Suchergebnisse

Since the official end of apartheid, different state actors and non-state actors have beenchanting the creed of national reconciliation and reconstruction for a better and harmoniousSouth Africa. In fact, Desmond Tutu's vision of the "rainbow nation", to an extent, has been thedriving force behind the policies of successive regimes in South Africa following the trauma anddispossession of the past. Since literature can also be conceived as an interpretation of societyin time and space, the discourse of national reconciliation and reconstruction has found inroadsin the literary and cultural productions of post-apartheid South Africa. This paper, thus, seeks toshow the relationship between post-apartheid female narratives and post-apartheid politics. Inother words, it verifies the contributory role of South African female writers in re-negotiating,re-conciliating and re-constructing the post-apartheid nation. In this connection, this paper ispredicated on the premise that the post-apartheid South African female writer, just like her malecounterpart, is also involved in the political project of nation building through politicalnegotiation, reconciliation, and reconstruction. These writers, in their works, affirm the view thatwithout political dialogue and reconciliation, the nation-building project in post-apartheid SouthAfrica is a mere hoax and an exercise in futility.

Since the end of the Cold War, America has led six nation-building missions. We have done none particularly well. Throughout the 1990's, but particularly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. government tried to improve the way it ran 'stabilization and reconstruction' operations. That effort produced most notably the Office of the Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction (S/CRS) within the State Department. S/CRS was charged with developing plans, coordinating their interagency implementation, and staffing a 'Civilian Response Corps' to deploy to countries on short notice. S/CRS largely failed in these efforts. It struggled to establish control over the interagency planning process. It failed to staff its Response Corps. And it was largely excluded from the civilian efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This paper explains why S/CRS failed. Four reasons in particular stand out. The office never had strong backing from the Secretary of State. It was undercut by USAID in its congressional negotiations. It lacked a strong domestic constituency to advocate for it. And it suffered from a general bias against civilian-led foreign policy projects. Without a clear congressional mandate and enough funding, S/CRS could not control either USAID or the regional bureaus. Simply put, the office did not bring much to the table. Finally, the failure of S/CRS suggests that the Defense Department, not State, will run future stabilization and reconstruction efforts. Though the appetite for nation building in the U.S. is low, history suggests that we are not done with these projects.

One of the greatest challenges facing people in the process of becoming South Africans today is that of building a cohesive national identity out of diverse and competing national, cultural and ethnic aspirations and identities that were never imagined as belonging to a single nation-state. This challenge has been made worse by the fact that the advent of the post-apartheid dispensation came with liberal democratic values of diversity, tolerance and various forms of freedom such as those of choice, association and speech. All of these freedoms have brought about an impediment to the cultivation of the spirit of patriotism, common belonging and unity among the peoples meant to become South Africans. While a number of obstacles have been identified in the quest to develop a sense of common belonging among the peoples who occupy the cartographic space known as South Africa today, the question of knowledge production and its divisive role in the making of South Africa has not yet been comprehensively addressed. This gap needs to be addressed urgently with specific reference to the field of producing historical knowledge because the manner in which historical events and narratives are imagined and reconstructed in South Africa today has the potential to constrain and/or enhance common belonging. This article is a decolonial epistemic perspective on the production of historical knowledge in South Africa and it argues that a decolonised historical narrative can possibly lead to the emergence of a cohesive South African national identity.

This latest book by award-winning researcher Duncan McCargo, one of the world's leading specialists on contemporary Thailand, builds on previous projects to elucidate new aspects of the intractable Southern conflict that has claimed more than 4500 lives since 2004. Mapping National Anxieties locates the insurgency in the context of Thailand's wider political conflicts, exploring the ambiguous relationships between the Thai state and organised religion, along with the recent resurgence of Buddhist chauvinism and nationalism. McCargo examines the way Islamic provincial councils have been drawn into the conflict, and scrutinises the special challenges the conflict has created for Thailand's media. Journalists have struggled to communicate a confusing story to an increasingly indifferent wider public. The book then moves beyond the crisis itself to look at ways forward, starting with the controversial National Reconciliation Commission that was established by the Thaksin Shinawatra government to propose peaceful options for reducing the violence. Another chapter explores how far Malay Muslims in Thailand's southern border provinces think of themselves as 'Thai', arguing that there is an important distinction between legal citizenship and informal understandings of what citizenship means and entails. Finally, McCargo invites readers to 'think the unthinkable' by imagining the possibility of autonomy for Thailand's deep South, and the implications for the country as a whole.

After the collapse of three socialist federations in Eastern Europe, the expression 'nation-building' returned to the heart of academic debates. Like other former socialist republics, Ukraine has started its nation- building project trying to balance between a limitation of centrifugal forces and the 'nationalisation' (Brubaker 1994) of the state. This article examines the main features of language policies within the Ukrainian nation-building project and adopts a dual approach. It first surveys the political will that has been incarnated in language policies since 1991, and how national identity has been affected by those policies. However, it counterpoises this approach with an analysis of bottom actors and their attitude towards language policies. The framework constructed is intended to question the idea that nation-building is mainly an elite driven process and to suggest that common people can participate in a political project by renegotiating its features at the local level.

In this paper, we argue that representative bureaucracy is a changing concept, and that in the academic and policy debate on representative bureaucracy in fact three different debates are intermingled. While the debate on representative bureaucracy in Public Administration is generally situated within wider debates about tensions between bureaucracy and democracy, this is only part of the story. We argue that discussions and scholarship on representative bureaucracy in fact employ three different concepts of representative bureaucracy. The reasons for making the bureaucracy representative in these three rival concepts are quite divergent, and even the conception of what representativity means is totally different. These rival concepts reflect a particular view on the role of the state and the relation between states and citizens.

"Serial no. 109-250." ; Shipping list no.: 2008-0431-P. ; Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche. ; Mode of access: Internet.

"Serial no. 109-249." ; Shipping list no.: 2008-0246-P. ; Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Shipping list no.: 2007-0403-P. ; "H.A.S.C. no. 109-92." ; Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche. ; Mode of access: Internet.

"Serial no. 109-247." ; Shipping list no.: 2008-0076-P. ; Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The article examines the progress that has been made on the post-civil war state-building project in Sierra Leone. (...) The article probes 1) the efforts to re-invigorate old state institutions; 2) the efforts to create new state institutions; and 3) the efforts by these public institutions to establish democratic control over the body politic. The findings indicate that appreciable amount of efforts have been made in the re-establishment of old state institutions and in the creation of new ones. However, much work needs to be done in the re-establishment of the judiciary. As for new state institutions, three major ones have been established to deal with reconciliation, corruption and war crimes. On the issue of these public institutions establishing democratic control over territorial Sierra Leone, while some progress has been made, much work remans. One of the major hurdles that needs to be overcome is the establishment of law and order throughout the country. The article then discusses the impediments to state-building in Sierra Leone and concludes by mapping out a suggested trajectory for overcoming these impediments. (...) (AAS/DÜI)

"August 2005." ; Includes bibliographical references (p. 27-29) ; Stabilization and reconstruction: a strategic requirement -- The Army misreads the future landscape -- The consequence of rapid decisive force to promote stability -- The winds of change begin to blow -- Understanding stabilization versus reconstruction -- A closer look at stabilization -- Progressive stabilization concept: the missing link -- Implications for the Army's future expeditionary force -- Army modularity: right effort aimed at the wrong target -- Shift and adjust: bring modularity on target. ; Mode of access: Internet.