Risk and Hierarchy Within International Society: Liberal Interventionism in the Post-Cold War Era

Several recent works have emphasised contemporary hierarchical trends within international society. These trends have been most readily demonstrated by the willingness of dominant states, such as the United States, to conduct interventions in support of the promotion of liberal values and political institutions. Yet while many scholars have identified new relations of hierarchy within international society, few have explored what they suggest regarding international society’s normative constitution or what factors have given rise to these new hierarchies. The end of colonialism in the 1960’s resulted in a fundamental reconstitution of international society. The result of decolonisation was that pluralism, the notion that all states have the equal freedom to constitute their internal socio-political and economic institutions as they see fit, was entrenched as the central constitutive principle of the post-colonial international society. Contemporary hierarchical trends suggest a transition away from this pluralist constitution, with resultant changes in the processes of inclusion and exclusion and modes of interaction between different members of international society. This thesis aims to explore these processes of reconstitution within international society in the post-Cold War era and explain why Western societies have felt compelled to intervene in particular territories in order to promote liberal values. Utilising sociological theories of risk, particularly the work of Ulrich Beck, this thesis suggests that a new ‘liberal social logic of risk’ underpins the emergence of new forms of hierarchy and contemporary constitutional transition within international society. New forms of temporally and spatially de-bounded security risks (such as terrorism), and Western attempts at managing these risks through intervention and the imposition of liberal values in so-called ‘risky zones’, has altered the constitution of international society in a way that gives rise to various hierarchical and anti-pluralist trends

An Evaluation of the Relevance of the AK Model to Developing Countries Such as Zimbabwe

AK models, unlike the exogenous models, factor in technology as endogenously determined within the model by economic decisions; hence they are also called endogenous models. This paper serves to outline the AK model as propounded by Frankel (1962) as well as to evaluate its relevance to a developing country. A theoretical approach is used to analyse its relevance. It was noted that, the AK model by Frankel (1962) is relevant to developing countries as it helps to combat the major impediments to economic growth faced in these countries such as low productivity, high unemployment, low levels of investment and dilapidated infrastructure. Capital accumulation will also bring positive externalities through learning by doing effects. The model might nevertheless fail to bring desired results since it does not consider other factors such as political instability and good institutions which equally contribute to economic growth. Keywords: Developing Countries, AK Model, Endogenous Model, Zimbabw

Family histories, family stories and family secrets:Late discoveries of being adopted

This paper reviews what we know about the experiences of adopted people who discover in later-life that they are adopted. It begins by discussing how and why various facets of the adoption experience have come to the fore over the 20th and 21st century time span of contemporary adoption. The paper concludes with the fact that research on the late discovery of adoption is in its infancy. It also points to parallels that will exist for people who have been conceived by anonymous donation and raises additional areas for possible research

“The Past Is Never Dead. It’s Not Even Past” (Faulkner, 1919 Requiem for a Nun p. 85):Mapping and taking care of the ghosts in adoption

The Code of Ethics of the Association of Professional Genealogists promotes the communication of coherent, clear, and well-organised information). It is not that simple when adoption features in a family’s history. This paper suggests that standard approaches to family tree-construction will struggle to capture the complexities, gaps, and challenges posed by adoption. Firstly, the paper makes the case for family historians having an alertness to adoption by noting the number of people affected by adoption. It then goes on to look at the literature that argues that adoption involves erasures of birth families and makes ghosts of them. Adoption also creates possible selves and lives; the adopted person’s “could-have-beens” had there been no adoption, the biological child that the adoptive parents might have had and could not, the birth mother’s life with the child lost to adoption. These presences and possibilities haunt all involved in adoption, and writers have posited the existence of a “ghost kingdom”. This paper maps out a greater ghost world of adoption, paradoxically full of life, and because of access to birth records, a world that offers a much greater potential for materialisation. The paper avoids the traditional notions of ghosts as things to be shunned or as representatives of pathologies. Instead, it asks for respect for the “not-dead”/“not-past” of adoption and for family history researchers, a capacity to embrace the jumbled, the murky, and the disorganised. People everywhere are increasingly constructing their own family trees, with all the potential for pleasant surprise but also the shock that this might bring. Should genealogists overlook adoption’s ghosts then they overlook the opportunity to professionally map a rich and varied world of family knowledge and connections. The paper concludes with this observation coupled with a discussion of other associated ethical implications of family history work where adoption features

A Social Work ‘Academic-in-Residence’?

This paper outlines ideas in action relating to establishing closer connections and collaboration between a University Social Work team and a third sector children and families social work agency. It suggests that there is much scope for such cooperation and advances the notion, common elsewhere but not so in social work education and practice, of establishing within the agency an ‘academic-in-residence’. It is argued that this is a further development of knowledge exchange and capable of producing much benefit for agencies, faculty, practitioners and students.</p