Chapter 4. The “Indigenous Problem,” Cold War US Anthropology, and Revolutionary Nationalism. New Approaches to Racial Thinking and Indigeneity in Guatemala

Abstract Influential members of the disarmament community have in recent years maintained that further progress towards the international community's nominally shared goal of a world without nuclear weapons depends on recapturing the spirit and practices of cooperation that prevailed in the late 1980s and 1990s. Proponents of abolition, in this view, should focus their efforts on revitalizing the tried and tested arms control formula that was implemented following the end of the Cold War. In this article, I argue that this call to make disarmament great again reflects unwarranted nostalgia for a past that never was, fostering overconfidence in established approaches to the elimination of nuclear weapons. Far from putting the world on course to nuclear abolition, the end of the Cold War saw the legitimation of nuclear weapons as a hedge against ‘future uncertainties’ and entrenchment of the power structures that sustain the retention of nuclear armouries. By overselling past progress towards the elimination of nuclear arms, the nostalgic narrative of a lost abolitionist consensus is used to rationalize the existing nuclear order and delegitimize the pursuit of new approaches to elimination such as the movement to stigmatize nuclear weapons and the practice of nuclear deterrence.

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United Nations Governance of Postconflict Societies

The American Journal of International Law ◽

10.2307/2642038 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 95 (1) ◽

pp. 76-85 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Michael J. Matheson

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

United Nations ◽

Security Council ◽

The State ◽

International Humanitarian Law ◽

Humanitarian Law ◽

New Approaches ◽

Boundary Issues ◽

The United Nations ◽

The Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War a decade ago, the United Nations has exercised authority in significant new ways to address various aspects of resolving conflicts and dealing with their consequences. These new approaches have included the use offeree to end interstate and internal violence, the resolution of boundary issues and other disputes that might prolong the conflict, the elimination of threatening weapons capabilities, the prosecution of violations of international humanitarian law, and the compensation of victims of the conflict. These actions have been taken either with the consent of the state or states involved, or pursuant to the authority of the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, or both.

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Violence today

Ciência & Saúde Coletiva ◽

10.1590/s1413-81232006000200002 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 261-267

Author(s):

Michel Wieviorka

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Nuclear Physics ◽

Industrial Structure ◽

Historical Context ◽

Central Idea ◽

New Approaches ◽

The World ◽

Recent Developments ◽

The Cold War

In this paper, the author seeks to approach contemporary violence in its most different expressions, including the use of the most recent developments in biology, bacteriology, chemistry and nuclear physics. The central idea is that violence changes, and with it the way it is perceived and how we react to it. The text, besides putting violence into a historical context, analyzes 1) the big transformation(s) in the world: the end of the cold war, the new industrial structure and its consequences for the decline of the labor movement, globalization and the new forms of victimization; 2) in the second part, the author points to new approaches and characterizes novel contemporary subjects.

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