Despite Kofi Annan’s warning that ‘the United Nations is passing through the gravest crisis of its existence’ and a burst of diplomatic activity at the World Summit in 2005, reform of the UNSC has not been easy to achieve. This essay will explore the reasons behind the impasse as well as briefly considering possible alternatives. It will critically analyse the notion that failure to reform represents a ‘crisis’ at the UN.

The resurgence of ‘the left’ in Latin America has received a great deal of attention from policy makers, academics and journalists alike. The November 2006 victory of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua is merely the most recent in a string of electoral triumphs which has seen Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia come under the control of leftist governments. Following five decades in which civil, political and socio-economic rights have been damaged variously by authoritarianism, neo-liberalism and clientelism, many hope that a new era may be on the horizon.

The epic struggle between the Ogoni, an African tribe with deep roots in the environment of the Niger Delta, and Royal Dutch/Shell, one of the world’s most powerful multinational oil companies, is a story which has caught the imagination of ‘Western’ publics. However, whilst there is little doubt over Shell’s devastating role in the Delta, the understanding of the Ogoni ‘nation’ as natural guardians of the Delta’s Eden-like environment deserves our critical analysis. Is this anything more than simply a story?

This essay will critically analyse the notion that there is a fundamental difference between the tasks of ‘explaining’ (comprehending ‘causes’) and ‘understanding’ (comprehending ‘reasons’). First, the essay will examine the emergence of the sharp division, which has come to be accepted as existent between ‘explaining’ (which is advocated by positivists) and ‘understanding’ (which is advocated by post-positivists). Second, one important consequence of the division will be demonstrated by showing how the intellectual battles between positivists and post-positivists, as well as the occasional attempts at reconciliation between them, have been instrumental in positivism’s dominance. Finally, the work of Milja Kurki will be drawn upon to argue that the concept of causation should be broadened, thereby exposing the interrelated nature of ‘explaining’ and ‘understanding’ without reducing one to the other. This will allow for positivism’s dominance to be effectively challenged.

Working within a constructivist framework, this essay will show that the process of ‘imagining communities’ (Anderson, 1993) and ‘inventing traditions’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) had very different consequences for the men and women of Zimbabwe’s national liberation movement.