This study explores the process of navigating instability arising from sudden, co-occurring crises in the 2020s. We focus on the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine on ...growing material and relational uncertainty and risk among Polish citizens, accumulating in the loss of ontological security. To showcase the practical and narrative presence of risk at the micro-level, we operationalize the broad theorization of risk society using the categorization of material, relational and subjective dimensions within the 'unsettling events' model proposed by Kilkey and Ryan. We reconceptualize the third pillar, positioning subjectivity as a meta-category. Moreover, we extend the application of the framework of unsettling events, treating the Polish situation as a case study for examining societies facing compounding catastrophes.The analyzed qualitative longitudinal data comprised 70 in-depth interviews about the pandemic and conducted with Polish young adults (ages 18-35) and their parents in 2021; and asynchronous responses from 43 study participants collected shortly after the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022. Considering intergenerational and temporal lens, we identify the dominant patterns of meaning that interviewees attributed to the pandemic and war, thereby revealing materialities of unsettlement, relational gains and losses, and the erosion of ontological security.
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The Cold War Harlan Cleveland
Cadmus (Trieste, Italy),
06/2022, Volume:
4, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This article is a reproduction of the keynote address by Harlan Cleveland at the William G. McGowan Theatre on October 21, 2006 in the National Archives and Record Administration at ...https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/cold-war/symposium/cleveland.html I am not a historian, so don’t look for dispassionate recording of the Cold War in what follows. I was of course an eyewitness to bits and pieces of the whole period we call the Cold War—but don’t look for fragmentary anecdotes which would not do justice to the serious purpose of this symposium. What I will try to do is something in between—an essay about this fascinating almost-half-century—not just what happened, but why, and especially why it came out the way it did. I was fortunate to work, during the 1960s, with a superlative writer named Thomas W. Wilson, Jr. Shortly before we joined forces in the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Tom had almost finished a vignette of history, which was published in 1962. Cold War and Common Sense, he called it—and indeed his book is not only readable history but full of common sense, about matters which were most uncommon and often nonsensical. Especially for those parts of the story that I didn’t myself see unfolding, I have leaned heavily, with posthumous thanks, on his version of the whos and whats and whys. You will find in this text several unattributed quotes; those are passages lifted directly from Tom Wilson’s writing…
Economic Sanctions are being deployed by the West in the Russia-Ukraine conflict at a level never before attempted with the intention of wrecking the Russian economy. Very little attention is given ...to the dismal record of sanctions or the consequences of sanctions on civilians, mercantile enterprises, global and regional economies, and the economies of countries applying the sanctions. This paper examines the unintended consequences of sanctions and argues that they are ineffective at countering military aggression because they are ambiguous when calibrated against military actions which require precise responses with strong signals. Criteria for the evaluation of possible responses to military aggression are proposed.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shaken up the academic world. Universities in Ukraine have been bombed and academic staff and students have been killed and injured and many professors and ...students have fled the country. Institutions especially in Europe are trying to help the academic world in Ukraine and refugee professors and students are helped so that they can continue their studies and research. The consequences of this invasion cannot be foreseen. A cold war signs up with the splitting of the scientific and academic world into two or three large blocks depending on the position of China: “Russia-China and Europe/America”. This will have major concerns for the future of science that is vitally needed by this world, such as climate change, COVID, Space and in many other domains. It is now an important theme that optimal solutions for the future are sought in order to optimize the sad situation. The question raised is what place the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) can take here.
The profound effect of military conflicts on exposure and vulnerability to human trafficking is well understood but rarely studied. The war in the Ukraine has caused a mass displacement of the ...country's population, primarily women and children, who escape to stay alive. In a humanitarian response, the Polish society created a vast system to welcome and support these war refugees. In March and April of 2022, researchers from the University of Warsaw conducted a field study to examine the adequacy of the Polish relief system in safeguarding these refugees from human trafficking activities. The team conducted 54 interviews, field observations and informal conversations with service providers and refugees. The findings suggest that, while the Polish relief effort was heroic, the massive humanitarian program has not been able to pay adequate attention to the risk of human trafficking. Recommendations for broader policy and programmatic adjustments are presented in response to Ukrainians' continued status as refugees due to the prolonged military conflict in their home country.
