Here Today, Gone Tomorrow--Is Global Climate Change Another White Man’s Trick to Get Indian Land? The Role of Treaties in Protecting Tribes as They Adapt to Climate Change

Indian Tribes are at the tip of the spear when it comes to climate change. Their dependence on their homelands for subsistence and cultural sustenance has made them vulnerable to climate-driven changes like sea level rise, shoreline erosion, and drought. As climate change makes their land less suitable for the animals and plants they depend on, tribes are facing increasing pressure to move to survive. Complicating any such move is its effect on tribal treaties that grant tribes sovereignty over their traditional land and their members. If tribes are forced to sever themselves from their homelands, will that affect their sovereignty; can their treaties migrate with them as they move to new land; where can tribes move to that will enable them to survive as distinct political sub-units in our federal system of government; and will these treaties make their assimilation into any new community impossible? This Article looks at these and many other questions in an attempt to understand how climate change may affect tribes as we know them today and begins to answer some of them. However, there are too many questions to answer in a single article. Therefore, this Article’s major contributions are identifying the problem and related questions and then proposing an analytical framework that separates legal from moral questions, and practical from constitutive ones, and contextualizes these questions in a rapidly changing physical world. Developing and applying this framework may help identify which institutions should try and answer the various questions raised in the Article, what tools they might be expected to use, and in what order the questions should be addressed

Power relations, ethnicity and privatisation: A tale of a telecommunications company

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the confluence of political and economic interests of the Fijian elite in transforming state assets into private property and financial gain. Drawing on a Habermasian theoretical framework applied to a privatised state monopoly (Telecom Fiji), it is demonstrated how an implementation of privatisation concealed social and political interests. Thus privatisation provided a convenient rhetoric and tool of implementation for social and political gain by a ruling elite. For those inside the Telecom company, the ethos of public service could not withstand the messengers of capitalism with their rhetoric of the need for greater efficiency, effectiveness and consumer awareness. However, as for many other privatisation programmes around the world, the results are not reflected in the improved organisational performance or wellbeing of the ordinary citizen when state monopolies are privatised

Adoption, Blood and Culture in the Middle East

This is an unpublished presentation given at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Panel on Fictive Kinship). The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author

Abstracts from the Twelfth Annual Conference on Ethnic and Minority Studies

In an attempt to record a sense of the formal sessions of the 1984 Conference, we asked the Chairs to assemble abstracts and discussant comments for their sessions. Although we are pleased with a response greater than in 1983, we are aiming for one hundred percent in 1985

Armed violence and poverty in Northeast India: a mini case study for the Armed Violence and Poverty Initiative

YesThis mini report on Northeast India is one of 13 case studies (all of the case studies are available at www.bradford.ac.uk/cics). This research draws upon secondary data sources including existing research studies, reports and evaluations. As DFID does not have any direct development engagement in Northeast India, this report does give any direct programming or policy recommendations. However, it does highlight key issues which need to be addressed for armed violence to be reduced in the region. The authors would like to thank David Seddon for comments made on an earlier draft. The analysis and opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policy of DFID or the UK government

Markets and Violence

In this commentary, I address different forms of corporate violence, in particular how some contemporary corporate practices result in violence. Violence is carried out often without impunity by a market-state nexus that enables accumulation by dispossession. Structural violence concentrates power on certain groups while creating a class of disposable labour. Epistemic violence involves using language and law to disempower specific groups of people. The state often uses instrumental violence to quell resistance. I discuss how violence operates in the political economy by discussing conflicts in the extractive industries

Islamist movements at crossroads: the choice between ideology and context-driven approach to politics. Case study on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

The aim of the paper is to analyse the ongoing transformation process within the Islamist movements using the example of the moderate Islamic Action Front party in Jordan. The dilemma of participation in the 2010 general elections raised tensions between the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan and its political wing, the Islamic Action Front, and between doves and hawks of the same organizations. Internal debate on the future has started recently among different groups within the Islamist movement in Jordan. The research is based on the author‘s recent field experience in Jordan (April–July 2010, Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the American Centre of Oriental Research, Amman, Jordan). The author also conducted research in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt, where several interviews were carried out with leading and lower level Islamist politicians. The dynamic changes within Islamic Action Front Party in Jordan and its relation with the regime has been used as reference point. The main question of the research was aa how the changing political and regional context shapes decisions of the Islamist with special attention to the acceptance of democratic values and human rights, political participation, and the meanings of Islamic values in the 21st century, possible cooperation with secular parties/movements/the regime