Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geiß Robin ◽  
Melzer Nils
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Economic Nature

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the twenty-first-century global security environment. Since the turn of the century, the global security environment has become increasingly dynamic, complex, and volatile; and the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of national and international (in-)security have become increasingly transnational and global in nature. Various powerful dynamics of a geopolitical, demographic, climatic, technological, social, and economic nature have been driving this trend, which has now been taken to entirely new levels by the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The convergence of so-called ‘old and new security challenges’, such as the return to power politics, the rise of asymmetric and hybrid warfare, and the emergence of novel threats posed by potent non-State actors, technological innovation, as well as dramatically increased economic, pandemic, and environmental risks, have entailed a veritable globalization of the security agenda. The chapter then outlines a number of overarching key dynamics, trends, and contestations that reflect the various intrinsic and extrinsic pressures and tensions international law is exposed to in the global security environment of the twenty-first century.

The Oxford Handbook of the International Law of Global Security

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Relationship

Understanding the global security environment and delivering the necessary governance responses is a central challenge of the twenty-first century. On a global scale, the central regulatory tool for such responses is public international law. But what is the state, role, and relevance of public international law in today’s complex and highly dynamic global security environment? The Oxford Handbook of the International Law of Global Security provides a groundbreaking overview of the relationship between international law and global security. It constitutes a comprehensive and systematic mapping of the various sub-fields of international law dealing with global security challenges, and offers authoritative guidance on key trends and debates around the relationship between public international law and global security governance. The Handbook features original contributions by leading scholars and practitioners from a wide range of professional and disciplinary backgrounds, reflecting the fluidity of the concept of global security and the diversity of scholarship in this area.

Human Rights and 21st Century Challenges

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
World Population ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Relative Share ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

The world faces significant and interrelated challenges in the twenty-first century which threaten human rights in a number of ways. This book examines the relationship between human rights and three of the largest challenges of the twenty-first century: conflict and security, environment, and poverty. Technological advances in fighting wars have led to the introduction of new weapons which threaten to transform the very nature of conflict. In addition, states confront threats to security which arise from a new set of international actors not clearly defined and which operate globally. Climate change, with its potentially catastrophic impacts, features a combination of characteristics which are novel for humanity. The problem is caused by the sum of innumerable individual actions across the globe and over time, and similarly involves risks that are geographically and temporally diffuse. In recent decades, the challenges involved in addressing global and national poverty have also changed. For example, the relative share of the poor in the world population has decreased significantly while the relative share of the poor who live in countries with significant domestic capacity has increased strongly. Overcoming these global and interlocking threats constitutes this century’s core political and moral task. This book examines how these challenges may be addressed using a human rights framework. It considers how these challenges threaten human rights and seeks to reassess our understanding of human rights in the light of these challenges. The analysis considers both foundational and applied questions. The approach is multidisciplinary and contributors include some of the most prominent lawyers, philosophers, and political theorists in the debate. The authors not only include leading academics but also those who have played important roles in shaping the policy debates on these questions. Each Part includes contributions by those who have served as Special Rapporteurs within the United Nations human rights system on the challenges under consideration.

3D-printed Futures of Manufacturing, Social Change and Technological Innovation in China and Singapore: The Ghost of a Massless Future?

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Heemsbergen ◽  
Angela Daly ◽  
Jiajie Lu ◽  
Thomas Birtchnell
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
3D Printing ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Law And Technology ◽  
3D Printed ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Political Economic

This article outlines preliminary findings from a futures forecasting exercise where participants in Shenzhen and Singapore considered the socio-technological construction of 3D printing in terms of work and social change. We offered participants ideal political-economic futures across local–global knowledge and capital–commons dimensions, and then had them backcast the contextual waypoints across markets, culture, policy, law and technology dimensions that help guide towards each future. Their discussion identified various contextually sensitive points, but also tended to dismiss the farthest reaches of each proposed ideal, often reverting to familiar contextual signifiers. Here, we offer discussion on how participants saw culture and industry shaping futures for pertinent political economic concerns in the twenty-first century.

Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Church History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Fluid Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Natural Philosophers

This introductory chapter discusses Isaac Newton’s immersion in ancient prophecies, Church history, and alchemy. These investigations raise several questions: what links his interest in such matters to his investigations in optics, mechanics, and mathematics? Was Newton in his alchemical laboratory the same Newton who analyzed the passage of light through a prism and who measured the behavior of bodies falling through fluid media? What did the Newton who interpreted the Book of Revelation have to do with the man who wrote the Principia Mathematica? And how does the Newton who pored over ancient texts square with the author of the Opticks? The Newton that is the subject of this book differs in striking ways from any scientist of the twenty-first century. But he differed as well from his contemporary natural philosophers, theologians, and chronologers. The book investigates the origin of this difference and then uses it to produce a new understanding of Newton’s worldview and its historical context.

Introduction: The Bollywood Eclipse

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neelam Sidhar Wright
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Aesthetic Style ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Function ◽  
Film Language

This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the Indian cinema has acquired evidently postmodern qualities and explains what postmodernism means in the context of Bollywood cinema. It also considers what postmodernism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after the twenty-first century. The book describes Bollywood's ‘postmodern turn’ as a form of transformation that reworks or revisits previous aesthetic trends in order to produce a radically different aesthetic. ‘New Bollywood’ refers to contemporary films characterised by a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s. This introductory chapter discusses the meaning of ‘contemporary Bollywood’, postmodernism as a means of reading and interpreting films, and the structure of the book.

Introduction

Saw ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Benjamin Poole
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
First Century ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Twenty First Century

This introductory chapter provides an overview of SAW (2004). SAW is a horror film that is entirely representative of the era that created it: the early twenty-first century witnessed a threatened America whose national confidence was shattered, and shady Middle Eastern wars played out in abject images of torture and suffering. Like the aeons of horror tales that precede it, the film is an essay in morality as well as mortality; its antagonist cleaves to a logical, if bloody moral code, while no victim is wholly without guilt. As with all of the best horror, SAW is interested in the spiritual and physical potential of the human body and soul. This aspect of gratification is abundantly evident in the gross extremities of SAW's survival horror. The particular focus is sadism and body trauma, which the film details with surgical precision.

Introduction

City, State ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Ran Hirschl
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
First Century ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The City ◽  
Spatial Governance

This introductory chapter illustrates that, in many settings worldwide, hardwired constitutional arrangements reflect outdated concepts of spatial governance featuring constitutional division of competences adopted in a pre-megacity era and increasingly detached from twenty-first-century realities. Consequently, cities do not exist constitutionally. And with few exceptions, cities remain subjugated by a Westphalian constitutional order and by the state’s innate inclination to maintain jurisdictional primacy over its territory. National constitutions’ entrenched nature and innately statist outlook render the city systemically weak and to a large degree underrepresented. As extensive urbanization marches on, an ever-widening gap emerges between what is expected of a modern metropolis, and what cities can actually deliver in the absence of adequate standing, representation, taxation powers, or robust policy-making authority.

Oil and the Future of Great Power Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-182
Author(s):  
Rosemary A. Kelanic
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Indirect Control ◽  
The Future ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Belt And Road

This concluding chapter explores the implications of the theory for great power politics as China continues to rise in the twenty-first century. If significant quantities of Persian Gulf oil could be realistically transported overland, away from U.S. naval interference, then the future threat to Chinese imports would remain low. Combined with a petroleum deficit that is likely to be large, Chinese coercive vulnerability could be held to a moderate level. Moderate coercive vulnerability should induce China to pursue indirect control as it emerges as a great power. Thus, the theory predicts that China is likely to eventually forge alliances with major oil-producing countries and transit states to keep oil in “friendly hands.” As yet, China is too militarily weak to shield friendly oil-producing states from interference by the United States or other potential rivals, but the beginnings of an alliance-based strategy appear to be taking shape under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), described by some analysts as a nascent framework for twenty-first-century Chinese grand strategy.

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