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Many view civil wars as violent contests between armed combatants. But history shows that community groups, businesses, NGOs, local governments, and even armed groups can respond to war by engaging in civil action. Characterized by a reluctance to resort to violence and a willingness to show enough respect to engage with others, civil action can slow, delay, or prevent violent escalations. This volume explores how people in conflict environments engage in civil action, and the ways such action has affected violence dynamics in Syria, Peru, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Spain, and Colombia. These cases highlight the critical and often neglected role that civil action plays in conflicts around the world.
The intersection of business, peace and sustainable development is becoming an increasingly powerful space, and is already beginning to show the capability to drive major global change. This book deciphers how different forms of corporate engagement in the pursuit of peace and development have different impacts and outcomes. It looks specifically at how the private sector can better deliver peace contributions in fragile, violent and conflict settings and then at the deeper consequences of this agenda upon businesses, governments, international institutions and not least the local communities that are presumed to be the beneficiaries of such actions. It is the first book to compile the state...
Private corporations are rarely discussed as playing a role in efforts to curb civil violence, even though they often have strong interests in maintaining stability. Violence often damages the infrastructure necessary to deliver goods to market or may directly target companies. Corporations also have a normative obligation to conduct business in ways that promote peace. While there are historical examples of firm-instigated violence and firms reaping benefits from instability and conflict, there is also evidence that corporations proactively engage in peacebuilding. For example, firms devise programs to promote economic development, offer access to education, and employ former combatants. In...
"In the face of new extraction, communities in Latin America's hydrocarbon and mining regions use participatory institutions powerfully. In some cases, communities act within the formal participatory spaces, while in others, they organized "around" or "in reaction to" the institutions, using participatory procedures as focal points for escalating conflict. Communities select their strategies in response to the participatory challenges they confront. Those challenges are associated with contestation over the boundaries that determine access to participatory institutions. Contestation over the line between subnational authority vis-à-vis central-state jurisdictions heightens communities' chal...
This encyclopedia reviews and interprets a broad array of research on Latin American politics, including topics related to political institutions, processes, and parties; social movements; political economy; racial and gender politics; and Latin America's international relations. Bringing together peer-reviewed contributions by leading researchers, this publication is the definitive resource for understanding contemporary politics in the region.
As of 2023, over nine million Colombians have secured official recognition as victims of an armed conflict that has lasted decades. The category of "victim" is not a mere description of having suffered harm, but a political status and a potential site of power. In Good Victims, Roxani Krystalli investigates the politics of victimhood as a feminist question. Based on in-depth engagement in Colombia over the course of a decade, Krystalli argues for the possibilities of politics through, rather than in opposition to, the status of "victim." Encompassing acts of care, agency, and haunting, the politics of victimhood entangle people who identify as victims, researchers, and transitional justice professionals. Krystalli shows how victimhood becomes a pillar of reimagining the state in the wake of war, and of bringing a vision of that state into being through bureaucratic encounters. Good Victims also sheds light on the ethical and methodological dilemmas that arise when contemplating the legacies of transitional justice mechanisms.
Private corporations are rarely discussed as playing a role in efforts to curb civil violence, even though they often have strong interests in maintaining stability. Violence often damages the infrastructure necessary to deliver goods to market or may directly target companies. Corporations also have a normative obligation to conduct business in ways that promote peace. While there are historical examples of firm-instigated violence and firms reaping benefits from instability and conflict, there is also evidence that corporations proactively engage in peacebuilding. For example, firms devise programs to promote economic development, offer access to education, and employ former combatants. In...
Through the lens of global capitalism theory, William Avilés examines democratization and civil-military relations in Colombia to explain how social and international forces led to the ostensibly contradictory outcome of democratic and economic reform coinciding with political repression. Focusing on the administrations in power from 1990 to the present, Avilés argues that the reduction in the institutional powers of the military within the state reflected changes in the structure of the global economy, the emergence of globalizing technocrats and politicians, and shifts in U.S. foreign policy strategies toward "democracy promotion." These same factors explain Colombia's establishment of a low-intensity democracy—a structure of elite rule in which the strategies of coercion (state and para-state repression) and consensus (competitive elections, civilian control over the military) maintain control and legitimacy. In the age of capitalist globalization, a low-intensity democracy is most concomitant with neoliberalism, establishing the political and economic environment most suitable to the investments of transnational corporations.
This volume bridges the gap between forensic and cultural anthropology in how both disciplines describe and theorize the dead, highlighting the potential for interdisciplinary scholarship. As applied disciplines dealing with some of the most marginalized people in our society, forensic anthropologists have the potential to shed light on important and persistent social issues that we face today. Forensic anthropologists have successfully pursued research agendas primarily focused on the development of individual biological profiles, time since death, recovery, and identification. Few, however, have taken a step back from their lab bench to consider how and why people become forensic cases or ...
Through two Colombian case studies, Sanne Weber identifies the ways in which conflict experiences are defined by structures of gender inequality, and how these could be transformed in the post-conflict context. The author reveals that current, apparently gender-sensitive, transitional justice (TJ) and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) laws and policies ultimately undermine rather than transform gender equality and, consequently, weaken the chances of achieving holistic and durable peace. To overcome this, Weber offers an innovative approach to TJ and DDR that places gendered citizenship as both the starting point and the continued driving force of post-conflict reconstruction.