When There Was No Aid

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah G. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
International Aid ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Global North ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Civil Order ◽  
Peace And Development

For all of the doubts raised about the effectiveness of international aid in advancing peace and development, there are few examples of developing countries that are even relatively untouched by it. This book offers us one such example. Using evidence from Somaliland’s experience of peace-building, the book challenges two of the most engrained presumptions about violence and poverty in the global South. First, that intervention by actors in the global North is self-evidently useful in ending them, and second that the quality of a country’s governance institutions (whether formal or informal) necessarily determines the level of peace and civil order that the country experiences. The book explores how popular discourses about war, peace, and international intervention structure the conditions of possibility to such a degree that even the inability of institutions to provide reliable security can stabilize a prolonged period of peace. It argues that Somaliland’s post-conflict peace is grounded less in the constraining power of its institutions than in a powerful discourse about the country’s structural, temporal, and physical proximity to war. Through its sensitivity to the ease with which peace gives way to war, the book argues, this discourse has indirectly harnessed an apparent propensity to war as a source of order.

The Imperative of Intervention

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-47
Author(s):  
Sarah G. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Global South ◽  
State Building ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
State Fragility ◽  
The World ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
North And South ◽  
Peace And Development

This chapter sets the scene for Somaliland’s place within debates about the utility of northern intervention against violence and poverty in various southern contexts. It explores the way that the dominant discourse about state fragility frames the quality of domestic governance institutions in the Global South as both cause of, and solution to, the prevalence of conflict and poverty. In so doing, it brackets out alternative—nondomestic and noninstitutional—ways of understanding peace and development in the Global South. These exclusions also frame international intervention as self-evidently useful in making the world more peaceful and prosperous. The chapter argues that this dramatically overstates the impact that development or state-building interventions have because they constitute a small part of the means by which power and resources move between north and south.

scholarly journals "Heritage-for-Peace and Development": An Opportunity Not to be Missed

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 1149-1164
Author(s):  
Miloš Milenković
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Development Program ◽  
International Community ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
United Nations Development Program ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Peace And Development ◽  
Critical Social

The dominant approach of the international community to the subject of our research and teaching is to instrumentalise cultural heritage safeguarding within stabilisation and development programs in post-conflict regions. Since the turn of the Millennium, cultural heritage safeguarding has been among the crucial instruments used by the international community, especially in post-conflict regions, for: reconciliation and peace building; development of a common sense of belonging; promoting mutually respectful dialogue in culturally complex societies. Many international organizations, such as the UN, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, NATO, the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the Council of Europe, and the EU, promote the management of ethno-political conflicts as their priority. Their agendas follow the principles of a) the overall relevance of cultural heritage for society and b) the importance of social networks for peace-building and peacekeeping in post-traumatic contexts. Instead of opposing this peace and development oriented paradigm from either anti-realist or nationalist perspective, we can recognize it, apply it and use it to improve the social status of social sciences and humanities in Serbia. Anthropological and critical heritage studies-based criticism of UNESCO-driven, state-governed ICH safeguarding fails to comprehend that standard academic constructivist analyses of a community’s key symbols of identity are offensive from the native’s point of view. Our typical analyses unwittingly confuse, annoy or even insult a great majority of the wider public who view/perceive collective identity as something given, inherited and real analogously to the objects and processes of the physical world. Consequently, our theoretical work counterindicates both peacekeeping, stability-building efforts by the international community in post-conflict regions and the goals of critical social science (which it nominally represents). Hence, a novel approach is required, one prioritising heritage stakeholder inclusion (and not our theoretical or ethnoreligious commitments). It is precisely the studies of nationalism and its consequences which forbid us to think of heritage as something useful, a counter-intuitive method for achieving fundamental anthropological goals. As communities regularly perceive their identities as objective and real, and see a critical social theory approach to their customs and traditions as confusing, non-academic, illegitimate or even offensive, I here propose a shift from constructionist criticism, standard in anthropology, to realist instrumentalism, typical of ethnology, in order to boost ICH safeguarding potential for achievement of both social and disciplinary-specific goals.

Proximities of Violence: Civil Order Beyond Governance Institutions

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 680-691
Author(s):  
Sarah G Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Weak Institutions ◽  
The Common ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Civil Order ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Support Order

AbstractThis article is concerned with the relationship between the quality of a country's governance institutions and the degree of civil order it experiences. Using evidence from Somaliland, it argues that order and peaceful cohabitation can be sustained not only when, but even partly because, governance institutions are incapable of reliably controlling violence. It suggests that Somaliland's postconflict peace is less grounded in the constraining power of its governance institutions than in a powerful discourse about the country's structural, temporal, and physical proximity to war. Through its sensitivity to the ease with which peace gives way to war, this discourse indirectly harnesses an apparent propensity to disorder as a source of order. This case challenges the “common sense” causal relationship between institutions and order. If either the strength or the weakness of institutions can offer foundations for order, then neither quality can be assigned as its cause without also being its effect. This has important implications beyond Somaliland by suggesting that, if weak institutions can support order under certain discursive conditions, then discourse—which is inherently fluid—also mediates the relationship between robust institutions and order. This makes them more susceptible to rapid change than usually imagined.

Local Ownership and the Rules of the Game

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-135
Author(s):  
Sarah G. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Capacity ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Local Ownership ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Basic Set ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Civil Order ◽  
Rules Of The Game

This chapter shows how Somaliland’s institutions have helped to facilitate both war and peace, which is reflected in the way that the independence discourse emphasizes that peace is never guaranteed and so must be actively nurtured. It charts the evolution of the governance institutions that structured key aspects of Somaliland’s recovery between 1991 and 1997, contextualizing their role in ending the violence and in the subsequent maintenance of peace. It emphasizes the contested nature of their emergence and the degree to which their contingency diminishes the notion that there is a “basic set of tools emerging from experience” that can be applied to post-conflict situations. After illustrating the complexity of the rules of the game that were iteratively established over several years and across dozens of the clan-based conferences, the chapter zooms in to examine the government’s institutional capacity to enforce rules that are not directly related to either to violence or civil order: the payment of tax. It argues that the government’s inability to compel people to pay tax has actually helped to produce a limited measure of taxation compliance.

scholarly journals Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration in Violent Conflict Settings

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Clarissa Augustinus ◽  
Ombretta Tempra
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Peace Building ◽  
Land Administration ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Conflict Settings ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Fit For Purpose

According to the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency, there were 79.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide by the end of 2019. Evictions from homes and land are often linked to protracted violent conflict. Land administration (LA) can be a small part of UN peace-building programs addressing these conflicts. Through the lens of the UN and seven country cases, the problem being addressed is: what are the key features of fit-for-purpose land administration (FFP LA) in violent conflict contexts? FFP LA involves the same LA elements found in conventional LA and FFP LA, and LA in post conflict contexts, as it supports peace building and conflict resolution. However, in the contexts being examined, FFP LA also has novel features as well, such as extra-legal transitional justice mechanisms to protect people and their land rights and to address historical injustices and the politics of exclusion that are the root causes of conflict. In addition, there are land governance and power relations’ implications, as FFP LA is part of larger UN peace-building programs. This impacts the FFP LA design. The cases discussed are from Darfur/Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Honduras, Iraq, Jubaland/Somalia, Peru and South Sudan.

scholarly journals ResUHUrge: A Low Cost and Fully Functional Ventilator Indicated for Application in COVID-19 Patients

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (23) ◽  
pp. 6774
Author(s):  
Francisco José Vivas Fernández ◽  
José Sánchez Segovia ◽  
Ismael Martel Bravo ◽  
Carlos García Ramos ◽  
Daniel Ruiz Castilla ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Pulmonary Ventilation ◽  
Lung Infection ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
Multidisciplinary Research ◽  
Global North ◽  
Severity Of The Disease ◽  
Open Source Hardware ◽  
The University

Although the cure for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) will come in the form of pharmaceutical solutions and/or a vaccine, one of the only ways to face it at present is to guarantee the best quality of health for patients, so that they can overcome the disease on their own. Therefore, and considering that COVID-19 generally causes damage to the respiratory system (in the form of lung infection), it is essential to ensure the best pulmonary ventilation for the patient. However, depending on the severity of the disease and the health condition of the patient, the situation can become critical when the patient has respiratory distress or becomes unable to breathe on his/her own. In that case, the ventilator becomes the lifeline of the patient. This device must keep patients stable until, on their own or with the help of medications, they manage to overcome the lung infection. However, with thousands or hundreds of thousands of infected patients, no country has enough ventilators. If this situation has become critical in the Global North, it has turned disastrous in developing countries, where ventilators are even more scarce. This article shows the race against time of a multidisciplinary research team at the University of Huelva, UHU, southwest of Spain, to develop an inexpensive, multifunctional, and easy-to-manufacture ventilator, which has been named ResUHUrge. The device meets all medical requirements and is developed with open-source hardware and software.

Ethical infrastructure: Halal and the ecology of askesis in Muslim Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 146349962110597
Author(s):  
Matteo (Teo) Benussi
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Consumption ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Material Religion ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Inherent Quality ◽  
Methodological Ground

This article explores the ecology of late-modern askesis through the concept of ‘ethical infrastructure’: the array of goods, locales, technologies, procedures, and sundry pieces of equipment upon which the possibility of ethicists’ striving is premised. By looking at the ethnographic case of halal living among Muslim pietists in post-Soviet Tatarstan (Russia), I advance a framework that highlights the ‘profane’, often unassuming or religiously unmarked, yet essential material scaffolding constituting the ‘material conditions of possibility’ for pious life in the lifeworld of late modernity. Halalness is conceptualised not as an inherent quality of a clearly defined set of things, but as a (sometimes complicated) relationship between humans, ethical intentionality, and infrastructurally organised habitats. Pointing beyond the case of halal, this article syncretises theories of self-cultivation, material religion, ethical consumption, and infrastructure to address current lacunas and explore fresh theoretical and methodological ground. This ‘ethical infrastructure’ framework enables us to conceptualise the embeddedness of contemporary ethicists in complex environments and the process by which processes of inner self-fashioning change and are changed by material worlds.

SYRIA: THE POTENTIAL FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. 182-189
Author(s):  
Konstantin I. Kozhevnikov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Resource Potential ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Socio Economic Development ◽  
Hydrocarbon Reserves

The article considers the territorial and natural resource potential of Syria, which can ensure the development of the country's economy and social sphere in the XXI century. In post-conflict conditions. This potential is very diverse and includes, among other things, a strategic aspect - hydrocarbon reserves that have ensured the socio-economic development of the country for several decades. The author comes to the conclusion that at present it is important for Syria not so much to develop and restore the extraction of natural resources, as to improve the quality of human capital, which, in the digital era, has, according to the author, much higher efficiency as a factor of production.

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