ABSTRACTReflecting on the results presented in articles in this special issue, European leaders should take greater account of external perceptions in crafting the European Union's strategic narrative and guiding its actions. Failure to do so has impaired external policies like the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy and Eastern Partnership. Leaders emerging from the Arab uprisings perceived the EU as complicit with their countries’ former anciens régimes and Russian leaders see EU support for democracy and the market economy in former Soviet states as duplicitous and instrusive. Awareness of such perceptions should be filtered into EU decision-making, without validating views that European officials and diplomats consider misleading. 相似文献
ABSTRACTCorporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important means to address conflicts, support local development and build trust between businesses and civil society. Yet CSR often fails to live up to its ambitions and can even exacerbate conflicts between companies and communities. In this article we consider how changing CSR strategies over the past four decades between Brazilian company Vale to Norwegian company Hydro have fomented or mitigated company–community conflicts in Northern Brazil. We find that paternalistic and philanthropic approaches of Vale over time led to deep resentment and mistrust due to underdevelopment and environmental damages. Moreover, while Hydro’s more modern CSR strategies sought to deepen community engagement and build legitimacy, the company has struggled in addressing the legacies inherited from Vale and past and current civil society grievances. The case suggests that even forward-thinking CSR approaches are vulnerable to failure where they prioritise business risk over community engagement, neglect to account for past legacies in areas of operation, and fail to create a shared vision of future development. It suggests that EI companies should both understand and engage with their social and environmental impacts in the past, present, and future and create shared economic benefits in the short and long term in order to address social conflicts. 相似文献
This article investigates off-farm work decisions by smallholder farm households. Using data on 1,101 households from Burkina Faso, it demonstrates that in addition to the usual household socio-demographic characteristics, remittances, access to information and beneficiary of specific training affect off-farm work decisions, as well as rainfall factors and idiosyncratic health shocks. Community characteristics such as accessibility and number of inhabitants are also key factors. While suggesting that off-farm work is less likely to be undertaken for accumulation purposes, these results have important policy implications. In particular, policy measures should consider each segment as a separate entity. 相似文献
The social sciences speak of violence through its meaning, performances, manifestations and representations; however, the inner workings of violence are less explored. In order to suggest a different mode of seeing violence, I explore the inner workings of violence through the pleasures of and fun among Shi’i volunteer combatants. I apply Walter Benjamin’s motion of pure means to explain how violence becomes self-referential and non-representational via combat-zone ethnography amongst Iraqi Shi’i militants who fought against ISIS in Iraq. I address the fine line between pleasure and fun in order to highlight the inner workings of violence during combat and to encourage a fresh bottom-up anthropological perspective in assessing the parameters of the persistence and resilience of volunteer combatants. My approach advocates moving beyond recruitment and ideological interpolation by questioning the allure of combat through an ontological framework that includes combatants’ perspectives and narratives. 相似文献
ABSTRACTThis article assembles a picture of Yemen’s 2013–14 National Dialogue Conference (NDC) by collecting perspectives from local civil society organizations (CSOs), which are contrasted to the views of international commentators. Despite all efforts by internal parties as well as the international community, the dialogue failed to avert war, which broke out shortly after. Through interviews with 50 CSOs, we reconstructed the reasons for failure, as well as paying attention to the observed strengths of the dialogue. Half of the consulted organizations were directly involved in the NDC, either as an invited participant or in a brokerage role. The other half concerns outside observers. We identify aspects on which the opinion of the CSOs converge, but also highlight striking divergences depending on insider/outsider status. In contrast to the view espoused in the international literature, the CSOs overall feel that, in spite of all its procedural and substantive flaws, the NDC was a significant junction in the long road towards peace and stability and laid important groundwork for future dialogues. 相似文献
This paper draws from Silencios – a photography series by the Colombian artist Juan Manuel Echavarría. Silencios comprises more than 120 portrayals of abandoned schools due to armed conflict in Los Montes de María, Colombia. Sharing Echeverría’s belief that ‘these chalkboards have lessons to tell us about war’, the author of this paper advocates for the pedagogical use of Silencios to promote and support memory works in Colombia. The present analysis acknowledges that hegemonic memories and narratives have a negative impact on conflict-affected societies due to their authoritarian and oppressive character.
Therefore, the pedagogical use of Silencios seeks to ignite multiple narratives and counterhegemonic memories that might emerge as the public interacts with the photography. The visuals, in this sense, become an educational opportunity to stimulate reflection and resistance against the monopoly of the past in a country that is currently emerging from conflict. In this paper, the abandoned schools are considered as memory sites, and as renewed learning spaces to stimulate reflections and debates upon the armed conflict. Silencios can contribute to peacebuilding efforts by bringing up the possibility to reconsider essentialist conceptions of peace, memory, and pedagogy, that might hinder potential venues for enduring peace in Colombia. 相似文献
In response to research demonstrating that irrelevant contextual information can bias forensic science analyses, authorities have increasingly urged laboratories to limit analysts' access to irrelevant and potentially biasing information (Dror and Cole (2010) [3]; National Academy of Sciences (2009) [18]; President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2016) [22]; UK Forensic Science Regulator (2015) [26]). However, a great challenge in implementing this reform is determining which information is task-relevant and which is task-irrelevant. In the current study, we surveyed 183 forensic analysts to examine what they consider relevant versus irrelevant in their forensic analyses. Results revealed that analysts generally do not regard information regarding the suspect or victim as essential to their analytic tasks. However, there was significant variability among analysts within and between disciplines. Findings suggest that forensic science disciplines need to agree on what they regard as task-relevant before context management procedures can be properly implemented. The lack of consensus about what is relevant information not only leaves room for biasing information, but also reveals foundational gaps in what analysts consider crucial in forensic decision making. 相似文献
Abstract Since March 2015, the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen has had devastating consequences for the country, its people and its rich cultural heritage. This article traces the responses of the world’s foremost multilateral body concerned with heritage promotion and protection, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Drawing on extensive interviews, archival research and long-term ethnographic research on UNESCO itself and, more specifically, its responses to the war in Yemen, it documents UNESCO’s profound failures in protecting Yemen’s heritage and in confronting the Saudi-led coalition. To do so, the article utilises the framework of ‘gridlock’ to analyse how and why multilateral bodies such as UNESCO become hamstrung in confronting powerful member states in conflict. The article concludes by arguing that UNESCO’s failures in Yemen hold powerful lessons about the role of multilateral institutions in addressing conflict. 相似文献