scholarly journals Pacifying Leviathan: Back to basics in peace-building out of conflict

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jessie Williams
Keyword(s):  
Reverse Engineering ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Core

<p>This thesis focuses critically on contemporary theory and practice of peace-building where there has been conflict. The commonality of the resumption of violence after peace processes in many recent examples, suggests that both theory and practice have not worked as intended. The thesis explores insights that might improve the odds that governing institutions (or, more particularly, the people who work in them) can put aside violence. In the terms used in this thesis: how might Leviathan be pacified? Therefore, the thesis deals with basics evident in all recorded (and probably pre-historic) human experience. For the modern states of Western Europe and North America, pacifying Leviathan followed centuries of conflict (including two world wars), interspersed with governance reforms and constitutional adjustments. The process is ongoing, but by the middle of the 20th century “the liberal state” clearly emerged, with features that included constitutions, the rule of law, the protection of human rights and the market system. There appeared to be a widespread view after World War II that the liberal state apparatus’ essence could be written down in documents, transplanted into many different historical and cultural contexts and would work much as the model predicted i.e. was easily reproducible, perhaps infinitely, even in smaller and smaller versions. From 1945 to 2010, the numbers of states at the United Nations almost quadrupled (51 to 192). Member 193 (South Sudan) may emerge from decades of conflict in 2011. In all that state formation, the optimistic view was that the new documents and institutions would provide structures within which political and/or ethnic competitors/combatants would engage in non-violent political competition. In this thesis, “reverse-engineering” is the term given to this notion. Such optimism was severely dented by the experiences of many newly-independent states in the mid-late 20th century. As violence escalated in new and existing states all over the world after the Cold War ended (taken, for convenience, as 1990), reverse-engineering remained at the core of the formula for peace-building after conflict. As with the post-colonial period, liberal peace-building since 1990 have also been repeated failures to work as intended, including the resumption of conflict. The most fragile states have posed the hardest problems, not only for the suffering citizens but for the international community seeking how best to help.  With this in mind, and accepting that each state and society is unique, this thesis sets out building blocks for alternative approaches. It does not suggest there are simple answers in pacifying Leviathan, either generally or in relation to any particular example. If it is indeed possible in any place (e.g. Haiti) to reduce ongoing conflict, the argument is that these blocks should be amongst the foundations of theory to inform practice.  The core thesis is thus that the chances of pacifying Leviathan might be significantly improved if domestic and international actors: • Adopt a conflict transformation approach to guide theory and practice; • Come to terms with groupism – how/why humans bond into groups and the potential this poses for violence and peace; • Understand the importance of receptivity - the notion that critical masses of key actors should squarely face (often when they have become exhausted by) the consequences of violent competitiveness and seek alternatives; • Translate receptivity into learned constitutionalism – learning to govern by rules amongst sufficient actors; and • Develop international assistance guided by the above perspectives, and which, with the consent of the peoples concerned, find ways to stay appropriately engaged for the time needed to strengthen the factors that should pacify Leviathan.  The thesis does not focus on future strategies of conflict-reduction – such as economic development to give people stakes in the society, along with disarmament of combatants. Many other studies explore these. Here, the exploration is of the nature of human society, informed by history, examples, case studies and a sweep of cross-disciplinary analysis. Understanding why pacifying Leviathan is so hard is the basic first step, which forms the bulk of this thesis. Putting such understanding into practice involves many further steps. Important as these might be for current and future policy and practice in peace-building, their full development is beyond the scope of this thesis. Some suggestions are made, especially in the conclusion, but elaboration will have to await further work.</p>

scholarly journals Pacifying Leviathan: Back to basics in peace-building out of conflict

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jessie Williams
Keyword(s):  
Reverse Engineering ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Core

<p>This thesis focuses critically on contemporary theory and practice of peace-building where there has been conflict. The commonality of the resumption of violence after peace processes in many recent examples, suggests that both theory and practice have not worked as intended. The thesis explores insights that might improve the odds that governing institutions (or, more particularly, the people who work in them) can put aside violence. In the terms used in this thesis: how might Leviathan be pacified? Therefore, the thesis deals with basics evident in all recorded (and probably pre-historic) human experience. For the modern states of Western Europe and North America, pacifying Leviathan followed centuries of conflict (including two world wars), interspersed with governance reforms and constitutional adjustments. The process is ongoing, but by the middle of the 20th century “the liberal state” clearly emerged, with features that included constitutions, the rule of law, the protection of human rights and the market system. There appeared to be a widespread view after World War II that the liberal state apparatus’ essence could be written down in documents, transplanted into many different historical and cultural contexts and would work much as the model predicted i.e. was easily reproducible, perhaps infinitely, even in smaller and smaller versions. From 1945 to 2010, the numbers of states at the United Nations almost quadrupled (51 to 192). Member 193 (South Sudan) may emerge from decades of conflict in 2011. In all that state formation, the optimistic view was that the new documents and institutions would provide structures within which political and/or ethnic competitors/combatants would engage in non-violent political competition. In this thesis, “reverse-engineering” is the term given to this notion. Such optimism was severely dented by the experiences of many newly-independent states in the mid-late 20th century. As violence escalated in new and existing states all over the world after the Cold War ended (taken, for convenience, as 1990), reverse-engineering remained at the core of the formula for peace-building after conflict. As with the post-colonial period, liberal peace-building since 1990 have also been repeated failures to work as intended, including the resumption of conflict. The most fragile states have posed the hardest problems, not only for the suffering citizens but for the international community seeking how best to help.  With this in mind, and accepting that each state and society is unique, this thesis sets out building blocks for alternative approaches. It does not suggest there are simple answers in pacifying Leviathan, either generally or in relation to any particular example. If it is indeed possible in any place (e.g. Haiti) to reduce ongoing conflict, the argument is that these blocks should be amongst the foundations of theory to inform practice.  The core thesis is thus that the chances of pacifying Leviathan might be significantly improved if domestic and international actors: • Adopt a conflict transformation approach to guide theory and practice; • Come to terms with groupism – how/why humans bond into groups and the potential this poses for violence and peace; • Understand the importance of receptivity - the notion that critical masses of key actors should squarely face (often when they have become exhausted by) the consequences of violent competitiveness and seek alternatives; • Translate receptivity into learned constitutionalism – learning to govern by rules amongst sufficient actors; and • Develop international assistance guided by the above perspectives, and which, with the consent of the peoples concerned, find ways to stay appropriately engaged for the time needed to strengthen the factors that should pacify Leviathan.  The thesis does not focus on future strategies of conflict-reduction – such as economic development to give people stakes in the society, along with disarmament of combatants. Many other studies explore these. Here, the exploration is of the nature of human society, informed by history, examples, case studies and a sweep of cross-disciplinary analysis. Understanding why pacifying Leviathan is so hard is the basic first step, which forms the bulk of this thesis. Putting such understanding into practice involves many further steps. Important as these might be for current and future policy and practice in peace-building, their full development is beyond the scope of this thesis. Some suggestions are made, especially in the conclusion, but elaboration will have to await further work.</p>

Matriarchal Studies

Anthropology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Alice Mann ◽  
Heide Goettner-Abendroth
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Culture Shock ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
Egalitarian Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

Evidence of matriarchy had always existed in Western chronicles, albeit scattered or hidden amid other ethnographic tidbits, all of them filtered heavily through the androcentric lens of Christian missionaries or European travelers. Most of these old European sources were either puzzled or horrified by women-led cultures, having had nothing to attach them to but scary stories from Herodotus about the ferocious Amazons as “men-slayers” or the Christian theological depictions of sinful Eve, resulting in the “burning times” (witch hunts). Moving out from Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially into Africa and the Americas, home to many matriarchal cultures, was very unsettling to the patriarchal paradigm of Europe. Until quite recently, this culture shock combined with colonialism to ensure that scholarship on matriarchy was crafted exclusively by elite, Western scholars, nearly all of them male and coming from nothing remotely resembling a matriarchal culture. Scholars in the 19th century were all infiltrated by the unilinear, universal evolution theory, as a part of European American colonialism, sporting racist and sexist roots. These disabilities distorted comprehension of the matriarchal form of society, allowing Western scholars either to dismiss it outright as a fantasy or to portray it crudely, as a wicked, Amazonian domination of men. This background left enduring marks on the scholarship around matriarchy until new interest was piqued among German and American scholars in the 19th century, moving thought from the Amazonian conception to the definition of matriarchy as a “mother right.” These scholars remained mired, however, in the racist and sexist premises of European colonialism, well into the 20th century. As colonial Eurocentrism lifted in the mid- to late 20th century, scholars from non-Western, matriarchal cultures worldwide began chiming in on the conversation, in order to revamp old ideas together with Western female scholars. The “maternal values” in matriarchal studies do not indicate Western sentimentalism, but principles formulated by Indigenous, matriarchal societies themselves, in their sayings (e.g., Minangkabau) and in their social rules (e.g., Iroquois), based on the prototype of Mother Nature, as conceptualized in mythology, proverbs, songs, etc. Collating all the evidence of non-Western and Western 21st-century scholarship, matriarchy is here defined as mother-centered societies, based on maternal values: equality, consensus finding, gift giving, and peace building by negotiations. Gift economies, defined by modern matriarchal studies as a transitive relation in closed communities, is a core concept of all matriarchies. The result is a gender-egalitarian society, in which each gender has its own sphere of power and action. All these societies are characterized by matrilinearity, matrilocality, and women as keepers of the land and distributors of food, based on a structured gift economy. As derived from inductive studies of singular matriarchal societies and in collaboration with Indigenous scholars writing on their own communities, the current definition of matriarchy is a mother-centered, gender-egalitarian society that practices the gift economy. Modern matriarchal studies primarily assesses the patterns of those cultures, past and present, in their unique displays of gender egalitarianism and generally social egalitarianism.

Natural Hazards and Risk Management

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljubica Mamula-Seadon
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Natural Hazards ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Natural Hazard ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Management Decision ◽  
Risk Governance ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Late 20Th Century

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. Please check back later for the full article. Natural hazards risk management has developed in conjunction with broader risk management theory and practice. Thus, it reflects a discourse that has characterized this field, particularly in the last decades of the 20th century. Effective implementation of natural hazards risk management strategies requires an understanding of underlying assumptions inherent to specific methodologies, as well as an explication of the process and the challenges embodied in specific approaches to risk mitigation. Historical thinking on risk, as it has unfolded in the last few hundred years, has been exemplified by a juxtaposition between positivist and post-positivist approaches to risk that dominated the risk discourse in the late 20th century. Evolution of the general concept of risk and the progress of scientific rationality modified the relationship of people to natural hazard disasters. The epistemology, derived from a worldview that champions objective knowledge gained through observation and analysis of the predicable phenomena in the world surrounding us, has greatly contributed to this change of attitude. Notwithstanding its successes, the approach has been challenged by the complexity of natural hazard risk and by the requirement for democratic risk governance. The influence of civic movements and social scientists entering the risk management field led to the current approach, which incorporates values and value judgments into risk management decision making. The discourse that generated those changes can be interpreted as positivist vs. post-positivist, influenced by concepts of sustainability and resilience, and generating some common principles, particularly relevant for policy and planning. Examples from different countries, such as New Zealand, illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the current theory and practice of natural hazards risk management and help identify challenges for the 21st century.

Diagnosing and Debunking Korean Pseudohistory

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-80
Author(s):  
Andrew Logie
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Inner Mongolia ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Core ◽  
Early State

In current day South Korea pseudohistory pertaining to early Korea and northern East Asia has reached epidemic proportions. Its advocates argue the early state of Chosŏn to have been an expansive empire centered on mainland geographical Manchuria. Through rationalizing interpretations of the traditional Hwan’ung- Tan’gun myth, they project back the supposed antiquity and pristine nature of this charter empire to the archaeological Hongshan Culture of the Neolithic straddling Inner Mongolia and Liaoning provinces of China. Despite these blatant spatial and temporal exaggerations, all but specialists of early Korea typically remain hesitant to explicitly label this conceptualization as “pseudohistory.” This is because advocates of ancient empire cast themselves as rationalist scholars and claim to have evidential arguments drawn from multiple textual sources and archaeology. They further wield an emotive polemic defaming the domestic academic establishment as being composed of national traitors bent only on maintaining a “colonial view of history.” The canon of counterevidence relied on by empire advocates is the accumulated product of 20th century revisionist and pseudo historiography, but to willing believers and non-experts, it can easily appear convincing and overwhelming. Combined with a postcolonial nationalist framing and situated against the ongoing historiography dispute with China, their conceptualization of a grand antiquity has gained bipartisan political influence with concrete ramifications for professional scholarship. This paper seeks to introduce and debunk the core, seemingly evidential, canon of arguments put forward by purveyors of Korean pseudohistory and to expose their polemics, situating the phenomenon in a broader diagnostic context of global pseudohistory and archaeology.

“Band Wagon and Gravy Train”: uses and abuses along the Silk Road

Afghanistan ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
Warwick Ball
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Ancient Trade ◽  
International Image ◽  
Academic Discussion ◽  
The Silk Road

The Silk Road as an image is a relatively new one for Afghanistan. It appeals to both the pre-Islamic and the perceived Islamic past, thus offering an Islamic balance to previous identities linked to Bamiyan or to the Kushans. It also appeals to a broader and more international image, one that has been taken up by many other countries. This paper traces the rise of the image of the Silk Road and its use as a metaphor for ancient trade to encompass all contacts throughout Eurasia, prehistoric, ancient and modern, but also how the image has been adopted and expanded into many other areas: politics, tourism and academia. It is argued here that the origin and popularity of the term lies in late 20th century (and increasingly 21st century) politics rather than any reality of ancient trade. Its consequent validity as a metaphor in academic discussion is questioned

The Nature of Degrowth: Theorising the Core of Nature for the Degrowth Movement

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pasi Heikkurinen
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Radical Reduction ◽  
Nature Experience ◽  
Matter Energy

This article investigates human–nature relations in the light of the recent call for degrowth, a radical reduction of matter–energy throughput in over-producing and over-consuming cultures. It outlines a culturally sensitive response to a (conceived) paradox where humans embedded in nature experience alienation and estrangement from it. The article finds that if nature has a core, then the experienced distance makes sense. To describe the core of nature, three temporal lenses are employed: the core of nature as ‘the past’, ‘the future’, and ‘the present’. It is proposed that while the degrowth movement should be inclusive of temporal perspectives, the lens of the present should be emphasised to balance out the prevailing romanticism and futurism in the theory and practice of degrowth.

Design, Synthesis and Bioactivity of Core 1 O-glycan and its Derivative on Human Gut Microbiota

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 1348-1353
Author(s):  
Huanhuan Qu ◽  
Baixue Li ◽  
Jingyi Yang ◽  
Huaiwen Liang ◽  
Meixia Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gut Microbiota ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Glycan Structure ◽  
Human Gut ◽  
Design Synthesis ◽  
The Core ◽  
Human Gut Microbiota ◽  
Biochemical Studies ◽  
Gut Symbionts

Background: Disaccharide core 1 (Galβ1-3GalNAc) is a common O-glycan structure in nature. Biochemical studies have confirmed that the formation of the core 1 structure is an important initial step in O-glycan biosynthesis and it is of great importance for human body. Objective: Our study will provide meaningful and useful sights for O-glycan synthesis and their bioassay. And all the synthetic glycosides would be used as intermediate building blocks in the scheme developed for oligosaccharide construction. Methods: In this article, we firstly used chemical procedures to prepare core 1 and its derivative, and a novel disaccharide was efficiently synthesized. The structures of the synthesized compounds were elucidated and confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS. Then we employed three human gut symbionts belonging to Bacteroidetes, a predominantphyla in the distal gut, as models to study the bioactivity of core 1 and its derivative on human gut microbiota. Results: According to our results, both core 1 and derivative could support the growth of B. fragilis, especially the core 1 derivative, while failed to support the growth of B. thetaiotaomicron and B. ovatus. Conclusion: This suggested that the B. fragilis might have the specificity glycohydrolase to cut the glycosidic bond for acquiring monosaccharide.

Political Settlements and Economic Transformation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hazel Gray
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Technological Learning ◽  
The Core ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Settlement

This chapter sets out the analytical framework of political settlements and elaborates the framework to account for the socialist experiences of Tanzania and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. A political settlement, as defined by Mushtaq Khan, is a combination of power and institutions that is mutually compatible and also sustainable in terms of economic and political viability. The chapter clarifies the core building blocks of the approach and sets out the main differences between political settlements and new institutional economics. The chapter then defines a socialist political settlement where productive rights are formally held by the collective and formal institutions protect common and collectively owned assets. The attempts to construct a socialist political settlement left important institutional, political, and economic legacies. These shaped incentives and constraints which influenced a number of critical processes at the heart of economic development—related to technological learning, accumulation for investment, and political stabilization.

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