South African women: an intercultural perspective

SUMMARY

Misrepresentation of local whisky as a genuine Scotch whisky was the centre of a high-powered legal wrangle in South Africa. As South African courts tend to favour informed expertise over empirical surveys, the author was asked to act as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. Evidence focused upon brand perceptions created by the label, specifically dominant features as opposed to small print.     

Critical terrorism studies: an activist scholar perspective

This thematic analysis examines the applicability of Gustavo Correa's constructs of horizontal and vertical honour with regard to prestige as reflected in 21 statements by Osama Bin Laden (OBL) between 2002 and 2008. The relevance of Correa's theory pivots upon whether the individual is considered as the primary locus of honour, as Correa seemed to imply. There was limited support and substantial disconfirming evidence under this condition. Correa's theory appears more applicable to honour when the Ummah rather than OBL's person is considered as the primary locus of honour, with the individual's prestige a derivative of group membership. Under this condition, supported hypotheses derived from the theory include honour being rooted in divinity; vertical and horizontal aspects of honour being mutually constitutive; vertical honour being established with the creation of the Ummah through rank (insofar as the Ummah is presumed precedent above all non-Muslims), competition (including warfare) and functioning as an ideology hierarchically differentiating Muslims from non-Muslims; horizontal honour being gendered (with domination by non-Muslims situating the Ummah in a feminised position). A notable limitation of the theory is that it does not predict or account for the geospatial reification of group honour, whereby the establishment, defence, violation and exoneration of Islamic honour is discussed in terms of establishment, defence, invasion and forceful expulsion of non-Muslims from Islamic territory. Implications of honour are discussed with regard to the Islamist geospatial dichotomy of Islamic versus non-Islamic territories, efforts to encourage disengagement from terrorism and de-radicalisation within non-Islamic settings, legitimisation of complex phenomena such as jihad or suicide bombing according to frameworks of martyrdom and realistic efforts to win hearts and minds within the Islamic world.     

Fighting terrorism with nonviolence: an ideological perspective

ABSTRACT

This article explores the potential of using nonviolence as a counter-ideology against terrorism. I analyse the current scholarship on nonviolence and terrorism, highlighting that terrorist ideology is crucial but is not directly addressed by nonviolent scholars. I outline a different approach to nonviolence, one which interprets the latter as an ideology of praxis centred on the interrelatedness of life, freedom and plurality. This ideology shares with terrorist ideologies the emphasis on action and conflict to overcome a grievance, but it offers a completely different path centred on diverse citizenship, building alternative social mechanisms (going beyond the focus on institutions), and omnicracy.     

Toward an effective international legal order: from coexistence to concert?

In forbidding the use of force except in self‐defence against armed attack or when authorised by the Security Council, the UN Charter appears to be the culminating development of a system of international order based on the doctrine of state sovereignty. The cumulative result of international‐law‐related acts, omissions and declarations of the Bush administration since its inception can be construed as a fundamental challenge to the sovereign state system. The administration's stated security strategy is one possible response to undoubtedly grave challenges to national and human security. In fact, only an institutionalised partnership between the US and regional powers such as China, India, Brazil and Germany can hope to address those challenges successfully, in part because only it would have the requisite legitimacy. That partnership or concert could be organised within the UN framework, albeit intensifying its hierarchical elements.     

India's look east policy: an Asianist strategy in perspective

Indian nationalist leaders developed a strong interest in Asia right from the early nineteenth century. Jawarharlal Nehru articulated an Asianist ideology based on the cultural affinities between India and China and the geopolitical interest in Greater India. This approach, which culminated in the Bandung summit, was put into parenthesis after the 1962 war. The Cold War, during which India and South East Asia were in different camps, prompted differing paths towards in emulating the economic progress of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, and different approaches towards the development of the ASEAN. India's Asianist policy met an uneven fate but, by and large, there has been a significant rapprochement between India and East Asia. This move materialized in the investments of several Asian countries – including South Korea – in India and the entry of India in the ARF. Yet the symbiosis between India and Southeast Asia remains hindered by the rather nationalistic view of the latter region that the Hindutva movement is still propagating: like in the colonial period, Asianism remains part of an instrumentalist strategy.     

Chinese medicine in an occidental perspective

This article treats the relationship between the Westerners and Chinese medicine. Firstly, the purpose is to comprehend how young Westerners have come to practice Chinese medicine in their lives and, secondly, to learn the eventual consequences of that practice on their lives and attitudes towards this medicine.

---

Index-based livestock insurance for Kenyan pastoralists: an innovation systems perspective

Pastoralists in northern Kenya live with a high level of risk, including climatic shocks, disease, and insecurity. This article considers the potential role of index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) as a mechanism which pastoralists can use to manage climate-related risk. How might it complement or compete with existing risk-management practices? Is the current institutional and policy environment favourable to developing this type of product? This study uses an innovation systems perspective to explore and answer some of these questions, and to consider the strategic role of research and development actors in the development process.     

The emerging international system: A European perspective

The author describes the breakdown of the international system of the mid‐twentieth century as unique in nature and consequences. The situation of bipolarity, characteristic of the Cold War years, has disappeared. Power has diffused greatly, making predictions as to what kind of international system will emerge difficult. Two models of possible developments in the international system are presented. In one, a tripolarity between the United States, China, and the USSR develops. In the other, there arises a five‐power multiple balance comprising China, Japan, the USSR, the USA and a unified Europe. The latter model is seen as the more hazardous, for its emergence would be a consequence of the breakdown of the spirit of coalition presently obtaining between the Atlantic powers and Japan and the proliferation of nuclear powers.     

Toward an International Relations Theory of National Innovation Rates

The ability of nations to innovate technologically plays an important causal role in both security studies and international political economy. Explanations for national differences in technological capabilities, however, have had little place in international relations theory. This gap is partly the result of assumptions made by scholars that the rate and direction of technological change are determined by a state's domestic institutions and policies. This article will bring together recent findings about the political economy of technological innovation in order to show that much of this conventional wisdom is incorrect. Instead, it will be shown that, due to the distributive nature of technological change, different combinations of domestic tensions and external security concerns motivate elites to pursue or eschew a technologically competitive economy. Institutions are not causal, they are merely instrumental. Recent findings in the economic development literature therefore have important implications for security studies.     

The Mediterranean area in perspective

Selective multilateralism as a US strategy

At home abroad: identity and power in American foreign policy / Henry R. Nau. ‐ Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, c2002. ‐ xiii, 314 p. ‐ ISBN 0–8014–3931–0 (cloth)     

The Biden Administration's Policy Toward Southeast Asia: Momentum,Motivation and Challenges

After Biden took office,the United States,on the basis of inheriting the main framework of the Trump administration's Southeast Asia policy,has gradually increased its strategic input in Southeast Asia to expand the depth and breadth of cooperation with Southeast Asian countries.First,consolidate its diplomatic influence.     

Toward High‐Quality Divorce Agreements: The Influence of Facilitative Professionals

Studies have reported that mediation has higher settlement rates than litigation. The quality of these agreements as experienced by the parties as well as the processes that contribute to this subjective experience remains underexamined, however. In a large, representative, and multidisciplinary study of divorcing couples, we studied the relationship between the practices of lawyers and mediators and the quality of agreements experienced by their clients. We used multiple regression analysis to reveal that divorce mediation is significantly more likely than litigation to produce high‐quality divorce settlements. Furthermore, we found that high‐quality divorce agreements were more likely to occur when mediators and lawyers were perceived to have worked facilitatively. In addition, we found that pre‐divorce conflict levels were inversely correlated with the quality of agreements. Which party initiated the divorce, the parties' gender, and the type of legal divorce did not explain variances in the quality of the agreements. In this article, we also discuss the training and practice implications of our findings.     

In the Wake of the East Asian Economic Crisis: Toward an Interdependent but Non-convergent Global System

Donald C. Hellmann here studies the political, societal and cultural forces that created the backdrop for the East Asian financial crisis. He presents three myths about the disaster, emphasizing that this event took place in the context of governmental and economic structures embedded in society and thus not easily modified. These myths include the idea that this region will not become the largest economic region in the next 25 years, that East Asian economies cannot continue to grow without Western-led structural change and that the existing economic and security multilateral institutions require only minor reform to face this new international order. He then goes on to argue that no international institution or world power has filled the new statesmanship vacuum of the post-Cold-War interregnum. A new global system will be necessary to face the challenges of this new balance of power.