Security relations in the Black Sea region: Russia and the West after the Ukrainian crisis

The Ukrainian conflict – as all post-Soviet conflicts – has three interrelated dimensions – global, regional and local – with deep implications for international security including the Black Sea region. The strategic interdependence between Russiaand West during the last decade became not only anaemic but antagonistic. The regional implications of that can be compared to the boomerang effect: problems at the strategic level affect the regional level and return to the originators. Generally speaking, Commonwealth of Independent States conflicts can be viewed as the product of the Soviet legacy and the patchy collapse of the USSR as well as the ill-conceived policies and mistakes of the involved parties, Russia and external actors – USA, NATO and EU.     

Primer composition and memory effect of weapons--some trends from a systematic approach in casework

Since 2008, our laboratory has adopted a systematic approach to the examination of gunshot residues (GSR) in casework by analysing, whenever possible, the inorganic composition present in ammunition (cartridge cases and unused ammunition). By compiling the results of these analyses in a database, it is possible to observe some trends during the period of interest: on the one hand, the prevalence of primers containing lead, barium and antimony is about 50%, and even as high as 70% when including lead-barium-antimony based primers also containing tin; on the other hand, the prevalence of non-toxic primers is for the time being very low. Still using the same approach, test firings were performed with recovered weapons and litigious ammunition whenever possible in order to estimate the influence of the well known "memory effect" of the weapons on the GSR analysis results. The first results show a quite strong memory effect for the .22 and the .32 caliber, unlike the .38 caliber. This is probably due to a high prevalence of lead-barium-antimony based primers for the latter caliber.     

Civil society organizations and the prevention of mass atrocities: Perspectives from south Sudan

Nowhere is the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in development and democratization more critical than in countries at high risk of mass atrocities. In this article, we examine the actual and potential role of development CSOs in the prevention of mass atrocities based on an analysis of 302 CSOs in South Sudan. The article examines if and how service-providing CSOs frame their work as contributing to the prevention of mass atrocities. The article seeks to understand how these CSOs deliver services and articulate their work regarding the prevention of large-scale identity-based violence. We aim to explore the degree to which organizations describe atrocity prevention as an intentional part of democratization efforts. The article is situated within the larger debates about the service delivery and civil society functions of CSOs. Specifically, we ask: To what extent do development CSOs articulate a contribution to the prevention of mass atrocities? We posit that the service delivery and civil society functions can be better achieved by giving deliberate attention to an atrocity prevention perspective.     

‘it was better during the war’: narratives of everyday violence in a Palestinian refugee camp

The distinction between what is commonly regarded as the routine of impoverishment and what is acknowledged and remarked upon as violence is increasingly being questioned in scholarship and public policy circles. Interrogating the distinction between routine and remarkable not only reveals the habits and relationships constituting everyday life as the site of violence, but also foregrounds questions of gender. Given that the everyday is shaped by a given community's norms regarding the gendered division of labour that produces and reproduces the conditions of the everyday, in what ways is violence as well as its experience gendered? This article examines this question in the particular context of Palestinian camp refugees’ lived experience of forced displacement in Lebanon. It explores the ways in which the violence used against Palestinian camp refugees draws on norms regarding masculinity and femininity shared by the refugees as well as their Lebanese oppressors. It also examines the ways in which Palestinian camp refugees’ everyday experience of impoverishment as well as the acknowledged violence of forced displacement, subjection to Lebanese military intelligence control, and participation in the armed struggle for national liberation are constituted by and constitutive of unequal subject positions of gender, class and citizenship.     

Does political connection influence corporate financial decisions in unstable political environment?

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of political connection on the cost of debt, the cost of equity and the investment level in an unstable political environment. We use a sample of 55 Tunisian listed firms during the post-revolution period (2011–2018) and we apply a generalized least square (GLS) approach to test our hypotheses. Findings highlight that political connections increase the corporate financial costs and reduce the investment level. Furthermore, in an additional analysis, we show on the one hand that political instability negatively affects the investment and affects positively the cost of debt and the cost of equity. On the other hand, we make evidence that the political instability level negatively affects the relation between the political connection and the cost of debt. The contribution is, to the best of our knowledge, the absence of studies conducted in Tunisia countries examining the impact of political connection on the financial cost and investment level in an unstable political environment such as Tunisia.     

Contesting Mestizaje: Black Politics and Oral Traditions in Venezuela

Afro-descendant oral traditions are powerful modes of political expression that disrupt anti-black logics within Latin America's mestizaje. Scholarship on Afro-Latin American anti-racist mobilisation centres on large-scale, collective action. Instead, in this article, I examine songs and décimas, central forms of Afro-descendant cultural subjectivity. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in La Guaira state, Venezuela, I show how oral traditions are place-based forms of resistance against anti-black racism. This research calls on scholars to attend to oral traditions and their geographies as a tool of anti-racist political mobilisation.