Organizing Insurgency: Networks, Resources, and Rebellion in South Asia

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Staniland
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Organizational Context ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Similar Resource ◽  
Resource Wealth ◽  
Lootable Resources ◽  
Training And Support ◽  
Control Resource

A central question in civil war research is how state sponsorship, overseas funding, involvement in illicit economics, and access to lootable resources affect the behavior and organization of insurgent groups. Existing research has not arrived at any consensus, as resource wealth is portrayed as a cause of both undisciplined predation and military resilience. A social-institutional theory explains why similar resource wealth can be associated with such different outcomes. The theory argues that the social networks on which insurgent groups are built create different types of organizations with differing abilities to control resource flows. There is no single effect of resource wealth: instead, social and organizational context determines how these groups use available resources. A detailed comparative study of armed groups in the insurgency in Kashmir supports this argument. A number of indigenous Kashmiri insurgent organizations received substantial funding, training, and support from Pakistan from 1988 to 2003, but they varied in their discipline and internal control. Preexisting networks determined how armed organizations were built and how material resources were used. Evidence from other South Asian wars shows that this is a broader pattern. Scholars of civil conflict should therefore explore the social and organizational processes of war in their research.

Impact of the Locus of Causality and Internal Control on the Social Utility of Causal Explanations

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 173-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Perrin ◽  
Benoît Testé
Keyword(s):  
Internal Control ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
External Control ◽  
Job Interview ◽  
Locus Of Causality ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Professional Success ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types

Research into the norm of internality ( Beauvois & Dubois, 1988 ) has shown that the expression of internal causal explanations is socially valued in social judgment. However, the value attributed to different types of internal explanations (e.g., efforts vs. traits) is far from homogeneous. This study used the Weiner (1979 ) tridimensional model to clarify the factors explaining the social utility attached to internal versus external explanations. Three dimensions were manipulated: locus of causality, controllability, and stability. Participants (N = 180 students) read the explanations expressed by appliants during a job interview. They then described the applicants on the French version of the revised causal dimension scale and rated their future professional success. Results indicated that internal-controllable explanations were the most valued. In addition, perceived internal and external control of explanations were significant predictors of judgments.

The Political and Aesthetic Power of the Everyday in Beckett's Happy Days

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-66
Author(s):  
Julie Bates
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Last Man ◽  
Second World

Happy Days is contemporaneous with a number of seminal contributions to the concept of the everyday in postwar France. This essay suggests that the increasingly constrained verbal and physical routines performed by its protagonist Winnie constitute a portrait of the everyday, and goes on to trace the affinities between Beckett's portrait and several formulations of the concept, with particular emphasis on the pronounced gendering of the everyday in many of these theories. The essay suggests the aerial bombings of the Second World War and methods of torture during the Algerian War as potential influences for Beckett's play, and draws a comparison with Marlen Haushofer's 1963 novel The Wall, which reimagines the Romantic myth of The Last Man as The Last Woman. It is significant, however, that the cataclysmic event that precedes the events of Happy Days remains unnamed. This lack of specificity, I suggest, is constitutive of the menace of the play, and has ensured that the political as well as aesthetic power of Happy Days has not dated. Indeed, the everyday of its sentinel figure posted in a blighted landscape continues to articulate the fears of audiences, for whom the play may resonate today as a staging of twenty-first century anxiety about environmental crisis. The essay concludes that in Happy Days we encounter an isolated female protagonist who contrives from scant material resources and habitual bodily rhythms a shelter within a hostile environment, who generates, in other words, an everyday despite the shattering of the social and temporal framework that conventionally underpin its formation. Beckett's play in this way demonstrates the political as well as aesthetic power of the everyday in a time of crisis.

Digital platforms aren’t mere tools —they’re complex environments

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (6) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Antero Garcia ◽  
T. Philip Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Educational Stakeholders ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Social Uses

Antero Garcia and T. Philip Nichols explore how classrooms and schools must reframe their conceptions of technology from a focus on tools that serve specific purposes to a focus on platforms and their ecologies. In doing so, they argue, educational stakeholders should attend to three different dimensions of how technology is integrated in schools: the social uses of digital technologies, the design decisions that were made about these products, and the material resources that help make them operate. This approach requires educators to ask complicated questions about what technology does in schools and how to teach with and about it.

Crkvene institucije u srednjovjekovnoj praksi

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (88) ◽  
pp. 21-46
Author(s):  
Ante Bećir
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of

The article sought to put the social and political agency of the Trogir Canons in the period from 1300 to 1360 into the wider context of political conflicts that took place between opposing noble factions within the Trogir commune in the 14th century. However, before commencing with the analysis, the author gives a basic insight into the status and infrastructure of the Trogir ecclesiastical organization, situated in its respective Dalmatian- Croatian and Hungarian context. Starting with the normative definition of a Cathedral Chapter, which exists to assist the Bishop and engage in the pastoral care of its human flock, the article compares the idea with the practical dealings of the Trogir Canons. It is highlighted that their dealings were almost primarily concerned with these-worldly matters. On the other hand, and on the basis of tracking several Trogir Canons, namely Jacob son of Peter (Vitturi), John son of Peter (Castrafoci), Stephan son of Michael (Cega), Lampredius son of Jacob (Vitturi), Kazarica son of Martin (Kazarice), Albert son of Marinus (Andreis) and some others, which are heavily exposed in the primary sources, it is argued that the Trogir Cathedral Chapter was not functioning in practice as an independent church corporation, rather than the Canons were in one way or another involved in the factional strifes. More precisely, the considered canons were deeply connected with the noble families, from which practically all of them originated, and sequentially with the informal factions. Therefore, the Canons exploited the existing institutional (corporate) framework and material resources of the Cathedral Chapter in the pursuit of their own individual or factional goals. In that respect, the Cathedral Chapter cannot be considered as an entity separate from the activities of the city lay authorities, regardless of the actual distinction in political and judicial jurisdiction between ecclesiastical and secular institutions. The Case of Trogir provided very fruitful material, which allowed the unraveling of social and political networks and the role of individual participants in the collective (political) agency. In other words, the paper put the focus more on individual agency, and less to structures, bearing in mind that individual agency is exactly that which shapes the institutions in the end.

Historical Context

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-45
Author(s):  
Roman David ◽  
Ian Holliday
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Current Transition ◽  
The Impact

Democratization necessarily takes place within a specific national context marked by prior historical experience. This chapter examines historical factors in the Myanmar case as a means of understanding the social and political underpinnings of the current transition. It focuses on legacies of colonization by Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, a growing nationalist struggle and devastating warfare in the first half of the twentieth century, shifting forms of civil conflict since independence, a phase of liberal democracy in the initial years of state sovereignty, and military-backed or military-directed authoritarianism for nearly half a century thereafter. It looks particularly at the impact of successive colonial, democratic, and military regimes, and at crosscutting legacies of repression, militarization of ethnic relations, and social exclusion of the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Three Questions about Spirituality

2021 ◽  
pp. 335-344
Author(s):  
Brian Steensland
Keyword(s):  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future

Using the concepts of developed in the volume, this chapter concludes the book by addressing three important questions about spirituality. Our approach foregrounds how spirituality is shaped by the interplay of context and practice and influenced by the distribution of material resources. On the question of the meaning of spirituality, we advance an explicitly relational approach that identifies the polysemous nature of “spirituality.” On the question of spirituality’s influence, we highlight the social mechanisms through which spirituality is likely to influence individual and public outcomes. Regarding the future of spirituality, we argue that spirituality, in both supernatural and secular forms, will endure for the foreseeable future because the conditions of late modernity will continue to create a demand for it.

22. Transitional Justice

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna R. Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Retributive Justice ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
The Social

This chapter examines the link between transitional justice and human rights. Atrocities such as genocide, disappearances, torture, civil conflict, and other gross violations of human rights leave states with a puzzling and often difficult question: what to do with the perpetrators of such acts of violence. Transitional justice takes into account the social implications of such conflicts. Its emphasis is on how to rebuild societies in the period after human rights violations, as well as with how such societies, and individuals within those societies, should be held to account for their actions. The chapter considers three paradigms of transitional justice, namely: retributive justice, restorative justice, and reparative justice. It also discusses the proliferation of the number of mechanisms of transitional justice at work and concludes with a case study of transitional justice in Uganda.

scholarly journals A meta-analysis of natural resources and conflict

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316801881823 ◽  
Author(s):  
William O’Brochta
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Aggregate Effect ◽  
Resource Wealth ◽  
Natural Resource Wealth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Variable Measurement

The relationship between natural resource wealth and civil conflict remains unclear, despite prolonged scholarly attention. Conducting a meta-analysis—a quantitative literature review—can help synthesize this broad and disparate field to provide clearer directions for future research. Meta-analysis tools determine both the aggregate effect of natural resources on conflict and whether any particular ways in which variables are measured systematically bias the estimated effect. I conduct a meta-analysis using sixty-nine studies from sixty-two authors. I find that there is no aggregate relationship between natural resources and conflict. Most variation in variable measurement does not alter the estimated effect. However, measuring natural resource wealth using Primary Commodity Exports and including controls for mountainous terrain and ethnic fractionalization all do significantly impact the results. These findings suggest that it may be worth exploring more nuanced connections between natural resources and conflict instead of continuing to study the overall relationship.

Putting People Down and Pushing Them Out: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilia M. Cortina ◽  
Maira A. Areguin
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Organizational Context ◽  
Sexual Problem ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Work Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Organizational ◽  
Common Manifestation

Sexual harassment was once conceptualized solely as a sexual problem: coercive sexual advances that spring from natural feelings of sexual desire or romance. Research has since shown that by far the most common manifestation of sexual harassment is gender harassment, which has contempt at its core; this conduct aims to put people down and push them out, not pull them into sexual activity. With findings such as these, we have made many strides in the scientific study of sexual harassment. That body of scholarship is the focus of this article, which is organized around the following questions: What is sexual harassment, both behaviorally and legally? How common is this conduct in work organizations, and what are its consequences? What features of the social/organizational context raise the risk for sexual harassment? What are some promising (and not-so-promising) solutions to this pervasive problem? And finally, what are important directions for this area of research moving forward? Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Pscyhology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 8 is January 21, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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