Militarising Mumbai? The ‘politics’ of response

This article focuses on how urban security has been governed in Mumbai in the aftermath of the 2008 terrorist attacks (26/11). The event was widely cited as a major turning point in the securitisation and militarisation of Indian cities. It also produced significant political upheaval, which in turn generated calls for a major institutional overhaul of the governmental architecture for handling terrorism. This article takes the political and policy repercussions of 26/11 as an intervention into critical debates about the (para-)militarisation of policing and the politics of urban security. Here I shift the focus from the disciplinary and divisive effects of policies towards an emphasis on their spectacular and theatrical dimensions. If we are to make sense of the ‘militarised’ focus of the policy response to 26/11, I argue, we need to take seriously its populist, aspirational qualities

Assessment of rural development programmes to enhance youth integration

In recent years concern about social exclusion processes has reached also rural areas. The rising unemployment and the limited opportunities for young people have turned the attention of policy analysis to this social group and to processes of social exclusion under these specific regional conditions. The results presented are drawn from the EU-project “Policies and young people in rural development” under the 4th Framework programme (FAIR6 CT-98-4171) where different aspects of economic and social integration/exclusion of young people in rural areas and their recognition in rural development programmes of the EU has been analysed. The paper focuses on the scope to enhance the aspect of young people integration in rural/regional programmes. To this end, it starts with a presentation of the policy background and its evaluation, particularly with regard to its rising priority over the last EU-reforms. It continues with the investigation of selected exemplary cases of policy measures and initiatives specifically addressing young people in rural development provided by the seven project partners study areas. The concluding part draws on evaluation studies on rural development programmes all over the European Union with regard to youth participation and explores the scope for future strengthening of respective activities and inclusion of young people concerns in rural development programmes. Experiences from this analysis suggests that with fundamental changes in the market structures and relations programmes targeted at specific rural areas cannot neglect the emerging interrelations to other areas. Hence a rural policy addressing the needs of young people has to address directly its insertion into the regional framework and its relation to regional policy. (Paper for conference theme "Socio-economic cohesion and regional/local development", thematic area %22Socio-economic exclusion")

"Doing Bedeutung" (Doing Meaning) - How children construct differences

Este texto se presentó como comunicación al II Congreso Internacional de Etnografía y Educación: Migraciones y Ciudadanías. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 5-8 Septiembre 2008.In a society structured by migration and globalisation difference and belonging (man/ woman, National/ Non-national) are decisive for one's life. From my theoretical point of view these belongings are no anthropologically constants or categories, on the contrary, they are produced in complicated social processes. In my doctoral - thesis I analyze this processes of the production of difference and belonging, referring to the idea of "Doing Difference" in a socialconstructivistic way, as well as the Cultural Studies. The focus lays on children and the institutional context of the Kindergarten in Germany. As the research follows a 'discovering- research-style' I don't focus on any specific difference at first, but only assume that in social practices differences are produced interactively. Which specific differences they are, stays open at first. Within this idea of ethnographic research I give relevance to the context and to the children's own importance. Understanding children and childhood as well as nothing natural and unspoiled, opens up the perspectives one can have on them and leads to the thesis that childhood can't be a place to go for to examine the world before it is determined by socially relevant practices of differentiation. In my paper I firstly do a short overview on my theoretical and empirical assumptions of the ethnographical children's-research I realize. Secondly I'll focus on one 'result' from the first research-phase. I'll show that one object of the interaction done by children is a process I'd like to describe with «Doing Bedeutung» (Doing meaning). After explaining the idea of the concept of "Doing Bedeutung" as a social practice and how it is related to "Doing Difference", I thirdly think about it as a rather general principle of the production of social reality by connecting it with Foucaults understanding of discourse. I'll finish by asking for possible consequences and challenges from my 'result' for the educational science and pedagogic

Learning from Israel? ‘26/11’ and the anti-politics of urban security governance

This article calls for a greater emphasis on issues of politics and anti-politics within critical debates about transnational security governance in the metropolis. While scholars have documented the growing popularity of policy ‘models’ and ‘best practices’ in policing and urban security planning, we know little about what makes these schemes attractive to the officials who enroll in them. I take the government of Maharashtra’s decision to ‘learn from Israel’ following the 2008 Mumbai attacks (26/11) as an invitation to re-evaluate the relationships among policymaking, politics, and depoliticization. Focusing on references to Israeli security know-how as a ‘best practice’ by Maharashtra state officials, I explore how an association with Israel was used to negotiate the conflicts and controversies that followed 26/11. The article has two aims: first, it addresses how transnational policy schemes work anti-politically within particular local contexts. Second, it locates counter-terrorism policy as a form of performative politics, which is generative of policy problems. In doing so, the article helps to reclaim the political contingency of policy responses to terroristic violence and addresses the agency of policy actors in the global South

Reconsidering the laboratory thesis: Palestine/Israel and the geopolitics of representation

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the notion of Palestine/Israel as a ‘laboratory’ for the production and export of advanced weapons, security knowhow and technology. Critics of Israeli wars and the ongoing colonization of Palestine use the laboratory metaphor to make sense of Israeli state policies and practices used in controlling Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and fighting wars but also to address how Israeli instruments of violence come to travel elsewhere. This article brings these discussions into sharper focus by examining how the concept of the laboratory is employed in making sense of Israel's perceived centrality in global patterns violence and militarism, here termed the laboratory thesis. The article argues that although the thesis develops powerful insights, it has analytical limitations. It further calls into question the thesis' polemical force, suggesting that critical references to Palestine/Israel as a laboratory reinforce misleading ideological tropes at the core of Israel's settler colonial project. The article takes these concerns as an opportunity to re-assemble the policing/security laboratory as a critical concept, in relation to Palestine/Israel, the global war on terror and beyond

Decomposition of Bayer process organics: Phenolates, polyalcohols, and additional carboxylates

The degradation of nineteen low-molecular-weight phenolates, polyalcohols and selected aliphatic and aromatic carboxylates of relevance to the Bayer process has been studied in 6 mol kg-1 NaOH(aq) at 90 °C for up to 36 days, and (for some species) at 180 °C for up to 12 days, using HPLC and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Aliphatic polyalcohols degraded readily at 90 °C to lactate, oxalate, acetate, and formate. As observed previously, aliphatic carboxylates with hydroxyl groups also degraded readily at 90 °C but there is evidence that the position of the hydroxyl group may be important. The observed degradation products for most, but not all, of these species can be explained in terms of well-known organic reaction mechanisms. Phenolate and 5-hydroxyisophthalate were stable at 180 °C but other phenolic species degraded partially at 90 °C. However, the reaction products could not be identified and no trends in reactivity were discernible. Consistent with previous studies both aliphatic and aromatic carboxylates without hydroxyl groups were generally stable in NaOH(aq) even at 180 °C

TENTATIVE SECURITIES: 26/11, ISRAEL AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY

This dissertation examines the global mobility of security knowhow in relation to the management of terrorism in megacities. Specifically, it offers three insights. First, it shows how historical events are performed as sites in need of transnational policy intervention. Second, it enables an understanding of how and why the sourcing of policy ‘models’ actually takes place. Third, it sheds light on how mobile policy schemes travel geographically and are put to work in particular contexts. In doing so, it elaborates on the conditions under which policies move geographically but also addresses the kinds of constraints and contradictions they face. The dissertation develops two closely related theses. The first has to do with how policy models are constructed as mobile objects while the second highlights the kinds of pressures and conflicts that such models are used to resolve. Regarding the construction of policy models, Israel’s status as a global policy exemplar should not be understood as a closed professional consensus or incontrovertible fact that exists independently ‘out there’. Rather it is a deeply ideological construct, emerging from processes of geographic interaction. Israel’s claim to expertise in security knowledge needs to be constantly re- articulated. Indeed, the Israeli involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks (26/11) reveals a basic tension. On the one hand, the Israeli officials’ prerogatives to comment on the handling of 26/11 reflects Israel’s dominant position on matters of counter-terrorism and homeland security (HLS). On the other hand, the extensive efforts of Israeli officials to situate Israeli security expertise as a ‘solution’ also reveals that the relationship between 26/11 and the ‘Israeli experience’ of fighting terrorism was not, in fact, obvious or natural. This link had to be actively made. Indeed, the event’s status as a failure of governance in need of urgent policy intervention emerged through Israeli criticisms of Indian security authorities and comparisons to their own alleged success in managing live terror attacks. The second component of my thesis is that the Mumbai authorities’ decision to take up Israeli security ‘solutions’ must be situated in relation to local public pressures and conflicts to which 26/11 gave rise. The reason why Maharashtra politicians decided to learn from Israel in 2009 was not because they suddenly woke up to the reality of global terrorism and realized that ‘securing’ Mumbai against this threat would require a set of technical skills that they lacked. Rather it was because they believed that an association with Israel would be helpful in managing public dissent and restoring their authority to govern. What ‘learning from Israel’ offered was not a set of concrete policy prescriptions for how to manage terrorism but rather an image of progress and success

Regionale Ungleichheit?

In den letzten Jahren und Jahrzehnten unterlag die Bereitstellung von sozialer und wirt-schaftlicher Infrastruktur einem tiefgreifenden Wandel. Eine flächendeckende Grundver-sorgung der Bevölkerung mit sozialer und wirtschaftlicher Infrastruktur ist vor allem in ländlichen, peripheren Regionen immer weniger sichergestellt. Die vorliegende Untersu-chung geht der Frage nach, ob die dynamische Entwicklung der sozialen und wirtschaftli-chen Infrastruktur zu regionaler Ungleichheit führt. Diese Fragestellung wird im Rahmen einer Analyse der Sekundärdaten der relevanten Infrastrukturbereiche in Österreich (Bil-dung, außerfamiliäre Kinderbetreuung, Gesundheit, Pflege- und Altenbetreuung, Nahver-sorgung durch Einzelhandel, Post und Öffentlicher Verkehr) sowie anhand von zwei Ge-meinde-Fallstudien in der Obersteiermark untersucht. Zwei Hypothesen stehen dabei im Vordergrund: (1) Durch den Rückbau von Infrastruktureinrichtungen verringern sich die Teilhabechancen der Bevölkerung an gesellschaftlich relevanten Institutionen, dies kann zu regionaler Ungleichheit führen. (2) Eine Verbesserung der infrastrukturellen Versor-gung führt zu einem lebenswerteren ländlichen Raum. Der theoretische Teil präsentiert die für diese Arbeit relevanten Konzepte über den ländli-chen Raum, soziale und wirtschaftliche Infrastruktur und regionale Ungleichheit. Darüber hinaus werden Leitbilder regionaler Ungleichheit vorgestellt, die im Hinblick auf eine Weiterentwicklung sozialer und wirtschaftlicher Infrastruktur relevant sind oder werden können. Obwohl in manchen Bereichen das Angebot quantitativ und/oder qualitativ auf-gewertet wurde (insbesondere Mobile Dienste, Kinderbetreuungseinrichtungen) und sich das Bild in den sieben untersuchten Infrastrukturbereichen sehr differenziert darstellt, wird sowohl in der Sekundäranalyse als auch in den Fallstudien deutlich, dass sich der Zugang in vielen Infrastrukturbereichen in ländlichen peripheren Regionen schwieriger gestaltet (insbesondere Öffentlicher Verkehr, Kinderbetreuungseinrichtungen, Postdiens-te, Einzelhandel, Bildung), und dies zur Entstehung regionaler Ungleichheit führt. Auf der anderen Seite hat Infrastruktur neben der Versorgungsfunktion auch eine ökono-mische, soziale sowie eine „Entschleunigungs“Funktion. Um Infrastruktureinrichtungen trotz sinkender EinwohnerInnenzahlen und Finanznot vieler ländlicher Gemeinden auf-recht zu erhalten, bedarf es einer differenzierten räumlichen Entwicklung, die auf die spe-zifischen Infrastrukturbedürfnisse der Bevölkerung Rücksicht nimmt und die sozialen Aspekte der Infrastruktur in zukünftige infrastrukturelle Entscheidungen einbezieht