The Role of the Scholar-Practitioner in International Conflict Resolution

Can unofficial, academically based, third-party approaches contribute to the prevention and resolution of international and intercommunal conflicts? The article focuses on one such approach, interactive problem solving, which the author has applied primarily in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After describing the central tool of the approach, the problem-solving workshop, the article goes on to address the role of interactive problem solving and related approaches to the larger process of conflict resolution. In this context, it discusses the relationship of the microprocess of problem-solving workshops to the macroprocess of international conflict resolution; the relationship between official and unofficial diplomacy; the relationship between practice and scholarship in conflict resolution; the role of the university in the process; and the possibilities for institutionalizing this model of conflict resolution.     

Squatting for Survival: Precarious Housing in a Declining U.S. City

Despite severely depressed property markets, housing in declining U.S. cities can be surprisingly unaffordable for poor residents. Yet the characteristics of decline, such as abundant vacant property and constrained economic/political conditions, also provide opportunity for squatting. This article explores survival squatting—illegal occupation of property as a means for procuring suitable housing by marginalized residents. Drawing on a 4.5-year ethnography in Detroit, I examine the mechanisms by which people strategically choose squatting as a method of sheltering in the context of local conditions, and the experiences and conditions of this practice. I situate these empirical findings within a broader discussion comparing squatting and other forms of housing that have received considerable attention by researchers (e.g., shelter use, sleeping rough, doubling up). Squatting is particularly risky and unstable, and often very hidden. Substandard housing conditions prevail, and substance abuse is common. Squatting may have negative implications for child welfare, but may also provide measures of independence, self-determination, and comfort for illegal occupiers. There is a critical need for further research in this area, both to inform comprehensive housing policies and to anticipate how squatters’ well-being is impacted by other urban initiatives, such as blight demolition.     

How Sophistication Affected The 2000 Presidential Vote: Traditional Sophistication Measures Versus Conceptualization

The 2000 Presidential vote is modeled using voter sophistication as a source of heterogeneity. Three measures of sophistication are employed: education, knowledge, and the levels of conceptualization. Interacting them with vote predictors shows little meaningful variation. However, removing the assumption of ordinality from the levels of conceptualization uncovers considerable heterogeneity in the importance of the vote predictors in explaining the vote. Thus, different sophistication measures should not be treated as equivalent, nor combined as if they are equivalent. Few of the issue and candidate components are relevant to those with a less sophisticated understanding of politics. The opposite partisan attachments of the two most sophisticated groups suggest that sophistication’s impact on the vote can be confounded by partisanship.     

a migrant ethic of care? negotiating care and caring among migrant workers in London's low-pay economy

A care deficit is clearly evident in global cities such as London and is attributable to an ageing population, the increased employment of native-born women, prevalent gender ideologies that continue to exempt men from much reproductive work, as well as the failure of the state to provide viable alternatives. However, while it is now acknowledged that migrant women, and to a lesser extent, migrant men, step in to provide care in cities such as London, there is less research on how this shapes the nature, politics and ethics of care. Drawing upon empirical research with low-paid migrant workers employed as domiciliary care providers in London, this paper explores the emergence of a distinct migrant ethic of care that is critically shaped by the caring work that migrant women and men perform.     

Amerikanische Außenpolitik im Zeichen des „Krieges gegen den Terror“

The review article systematizes the current academic debate on U. S. foreign policy after 9/11. The main focus lies on different explanations of the causes and consequences of the “war on terror”. Such a problem-oriented approach mirrors the heterogeneity of the debate which cannot adequately be captured by the conventional categories of IR research and foreign policy analysis. It is fair to say that the analysis of U. S. foreign policy as a case of empirical investigation profits from this disciplinary emancipation.     

Physician-assisted suicide in Oregon: a medical perspective

This Article examines the Oregon Death with Dignity Act from a medical perspective. Drawing on case studies and information provided by doctors, families, and other care givers, it finds that seemingly reasonable safeguards for the care and protection of terminally ill patients written into the Oregon law are being circumvented. The problem lies primarily with the Oregon Public Health Division ("OPHD"), which is charged with monitoring the law. OPHD does not collect the information it would need to effectively monitor the law and in its actions and publications acts as the defender of the law rather than as the protector of the welfare of terminally ill patients. We make explicit suggestions for what OPHD would need to do to change that.