Getting Religion Right in Civil Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200272199789
Author(s):  
Monica Duffy Toft

Surveying civil war in the world today is striking in terms of how often religious cleavages and grievances have become central to armed conflict. How are the causes and outcomes of religious civil wars different than other civil wars, if at all? Is Islam implicated for the contemporary surge in religious civil war? The first section reviews the literature and addresses the importance of religion for civil war. I then introduce a dataset and describe key trends in religious civil war in the third section, while in the fourth section I present tests of whether Muslim or Arab Muslim societies in particular are more prone to religious strife. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the main findings.

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sugumaran Narayanan

Historically, Southeast Asia has been among the most peaceful regions of the world. In the last sixty years, however, the populations of Southeast Asia have been torn apart by ravaging civil wars. What could be causing the high number of ethno-religious civil wars in Southeast Asia? To understand this, I use three different methods, two of which I have already employed in previous researches—quantitative (statistical) and traditional case studies. The third, using personal interviews with direct participants of conflict, is the focus of this study. This, combined with the results obtained from the other two methods, will highlight the causes of civil wars in Southeast Asia. While a number of studies have attempted to answer the race-religion-civil war nexus puzzle (none have used all three methods—quantitative, traditional case studies, and personal interviews), and none has specifically addressed Southeast Asian civil wars using all three methods.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Harris Parker

The press is a constitutive part of our society. It helps create national identities and formulates society's understanding of itself and its place in the world. Moreover, a free press is indispensable for ensuring the vibrancy of a democracy. For these reasons, a close inspection of news, and an evaluation of its performance, is crucial. We must look to the development of the mass press at the turn of the twentieth century to locate the beginnings of journalistic objectivity and the type of news we are familiar with today. The first section of this paper offers a review of accounts of this transformational period, placing opposing theories within the larger framework of the frictions between cultural studies and political economy, and underscores the need for a holistic understanding of the period. The second section chronicles the press's articulation of its new professional tenets, offers a definition of journalistic objectivity, and reveals its intrinsic limitations. The third section details how the modern press's ideal democratic mandate has been compromised, with the influence of the press being used instead to ensconce powerful interests. And the fourth section outlines the calls for a redefinition of journalism in light of the failures covered in the preceding section. Finally, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is offered as an alternative journalistic form that transcends the dangerous dogma of traditional news outlets, allowing it to fulfill the democratic responsibility of the press by encouraging a critical and astute citizenry.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana-Luisa Fernandes-Gonçalves

The present article is about the presence of the tv in the society, in general, and its potential as an important agent, such as the family and the school, on the children’s and young people’s development and education. Nowadays we live in a complex world of images with sound, the most of them transmitted by the tv, the cinema and the internet. The infantile universe is full of those images. This way we structured this article in four parts, refering some of the contents related with this subject. The first part describes the presence of the television in the children's daylife and their relationship with the magic box, even the identification that they make with its favourites characters, in order to understand the space that the TV occupies in their lives. The second part presents the different messages transmitted by the television. It is important to analyze the main risks and advantages of television, that is to say, in spite of some programs show bad values, foment the excessive consumption, expose the children to an atmosphere of violence and pornography, also entertains, accompanies, educates, informs, favours the access to the culture and allows to unite the family around a program. At last the third part, this one outlines the necessity to put the tele as a curricular resource in the school, to teaches the students how to analyze, how to criticize and to think about the texts and the news of the world today. The television, considered a powerful tool, is decisive in the communication, such in the formation of values and ideas as in the culture transmission. The function of the school is not to remain far from this factor, but to try to meditate, to understand and to decide its impact, in a better way, on the development of the children and youngs. As conclusion we can add that we’ve tried to aim some strategies that educators and parents will be able to work, united to the children and the youngs, so they could have a new look of the Tv’s world and that they could know how to make their own selection and how to have a critical attitude before the watched product.La presente comunicación se refiere a la presencia de la tele en la sociedad en general y a su potencial como agente importante de formación y educación, junto con la escuela y la familia, en la vida de los niños y de los jóvenes. Actualmente vivimos inmersos en un mundo complejo de imágenes con sonido, que recibimos muy especialmente a través de la tele, del cine y de Internet, los cuales hacen parte del cotidiano del universo infantil. Así, a fin de organizar algunos de los contenidos desde los que es posible enfocar el tema, estructuramos este artículo en cuatro partes. La primera parte describe la presencia de la tele a diario de los niños y su relación con la caja mágica, incluso la identificación que hacen de sus personajes favoritos, a fin de comprender el espacio que ocupa la tele en su cotidianidad. La segunda parte presenta los distintos mensajes transmitidos por la tele. Es importante analizar las principales riesgos y ventajes de la televisión, o sea, a pesar de algunos programas muestran antivalores de la tele: fomentar excesivamente el consumo, exponer a los niños a un ambiente de violencia y pornografía también entretiene, acompaña, educa, informa, favorece el acceso a la cultura y permite unir a la familia en torno a un programa. Cuanto a la tercera parte, plantea la necesidad de incorporar la tele como recurso curricular en la escuela, para que enseñe a los alumnos a analizar crítica y reflexivamente los textos mediáticos. La televisión es considerada como una herramienta poderosa, determinante en la comunicación, tanto en la formación de valores e ideas, como en la transmisión de cultura; la función de la escuela no es permanecer ajena a este factor, pero procurar reflexionar para comprender y decidir mejor su impacto en el desarrollo de los niños y jóvenes. Como conclusión podemos añadir que hemos tratado de apuntar algunas estrategias que educadores y padres podrán trabajar junto con los niños y los jóvenes, para que éstes tengan una nueva mirada del mundo de la tele y para que sepan hacer su propia selección y tener una actitud crítica ante el producto visionado.


1980 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 250-280
Author(s):  
Chi-hsi Hu

In more respects than one, the Fifth Encirclement Campaign launched by Chiang Kai-shek in 1933–34 against the Jiangxi Soviet may be considered as an important landmark in contemporary Chinese history. From a purely military standpoint, in view of its scope and the particular means used, it is undoubtedly the first modern Chinese campaign. General Jacques Guillermaz points out, quite rightly, that “the methodical nature of the operations, the importance given to fire power and logistical resources, and the tactical use of large and small units all bring the Fifth Campaign closer to certain phases of the 1914–18 war than to traditional Chinese civil wars.” Precisely because of its scope and its methodical nature, the Fifth Campaign, rather than the first four, led Mao, after the Long March, to evolve a theory of guerrilla warfare which “has broken out of the bounds of tactics to knock at the gates of strategy.” This theory, applied first of all to the war against Japan and later to the Third Revolutionary Civil War, was to change the face of China.


Itinerario ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Zhilian ◽  
Luo Rongqu

The Third World today is the historic product of the overseas expansion of European and North American capitalism. Prior to the rise of modern capitalism, the world had been pluralistic. Different centres of civilisation had developed independently. Between them there had been cultural and commercial intercourse. Two historic missions were completed by European capitalism: firstly, the conquest of the world, and in its wake, colonial plunderings; secondly, the integration of the isolated and the peripheric regions into a unified world system.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
Лобанов ◽  
Konstantin Lobanov ◽  
Моисеев ◽  
Vladimir Moiseev

Armed conflict in Syria has not only aggravated regional contradictions in the Middle East region, but also activated geopolitical interests of the world powers in this part of the planet. The collision of multidirectional interests gives tragic sounding to numerous internal and external political forces to civil war in Syria, prolongs this conflict in time and expands it spatially. This article is devoted to the detection of geopolitical interests of Russia in the Middle East region on the example of participation of our country in the Syrian opposition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.A. Leontyev

The paper is focused on one of the key aspects of Fyodor Vasilyuk’s contribution to the elabora¬tion of methodological foundations of psychology, namely, on the construct of lifeworld and ‘lifeworld ontology’ as a metatheoretical framework for the understanding of human life and activity in the world. The paper is subdivided into four sections. The first one gives the justification of Vasilyuk’s approach in terms of ‘lifeworld ontology’, reveals its conceptual connection with the ideas of A.N. Leontiev and S.L. Rubinstein. The second one is dedicated to the concept of lifeworld, its association with specifically human ways of existing in the world, its distinction from the environment and the idea of multiple hu¬man worlds. In the third section, the author reveals, basing on the conceptions of L. Binswanger, E. van Deurtzen and C. Popper, the multidimensional structure of human lifeworld and discusses the mutuality of human-world relationships. In the fourth section. a typology of lifeworlds is offered, based on three core criteria: past/present/future ratio, individual/society relationship, and factual/due/possible ratio as value orientations.


Islamovedenie ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-120
Author(s):  
Shreiber Viktor Konstantinovich ◽  

In this country, the name of Mullah Sadra is known to very few specialists, while con-temporary western scholars consider Sadra one of the classics of Muslim culture. These points define the structure and the content of this paper: what the word Islamic means in relation to philosophy and what caused such a high assessment of this person's creativity. In the first part, the author notes that any worldview reflects three attitudes of a person to the world, and on this basis then defines the difference in Islamic, Christian and Buddhist world outlooks. The second part is the description of the life path of ad-Din Shirazi from his discipleship, when his mentors were Mir Damad and Sheikh ul Islam Bahá'í, up to his return to Shiraz. Here the author dwells on the motives of Sadra's «hermitage» in Kohak. The specifics of Islamic philosophy is the sub-ject of the third section. The author considers the views of S. Meisami, M. Bilalov and O. Limen and concludes that the solution to this problem is not yet visible. In this regard, the heuristic po-tential of A. Smirnov’s «logical-semantic» theory suggesting to consider this specificity through the prism of relationship between the linguistic and conceptual (logical) pictures of the world, is discussed. The conclusion summarizes the author's reflections on the specifics of Arab-Muslim philosophy and Sadra's role in its development.


Author(s):  
Betcy Jose ◽  
Peace A. Medie

Studies have shown that civilians are often intentionally targeted in civil wars and that civilian protection efforts launched by the international community have not always been successful, if they occur at all. Civilians, therefore, have had to rely on themselves for protection in most conflicts. However, despite the pervasiveness of civilian self-protection (CSP) and its success at protecting civilians from violence in some cases, it is rarely discussed in the civilian protection literature, and its impact on civilian targeting is inadequately explored. Addressing this gap in the study and practice of civilian protection by carefully conceptualizing CSP and appreciating its role in civil war dynamics can further scholarly and practitioner discussions on civilian protection. CSP is defined as (a) actions taken to protect against immediate, direct threats to physical integrity imposed by belligerents or traditional protection actors; (b) primarily selected and employed by civilians; and (c) employed during an armed conflict. CSP strategies can be organized into three categories. The first, non-engagement, describes strategies in which civilians do not interact with belligerents or traditional protection actors who pose a threat to them. The second, nonviolent engagement, entails some interaction with one or more actors who may harm civilians. The third, violent engagement, includes CSP strategies that incorporate physical violence. These CSP strategies may actually render civilians more vulnerable to threats. First, some CSP strategies might lock civilians into unpredictable relationships with belligerents, which can become dangerous. Second, allying with one set of belligerents might lead to targeting by opposition forces, who view these CSP strategies as crucial support for their enemies. Third, civilians may overestimate how successful their CSP strategies can be, exposing them to harm. Fourth, civilian use of violence may cause belligerents to view them as threats, leading to intentional targeting. Appreciation of the reasons why civilians engage in CSP and understanding when and how this may endanger them can inspire more effective protection policies, as well as advance our understanding of civil war dynamics. For instance, further study on these issues can provide some insights into the conditions under which CSP is effective in protecting civilians and how the international community can support CSP. This information could be particularly useful in the design and execution of peacekeeping strategies that are sensitive to the efforts and needs of conflict-affected communities. Additionally, studying CSP can advance the vast literature on civilian targeting by shedding additional light on why belligerents kill civilians.


Author(s):  
Jaroslav Tir ◽  
Johannes Karreth

After surveying the literature on the causes, consequences, and management of civil wars, we argue that novel ways of examining civil war management are needed. We advocate for a developmental view of civil wars in order to better understand how to prevent the escalation of low-level armed conflict to full-scale civil war. To prevent full-scale civil war, third parties need to (a) respond swiftly, (b) have the will and ability to impose tangible costs on (and offer benefits to) governments and rebels, and (c) remain involved over the long term. Our analysis shows that typical third-party civil war management approaches (mediation, peacekeeping, and intervention) fail to adequately address at least one of these issues. This motivates our argument in favor of focusing on a different type of third party that could arguably play a particularly constructive role in civil war prevention: highly structured intergovernmental organizations.


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