The spectre of a debt crisis, the first signs of which were seen in the Third World in the 1970s, and the fear of world finances’ disintegration, led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) to propose Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) to the developing world. This essay will start with a description of the long term advantages of SAPs, as advocated by the IMF and the WB (including elements of the neo-liberal philosophy presented as an ideological basis for the programmes) before assessing the short term disadvantages of SAPs – largely revolving around unsustainable growth.
This essay first briefly explains the significance of ‘structural violence’ in Israeli society, before going on to critically examine dominant conceptions of ‘suffering’ in the Israeli context, arguing that the pragmatic and rationalist bias of this notion itself constitutes one major hindrance to ‘healing’. Finally, I consider the role of silence and memory in perpetuating suffering in Israel, looking specifically at the two imbricated elements of Holocaust memorialisation and the construction of the Other, arguing for a more processual rather than essentialist conception of suffering, community, healing and memory.
Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, over 100 major conflicts around the world have left some 20 million dead’[1]. In An Agenda for Peace, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali set out visions for preventive diplomacy and strategies to strengthen the United Nations’ (UN) capacity to maintain the peace. The collapse of Cold War bipolarity has seen a surge in demand for UN involvement. The UN has cast its net wide, beyond narrow conceptions of collective security, into human rights, environmental politics and human security. The response from the Security Council, General Assembly and member states to An Agenda for Peace was cautiously optimistic; the rhetoric, asserts Chesterman, ‘was euphoric, utopian, and short’.
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?
Feminism is a relatively new force in politics. It addresses the underlying assumptions that make politics a male-dominated discipline and seeks to improve the position of women within it. In recent decades feminism has been present throughout the world in varying forms and has begun to make an impact in many regions.
Gender is one of the most crucial aspects of individual identity and it is closely linked to ideas of war. Elshtain’s ‘Just Warriors’ and ‘Beautiful Souls’, her portrayal of the ideal gender types for western society, make clear the war roles that each of us is encouraged to aspire to in peace-time society. Patriarchy refers broadly to rule by men and can be seen almost universally. In this essay I will examine the patriarchy of the international system and the international relations theory that serves to reinforce and recreate the male-dominated nature of this system.
For Bourdieu, ‘The only way to bring about organisational change that does not entail merely replacing one modality of domination with another is to address specifically and to undo the mechanisms of dehistoricisation and universalisation – “always and everywhere has it been this way” – whereby arbitrary workings of power are enabled to continue.’ (Emirbayer and Johnson, forthcoming; 47-8)
Indochina was a central battleground of the Cold War for more than two decades in which poorly-armed Vietnamese guerrillas fought successfully against the USA. Some saw it as an ideological struggle between capitalism and communism, and others, as a misinformed US attack on anti-colonial nationalism. The reasons for American involvement are unclear and have led to fierce debate among academics.
For those that lived through the Cold War, nuclear weapons are synonymous with the superpower rivalry of the USA and USSR. Although never used, they were central to the conflict. Now, in the post-Cold War environment, this rivalry has been removed and the question of the utility of nuclear weapons is being reviewed.
The idea of poverty as a security issue has been fairly commonplace since the end of the Cold War. In 1993, the United Nations sought to redefine security with individuals as the referent object; a framework in which poverty is one of the principal security threats as it significantly reduces quality and quantity of life. At the same time, poverty was gaining importance in the security agendas of states. This is based on the idea that poverty is a threat to the rich as well as the poor and that an unequal world is an unstable one; a view that has become very powerful in the years since September, 2001. This essay will address the implications of this second type of securitisation – world poverty as a threat to the west.
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