Conflict Transformation and Civil Society: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh

If Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators ever agree on the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh, it will not necessarily resolve the long-running conflict, because any peace treaty would require the consent of the Karabakh Armenians, whose political representatives are currently excluded from peace negotiations. It is difficult to imagine the Karabakh Armenians consenting to such a treaty without a change in their perception of the Azerbaijanis. According to the theory of conflict transformation/peacebuilding, Nagorno-Karabakh’s civil society should be able to make a contribution to this change. Using the example of four Nagorno-Karabakh civil society organisations, this study shows how they positively or negatively influence conflict transformation.     

Y-chromosome STR haplotypes in males from Greenland

A total of 272 males from Greenland were typed for 11 Y-chromosome STRs DYS19, DYS385a/b, DYS389-I, DYS389-II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS437, DYS438 and DYS439 with the PowerPlex^® Y System (Promega). A total of 146 different haplotypes were observed and the haplotype diversity was 0.9887. The number of haplotypes seen once was 108 and the most common haplotype was observed in 12 males. A significant F_ST value was observed (F_ST = 0.012, P < 0.00001) when comparing the population of 15 locations in Greenland assigned to 7 groups. The significance could mainly be attributed to the subpopulation of males from Tasiilaq (East of Greenland). The R_ST value was not statistically significant (R_ST = 0.016, P = 0.15).     

Judicial Work and Judges’ Motivation: The Perceptions of Brazilian State Judges

The professional ethos of judges has undergone many changes in Brazil in recent years, generating conflicts about the role of these professionals in society. This article examines how Brazilian judges deal with those conflicts. The objective is to identify how judges perceive their social role and, based on that, what motivates them in their work. A series of twenty‐five in‐depth interviews was carried out with Brazilian state judges working in all regions of the country in different judicial specialties. The findings indicate that the judges interviewed can be classified into four different profiles according to the predominant social role: (1) social activist; (2) service provider; (3) judicial restraint; and (4) defender of the status quo. Each profile corresponds to a specific individual and social motivation.     

Die wissensbasierte Regierung der Bildung – Die Genese einer transnationalen Gouvernementalität in England und Schweden

Knowledge-based government of education constitutes a transnationally distributed practice of government that appears in various forms in different countries. The article defines government in accordance with Michel Foucault as governmentality—a particular configuration of governmental practices and body of knowledge—and develops a heuristic framework to study the historical development of knowledge-based government in the form of a “genealogy of government”. Two historical and comparative case studies on England and Sweden reconstruct the historical processes that involved the emergence of two particular models of knowledge-based government of education and explain their particular local characteristics. On the empirical results obtained the paper outlines the phenomenal structure of knowledge-based government of education as transnational social order and displays a number of general dimensions, in which different types of knowledge-based government of education differ from each other.