712 research outputs found
First impressions and perceived roles: Palestinian perceptions on foreign aid
This paper summarizes some results of a wider research on foreign aid that was conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2010. It seeks to describe the impressions and feelings of Palestinian aid beneficiaries as well as the roles and functions they attached to foreign aid. To capture and measure local perceptions on Western assistance a series of individual in depth interviews and few focus group interviews were conducted in the Palestinian territories. The interview transcripts were processed by content analysis. As research results show â from the perspective of aid beneficiaries â foreign aid is more related to human dignity than to any economic development. All this implies that frustration with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict inevitably embraces the donor policies and practices too
Understanding Terrorist Organizations with a Dynamic Model
Terrorist organizations change over time because of processes such as
recruitment and training as well as counter-terrorism (CT) measures, but the
effects of these processes are typically studied qualitatively and in
separation from each other. Seeking a more quantitative and integrated
understanding, we constructed a simple dynamic model where equations describe
how these processes change an organization's membership. Analysis of the model
yields a number of intuitive as well as novel findings. Most importantly it
becomes possible to predict whether counter-terrorism measures would be
sufficient to defeat the organization. Furthermore, we can prove in general
that an organization would collapse if its strength and its pool of foot
soldiers decline simultaneously. In contrast, a simultaneous decline in its
strength and its pool of leaders is often insufficient and short-termed. These
results and other like them demonstrate the great potential of dynamic models
for informing terrorism scholarship and counter-terrorism policy making.Comment: To appear as Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science v2:
vectorized 4 figures, fixed two typos, more detailed bibliograph
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7/7: A reflexive re-evaluation of journalistic practice
The suicide bombings of 7 July 2005 remain the most serious terror attacks in the United Kingdom to date in the so-called âwar on terrorâ. Much has been published on the war on terror but few journalists have reflected on their practice post 9/11 and none on their domestic coverage of the 7/7 attacks. This article is written by a journalist who covered the London bombings for a UK national newspaper and more recently is a practitioner-academic. Using academic texts focusing on the domestic reporting of the war on terror as stimuli for scholarly reflection, this article reviews the authorâs own coverage using reflexive practice and content analysis. This article places 7/7 in the continuum of reporting subsequent to 11 September 2001 (9/11) and issues discussed. Some 63 authored articles were considered from the period. Scholarly texts have proposed a range of concepts to analyse coverage from including political ritual, trauma, national wound and hegemony. This article concludes by noting that while many academic texts see coverage of terrorism as an elite discourse, dominated by political economy drivers and responding to events in a homogeneous reactivity, in practice, news organisations can have complex responses and journalists, agency in their coverage of major terrorism events
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The ambiguity of human ashes: exploring encounters with cremated remains in the Netherlands
This article explores cremation and disposal practices in the Netherlands, focusing on the attitudes and experiences of bereaved Dutch people in relation to cremated remains. In academic and professional narratives, human ashes are commonly described as âimportant,â as âsacred,â and as a vehicle to continue intense and physical relationships with the dead. Based on quantitative and qualitative data this article illustrates the ambiguity of such relationships. It highlights the diverse experiences, unexpected challenges, and moral obligations that can be evoked by the deceasedâs ashes, where the latter are seen as embedded in material practices and entangled in social relationships
Editors' introduction: neoliberalism and/as terror
The articles in this special issue are drawn from papers presented at a conference entitled âNeoliberalism and/as Terrorâ, held at the Nottingham Conference Centre at Nottingham Trent University by the Critical Terrorism Studies BISA Working Group (CSTWG) on 15-16 September 2014. The conference was supported by both a BISA workshop grant and supplementary funds from Nottingham Trent Universityâs Politics and International Relations Department and the Critical Studies on Terrorism journal. Papers presented at the conference aimed to extend research into the diverse linkages between neoliberalism and terrorism, including but extending beyond the contextualisation of pre-emptive counterterrorism technologies and privatised securities within relevant economic and ideological contexts. Thus, the conference sought also to stimulate research into the ways that neoliberalism could itself be understood as terrorism, asking - amongst other questions - whether populations are themselves terrorised by neoliberal policy. The articles presented in this special issue reflect the conference aims in bringing together research on the neoliberalisation of counterterrorism and on the terror of neoliberalism
The mimetic politics of lone-wolf terrorism
Written at a time of crisis in the project of social and political modernity, Fyodor Dostoevskyâs 1864 novel Notes from Underground offers an intriguing parallel for the twenty-first century lone-wolf; it portrays an abject, outcast, spiteful unnamed anti-hero boiling with rage, bitter with resentment and on the verge of radicalisation. A Girardian reading of the poetic truths contained in Dostoevskyâs work is able to provide important keys to explain the contemporary transformation from âfourth-waveâ religious terrorism to âfifth-waveâ lone-wolf terrorism. Such a reading argues that it is mimetic rivalry â rather than much-trumpeted forms of religious violence or cultural differences â that fuels the triangular relation between governments, terrorists and civilian victims at heart of terrorist acts. This approach is further able to blend social inquiry with an account of the individual, in fact anthropological, conditions of lone-wolf terrorism by tracing the globalisation of resentment and the individualisation of violence to the hyper-mimeticism characterising the globalisation of late modernity. Finally, a mimetic reading of âfifth-waveâ terrorism accounts for the turbulence of a global politics in which victimhood and scapegoating no longer have the ability to stabilise social order and warns against a future where violence proliferates and escalates unchecked
Violence and creation: the recovery of the body in the work of Elaine Scarry
Elaine Scarryâs book The Body in Pain justly deserves it place as one the pivotal works that opened up the field of âbody studiesâ. The text needs to be evaluated in the retrospective terms of the field it established, and also with respect to the changing status of both âtortureâ and âwarâ in contemporary state politics. Scarryâs analysis of the relationship between making and unmaking, tools and weapons, under-estimates the reversibility and the situated relational character of these processes and artefacts. The changing nature of modern conflict, and the rising concern with global terrorism rather than âconventionalâ and ânuclearâ war, makes the âreferential instabilityâ of the body difficult to recuperate in post-conflict discourse. At the same, the normalisation of the logic of torture in the contemporary governance of the bodies of the most vulnerable in society makes Scarryâs analysis all the more prescient
Memorials to the victims of Nazism: the impact on tourists in Berlin
This qualitative study explores tourist responses to memorials to the victims of Nazism in Berlin and the impact they have on the tourist experience. The findings are located in the field of study known as dark tourism, of which visiting memorials is a part. The analysis shows that tourists increased their knowledge of the crimes committed by the Nazis, thus fulfilling the educational function of memorials. Tourists were also overwhelmed by their experience; they attested to feelings of sadness, shock, anger, despair and incomprehension. These feelings made it hard for them to resume the role of tourist after their exposure to a memorial. There was acknowledgement of the extent of commemoration practised in Germany
TERF Wars: Introduction
No abstract available
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