Accounting for the 1990 - 2013 Christian-Muslim Conflicts in Tanzania.

From 1990 to 2013, conflicts resulting in bloody violence erupted at different times and in different places between some Christians and some Muslims in Tanzania. The main objective of this thesis was to account for these conflicts. In examimning these conflicts, the researcher used the Relational Theory of Conflict. The theory states thus: ―Conflicts result from interactions of different people with opposed cultural experiences, values and interests.‖ Guided by this theory, the researcher identified two hypotheses that address religious conflicts. The first hypothesis states that: Wherever two religions coexist in roughly equal sizes, in a particular geographical setting, there is a potential for inter-religious conflicts due to their doctrinal differences and their need to access resources. The second hypothesis states thus: In order for those conflicts to develop into violence, there must be conditions, actors, and actions that foment the violence. The specific objectives were to state the conditions, to identify the actors, and to describe the actions that fomented the 1990 - 2013 violent conflicts. The researcher used both the survey and explorative research designs in this research. Dar es Salaam was the study area and the study involved 1010 respondents - 521 Christians and 489 Muslims. The findings showed that the conditions included ignorance, poverty, and globalization. The actors in the conflicts were leaders of Islamist groups, public debaters and preachers, unruly Christians and Muslims, and others. The actions included instigative public preaching and selling inciting DVDs and CDs. The researcher recommends religious education to all, rigorous law enforcement, and government‘s fair treatment for all citizens

Civil society, human security, and the politics of peace-building in victor’s peace Sri Lanka (2009-2012)

This thesis aims to expand scholarship on civil society and peace-building through exploration of civil society’s experiences, perspectives, and practices in relation to the politics of peace-building and human (in)security in instances of victor’s peace, using post-war Sri Lanka as case study. It adopts Human Security as an analytical approach calling attention to insecurities operating on and through Sri Lankans but also the nature of power dynamics underlying these insecurities based on the subjective and political nature of ‘peace’ itself. The thesis contributes conceptually and empirically to knowledge of the operation of victor’s peace and its implications for civil society in peace-building. This thesis’s central contention is that acts of securitization and governmentality carried out by Sri Lanka’s central governmental elite within and enabled by the victor’s peace have constricted spaces for civil society to articulate alternatives or engage in critical dialogue within the political process fostered under the victor’s peace. This study, thus, questions romanticized notions of the potentiality of ‘local’ resistances to shift structural inequalities and power asymmetries in victor’s peace. At a disciplinary level, the thesis also deepens knowledge, first, on civil society as complex and contested sphere. It argues that to conceptualize civil society as homogenous or inherently altruistic risks drastically oversimplifying its highly diffuse nature and politics within the sector in which certain actors may benefit within the victor’s peace and engage in ‘peace’-building activities in order to both capitalise on those benefits and sustain the victor’s peace. Second, the thesis addresses the nexus between civil society and peace-building, and specifically the politics of peace-building, in the victor’s peace. In not being constrained by negotiated peace settlement it asserts that, as in Sri Lanka, instances of victor’s peace can quickly transition into repressive environments. Here it is unlikely that civil society, despite innovative methods of exercising agency, can significantly alter the trajectories of the ‘peace’, and further that those civil society actors that support the victor’s peace may seek to exploit the benefits they gain from it at the expense of the human security of others. Finally, the thesis asserts that, ultimately, Human Security’s utility may lie not as political agenda that validates external intervention based on a ‘responsibility’ to intervene, but as a conceptual framework for developing deeper understandings of the nature of (in)security and factors driving (in)security at multiple levels of analysis within different articulations or ‘types’ of peace

Conceptualisation of family mediation: Access to justice after LASPO

Several decades of policy have reinforced mediation as a critical stakeholder in the English and Welsh family justice system, most notably demonstrated through the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO). This has led to rising demand for mediation to adapt to the needs of a diverse and complex client base with little access to legal support. Despite these calls, mediation reform continues to be governed by the orthodox conceptualisation, based on the limited mediator. The traditional approach binds mediators to a strictly facilitative framework and an absolute vision of neutrality that cannot ensure access to justice post-LASPO. This thesis proposes that the dominant conceptualisation of family mediation in contemporary justice advances a more adaptable, modern mediator, but this role has not been openly recognised. This argument is based on original research in two parts. First, a qualitative text analysis of family mediation Codes of Practice demonstrates the fluidity of modern mediator practice. Its analysis adopts a new theoretical framework of four mediator functions, showing that mediators are allowed to evaluate though their actions are frequently concealed by a facilitative proxy. Second, interview data with 17 family mediators show that the profession largely associates with facilitation but frequently evaluates. It is revealed that mediators seek a settlement that is assessed against a standard of quality, alluding to a more quasi-legal role for the profession in the post-LASPO era. Nevertheless, this modern mediator type is not acknowledged in discussions due to the strong adherence to mediator neutrality. A further barrier to recognising the modern mediator is the prominence of structural issues surrounding the mediation process. Combined, these obstacles lead the thesis to a final call for further regulation of mediators, as well as attitudinal change that recognises the potential of family mediation in achieving access to justice post-LASPO

Maritime expressions:a corpus based exploration of maritime metaphors

This study uses a purpose-built corpus to explore the linguistic legacy of Britain’s maritime history found in the form of hundreds of specialised ‘Maritime Expressions’ (MEs), such as TAKEN ABACK, ANCHOR and ALOOF, that permeate modern English. Selecting just those expressions commencing with ’A’, it analyses 61 MEs in detail and describes the processes by which these technical expressions, from a highly specialised occupational discourse community, have made their way into modern English. The Maritime Text Corpus (MTC) comprises 8.8 million words, encompassing a range of text types and registers, selected to provide a cross-section of ‘maritime’ writing. It is analysed using WordSmith analytical software (Scott, 2010), with the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference corpus. Using the MTC, a list of keywords of specific salience within the maritime discourse has been compiled and, using frequency data, concordances and collocations, these MEs are described in detail and their use and form in the MTC and the BNC is compared. The study examines the transformation from ME to figurative use in the general discourse, in terms of form and metaphoricity. MEs are classified according to their metaphorical strength and their transference from maritime usage into new registers and domains such as those of business, politics, sports and reportage etc. A revised model of metaphoricity is developed and a new category of figurative expression, the ‘resonator’, is proposed. Additionally, developing the work of Lakov and Johnson, Kovesces and others on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), a number of Maritime Conceptual Metaphors are identified and their cultural significance is discussed