Securitisation of research: fieldwork under new restrictions in Darfur and Mali
Knowledge on conflict-affected areas is becoming increasingly important for scholarship and policy. This article identifies a recent change in knowledge production regarding 'zones of danger', attributing it not only to the external environment, but also to an on-going process of securitisation of research resulting from institutional and disciplinary practices. Research is increasingly framed by security concerns and is becoming a security concern in itself, although the implications are not readily acknowledged. To illustrate these developments, we draw on fieldwork in Mali and Darfur.
Den globale flyktningkrisen - de synlige og de usynlige
Den europeiske delen av den globale flyktningkirsen har skapt et nyy geografisk hierarki av synlige og unsynlige flyktninger. De synlige er de som kommer til Europa eller har en mulighet til det. De usynlige er de som ikke har denne muligheten. Dette hierarkiet har store implikasjoner både med tanke på hvilke dimensjoner av den globale flyktningkirsen som synes og hvilke som forblir unsynlige, men også for hvilke typer av politikk som benyttes og hvilke prioriteringer som gjøres
Displacement, belonging, and land rights in Grand Gedeh, Liberia: almost at home abroad?
Conflicts over local land rights between groups considered as “sons of the soil” and newcomers such as refugees can trigger autochthony-inspired violence. However, such conflicts are not always manifested, even when the conditions are in place. The question we explore in this article is whether such conflicts are less likely to emerge if the “other” is from a group with a longstanding bond of interethnic allegiance with the host community. Based on ethnographic data from host–refugee communities in Grand Gedeh, Liberia, we revisit previous attempts to explain economic and social relations between majority and minority groups. Our main finding is that in this part of Africa no prior special status will fundamentally alter the established ways of incorporating strangers into the community.
Wars and Warlords
The debate about war in African studies has gone through a number of important changes. Until the end of the Cold War, African wars were often fueled by super-power competition. After the end of the Cold War most were either solved peacefully or simply collapsed as external support dried up. Some, however, continued, such as the Lord’s Resistance Army war, and new ones emerged. One was the intertwining of civil wars in West Africa’s Mano River Basin. Another was created by the collapse of the Mobutist state in Zaire that drew in a number of neighboring countries. Lately the Sahel is also experiencing a similar trend. During the Cold War, conflict in Africa was often referred to as “war by proxy,” in reference to external factors as important causes of conflict. After the end of the Cold War, much more emphasis has been placed on internal factors, first ethnicity and later the so-called greed and grievance debate. The approach to the warlord concept in African studies is closely tied to these debates. In general terms, a warlord is an individual who has control over an area because this person commands armed forces that are loyal to the warlord. A precise definition of this phenomenon is therefore available. The challenge, however, is that this term almost automatically brings forth powerful images of rape, loot, and plunder committed by heavily armed, thuggish-looking men. Contrary to the relatively sober academic debate about wars and warlords elsewhere in the world, the debate about warlords in Africa has tended to be extremely politicized and used to name and shame specific persons. Until the early 1990s, the warlord concept was used sparsely in African studies, but then it became more prevalent, promoted by debates about the civil wars in the Mano River Basin, where influential scholars such as Paul Collier argued that African civil wars were driven by greed and not grievances. Soon, the warlord label was attached to almost all conflicts on the continent. However, this also led to the emergence of a counterdebate that questioned the validity of greedy warlords as explanatory factors and argued for a multidimensional approach that also took into consideration social, political, and historical factors. The outcome was a much more nuanced but also diverse debate, where many of the most prominent scholars question the usefulness of the warlord concept.
Forsvarspolitisk djupdykk
Norsk forsvarspolitikk har gått gjennom store endringar sidan slutten av den kalde krigen. I ei fersk bok analyserer Nina Græger denne politikken gjennom 25 år. Velkommen til lanseringsseminar med forfattaren, Kate Hansen Bundt og Anniken Huitfeldt!
Syria - eit overblikk
Dei siste åra har medført ein av dei største og mest komplekse humanitære katastrofane sidan andre verdskrig. Sjå nokre av landet sine fremste fagfolk om Syria-konflikten.
Russia's Securitization of Chechnya:How war became acceptable
This book provides an in-depth analysis of how mobilization and legitimation for war are made possible, with a focus on Russia's conflict with Chechnya. Through which processes do leaders and their publics come to define and accept certain conflicts as difficult to engage in, and others as logical, even necessary? Drawing on a detailed study of changes in Russia’s approach to Chechnya, this book argues that ‘re-phrasing’ Chechnya as a terrorist threat in 1999 was essential to making the use of violence acceptable to the Russian public. The book refutes popular explanations that see Russian war-making as determined and grounded in a sole, authoritarian leader. Close study of the statements and texts of Duma representatives, experts and journalists before and during the war demonstrates how the Second Chechen War was made a ‘legitimate’ undertaking through the efforts of many. A post-structuralist reinterpretation of securitization theory guides and structures the book, with discourse theory and method employed as a means to uncover the social processes that make war acceptable. More generally, the book provides a framework for understanding the broad social processes that underpin legitimized war-making. This book will be of much interest to students of Russian politics, critical terrorism studies, security studies and international relations.
Stable nuclear zero : the vision and its implications for disarmament policy
This volume examines the conditions necessary for a stable nuclear-weapons-free world and the implications for nuclear disarmament policy. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a road map to nuclear zero, but it is a rudimentary one and it says nothing about the kind of zero to aim for. Preferably, this would be a world where the inhibitions against reversal are strong enough to make it stably non-nuclear. What then are the requirements of stable zero? The literature on nuclear disarmament has paid little attention to this question. By and large, the focus has been on the next steps, and discussions tend to stop where the NPT stops: with the elimination of the weapons. This book seeks to fill a lacuna by examining the requirements of stable zero and their implications for the road map to that goal, starting from the vision to the present day. The volume highlights that a clear conception of the goal not only is important in itself, but can shed light on what kind of disarmament process to promote. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, global governance, security studies and IR.