Court's affirmation of a limited right to “abortion on demand” in Roev. Wadefollowed a decade of intense political struggle and judicial action at the state level, and Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion, was self-consciously attempting to forge a consensus in areas of human behavior and public policy where conflicts were literally lethal and threatened the social order. In turn, much of the vitality of the scholarship on reproductive history that coincides with changes in the law sprang from the self-consciousness of women.

Nightmares and Dreams

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Dodge
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Shale Gas ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
High Volume ◽  
The United States ◽  
Horizontal Drilling ◽  
Political Effect ◽  
Local Opposition ◽  
National Governments

Shale gas development rapidly transformed energy production when new techniques emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s. The combination of high-volume hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, or “fracking,” allowed development in vast, previously inaccessible, “unconventional” oil and gas deposits. Fracking has been welcomed by many national governments as a purportedly low-greenhouse-gas-emitting, energy-security-providing windfall. But it has simultaneously motivated vehement local opposition, to some surprising political effect. Many jurisdictions around the globe now have bans on the practice. This chapter explores shale gas development as a contested “sociotechnical imaginary,” an imagined form of social order reflected in technological projects. Drawing on the controversy in New York in the United States, it demonstrates how the “drill, baby, drill” imaginary was debunked as groups framed it as inherently risky and dangerous, and sought to empower institutions supporting an alternative imaginary.

Lending to the Borrower from Hell

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Risk Sharing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Loan Contracts ◽  
The Right ◽  
Intelligent Model ◽  
New Evidence

Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. This book looks at one famous case—the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, the book analyzes the lessons from this historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, the book examines the incentives and returns of lenders. It provides powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults—they thrive. It also demonstrates that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The book unearths unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, this book offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults.

A Compact Embodiment of Pluralities and Denial of Origins: Atwood’s The Year of The Flood

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Rana Sağıroğlu
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Why Questions ◽  
Near Future

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.

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