Suchergebnisse

This dissertation concerns Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti (SKP) [the Swedish Communist Party] – in 1967 renamed Vänsterpartiet kommunisterna (VPK) [the Left Party – the Communists] and in 1990 renamed Vänsterpartiet (V) [the Left Party] – and the Party's process of coming to terms with history and its communist legacy. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the SKP/VPK/V's process of coming to terms with history for the period 1956-2006, and to set out and problematise the driving forces and constraining mechanisms of this process. The theoretical framework of the study consists of Gunnar Sjöblom's theory about party strategies of political parties in multi-party systems and Michael Freeden's conceptual approach to ideology analysis. During the period of study the SKP/VPK/V has, like no other political party in Sweden, been ascribed historical guilt regarding its own party history but also regarding the effects of world communism. The Party has thus found itself in a situation where it has had history as an adversary. The process of coming to terms with history has mainly revolved around three issues: independence (1956-1977), international ties (1977-1989) and a broadening beyond the communist tradition (1986-2006). The internal debate within the Party has linked these issues to calls for change aimed at ridding the party of what is considered undesirable elements of the Communist legacy. By analysing the arguments pursued in favour of these calls, it is possible to pick out a number of the driving forces behind the Party's process of coming to terms with history, namely an ambition to obtain vote maximisation, programme realisation and maximisation of parliamentary influence. The urge to distance the Party from certain aspects of its communist past has thus been related to fundamental goals that political parties in multi-party systems seek to obtain. The results of the dissertation show that it is possible to pick out five main constraining mechanisms in the Party's process of coming to terms with history. 1) The safeguarding of Party cohesion. 2) The safeguarding of the distinctive character of the Party. 3) The need to resist external pressure. 4) The desire to avoid unfair apportioning of blame. 5) The safeguarding of the right to define the substance of one's own ideology. The existence of these constraining mechanisms help to explain why the process of coming to terms with history lingered on for several decades, and also why it seems to have been a process of such complexity for the Swedish Communist and Post-Communist Party.

Whaling is a globally controversial topic, and Faroese drive-style whaling, grindadráp, is no exception. A complex common-pool resource (CPR) institution, viewable from multiple moral, social, economic and political viewpoints, grindadráp is a challenge to assess. Responding to calls to utilise more relationship-centred and multiperspectival approaches to studying CPRs, this article examines grindadráp utilising the theory of socio-cultural viability, which asserts diverse understandings of the world can be classified within a fourfold typology and that 'successful' institutions draw on all four social solidarities in dealing with challenges that arise. The analysis reveals how throughout grindadráp's history its place in Faroese society has been maintained through the enforcement of a largely egalitarian conceptualisation. However, in meeting various challenges around the distribution of meat, sustainability and killing methods, the institution has accepted solutions utilising alternative conceptualisations. It is this adaptability which has allowed grindadráp to remain a popular part of Faroese society, even as dependence on pilot whale meat has declined. The issue of toxins in pilot whale meat is found to be arguably the greatest threat to grindadráp, undermining the egalitarian foundations of the practice, the response to which is something that Faroese society is currently in the process of negotiation.

The first part of this report provides an overview of the history of nuclear weapons doctrine, as it evolved in parallel to the practice of warfare and war planning in the mid-1940s and subsequently as an integral element of the cold war. A distinction is made between the early development of nuclear weapons doctrine, when United States held a dominant position in the field, and the near-parity situation that ensued in the late 1960s and onwards. The second part of the report consists of an analysis of American, British, French and Russian nuclear weapons doctrine between 1991 and 2018, illustrating how a period of low tension was gradually replaced with a reinvigoration of mutual suspicion after the year 2000. A third part briefly examines recent contributions to the American scholarly debate about the utility of nuclear weapons for strategic thought in a world moving toward polycentrism, as it revisits earlier theoretical insights and challenges conventional wisdoms. The fourth and final part elicits lessons for Sweden in particular. Overall, the report demonstrates that nuclear weapons consistently have represented an integral element of managing security risks in the Western hemisphere but that domestic political and defense industry considerations play in as well. It also suggests that doctrinal adjustments mirror the major concerns of policymakers in this regard and that nuclear powers are well aware of special obligations and privileges ascribed to them by countries that lack this category of weapons. A world in which the United States wields the greatest share of this power (unipolarity) will nonetheless be quite different from one in which two countries possess roughly the same capacity (bipolarity), and yet fundamentally different from one in which three or more countries compete to gain, or sustain, an edge toward others (multipolarity). To the extent that the world is moving toward greater security competition including the dimension of nuclear power, it will inevitably be more difficult for individual states to remain on the sidelines, unless they are ready to compromise their political autonomy. In terms of options for aligning Sweden with a broader security arrangement in the near future, there are only three feasible alternatives that may offset the risk of nuclear coercion: responding within the framework of the EU, forge closer ties to NATO, or build a bilateral relationship to the United States. Each such option comes with its own set of assets and liabilities, as does remaining a passive bystander. ; Transaltantisk och europeisk säkerhet , FORBE

The imprint on rural areas from social change since the 1950s is a decline in population, farming and other local working places, services, political platforms and meeting places. The aim of the thesis is to understand how these changes have affected the interrelations between people, place and history. The fieldwork was conducted in Locknevi, a parish in Småland. Interviews and participant observation were undertaken for four months, during a span of five years. In spite of the impoverishment of rural areas inhabitants seek to maintain social and time-space relations through new practises, mostly in local associations. These associations were once an important arena for modernising both agriculture and rural life. Now they are divided into agricultural and community based associations. People moving into the community often engage in community based associations. Hence local communities are now upheld by activities within associations and among friends instead of by work within agriculture. Three cases from Locknevi are the basis for discussions of the effect of social change over the last decades. For example the school is an important institution and meeting place. Here the struggle to retain the village school shows that when meeting places are in danger of disappearing people tend to mobilize against deterioration in living conditions. Furthermore the church is an important local political arena, institution and meeting place. The conflict within church leadership represents divergent views in the community, namely the old independent view and the new view incorporated in a global world. Moreover the moose hunt as an institution serves to maintain the sense of community. In this regard the effects of change are manifested in the way the local hunting teams respond to the activities of hunting tourism. Here tensions often emerge between cultural/social and economic stakes within the community. The empirical findings shows no conflict between seeking to maintain a strong place identity and embracing an openness towards society. On the contrary, this combination could well be the fundamental driving force for building society. However it is hard to create a viable community in the absence of local subsistence, meeting places, institutions and a concrete use of place.

This study analyses the history of a large hydroelectric scheme – the Great Ruaha power project in Tanzania. The objective is to establish why and how this specific scheme came about, and as part of this to identify the key actors involved in the decision-making process, including the ideological contexts within which they acted. Although the Tanzanian actors and the World Bank (IBRD) are discussed, main focus is on the Swedish actors on project level.Kidatu, the first phase of the Great Ruaha power project (constructed between1970-1975), became the first large-scale hydropower station in Tanzania. As such, it paved the way for Tanzanian entrance into the Big Dam Era and significant changes within the Tanzanian landscape. As well as the dry river bed at Kidatu, and the small reservoir that precedes it, the Great Ruaha power project also involved the creation of a huge artificial lake, the Mtera reservoir. The Kidatu hydropower station was the first large undertaking within Swedish bilateral aid, and implied the takeover of control of hydropower construction in Tanzania by Swedish enterprises, replacing the enterprises of the former colonial power. A hydropower plant is a complex technoscientific artefact. The construction of a hydropower plant is preceded by a large number of technological choices, scientific prestudies and estimations of costs and revenues. A hydropower plant is also a complex social creation, and is as such filled with social actors engaged in conflicts, compromises and power structures. The decision to construct Kidatu hydropower station was a result of negotiations and activities within what is called "development assistance". This brings in yet another dimension, the political one, involving export and import of technology, foreign capital, and foreign influence in decision-making processes, as well as ideas about how to bring development and progress to a people supposed to be living in "poverty and misery". The study is divided into three main parts. The first part analyses the context of Swedish development assistance in the support to the construction of hydropower plants. This part discusses Swedish state-supported hydropower exploitation of indigenous people's territory within Sweden's borders in the 20th century and the background of Swedish development assistance, from the 1950s to the early 1960s. The second part analyses the event of Swedish development assistance entering Tanzania and the Great Ruaha power project, with the main focus being on the period 1965 – 1970. The third part is an analysis of the technoscientific basis for the decisions taken to implement the Great Ruaha hydropower scheme. Main focus is on the period 1969-1974, discussed against the backdrop of precolonial and colonial studies. While focus is on the 1960s and 1970s, in both part two and three events in the 1980s and 1990s are discussed. The study shows that although Sweden was not a colonial power in Tanzania, colonial imagery, and relations to the colonial era, as well as Sweden's background of internal colonialisation, exerted an influence on the decision-making process and the actors involved in the Great Ruaha power project.The study is mainly based on archival sources, complemented with oral sources from Tanzania and Sweden. Recognizing the complexity of large-scale hydropower and the attempts to control watercourses that large scale hydropower necessitates, in the specific context of decolonisation and development assistance that the decision-making process behind the Great Ruaha hydropower scheme reveals, the analysis of the actors involved is based on feminist and postcolonial perspectives.

Illegal hunting has constituted an expression of contested legitimacy of wildlife regulation across the world for centuries. In the following report, we critically engage with the state of the art on the illegal hunting phenomenon. We do so to reveal emerging scholarly perspectives on the crime. Specifically, we aim to capture the complexity of illegal hunting as a socio-political phenomenon rather than an economically motivated crime. To do so, we adopt a critical perspective that pays particular attention to the societal processes that contribute to the criminalization of historically accepted hunting practices. To capture perspectives on illegal hunting, fifteen researchers from various countries participated in an illegal hunting workshop in Copenhagen 16-17th June 2014. A primary contribution of the research workshop was to bring together criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists and geographers, each equipped with their own research perspective, to engage in a critical and interdisciplinary discussion on how to apprehend and constructively address the challenges of illegal hunting in contemporary society. A majority of those that attended were primarily based in the Nordic and the UK context, which motivated a strong focus on the illegal hunting that currently takes places in these countries. Similar trends of illegal hunting were identified across Europe, many of which traced from EU legislation on the reintroduction of large carnivores or other controversial wildlife conservation projects. In the workshop, proceedings took the form of individual presentations, plenary discussions and group work. Common themes that emerged from these presentations were: illegal hunting as communicating socio-political resistance; the targeting of specific species based on its symbolism or environmental history; illegal hunting as symptom of class struggles; the role of rewilding and domestication of nature on wildlife regulation; corruption, complicity and conflicts of loyalty in enforcement, and discrepancies and discontinuities in legality. These themes were framed in an understanding of illegal hunting as a complex, multifaceted expression that transgresses livelihood based motivation. Critical discussions conceptualised illegal hunting as a crime of dissent. This meant situating crimes as everyday forms of resistance against the regulatory regime. In so doing, the relationship between hunters and public authorities was highlighted as a potential source of disenfranchisement. In this interactionist perspective, illegal hunting tells us not just about the rationales of the offenders. It also elucidates the broader context in which non-compliance with regulation serves as symptoms of democratic and legitimacy deficits on the state level. Erratic transitions in legislation and a subsequent discord between legal, cultural and moral norms in society were identified as factors that contribute to the conflict. Crucially, the research workshop and the report contribute with three perspectives. First, it emphasizes the need to uncover the grey areas of complicity in wildlife crime. Previously corruption, bribery and selective law enforcement have been associated with wildlife trafficking in the global south, but this understanding is too blunt for the complicity that exists in many other contexts. Here conflicts of loyalty exist across several strata of society and differ in degrees. In highlighting this fact, we show a more opaque and contingent climate of complicity around illegal hunting in Northern Europe and elsewhere. Second, as crimes of dissent seeking to publicise injustices, illegal hunting and its associated resistance tactics are counterproductive by constituting a 'dialogue of the dead'. With this is mean that such communication is prone to distortion, misunderstanding and exaggeration and does no favors to hunters. There is consequently a need to move to a clarity of messages, as in institutionalised diogue processes. Third, hunting regulation cannot be seen in isolation to the broader differences in society in terms of values, economic factors and development. Research questions for future scholarship concluded the workshop and are summarized in the report. In terms of illuminating the junctures at which additional research is needed, these questions may provide important guidance. Above all, the report is intended as help for policy-makers, wildlife managers and law enforcement in better understanding and responding to the complexities of illegal hunting. We hope this will lead to more long-term preventative measures that address the core of the issue rather than proximate causes. The workshop was organized by the Environmental Communication Division of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The event constituted a part of the FORMAS funded research project Confronting challenges to political legitimacy of the natural resource management regulatory regime in Sweden - the case of illegal hunting in Sweden whose members include Erica von Essen, Dr. Hans Peter Hansen and Dr. Helena Nordström Källström from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Professor Tarla R. Peterson from Texas A&M University and Dr. Nils Peterson from North Carolina State University.