Local Ordering and Peacebuilding in Kyrgyzstan: What Can Customary Orders Achieve?

ABSTRACT

The post-liberal IR debate on peacebuilding has made considerable efforts to reintroduce ‘the local’. In principle, critical peace studies follow the argument that communal capacities for peace formation exist in every society. However, few take the further conceptual step of taking emic perspectives on ordering and peacebuilding more seriously. This article aims at exploring and understanding customary concepts and practices of ordering with examples from Kyrgyzstan. It asks how and why communal actors and institutions contribute to ordering in the context of limited local tensions and how these actors navigate at national and international levels.     

Co-production of cybersecurity: a case of reported data system break-ins

ABSTRACT

In this study, we contributed on research of policing cyberspace by analysing how different stakeholder groups (nodal clusters) participate in the formal security network during detecting and handling of data system break-ins in practice. The goal of this article was to study whether citizens have roles within the security network. The analysis was based on data system break-ins (n = 220) reported to the Finnish national computer emergency response team, CERT-FI, in 2012. We detected five types of nodal clusters: computer emergency response teams (CERTs), companies, public organisations, private persons and associations. The roles of nodal clusters were described by using cultural, social, political, economic and symbolic capital. However, the results show that there are differences not only between the nodal clusters but also inside them regarding their positioning within the network. We argue that instead of a type of nodal cluster, division based on the roles and individual needs could be more relevant. Recognition of roles could encourage netizens to co-produce cybersecurity from their respective premises.     

The rise of Femi‐Nazis? Female participation in right‐extremist movements in unified Germany

German feminist scholars have recently come to argue that female involvement in right‐extremist causes is grounded in gender‐specific motives. They have also begun to uncover a troubling link between new patterns of female political engagement (ranging from electoral mobilisation to violent streetfighting) and their own efforts to promote an independent women's consciousness since the 1960s. This article develops a typology of New Right women, characterised here as Femi‐Nazis, evincing different levels of sympathy for, identification with, and participation in radical and extremist movements. It then explores five issue orientations distinguishing New Right women of the 1990s from the Old and New Right men of the 1940s and 1990s, suggesting that these women have developed an independent, self‐assertive political consciousness without internalising feminism's broader aims of diversity and inclusion. The article concludes with reflections on the interplay of ‘feminist’ consciousness and ultra‐nationalist qua xenophobic attitudes, and on the dilemmas Femi‐Nazi thinking poses for feminist identity in united Germany.     

The Role of Body Image in Women's Mental Health

This article was inspired by the Body Image Summit on 21 June 2000 in London at which a panel, headed by Tessa Jowell, Minister for Women, led a discussion among representatives of the media and British fashion industry. The aims of the Summit were to consider the effects of advertising images on teenage girls and women and to develop a consensus from within these industries to incorporate a social and ethical awareness in their promotional activities. A negative reaction to this forum was the main result. In this article I offer both a sociological and psychoanalytically based discussion of the problem of body image for women. I also consider how society and women themselves could begin to counteract the pernicious effects of being sold unrealistically thin, ideal images of womanhood continually perpetrated by consumerism.     

Access to information: An asset for democracy or ammunition for political conflict,or both?

More than twenty‐five years after its adoption, the Access to Information Act has become increasingly a cause for concern among public servants, experts, scientists and the media. This article reviews the evolution of the access‐to‐information regime since the 1980s, the issues that have arisen, the political significance of information in democracy, and the enduring tension between its democratic purpose and strategic value. The article also examines the issues of centralization, control and secrecy within the state apparatus despite continuing calls for transparency. Under Conservative governments since 2006, there has been increased control and conflict over disclosure of information, which have spread to a larger part of the state apparatus. Among those involved in conflicts over information with the Prime Minister's Office are members and officers of Parliament and parliamentary committees.