Pathways for Irregular Forces in Southeast Asia

An exploration of the roles that pro- and anti-government militias, private armed groups, vigilantes, and gangs play in local communities in the new democracies of Southeast Asia. Scholars have typically characterized irregular forces as spoilers and infiltrators in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. The contributors to this book challenge this conventional understanding of irregular forces in Southeast Asia, demonstrating that they often attract solid support from civilians and can be major contributors to the building of local security — a process by which local residents, in the absence of an effective police force, develop, partner or are at least included in the management of community crimes and other violence. They analyze irregular forces’ dealings with political actors at the community level, explaining why and how forces are incorporated in and collaborate with legitimate institutions without using violence against them. Offering a new approach to dealing with irregular forces in Southeast Asia, contributors explore new theoretical frameworks that are better suited for evaluating irregular forces’ relationship to different security providers and the political environments in the region. Specifically, they examine case studies from Indonesia, Timor-Leste, the Philippines, and Thailand. A valuable resource for researchers, students and practitioners in the areas of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, and security governance, especially those with a focus on Southeast Asia. This book will also be of great interest to scholars of the sociology and anthropology of the region

Indonesian security responses to resurgent Papuan separatism : an open source intelligence case study

Simplistic but commonly held beliefs about State security functions would hold that the State manages an exclusive supply of the best possible quality of information, to which the public can only become privy via scandalous 'leaks'. Whether conducting counter-insurgencies, or intelligence collection and analysis of such operations, a State's special apparatus is often accorded an intelligence mystique, and its functions assumed to be specially endowed with 'the real story', far removed from 'low grade' information available to journalists, NGOs and other non-State actors and agents. In challenging such views, this paper sets out to detail various aspects of the Indonesian counter-insurgency in Irian Jaya/Papua, with a view to two distinct goals. The first objective is to attain an overview of the counter-insurgency's political context and some of its implications for regional security. The second is to assert the rich, though seemingly neglected, intelligence value of public domain information as evident in the Papua case. Reliance is placed upon a critical appraisal of many sources, especially Indonesian press reporting, in the discussion heading towards both destinations. Maps, tables and appendices are used to present the most specific and detailed aspects of the research made during the drafting of this paper. It must be emphasised that this study uses only information that has already been revealed in the public domain. Any analysis and opinion by the author is entirely his own, and made in a private capacity

Interpreting Myanmar

Since the abortive 1988 pro-democracy uprising, Myanmar (formerly Burma) has attracted increased attention from a wide range of observers. Yet, despite all the statements, publications and documentary films made about the country over the past 32 years, it is still little known and poorly understood. It remains the subject of many myths, mysteries and misconceptions. Between 2008 and 2019, Andrew Selth clarified and explained contemporary developments in Myanmar on the Lowy Institute's internationally acclaimed blog, The Interpreter. This collection of his 97 articles provides a fascinating and informative record of that critical period, and helps to explain many issues that remain relevant today

Protest Lyrics at Work: Labor Resistance Poetry of Depression-Era Autoworkers

This dissertation argues that scholarly inquiry into American poetry of the Great Depression is incomplete without a critical understanding of poems produced within the labor movement. Through archival research and methodologies drawn from American studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and labor history, this dissertation demonstrates that autoworkers from 1935-1941 developed a rich poetic discourse that championed their cause. Autoworker poets—including autoworker song lyricists—used humor and borrowed extensively from popular, religious, and “folk” cultures to craft their own poetic styles and trope sets. They wrote about a diverse range of topics from their hopes for the unionization movement, to scab conversions, to comic exaggerations of capitalist figures such as Henry Ford and GM’s William S. Knudsen. Their poems and songs also capture aspects of quotidian life on the shop floor, such as the difficulty of assembly line work, gripes about managers and fellow workers, and frustrations with union factionalization. Women autoworkers and union auxiliary members, similarly, fashioned a discourse that spoke to their own particular set of goals, separate from—yet related to—those of unionizing men. This dissertation, further, shows how parodies of songs and poems, so often written in the labor movement, were frequently written and rewritten time and time again. Tracing the histories of two parodies, in particular, this study demonstrates 1) how older versions can influence the subtext of newer versions and 2) how mapping geographical appearances of parodies can reveal both evolutions in class consciousness and intersections between aspects of society typically thought to be unrelated. More broadly, discovering the connections between autoworker-authored poems and songs and their wider artistic underpinnings helps us to more deeply understand the array of cultural touchstones that working-class Americans drew upon during a dynamic moment in history

Community Consumed: Sunbelt Capitalism, A Praxis For Community Control, And The (dis) Integration Of Civic Life In Maryvale, Arizona

Civic activists have worked to embed community institutions in the Phoenix area from the time of initial Anglo settlement in the Salt River valley. Civic elites sought to monopolize control over regional development via municipal governance in the period after the Second World War. This dissertation places qualitative sources on community life in conversation with quantitative sources on political economy to explain how civic elites, as manifest in the civic organization of Charter government, worked with suburban activists to maintain spatial racialization in Phoenix. This process reveals that the socio-political value of civic life has waned in metropolitan Phoenix after the political ascent of Charter government. The outcome of this change is that marginalized Anglo communities like Maryvale, the first master-planned community built in Phoenix after World War II, were consumed by racial transition once local civic activists lost control over neighborhood economies. John F. Long began to construct Maryvale atop cotton and cantaloupe fields on the rural periphery of metropolitan Phoenix in the mid-fifties. The sweat equity of civic participation helped Long provide residents with access to affordable community amenities. He hoped that annexation into Phoenix would benefit Maryvale, but continued political marginalization hindered local efforts to provide civic services, like community healthcare, without burdensome debt. Soon, political engagement declined and outside investors acquired operational ownership of civic institutions; moreover, the social capital which traditionally remunerated civic activity declined in value as racial minorities challenged Anglo hegemony over local civic life. By the late seventies, when racial tensions among local youth boiled over into overt violence, civic leaders lacked the social capital to ameliorate racial conflict, and Anglos abdicated civic authority to law enforcement to pacify hostilities. This shift in community praxis, from civic participation to private consumption, transformed local patterns of racial integration into regional patterns of social segregation

One Step Over the Line: Toward a History of Women in the North American Wests

This eclectic and carefully organized range of essays—from women’s history and settler societies to colonialism and borderlands studies—is the first collection of comparative and transnational work on women in the Canadian and U.S. Wests. It explores, expands, and advances the aspects of women's history that cross national borders. Out of the talks presented at the 2002 “Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women’s History,” Elizabeth Jameson and Sheila McManus have edited a foundational text with a wide, inclusive perspective on our western past

Digital Vigilantism in Russia: Citizen-led justice in the context of social change and social harm

This dissertation describes four years of scientific inquiry into the phenomenon of digital vigilantism. Focusing on Russia, it investigates a unique case where the ruling elites are negotiating a relationship with some digitally savvy citizens while censoring the digital domain and otherwise controlling online self-expression

Organised voluntary action in crime control and community safety: A study of citizen patrol initiatives in Northern England

Within contemporary policing and community safety discourses, citizen-led initiatives have rarely commanded the degree of attention afforded elsewhere. Typically, research has tended to focus upon state, and more recently market provision. This thesis addresses that deficit by investigating volunteer citizen patrol initiatives. It adopts an exploratory approach to conceptualise and determine the composition of patrols, and subsequently offers insights into the reasons why individuals partake in organised patrols, the nature of their activities, and how they are received by other citizens and local stakeholders. In the first half of the study, citizen patrols are defined, charted across extended historical periods, and located within the contemporary policing landscape. The second half presents the empirical findings of a qualitative study that explores three citizen patrol case studies in northern England. Data collected within these sites consisted of a total of 150 hours of participant observation and 40 semi-structured interviews, with participants, coordinators and external stakeholders. The findings indicate that despite state dominance and more recent market expansion across the policing landscape, the presence of citizen patrols illustrates a space for civil society that demonstrates continuities with the past. Participants exhibited a range of motivations for partaking and completed various activities; as responses to perceived threats, broader vulnerability, and for the purposes of information sharing. Elsewhere, a distinction emerged between those that the patrols engaged, and those that more broadly benefited. Serving the interests of the latter presented implications not only for the fair and even spread of patrol activities, but also for the delivery of policing provision more generally. Finally, the patrols were well-received by stakeholders, who connected with initiatives both strategically and operationally. There was evidence of positive relationships and collaboration, though frontline police articulated concern about their capacity to effectively support initiatives in light of reductions to personnel and resources

Watching the Watchdog: Security Oversight Law in the New South Africa

This Article attempts to assess the experiences of post-apartheid South Africa in the realm of national security law by examining key issues from constitutional, statutory, and policy perspectives. It observes that South Africans now have a great window of opportunity that allows them to establish the habits and mores necessary to a working security oversight regime, and argues that the way in which South Africa strikes a balance between the requirements of national security and the preservation of personal liberties is of enormous importance to the Republic\u27s future. It further contends that South Africa\u27s choices in this arena could have significant implications and/or hold important lessons for other democracies around the world. The Article concludes by making recommendations for the proper role of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in South African security oversight law

Black Peril, White Fear. Representations of Violence and Race in South Africa�s English Press, 1976-2002, and Their Influence on Public Opinion

The present dissertation is an attempt at uncovering to which extent and in what way the reporting on violence in South Africa�s English language press between 1976 and 2002 has influenced white South Africans� views of their country. South African history has been marked by violence for centuries; however, in the past decades the subject has come to occupy the minds of the white population like no other. The media, too, have grown increasingly interested in the problem. My research on the topic is based on a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing ideas from anthropology as well as from British Cultural Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis. Hence, my findings are the result of an in-depth analysis of news reports, along with extensive literature research, and of a total of 14 months anthropological field research in the shape of participant observation and interviews. These have come together to show that, through the use of culturally salient images, the press influence their readers� perception of and reaction to reality, thus making an important contribution to the creation, maintenance, changing, and development of culture and society. Throughout the period under investigation, the media have approached violence with racial concepts in mind. The newspapers� (largely white) in-group and the (mainly black) out-group were shown to be facing each other from opposite ends of the good-bad spectrum, and the concept of violence was lexicalised accordingly. The in-group was, as far as possible, absolved from any violent actions, while the out-group was blamed for as much violence as possible. This is true for the political violence of the apartheid years as well as the crimes of modern days. My research has confirmed that white South Africans� attitudes towards violence display a striking resemblance to this view. This suggests that the newspapers did more than inform their readers about the world. Their choice of subjects has frequently influenced how South Africans define violence and that their way of approaching these subjects was equally important in constituting the public�s view of them. It is therefore beyond doubt that the English language press helped to structure and limit people�s interpretive frameworks. They worked to define what was seen as violence and provided the language to describe the individual incidents. They constituted reality; made history so to speak