Much of the debate over the security implications of climate change revolves around whether changing weather patterns will lead to future conflict. This article addresses whether deviations from ...normal rainfall patterns affect the propensity for individuals and groups to engage in disruptive activities such as demonstrations, riots, strikes, communal conflict, and anti-government violence. In contrast to much of the environmental security literature, it uses a much broader definition of conflict that includes, but is not limited to, organized rebellion. Using a new database of over 6,000 instances of social conflict over 20 years — the Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD) — it examines the effect of deviations from normal rainfall patterns on various types of conflict. The results indicate that rainfall variability has a significant effect on both large-scale and smaller-scale instances of political conflict. Rainfall correlates with civil war and insurgency, although wetter years are more likely to suffer from violent events. Extreme deviations in rainfall — particularly dry and wet years — are associated positively with all types of political conflict, though the relationship is strongest with respect to violent events, which are more responsive to abundant than scarce rainfall. By looking at a broader spectrum of social conflict, rather than limiting the analysis to civil war, we demonstrate a robust relationship between environmental shocks and unrest.
Armed conflicts, 1946–2013 Themnér, Lotta; Wallensteen, Peter
Journal of peace research,
07/2014, Letnik:
51, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In 2013, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 33 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths, up by one from 2012. Seven of these were recorded as wars, that is conflicts ...leading to 1,000 or more battle-related deaths in a calendar year. There have been 144 armed conflicts (47 wars) since 1989 and 254 armed conflicts (114 wars) since 1946. For the past ten years the amount of active armed conflict has fluctuated between 31 and 37. Six peace agreements were signed during the year 2013, two more than in the previous year. For the first time, this article also provides data on trends in battle-related deaths since 1989. These data do not show a clear time-trend. However, there is a particular difficulty in mapping the conflict in Syria, for which no credible battle-related deaths in 2013 can yet be reported.
Vital Enemies Santos-Granero, Fernando
2009, 20090101
eBook
Analyzing slavery and other forms of servitude in six non-state indigenous societies of tropical America at the time of European contact, Vital Enemies offers a fascinating new approach to the study ...of slavery based on the notion of “political economy of life.” Fernando Santos-Granero draws on the earliest available historical sources to provide novel information on Amerindian regimes of servitude, sociologies of submission, and ideologies of capture. Estimating that captive slaves represented up to 20 percent of the total population and up to 40 percent when combined with other forms of servitude, Santos-Granero argues that native forms of servitude fulfill the modern understandings of slavery, though Amerindian contexts provide crucial distinctions with slavery as it developed in the American South. The Amerindian understanding of life forces as being finite, scarce, unequally distributed, and in constant circulation yields a concept of all living beings as competing for vital energy. The capture of human beings is an extreme manifestation of this understanding, but it marks an important element in the ways Amerindian “captive slavery” was misconstrued by European conquistadors. Illuminating a cultural facet that has been widely overlooked or miscast for centuries, Vital Enemies makes possible new dialogues regarding hierarchies in the field of native studies, as well as a provocative re-framing of pre- and post-contact America.
This volume examines different ethnic configurations and conflict avoidance and resolution in five different Southeast Asian countries.
Tin Maung Maung Than traces the history and impossibility of ...the current Myanmar regime's quest to integrate the various ethnic groups in the border regions while insisting on a unitary state with all real power kept to themselves.
Rizal Sukma divides conflicts in Indonesia into horizontal (Kalimantan, Maluku and Sulawesi) and vertical ones (the Madurese versus the Dayaks) and assesses the prospects for peaceful resolution if the country's fledgling democracy does not properly address them.
Miriam Coronel Ferrer examines the conflicts in Mindanao against the apparent lack of willingness of Manila to come to terms with the root causes as well as the infusion of arms and ideology from outside.
Zakaria Haji Ahmad and Suzaina Kadir analyse Malaysia's relatively successful handling of an ethnically divided society, which has permitted impressive stability since 1969.
Chayan Vaddhanaphuti focuses on the non-Thai border peoples of northern Thailand, noting the legacy of the government's policy of selective citizenship. Ethnic Conflicts in Southeast Asia will be an invaluable resource for scholars of contemporary Southeast Asia as well as in other regions, policy-makers and others, who wish to assess and develop strategies to prevent, modulate and resolve such conflicts.
Armed Conflicts, 1946—2012 Themnér, Lotta; Wallensteen, Peter
Journal of peace research,
07/2013, Letnik:
50, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In 2012, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 32 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths. This is a significant decrease from the 37 recorded in 2011. Overall, the ...2000s has been the least conflict-ridden decade since the 1970s. A worrying finding, however, is that the number of internationalized intrastate conflicts continued to be at a high level for the fourth consecutive year. At six, the number of wars — conflicts leading to 1,000 or more battle-related deaths — remained the same as in 2011. In total, UCDP estimates that the conflicts that were active in 2012 caused between 37,175 (low estimate) and 60,260 (high estimate) battle-related deaths, with a best estimate of 37,941. The conflict that caused the highest number of fatalities in 2012 is the Syrian conflict, which led to between 14,830 (low) and 30,805 (high) battle-related deaths, with the best estimate being 15,055. Eleven armed conflicts listed in 2011 were not active in 2012; however, three new conflicts erupted during the year — India (Garoland), Mali and South Sudan vs. Sudan (common border) — and three previously registered conflicts were resumed by new actors. Lastly, 2012 saw an increase in the number of signed peace agreements which had been at a very low level over the past three years; four accords were concluded during the year, compared with one in 2011.
Making Ubumwe Purdekova, Andrea
2015, 2015-10-15, Letnik:
34
eBook
Since the end of the Rwandan genocide, the new political elite has been challenged with building a unified nation. Reaching beyond the better-studied topics of post-conflict justice and memory, the ...book investigates the project of civic education, the upsurge of state-led neo-traditional institutions and activities, and the use of camps and retreats shape the "ideal" Rwandan citizen. Rwanda's ingando camps offer unique insights into the uses of dislocation and liminality in an attempt to anchor identities and desired political roles, to practically orient and symbolically place individuals in the new Rwandan order, and, ultimately, to create additional platforms for the reproduction of political power itself.
How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy ...fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields. “A pathbreaking examination of the multiple international narratives around Darfur by human rights advocates, humanitarians, journalists, and diplomats. Thorough and rigorous—an essential contribution to the scholarship.” — ALEX DE WAAL, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Tufts University “Darfur is the modern genocide that refuses to end, and this volume gives this mass atrocity the attention it deserves. It does so in highly original ways, including an unprecedented global analysis of media coverage, activism, and advocacy.” — JOHN HAGAN, John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University and Co-Director of the Center on Law and Globalization at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago “Joachim Savelsberg’s engagement with the critics of the human rights regime, coupled with his analysis of media representations and their national variations (and similarities), provides a perspective that is more encompassing than anything I am aware of.” — DANIEL LEVY, Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University JOACHIM J. SAVELSBERG is Professor of Sociology and Law and Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair at the University of Minnesota. He is the coauthor of American Memories: Atrocities and the Law and author of Crime and Human Rights: Criminology of Genocide and Atrocities.
This article reports on trends in organized violence, building on new data by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). The falling trend in fatalities stemming from organized violence in the world, ...observed for five consecutive years, broke upwards in 2020 and deaths in organized violence seem to have settled on a high plateau. UCDP registered more than 80,100 deaths in organized violence in 2020, compared to 76,300 in 2019. The decrease in violence in Afghanistan and Syria was countered by escalating conflicts in, for example, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Azerbaijan and Tigray, Ethiopia. Moreover, the call for a global ceasefire following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic failed to produce any results. In fact, the number of active state-based and non-state conflicts, as well as the number of actors carrying out one-sided violence against civilians, increased when compared to 2019. UCDP noted a record-high number of 56 state-based conflicts in 2020, including eight wars. Most of the conflicts occurred in Africa, as the region registered 30 state-based conflicts, including nine new or restarted ones.
The narrative of peasant unrest in Russia during 1905–1906 combines a chronology of incidents drawn from official documents, with close analysis of the villages associated with the disorders based ...upon detailed census materials compiled by local specialists. The analysis concentrates on a single province: Kursk Oblast, bordering the now independent Ukraine. In place of the general surveys of the revolution that dominate the literature, Miller focuses on local events and the rural populations that participated in them.
Shatterzone of Empires Larry Wolfe, Gregor Thum, Dan Diner, Theodore R. Weeks, Gary B. Cohen, Pieter M. Judson, Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, Elke Hartmann, Patrice M. Dabrowski, Robert Nemes, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Tomas Balkelis, Taner Akçam, Eyal Ginio, Keith Brown, David Gaunt, Peter Holquist, Alexander V. Prusin, John-Paul Hi / Omer Bartov, Eric D. Weitz / OMER BARTOV, ERIC D WEITZ
02/2013
eBook
Shatterzone of Empires is a comprehensive analysis of interethnic relations, coexistence, and violence in Europe's eastern borderlands over the past two centuries. In this vast territory, extending ...from the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along often changing and contested borders. Examining this geographically widespread, multicultural region at several levels-local, national, transnational, and empire-and through multiple approaches-social, cultural, political, and economic-this volume offers informed and dispassionate analyses of how the many populations of these borderlands managed to coexist in a previous era and how and why the areas eventually descended into violence. An understanding of this specific region will help readers grasp the preconditions of interethnic coexistence and the causes of ethnic violence and war in many of the world's other borderlands both past and present.
PDF
