Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine: A Reply to Joshua Searle

This is the final version. Available on open access from the Anabaptist Mennonite Network via the link in this recordThis article seeks to place the war against Ukraine in its wider global, political, and theological contexts. The paper demonstrates how Russia’s war against Ukraine is a theological problem, considers Joshua Searle's questions about ethics in this light, and places these questions in the wider pacifist versus just war debate. It argues that the notion of a just war, in this or any context, lacks both utility in political terms and faithfulness in theological terms

Playing the ‘Game’ of Transparency and Accountability: Non-elite Politics in Kyrgyzstan’s Natural Resource Governance

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis (Routledge) via the DOI in this record.This article demonstrates the role of non-elites in the struggle for transparency and accountability in Kyrgyzstan’s mining sector. Most existing accounts foreground elite strategies and political machines in the governance of post-Soviet societies. Drawing on recent anthropological work on post-Soviet politics and applying it critically to the literature on neopatrimonialism, this article sheds light on the adoption of political game strategies by community members (non-elites) to advance their interests and challenge elite dominance within the case study mining communities. This finding responds to recent calls to interrogate the activities of non-elites at the margins of neopatrimonial contexts. The article advances a research agenda on how practices by non-elites shape the multiple meanings and enactments of transparency and accountability by elites in natural resource governance. It also points to the need to explore how and why “communities” exert their “agency” in governing natural resources within post-Soviet contexts.United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology/Maastricht Graduate School of Governanc

Foreign Donations in the Higher Education Sector of the United States and the United Kingdom:Pathways for Reputation Laundering

This is the final version. Available on open access from the publisher via the DOI in this recordWe explore how the influx of foreign funding into the higher education sectors of the United States and United Kingdom has raised the challenge of “reputation laundering”—when foreign donors and individuals use donations to prestigious universities to boost their international public image and offset negative images or reported controversies back in their home country. We outline four pathways for reputation laundering—donations for academic programs/schools, naming rights, honorary degrees and board seats; and the offer of favorable admissions decisions—and examine the variety of policies, practices and safeguards that have been adopted by U.K. and U.S. universities in response. We present evidence, drawn from a survey of U.K. development officers, that university diligence procedures, which usually focus on compliance with the law, often are inadequate for filtering or deterring most types of reputation launderingGlobal Integrit

Seeing like the international community: how peacebuilding failed (and survived) in Tajikistan

Post-print version. 18 month embargo by the publisher. Article will be released April 2010.The international community claims transformative power over post-conflict spaces via the concept of peacebuilding. International actors discursively make space for themselves in settings such as the Central Asian state of Tajikistan which endured a civil war during the 1990s and has only seen an end to widespread political violence in recent years. With the work of James C. Scott, this paper challenges the notion that post-conflict spaces are merely the objects of international intervention. It reveals how, even in cases of apparent stability such as that of Tajikistan, international actors fail to achieve their ostensible goals for that place yet make space for themselves in that place. International peacebuilders may provide essential resources for the re-emergence of local forms of order yet these symbolic and material resources are inevitably re-interpreted and re-appropriated by local actors to serve purposes which may be the opposite of their aims. However, despite this ‘failure’ of peacebuilding it nevertheless survives as a discursive construction through highly subjective processes of monitoring and evaluation. So maintained, peacebuilding is a constitutive element of world order where the necessity of intervention for humanitarian, democratic and statebuilding ends goes unchallenged. This raises the question of what or where – in spatial terms – is the locus of international intervention: the local recipients of peacebuilding programmes (who are the ostensible targets) or ‘the International Community’ itself (whose space is re-inscribed as that of an imperfect but necessary regulator of world order)

Is academic freedom at risk from internationalisation? Results from a 2020 survey of UK social scientists

This is the final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this recordThe question of the form that academic freedom takes and how it can be maintained in the context of the internationalisation of universities has become prominent in the UK in recent years. Both governmental and societal voices have raised concerns about perceived threats; however, much of the existing evidence is scattered and anecdotal. In October 2020, we distributed a survey in order to assess these issues. In this paper we report three main findings. First, UK social scientists express high levels of concern across a number of dimensions, from the effects of funding on research, to teaching content, to freedom of expression, and risks created by the online environment. Second, these concerns are somewhat greater in Politics, IR and Area Studies, suggesting that those disciplines which are most international in their content report greater risk. Finally, there appears to be demand for greater support. A majority of respondents did not know if guidelines existed in their department, and state that academic freedom was discussed infrequently or not at all. This suggests that institutional guidance and professional discourse have not kept pace with heightened concern. We find majority support for new legislation and even stronger support for a code of conduct.Department for International Development (DFID

Measurement of viscous sound absorption at 50-150 kHz in a model turbid environment

The visco-thermal absorption of sound by suspended particulate matter can be reliably measured using a reverberation technique. This absorption may have an adverse effect on the performance of sonars operating at 50–300 kHz in coastal waters where suspensions are often present in significant concentrations. A series of experiments has been performed to study the viscous absorption by suspensions in the frequency range of 50–150 kHz. In the test volumes employed, the effect is small. It is therefore measured by taking the difference in reverberation times of a volume of water with and without particles. This greatly reduces the effect on the measurement of the other sources of absorption. Even so, it is necessary to design the experiment to characterize and minimize acoustic losses which occur at the surfaces of the container, the hydrophones, and their cables, and losses associated with bubbles and turbulence. These effects are discussed and results for particulate absorption for suspensions of spherical glass beads are presented and compared to theoretical predictions. Measured absorption agrees well with that predicted by theory for concentrations above 0.5 kg/m3 and up to 2.0 kg/m

The UK’s kleptocracy problem: How servicing post-Soviet elites weakens the rule of law

This pdf is of the printed version of the Chatham House report which was originally published in December 2021. In October 2022, the online version of the report was excised to remove all mentions of Mr Dmitri Leus, at his request. This excised version may be found on the Chatham House website via the link. The full and accurate version of the report as the authors intended is the one available here.The growth of London as a centre for financial and professional services coincided with the collapse of the USSR and the rise of post-Soviet kleptocracies in the 1990s. These states and their elites have since become a major source of clients for UK-based services firms and of investors in UK assets. In keeping with global standards, the UK has officially adopted a risk-based approach to anti-money laundering. However, failures of enforcement and implementation of the law – plus the exploitation of loopholes by professional enablers – have meant that little has been done in practice to prevent kleptocratic wealth and political agendas from entering Britain. Based on extensive research on the laundering of money and reputations by elites from the post-Soviet successor states, this paper details how the UK is ill-equipped to assess the risk of corruption from transnational kleptocracy, which has undermined the integrity of important domestic institutions and weakened the rule of law. It concludes by calling for the UK government to adopt a new approach to this problem focused on creating a hostile environment for the world’s kleptocrats

Beyond spheres of influence: the myth of the state and Russia’s seductive power in Kyrgyzstan

This article questions the analytical value of “spheres of influence” for understanding power and the state in the post-Soviet region and beyond, based on a critical deconstruction of the ontological and epistemological assumptions inherent in the concept. It proposes an alternative reading of power and the state, drawing on the concept of “seductive power” at a distance and Timothy Mitchell’s “state effect.” Rather than the concept of a sphere of influence, a highly politicized concept that conveys an ontology that flattens and divides space, essentializes the state, and relies on an intentionalist account of power, we need an analytical framework that can help us make sense of the multiple, varied spatialities and historical legacies that produce the state and power. I demonstrate this through an extended discussion of Russian power in Kyrgyzstan, a country often described as a Russian client state. Mobilizing recent re-conceptualizations of state and power in anthropology and political geography, I present an analysis of Russia’s seductive power in Kyrgyzstan and the way it contributes to producing Kyrgyz state-ness. I also show how Russia’s Great Power myth is itself evolving and conclude that the differentiated, relational production of space and power in either Kyrgyz or Russian myths of the state is not captured by a the concept of a return to spheres of influence

Numerical study of circulation on the inner Amazon Shelf

Author Posting. © Springer, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ocean Dynamics 58 (2008): 187-198, doi:10.1007/s10236-008-0139-4.We studied the circulation on the coastal domain of the Amazon Shelf by applying the hydrodynamic module of the Estuarine and Coastal Ocean Model and Sediment Transport - ECOMSED. The first barotropic experiment aimed to explain the major bathymetric effects on tides and those generated by anisotropy in sediment distribution. We analyzed the continental shelf response of barotropic tides under realistic bottom stress parametrization (Cd), considering sediment granulometry obtained from a faciologic map, where river mud deposits and reworked sediments areas are well distinguished, among others classes of sediments. Very low Cd values were set in the fluid mud regions off the Amapa coast (1.0 10-4 ), in contrast to values around 3:5 10-3 for coarser sediment regions off the Para coast. Three-dimensional experiments represented the Amazon River discharge and trade winds, combined to barotropic tide influences and induced vertical mixing. The quasi-resonant response of the Amazon Shelf to the M2 tide act on the local hydrodynamics by increasing tidal admittance, along with tidal forcing at the shelf break and extensive fluid mud regions. Harmonic analysis of modeled currents agreed well with analysis of the AMASSEDS observational data set. Tidal-induced vertical shear provided strong homogenization of threshold waters, which are subject to a kind of hydraulic control due to the topographic steepness. Ahead of the hydraulic jump, the low-salinity plume is disconnected from the bottom and acquires negative vorticity, turning southeastward. Tides act as a generator mechanism and topography, via hydraulic control, as a maintainer mechanism for the low-salinity frontal zone positioning. Tidally induced southeastward plume fate is overwhelmed by northwestward trade winds so that, along with background circulation, probably play the most important role on the plume fate and variability over the Amazon Shelf

Justice, power and informal settlements: Understanding the juridical view of property rights in Central Asia

The article examines how judges and lawyers struggle to legitimise and normalise private property rights against attempts by poor and migrant groups to politicise housing and social needs in Central Asia. It will discuss the juridical understanding of justice and equality in relation to property rights violations on the outskirts of major cities in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It will argue that the juridical system is central in construing property rights and obligations, and in so doing social inequalities are legitimised and naturalised in a neoliberalising post-Soviet space. The article uses the concepts of 'the moral economy' and 'the juridical field' to examine how judges and lawyers justify and normalise their ways of interpreting and ordering the social world