Suchergebnisse

This book interrogates the extent to which regional civil society organisations have evolved as actors in West Africa. Examining civil society democratic participation in regional integration and involvement in regionalism of peacebuilding, it rethinks how we study civil society in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region. Beyond the functional typology of civil society actors as 'partner', 'legitimiser', 'resistance/counter-hegemonic' and 'manipulator', the book develops a new analytical framework to understand how organisations such as the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF) and West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) have evolved. Offering analytical perspectives of the actorship of specific regional civil society actors, the book draws attention to the tendencies in the previous studies of mistaking an action or misdeed that is empirically specific to particular civil society organisations within a region to the generality of the civic space of the region. Providing an alternative perspective aimed at invoking a new intellectual conversation about civil society regionalism this book advances a new analytical framework of action-based regional identity of civil society, regional presence of activities, regional capacities and societal impact. It will be of interest to academics and scholars of international relations, global governance, African politics and comparative regionalism.

Intro -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Contents -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter Summaries -- References -- Part I: Theoretical and Historical Foundations -- Chapter 2: Reading Popular Culture for Peace: Theoretical Foundations -- Why Read Popular Culture for Peace? -- Identifying and Resisting the 'Commonsensical' Narratives and 'Self-Fulfilling Prophecies' of Violence in World Politics -- Understanding the Domestic Pop-Cultural Contexts of Liberal Peacebuilding/Militarism -- Identifying and Supporting Cultural Sources of Positive Peace and Resistance -- Youth in the House -- Ecological Systems, Lifeworlds, and Everyday Peacebuilding -- Exploring Peace in Pop Culture: A Framework for Analysis -- Discipline, Struggle, and Hidden Resistance -- Bridging Differences Toward New Consciousness -- Pop Culture/Peacebuilding: Blurred Boundaries -- References -- Chapter 3: What We Talk About When We Talk About Youth -- Talking About Youth: Fears and Desires of War/Peace -- The Child as an Image: Idealist and Normative Peace -- Wildness, Innocence, and Signs -- Reforming and Saving -- Liberal Peace and Gothic Wars -- Gender, Race, Class, and Estrangement -- Gothic Girls and Resistance -- Boundaries and Revolt: Youth Containment and a Search for Structural Peace -- Apprenticeship and Insurrection -- Martial Civic Peace -- (Military) Discipline -- Parenting, Policing, Politicizing, Pacifying -- Progress and Existential Threat: Realist Peace and Human Rights -- Resistance: From 'Rugged and Ready' to 'Peace and Love' -- Neocolonial, Neoliberal Peace -- Conclusion -- References -- Part II: Reading Peace: Textual and Intertextual Analysis -- Chapter 4: Reading War and Peace in Harry Potter -- Harry Potter's Just Wars2 -- Harry's Gendered and Relational Peace -- Conclusion -- References

What happens if international interveners feel emotions that they consider unsanctioned, unwanted and unprofessional? What if they enact and manage their emotions in ways that they – or others – deem unacceptable? If international interveners face anxiety about being 'too emotional' or not feeling or expressing the 'right' emotions, does this challenge their sense of identity? And what consequences could this have for peacebuilding and the conflict-affected population in which they were working? Building on the growing body of critical peace and conflict scholarship that has analysed international interveners at the micro-scale, this article analyses how individual interveners' emotional and embodied experiences influence their understanding and practice of peacebuilding. Based on a discourse analysis of the memoirs of 10 international interveners, this article identifies two primary interpretive repertoires that the interveners employed and argues that they generated two ideal-type subject positions: the intervener as objective, rational, technocratic 'expert' and the intervener as irrational, fallible, vulnerable 'human'. These subject positions determined the feeling rules that the interveners followed and the dilemmas they faced. This, in turn, affected how the interveners perceived the conflict-affected societies in which they were working, and how they understood and practised peacebuilding.

The past two decades have witnessed myriad 'turns' in peacebuilding scholarship. This article explores these 'turns' and questions their influence on peacebuilding practice – whether intended or not. It examines the features of academia under late capitalism that contribute to this, asks if these shifts are comprehensible to the agents of peacebuilding and whether implementers are willing and/or able to listen anyway. It posits that scholars and practitioners find themselves in a 'dialogue of the deaf' arguing that unless this is transformed then conflict-affected societies will see little benefit from the clever pirouettes occurring in the comfort of the ivory tower.

The rationale for India's development and peacebuilding assistance and the mechanisms employed have changed over the period. India's assistance is starkly different from the way the developed countries do peacebuilding. This difference is due to India's different historical experiences, socio-economic conditions and lived experience. The conflict-affected states have appreciated India's assistance due to the suitability and appropriateness of technical assistance, training and educational programs to their socio-economic context. India's ways of development and peacebuilding assistance have similarities with the 2016 UN concept of 'sustaining peace', which has been formulated to liberate peacebuilding from the strict limitation to post-conflict contexts. However, both the western and non-western donors have a certain reservation about 'sustaining peace' concept, for different reasons. The way forward to implement the UN 'sustaining peace' is to facilitate both the western and non-western donors to learn lessons from each other's experiences and view their varied approaches as complementary rather than contradictory.

Aim. The aim of the study is to provide an overview of online workshops of the International Association for Human Values (IAHV), Healing Resilience Empowerment (HRE), which can be the first stage of intervention in dealing with trauma in refugees, in the context of the uniquely integrated psychosocial approach implemented by IAHV in war zones, refugee camps, and refugee centres.
Methods. IAHV materials and resources available on the Internet, which constitute a repository of the actions of the European Union outside Europe have been searched concerning the resilience and peace-building initiatives of IAHV in Jordan and Lebanon. The method of critical literature analysis has been incorporated and a review of the scientific literature available in the English language has been used to present selected issues. For this purpose, scientific literature databases accessible on the Internet have been searched, i.e. Google Scholar, Web Of Science, Ebsco, and Elsevier.
Results. The analysis shows that, nowadays, the use of online technologies in HRE workshops is recommended to the people affected by a crisis, i.e., a war, even in Afghanistan, Ukraine, or South Africa. HRE is the first/low threshold step of the psychosocial approach of IAHV towards trauma relief. It constitutes a low-cost program that transcends strictly cognitive effects into all the layers, from the physical to the deeply existential.
Conclusion. The study considers the pioneering online interventions by IAHV in the first stage of their unique, integrated, psychosocial, peacebuilding approach for refugees and victims of wars and conflicts. Thus, the HRE intervention can reach a large number of victimised individuals.