A History of Nonviolence: Insecurity and the Normative Power of the Imagined in Costa Rica

Crime, violence, and insecurity are among the most important social topics in contemporary Costa Rica. These three issues play a central role in the media, politics, and everyday life, and the impression has emerged that security has changed for the worse and that society is now threatened permanently. However, crime statistics do not support this perception. The paper thus asks why violence and crime generate such huge fear in society. The thesis is that the Costa Rican national identity—with Costa Rica constructed as a nonviolent nation— impedes a realistic discussion about the phenomena and their causes, and simultaneously provides a platform for sensationalism and the social construction of fear.Costa Rica, violence, crime, national identity, public discourse

Discourses on violence in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua: Social Perceptions in Everyday Life

Huhn S. Discourses on violence in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua: Social Perceptions in Everyday Life. GIGA Working Papers. Vol 81. Hamburg: GIGA; 2008.Central America has the reputation of being a violent region with high crime rates, youth gangs, drug traffic, and ubiquitous insecurity. Politicians, the media, and social scientists in and outside the region often claim that the societies are in complete agreement with their judgment of the situation and that all society members are calling for law and order and social segregation. Focusing on Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, the paper analyzes the social perception of violence and crime. On the basis of essays written by secondary school students and interviews with citizens from all walks of life in the three countries, the paper points out how elite arguments on violence and crime are translated into everyday life, and what society members suggest be done to deal with these problems. The sources prove that there are noticeable hegemonic discourses on violence and crime in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Simultaneously, a majority of the respondents call for social and integrative solutions rather than the so-called “iron fist.” The repressive trend in Central American policies therefore does not necessarily receive the presumed affirmation asserted by many authorities on and in the region

Negotiating Resettlement in Venezuela after World War II: An Exploration

After the end of World War II, millions of people were uprooted all over Europe. After realizing that many of those people did not want to return to their former places of origin, the United Nations founded the International Refugee Organization (IRO) to repatriate those displaced persons (DPs) who wanted to return home and to resettle refugees who did not in other countries. Venezuela was neither actively involved in World War II nor (at that time) in the approaching Cold War. Nevertheless, this "third world" country became involved both in the political discussion about the international resettlement program and as the receiving country of 17,000 DPs. In this context, the paper asks who was resettled in Venezuela and in what way those people were able to influence and negotiate their resettlement in Venezuela. The paper thus focusses on the agency of DPs and the IRO's decision-making processes in their European field offices

A History of Non-Violence: Insecurity and the Normative Power of the Imagined in Costa Rica

Huhn S. A History of Non-Violence: Insecurity and the Normative Power of the Imagined in Costa Rica. GIGA Working Papers. Vol 84. Hamburg: GIGA; 2008.Crime, violence, and insecurity are among the most important social topics in contemporary Costa Rica. These three issues play a central role in the media, politics, and everyday life, and the impression has emerged that security has changed for the worse and that society is now threatened permanently. However, crime statistics do not support this perception. The paper thus asks why violence and crime generate such huge fear in society. The thesis is that the Costa Rican national identity—with Costa Rica constructed as a nonviolent nation— impedes a realistic discussion about the phenomena and their causes, and simultaneously provides a platform for sensationalism and the social construction of fear

The Culture of Fear and Control in Costa Rica (I): Crime Statistics and Law Enforcement

The Costa Rican talk of crime is fundamentally based on the assumption that crime rates have increased significantly in recent years and that there is today a vast and alarming amount of crime. On the basis of this assumption, fear of crime, the call for the “iron fist,” and drastic law enforcement actions are continually increasing. While crime statistics are the logical basis for the hypothesis on the far-reaching extent of delinquency, they are used in a problematic way in the talk of crime. In this paper I discuss Costa Rican crime statis-tics, their development, and their utilization in the talk of crime against the background of criminological theory. The theses of the paper are that a) the informative value of crime statistics regarding Costa Rican reality is far more questionable than the common utiliza-tion of them implies and b) when they are used as argumentation, these crime statistics do not provide evidence of the oft-proclaimed rising crime wave.Costa Rica, violence, crime, social order, crime statistics, public discourse

Die marode Musterdemokratie Costa Rica

"Fast unbemerkt von der Weltöffentlichkeit wurde im lateinamerikanischen Superwahljahr auch in Costa Rica ein neuer Präsident gewählt. Am 5. Februar siegte der Expräsident und Friedensnobelpreisträger Óscar Arias Sánchez (Partido Liberación Nacional, PLN) mit einer Differenz von nur 1,1% der Stimmen vor Ottón Solís von der Mitte- Links-Partei Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC). Die neue Regierung, die am 8. Mai die Amtsgeschäfte übernimmt, verfügt im Parlament über keine Mehrheit. Das Wahlergebnis beinhaltet eine klare Kritik der Bevölkerung an der politischen Elite des Landes. Die etablierten politischen Parteien handeln seit Jahren gegen die Bedürfnisse der Bevölkerung. Im Wahlergebnis spiegeln sich zentrale politische und soziale Krisen wider. Das traditionelle Zweiparteiensystem des Landes, das seit 1948 die Politik bestimmte, ist mit der Wahlniederlage der christlich-sozialen Partei und dem Aufstieg des PAC am Ende. Die Bevölkerung hat vor dem Hintergrund schwerwiegender Korruptionsskandale das Vertrauen in die alteingesessene politische Elite verloren. Das überraschend gute Ergebnis des erst vor fünf Jahren gegründeten PAC verdeutlicht die Stärke der wachsenden sozialen Protestbewegung gegen die Privatisierungen und den Freihandel. Arias siegte als charismatischer Spitzenkandidat, nicht als Vertreter eines politischen Programms. Dies könnte sich zum wunden Punkt einer Regierung entwickeln, die ohne Parlamentsmehrheit und gegen einen großen Teil der Bevölkerung regieren muss." (Autorenreferat

Zentralamerika: Sozialer Konflikt um CAFTA und seine Folgen

"Manchmal siegt Goliath doch: Am 7. Oktober hat sich in Costa Rica die Mehrheit in einem Referendum für den Beitritt des Landes zum Freihandelsabkommen zwischen den USA, den zentralamerikanischen Staaten und der Dominikanischen Republik ausgesprochen. Knapp unterlagen die CAFTA-Kritiker der gut geölten und finanzstarken Maschinerie der Befürworter. Der Ablauf der Volksabstimmung war nicht vorbildlich, aber exemplarisch für die Auseinandersetzung in ganz Zentralamerika. In allen anderen Mitgliedsstaaten ist das Abkommen bereits in Kraft getreten. Die Ratifizierungen des Abkommens waren in der gesamten Region von starken sozialen Protesten begleitet. Um die massiven Widerstände verstehen zu können, müssen sowohl die Inhalte des Freihandelsabkommens und die Konsequenzen ihrer Umsetzung als auch die Forderungen und Befürchtungen der Bevölkerungen in den einzelnen Ländern differenzierter betrachtet werden. Das Abkommen - das weit über einen klassischen Freihandelsvertrag hinausgeht - schadet den sozial schwächsten Menschen in Zentralamerika und vergrößert die soziale Ungleichheit. CAFTA hat jenseits der erwarteten, aber noch wenig sichtbaren positiven Effekte auf den regionalen Handel unmittelbare negative soziale Folgen in allen zentralamerikanischen Staaten. Das Abkommen stellt wirtschaftliche Interessen hemmungslos über nationales Recht und soziale Fragen. Der Konflikt um das Abkommen hat die sozialen Bewegungen gestärkt und vereint und die Bevölkerung für das Regierungshandeln sensibilisiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund können die sozialen Bewegungen in Zukunft eine größere Rolle in der Politik Zentralamerikas spielen. Ende Oktober 2007 haben die Verhandlungen über das Assoziierungs- und Freihandelsabkommen zwischen Zentralamerika und der Europäischen Union (EU) begonnen. Transparenz und die Beteiligung der Zivilgesellschaft sind wichtige Voraussetzungen für eine erfolgreiche Kooperation." (Autorenreferat

Reconstruction of retreating mass wasting in response to progressive slope steepening of the northeastern Gretan margin, eastern Mediterranean

In this study we aim on a reconstruction of mechanisms and kinematics of slope-failure and mass-movement processes along the northeastern slope of Crete in the Hellenic forearc, eastern Mediterranean. Here, subsidence of the forearc basin and the uplift of the island of Crete cause ongoing steepening of the slope in-between. The high level of neotectonic activity in this region is expected to exert a key role in slope-failure development. Newly acquired reflection seismic data from the upper slope region reveal an intact sediment cover while the lower slope is devoid of both intact strata and mass-transport deposits (MTDs). In a mid-slope position, however, we found evidence for a ∼ 4-km³-sized landslide complex that comprises several MTDs from translational transport of coherent sediment bodies over short distances. Morphometric analysis of these MTDs and their source scars indicates that this part of the northeast Cretan slope can be characterized as a cohesive slope. Furthermore, we reconstruct retrogressive development for this complex and determine a critical slope angle for both pre-conditioning of failure and subsequent landslide deposition near source scars. Consequently, data imply that the investigated shallower slope is stable due to low angles in the order of 3°, whereas 5°-inclined mid-slope portions favour both slope destabilization and landslide deposition. The failed mid-slope parts are dominated by sediment truncations from faults almost correlating with the orientation of head- and sidewalls of scars. We suggest that cohesive landslides and MTDs are generated and preserved, respectively, in such critical slope regions. If once generated, cohesive landslides reach the lower slope further downslope that exceeds the threshold gradient for MTD deposition (∼ 5°), they are transported all the way down to the foot of the slope and disintegrate to mass flows. From these observations we suggest that the mass-wasting history of the investigated Cretan slope area over a longer period of time is characterized by repeated sediment erosion and transport into the deeper Cretan Sea basin. The relocation of the critical slope portion in upslope direction and therefore recurrence of mass-wasting events is thereby likely controlled by the progressive steepening of the slope. This mechanism and restriction of sediment failure to narrow, critically-inclined and relocating slope portions likely explains how such an active margin setting can exhibit only scarce findings of MTDs on the slope despite an expected, extensive and widespread mass wasting