A Future without Borders? Theories and practices of cosmopolitan peacebuilding
A Future without Borders? Theories and practices of cosmopolitan peacebuilding

Author: Eddy Souffrant

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-08-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9004325387

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A Future without Borders (FWB) offers an explanation of why the recent, but by now distant, movements of the “Occupy Wall Street” activists have repeated themselves across the globe. The book demonstrates some of the processes inherent to an adapting cosmopolitanism (a call for civility, a call for Justice, a call for a collective responsibility or accountability) that is not individualistic in nature. Until recently, the statal/national problems understood as politico-economic failures were conceived as isolated problems, failures of statal institutions that are particular to certain countries. FWB contests the Westphalian logic that explains these circumstances, as national failures and argues instead that the conditions be assessed as extensions of the global economic and ideological failures that they surely are. Contributors are: Anton Allahar, Arnold Farr, Andrew Fiala, Pierre-André Gagnon, Bill Gay, Kurtis Hagen, Linden F. Lewis, Tracey Nicholls, Richard T. Peterson, Jorge Rodriguez, Eddy M. Souffrant, and Hilbourne A. Watson.

Indigenous Peacebuilding in South Sudan
Indigenous Peacebuilding in South Sudan

Author: Winnifred Bedigen

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-04-25

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1000865819

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This book explores the indigenous peace cultures of the major ethnic groups in South Sudan (Dinka, Nuer, Anuak and Acholi) and analyses their contribution to resolving the civil war. The book utilises qualitative narrative inquiry ethnographic methods to explore the indigenous institutions and customs (customary laws, beliefs and practices) employed in resolving ethnic conflicts and argues for their application in civil war resolution. This book contributes to the decolonial literature/knowledge by discussing the subtle norms, the role of youth, women, and elders, the concepts of resilience and proximity, and their significance in peacebuilding. The book shows that for sustainable peace to happen, subtle roles and disputants' indigenous knowledge should be part of national peace negotiation strategies. This book will interest NGOs, students and scholars of indigenous knowledge, women, youth, conflict and peacebuilding, African Studies and Development in the Horn of Africa and sub-Sahara regions.

Conspiracy Theories and the Failure of Intellectual Critique
Conspiracy Theories and the Failure of Intellectual Critique

Author: Kurtis Hagen

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2022-07-20

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0472133101

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Conspiracy Theories and the Failure of Intellectual Critique argues that conspiracy theories, including those that conflict with official accounts and suggest that prominent people in Western democracies have engaged in appalling behavior, should be taken seriously and judged on their merits and problems on a case-by-case basis. It builds on the philosophical work on this topic that has developed over the past quarter century, challenging some of it, but affirming the emerging consensus: each conspiracy theory ought to be judged on its particular merits and faults. The philosophical consensus contrasts starkly with what one finds in the social science literature. Kurtis Hagen argues that significant aspects of that literature, especially the psychological study of conspiracy theorists, has turned out to be flawed and misleading. Those flaws are not randomly directed; rather, they consistently serve to disparage conspiracy theorists unfairly. This suggests that there may be a bias against conspiracy theorists in the academy, skewing “scientific” results. Conspiracy Theories and the Failure of Intellectual Critique argues that social scientists who study conspiracy theories and/or conspiracy theorists would do well to better absorb the implications of the philosophical literature.

Lead Them with Virtue
Lead Them with Virtue

Author: Kurtis Hagen

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-08-20

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 179363971X

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Recent scholarship has framed early Confucians as just war theorists with relatively permissive criteria for the just use of violence. Lead Them with Virtue: A Confucian Alternative to War makes the case that such interpretations conflict with what Mencius and Xunzi were trying to do. Kurtis Hagen argues that they both strove to prevent war by contrasting the situations of their day with idealized versions of the semi-mythic activities of sage-kings, which represent appropriate use of the military. These stories imply support for the offensive use of the military only when actual war—with its characteristic horrors—would not ensue. Following this logic, military interventions are just only in circumstances that do not actually occur. Confucians advocate, instead, a long-term strategy of ameliorating unjust circumstances by leveraging the credibility and influence that stems from consistently practicing genuinely benevolent governance. Passages that imply pacifistic readings of these texts are routinely dismissed by scholars as too naïve to be taken seriously. Hagen argues that the relatively pacifistic position implied by these passages is not in fact naïve, but is rather reasonable, and indeed should be supported, at least by contemporary Confucians.

Borders and Border Walls
Borders and Border Walls

Author: Andréanne Bissonnette

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-17

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1000191036

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This book addresses the recent evolution of borderlines around the world as an attempt to control transnational movements with a view to securitization of borders rooted in the need to control mobility and preserve national identities. This book moves beyond physical borders and studies new manifestations of borders such as technological and symbolic walls. It brings together scholars from various academic fields such as geography, political science, and border studies to examine the various movements, functions and articulations of international borders. It explores two main issues: how international borders have become enforced lines of demarcation and division, reinforcing national identity and impacting national and regional dynamics; and the material and immaterial, discursive and concrete expressions of borders and the impacts of the transformation of bodies into threat to be monitored, as daily lives become sites of border enforcement. Offering multidisciplinary insights on the growing phenomenon of border walls, this book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Border Studies, European Studies, International Relations, Political Geography, and Regional Studies.

Philosophers of the Warring States: A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy
Philosophers of the Warring States: A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy

Author:

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2018-11-30

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 1460405641

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Philosophers of the Warring States is an anthology of new translations of essential readings from the classic texts of early Chinese philosophy, informed by the latest scholarship. It includes the Analects of Confucius, Meng Zi (Mencius), Xun Zi, Mo Zi, Lao Zi (Dao De Jing), Zhuang Zi, and Han Fei Zi, as well as short chapters on the Da Xue and the Zhong Yong. Pedagogically organized, this book offers philosophically sophisticated annotations and commentaries as well as an extensive glossary explaining key philosophical concepts in detail. The translations aim to be true to the originals yet accessible, with the goal of opening up these rich and subtle philosophical texts to modern readers without prior training in Chinese thought.

Transformative Pacifism
Transformative Pacifism

Author: Andrew Fiala

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1350039217

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Defending pacifism against the charge that it is naïvely utopian, Transformative Pacifism offers a critical theory of the existing world order, and points in the direction of concrete ethical and political action. Pacifism is a transformative philosophy with wide ranging implications. It aims to transform political, social, and psychological structures. Its focus is deep and wide. It is similar to other transformative social theories: feminism, ecology, animal welfare, cosmopolitanism, human rights theory. Indeed, behind those theories is often the pacifist idea that violence, power, and domination are wrong. Pacifist theory raises consciousness about unjustifiable violence. This in turn leads to transformations in practical life. Many other books defend nonviolence and pacifism by focusing on failed justifications of war, as well as on the strategic value of nonviolence. This book begins by reviewing and accepting those sort of arguments. It then focuses on what a commitment to pacifism and nonviolence means in terms of a variety of practical issues. Pacifists reject the violent presuppositions of a society based upon power, strength, nationalism, and the system of militarized nation-states. Pacifism transforms psychological, social, political, and economic life. This book will be of interest to those who are disenchanted with ongoing violence, violent rhetoric, terrorism, wars, and the war industry. It gives anyone with pacifist sympathies reassurance: pacifists are not wrong to think that violence and war are immoral, irrational, and insane and that there is always an alternative.

Peacebuilding Paradigms
Peacebuilding Paradigms

Author: Henry Carey

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-12-17

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1108483720

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Peacebuilding is explained by combining interpretive frameworks (paradigms) that have evolved from the subfields of international relations and comparative politics.

Entangled Peace
Entangled Peace

Author: Ignasi Torrent

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-08-30

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1538150778

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This book unfolds an exploratory journey intended to scrutinise the suitability of entanglements and relations as a mode of thinking and seeing peacebuilding events. Through a reflection upon the UN’s limited results in the endeavour towards securing lasting peace in war-torn scenarios, Torrent critically engages with three relevant debates in contemporary peacebuilding literature, including the inclusion of ‘the locals’, the achievement of organisational system-wide coherence and the increasingly questioned agential condition of peacebuilding actors. Inattentive to the relational vulnerability of involved stakeholders, it is suggested that the UN seeks to secure a totalising modern distory, defined in the book as a story that undoes other stories. Whilst affirming the entangled ontogenesis of actors and processes in the conflict-affected configuration, Entangled Peace also delves into a cautionary argument about what the author refers to as entanglement fetishism, namely the celebratory, normative, deterministic and exclusionary projection of a relational world. Inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, Entangled Peace is an invitation to speculate over the peacebuilding milieu, and by extension the broader theatre of the real, as radical openness, in which events emanate from the collision of an infinite multiplicity of possible worlds.

Global Health and International Relations
Global Health and International Relations

Author: Colin McInnes

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0745663079

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The long separation of health and International Relations, as distinct academic fields and policy arenas, has now dramatically changed. Health, concerned with the body, mind and spirit, has traditionally focused on disease and infirmity, whilst International Relations has been dominated by concerns of war, peace and security. Since the 1990s, however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped. How can we explain this shift and what are the implications for the future development of both fields? Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee examine four key intersections between health and International Relations today - foreign policy and health diplomacy, health and the global political economy, global health governance and global health security. The explosion of interest in these subjects has, in large part, been due to "real world" concerns - disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, counterfeit drugs and other risks to human health amid the spread of globalisation. Yet the authors contend that it is also important to understand how global health has been socially constructed, shaped in theory and practice by particular interests and normative frameworks. This groundbreaking book encourages readers to step back from problem-solving to ask how global health is being problematized in the first place, why certain agendas and issue areas are prioritised, and what determines the potential solutions put forth to address them? The palpable struggle to better understand the health risks facing a globalized world, and to strengthen collective action to deal with them effectively, begins - they argue - with a more reflexive and critical approach to this rapidly emerging subject.