Country's Civil War Research Articles

Interpreting Sacred Ground: The Rhetoric of National Civil War Parks and Battlefields by J. Christian Spielvogel (review)

Reviewed by: Interpreting Sacred Ground: The Rhetoric of National Civil War Parks and Battlefields by J. Christian Spielvogel Dwight T. Pitcaithley (bio) Interpreting Sacred Ground: The Rhetoric of National Civil War Parks and Battlefields. By J. Christian Spielvogel. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013. Pp. 190. Cloth, $34.95.) Interpreting civil wars is always tricky business. The problems are compounded when the federal government (one of the participants in civil wars) attempts the explanation. So it is for all civil wars, so it has been for this country's civil war. The Department of War was the first to try its hand at interpreting the five national battlefield parks created by Congress during the 1890s; then, when those lands were transferred to the National Park Service (NPS) in 1933, that federal agency became responsible for presenting the nation's killings fields to the visiting public. Aware that a southern public might be sensitive to the idea of the Confederacy being portrayed by the victorious national government, the National Park Service quickly entered into an arrangement whereby all interpretive media in Virginia would be reviewed for appropriate content by the state historian and by none other than Douglas Southall Freeman. Navigating the tortuous waters of Civil War interpretation continues to challenge both the federal government and the interested public. [End Page 141] In Interpreting Sacred Ground, J. Christian Spielvogel sets out to examine how the National Park Service has negotiated the war's cultural memory and how its efforts have "contributed to and continue to shape the broader cultural struggle for interpretive dominance of the war's legacy" (5). A professor of communication, Spielvogel analyzes NPS interpretation along two theoretical axes. The first asks the question: Does park interpretation reflect the traditional "reconciliationist" interpretation developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or does it present the war through a mid- to late twentieth-century "emancipationist" lens? (Spielvogel forth-rightly credits David Blight as the originator of these terms.) After examining exhibits at Harpers Ferry's Virginius Island, John Brown's Fort, and John Brown Museum, he concludes that through the recent inclusion of a large amount of information on slavery, the park has gone a long way in introducing an emancipationist memory of the war that balances and even overshadows the older exhibits, which tended to be more descriptive of the built environment. The newer exhibits make Harpers Ferry a more "stimulating and provocative place" (81), according to Spielvogel, although he correctly observes that the concluding exhibits in the John Brown Museum "leave visitors with the impression that racial inequality is a thing of the past" (82). The other line of inquiry asks whether the National Park Service leans toward a military "heroic masculine" view or a "savage" perspective as it explains battles and war to the public. For the answer to this question, Spielvogel analyzes interpretive messages at Gettysburg National Military Park and Cold Harbor, a unit of Richmond National Battlefield Park. Not surprisingly, given the eight decades that the NPS has been interpreting the Civil War, Spielvogel finds interpretive evidence of the military heroism/courage trope as well as the presentation of savage interpretations of the battle. In general, he determines that reconciliationist/heroic interpretations of the battle reside in older exhibits and that emancipationist/savage interpretations are present in more recent exhibits and interpretive panels. This generalization is speculative, however, because the age of the interpretive elements is not consistently stated. Ultimately, Spielvogel concludes that the presence of both reconciliationist and emancipationist interpretive traditions in a battlefield park assists visitors in their attempt to understand the battle and its implications. He questions, however, given the power and longevity of the former, whether the emancipationist memory will ever become the dominant narrative of the war's memory. He also draws attention to the issue of visitor perception of competing "countermemories." With what message does [End Page 142] the visitor leave the battlefield when opposing traditions are presented? Spielvogel argues that different narratives enable battlefields to become "sites of contested public memory" that encourage visitors to think deeply about the war, its complexity and its savagery, rather than passively accept a monochrome version of the past (151). One...

Counterinsurgency Ecotourism in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve

Through analysis of a Guatemalan ecotourism project, this paper examines how tourism development is driving the militarization of conservation through a modality of violence I identify as counterinsurgency ecotourism. I look at four manifestations of counterinsurgency ecotourism: the repurposing of the army to enforce conservation law; the creation of an environmental ‘predator’ discourse; the eviction of peasants from protected areas; and the construction of military outposts. These practices illustrate that ecotourism development has become a means by which the Guatemalan state is militarizing conservation spaces in ways that revive and repurpose tactics of counterinsurgency warfare from the country's civil war (1960–96). Furthermore, this militarized approach to ecotourism development obscures the structural production of poverty, insecurity, and deforestation in northern Guatemala and undermines environmental conservation and social justice efforts. The counterinsurgency ecotourism practices identified in Guatemala resonate with many other conservation and ecotourism spaces found across the world, such as UNESCO Biospheres, as well places across the Global South with histories of counterinsurgency warfare.

Confronting Africa's Sobels

ABSTRACT: While the phenomenon described in this article may appear to be an African problem, the Western world's increasing involvement in fighting terrorists make it one that America's military forces might encounter. Unfortunately, it could add a significant layer of complexity to US operations as American troops attempt to differentiate allies from enemies. In Africa, sometimes they are one and the same. ********** Sobel, a portmanteau of soldier and rebel, appears to have been coined in Sierra Leone during the 1990s. This was a period marked in parts of West Africa by fighting over conflict diamonds, also known as blood diamonds, when government discovered how lucrative it could be to serve as soldiers by day, rebels by night or, as the villagers called them, sobels. On closer examination, it can be observed that the relationship between the of the Sierra Leonean Army and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel group which during the country's civil war occupied large portions of diamond-rich land, changed over time, thus making the phenomenon more like the phenomena. Unfortunately, the presence of sobels is often an indication that a war is profitable for both rebels and soldiers, providing them with an incentive to lengthen the conflict to maximize their earnings. With neither side able to score a decisive win, both sides profit. Meanwhile, the rural population, essentially held hostage during the conflict, is often terrorized so as not to intervene. As an example, the RUF started not only to amputate people's hands, but to publicize such mutilations as a way of preventing people from casting ballots and putting a political end to unpolitical brutalities. Though Sierra Leone appears to be where the sobel neologism originated, variations of the soldier-by-day, rebel-by-night phenomenon can be found in many parts of Africa (and, indeed, in other parts of the world). By studying the phenomenon and its variations, it is possible to determine what factors influence government to join rebel forces, ways to dissuade them from joining, and, if they do join, possible ways to induce them to return permanently to government service. While the phenomenon described within these pages may appear to be an African problem, the Western world's increasing involvement in fighting terrorists on that continent make it one America's military forces might encounter. Unfortunately, it could add a significant layer of complexity to US operations as American troops attempt to differentiate allies from enemies. In Africa, sometimes they are one and the same. Background to Sobel: The Sierra Leone Civil War Sierra Leone's civil war started in 1991, when the RUF, led by Foday Sankoh, and backed by Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, launched an attack in a diamond-rich area in Eastern Sierra Leone. (1) Though ostensibly the RUF's raison d'etre was to oppose the corrupt government, it morphed more into a group of bandits and less a band of revolutionaries. As for Taylor, who later would become President of Liberia, his interests from the outset appear mostly financial. The war lasted eleven years, during which time both the RUF and the army were responsible for heinous atrocities against civilian populations. Estimates of the number killed range upwards of 50,000. (2) It took foreign intervention, in particular the country's former colonial power, the British, to help end the war. Atrocities as a Contributing Factor There were many factors which led to some of Sierra Leone's becoming sobels, including several socioeconomic ones discussed later. A significant driving force, however, was the civilian hatred of the army because of the atrocities the committed fighting the RUE The soldiers, when willing to hunt down the RUF--an inconsistent process as the army was sometimes afraid of direct combat with the rebels--often had difficulties locating their enemy. …

Economic Shocks, Civil War & Ethnicity

Using a novel cross-country panel dataset, we show that commodity terms of trade declines cause civil war in countries with intermediate ethnic diversity. The civil war effects for highly diverse or homogenous societies are negative and insignificant. Since the size of the largest ethnic group explains 96% of the variation in the ethnic diversity measure, we conjecture that a key problem may be ethnic dominance: countries where the ethnic plurality is large, but not so large it cannot be challenged, may be most vulnerable to economic shocks. The findings may help to bridge the partly distinct literatures linking ethnicity and economic factors to conflict.

Is Happiness Really a Warm Gun? The Political Consequences of US Weapons Sales

We exploit exogenous shifts in the cost of purchasing commercial weapons from the U.S. to uncover the causal effect of U.S. weapons purchases on political violence. We find that weapons purchases reduce the likelihood of political repression but increase the likelihood of onset of civil war in purchasing countries. The results suggest that state investment in military capability incites civil war in countries where state repression of an aggrieved opposition would have otherwise prevailed.

Las industrias extractivas y sus implicaciones políticas y económicas

This article reviews the academic literature on the relationship between dependency on extractive industries for export and economic and political performance in developing countries, presenting a state of the art. It first reviews the relationship between dependency on extractive industries for export and political violence, discussing why there are more civil wars in countries that show that dependence. It then reviews the relationship between dependency on extractive industries for export and political regime, discussing the influence that such a dependency might have over prospects for democracy. It finally reviews the relationship between dependency on extractive industries for export and economic and institutional performance, i.e., the so called «resource curse».

Selling Guatemala's next Green Revolution: agricultural modernization and the politics of GM maize regulation

Although genetically modified (GM) agriculture is posited as key for increasing food production, controversy has limited the global adoption of the technology. There has been little work, however, analysing the negotiation of biotechnology regulations in developing countries where disputes are related to different histories of agricultural change from the US and Europe. Guatemala is a key case to examine the relationship of biotechnology debates to the historical trajectory of Green Revolution technologies. While Mayan farmers increased maize yields by mixing local seeds with modern fertilizers, the Green Revolution exacerbated structural inequities underlying Guatemala's agrarian system and heightened political tensions during the country's civil war. This paper contends that biotechnology regulatory politics are integrally tied to concerns over heightening existing tensions between small-scale and industrialized farming systems as well as to more recent issues of seed patenting. The first section links contemporary agrarian issues in Guatemala to agricultural modernization during the 1960s and 1970s. I then focus on international biotechnology disputes before turning to Guatemalan debates over GM maize. With continued struggles over biotechnology knowledge, I further suggest ways to envision an agricultural revolution more closely aligned with the goals of sustainability and the needs of small-scale farmers.

DIAMOND MINING, RICE FARMING AND A ‘MAGGI CUBE’: A VIABLE SURVIVAL STRATEGY IN RURAL LIBERIA?

AbstractSince the conclusion of its 14‐year civil war in 2003, Liberia has struggled economically. Jobs are in short supply and operational infrastructural services, such as electricity and running water, are virtually nonexistent. The situation has proved especially challenging for the scores of people who fled the country in the 1990s to escape the violence and who have since returned to re‐enter their lives. With few economic prospects on hand, many have elected to enter the artisanal diamond mining sector, which has earned notoriety for perpetuating the country's civil war. This article critically reflects on the fate of these Liberians, many of whom, because of a lack of government support, finances, manpower and technological resources, have forged deals with hired labourers to work artisanal diamond fields. Specifically, in exchange for meals containing locally grown rice and a Maggi (soup) cube, hired hands mine diamondiferous territories, splitting the revenues accrued from the sales of recovered stones amongst themselves and the individual ‘claimholder’ who hired them. Although this cycle—referred to here as ‘diamond mining, rice farming and a Maggi cube’—helps to buffer against poverty, few of the parties involved will ever progress beyond a subsistence level. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Artisanal Gold Mining: A New Frontier in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone?

This paper argues that a formalised small-scale gold mining sector could ameliorate Sierra Leone's emerging ‘crisis of youth’. Burgeoning pockets of unemployed young men now found scattered throughout the country, the mobilisation of whom proved instrumental in prolonging civil war in the 1990s, have fuelled fresh concerns about renewed violence. If supported, small-scale gold mining could provide immediate economic relief in the form of direct employment and downstream activities. Its promotion, however, is contingent upon a radical change in mindset in policymaking circles. Gold mining continues to be associated with diamond mining, an industry which perpetuated the country's civil war.

‘New spaces’ for change?: Diamond governance reforms and the micro‐politics of participation in post‐war Sierra Leone

AbstractWhile the majority of research carried out on diamonds and development in Sierra Leone has focused on debates concerning the role that diamonds played in the country's civil war of the 1990s, little attention has been directed towards understanding how the emergence and consequences of ‘new spaces’ for citizen engagement in diamond governance are shaping relationships between mining and political economic change in the post‐war period. Recent fieldwork carried out in two communities in Kono District illustrates how the emergence of such spaces—although much celebrated by government, donors and development practitioners—may not necessarily be creating the ‘room for manoeuvre’ necessary to open up meaningful public engagement in resource governance. The analysis focuses on one recent governance initiative in the diamond sector—the Diamond Area Community Development Fund (DACDF)—which aims to strengthen citizen participation in decision‐making within the industry, but has frequently been at the centre of controversy. In framing and articulating socio‐environmental struggles over resource access and control in Sierra Leone's post‐war period of transition, the article highlights how the emerging geographies of participation continue to be shaped by unequal power relationships, in turn having an impact on livelihood options, decision‐making abilities and development outcomes in the country's diamondiferous communities. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The human capital consequences of civil war: Evidence from Guatemala

We combine data from the 2002 National Population Census and the distribution of the number of human rights violations and victims across 22 departments to examine how Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war affected human capital accumulation. The year of birth and the department of birth jointly determine an individual's exposure during school age to three different periods of the civil war, namely the initial period (1960–1978), the worst period (1979–1984), and the final period (1985–1996). We find a strong negative impact of the civil war on the education of the two most disadvantaged groups, namely rural Mayan males and females. Among rural Mayan males, those who were school age during the three periods of the civil war in departments where more human rights violations were committed completed 0.27, 0.71, and 1.09 years less of schooling respectively whereas rural Mayan females exposed to the three periods of the war completed 0.12, 0.47, and 1.17 years less of schooling respectively. Given an average of 4.66 and 3.83 years of schooling for males and females, these represent declines of 6, 15, and 23% for males and 3, 12, and 30% for females. Our results are robust to the inclusion of indicators for department of residence, year of birth, and controls for different trends in education and human development in war-affected and peaceful departments of Guatemala and suggest that the country's civil war may have deepened gender, regional, sectoral, and ethnic disparities in schooling.

Memory Controversies in Post-Genocide Rwanda: Implications for Peacebuilding

Intrastate wars and genocides result in devastating losses and leave deep and lasting scars on those who survive. Making space for civilians to share their experiences of violence and to have them publicly acknowledged—especially by their own governments—can be important parts of (re)knitting the social fabric. This article focuses on the experiences of ordinary Rwandans during and after their country's civil war and genocide. It is centered on excerpts from a series of field interviews and highlights Rwandans' memories in their own words. This article contrasts this cross-section of civilian narratives with the official memories of violence that the national government disseminates through memorials and schools. The central argument is that, in order to legitimate its rule, the Rwandan government selectively highlights some memories of violence, and represses others, and that this is likely to hinder sustainable peace.

Machetes in Our Hands, Blood on Our Faces: Reflections on Violence and Advocacy in the Peruvian Amazon

States feel they cannot modernize effectively if they tolerate indigenous cultures in their midst (Maybury-Lewis 2002a:32). As a public intellectual, David Maybury-Lewis was a steadfast advocate for those whose worldviews, cultural practices, or perceived differences make them targets for the violence of state institutions and their agents who are simply unwilling to live with diversity and calls for cultural autonomy. The case I recount here is but one of innumerable examples where David not only embraced the theory of cultural survival, but acted without hesitation in support of the struggles of marginalized indigenous peoples. Perched aloft a dusty filing cabinet in my office is a photograph of a Kukama1 woman-Dona Luz-covered in blood from machete wounds she received during a horrific attack that occurred in her community in the Peruvian Amazon some years ago. The photo is a painful yet poignant reminder to me of a lesson my teacher articulated many times: that make war on marginalized minorities are... states in which pluralism has either failed or has not been given a chance (Maybury-Lewis 2002b:52). Sadly, the country I have studied, come to love, and at times despise- Peru-is no exception to this dictum. Peruvian Amazon some years ago. The photo is a painful yet poignant reminder to me of a lesson my teacher articulated many times: that make war on marginalized minorities are... states in which pluralism has either failed or has not been given a chance (Maybury-Lewis 2002b:52). Sadly, the country I have studied, come to love, and at times despise- Peru-is no exception to this dictum. In 2004, while conducting ethnographic research in the Alto Amazonas province, I found myself entangled in a violent showdown between crooked Peruvian officials and indigenous peoples residing in the historically important community of Lagunas. The vicious assault occurred April 20, 2004, after a group of Kukama-Kukamiria took control of the Municipal offices to protest the local mayor, Rider Padilla Sinarahua, who they suspected was pocketing funds from the central government that were intended to be used for infrastructure and community well-being. In response, a group of Kukama-Kukmiria was attacked at night by approximately 50 hooded adults who had been imbibing moonshine mixed with gunpowder to enable them to dislodge the peaceful protesters with clubs, axes, nail-studded sticks, and metal rods. As a result of the sanguineous melee, more than 30 people were injured, some severely: people had their skulls cracked, limbs hacked, and one protester had his eye gouged out. When I first arrived in Lagunas, a tense, fearful atmosphere was regnant; wounds were still healing, the maimed cried out for assistance, and the remnants of burned homes were eerily obvious. Reminded of the lessons of my adviser, the founder of Cultural Survival, how could I refuse requests to help from the indigenous Kukama-Kukamiria Federation (FEDECOCA, Federacon de Communidades Cocama-Cocamilla del Bajo Huallaga)? I soon found myself reviewing video footage of public marches and other documents indicating the Mayor's ties to Sendero Luminoso, the leftist rebel movement responsible-along with the Armed Forces-for some of the worst atrocities committed in the 1980s and 1990s during the height of the country's civil war. Convinced of the dire need for external assistance, community representatives and I traveled by boat to the nearby town of Yurimaguas. But the local prosecutor and judge refused to intervene in what they portrayed was a simple conflict marked by local tribal feuding. Disheartened by the local authorities' total failure to intercede, the aggrieved victims began preparing to fight back. Having long been a center of coca production and processing, indigenous villagers had access to stockpiles of heavy armaments that they were now willing to use. With the assistance of the respected elders (apus), tempers were assuaged after it was decided in a community meeting that an indigenous representative of FEDECOCA and I would travel to the nation's capital, Lima, to seek state intervention in the escalating crisis. …

Pathways to War in Democratic Transitions

We have argued in Electing to Fight and other writings that an incomplete democratic transition increases the risk of international and civil war in countries that lack the institutional capacity to sustain democratic politics. The combination of increasing mass political participation and weak political institutions creates the motive and the opportunity for both rising and declining elites to play the nationalist card in an attempt to rally popular support against domestic and foreign rivals.

Inside Insurgencies: Politics and Violence in an Age of Civil War

Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis. Edited by Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis. 2 vols. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, 2003. 800p. $40.00 Vol. 2.The Logic of Violence in Civil War. By Stathis Kalyvas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 508p. 27.99 paper.Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence. By Jeremy M. Weinstein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 428p. 26.99 paper.Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. By Elisabeth Jean Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 328p. 25.99 paper.“Inside Insurgencies”? An odd title for a review of four books that deal with one of the most wide-ranging, violent, and protracted forms of contentious politics the world has known—civil wars. Should we not care more about their impact on citizens at large, their effects on national politics, and their creation of instability in the international system than on their interior lives? But think of the conflicts among communists, anarchists and others in the Spanish Republic: They inhibited the republic's capacity to resist the assaults of Franco's forces. No adequate understanding of that country's civil war could have excluded these “internal” relations.

A Closer Look at Oil, Diamonds, and Civil War

▪ Abstract Studies of natural resource wealth and civil war have been hampered by measurement error, endogeneity, lack of robustness, and uncertainty about causal mechanisms. This paper develops new measures and new tests to address these problems. It has four main findings. First, the likelihood of civil war in countries that produce oil, gas, and diamonds rose sharply from the early 1970s to the late 1990s; so did the number of rebel groups that sold contraband to raise money. Second, exogenous measures of oil, gas, and diamond wealth are robustly correlated with the onset of civil war. Still, these correlations are based on a small number of cases, and the substantive effects of resource wealth are sensitive to certain assumptions. Third, petroleum and diamond production lead to civil wars through at least three different mechanisms. Finally, the only resource variable robustly linked to conflict duration is a measure of “contraband,” which includes gemstones, timber, and narcotics.

Truth, Lies, and Politics in the Debate over Testimonial Writing: The Cases of Rigoberta Menchu and Binjamin Wilkomirski

In 1985 Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia (I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala), the testimony of an obscure Guatemalan campesina about her own and her family's experiences during their country's civil war, gained international attention and ultimately played an important role in bringing about the end of that war. Partly on the basis of her powerful book, in 1992 Menchu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Three years later Binjamin Wilkomirski, a Latvian Jew living in Switzerland, published Bruchstucke (Fragments), a memoir of his childhood experience in the Nazi death camps. The book won numerous awards in Europe and the United States, and Wilkomirski became an instant celebrity, not only as the author of a compelling work of testimonial literature, but as a spokesperson for, and champion of, countless other child Holocaust survivors. Not long after their respective publications, both books were exposed as partial or complete fabrications. Menchu was shown to have embellished facts and invented incidents, that is, to have stretched the truth to promote her cause, whereas Wilkomirski had apparently invented his entire story. The responses to these scandals, in both academic circles and the popular press, were vehement, often quite nasty, and to a surprising extent aimed not at Menchu or Wilkomirski, but at those responsible for exposing them. Despite the parallels between the two cases, their outcomes were quite dissimilar. Fragments was withdrawn from publication, and Wilkomirski was stripped of his literary honors; however, Menchu continues to enjoy the status of Nobel laureate, and her book still appears on high school reading lists and college course syllabi. Although the initial outcry surrounding both these controversies might have been expected to invite debate over urgent, fundamental issues such as the blurring of fact and fiction, the unreliability of memory, and the very nature of truth, such legitimate concerns were for the most part relegated to the background or ignored entirely. Instead, politics and personal or professional agendas dominated and distorted the discussion, replacing honest inquiry with polemics and the strident defense of a particular position. The result in both cases was, albeit to different degrees of intensity, an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility exacerbated by ad hominem attacks that to this day have not completely subsided. This alarming situation demands that some important questions be asked. What brought about such polarized, politicized responses to reasonable doubts about the authenticity of these testimonies? To what degree and to what ends does postmodern skepticism toward truth inform the debate? What do the scope, depth, and intensity of the controversies imply about our ability, both inside and outside the academy, to grapple effectively with current, vitally important issues involving truth, lies, and politics? Literary fabrications and their ensuing scandals are nothing new, of course. The eighteenth-century controversies over James Macpherson's Ossianic ballads and Thomas Chatterton's Rowley poems still generate debate, although the circumstances surrounding them and the questions they raise are for the most part quite different from those concerning Menchu and Wilkomirski. Both Macpherson and Chatterton claimed to have discovered long-lost works of literature that they had, in fact, written themselves, and much of the controversy that arose had to do with the question of whether well-crafted, aesthetically superior, yet fraudulent works can be considered to have literary value. (1) The question of literary value is less clear when applied to testimonial writing, which occupies a precarious position somewhere between history and autobiography, yet contains novelistic elements as well. In addition, as John Beverley points out, testimonial writing is invariably tied to a political or social cause. …

Working with “Local Governance” in a Conflict Situation: The Experience of Save the Children Norway in Nepal

This paper describes the education-focused work of Save the Children Norway and its local partners in a district of Nepal that has been seriously affected by the country's civil war. Schooling in rural Nepal, inadequate at the best of times, has been further challenged by the conflict, which has resulted in frequent closures and even lower attendance rates than usual. Schools are technically the responsibility of district education offices; in many parts of Nepal, however, local governance has become a contested domain. In the district described in this paper, the Maoist rebels have become the de facto local government, hostile to the facilities and services of the formal government structures. The paper describes the success of Save the Children Norway's staff in supporting local communities' efforts to bring rebels and district education officials together to improve educational opportunities for children in the area—an unusual and possibly unique development in this conflict-torn country.

Korean war filmography: 91 English language features through 2000

The Korean Conflict (as it is sometimes known) dramatically changed the way that Americans viewed war. The lack of a clear-cut victory inspired filmmakers to try to make sense of fighting another country's civil war and risking American lives for a largely unpopular cause. More than 50 movies about the Korean War appeared in the 15 years after it ended, and dozens more have appeared since then.This filmography details more than 90 English - language films that chronicle or depict the Korean War and its consequences. Each film entry includes complete cast and credit listings, a plot synopsis, evaluation, review snippets, and notice of video availability. This book places each Korean War film in its historical context, assesses the essential truthfulness and relevance of each film, evaluates each film's entertainment value, and discusses how - and why - Korean War films differ from other Hollywood war genres.The book also provides information on themes and subjects that appear in the films and an outline of the war and those films which portray historical events. The first four appendices list the films by chronology, production company and studio, level of historical accuracy and subject and theme. The following appendices provide a listing of films with superficial or incidental references to the Korean War, a film listing of documentaries on the Korean War and a film listing of South Korean films about the Korean War. Also included are photographs from each film and its marketing campaign, a bibliography, and an index.

Ethical codes in humanitarian emergencies: from practice to research?

Notable strides have been made in recent years to develop codes of conduct for humanitarian intervention in conflicts on the part of international NGOs and UN organisations. Yet engagement by the academic and broader research communities with humanitarian crises and ongoing complex political emergencies remains relatively ad hoc and unregulated beyond the basic ethical guidelines and norms developed within universities for research in general, and within the governing and representative bodies of particular academic disciplines. This paper draws on a case study of research on humanitarian assistance to Liberia during that country's civil war from 1989 to 1996. The difficulties faced by humanitarian agencies in Liberia led to the development of two key sets of ethical guidelines for humanitarian intervention: the Joint Policy of Operations (JPO) and Principles and Policies of Humanitarian Operations (PPHO). This paper seeks to address what lessons, if any, these ethical guidelines, together with different experiences of conducting research in war-torn Liberia, can provide in terms of the role of academic researchers--and research itself--in humanitarian crises.