scholarly journals Operational Media: Cybernetics, Biopolitics and Postwar Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Zoë Druick
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Social Science ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Mass Education ◽  
The United Nations

This article develops the concept of «operational media» to think through the deployment of utility/useful cinema in the context of cybernetically informed educational policy. The paper argues that cybernetic concepts of communication, feedback loops and homeostasis were central to the pragmatic installation of media at the center of postwar mass education. Links are made to the dominance of cybernetic ideas in postwar social science, including social psychology, sociobiology and behaviourism. A consideration of the UN’s operational media allows for a reconsideration of the agency’s communicative mandate as biopolitical and governmental. Educational policies influenced by the UN were doubly concerned with technologized classrooms: cybernetic ideas presented themselves as politically neutral, while offering efficiencies in the delivery of content. Cold war citizenship was thus conceived as a form of training that would pragmatically lead to the rebalancing of a volatile international situation. Carrefour de la vie (1949), made by Belgian filmmaker Henri Storck for the United Nations, is presented as an example of the centrality of mental health for citizenship training in postwar biopolitical regimes. In particular, the tension between the film’s humanist and cybernetic strands are considered. Au Carrefour de la vie is considered as a transitional text, presenting a humanist story of childhood in postwar life that simultaneously prefigures the operation of a controlled society.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

scholarly journals Informal Reform of the United Nations Security Council

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-115
Author(s):  
Mariana Pimenta Oliveira Baccarini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Lock In Effect ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Lock In

Abstract This article analyses attempts to reform the United Nations Security Council from a historical-institutional perspective. It argues that the possibilities for reform have suffered from a ‘lock-in’ effect that has rendered the UN resistant to change. On the other hand, the UN decision-making process has evolved since its establishment, especially since the end of the Cold War, in response to new power aspirations, making it more representative and legitimate. The Security Council has also undergone continuous informal reform that has allowed it to adapt to new times.

The Development of the United Nations Law Concerning Peace-Keeping Operations

1992 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-281
Author(s):  
Robert Siekmann
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Central America ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cold War

Especially as a consequence of the termination of the Cold War, the détente in the relations between East en West (Gorbachev's ‘new thinking’ in foreign policy matters) and, finally, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the number of UN peace-keeping operations substantially increased in recent years. One could even speak of a ‘proliferation’. Until 1988 the number of operations was twelve (seven peace-keeping forces: UNEF ‘I’ and ‘II’, ONUC, UNHCYP, UNSF (West New Guinea), UNDOF AND UNIFIL; and five military observer missions: UNTSO, UNMOGIP, UNOGIL, UNYOM and UNIPOM). Now, three forces and seven observer missions can be added. The forces are MINURSO (West Sahara), UNTAC (Cambodia) and UNPROFOR (Yugoslavia); the observer groups: UNGOMAP (Afghanistan/Pakistan), UNIIMOG (Iran/Iraq), UNAVEM ‘I’ and ‘II’ (Angola), ONUCA (Central America), UNIKOM (Iraq/Kuwait) and ONUSAL (El Salvador). UNTAG (Namibia), which was established in 1978, could not become operational until 1989 as a result of the new political circumstances in the world. So, a total of twenty-three operations have been undertaken, of which almost fifty percent was established in the last five years, whereas the other half was the result of decisions taken by the United Nations in the preceding forty years (UNTSO dates back to 1949). In the meantime, some ‘classic’ operations are being continued (UNTSO, UNMOGIP, UNFICYP, UNDOF, and UNIFIL), whereas some ‘modern’ operations already have been terminated as planned (UNTAG, UNGOMAP, UNIIMOG, UNAVEM ‘I’ and ‘II’, and ONUCA). At the moment (July 1992) eleven operations are in action – the greatest number in the UN history ever.

scholarly journals A EVOLUÇÃO DO PEACEKEEPING: SUEZ, RUANDA E REPÚBLICA DEMOCRÁTICA DO CONGO

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Fernanda Affonso Leal ◽  
Rafael Santin ◽  
David Almstadter De Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Republic Of Congo ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

Since the first peacekeeping operation was created until today, the UN has been trying to adapt them to the different contexts in which they are deployed. This paper analy- ses the possibility of a bigger shift happening in the way the United Nations, through the Security Council, operates their Peacekeeping Operations. The change here ad- dressed includes, mainly, the constitution of more “robust” missions and the newly introduced Intervention Brigade in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By presenting three missions (UNEF I, UNAMIR and MONUSCO) deployed in different historic periods, we identified various elements in their mandates and in the way these were established which indicate a progressive transformation in the peacekeeping model since the Cold War - when conflicts were in their majority between States – until present days, when they occur mostly inside the States.

The Cold War, the Detente, and the United Nations

1974 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-842
Author(s):  
M.S. Rajan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War

The Role of the United Nations in the Post-Cold War Era

2017 ◽  
pp. 93-110
Author(s):  
Johan Kaufmann ◽  
Dick Leurdijk ◽  
Nico Schrijver
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The United Nations
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