War, ‘strategic communication’ and the violence of non-recognition

Contemporary Western war-fighting is animated by the fictitious imagination of a war free from antagonism. In this logic, winning wars is about winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of local populations, about persuasion rather than confrontation. In recent years, the concept of ‘strategic communication’ (SC) has been elevated to the top echelons of strategic thinking in United States military circles, focusing attention on how to communicate ‘effectively’ with local populations. Via an analysis of the concept of SC, this article examines the ethico-political dimensions of contemporary Western-led ‘population-centric’ war. Through a reading inspired by Judith Butler's recent work in Precarious life (London: Verso 2006) and Frames of war (London: Verso 2009), and an analysis that turns on the link between ethics and ontology, I reflect on the significance of the ‘communications turn’ in warfare for our study of war in ontological terms.     

“He would know,but i just have a feeling”: gender and oral history1

Abstract

While feminist historians have long used oral history, and continue to revise the ways oral sources can be employed, historians of masculinities have been slow to embrace new approaches to oral history. Using interviews conducted with women and men for a community study, this article suggests that a gendered, relational reading of oral history is instructive, not just in showing how different men and women's experiences have been, but also how their memories have been shaped by prevailing ideas of gender-appropriate behaviour and values. This raises the issue of the form as well as the content of oral history being gendered.     

Political institutions and debt crises

This paper shows that political institutions matter in explaining defaults on external and domestic debt obligations. We explore a large number of political and macroeconomic variables using a non-parametric technique to predict safety from default. The advantage of this technique is that it is able to identify patterns in the data that are not captured in standard probit analysis. We find that political factors matter, and do so in different ways for democratic and non-democratic regimes, and for domestic and external debt. In democracies, a parliamentary system or sufficient checks and balances almost guarantee the absence of default on external debt when economic fundamentals or liquidity are sufficiently strong. In dictatorships, high stability and tenure play a similar role for default on domestic debt.