Extralegal groups in post-conflict Liberia: how trade makes the state
This work examines how the economic survival strategies of former fighters in Liberia can help explain the trajectories of war-to-peace transitions.
This work examines how the economic survival strategies of former fighters in Liberia can help explain the trajectories of war-to-peace transitions.
In the aftermath of the Liberian civil war, groups of ex-combatants seized control of natural resource enclaves in the rubber, diamond, and timber sectors. With some of them threatening a return to war, these groups were widely viewed as the most significant threats to Liberia's hard-won peace. Building on fieldwork and socio-historical analysis, this book shows how extralegal groups are driven to provide basic governance goods in their bid to create a stable commercial environment. This is a story about how their livelihood strategies merged with the opportunities of Liberia's post-war political economy. But it is also a context-specific story that is rooted in the country's geography, its history of state-making, and its social and political practices. This volume demonstrates that extralegal groups do not emerge in a vacuum
In: Journal of global security studies, Band 4, Heft 3, S. 321-344
ISSN: 2057-3189
AbstractWhy do American perspectives of international relations (IR) continue to hold sway over an increasingly diverse discipline? What actually constitutes "Americanness" in IR? Who is considered "American" in IR? These are the central questions we explore in this essay. Drawing on cognitive and behavioral insights from social psychology, we argue that there is a distinct "American approach" to international relations and security studies and that this approach is a product of Western cognitive frames. We identify three factors that represent the American approach's hyper-Westernized framing: individualism, equality, and a preference for causal rather than contextual analysis, and a preference for egalitarianism. We argue that these are reinforced by two social identity processes—academic identity and national identity. The consequences of "being American" in IR and security studies suggest not only problems of attention and accuracy, but an inherent failure to appreciate that Western—and particularly, American—ways of seeing and valuing the world are not universal.
In: Millennium: journal of international studies, Band 47, Heft 2, S. 210-230
ISSN: 1477-9021
This article makes the case for feminist IR to build knowledge of international institutions. It emerges from a roundtable titled 'Challenges and Opportunities for Feminist IR: Researching Gendered Institutions' which took place at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Baltimore in 2017. Here, we engage in self-reflexivity, drawing on our conversation to consider what it means for feminist scholars to 'study up'. We argue that feminist IR conceptions of narratives and the everyday make a valuable contribution to feminist institutionalist understandings of the formal and informal. We also draw attention to the value of postcolonial approaches and multi-site analyses of international institutions for creating a counter-narrative to hegemonic accounts emerging from both the institutions themselves, and scholars studying them without a critical feminist perspective. In so doing, we draw attention to the salience of considering not just what we study as feminist International Relations scholars but how we study it.
In: Millennium: journal of international studies, Band 47, Heft 2, S. 210-230
ISSN: 1477-9021
This article makes the case for feminist IR to build knowledge of international institutions. It emerges from a roundtable titled 'Challenges and Opportunities for Feminist IR: Researching Gendered Institutions' which took place at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Baltimore in 2017. Here, we engage in self-reflexivity, drawing on our conversation to consider what it means for feminist scholars to 'study up'. We argue that feminist IR conceptions of narratives and the everyday make a valuable contribution to feminist institutionalist understandings of the formal and informal. We also draw attention to the value of postcolonial approaches and multi-site analyses of international institutions for creating a counter-narrative to hegemonic accounts emerging from both the institutions themselves, and scholars studying them without a critical feminist perspective. In so doing, we draw attention to the salience of considering not just what we study as feminist International Relations scholars but how we study it.
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