Why Congo Persists: Sovereignty, Globalization and the Violent Reproduction of a Weak State

Wherever one looks, many elements conspire to suggest that the Democratic Republic of Congo should have collapsed some time ago under the multiple assaults of its own inadequacies as a state, the extreme heterogeneity and polarization of its populations, and the dislocations of globalization and foreign occupation. Yet, Congo has gone on defying such expectations and has continued to display a stunning propensity for resilience. This paper tries to explain why Congo persists amid these overwhelming structural obstacles. It focuses particularly on the more recent period when state weakness, foreign invasions, the exploitation of its natural resources by transnational and informal networks, and the multiplicity of domestic rebellions linked to foreign interests have not managed to dent, however slightly, the generalized support that exists for the reproduction of the Congolese state among its elites and regular citizens, foreign political and economic interests, and the international community at large. Observing that, in many parts of Congo, local grievances against the state and the greed of political elites have been magnified by the circumstances of post -Cold War Africa, it takes as paradoxical the continued broadly unchallenged existence of Congo

Les concepts de territorialisation et de ritournelle pour appréhender la perte de corps commun dans la psychose

peer reviewe

Riley Englebert: Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio

The portfolio of Riley Englebert\u27s senior art exhibition project.https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/artportfolios/1076/thumbnail.jp

A new understanding of psychopathy: The contribution of phenomenological psychopathology

peer reviewedThe objective of this study is to present a theoretical paper about a clinical issue. Our aim is to propose some clinical and semiological considerations for a psychopathological conception of psychopathy. We will discuss several major theoretical works dedicated to this nosographic entity (mainly those of Schneider, Cleckley and Hare). We will also examine a significant issue raised by Cooke et al., namely whether psychopathic functioning is consistently related to antisocial behavior. This theoretical essay is informed by clinical situations (involving psychopaths who were interviewed in prison or in forensic centers). The method applied a phenomenological psychopathology analysis to the clinical material. We first compare Binswanger’s conception of mania with psychopathic functioning. Patients’ behavior is similar but there is a difference related to the dialectic between the ego and the alter ego. A patient with mania has a fundamental crisis of the ego, which a psychopath does not have. A second finding of our investigations concerns emotions and the adaptive dimension of the psychopathic disorder. An epistemological discussion of the concept of emotions reveals that psychopaths are competent in the management of emotional stimuli, which confers a psychological advantage upon them

Conically singular Cayley submanifolds I: Deformations

This is the first in a series of three papers working towards constructing fibrations of compact Spin(7) manifolds by Cayley submanifolds. In this paper we describe the deformation theory of conically singular and asymptotically conical Cayley submanifolds.Comment: 47 page

Compliance and defiance to national integration in Barotseland and Casamance

'Das Modell der Elitenfusion wird im allgemeinen zur Erklärung des postkolonialen 'nation-building' herangezogen. Warum sind aber einige regionale Eliten an der Peripherie bereit, dieses Projekt mitzutragen, während andere nach Autonomie oder Sezession streben? Die Frage wird anhand eines Vergleichs zwischen Barotseland in Sambia und der Casamance in Senegal untersucht. Hier wird die These vertreten, dass Eliten in beiden Fällen um Zugang zu den lokalen 'benefits' des souveränen Staates ringen. So lange sie den post-kolonialen Staat für ihre 'lokalen' Kämpfe um politische Herrschaft und Ressourcen erfolgreich nutzen können, stellen regionale Eliten den Zentralstaat nicht in Frage, selbst wenn sie an den distributiven Mechanismen der Elitenfusion auf der nationalen Ebene nicht partizipieren.' (Autorenreferat)'What determines whether peripheral regions in Africa comply with the national integration project? Why do some regional elites, outside the core 'fusion of elites', willingly partake in the state while others promote separate paths for their communities? This paper suggests some answers, based on a comparison between Barotseland - where the Lozi leadership has chosen not to challenge the Zambian project - and Casamance - where local particularism has resulted in active separatist defiance towards the Senegalese state among many Diola elites. It argues that the contrast between the two regions is more apparent than real, and that elites in both cases strive for access to the local benefits of sovereign statehood. Provided they can use the post-colonial state in their local strategies of domination and access to resources, regional elites are unlikely to challenge it, even if they are kept at a distance from resource-sharing arrangements at the national level. A broader model of African state formation, including the benefits of sovereignty for local elites, is needed to make sense of the resilience of African states and of the compliance of loser groups with their authority.' (author's abstract)

An OO interpretation of graphs as meta-CASE's meta-meta-model

AbstractThis paper presents the meta-meta-model of a meta-CASE that is largely based on graphs. Nevertheless, the graph aspects have been hidden behind an extended object-oriented model that makes easier the modeling task: the generalization of meta-models into meta-classes as well as the possibility to edit the inheritance relationships at the instance level makes this approach both simple and expressive