Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

The Classroom As A Peace Incubator: A Us-Gaza Case Study, Ian S. Mcintosh, Jamil Alfaleet

Peace and Conflict Studies

This paper describes the design, implementation, and lessons from a case study in transforming two university classrooms into what we call an international “peace incubator.” In the besieged Gaza Strip, opportunities for normalization of relations with Israel are almost non-existent, and there is very limited desire or personal capacity among the student population of Gaza to do the work of peace-building. A semester-long videoconference class linking IUPUI and Gaza University students sought to address this deficit by developing a model for building ties of friendship and cooperation. West Bank peace activist Juliano Mer Khamis once spoke of a coming Third …

Islamic Fundamentalism: A Quantitative Analysis, D. Dustin Berna

Peace and Conflict Studies

Islamic fundamentalist movements are inherently anti-system social movements. An anti-system social movement is designed to criticize governmental institutions and the political mainstream while mobilizing disaffected individuals against the existing sociopolitical and socioeconomic institutions. What is lacking in the mindset of many Western politicians, practitioners, the media, and the general public is a basic understanding of Islamic fundamentalism; specifically, the causes. This is the first quantitative analysis of potential causes of Islamic fundamentalism. I have created a unique data set that contains every Islamic fundamentalist group that is or has been in operation from 1970 through 2008. This fundamentalist data set …

Disputes Over Water Resources: A History Of Conflict And Cooperation In Drainage Basins, Shavkat Kasymov

Peace and Conflict Studies

This paper presents the analysis of conflict history over freshwater in several drainage basins across the planet. As will be demonstrated in this paper, unilateral water policies have proved to reduce the role and prospect of water treaties and international water sharing regimes, and led to political tensions and conflicts. The main argument of the essay is that unilateral diversions of water flows will instigate wars between riparian states because of the rising demand for freshwater in the future. Unilateral practices of water diversion create a situation of inequitable distribution of water among nation-states within a basin which is a …

Volume 16, Number 2 (Winter 2009), Peace And Conflict Studies

Peace and Conflict Studies

No abstract provided.

Labor Law Reforms: China’S Response To Challenges Of Globalization, Yunqiu Zhang

Peace and Conflict Studies

The post-Mao years witnessed vigorous labor law reform efforts in China, which can be partly understood in terms of globalization, economic and legal. In the economic globalization, China was increasingly integrated into the world economic system and exposed to international pressures to reform its traditional labor system and follow internationally-accepted labor rules. In other words, the economic globalization created the need for labor law reforms in China. In the legal globalization, China was apparently the recipient or borrower of foreign legal ideas including ideas about labor legislation. These ideas inspired the Chinese to build a new legal system concerning labor.

Liberal Globalization And Peripheral Justice, Weigang Chen

Peace and Conflict Studies

The increasing salience of cultural conflicts in the post-Cold War era brings the problem of peripheral justice, defined as the equal attainment of social justice, to the center of current debates on globalization. Specifically, they force us to directly confront the toughest challenge posed by the Weberian tradition: If the principles of justice and equality are beyond the peculiarity of the Occidental civilization, how then may we give a full explanation as to why in the West-and only in the West-the ideal of public reasoning by private people has been materialized? The present study seeks to address this fundamental challenge …

Editor’S Reflections: Academic Indigenization, Honggang Yang

Peace and Conflict Studies

Excerpt

The movement for academic indigenization has been growing swiftly in the social science fields over recent decades. From a historical, sociological perspective, for example, Lee (2000) recognizes that Western social sciences were implanted in East Asian countries like many other developing societies where there were abundant cultural traditions and indigenous frameworks of understanding human interrelations. As early as the 19th Century, several Chinese intellectuals had called for “Eastern Way and Western Technology” or “Chinese Body and Western Utility” in their search for solutions to “saving the nation” from feudal corruptions and imperialist invaders. These thinkers and reformers were trying …

The Emperor Needs New Clothes: Securitizing Threats In The Twenty-First Century, Volker Franke

Peace and Conflict Studies

The terrorist attacks of September 11 brought to a head change that had been underway since the end of the Cold War in how we think about security: (1) there is no longer consensus about who or what constitutes the “enemy”; (2) Realism as the dominating paradigm for studying international relations is collapsing; (3) domestic factors are gaining importance for devising security policies; and (4) with increasing globalization these domestic factors attain impact beyond national borders. In this article, I examine the nature of these developments and illustrate that the concept of security is often misapplied for political gain and/or …

Exploring The Relevance And Contribution Of Mediation To Peace-Building, Jacob Bercovitch, Ayse Kadayifci

Peace and Conflict Studies

The paper considers the nature and characteristics of peace-building as an approach to conflict. It suggests that mediation should be seen as a particularly important aspect of peace-building efforts, and one that may be used at different phases of a conflict. The paper develops a framework for analyzing the circumstances under which mediation may contribute to peace-building. The framework lays emphasis on contextual and perceptual dimensions. The paper argues that mediation, properly utilized, can achieve not just a settlement of a conflict, but facilitate, in the longer run, a full transformation of relations. Any successful program of peace-building requires some …