Suchergebnisse

Die Idee der Konfliktlösung basiert auf der Maßgabe, dass Gegensätze bereits im Ansatz bewältigt werden müssen. Nur so können Situationen vermieden werden, die Stabilität und Leistungsfähigkeit nachhaltig behindern. Akademiker spielen hierbei eine wichtige Rolle. Am Beispiel der Hochschulen wird nachgezeichnet, dass die Existenz anerkannter Autoritäten sowie geeignete Strukturen notwendig sind, um derartige Konflikte zu bewältigen. (DÜI-Wgm)

The paper presents the issues of ethnicity, governance and prevention of conflicts in terms of their political management through the proper exercise of power. Conflict cannot be prevented, it can only be managed. The crucial determining factor in ethnic, gender and class relations is power. The paper traces notions of power in the works of various philosophers and outlines the significance of perceiving the impact of paradigmatic shifts on political discourse. These shifts are perceived as intellectual itineraries from structural-functionalism to the contemporary North America Critical Theory and postmodernist theory. The problematic of ethnicity is posed within debates emanating from the ensuing perspectival contests and paradigmatic struggles. The moral economy, rational choice, and subaltern approaches are also interrogated and critiqued. The paper contends that when the structures and procedures of democratic governance are undermined, political legitimacy also gets compromise.

Studies of the media in Africa, incorporating both African and international perspectives, are few. The thirty papers collected here were presented at a seminar organised and hosted by the Kenya-based Twaweza Communications and the International African Institute in Nairobi in 2004. They demonstrate how media outlets are used to perpetuate, question or modify the unequal power relations between the North and the South. Focusing on east Africa, the papers include discussions of the construction of old and new social entities, as defined by class, gender, ethnicity, political and economic differences, wealth, poverty, cultural behaviour, language and religion. The authors illustrate how there is increasing control by local people of traditional and modern forms of media. Globalization is being countered by local responses, within the context of social and cultural identities. Essentially, the book describes the tensions between the global and the local, tensions not often discussed in media studies, thus pioneering new debates