Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African identities, violence and external engagement

This article examines processes of identity formation in Darfur,now part of the Republic of Sudan, over the last four centuries.The basic story is of four overlapping processes of identityformation, each of them primarily associated with a differentperiod in the region's history: namely, the ‘Sudanic identities’associated with the Dar Fur sultanate, Islamic identities, theadministrative tribalism associated with the twentieth-centurySudanese state, and the recent polarization of ‘Arab’and ‘African’ identities, associated with new formsof external intrusion and internal violence. It is a story thatemphasizes the much-neglected east-west axis of Sudanese identity,arguably as important as the north-south axis, and redeems theneglect of Darfur as a separate and important locus for stateformation in northern Sudan, paralleling and competing withthe Nile Valley states. It focuses on the incapacity of boththe modern Sudanese state and international actors to comprehendthe singularities of Darfur, accusing much Sudanese historiographyof ‘Nilocentrism’, namely, the use of analyticalterms derived from the experience of the Nile Valley to applyto Darfur.     

China's New Silk Road: Linking Commerce,Cultures, Civilizations

正From their beginnings——in the glory days of the Han Dynasty in the East and the Roman Empire in the West—the linkages between our countries and even those of parts of Africa had ranged beyond the exchange of material goods.COMMERCE,CULTURE,CIVILIZATION From the beginning,East-West trade transcended the limits of commerce.From the beginning,it     

EU issue voting and the 2014 European Parliament elections: a dynamic perspective

EU issue voting in European Parliament elections has been shown to be highly conditional upon levels of EU politicization. The present study analyzes this conditionality over time, hypothesizing that the effect of EU attitudes on EP vote preferences is catalyzed as EP elections draw closer. In contrast to extant cross-sectional post-election studies, we use a four-wave panel study covering the six months leading up to the Dutch EP elections of 2014, differentiating between party groups (pro, anti, mixed) and five EU attitude dimensions. We find that EU issue voting occurs for both anti- and pro-EU parties, but only increases for the latter. For mixed parties we find no effect of EU attitudes, yet their support base shifts in the anti-EU direction as the elections draw closer. The overarching image, however, is one of surprising stability: EU attitudes form a consistent part of EP voting motivations even outside EP election times.     

Militarism,states and resistance in Africa: exploring colonial patterns in stabilisation missions

ABSTRACT

The article explores how stabilisation missions reproduce the patterns that constituted colonial states. Following African historiography, the article argues that stabilisation’s militarised approach to neutralising resistance, its racialisation of targets and its aim to constitute and reform state authority evoke how colonial states were forged by the inseparable relationship between authority, force, race, production and resistance. However, it will be shown that those patterns cannot be fully understood without an account of the broader structure of coloniality and imperialism. In so doing, the article aims to contribute to bring together different literatures on contemporary peace-building interventions and contemporary militarism by examining the relation between militarism, coloniality and imperialism. It focuses on the Democratic Republic of Congo to show how an intensified use of force against resistance, added to frames that see Congolese politics as deviant, has guided the goal of restoration of state authority, and with it, different economic reforms, all of which have reinforced the military and economic power of national and international elites, without reporting significant benefits to the population at large.     

L'offre active de services de santé mentale en français en Ontario et au Manitoba : les rôles clés des instruments et des outils

This article is based on the results of a survey carried out in 2019 to document health managers and professionals’ knowledge concerning their linguistic obligations and the tools promoting active offer in the field of mental health in French, in Ontario and Manitoba. The working hypothesis is that knowledge of the obligations and available tools can contribute to a successful offer of services in French. The more professionals and managers understand their obligations, the more tools they can use to fulfill them. The study shows that there is indeed a link between knowledge of obligations and the use of tools to provide an active offer of mental health services in French. It also highlights the key role of tools to provide French services actively.