scholarly journals Building collaboration through shared actions: The experience of the Global Network for Disaster Reduction

Author(s):  
Terry Gibson

This article asks how the emergent Global Network for Disaster Reduction has built collaboration and impact. Observation of the network’s journey nuanced the researcher’s initial hypothesis in marked ways. A ‘reflective practitioner’ perspective is adopted, locating action within two relevant theoretical frameworks to aid understanding and define future progress. Development showed an early emphasis on a ‘community of practice’ model. However, this appeared ineffective in creating the intended collaboration and led to the recognition of the power of shared action. This observation is framed within the thinking of Freire (1996) on action and reflection as a means of empowerment. The political dimension of the network’s activity is recognised, and is related to Gaventa’s (1980) thinking on the creation of political space. The article attempts to show that combining cycles of action and reflection in the network’s activity (i.e. creating a practitioner focus) with a wider investigation of relevant literature and thinking can be helpful in framing understanding and determining future strategy. It concludes by suggesting that a proposed framework of ‘communities of praxis’ may have a broader application in the development of networks.

In every phase of the conflict in Afghanistan, serious War Crimes and crimes against humanity were committed, resulting in mass killings and forced displacement of millions of Afghan civilians and political opponents. Based on relevant literature, this article investigates the political factors responsible for the failure of transitional justice in Afghanistan, particularly internal and external factors. The article also brings to the fore the impact of the dual process of state-building and peace-building on the implementation of transitional justice. In addition, the paper investigates why the 'Peace first and justice later' strategy proved to be unsuccessful in Afghanistan as the Taliban continued their atrocities, fighting Afghan forces and killing innocent people in suicide attacks. The paper finds that the failure of transitional justice in Afghanistan is due to both internal and external factors. Further, the paper finds that Afghanistan has never been a post-conflict state, unlike other countries that have experienced transitional justice processes. Therefore transitional justice measures were never implemented.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Antonio Bellisario ◽  
Leslie Prock

The article examines Chilean muralism, looking at its role in articulating political struggles in urban public space through a visual political culture perspective that emphasizes its sociological and ideological context. The analysis characterizes the main themes and functions of left-wing brigade muralism and outlines four subpolitical phases: (i) Chilean mural painting’s beginnings in 1940–1950, especially following the influence of Mexican muralism, (ii) the development of brigade muralism for political persuasion under the context of revolutionary sociopolitical upheaval during the 1960s and in the socialist government of Allende from 1970 to 1973, (iii) the characteristics of muralism during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s as a form of popular protest, and (iv) muralism to express broader social discontent during the return to democracy in the 1990s. How did the progressive popular culture movement represent, through murals, the political hopes during Allende’s government and then the political violence suffered under the military dictatorship? Several online repositories of photographs of left-wing brigade murals provide data for the analysis, which suggests that brigade muralism used murals mostly for political expression and for popular education. Visual art’s inherent political dimension is enmeshed in a field of power constituted by hegemony and confrontation. The muralist brigades executed murals to express their political views and offer them to all spectators because the street wall was within everyone's reach. These murals also suggested ideas that went beyond pictorial representation; thus, muralism was a process of education that invited the audience to decipher its polysemic elements.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-113
Author(s):  
Francesco Rotiroti

This article seeks to define a theoretical framework for the study of the relation between religion and the political community in the Roman world and to analyze a particular case in point. The first part reviews two prominent theories of religion developed in the last fifty years through the combined efforts of anthropologists and classicists, arguing for their complementary contribution to the understanding of religion's political dimension. It also provides an overview of the approaches of recent scholarship to the relation between religion and the Roman polity, contextualizing the efforts of this article toward a theoretical reframing of the political and institutional elements of ancient Christianity. The second part focuses on the religious legislation of the Theodosian Code, with particular emphasis on the laws against the heretics and their performance in the construction of the political community. With their characteristic language of exclusion, these laws signal the persisting overlap between the borders of the political community and the borders of religion, in a manner that one would expect from pre-Christian civic religions. Nevertheless, the political essence of religion did also adapt to the ecumenical dimension of the empire. Indeed, the religious norms of the Code appear to structure a community whose borders tend to be identical to the borders of the whole inhabited world, within which there is no longer room for alternative affiliations; the only possible identity outside this community is that of the insane, not belonging to any political entity and thus unable to possess any right.


2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642110139
Author(s):  
Reyna Hernández-Tubert

The origins of the Mexican people and their impact on their social unconscious have been presented in the first part of this article. This second part starts with a discussion of the unavoidable need to include the political dimension in any group-analytic theory and enquiry. It then sketches the socio-political evolution of the country up to the present and its impact on the collective mood and relations among individuals and groups.


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