Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Uğur Ümit Üngör
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The City ◽  
Institutional Relationships ◽  
Historical Legacies

What is paramilitarism? This introductory chapter engages with the scholarship on paramilitarism, conceptualizes the phenomenon, and clarifies the book’s approach. It opens with a prologue on the Syrian paramilitary criminal Suleiman al-Assad, the president’s nephew, who committed a murder in broad daylight in the city of Latakia and enjoyed impunity by hiding behind his paramilitary group. The chapter identifies areas in the research field that require development and suggests how to bridge the gaps between different literatures. In this book, paramilitarism is defined as clandestine, irregular, pro-state armed groups that carry out acts of violence against clearly defined civilian individuals or groups. The range of state involvement extends on a spectrum from spontaneous vigilantism to fully accountable special operatives. Paramilitarism has great importance for understanding the processes of violence that are played out during civil wars, counter-insurgency operations, and massacres including genocide. The chapter approaches paramilitarism from the perspective of three relevant forces: historical legacies, organized crime, and institutional relationships.

Electing Displacement: Political Cleansing in Apartadó, Colombia

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbey Steele
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Unexpected Outcome ◽  
The City

This article highlights a nefarious effect of elections during civil wars by demonstrating that they can facilitate the displacement of civilians. In contrast to the perception of displacement as haphazard, the author argues that armed groups displace strategically when they attempt to gain control over a territory, and where they have information about civilians’ loyalties. Although inferring preferences is difficult in the context of civil wars, elections conducted before or during a violent conflict are one way that armed groups can identify local cleavages and ‘‘disloyal’’ residents. The author tests implications of the argument with original, microlevel quantitative and qualitative data from northwest Colombia. Using voter files and disaggregated electoral returns, the author shows that residents in urban neighborhoods that supported the insurgent-backed political party, the Patriotic Union (UP), were more likely to leave the city of Apartadó than were neighbors in other districts. However, residents of the nearby rural communities that supported the UP were the least likely to leave. The author traces the patterns of violence across the communities using local archival materials and interviews to assess how well the argument accounts for the variation observed, and to explore the unexpected outcome in the rural area. While the author finds that counterinsurgents attempted strategic displacement in both the city and the mountains, they only succeeded in the urban areas because residents of the rural hamlets were uniquely able to overcome the collective action problem that strategic displacement generates. The findings demonstrate that political identities are relevant for patterns of violence, and that cleansing occurs even in nonethnic civil wars.

scholarly journals Puritan Lecturers and Anglican Clergymen during the Early Years of the English Civil Wars

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Youngkwon Chung
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Early Phase ◽  
Early Years ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Base Of Support ◽  
The City ◽  
Urgent Necessity

During the early years of the Civil Wars in England, from February 1642 to July 1643, Puritan parishioners in conjunction with the parliament in London set up approximately 150 divines as weekly preachers, or lecturers, in the city and the provinces. This was an exceptional activity surrounding lectureships including the high number of lecturer appointments made over the relatively brief space of time, especially considering the urgent necessity of making preparations for the looming war and fighting it as well. By examining a range of sources, this article seeks to demonstrate that the Puritan MPs and peers, in cooperation with their supporters from across the country, tactically employed the institutional device of weekly preaching, or lectureships, to neutralize the influence of Anglican clergymen perceived as royalists dissatisfied with the parliamentarian cause, and to bolster Puritan and pro-parliamentarian preaching during the critical years of 1642–1643. If successfully employed, the device of weekly lectureships would have significantly widened the base of support for the parliament during this crucial period when people began to take sides, prepared for war, and fought its first battles. Such a program of lectureships, no doubt, contributed to the increasing polarization of the religious and political climate of the country. More broadly, this study seeks to add to our understanding of an early phase of the conflict that eventually embroiled the entire British Isles in a decade of gruesome internecine warfare.

scholarly journals Lost in Transition? Directions for an Economic Geography of Urban Sustainability Transitions

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Fastenrath ◽  
Boris Braun
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Sustainability Transitions ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
The City

Socio-technical transitions towards more sustainable modes of production and consumption are receiving increasing attention in the academic world and also from political and economic decision-makers. There is increasing demand for resource-efficient technologies and institutional innovations, particularly at the city level. However, it is widely unclear how processes of change evolve and develop and how they are embedded in different socio-spatial contexts. While numerous scholars have contributed to the vibrant research field around sustainability transitions, the geographical expertise largely has been ignored. The lack of knowledge about the role of spatial contexts, learning processes, and the co-evolution of technological, economical, and socio-political processes has been prominently addressed. Bridging approaches from Transition Studies and perspectives of Economic Geography, the paper presents conceptual ideas for an evolutionary and relational understanding of urban sustainability transitions. The paper introduces new perspectives on sustainability transitions towards a better understanding of socio-spatial contexts.

scholarly journals Extending the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways at the City Scale to Inform Future Vulnerability Assessments — The Case of Boston, Massachusetts

2019 ◽  
Vol 06 (03n04) ◽  
pp. 2050009
Author(s):  
Jayne Lino ◽  
Guillaume Rohat ◽  
Paul Kirshen ◽  
Hy Dao
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Climate Change Research ◽  
Multi Scale ◽  
Vulnerability Assessments ◽  
Neighborhood Scale ◽  
The City ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Climate change will impact cities’ infrastructure and urban dwellers, who often show differentiated capacity to cope with climate-related hazards. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are part of an emerging research field which uses global socioeconomic and climate scenarios, developed by the climate change research community, to explore how different socioeconomic pathways will influence future society’s ability to cope with climate change. While the SSPs have been extensively used at the global scale, their use at the local and urban scale has remained rare, as they first need to be contextualized and extended for the particular place of interest. In this study, we present and apply a method to develop multi-scale extended SSPs at the city and neighborhood scale. Using Boston, Massachusetts, as a case study, we combined scenario matching, experts’ elicitation, and participatory processes to contextualize and make the global SSPs relevant at the urban scale. We subsequently employed the extended SSPs to explore future neighborhood-level vulnerability to extreme heat under multiple plausible socioeconomic trajectories, highlighting the usefulness of extended SSPs in informing future vulnerability assessments. The large differences in outcomes hint at the enormous potential of risk reduction that social and urban planning policies could trigger in the next decades.

scholarly journals Aktivistinen kielimaisema: pilottitutkimus

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Sofie Henricson
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Railway Stations ◽  
City Official ◽  
Bus Stop ◽  
The People ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Landscape Research ◽  
The City ◽  
Tourist Information

Urban linguistic landscapes consist of various kinds of signs in different languages, together transmitting a myriad of messages to the people living in, visiting or passing through the city. Official authorities are the authors of some signs, e.g. street names and tourist information, while businesses operating on a local or global level are the authors of other signs, e.g. advertisements and information about opening hours. In addition, individual persons or groups of people give their input to the urban linguistic landscapes, e.g. by attaching a sticker to a bus stop or writing a slogan on a park bench. The current article explores this third, unofficial layer of the urban linguistic landscape, and the topics, discourses and ideologies it encompasses. Through a pilot study of the activist linguistic landscapes at two railway stations in Helsinki, the article discusses the methodological underpinnings of this kind of linguistic landscape research.

scholarly journals Defining Urban Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
Michael Batty
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Spatial Interaction ◽  
Urban Informatics ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Urban Science ◽  
Operational Models ◽  
And Function ◽  
The City ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractThis introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the theories and models that constitute what has come to be called urban science. Explaining and measuring the spatial structure of the city in terms of its form and function is one of the main goals of this science. It provides links between the way various theories about how the city is formed, in terms of its economy and social structure, and how these theories might be transformed into models that constitute the operational tools of urban informatics. First the idea of the city as a system is introduced, and then various models pertaining to the forces that determine what is located where in the city are presented. How these activities are linked to one another through flows and networks are then introduced. These models relate to formal models of spatial interaction, the distribution of the sizes of different cities, and the qualitative changes that take place as cities grow and evolve to different levels. Scaling is one of the major themes uniting these different elements grounding this science within the emerging field of complexity. We then illustrate how we might translate these ideas into operational models which are at the cutting edge of the new tools that are being developed in urban informatics, and which are elaborated in various chapters dealing with modeling and mobility throughout this book.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
State System ◽  
Population Migration ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Transnational Organized Crime ◽  
And Control ◽  
Crime Institute

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's key themes. The book examines mafias' ability to transplant in new and distant territories. Conventional wisdom suggests that organized crime migrates easily due to the spread of globalization and population migration, and criminal multinational corporations are increasingly unattached to a specific territory. According to Louise Shelley, the director of the Transnational Crime Institute in Washington, DC, “international organized crime has globalized its activities for the same reasons as legitimate multinational corporations.” Many authors argue that the notions of territorial entrenchment and control are becoming obsolete for a “Global Crime Inc.” that “transcends the sovereignty that organizes the modern state system.” The “transnational organized crime consensus” is influential among policymakers.

Introduction

Uprooted ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Thum
Keyword(s):  
Total Population ◽  
Large City ◽  
Border City ◽  
Population Exchange ◽  
Forced Migrations ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The City

This introductory chapter discusses the consequences of forced migrations for those regions where the established inhabitants were expelled and replaced by new settlers from elsewhere. It particularly studies the city of Wroclaw, the largest city in the German territories ceded to Poland after the war and the largest city ever to experience a total population exchange of this kind. As a large city, Wroclaw is well suited for an investigation of the complex consequences of such a population exchange. Compared to other large Polish cities with a similar history, such as Szczecin and Gdansk, Wroclaw offered decisive advantages. In 1945, Szczecin became a border city, having lost a significant portion of its hinterland as well as its economically crucial connection to Berlin. In Wroclaw, by contrast, established regional relations were preserved because almost all of Silesia became Polish in 1945.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This introductory chapter briefly discusses the baffling history of the pomerium. The pomerium, as a fundamental feature of Rome's political topography, was especially confounding for Roman antiquarians seeking to study the origins of Rome and its institutions. Its religious role lived on, cultivated by the priesthoods—the augurs and the pontiffs—charged with its related rituals. But the realities that accompanied Rome's growth from the Romulean foundation to the caput mundi rendered much of the surviving lore that surrounded the city's mythic past incommensurate with early imperial life in the urbs. The sheer scale of the city thus challenged one's belief in so many of the stories about its formation and its growth.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Brenda Hollweg ◽  
Igor Krstić
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual

In this introductory chapter readers are made familiar with the expanding research field of essayistic filmmaking in world cinema-contexts around the globe. Brenda Hollweg and Igor Krstíc argue that the essay film is a privileged political and ethical tool by means of which filmmakers around the world approach historically specific and locally, geographically concrete issues against larger global issues and universal concerns. The chapter also includes a genealogical overview of important moments in the development of essay filmmaking, particularly during the 1920s and 1960s, and provides readers with short abstracts on the individual chapters and their specific transnationally inflected case studies on essay film practitioners from around the world.

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