Philanthronationalism: Junctures at the Business–Charity Nexus in Post‐war Sri Lanka

Over the past few years, the role of private sector organizations as actors and investors in development processes has received increased attention. This article explores the rise of ‘philanthronationalism’ in Sri Lanka: the co‐development of business and philanthropy methods as a response to patronage, nationalization and militarization in the post‐war environment. Drawing on ethnographic research into indigenous forms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the article identifies four kinds of philanthronationalist practice — passive, assimilative, reactive and collaborative — that provide a logic, mechanism and ethic for private sector development initiatives in the island whilst promoting a vision of the ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ nation state. Noting the emergence of similar philanthronationalist practices in Myanmar, the article concludes by arguing that the Sri Lankan case is unlikely to be unique and calls for further research into the partnerships that emerge between private philanthropy and nationalist movements in conflict/post‐conflict processes around the world.     

State reconstruction in Africa: the relevance of Claude Ake's political thought

Studies on post‐conflict reconstruction in Africa have glossed over the need for state transformation as a prerequisite for sustainable peacebuilding in post‐conflict societies. This article fills this gap and discusses the relevance of Claude Ake's political thought for state reconstruction in post‐conflict Africa. It underscores the need for the autochthonous transformation of the state as a central component of peacebuilding and post‐conflict transition in the continent as Ake had suggested. Drawing on Sierra Leone, it theorizes Ake's works on the state in Africa against the backdrop of externally driven state reconstruction projects hinged on hegemonic discourses of ‘nation‐building’ in post‐conflict situations. It presents Ake's corpus as a basis for critiquing ongoing state rehabilitation attempts and urges a return to endogenous initiatives of rebuilding the state from below as a condition for achieving a sustainable democratic reconstruction of the state in post‐conflict Africa.     

Transitional Justice and Political Economies of Survival in Post‐conflict Northern Uganda

This article explores the interplay between transitional justice and ‘everyday’ political economies of survival in post‐conflict Acholiland, northern Uganda. It advances two main arguments. First, that transitional justice — as part and parcel of conventional liberal peacebuilding packages — promotes a repertoire of normatively driven policies that have little bearing on lived realities of social accountability in post‐conflict settings. Second, that in transcending the epistemological and ontological boundaries of transitional justice and using concepts developed in the critical peacebuilding literature — the ‘everyday’ and ‘hybridity’ — a nuanced understanding of this dissonance emerges. Based on extensive fieldwork in Acholiland in the period 2012–14, using a range of qualitative research methods, the author examines the means through which people negotiate social and moral order in the context of post‐conflict life and analyses the tensions between these forms of ‘everyday’ activity and current transitional justice policy and programming in the region.     

The unintended consequences of emergency food aid: neutrality,sovereignty and politics in the Syrian civil war, 2012–15

This article dissects the role of emergency food aid during the current Syrian conflict. Drawing on Séverine Autesserre's concept of frames and Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty, we argue that the neutrality frame, which undergirds the majority of humanitarian relief efforts in Syria, obfuscates the impact of emergency food aid, both on sovereign power relations and local political dynamics. While neutrality appears benign, it has had a tangible impact on the Syrian civil war. Through close scrutiny of various case‐studies, the article traces how humanitarian efforts reinforce the bases of sovereign politics while contributing to a host of what Mariella Pandolfi (1998) terms ‘mobile sovereignties’. In the process, humanitarian organizations reaffirm sovereign power while also engaging in similar activities. We then analyse how and why ostensibly neutral emergency food aid has unintentionally assisted the Assad regime by facilitating its control over food, which it uses to buttress support and foster compliance. By bringing external resources into life‐or‐death situations characterized by scarcity, aid agencies have become implicated in the conflict's inner workings. The article concludes by examining the political and military impact of emergency food assistance during the Syrian conflict, before discussing possible implications for the humanitarian enterprise more broadly.     

Governing Mobility through Humanitarianism in Somalia: Compromising Protection for the Sake of Return

This article aims to contribute to an increased understanding of the importance of migration in humanitarian and ‘post‐humanitarian’ contexts, by exploring the interlinkages between protection and displacement. It argues that the strategies by which conflict‐displaced populations protect themselves are largely based on mobility. Yet, humanitarian approaches to displaced populations do not take sufficient account of the mobility needs of those they assist. Furthermore, the actual location at which aid is provided is affected by funding realities and donor priorities. This article discusses the case of protracted displacement realities of Somali refugees and internally displaced people in Kenya, Somaliland and south‐central Somalia. Based on in‐depth semi‐structured interviews and focus group discussions with humanitarian aid workers and displaced people, the article offers an analysis of the recent ‘stabilization discourse’ that fuels programming directed at the return of displaced Somalis. The authors argue that humanitarian protection is compromised by immobile aid practices and by humanitarian programmes that are guided by states’ interest in refugee return.     

‘Beyond anything we have ever seen’: beheading videos and the visibility of violence in the war against ISIS

This article examines the role of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's (ISIS's) beheading videos in the United Kingdom and the United States. These videos are highly illustrative demonstrations of the importance of visual imagery and visual media in contemporary warfare. By functioning as evidence in a political discourse constituting ISIS as an imminent, exceptional threat to the West, the videos have played an important role in the re‐framing of the conflict in Iraq and Syria from a humanitarian crisis requiring a humanitarian response to a national security issue requiring a military response and intensified counterterrorism efforts. However, this article seeks to problematize the role and status of ISIS's beheadings in American and British security discourses by highlighting the depoliticizing aspects of reducing a complicated conflict to a fragmented visual icon. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for further attention to how the visibility of war, and the constitution of boundaries between which acts of violence are rendered visible and which are not, shape the political terrain in which decisions about war and peace are produced and legitimized.     

Post‐Conflict Ambon: Forced Migration and the Ethno‐Territorial Effects of Customary Tenure

In post‐conflict contexts characterized by large‐scale migration and increasing levels of legal pluralism, customary land tenure risks being deployed as a tool of ethno‐territorialization in which displaced communities are denied return and secure land rights. This thesis will be illustrated through a case study of the Indonesian island of Ambon where a recognition of customary tenure — also called adat — was initiated in 2005 at the end of a high‐intensity conflict between Christians and Muslims. Although a system of land tenure providing multiple forms of social security for the indigenous in‐group, adat in Ambon also constitutes an arena of power in which populations considered as non‐indigenous to a fixed historical territory are pushed into an inferior legal position. The legal registration of customary tenure therefore tends to be deployed to settle long‐standing land contests with a growing migrant community, hereby legally enforcing some of the forced expulsions that were brought about by the recent communal violence.     

‘Humanitarianized’ Development? Anti‐trafficking Reconfigured

Over the past three decades humanitarianism has broadened considerably in scope. Humanitarian aid agencies have increasingly moved beyond a traditionally narrow concern with immediate relief aid to engage the wider implications of their work. Humanitarian arguments have also become central to policy legitimation in a range of contexts outside the humanitarian aid sector. By contrast, this article, based on research into anti‐trafficking programmes in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia, considers a case where a particular humanitarian discourse has in fact narrowed. Anti‐trafficking, once informed by development discourses of poverty reduction and long‐term well‐being of populations, has become increasingly shaped by a humanitarian emergency logic of exceptionalism. Long‐term development modalities have contracted into a zeal for the immediateness of ‘rescues’ and saving lives. By drawing attention to how development and humanitarian discourses intersect in anti‐trafficking interventions, this article explores how such shifts in legitimization and mobilization have taken place, in turn transforming actors and practices. The article will suggest that it is the different temporal registers of the two discourses — development and humanitarianism — that help account for this shift from the former to the latter.     

The ‘war on terror’ and extremism: assessing the relevance of the Women,Peace and Security agenda

Recognizing the critique of sexual essentialism in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, this article moves beyond this familiar narrative to address the narrowness of conflict frames that have to date been engaged by the WPS agenda. The events of 11 September 2001 brought new urgency and vibrancy to state action in the realm of counterterrorism. This momentum was illustrated both by the response of national legal systems and by more concerted efforts to achieve multilateral and multilevel counterterrorism cooperation on the international level. Notably, terrorism and counterterrorism have long been of only marginal interest to mainstream feminist legal theorists. Until recently concerted analytical feminist scrutiny has been missing in the assessment of terrorism, radicalism and counterterrorism discourses. This article addresses the lack of attention to terrorism, counterterrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) initiatives in the WPS mandate and its consequences for mainstreaming gender interests in foundational aspects of peace and security practice. Recent normative augmentations including UNSCR 2242 and the amplified mandate of the Counter‐Terrorism Committee to include gender considerations are assessed. The article argues that these moves to include gender come late, and on the terms set by security‐minded states. The late attention to gender in counterterrorism leaves little capacity to produce an inclusive and reimagined feminist agenda addressing the causes conducive to the production of terrorism and the costs to women of counterterrorism strategies. This pessimistic assessment warns of the pitfalls of exclusion and inclusion in the new security regimes that have been fashioned post 9/11 by states.     

Territories of Struggle: Social Centres in Northern Italy Opposing Mega‐Events

The article takes into consideration the spatialised action of self‐managed Social Centres in Northern Italy over the last 20 years. Considering Genoa, Turin and Milan, we outline the passage from the Fordist era to the post‐industrial cities reconversion, which gave the space—both physical and political—for the emergence of Social Centres. The changes that occurred in the three cities in the following years introduced new features in urban space configuration and organisation. In this frame, we focus on three case studies that serve the purpose of illustrating the role of Social Centres contesting unfair space transformations: Genoa's Expo Colombiane in 1992, Turin's Winter Olympic Games in 2006 and Milan's Expo in 2015. The opposition to these “mega‐events” allows us to analyse the changes related to the forms of conflict put into practice by urban social movements throughout time, and the learning process they underwent.     

Humanitarian security regimes

This article introduces a novel concept, humanitarian security regimes, and enquires under what conditions they arise and what is distinctive about them. Humanitarian security regimes are driven by altruistic imperatives aiming to prohibit and restrict behaviour, impede lethal technology or ban categories of weapons through disarmament treaties; they embrace humanitarian perspectives that seek to prevent civilian casualties, precluding harmful behavior, protecting and ensuring the rights of victims and survivors of armed violence. The article explores how these regimes appear in the security area, usually in opposition to the aspirations of the most powerful states. The existing regimes literature has mostly taken a functional approach to analyzing cooperation, lacks a humanitarian hypothesis and does not explore the emergence of new regimes in the core area of security. The author argues that in the processes of humanitarian security regime‐making, it is the national interest that is restructured to incorporate new normative understandings that then become part of the new national security aspirations. This article intends to fill this gap and its importance rests on three reasons. First, security areas that were previously considered to be the exclusive domain of states have now been the focus of change by actors beyond the state. Second, states have embraced changes to domains close to their national security (e.g. arms) mostly cognizant of humanitarian concerns. Third, states are compelled to re‐evaluate their national interests motivated by a clear humanitarian impetus. Three conditions for the emergence of humanitarian security regimes are explained: marginalization and delegitimization; multilevel agency, and reputational concerns.     

Everyday peace capture: Nationalism and the dynamics of peace after violent conflict

Nationalism is arguably one of the most detrimental peace‐breaking factors in conflict‐affected societies. This article examines how ethno‐nationalist elites, subterranean movements, and ordinary people can become blockages to sustainable peace and reconciliation after violent conflict. It argues that peacebuilding and state‐building imposed from outside as conflict transformation approaches without acceptable peace settlement and resolute solution of the disputes among parties in conflict risk enabling the co‐optation of power‐sharing arrangements by ethno‐nationalist elites, contestation of peace and reconciliation by subterranean mono‐ethnic movements, and the occurrence of vernacular peace‐breaking acts. This negative mutation of nationalism not only harms peace, justice, and development but also undermines the rights and needs of distinct identity groups. Under these conditions, escaping the nationalism trap in conflict‐affected societies requires seeking political change through post‐ethnic politics and reconciliation through everyday pacifist acts undertaken by the affected communities themselves. The article draws on Kosovo to illustrate empirically the dynamics of peace‐breaking and practices of everyday nationalism. It seeks to bridge debates on nationalism and post‐conflict peacebuilding and offer alternative pathways for rethinking strategies of peace in divided societies.     

Understanding the July 2016 Military Coup: The Contemporary Security Dilemma in Turkey

This study explores the link between religious identity and conflict in contemporary Turkey by examining the dramatic reversals in the relations between the country’s two prominent Islamic social forces, the ruling party AKP and the Gülen Organization. It shows how a particular trajectory of power and identity between the two religious forces transformed into a brutal security competition in the Turkish society and polity. It puts the analytical foci on the following puzzle: how did the Gülen community — once a confidential ally of AKP — turn into a coup plotter in the Turkish military to bring down the elected government? In order to explore the puzzle, the study offers significant departures from the standard approaches to religious identity and conflict by employing a distinct concept — the inter‐societal security dilemma.     

Distinction and the Ethics of Violence: On the Legal Construction of Liminal Subjects and Spaces

This paper interrogates the relationship among visibility, distinction, international humanitarian law and ethics in contemporary theatres of violence. After introducing the notions of “civilianization of armed conflict” and “battlespaces”, we briefly discuss the evisceration of one of international humanitarian law's axiomatic figures: the civilian. We show how liberal militaries have created an apparatus of distinction that expands that which is perceptible by subjecting big data to algorithmic analysis, combining the traditional humanist lens with a post‐humanist one. The apparatus functions before, during, and after the fray not only as an operational technology that directs the fighting or as a discursive mechanism responsible for producing the legal and ethical interpretation of hostilities, but also as a force that produces liminal subjects. Focusing on two legal figures—“enemies killed in action” and “human shields”—we show how the apparatus helps justify killing civilians and targeting civilian spaces during war.     

Social Capital and Post‐Conflict Reconstruction in Burundi: The Limits of Community‐based Reconstruction

Using an examination of three NGO interventions in post‐conflict Burundi, this article questions community‐based reconstruction as a mechanism to rebuild social capital after conflicts, particularly when direct livelihood support is provided. The authors demonstrate a general shortcoming of the methodology employed in community‐based development (CBD), namely its focus on ‘technical procedural design’, which results in what may be termed ‘supply‐driven demand‐driven’ reconstruction. The findings suggest the need for a political economy perspective on social capital, which acknowledges that the effects on social capital are determined by the type of economic resource CBD gives access to. Through the use of a resource typology, the case studies show that the CBD methodology and the potential effects on social capital differ when applied to public and non‐strategic versus private and strategic resources. This has particular consequences for post‐conflict situations. A generalized application of CBD methodology to post‐conflict reconstruction programmes fails to take adequate account of the nature of the interventions and the challenges posed by the particular post‐conflict setting. The article therefore questions the current popular ‘social engineering’ approach to post‐conflict reconstruction.     

Delaying truth recovery for missing persons*

ABSTRACT. The fate of missing persons is a central issue in post‐conflict societies facing truth recovery and human rights dilemmas. Despite widespread public sympathy towards relatives, societies emerging from conflict often defer the recovery of missing for decades. More paradoxically, in post‐1974 Cyprus, the official authorities delayed unilateral exhumations of victims buried within cemeteries in their own jurisdiction. Analysis of official post‐1974 discourses reveals a Greek‐Cypriot consensus to emphasise the issue as one of Turkish aggression, thus downplaying in‐group responsibilities and the legacy of intra‐communal violence. We compare the experience of Cyprus with other post‐conflict societies such as Spain, Northern Ireland, and Mozambique and explore the linkages between institutions and beliefs about transitional justice. We argue that elite consensus initiates and facilitates the transition to democracy but often leads to the institutionalisation of groups opposing truth recovery even for in‐group members.     

No Way Back? Adaptation and Urbanization of IDP Livelihoods in the Darfur Region of Sudan

This article explores how people in conflict zones adapt their livelihoods after they migrate to urban areas. Drawing on case studies in two towns in the Darfur region of Sudan, the authors find that livelihood systems are in transition and have undergone fundamental changes resulting from displacement and the effects of conflict on dysfunctional and failing institutions. Urban migrants’ livelihood strategies evolve in a context of insecurity, distorted markets, lack of regulation and punitive rent‐seeking regimes such as protection payments. Maladaptive livelihood strategies emerge in response to the need for food and income in the short term. New strategies also can increase societal inequities and marginalization, and over‐exploit limited natural resources. Thus the ‘new’ livelihoods cannot be considered sustainable or equitable, or even able to provide food security in the short term. Locally appropriate and innovative approaches to support livelihoods are badly needed, but it is important to monitor and evaluate their impacts on livelihood groups, local economic recovery, environment and conflict.     

Respacing for Peace? Resistance to Integration and the Ontopolitics of Rural Planning in Post‐War Burundi

This article investigates the politics and social impact of post‐war ‘respacing for peace’ strategies in Burundi from within a set of contested spatial arrangements — or rather, post‐war socio‐spatial experiments — including peace villages, IDP site clearances and land sharing. The author takes a critical look at these reconfigurations, and the resistances and manipulations that result when people (or their remains) are moved or placed in the name of coexistence, integration and sharing after the war. In this way, the article contributes to a post‐conflict planning literature that is mostly concerned with overcoming segregation and cleansing through integration, by exploring some of the complexities and problems that can arise with unquestioned embrace of the latter. It shows that a very particular and problematic logic of ethnic coexistence and physical integration drives post‐war respacing in Burundi and that people resist it with strategies in both physical and reflexive space. Proceeding through a set of paradoxes — such as the refusal to return and staying put, or re‐emigration as a response to settling — the article explores how and why respacing‐for‐peace might produce, or fail to prevent, the opposite outcome: community conflict, social tension and segregation.     

邓小平绿色发展思想的历史考察

邓小平在人与自然关系的主体方面,主张控制人口,主要涉及绿色发展的人口与资源协调发展观;在人与自然关系的客体要素方面,倡行植树造林,内含了绿色发展的生态安全观、群众主体观和持续绿化观;在协调人与自然关系的支撑条件方面,强调科教对经济建设和环境建设的先导作用,突出立法建制对环保事业发展的保障作用,蕴含有绿色发展的科技观、教育观和法制观。总结和研究邓小平绿色发展思想,对于深入把握当代中国马克思主义绿色发展观的历史与理论逻辑,贯彻落实党的十八大以来关于生态文明建设的新认识、新设计、新规范,实现美丽中国梦具有重要意义。