Suchergebnisse

This book is the outcome of a conference on Common Security and Civil Society in Africa, held in 1997, and organised jointly by the Nordic Africa Institute and the Common Security Forum, based at the Centre for History and Economics, King's College and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. The idea that security is to be achieved by cooperation more than by confrontation, and that it is an economic and social as well as a military condition, has been a commonplace of international politics for some 20 years. The geometry of common or extended security is complex. But it usually involves an extension of the domain of security, of the sources of security, and of the characteristics of security. Among these diverse kinds of security, it is political security which has come into particular prominence at the end of the 1990s, most strikingly in Africa. Political security, in the sense of legal and political institutions such that individuals feel secure both in their individual rights and in the development of political culture, has come to be seen as the foundation of all other kinds of security. The papers presented in this volume seek to go 'beyond the war of images', to imagine a different and more secure future, and they are concerned with five major themes: economic and social change; the prevention of violent conflict; the causes of conflict; political security; the international politics of development partnership. ; CONTENTS -- BEYOND THE WAR OF IMAGES: TOWARDS COMMON SECURITY AND NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH AFRICA/Samantha Gibson -- SHIFTING COMMITMENTS AND NATIONAL COHESION IN AFRICAN COUNTRIES/Thandika Mkandawire -- POVERTY, EQUALITY AND SECURITY IN SOUTH AFRICA/Stephan Klasen and Fani Zulu -- HEALTH AND SECURITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA/William Pick -- MEETING THE GOALS OF THE 1990 WORLD SUMMIT ON CHILDREN: HEALTH AND NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF CHILDREN IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA/Omar B. Ahmad -- CONFLICT PREVENTION AND EARLY-WARNING SYSTEMS/J. 'Bayo Adekanye -- THE STRUCTURE OF CONFLICT/Mary Kaldor -- ARMS AND CONFLICTS IN AFRICA: MYTHS AND REALITIES OF PROLIFERATION AND DISARMAMENT/Siemon T. Wezeman -- PROMOTING THE RULE OF LAW IN POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES/Rama Mani -- AID AND POLITICS IN MALAWI AND KENYA: POLITICAL CONDITIONALITY AND DONOR SUPPORT TO THE 'HUMAN RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE' SECTOR/Samantha Gibson -- THE INTERACTION BETWEEN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: PROSPECTS FOR PEACE AND SECURITY/Patrick Molutsi -- COSMOPOLITAN PATRIOTS/Kwame Anthony Appiah

Contends that new environmental organizations, eg, the UN Environmental Program & the World Wildlife Fund, are fashioning a new type of world civic politics by investing themselves in the social, economic, & cultural dimensions of global life that lie outside the realm of governmental affairs. The development of several environmental organizations, including Greenpeace & Friends of the Earth, is examined, & it is concluded that the establishment of nongovernmental environmental organizations represents the birth of a new global civil society dedicated to ecological conservation. W. Howard

In Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria, Ebenezer Obadare offers an innovative perspective on the idea and reality of civil society. Mobilizing a wide range of concepts and insights from political science, African studies, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, anthropology, communications theory, and international development, Obadare develops a notion of civil society that radically departs from the literature's axiomatic focus on voluntary civic associations and focuses instead on more informal strategies of resistance, such as humor and silence. Compellingly argued, Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria raises provocative questions on a topic of keen importance for students, scholars, and policymakers. Ebenezer Obadare is associate professorof sociology at the University of Kansas. He is coeditor of Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century (James Currey, 2014)

Extensive socio-ethnographic fieldwork among nongovernmental organizations, international donor agencies, and Church-related organizations in Chiapas, Mexico, suggests that global civil society—as an imagined terrain of transnational social action—can be viewed both as a site of expanded possibilities for social action and as a source of significant new constraints. It is a terrain where not all ideas and values are heard, promoted, or given legitimacy. There is, however, a transnationally resonant language into which Southern activists need to translate their issues and concerns if they wish to be heard.

"Civil Society and the Internet in Japan addresses how citizen groups utilize the Internet and how significant it is in their effectiveness. Isa Ducke provides an introduction into the theory regarding technological impact on democracy and this is supported with a series of case studies that take a closer look at the role of the Internet during the history textbook controversy; analyse the strategies of small citizen's groups; make comparisons between Internet use in Japan, Korea and Germany; and examine how the Internet is used as a platform to discuss the dispatch of Japanese troops in Iraq." "Providing original qualitative and quantitative research based on extensive empirical data, Civil Society and the Internet in Japan will be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese politics, media and information technology and civil society."--Jacket