Understanding Religion-Inspired Conflict and Peace
Religious dynamics (e.g. actors, worldviews, and cultures) infused numerous conflagrations in the 1990s including Bosnia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Without giving credence to the notion that religion is the “problem” causing all today’s conflicts, how best can we understand the role that religious dynamics play in contemporary war and peace?
Not quite the end of the Third World?
One of the few things to catch the imagination out of last December’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen certainly was Tuvalu, standing up to make a desperate plea for its continuing existence. But despite Clive Hamilton’s claim that this marks the ‘tectonics plates’ shifting and a rift emerging within the Third World, it is more likely that Tuvalu’s actions will come to be little more than a wistful memory.
Global Householding: the Good, the Bad, and the Uncomfortable
Households are an enduring feature of human history. They are the building blocks of social formations in every era and at all scales: from small communities to the global economy. Feminists have produced an extensive body of research on households. But like domestic labor within households, this work rarely appears in mainstream accounts of economics, politics, or international relations (IR).
The End of the Third World
For half a century, the Third World remained united in the face of a common threat, the influence of the United States and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. But for least developed countries a greater enemy has now emerged, the threat to their survival posed by global warming, and they are no longer willing to subsume their demand that all the world’s polluters curb their activities beneath the imperative of maintaining the appearance of G77 unity.
How NATO and Russia are Shaping the Future of European Security
The kind of conventional military brinkmanship going on at the common NATO-Russia border is not good news. A phenomenon not seen since the frostiest Cold War periods. If the last East-West confrontation offers a cautionary tale, it is that the situation urgently needs to be de-escalated, before worst-case scenarios become self-fulfilling prophecies.
China Rising: Friend or Foe?
As a power such as China come to rise, it can at its discretion take the role of a rival, a partner, or disguise itself and ultimately be both. Therefore, an emphasis on human rights through public diplomacy and positive interaction with both China and the international community may be the key that opens the door to building positive relations between the United States and China in the future.
Which Identity for the EU? Implications Of and For Turkey’s Accession
Turkey’s EU accession bid has encouraged political actors in the EU Member States and institutions to consider which kind of organisation the EU is and should be. Opinion is divided between those who support a ‘civic’ identity for the EU, and those who argue that the EU needs a thicker ‘cultural’ identity.
RIGHT WAR OR WRONG WAR?
It is seven years since a US led coalition invaded Iraq, deposing Saddam Hussein and becoming involved in a long, costly stabilization operation that is supposedly about to end soon with the withdrawal of US combat units. More than 4,700 coalition troops, 4,385 of them Americans, have died so far in this effort.
Beyond Secularism
Secularism has long been the language of most public servants and many scholars in the Western world, enabling both groups to work and live as though religions were irrelevant to their respective fields. This perspective has meant that religious phenomena have been ignored or reduced to other categories such as civil society, humanitarianism or as part of a definition of “civilization.”
The War on Terror and the Rise of Neo-Orientalism in the 21st Century
There is a growing critique of the hegemonic discourse on the ‘War on Terror’ against the backdrop of an overwhelming silence about the impacts of the global WOT on the non-Western and particularly the Muslim world. The new critique is based on: the dominance of ‘state-centric’ perspectives; the pre-eminence of ‘problem-solving’ approaches; and largely ahistorical accounts of terrorism.
