Studying Peace in and with Central Eurasia: Starting from Local and Trans-Local Perspectives

ABSTRACT

In view of a crisis of liberal universalism peace research must reflect on how it is perceived, how peace is constructed in other places and how it can cope with diversity in ordering and peacebuilding. This Special Issue is an attempt to search starting points for peace research in and with Central Eurasia. The introductory concept clears a path through current research questions, normative problems and barriers of knowledge production. Considering ethnographic methodologies, it starts from the local everyday and takes an interest in how actors and institutions in concrete places and multiple socio-spatial configurations navigate conflict and peace.     

Studying North Korea through North Korean migrants: lessons from the field

This article examines the use of North Korean defectors’ accounts as a source of information for studying the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Information from defectors fills a vital knowledge gap and improves our understanding of North Korean politics, economics, and society. Witness accounts and interview data collected from people who were born in North Korea but have since left have been widely used by journalists, government agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and academics. There are, however, serious methodological issues in collecting, organizing, and interpreting information derived from defectors’ accounts. Selection and demographic biases, power relations between researchers and interviewees, monetary incentives, and language barriers are among those issues. We propose focus group discussions and participatory observation as complementary methods of data collection to mitigate the shortfalls of relying on individual interviews.     

Interventionary order and its methodologies: the relationship between peace and intervention

Abstract

¹Recently there have been calls from policymakers around the world for practically engaged research to produce evidence-based policy for peace, security and development. Policymakers aim to align three types of methodological approaches to knowledge about peace, security and development in international order: methodological liberalism at state and international levels, aligned with ‘methodological everydayism’ in order to constrain methodological nationalism. Policy operates through broad forms of intervention, spanning military, governmental and developmental processes, which scholarship is expected to refine. Critical scholarship is sensitive about the subsequent ‘interventionary order’, often connecting methodological everydayism with global justice frameworks rather than methodological nationalism or liberalism.

Sir Philip Mitchell, later colonial governor of Uganda, Fiji, and Kenya, responded to Malinowski’s claims [that the British government needed the support of anthropologists] with great scepticism, emphatically expressing a preference for the ‘practical man’ rather than the scientist.²     

Taking Intervention Politics Seriously: Media Debates and the Contestation of African Regional Interventions ‘from Below’

ABSTRACT

Scholars increasingly investigate how the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) is contested and negotiated in practice. Yet little knowledge exists on the politics African regional interventions provoke in the societies affected by such interventions. Based on an analysis of media reports from Burkina Faso and The Gambia, we show that regional interventions are indeed contested locally, irrespective of the means of intervention applied. Our analysis demonstrates how local elites use regional norms and policies in order to claim power and define what is going (wr)on(g). With this, we provide evidence for the (contested) local effects of APSA and for the relevance of media for researching such effects.     

Legitimacy,self-determination,and conditional cooperators

ABSTRACT

This article critically examines the account of collective self-determination and state legitimacy developed by Stilz in her book. Central to this account is the idea that for a state to be legitimate it must reflect the shared will of the people over which it governs. I argue that the normative taxonomy Stilz employs to develop this criterion of legitimacy ignores the possibility of conditional cooperators: groups who are alienated from society due to the injustices they experience but are willing to affirm their participation in state institutions if these injustices are rectified. I then demonstrate that since there are no grounds for discounting the dissent of conditional cooperators, their presence significantly increases the threshold for state legitimacy that follows from Stilz’s theory. As a result, Stilz is forced to abandon her claim that basically just states generally enjoy a qualified ‘right to do wrong’.     

Navigating the dilemmas of politically smart,locally led development: the Pacific-based Green Growth Leaders’ Coalition

Abstract

Iterative approaches to development under banners such as ‘thinking and working politically’ and ‘doing development differently’ build upon decades-old commitments to fostering locally led and -owned development. These approaches are increasingly popular with academics and development practitioners. In this paper we argue that outsiders seeking to deliver locally led, politically smart programmes need to either accept that competing priorities, results and values will work to limit the extent of true local ownership, or be sufficiently committed to true local leadership to accept that this may well cut against organisational imperatives. Using the example of the Pacific-based Green Growth Leaders’ Coalition, we discuss how politically tricky partnerships challenge tenets of local leadership and ownership.     

The spaces of intervention for Mali and Guinea-Bissau

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on interventions by the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States in Guinea-Bissau and Mali. In the literature, these are often approached in a ‘top-down’ manner, focusing on formal institutions, not accounting for the complex dynamics in and around conflict intervention. This article argues that adopting space as an analytical lens allows new ways to address these issues. It highlights how interventions by different actors and their interactions are influenced by spatial perceptions and framings, which result in the making of different ‘spaces of intervention’ through different practices. The two described here, ‘scaling’ and ‘establishing reach’, enable strategic and continuous formation and negotiation of spaces for action, according to actors’ needs and interests. Thus, shedding light on specific actors and their practices, the article contributes to a better understanding of the complex dynamics in conflict intervention in West Africa.     

我国生态系统服务价值研究进展及现实问题探析

生态系统有价和有偿使用已成共识。通过对生态系统服务价值研究方法和主要几类生态系统的服务价值研究结果进行梳理,发现生态系统服务价值相关评估方法的科学性、数据选取的可信度和研究结果的准确性以及研究结果应用的可行性等几个方面面临一些现实问题,影响到评估结果的采纳和应用。随着可持续发展战略的深入实施,迫切需要对生态系统服务价值评估方法和现实问题进行深入探讨,重新定位生态系统的价值和价格。     

Colliding intervention in the spatial management of street-based injecting and drug-related litter within settings of public convenience (UK)

This paper considers the structural production and amplification of tensions surrounding the issue of street-based injecting drug use and drug-related litter (injecting paraphernalia) discarded in public settings. These tensions, it is argued, is a consequence of colliding intervention (policy and practice) brought about by conflicting connections between national/local drug strategy and micro-level forms of governance regarding the spatial management of public space. These colliding interventions have negative consequences upon harm reduction and the formation of enabling environments. The paper draws upon data obtained from a five-year (multi-site) ethnographic study of street-based injecting conducted throughout the south of England during 2006–2011.     

女性学与女性研究的原创性、时代性探析

在学习和理解习近平总书记在哲学社会科学工作座谈会上重要讲话精神的基础上,对女性学和女性研究的原创性与时代性问题展开讨论。研究结果表明,尽管女性学和女性研究在原创性与时代性建设方面取得了一定成绩,但仍然存在学科地位边缘化、原创性力作偏少等不足,需要进一步提高对这些问题的思想认识,并建构新的评价与激励机制。