Network Thinking in Peace and Conflict Studies

Developments in mathematics and social theory and in techniques of communication and computation have brought network analysis to a state where it can be practically applied over a broad spectrum. Surprisingly, this mode of analysis has not been adopted by practitioners and scholars of peace and conflict studies to the extent that it ought to be. Examples of types of analysis that could have important applications are given, using network concepts such centrality, structural equivalence, and regular equivalence

Transformative sensemaking: Development in Whose Image? Keyan Tomaselli and the semiotics of visual representation

The defining and distinguishing feature of homo sapiens is its ability to make sense of the world, i.e. to use its intellect to understand and change both itself and the world of which it is an integral part. It is against this backdrop that this essay reviews Tomaselli's 1996 text, Appropriating Images: The Semiotics of Visual Representation/ by summarizing his key perspectives, clarifying his major operational concepts and citing particular portions from his work in support of specific perspectives on sense-making. Subsequently, this essay employs his techniques of sense-making to interrogate the notion of "development". This exercise examines and confirms two interrelated hypotheses: first, a semiotic analysis of the privileged notion of "development" demonstrates its metaphysical/ ideological, and thus limiting, nature especially vis-a-vis the marginalized, excluded, and the collective other, the so-called Developing Countries. Second, the interrogative nature of semiotics allows for an alternative reading and application of human potential or skills in the quest of a more humane social and global order, highlighting thereby the transformative implications of a reflexive epistemology.Web of Scienc

Capital and the Congo

Describes ways in which the Congo Economy was completely embedded within the supranational system. Shows how the firm, Societe General de Belgique, cam to control a much larger segment of Congo industry than their risk, in terms of actual capital investment, warranted (p.368). In consequence, this Belgian company is in a stronger position than its investment warrants in the supranational system of mining enterprises that involves such giants as Tanganyika Concessions, Rhodesian Selection Trust, De Beers Consolidated Mines, Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, and the British South Africa company (p. 368)

Economies in Bondage: An Essay on the Mining Industry in Africa

Explains how mining companies are organized in a network of overlapping groups so that even though a company may compete directly with another at one level, their higher-level supranational organization emphasizes their common interests (p. 19). African states were constrained to use Western advisors whose counsel was likely to be limited to the purely technical (in either law, or economics, or engineering -- and conceived in the context of status quo, whereas the crucial problems are surely political, so that the context of African decision-making should be oriented toward a future world system quite different from today\u27s (p. 19)

Alvin Wolfe

Alvin Wolfe discusses his twenty-nine years with the University of South Florida\u27s Anthropology Department. Topics include the beginning of the department\u27s Master\u27s and PhD. Programs, and careers in anthropology

Tanzania-Zambia Railway: Escape Route from Neocolonial Control?

Case histories describes the joint attempt of Tanzania and Zambia to escape from the supranational network that controlled southern Africa, by expanding links across the Indian Ocean by building a railroad that would give Central Africa a way to export minerals outside the control of the southern African system. Author warned the extraction and processing of ores is, in all circumstances, an interdependent part of a larger scale world industrial system (p. 102)

Supranational Networks: States and Firms - Expanded Version

Deals with question: Why have so few scholars recognized the supranational system as something that is truly above the level of the state? Argues that my anthropological colleagues are, like others, bound by our own culture, traditions and narratives to such an extent that they are unable to study these pehnomena with the same objectivity and relativism with which they study the institutions of cultural systems with which they are less familiar. See especially the section on Difficulties of Thinking Anew (pp 3-5)