Jihad in a World of Sovereigns: Law,Violence, and Islam in the Bosnia Crisis

This article argues that jihads waged in recent decades by “foreign fighter” volunteers invoking a sense of global Islamic solidarity can be usefully understood as attempts to enact an alternative to the interventions of the “International Community.” Drawing from ethnographic and archival research on Arab volunteers who joined the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, this article highlights the challenges and dilemmas facing such jihad fighters as they maneuvered at the edges of diverse legal orders, including international and Islamic law. Jihad fighters appealed to a divine authority above the global nation‐state order while at the same time rooting themselves in that order through affiliation with the sovereign and avowedly secular nation‐state of Bosnia‐Herzegovina. This article demonstrates an innovative approach to law, violence, and Islam that critically situates states and nonstate actors in relation to one another in transnational perspective.     

Everyday health security practices as disaster resilience in rural Bangladesh

Health security is a relatively new concept in terms of how it is practised in disaster-prone locales. We observed 10 rural households in Bangladesh for four months using informal interviews, field diaries, and observation. The findings suggest that the everyday practises of health security involve the capabilities of “caring for themselves” in resource-constrained contexts. Understanding how households care for themselves prior to and during disasters presents an opportunity to examine how improved health might reduce the effects of disasters, ill health, and poverty. Some interventions are proposed to improve health security for poorer households in general and women in particular.     

Cognitive Dissonance in Social Work

Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension occurring when a person holds two psychologically inconsistent cognitions. For this study, 21 social workers who facilitate transracial adoption plans for Aboriginal children in British Columbia were interviewed: 1) Do social workers who facilitate transracial adoption plans for Aboriginal children experience cognitive dissonance? If so, in what ways? 2) How does cognitive dissonance impact them? 3) In what ways do social workers reconcile a sense of dissonance? Findings suggest that social workers do experience cognitive dissonance, that they are adversely impacted, and that they find ways to reconcile the cognitive dissonance.     

Contemporary radical right‐wing violence in Canada: A quantitative analysis

Despite the presence of radical right‐wing movements, groups, and individuals in Canada, a paucity of academic research on this topic exists. Concurrently, the majority of material on this particular area has employed either journalistic or ethnographic methodologies. What remains is several thesi and dissertations and a couple of excellent case studies describing not only membership, but also the most salient activities of radical right‐wing groups and parties. These studies, however, have been short on examining these actors’ proclivity to engage in violence. In contrast, this article, uses an events data methodology to show the dynamics of radical right‐wing violence in Canada over the last three decades. The author then maps out the attributes of this particular type of violence and where possible specifies its correlates. This work is a part of a larger project on violence in Canada.     

Research note: Hypotheses about political terrorism during the gulf conflict, 1990–1991

Based on a review of the literature and a logical deductive approach, the author develops 12 testable research hypotheses in connection with the possibility of oppositional political terrorism during the 1990–91 Gulf Crisis and War. The article represents the foundation of future research on one of most important anomalies of this political crisis.     

IRA 2.0: Continuing the Long War—Analyzing the Factors Behind Anti-GFA Violence

Despite an increasing number of attacks by violent anti-Good Friday Agreement (GFA) Republicans from 2009 there is still relatively little understanding of the nature of these organizations or the likely longevity of their campaign(s). This analysis argues that the current upsurge of violence is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, due to a combination of factors that entrench republican ideology. The fractured nature of anti-GFA groups and the declining stature of the Provisional movement are key factors that energize anti-agreement sentiment. In particular, this study identifies the Internet as one of the most significant emerging drivers in that it has the potential to sustain social networks that create and reinforce a traditional minded Irish Republican constituency implacably committed to using violence in pursuit of its goals.     

Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China: Accommodation and Balancing in East Asia

Realists agree that great powers balance the military power of rising powers, but there is little agreement regarding secondary-state responses to rising powers. First, there are differences regarding whether secondary states balance or accommodate rising powers. Second, there are differences among realists regarding the distinct roles of economic and military factors in secondary-state alignment policies. Third, some scholars argue that state alignments are not necessarily determined by realist variables, but can reflect preferences shaped by intentions, historical experiences, or cultural influences. This paper addresses these issues in balance-of-power theory. Its empirical focus is the impact of the rise of China on secondary-state alignments in East Asia. After examining the complex mix of China's military and economic reach in East Asia, it concludes that secondary-state behavior is sensitive to local variation in the great power capabilities and that secondary states tend to accommodate rather than balance rising powers. It further concludes that economic capabilities alone are insufficient to generate accommodation, so that the political-economy literature should reexamine cases of apparent secondary-state accommodation to economic dependency, sensitive to the presence of military vulnerability on the part these secondary states to proximate great powers. These conclusions suggest that there is nothing sui generis or culturally-determined in East Asian international politics and that realism can explain alignment behavior among East Asian states as well as it does among European states. Research on East Asia's response to China's rise that is sensitive to intra-regional variations in U.S. and Chinese military and economic capabilities also challenges assumptions of an emerging Chinese regional hegemony or of a costly region-wide U.S.-China competition.     

Our Brotherhood and Your Sister: Building Anti-Rape Community in the Fraternity

Research shows that male peer influence is a significant predictor of violent sexual behavior. However, men challenging sexual violence within their male peer communities may exert a counter-influence, shifting community norms and behaviors. Using the Fraternity Peer Rape Education Program as a case study, this article examines the ways that fraternity men in a peer rape education program make sense of and interact within their communities. Through coded interviews, this article examines participants' perceptions of change within themselves, within their interactions with fraternity brothers, and within their fraternities. Learning about sexual violence altered participants' worldview and created a communal sense of partnership and responsibility, while simultaneously limiting the traditional ways that fraternal communities are maintained. This experience provides lessons for how we may begin creating communities of men against sexual violence, as well as what support may be required for such messy, nonlinear change processes.