Suchergebnisse

When Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947 as a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent, it was envisioned as a secular state where non-Muslims would be granted freedom of religion and equal citizenship. However, the subsequent historical events led to a fast Islamization of nearly every part of public life and discrimination against the country's religious minorities, who today make up less than 4 per cent of the overall population. Based on extensive field work involving more than 100 non-structured qualitative interviews, this study explores the situation of the religious minorities and the dynamics of interfaith peacebuilding in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Primary focus was laid on the practice of interfaith dialogue, which – given the draconic blasphemy laws – differs from interfaith dialogue as conceived of in the West. Additionally, other peacebuilding measures, as offered by various non-governmental organizations, were taken into account, be they advocacy, promotion of human rights and unbiased education, or policy negotiation with the government.

Attention to everyday forms of resistance in the liberal peace debates has provided a more sophisticated critique of peacebuilding but the concept of resistance remains limited. The paper argues that this is because leading approaches to resistance coming out the hybridity literature lack an account of class and privilege. These approaches have done a superficial application of the frameworks they were drawing on, primarily those of Michel De Certeau and James Scott. Resistance has been conceived as an international–local and liberal–non-liberal contention. The conclusion is that while the study of resistance is welcomed, this research agenda is limited and depoliticizing. Critics of hybridity have addressed similar points, taking issue with the account of the local, the lack of historicity and the reification of liberal norms. However, in seeing these problems as stemming from the everyday framework, they too have misread the importance of class and privilege therein. The article shows that Certeau and Scott have much to contribute to understanding peacebuilding processes by sustaining a sociological historicist and practice-based account of resistance as embodied in subordinate subjects. This has the potential to politicize, historicize and decolonize the liberal peace critique and to contribute to studying resistance in IR more generally.

Abstract
The concept of relationships is one that is central to numerous subfields within communication, including interpersonal, organizational, and public relations. This conceptual paper investigates the notion of relationships and proposes a framework to understand and explicate corporate-community relationships (CCRs), a specific type of organization-public relationships (OPRs). In developing this framework, we draw upon existing literature and our experiences in Liberia related to natural resource management (NRM) as part of a multi-year collaborative peacebuilding initiative. We advance a framework of CCRs that (a) helps develop further empirical research and knowledge about these relationships and (b) contributes to the practice of more transformative relationships between Western and Asian multinational corporations (MNCs) and local communities in West Africa and beyond. This framework puts forth our conceptualization of CCRs as (a) constituted by the communicative, (b) dynamic, constantly influenced by macro and micro factors, and (c) complex. Drawing on our framework, we also advance some guiding questions for a research agenda in this area.

Abstract This article intends to challenge the dominant assumptions that undermine the potential application of peacebuilding frameworks beyond formal post-war contexts. It analyses the gangs' truce that recently took place in El Salvador as a privileged laboratory to rethink hegemonic understandings and practices of peacebuilding by specifically addressing the importance of overcoming dichotomised categories such 'war and peace', 'criminal and political', and 'success and failure'. It is claimed that while the truce fostered a discourse pointing towards an ongoing peace process and enlarged the public debate on the failings of post-war policies and on the structural roots of violence, it was also decisively undermined by the inability to surmount the dichotomy that juxtaposes the criminal and the political domains. It is argued that a peacebuilding framework, inspired by a set of critical perspectives on war and peace and on the nature of 'the political', may thus be of crucial importance for the future of policies aimed at curbing violence in El Salvador and elsewhere.