1,721,030 research outputs found
"Open the Gates Mek We Repatriate": Caribbean slavery, constructivism, and hermeneutic tensions
Get PDFThis is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edit version of an article published in International Theory. The definitive publisher-authenticated version: Shilliam, Robbie. "“Open the Gates Mek We Repatriate”: Caribbean slavery, constructivism, and hermeneutic tensions." International Theory 6.02 (2014): 349-372 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1752971914000165© 2015, Cambridge University Press
To What Extent Did Assumptions About Local Ethnic Identities, Fostered Amongst UN Officials During the Bosnia Mission, Frame Their Policies for the Kosovo Mission?
No full textThis thesis focuses on the role of an international actor - United Nations (UN) - and its missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMBiH) during 1992-1995 and Kosovo (UNMIK) in the post war conflict period of peace building. It scrutinizes the tenor of UN peace building missions in these territories by analysing the scope of the policies introduced and the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the international actors' activities during the times of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) before the conflict in Kosovo and Metohija (KiM); and the current situation in these two territories. The thesis will also argue that the ethnic identities played a critical role in relation building between the UN and ethnic groups, where the one ethnic group (Serbs) was recognised as a crucial factor for the conflict's escalation and development.
A further focus in this thesis is not only to provide constructive discussion of the ineffectiveness of policies and missions introduced by International Actors (IA) but also to challenge the UN and IA's decision for non-intervention in BiH and to address the consequence of subsequent humanitarian-military intervention in KiM.
This paper outlines an analysis of the lack of literature relating to the historical-sociological perspective of the ethnic groups' in BiH. The lack of understanding of the complex relationships among the ethnicities is an additional gap. This is exacerbated by the lack of understanding of the complex relationships among the ethnicities, within itself, as well as the differences among the groups within each ethnic group. It appears that the literature is unable to acknowledge the structural formation of societies in BiH, and to make proper segmentation in understanding the particular group of people (Rex, 2001) as a collection of peoples with different sociological characteristics combined into something called 'ethnicity'. The handicap of such literature leads to the categorisation and generalisation of ethnicities; not at one particular area of an ethnic group's presence but to the generalisation of the peoples' ethnicities (all Serbs are barbarous, similar to the Germans after WWII). This paper argues that such generalisations developed the notion that the particular ethnic group (Serbs) has an 'evil' character, regardless of the territorial occupation (Bosnia as well as Serbia and Diaspora). In addition, the lack of recognising Serbs as a people composed of different individual (local) ethnic groups led to the global generalisation about Serbs. And yet, such generalisations, by the modern western actors, i.e. UN, EU (European Union) and USA (United States of America), led to the employment of negative assumptions about the Serbs which served as a tool for, and added impetus to, the implementation of a strategy to achieve the Western objectives of the devaluation of Serbian dominance in Bosnia and across the Balkan Peninsula.
Therefore the quality of literature, in addressing the questions about the conflict in BiH and later KiM, beside its attempts to offer some sustainable answers, remains inadequate and poor. This unsubstantiated position, offered by many involved in former-Yugoslavian conflict discussions, to offer an informed conclusion, persists as a never-ending debate. Yet, the discourse about the guilty factor in BiH and KiM remains in the shape of the 'evil' Serbian nation
Swimming with or Against the Tide: Has the International Labour Organisation Been Co-Opted by Neoliberal Hegemony
No full textWork is one, if not the, primary mechanism through which the majority of the world's
population experience economic globalisation. Work is intimately connected to
matters of human rights, social equality, welfare, and class struggle and it is
increasingly determined by activities that occur in the international and transnational
levels. Neoliberal globalisation has fundamentally restructured the world of work. It
has also undermined the social democratic worldview of the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) on which the global governance portfolio for labour most squarely
falls. The ILO's current Director General Juan Somavia, in referring to this era of
neoliberal hegemony, has said that "the ILO has often been swimming against the
tide". This thesis undertakes a thorough examination of Somavia's statement in order
to determine the extent to which the neoliberal tide has saturated the organisation
and its ideas
China and New Regionalism in Africa - Conflict or Coherence?
No full textWhat is Africa's best hope for advancing its development initiatives? Should each state seek to compete independently on the world stage? Should they seek to forge relationships with external partners and the power players in the world economy on a one-to-one basis? Or should they work together in conjunction with the economic giants of the globalised economy? Of these three possible approaches this article seeks to investigate the third. Can the African states use a regional approach to economic development whilst still engaging and benefitting from external benefactors? Or will the traditional and developing powerhouses in the world economy simply use Africa's efforts at regional integration as a way to garner favour and preferential access to African markets and resources? In the post colonial and post independence period, many African states sought to work with the former colonialists overlords in an attempt to develop their economies through a regional approach. Many of these attempts created little real benefit to the African peoples themselves. In the wake of these failed attempts at development via the perceived benefits of regional integration, new movements developed. A new approach to regionalism has appeared in the last three decades, whose hallmarks are quite different to the old approaches to regionalism. It is the intent of this article to make an empirical investigation into the progress of these new approaches to regional integration or 'the new regionalism' as it is often dubbed. I also wish to add a further element to this investigation. The 'old regionalism' traditionally featured African states seeking trade policy rationalisation/integration/development under the tutelage and patronage of the western states. However, one of key characteristics of the 'new regionalism' is that new partnerships between developing economies and the African states are emerging. These partnerships have the ability to either greatly help the African states in the path to development through regional integration, or they may hinder and derail these attempts. To this end I wish to investigate the greatest 'developing' economy in the world and its impact on Africa's regionalisation projects. I am referring here to China. China has shown interest in Africa as a continent that has huge potential and as one that can provide great benefit to China's rapid economic growth and expansion. To this end it seems particularly relevant to investigate how China seeks to expand its ties and increase its presence in the area. As both Africa and China can be seen as 'developing', albeit both at very different levels, it should be particularly interesting to see how these two geographical and demographic juggernauts work together in the pursuit of their own developments ..
The Black Pacific
Get PDFThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Why have the struggles of the African Diaspora so resonated with South Pacific people? How have Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha activists incorporated the ideologies of the African diaspora into their struggle against colonial rule and racism, and their pursuit of social justice? This book challenges predominant understandings of the historical linkages that make up the (post-)colonial world. The author goes beyond both the domination of the Atlantic viewpoint, and the correctives now being offered by South Pacific and Indian Ocean studies, to look at how the Atlantic ecumene is refracted in and has influenced the Pacific ecumene. The book is empirically rich, using extensive interviews, participation and archival work and focusing on the politics of Black Power and the Rastafari faith. It is also theoretically sophisticated, offering an innovative hermeneutical critique of post-colonial and subaltern studies. The Black Pacific is essential reading for students and scholars of Politics, International Relations, History and Anthropology interested in anti-colonial struggles, anti-racism and the quests for equality, justice, freedom and self-determination
Internationalism and anti-racism in the thought and practice of Mondlane, Neto, Cabral and Machel
No full textThe Black Pacific
Get PDFThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Why have the struggles of the African Diaspora so resonated with South Pacific people? How have Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha activists incorporated the ideologies of the African diaspora into their struggle against colonial rule and racism, and their pursuit of social justice? This book challenges predominant understandings of the historical linkages that make up the (post-)colonial world. The author goes beyond both the domination of the Atlantic viewpoint, and the correctives now being offered by South Pacific and Indian Ocean studies, to look at how the Atlantic ecumene is refracted in and has influenced the Pacific ecumene. The book is empirically rich, using extensive interviews, participation and archival work and focusing on the politics of Black Power and the Rastafari faith. It is also theoretically sophisticated, offering an innovative hermeneutical critique of post-colonial and subaltern studies. The Black Pacific is essential reading for students and scholars of Politics, International Relations, History and Anthropology interested in anti-colonial struggles, anti-racism and the quests for equality, justice, freedom and self-determination
Raced Markets
No full textDespite rich archives of work on race and the global economy, most notably by scholars of colour and Global South intellectuals, the discipline of Political Economy has largely avoided an honest confrontation with how race works within the domains it studies, not least within markets. By way of corrective, this book draws together scholarship on the material function of race at various scales in the global political economy. The collective provocation of the contributors to this volume is that race has been integral to the formation of capitalism – as extensively laid out by the racial capitalism literature – and takes on new forms in the novel market spaces of neoliberalism. The chapters within this volume also reinforce that the current political conjuncture, marked by the ascension of neo-fascist power, cannot be defined by an exceptional intrusion of racism, nor can its racism be dismissed as epiphenomenal. Raced Markets will be of great value to scholars, students, and researchers interested in political economy and racial capitalism as well as those willing to explore how race takes on new forms in the novel market spaces of contemporary neoliberalism. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the New Political Economy
Anti-racism and emancipation in the thought and practice of Cabral, Neto, Mondlane and Machel
No full textInternational Relations, as a discipline, tends to focus upon European and Western canons of modern social and political thought. Alternatively, this book explores the global imperial and colonial context within which knowledge of modernity has been developed.
The chapters sketch out the historical depth and contemporary significance of non-Western thought on modernity, as well as the rich diversity of its individuals, groups, movements and traditions. The contributors theoretically and substantively engage with non-Western thought in ways that refuse to render it exotic to, superfluous to or derivative of the orthodox Western canon of social and political thought. Taken as a whole, the book provides deep insights into the contested nature of a global modernity shaped so fundamentally by Western colonialism and imperialism. Now, as ever, these insights are desperately needed for a discipline that is so closely implicated in Western foreign policy making and yet retains such a myopic horizon of inquiry.
This work provides a significant contribution to the field and will be of great interest to all scholars of politics, political theory and international relations theory
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