International Journal on World Peace最新文献

{"title":"Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Interventions","authors":"J. Smith","doi":"10.5860/choice.186665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.186665","url":null,"abstract":"PEACELAND: CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND THE EVERYDAY POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTIONS Severine Autesserre New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014 329 pages, paper, $34.99Peaceland, by Severine Autesserre, offers a fresh and insightful contribution to the small but growing body of literature that advocates for increased focus on the roles and influence of the 'everyday' in international peacebuilding interventions. As Autesserre astutely observes, some social science scholars have begun to call for more holistic and contextualized accounts of the factors that promote and/or impede peacebuilding efforts, particularly the ways that \"local\" cultures, politics, and practices impact and are impacted by interventions. However, these scholars remain in the minority despite the fact that \"local ownership\" has become commonplace lexicon for peacebuilders.What sets Peaceland apart from the relative abundance of material that has emerged in recent years on the \"local\" in peacebuilding, and to a lesser extent the \"everyday,\" is the subject matter of Autesserre's \"everyday\" inquiry into international interventions. In Peaceland Autesserre turns her ethnographic lens onto investigation of the everyday practices of those expatriates that intervene to perform international interventions. That is the habitual and mundane actions, attitudes, and approaches of the transnational community of aid workers, humanitarians, peacekeepers, peacebuilders, and diplomats who occupy the metaphorical world of Peaceland.Autesserre draws on 15 years of professional experience as an inhabitant of Peaceland and as an academic studying peacebuilding in developing her arguments, including a year of ethnographic study in Congo with shorter research trips to Burundi, Cyprus, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste for Peaceland specifically. The unique position Autesserre is able to adopt, situating herself as both \"insider,\" as a fellow intervener, and \"outsider,\" as a researcher, in inquiring into the everyday politics of international peace interventions establishes her as a member of a very small group of authorities possessing the gravitas and ability to access the inner dynamics of Peaceland. Autesserre sets out to engage with a number of overarching questions that have long plagued policy-makers and scholars engaged in the study and practice of international interventions. These are: Why do peace interventions regularly fail to reach their full potential? What accounts for the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of international peacebuilding efforts? How can interveners be more successful when they are already effective and avoid failure otherwise?Autesserre contends that part of the answer to these persistent challenges lies in developing understandings of the underlying culture of international interveners in conflict zones; their shared social habits, standard security protocols, and ways of collecting information and constructing knowledge ","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127136281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa","authors":"P. Magnarella","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-3005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-3005","url":null,"abstract":"THE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Mark Gasiorowski, ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014. 530 pages, $54.00.Mark Gasiorowski served as the sole editor of the present seventh edition of this collection. Its individual chapters, each written by a country specialist, cover states from Iran in the East to Morocco in the West. It also contains a chapter on \"The Palestinians,\" not the \"State of Palestine.\" The United Nations granted Palestine non-member observer state status in 2012. By then, it had already received state recognition by over 90 countries. By September 2015, 136 countries (over 70% of UN member states) had granted it state recognition. This collection, however, follows the US-Israeli minority position by not identifying Palestine as a state. Nonetheless, Glenn E. Robinson, the author of \"The Palestinians\" chapter, penned a well-written, informative contribution on the subject.The collection opens with an introductory chapter by Gasiorowski covering the history, geography, socioeconomic conditions, and domestic politics of the region. He makes reference to Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, but is silent on Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal. A serious omission, since Israel is the only country in the vast region of the Middle East and North Africa that actually possesses nuclear weapons. He also mistakenly states that Constantinople, conquered by the Ottomans in 1453, was \"the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire\" (p. 5). Actually, the Byzantine city of Trabizond on the Black Sea outlasted Constantinople; it was not conquered until 1461.Each country chapter follows a similar organizational structure: a historical overview, discussion of socioeconomic and geopolitical factors, followed by sections on foreign policy and future prospects. All chapters are accompanied by country maps, which unfortunately too often lack place names that appear in the text. The book covers events up to 2012 only. Because so much has happened in the region since then, the book is now seriously outdated. Nonetheless, most authors have done an excellent job presenting information to that point. Especially impressive is Jill Crystal's presentation of the historic and political complexities of the Eastern Arabian States of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates all in one chapter!One exception to this praise is the Israel chapter by David H. Goldberg. It is so unbalanced and one-sided that readers could easily regard it as proIsrael propaganda literature. He maintains that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and nuclear weapons facilities, even though their existence had not been confirmed by neutral inspection agencies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency. …","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"296 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134041203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Faith and Practice in Conflict Resolution","authors":"Naresh Singh","doi":"10.1515/9781626375055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9781626375055","url":null,"abstract":"FAITH AND PRACTICE IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION Edited by Rachel M Goldberg Kumarian Press, Lynne Rienner, 2016 Hardcover, 227 pp., $65.00.This book makes the case for inclusion of faith and spirituality in a multidimensional approach to conflict resolution (CR) and illustrates how different practitioners have in practice found this to be helpful. The case is premised on the observation that the early stages of the evolution of the CR field was heavily influenced by a search for legitimacy through standards like those that seemed to validate the legal profession. The search for professional credibility relied on expert neutrality and objectivism. The idea that legitimacy comes from objectivity is, of course, rooted in the long history of the separation of mind and body: reason and emotion and science and faith. Anchored in modernism and the work of its founding fathers Newton, Descartes, and Bacon, reductionism and determinism became the hallmarks of the scientific approach to gathering objective knowledge. \"The key was keeping body, mind, heart and spirit separate and it was believed, this process led to the truth.\"In the field of CR the use of outside (separated) mediators who are neutral (have set aside their emotions and values) was required for them to be considered trustworthy and fair. However Faith and Practice in Conflict Resolution presents credible arguments which show that these original separations are being refuted by many disciplines which now conclude that the human mind is inherently embodied and no separate and objective reasoning facility exists. Further, human systems are complex, adaptive, non-linear and non-determinative so that cause and effect are not uniquely coupled. They are integrated wholes which cannot be understood by breaking them down into essential elements.The authors then proceed to show that what allows real transformative work in CR includes but goes beyond rational cognitive skills and responses. They propose a multidimensional framework in which the goal is to access multiple dimensions of knowledge or wisdom in a way that engages our whole selves and seeks to engage the somatic, emotional, cognitive and spiritual dimensions of our being. They support the validity of the framework by drawing from several relevant authoritative sources such as the work of Howard Gardener on multiple intelligences, Daniel Goleman and Daniel Kahneman, on emotional intelligence, Donald Schon on the reflective practitioner, and others. After presenting and rationalising the framework, several chapters of the book are written by practitioners who illustrate how this more holistic multidimensional approach has been used in their work and experience. What comes through clearly is that the practitioners own spirituality, emotional intelligence, and somatic intelligence had to be transformed in the process and it was not a matter of just using a new framework as a tool. Two chapters then focus on how to train and teach multidimensional pra","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"313 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134504805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Existence and Consolation: Reinventing Ontology, Gnosis, and Values in African Philosophy","authors":"Michael D. Royster","doi":"10.5860/choice.191811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.191811","url":null,"abstract":"EXISTENCE AND CONSOLATION: REINVENTING ONTOLOGY, GNOSIS, AND VALUES IN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY Agada, Ada St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2015 Paperback, Pp. xxi + 368, $24.95Existence and Consolation functions as a primer to \"consolation philosophy\" while demonstrating how African wisdom provides contemporary relevance for addressing the manifold perils of the human experience beyond mere empiricism. The book addresses life's riddles with regards to the meaning and purpose of existence, the relationship between faith and intellect, and the role of skepticism and nihilism in terms of the human creature's responses to life's mysteries. With respect to Leopold Segar Senghor, the \"father of African philosophy,\" the author adheres to the idea that the universe has a non-dualistic state of existence.Western philosophy has traditionally functioned as ad-hoc standard bearers of the discipline. As a result, African philosophy exists in a continuous struggle to become equal and supplemental members of the philosophical cannon. However, the author focuses on African contributions to the field of inquiry through addressing themes such as existentialism, nihilism, skepticism, and the melancholy being with respect to consolation philosophy. Several African countries as a whole have endured prolonged dictatorships disguised as democracies, with oligarchic economic systems which transfer significant portions of the wealth from Africa to European financial havens, which result in mass levels of devastation for the numerical majority. \"There is tragedy enough in the African predicament, no doubt, but there is a far greater tragedy in the existential predicament of humanity as a whole\" (p. 32).Early in the text, the author wrestles with existentialism's relationship with the postmodern problem of ambivalence with its manifestations of both a joy-component and sadness within the context of the human experience. The book's unique feature entails the author's ability to provide a glimpse of the optimism which exists and is well entrenched within the African spirit. However, the Western sense of optimism from modernity never resonated in Africa. Yet, Africa bypassed the disappointment and nihilistic tendencies that derives from the demystification of the world. Collectively, the African way of life has retained its creative imagination. Although the intellect functions as a critical faculty among human creatures as a means of cognitive reasoning and solving life's problems, it easily becomes a source of pessimism and tragedy if devoid of the emotive faculties which protect society from the evil of human capabilities. \"The intellect denies life in its nihilistic extremity\" (p. 103). The effects of nihilistic intellectualism have resulted in the radicalization of social movements, terrorism, and rigid political regimes rooted in despair. …","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128982124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Genocide on Settler Frontiers: When Hunter-Gatherers and Commercial Stock Farmers Clash","authors":"G. Lancaster","doi":"10.1093/ahr/121.1.348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.1.348","url":null,"abstract":"GENOCIDE ON SETTLER FRONTIERS: WHEN HUNTER-GATHERERS AND COMMERCIAL STOCK FARMERS CLASH Edited by Mohamed Adhikari New York: Berghahn Books, 2015 356 pages, hardcover, $120.00The struggle between indigenous hunter-gatherer populations and commercial stock farmers has popularly been painted along the lines of Cain versus Abel-an inexorable, inevitable conflict from which only one lifeway can emerge victorious. Lost in the older narratives lauding the march of western civilization, or more recent counter-narratives critiquing those myths of progress, has been a cogent analysis of how different modes of settler agriculture affected native populations, how international markets determined the rate of extirpation and extermination of indigenous peoples, and how genocide not only occurred in a variety of settler contexts across the globe but also failed to occur in some places seemingly ripe for mass violence. Mohamed Adhikari's edited volume, Genocide on Settler Frontiers, not only fills in these historiographical gaps quite ably but also lends itself to the further theorization of genocide, addressing, for instance, the question of to what extent genocide and colonization overlap in practice.Adhikari sets the stage with an introductory chapter on the gcnocidal impetus behind commercial stock farming in the colonial context. While sedentary agriculture would prove, in the long run, \"more destructive of indigenous societies because it supported denser populations and occupied land more comprehensively and permanently,\" stock farming made itself felt \"much more swiftly over larger areas,\" especially as distance from ports was of less concern, as the animals were capable of carrying themselves to the desired locales (4). This fact, combined with weak colonial states incapable of exerting power on their margins, fluctuating international markets, racial ideologies that could justify violence against indigenes, superior military technology, and a gender imbalance among settler populations (which were mostly male) all provided the fuel for mass violence against huntergatherer populations, violence that had a particularly large impact given the dispersed population of foraging societies. Adhikari's next chapter examines the fate of the Komani San, in what is now South Africa, under the rule of both the Dutch East India Company ( Verenigde Ooste-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) and the British, with special analysis of the commando system, in which local militias carried out retaliatory raids that often entailed the killing of women and children when they were not captured and enslaved. The two following chapters also relate to the San people of the Cape. In the first, Jared McDonald looks at forced child labor, concluding that the \"abduction and assimilation of San children was as injurious to San society as physical destruction\" (69); in fact, legislation aimed at regulating more closely the trafficking of San orphans only motivated commando raiders to kill San ","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129391465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Challenges of Nuclear Non-Proliferation","authors":"P. Magnarella","doi":"10.5860/choice.192337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.192337","url":null,"abstract":"THE CHALLENGES OF NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION Richard D. Burns and Philip E. Coyle III Lanham, MD., USA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015 238 pages, hardcover $75.00, paper $29.95This book, in the publisher's Weapons of Mass Destruction series, offers a chronology of nuclear weapons production and attempts at non-proliferation from World War II to the near present. The authors discuss the pros and cons of US President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Program, which critics contend contributed to the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities. Currently, about 49 countries have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. Of these, only ten have actually done so.Presently, there are five nuclear weapons states (NWS) which have ratified the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 (US, U.K., Russia, France, and China) and four rouge NWS (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea) that are not party to the NPT and do not permit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors on their soil. The first five were officially recognized in the NPT.The US led the way in the production of atomic and nuclear weapons. Its Manhattan Project, with 18 facilities in the US and Canada, had employed 130,000 people and cost nearly $30 billion (in today's dollars) before being officially disbanded in August 1946. By 1996, the five official NWS had conducted 2069 nuclear tests, polluting land, sea, air and formerly occupied Pacific islands (not discussed). At their peaks, the US in 1967 and the USSRin 1986 had 31,255 and 45,000 nukes respectively in their stockpiles. Together, they accounted for over 90% of the world's total.With the help of the US, UK, France, and private US citizens loyal to Israel (not discussed by the authors), Israel became the world's sixth nuclear power, followed by India, Pakistan, and North Korea. In 1964, Argentina sold over 80 tons of uranium oxide to Israel, requiring the purchaser to use it for peaceful purposes only. \"An agreement that Tel Aviv ignored\" (p. 171). South Africa had a nuclear weapons program, which President F. W. de Clerk ordered dismantled in 1989. The authors ignore the abundance of evidence of nuclear weapons cooperation between Apartheid South Africa and Israel. They simply write that such \"rumors\" cannot be dismissed nor verified.Although North Korea had contemplated developing nuclear weapons for years, its 1992 joint declaration with South Korea on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula held promise for a safe future. However, US President G.W. Bush's inclusion of North Korea (along with Iraq and Iran) in his 2002 Axis of Evil speech convinced Pyongyang that the US threat required nuclear weapons for North Korea's protection. It withdrew from the NPT and in 2006 detonated its first nuclear device.Burns and Coyle offer an important discussion of nuclear weapon-free zones (NWFZ)-a topic largely ignored in the US. These zones consist of groups of states that prohibit nuclear weapons on their land, sea, and air. They also ","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"245 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130550684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Human Rights as War By Other Means: Peace Politics in Northern Ireland","authors":"L. Graham","doi":"10.5860/choice.187198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.187198","url":null,"abstract":"HUMAN RIGHTS AS WAR BY OTHER MEANS: PEACE POLITICS IN NORTHERN IRELAND Jennifer Curtis University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014 304 pages, $69.95Jennifer Curtis's Human Rights as War by Other Means: Peace Politics in Northern Ireland examines the ways in which human rights discourse has been used as an instrument of both war and peace amongst Protestants and Catholics during and following the conflict in Northern Ireland. Curtis posits that rights discourse has had a complex relationship between peace and human rights whereby local rights-based activism was just as likely to legitimize violence and provide new avenues for conflict as it was to promote peace and social justice. Her main argument is that rights discourse during the conflict and throughout the peace process has functioned as a war by other means.The book critically examines rights activism across six periods in Northern Irish history, including struggles for civil rights in the 1960s, the housing rights campaigns of the 1970s, economic and welfare rights debates in the 1980s, freedom of association and assembly as political rights of the 1990s, victims' rights and human rights as per the parity of esteem clause of the Good Friday Agreement in the post-conflict era, and gay rights advocacy. Initially, it was difficult to see the connections between each of these rights battles, but Curtis masterfully links each of these key struggles to the larger context of the conflict and the ways in which Protestants and Catholics used rights discourse to place their community's deprivation of rights at the apex of an ethnopolitical agenda.The gay rights struggle reveals an exception to this history, which has bridged the two communities to fight homophobia and promote love as a human right. Whereas the parity of esteem logic of the Good Friday Agreement has reinforced identity politics under the guise of human rights, the gay rights struggle advocates for equality for all within a legal framework of human rights. In practice, this battle has developed alliances between the two communities, while rejecting ethnopolitical claims on rights. Curtis contends that by \"privileging 'two communities,' post-conflict human rights talk and practice actually limit potential transformations of political subjectivity and action while privileging communal, collective subjects\" (p. 212). She concludes that human rights will continue to be used as an instrument of conflict in Northern Ireland, but offers some cause for hope in that local activism has also promoted a more progressive form of politics and social rapprochements.Curtis reveals two aims for this book: to describe local human rights discourse and activism in Belfast over the course of the Troubles and in post-conflict Northern Ireland, and to analyze local activism and determine what it reveals about rights discourse for theoretical and practical understandings. Curtis achieves both of these aims by combining her research findings with an extensive compi","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115402066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"International Mediation in Venezuela","authors":"Nancy D. Erbe","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-5325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-5325","url":null,"abstract":"INTERNATIONAL MEDIATION IN VENEZUELA Jennifer McCoy and Francisco Diez Washington D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2011 291 pages, paper, $24.95This book presents a detailed case study insider account and critical reflection of the efforts of the Carter Center, United Nations Development Program staff and particularly the Organization of American States when they were invited by Hugo Chavez to Venezuela in 2002. They were asked to facilitate dialogue during highly polarized times at the elite level through 2004. The book represents a rare description of the complex processes and steps that occur, can occur, and hopefully will be seen more often with international conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Too often the international elite and academics of international conflict resolution, and even peacebuilding, assume that the model and approach can only be equated with power and elite politics: that a president or secretary of state from a powerful nation simply steps in or at the very least diplomats are the only ones involved in international negotiation and dialogue. Realistic politics is restricted to envisioning power over and under rather than the democratic with what represents the best of contemporary conflict resolution and peacebuilding.Jimmy Carter certainly has shown rare moral courage in speaking truth in the face of political pressure and a commitment to helping many nation states move forward with true democracy through election oversight. He was also a rare U.S. president in his ability to listen to other heads of state and negotiate agreement. Here he, his center, and alliances go even further. This book introduces how \"ordinary\" people were and can be persuaded and supported with spreading conflict resolution education and engaging in building peace at the myriad levels of conflict and resolution: the interpersonal, family, neighborhood and church community, labor union, workplace, as well as political group and social movement. Conflict resolution, at its best, empowers truth telling and social justice, or dialogue at all societal levels, in a spiraling rather than linear fashion. This book provides a detailed description of such conflict resolution efforts in Latin America. It does so with impressive reflective practice, or critical self evaluation, of missed opportunities, and other lessons learned.This case study will benefit anyone seeking to expand their knowledge of what is possible with international conflict resolution at the international level. Hopefully it will inspire and motivate a series of such case studies. For example, the practices of conflict analysis searching for areas of possible agreement and progress must occur in relationships of bad faith and limited, if any, trust, particularly when the conflict involves those working for governments in the United States and around the world. Such work is grounded in tough contentious dynamics where power and government employment is often abused at its best; in the wors","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130193905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Collapse of Complex Societies","authors":"T. Kando","doi":"10.5860/choice.26-2760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.26-2760","url":null,"abstract":"THE COLLAPSE OF COMPLEX SOCIETIESJoseph TainterYou Tube Videohttp ://www.youtube.com/watch? v= ddmQhIiVM48Review Essay by Tom KandoJoseph Tainter is an anthropologist and historian who teaches at Utah State University. In 1988, he published a book titled The Collapse of Complex Societies. Since then, Tainter has amplified his thesis, making it even more compelling. This essay is based on a brilliant lecture he gave at Northwestern University on December 10, 2010. This is not a mere a summary; I add my own examples and interpretations. I do this especially at the end, where I suggest some straight-forward solutions with which Tainter may not agree.THESISTainter brings to mind another doomsday prophet, Jared Diamond, a UCLA geographer whose thesis is well-known. In his 2005 book, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Diamond proposed a neo-Malthusian analogy between the collapse of the Easter Islands and the possible imminent collapse of humanity. Tainter is similarly apocalyptic, but more interesting. Diamond's \"Easter Island scenario\" is an academic version of what \"green\" people have been worrying about for at least fifty years. Tainter, on the other hand, presents a sociological analysis which suggests that the root of societal collapse is located in the inexorable nature of social evolution. As a sociologist and a history buff, I found it mesmerizing.As a society evolves, it becomes more complex. In time, the level of complexity becomes unsustainable, and society begins to decline, ending up in collapse. Tainter uses the words \"collapse\" and \"simplification\" synonymously. Increasing complexity manifests itself in a growing bureaucracy. The cost of increased complexity is twofold: ( 1 ) greater expenditures of money and energy and (2) increased annoyance/pain. Complexity does solve problems, but over time it provides diminishing returns and requires more and more energy. This is the Energy-Complexity Spiral.ROME: THE PROTOTYPETainter focuses on Ancient Rome to make his point: For centuries, Rome was able to sustain its growing complexity through an extremely successful \"loot and pillage\" strategy. Rome subjugated various peoples and appropriated the surplus resources which those peoples had accumulated. All these resources were the product of converted solar energy. That is, they consisted of built-up minerals (precious metals, etc.) and of human energy/labor (slaves, soldiers and other annexed populations). In 167 b.c. Rome conquered Macedonia, in 130 b.c. it took over Pergamum, in 63 b.c. Pompey occupied Syria, shortly thereafter Caesar subdued Gaul, and the list goes on.However, there is a limit to the loot and pillage strategy. Expanding empires run out of areas to conquer. Furthermore, the administration of the acquired resources, territories and populations demands more and more energy. Military operations and armies must be increased, particularly very expensive components such as cavalry.Tainter shows how the Romans attempted to deal","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127967721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris","authors":"Deborah D. Buffton","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-4093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-4093","url":null,"abstract":"COLONIAL METROPOLIS: THE URBAN GROUNDS OF ANTI-IMPERIALISM AND FEMINISM IN INTERWAR PARIS Jennifer Anne Boittin Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2010 320 pages, hardcover, $45.00In the years after World War I, Paris became a \"colonial metropolis\" - a space in which men and women, blacks and whites, interacted with each other and discussed and shaped perceptions of French colonial policy, race, gender, class, imperialism, and equality. In this ambitious study, Jennifer Anne Boittin tries to weave together a number of disparate but related threads that ran through interwar Paris. This is a challenging task given the number of groups involved, their diverse perspectives, and the various venues in which they operated.The book begins with an examination of Josephine Baker, the AfricanAmerican entertainer who not only took Paris by storm in the 1920s and 1930s, but came to \"both reflect and influence French attitudes regarding colonialism and race in interwar Paris.\" (p. 2) Neither French nor colonial, she nonetheless was seen as a \"colonial representative.\" (p. 2) Baker understood the complex nature of Parisians' views of their African and Caribbean colonies and sold herself as representing both the fearful \"savage\" and the possibility of being \"civilized\" through colonization. As such, she represented to white Parisians \"a safe version of the other.\" (p. 3) In particular, the Surrealist Movement was fascinated by her and by black culture in general (African, Antillean, African-American). Though this fascination started prior to World War I, it was strengthened after the war. \"The vision this group [Surrealists] held of a lush, naive, sensuous, and spiritual black culture contrasted with the perceived cold rationalism - and sheer terror - of the Great War.\" (p. 13) Boittin points out the paradoxical ways in which many people saw both indigenous culture in the colonies and modern Western culture. The former was seen as being both fearful and savage as well as a source of vitality. But at the same time, modern culture was terrifying in its use of technology - as shown in the bloodbath of World War I - but also necessary to \"civilize\" the rest of the world.Boittin then explores some of the spaces of racial interaction the city. There were many opportunities for blacks and whites to come into contact with each other. Black men lived in most of the city's 20 arrondissements and interracial couples lived in half of them. Black associations met in all but 4 arrondissements. Blacks came into contact with other Parisians in their work as lawyers, cab drivers, shop workers, window washers, students, bar tenders, and performers. World War I brought a large number of colonial men to fight for France, who then stayed on after the war ended. Moreover, night clubs and jazz clubs allowed for interracial socializing and romance. Police reports reveal the concerns of white French men that interracial unions would reverse the colonial order in the colonies if Euro","PeriodicalId":222069,"journal":{"name":"International Journal on World Peace","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126432867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}