29526 research outputs found
Sort by
Greening of Economic Development: The Next Great Transformation: Conclusions and Pathways to the Future
No full textThe Handbook frames the process of the greening of economic development as the next major transformation of the global economy, demonstrated using empirical evidence across frameworks, regions, and sectors in the thirty chapters as finalized. The transformation entails a comprehensive restructuring of the world order, encompassing (i) a 100 per cent exit from fossil fuels; (ii) a comprehensive shift in resource flows from linearity to circularity; and (iii) a comprehensive shift to green finance with bonds and equities playing a key role. The new paradigm of the greening of economic development has economic and technological drivers that generate optimism regarding its eventual supersession of the fossil fuel industrial system. But what continues to be lacking is the institutional support needed at a global scale and immediacy to overcome the inevitable barriers to be encountered. This concluding chapter wraps up the discussion by arguing that greening is most likely to emerge where states are driving change; in emerging industrial giants, green growth may be viewed as an essential pathway to future wealth generation that does not cost the earth
The pitfalls of the humanitarian principles “impartiality” and “humanity” in humanitarian aid in Borno, Nigeria
Get PDFThe application of the traditional humanitarian principles: impartiality, humanity, neutrality, and independence has been a source of contention in humanitarian interventions. The literature is broadly divided into two groups: traditional humanitarians who support these principles and believe aid must avoid being politicised or biased, and the new humanitarians who believe the inherently political nature of aid interventions should be embraced, as well as local contexts. This article focuses on aid in Borno state, Nigeria, to bring further insight to this debate. Through in-depth interviews with humanitarian workers, government workers, and Borno community residents, it finds that in adherence to the principles of impartiality and humanity, some aid actors give aid to beneficiaries based solely on need alone. Assisting widely on this basis in theory allows for the possibility of Boko Haram insurgents receiving aid, which some interview informants and secondary sources have alleged is the case. While there is no conclusive proof of this, this article explores the impact of how impartiality and humanity are (allegedly) applied in Borno, and the potential unintended consequences that follow. In doing so, it calls into question the ethical and operational limitations of aid in insurgency contexts such as Borno’s
Rights of Nature and the right to a healthy environment: Jurisprudence of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court
Get PDFIn this essay I analyse some relationships among the rights of nature and the human right to a healthy environment. I show these relationships describing several rulings of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court, and specially the Los Cedros judgement, which is a ruling on mining concessions granted within a cloud forest located in a highly biodiverse area. Judges must impartially examine the arguments and evidence presented by the parties involved. However, to issue a ruling, they must ultimately adopt a position based on their own interpretation of the law and understanding of the facts. The author of this essay served as the rapporteur judge for the Los Cedros ruling when I was a member of Ecuador’s Constitutional Court. During this judicial process and afterward, I have reflected on the relationship between the rights of nature and the right to a healthy environment. While drafting the ruling and later, after leaving the Court, analysing it as an academic—considering its precedents, context, and consequences—I have developed several scholarly arguments that are expressed in this essay
The Inventing and Reinventing of the Muslim Saint Ibn ʿAbd al-Salam: From Louis IX’s Crusade to the Syrian War
No full textReconceptualizing Resistance in Light of the End and Failure of Hong Kong’s 2014 Protest
No full textContemporary social movement studies critique evaluations of failure as lacking causality and precision. Concept analysis stresses the need for a theoretical examination of core concepts that most empirical and theoretical approaches in the academic field of politics and international relations deploy but often do not explicate. This dissertation, however, proposes that the need for a reconceptualization of resistance in the face of end and failure, on the one hand, results from the recurrence of both resistance and its end and failure in global politics. For instance, between 2011 and 2015 a wave of occupations unfolded across the globe. In Hong Kong, the pro-democratic protests occupied the city center for over two months. And yet, this protest failed to achieve democracy and, eventually, the government cleared the occupation. On the other hand, epistemologies of resistance often conflate the historical outcomes of end and failure with the phenomenon of resistance itself. Therefore, this dissertation proposes the analytical strength of the Deleuzian concept of the event because it locates the historical outcomes of end and failure and the productive becoming of resistance on two different planes and ascribes them two different logics. Moreover, the concept of the event allows us to think of the end and failure not only as outcomes but as external processes that operate on a manifestation of resistance and impact it differently. Since Deleuze never performed an empirical analysis of resistance with this concept, I ontologically redescribe Hong Kong’s 2014 protests in the face of end and failure as an event in order to reconceptualize failed and ended resistance as both a productive and politically frustrating event in order to intervene against the predominant reductive conceptualizations of resistance
Prayers of Inner Quarters: A Comparative Study of Buddhist Patronage by Korean and Japanese Women, 1200–1700
Get PDFIn an era when Neo-Confucianism and military feudalism shaped the political and cultural orders of Korea and Japan, women harnessed Buddhism to forge their own spiritual identities, devotional spaces, and networks of influence. This study asks: How did the women of the ruling class — queen consorts, empresses, royal concubines, and spouses of military leaders — use Buddhist patronage to assert their roles within patriarchal societies? And how does a cross-regional comparison between the two countries clarify the social, institutional, and material dimensions of women’s religious agency? To tackle these questions, the research employs a comparative methodology that juxtaposes Korean and Japanese women’s Buddhist patronage. Drawing on a diverse corpus — votive inscriptions, temple archives, architectural remains, and visual iconography — the thesis traces how patronage operated simultaneously as tools of proselytization and tradition-preserving endeavours of women. This research further illuminates how these women mapped out networks of sponsorship to obtain revered relics, commission monumental artworks, and form devotional groups both within court circles and monastic precincts. Rather than framing patronage solely as an act of funding votive images, this project reconceives it as a dynamic practice of women who also aspired to preserve Buddhist traditions from erosion. Especially on the Korean side, textual and material evidence reveal the fierce backlash these women encountered in their advocacy for monastic communities. Dynasty chronicles denounced women’s piety as excessive or unseemly, while some Buddhist sūtras questioned women’s innate nature for attaining Buddhahood. Yet, other records also document how female patrons in both countries revived Buddhist customs by supporting nunneries and safeguarding communal rituals that corresponded with indigenous worship of deities. By placing female patrons at the heart of East Asian material culture, this dissertation bridges a gap between gender studies and the social history of Buddhism. It challenges enduring stereotypes that trivialize women’s religious practices as mere acts of superstition or private indulgence. Through analysis of historical records and artistic expressions, the study demonstrates that women’s patronage served as a significant and transformative force, positioning them as architects of Buddhist art and practice. It reveals how their commitments created ripples of influence across courts, temples, and local communities, enriching the religious tapestry of each region. Ultimately, this research contributes a fresh interdisciplinary perspective to rethink the relationships between gender, power, and religion. It further paves the way for future investigations into how marginalized agents have shaped — and been shaped by — broader currents of belief and authority
“Sounds like” redemption? On the musicality of species and the species of musicality
Get PDFPopular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called natural world of nonhuman species. And, amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. Intervening in these debates, this article traces how notions of “musicality” have been applied to or denied from nonhuman entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. It concludes that debates about the relation between human and animal musics have always reinforced the separation that today they seek to overcome, as this separation is itself rooted in the history of the study of music in nature. The article demonstrates that the study of music in nature has often relied upon an epistemology of origins-listening in which attention to the acoustic is used to formulate implicit evolutionary hierarchies organized along an axis of similarity and difference among species. While who or what is placed within these categories and the relative value of musicality thus derived may have changed over time, this axis of comparison remains in place. As a corrective, the article provokes a new epistemology of listening in which musicality and species are situated becomings
Book Review: Routledge Handbook of Seabed Mining and the Law of the Sea
No full textOver the last 70-80 years, historical concerns related to the exploitation and enclosure of the high seas, stemming from Grotius’ Mare Liberum, have become prominent, particularly amid rising mineral resource demand, population growth, and consumption patterns. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)1 established regulatory frameworks for all maritime zones. Consequently, the legal framework surrounding deep-seabed mining (DSM) has gained significance. The Routledge Handbook of Seabed Mining and the Law of the Sea, edited by Dr. Campanella, stands out as a recent significant contribution to this field
The Revamping of India’s ‘Access and Benefit Sharing’ Regime: A Gateway to Inclusive Biodiversity Governance?
Get PDFCodified for the first time in the Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 (CBD), ‘Access and Benefit Sharing’ (ABS) is a mechanism for ensuring that indigenous people and local communities (IPs & LCs) receive a share of the monetary benefits arising from the access and use of their traditional knowledge and associated genetic resources by third parties. Since the adoption of the CBD, the implementation of access and benefit sharing, bolstered by additional international commitments such as the Nagoya Protocol, has gained traction. India, as a party to both instruments, had enacted the Biological Diversity Act in 2002 (BDA) and framed allied rules and regulations. In the original provisions, this ABS framework were not stringent enough to fully safeguard the rights and decision-making powers of IPs & LCs. Successive changes to these instruments, have now further whittled down the rights of IPs & LCs in the ABS process. This comes at a time when India has made ambitious commitments under the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) on conserving biodiversity in tandem with IPs & LCs’ rights. This paper aims to analyse the aforesaid changes and their impacts on the ABS mechanism in India including, the extent to which they complement or contradict India’s commitments under the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and Article 8(j) of Convention on Biological Diversity 1992. The authors hope this will add to the body of knowledge in India pertaining to access and benefit sharing and also lead to a better informed response to the Government’s recent efforts of revising the Indian ABS framework to bring them in compliance international mandates
The Urban Ritual: Ritual and Counter-Ritual During Muḥarram in Mumbai
No full textMuḥarram rituals have been constantly reinvented in Mumbai during the last two centuries. The format of Muḥarram commemoration, as practiced today, is the result of intensive negotiations and tensions between diverse ethnoreligious groups that have settled in Mumbai. This article examines how over the last two centuries Muḥarram has produced a space for social negotiations and particularly looks at a new social fold in such space, where a Wahhabi counter-ritual is manifested. The Wahhabi community is a relatively new social group, mainly constituted by Indian Muslim workers who returned from Arab countries. While seemingly Wahhabi counter-ritual is aimed at challenging the commemoration of the Karbala martyrs, the Wahhabi community employs Muḥarram to negotiate its social position within Mumbai’s dynamic urban society. With such a focus, this article describes “Mumbai Muḥarram” as an “urban ritual” that produces a space for intensive “urban negotiation.” The idea is to explore Mumbai Muḥarram beyond its religious connotations, showing its social complexity that constitutes not only Shiʿi Muḥarram but also its counter-ritual. Mumbai Muharram is a grand urban ritual that should be seen as a part of the cosmopolitan process of this city. This article highlights the fact that urban dynamics cannot be fully articulated by the conventional idea of “class struggle” and “urban everyday life,” and that social negotiations throughout the liminal time of rituals, based on “community struggle,” play a central part in urban processes and dynamics
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage SOAS Research Online? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!