African Peacekeeping

Exploring the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping, this concise and accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeeping by Africans. Going beyond the question of why post-conflict states contribute troops to peacekeeping efforts, Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén demonstrate how peacekeeping is – and has been – weaved into Africa's national, regional and international politics more broadly, as well as what implications this has for how we should understand the continent, its history and its politics. In doing so, and drawing on fieldwork undertaken in every region of the continent, Fisher and Wilén explain how profoundly this involvement in peacekeeping has shaped contemporary Africa.

Humans and humanity at a crossroads, reading Huxley’s brave new world in light of harari’s homo deus

We don't know where humanity is going. It's challenging to keep up with the rapid advancements in science and technology. In real life, both true and fictional 'truths' play important roles. Huxley's utopian/dystopian novel Brave New World (BNW) depicts a possible future for humanity through his description of a society organized and controlled through the use of science. A contemporary history book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (HD), also discusses the potential of humanity facing extinction in the future. This discussion employs HD to shed light on BNW, using Marxist and New Historicist arguments. Its goals are to analyze the irony in the works, the threat to invention and creativity, oligarchy and hedonism, the name allusions in the works, and the future prospect of engeneered homo sapiens as eternal working classes. The research discovered that both books are based on humanism, but humans are not treated as they should, that the lower castes in BNW cannot become innovative and creative because they are engineered, that the small oligarchy (the Alphas) maintains its power by providing pleasures for the lower castes so as to forget that they are being controlled.

Reflection on COVID-19 Pandemic and Crisis Management Models in Tourism

The contemporary history of tourism has been shaken by different types of crises as natural disasters, economic crises, terrorist attacks and pandemics, resulting in economic, political and social implications that impact the tourist destination, the volume and direction of tourist flows (Ritchie, 2008; Speakman and Sharpley, 2012). In early 2020, COVID-19 took the world by surprise, causing a worldwide pandemic in just a few months. The dimension of this outbreak coupled to the mobility that characterizes tourism in the 21st century, now raises a need for reflection on the arrising and control of future pandemics. Several models of crisis management in tourism are presented in the scientific literature, however, all of generalist nature. It is urgent to examine and refine the existing crisis management models, since the models already developed have little specificity in the theme of pandemic crisis management in tourism.

Writing on Death: Plague Narratives. A Review Essay

This essay discusses several books, ancient and recent, on plagues to ask the question: Can we face death without turning away from it through historical narration? Can we write about death, which only afflicts individuals, without stripping death of its individuality? After briefly addressing these questions, I discuss five books, one from the ancient period (Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War), one from the late medieval period (Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron), one from the early modern period (Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year), and two from the modern period (Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, and Frank Snowden’s Epidemics and Society). These books not only come from different eras but also reflect different written responses to death—ancient history, story/fable, reportage, futuristic novel, and contemporary history. The essay concludes by considering a counterargument to its focus on death, an argument developed by Baruch Spinoza which claims that humans should think nothing less than of death.

Yallah Bye or the Dream of a Farewell to War

Yallah Bye, an album published by Lombard (2015), illustrates two wars marking the contemporary history of Lebanon: the civil war (1975-1990) and the war between Israel and Hezbollah (August 2006). There is an intersection between two visions: that of a Lebanese screenwriter who tells a universal autobiographical story and that of a Korean illustrator who is committed to create an authentic figurative narration. The aim of the article is to show how this medium constitutes a documentary source within the framework of a cultural and social history. By exposing the repercussions of the 2006 war, images and text reveal, via humour and denial, a dream of peace despite the current turmoil and the obsession with a past that keeps repeating itself.

Humans and humanity at a crossroads, reading Huxley’s brave new world in light of harari’s homo deus

We don't know where humanity is going. It's challenging to keep up with the rapid advancements in science and technology. In real life, both true and fictional 'truths' play important roles. Huxley's utopian/dystopian novel Brave New World (BNW) depicts a possible future for humanity through his description of a society organized and controlled through the use of science. A contemporary history book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (HD), also discusses the potential of humanity facing extinction in the future. This discussion employs HD to shed light on BNW, using Marxist and New Historicist arguments. Its goals are to analyze the irony in the works, the threat to invention and creativity, oligarchy and hedonism, the name allusions in the works, and the future prospect of engeneered homo sapiens as eternal working classes. The research discovered that both books are based on humanism, but humans are not treated as they should, that the lower castes in BNW cannot become innovative and creative because they are engineered, that the small oligarchy (the Alphas) maintains its power by providing pleasures for the lower castes so as to forget that they are being controlled.

The Politics of Social Discourses about Youth in New Zealand 1950-1965 and 1990-2005

<p>This thesis explores the politics of changing discourses around the youth question in New Zealand’s postwar (1950-1965) and near-contemporary history (1990-2005). Building on a modified Foucaultian framework, it examines for both periods anxieties over young people’s relationships with home, school and the wider society. It also contrasts the two periods to illustrate the ideological shift from the welfare state to neoliberalism, as it was played out through youth-related discourses. This thesis goes beyond the moral panic approach, especially regarding the postwar period. It will demonstrate that rethinking what is conventionally condensed and marginalised as ‘context’ is key to understanding the politics of youth discourses. Postwar debates about young people, because youth were conceived as being in social crisis, served to expose ideological differences that the welfare state had ostensibly overcome. That in turn destabilized the apparent moral consensus and opened up opportunities for resistance and subversion. By contrast, the liberal and emancipatory discourse of society in the 1990s and early 2000s served to insulate neoliberal politics from volatile public concerns. This in turn paradoxically provides a stronger and more efficient foundation for social control over youth.</p>

The Politics of Social Discourses about Youth in New Zealand 1950-1965 and 1990-2005

<p>This thesis explores the politics of changing discourses around the youth question in New Zealand’s postwar (1950-1965) and near-contemporary history (1990-2005). Building on a modified Foucaultian framework, it examines for both periods anxieties over young people’s relationships with home, school and the wider society. It also contrasts the two periods to illustrate the ideological shift from the welfare state to neoliberalism, as it was played out through youth-related discourses. This thesis goes beyond the moral panic approach, especially regarding the postwar period. It will demonstrate that rethinking what is conventionally condensed and marginalised as ‘context’ is key to understanding the politics of youth discourses. Postwar debates about young people, because youth were conceived as being in social crisis, served to expose ideological differences that the welfare state had ostensibly overcome. That in turn destabilized the apparent moral consensus and opened up opportunities for resistance and subversion. By contrast, the liberal and emancipatory discourse of society in the 1990s and early 2000s served to insulate neoliberal politics from volatile public concerns. This in turn paradoxically provides a stronger and more efficient foundation for social control over youth.</p>

Aesthetic Height of the Art and the Art Market: Essential and Imaginary Nature of Art Quality

A problem of perfection at art is analyzed in the article according to paradigm of the art market as a system of cultural, economic and social interactions of the art world. The author finds out the vitality of the artwork not only as its essential value but also defines the idea of its imaginary vitality. The latter is created by the art market participants, and it causes the commercial value of the artwork. The article makes an assumption about the division of art, at least of the Modern and Contemporary history, into two spheres — the art of “aesthetic experience” and the art of “commercial success”. While the art of “aesthetic experience” is aimed at finding and creating a new artistic language (the embodiment of new creative ideas, complex ethical and aesthetic problems), the art of “commercial success” follows artistic stereotypes, uses creative innovations in an adapted form, which is included in the cultural and aesthetic system familiar to the audience of art. This antithesis is analyzed in the article by the example of comparing a number of works by two artists of the same time. One is Mikhail Larionov, a prominent artist of the Russian Avant-Garde, and the other is Vladislav Izmailovitch, a typical representative of Salon and Late Academic art. Considering the specific historical aspects of vitality in art, the author analyzes several examples. Firstly, the late oeuvre of the Russian artist Ilya Repin as a metaphor for the “joy of the risen”. Secondly, the Easter rarities of the House of Faberge, which have changed their status over the past century from a home memorabilia to a cultural myth and became an object of the art market nowadays. Thirdly, the exposition of the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2019, where authors and curators exploited the vitality of Dutch and Flemish art of the 17th century as the personification of contemporary creative pursuits.