Geography Of Conflict Research Articles

Speculative Heritage: Architectural Imagination as a Gateway to Alternative Futures for Iranians at Home and in the Diaspora

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the Azadi Tower, a prominent gate structure in Tehran, to discuss how an authoritarian monument has the potential to become a shared space of public discourse, both physically and visually. In so doing, it opens up a discussion of the construction of spatial imaginaries as a category of cultural heritage, specifically in geographies of conflict. Initially named Shahyad, the tower and the square around it were built in 1971 as a monument to the Shah. Despite the controversial genesis of the structure, it was given new meanings after the 1979 revolution and renamed Azadi (freedom) Tower. This article considers the centrality of the structure in the visual materials expressing dissent in the recent years in Iran and across the Iranian diaspora, and addresses the various stages of physical and visual re-invention of the structure since the 1979 revolution to comprehend its role as a speculative solidarity monument in contemporary Iran. In this sense, architectural heritage opens up new possibilities not just through its lived experiences, but also its yet-to-be-lived subjective imaginaries.

The Indo-Pacific: A New Geography of Conflict

This article analyzes the Indo-Pacific as a new area of conflict between actors in maintaining strategic access – both marine resources and sea route access – for commercial and military transportation purposes. The results of this study explain that conflicts of interest describe differences in attitudes, especially between the United States (US), its allies, and several countries that also have security problems with China. On the other hand, various Chinese military steps are considered to be worrying for global interests in the Indo-Pacific, namely freedom of navigation that ensures the security of maritime transportation routes, as well as the ownership of marine resources.
 Keywords: Indo-Pacific, conflict, geostrategy

Imagined futures, mobility and the making of oil conflicts in Uganda

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we examine how oil-related activities in the Albertine region have the potential to influence conflicts of different forms and intensity in Uganda, a new African oil producer in the making. We view this through the lens of the future, for which we propose the ‘in-the-making’ perspective. Through this approach we identify three geographies of conflict, framed around three local narratives on mobility, namely: the peripatetic tradition of a social group commonly known as ‘Balaalo’, speculative labour mobility and ensuing narratives about oil-induced pressure on fishing, and the link between elephant mobility and community grievances. With this paper we seek to contribute to the growing body of empirical research on Uganda’s oilscape, and add a case to the existing work on the interface between oil exploitation and social practices across various oil-producing world regions. We conclude that in Uganda’s pre-oil situation, the emergence of complex local narratives, resulting from a combination of lack-or inadequacy-of information, pre-existing but low-lying ethnic sentiments, and institutional challenges, are important indicators of how materialities of the future frame relationships within societies today.

Riots and rebellion: State, society and the geography of conflict in India

This article argues that different types of politically motivated violence in South Asia are associated with different forms of governance and relationships between society and the state. This variation in local governance in turn is the product of unevenness in state formation across the political geography of India. It classifies conflict events in India in 2015 and 2016 into conceptual categories of sovereignty-neutral and sovereignty-challenging, theoretically reflecting the commonsense distinction between riots and rebellion. It presents evidence that different categories of state-society regimes at the district level are associated with different patterns of sovereignty-neutral and -challenging violence. It finds that urban-adjacent hegemonic state-society regimes are associated with high levels of sovereignty-neutral violence, revised state-society regimes with traditionally restrained state capacity are associated with high levels of sovereignty-challenging violence, and fragmented and accommodative regimes in the agrarian hinterland are associated with intermediary positions in both categories.

The impact of World War II on nutrition and children's health in Italy

The impact of World War II on the nutrition and health of Italian children is examined. During the Second World War (1939–1945), both per capita GDP and consumption collapsed in Italy. Infant mortality increased. The anthropometric measurements of a sample of schoolchildren show a loss in weight and height in comparison with the pre-war years. Measurements of conscripts born during the conflict show an interruption in the secular increase in height, with a decrease in the mean height of conscripts born in 1945. The adverse impact of the war on height, particularly affected the northern regions, and appears to be related to the ‘geography of conflict’ in Italy.

Modeling of Consciences Image "Government / Elite" by Tatars and Russians (Evidence from of the Republic of Tatarstan)

In this article inter-ethnic tension in government sphere is detected. Consideration of the concept of inter-ethnic tension from the position of psycholinguistics provides additional material for a comprehensive study of this issue, an attempt is made to diagnose inter-ethnic tensions in a particular region - the Republic of Tatarstan. As stimulus - word was taken the following group: Ethno-social representations associated with public notions: pravitel'stvo/ hokumat-government /elite. Psycholinguistics (ethno-psycholinguistics), which deals with the problem of representation of the systemic nature of the linguistic consciousness of native speakers of different cultures, puts forward the associative experiment as the main method. The material of the study is an array of associates, which we obtained as a result of a free associative experiment in Russian and Tatar languages. We placed our research on the Internet site http://virtualexs.ru. The experiment was conducted in 2015 and 2016. Analyzing the data obtained during the free associative experiment, we come to the conclusion that the situation between the title and non-title ethnic group is not ethnically tense. We can predict: if the effectiveness of the state national policy remains at the same low level, inter-ethnic tension in society will grow, and the geography of conflicts will expand.

Towards Contested ‘Spheres of Influence’ in the Western Pacific: Rising China, Classical Geopolitics, and Asia-Pacific Stability

ABSTRACTThe evolution of US-Sino great power competition in East Asia has emerged as a key geostrategic issue in international politics. A central question is whether the ‘geography of the peace’ will prevail where, despite their natural predisposition to compete for regional hegemony, the two great powers respect each other’s ‘spheres of influence’. This concept assumes that, as a major continental power, China remains preoccupied with securing its land borders and expanding its influence on the Eurasian land mass. In contrast, this article argues that the Sino-US rivalry likely leads to the emergence of a ‘geography of conflict’ in East Asia because of overlapping zones of strategic interests. Applying a classical geopolitics approach, it shows that the geopolitical models of British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, US naval strategist Alfred Thayer and Dutch-American geostrategist Nicholas Spykman are useful to explain the current behaviour of China and the United States, and why, as a result, East Asia is becoming more contested.

Dark Times: nighttime satellite imagery as a detector of regional disparity and the geography of conflict

Satellite observations of night-time emitted lights describe a geography of the spatial distribution of resource use. Measurements of nocturnal lights enable the calculation of the total light emitted from each country of the world, and the light emitted per capita. We consider different groups of countries that share a land or maritime border and whose light per capita can be more equally/unequally distributed. A sharp difference in light per capita among neighboring countries reflects marked differences in economic welfare and in the extent of built environments. We demonstrate how this geography of nocturnal lights informs our understanding of the dynamics of conflict at the national and regional scale. We propose an index of regional disparity and test its ability to detect conflict dynamics by relating the index score with the occurrence and intensity of conflicts as classified by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research’s Conflict Barometer 2012 for the countries of the world. This method can be used to produce a global available temporal sampling of “cold spots” of disparity where conflicts are likely to occur. This will help foresee the identification and monitoring of regions of the world,which are becoming particularly unstable, assisting in the definition and execution of timely and proactive policies.

Introduction: Interdisciplinary war and culture studies in action

This is the first Varia issue of Volume 6, and a first glance at the titles suggests that it contains an apparently eclectic series of five articles. Looked at more closely, however, it becomes clear that this issue provides an excellent example of the Journal of War and Culture Studies’ (JWACS) commitment to fostering interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches, and to building a multidisciplinary community of scholars to consider diverse relationships between war and culture. This engagement with a range of disciplines is manifested not least in the academic, and indeed practitioner, backgrounds of the contributors to this issue. This issue also exemplifies the broad geographical scope now offered by the JWACS as the articles take their examples and objects of study from several very different European countries and cultures, North America, and Australia. Sara McDowell’s discipline is Human Geography, and her interest in the geography of conflict and in territoriality leads necessarily to a concern with memory and memorialization. In her article, ‘Time elapsed: untangling commemorative temporalities after conflict and tragedy’, she demonstrates how power and politics ultimately determine when the past is officially remembered, using examples of diverse forms of conflict and trauma from Britain, Ireland, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, the United States and Canada. The time that elapses between a conflict or traumatic event and its memorialization can vary significantly, due, as she shows here, to a range of collective social, economic, and political circumstances, but due also to individual needs and motivations. Philippa Lyon brings a literary and cultural analysis perspective to ‘Continuities and Disjunctions: investigating British poetry anthologies of the Second World War’. The poetry of this period has undergone a re-appraisal by anthologists and literary critics, and is now asserting its own significance with regard to the First World War poetry which has so dominated in British culture and in perceptions of the war experience, previously pushing the poetry of the later war to a marginal position. Her approach here is to investigate the value of a set of poetry anthologies published, it is important to note, during the war itself. She engages with this body of anthologies through four taxonomical categories which function as an interpretive journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 6 No. 3, August, 2013, 183–184

Geographies of social exclusion: education access in the Philippines

Despite the massive education sector of the country, the Philippines – being located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and the typhoon belt – is home to a number of natural instabilities that frequently disrupt the school calendar. Conflict areas in selected parts of the island of Mindanao and the remote geographic features of the country also pose problems in education access. Poverty incidence is reported to be high in such locations and access to basic services such as education is exceedingly low as compared to mainstream Manila. Given the geographies of social exclusion, particularly in education, as exemplified by such issues, this article will detail the problems in education access in the Philippines as illustrated through: (a) the remote geographic locations of some parts of the country; (b) the devastations brought to schooling by natural disasters; and (c) the ‘geography of conflict’ in Mindanao.

The Geography of Conflicts and Regional Trade Agreements

In addition to standard trade gains, regional trade agreements (RTAs) can promote peaceful relations by increasing the opportunity cost of conflicts. Country pairs with large trade gains from RTAs and a high probability of conflict should be more likely to sign an RTA. Using data from 1950 to 2000, we show that this complementarity between economic and politics determines the geography of RTAs. We disentangle trade gains from political factors by a theory-driven empirical estimation and find that country pairs with higher frequency of past wars are more likely to sign RTAs, the more so the larger the trade gains. (JEL D72, D74, F15, N70)

The Political Geography of Conflict in the South Sudan: Selected Materials

The Political Geography of Conflict in the South Sudan: Selected Materials

Geographies of Conflict and Post-Conflict in Northern Ireland

The violent conflict in Northern Ireland that led to some 3700 deaths was tied to opposing ethno-sectarian groups and the state and the disputation between them over that country’s constitutional future. Republicans such as the Irish Republican Army used violence in order to ‘gain’ a united Ireland. Whereas loyalists such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the British state utilised violence in order to maintain Northern Ireland’s constitutional link with the United Kingdom. Geographers writing on this conflict have, via various forms of spatial analysis studied the consequences of that violence with regard to territoriality, the construction of ideological space and the perpetuation of ethno-sectarian boundaries. In more recent times, the analysis of conflict and post-conflict Northern Ireland has evaluated the governance of a divided society, the role paramilitaries have played in embedding peace and also the paradoxical role of reproducing conflict by other non-violent means. Northern Ireland remains as a divided society but there is a prominent role for geographers who study such a complex place to add to wider international scholarship regarding resistance and domination, revanchism, discourse construction, post-conflict and the impact upon place and also the role of agency in both perpetuating and removing violence.

Bodies, bombs and barricades: geographies of conflict and civilian (in)security

This article critically examines the entanglements between ‘security’ and the geopolitical and geo‐economic formations that assist in the cyclical continuation of conflict. The author questions the biopolitical configurations of state and private forms of militarised security. The author’s approach to this research addresses the spatial and corporeal aspects of civilian security in contemporary conflicts zones – with a specific focus on Afghanistan. Drawing on the work of feminist political geographers, this article highlights the corporeal as a key site of analysis for the everyday and seemingly apolitical spaces occupied by civilians living amidst political conflict. This descriptive analysis of security and insecurity focuses on four specific areas: (1) Afghan civilian security measures, (2) domestic spaces as sites of security and violence, (3) mobile forms of security and insecurity and (4) the divergent perceptions and experiences of security/insecurity between international civilian workers living in Afghanistan and Afghan civilian citizens. While macro‐scale analyses of security and civilian agency in various locations are important for geographic inquiry, it remains imperative that geographers and other social scientists examine the particularities of specific conflict sites and situations in order to avoid one‐size‐fits‐all responses to or analyses of political conflict – and subsequently flattening civilian experiences through aggregated forms of knowledge production. This paper seeks to investigate several key aspects of feminist political geography by examining the multiple and varied experiences of the everyday within this conflict zone.

Tracking cooperation and conflict in international basins: historic and recent trends

This paper describes the use of media-reported events in the assessment of hydropolitical relations and investigates instances of conflict and cooperation over international water resources during the last 60 years. Specifically, two periods – 1948–1999 and 2000–2008 – are compared and assessed for trends in international hydropolitics. In many respects, the dominant trends of the 20th century have remained consistent through the period 2000–2008. Despite the rampant water crisis associated with resource degradation and imbalance between supply and demand, cooperation between riparian nations continues to far outweigh conflict related to shared waters. This holds true even in the contentious Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region, particularly during the most recent study period. The two most controversial issues in transboundary relations continue to be infrastructure and water quantity, a consistent pattern through both study periods. Positive interactions continue to be associated with joint management, flood control and technical cooperation, and the geography of conflict and cooperation remains relatively stable, with a mild increase in the importance of North America. Noteworthy changes include the increasing importance of water quality issues, and, while not documented through our methodology, a flurry of activity on transboundary groundwater.

MIDLOC: Introducing the Militarized Interstate Dispute Location dataset

The Militarized Interstate Dispute Location (MIDLOC) dataset addresses a significant lacuna in the empirical literature on the geography of interstate conflict: the dearth of location-level data. This dataset provides details of the geographic location of Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) onsets between 1816 and 2001. These data on locations are available at both the dispute-level (for 1816—2001) and the incident-level (for 1993—2001). This article briefly identifies the motivation behind this data-collection project, details some of the coding procedures followed in assembling the MIDLOC dataset, and then offers some mapped visualizations of the variance in this dataset across time. These maps are designed, in part, to stimulate additional hypothesis derivation in work on the geography of conflict. The data are then employed to offer a geographic assessment of the proposition that democracies tend to conduct the majority of their conflicts on their opponents’ territories. The article then concludes with a discussion of some additional potential applications of the MIDLOC dataset.

The Geography of Conflict and Death in Belfast, Northern Ireland

The conflict known as the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland began during the late 1960s and is defined by political and ethno-sectarian violence between state, pro-state, and anti-state forces. Reasons for the conflict are contested and complicated by social, religious, political, and cultural disputes, with much of the debate concerning the victims of violence hardened by competing propaganda-conditioning perspectives. This article introduces a database holding information on the location of individual fatalities connected with the contemporary Irish conflict. For each victim, it includes a demographic profile, home address, manner of death, and the organization responsible. Employing geographic information system (GIS) techniques, the database is used to measure, map, and analyze the spatial distribution of conflict-related deaths between 1966 and 2007 across Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland, with respect to levels of segregation, social and economic deprivation, and interfacing. The GIS analysis includes a kernel density estimator designed to generate smooth intensity surfaces of the conflict-related deaths by both incident and home locations. Neighborhoods with high-intensity surfaces of deaths were those with the highest levels of segregation (> 90 percent Catholic or Protestant) and deprivation, and they were located near physical barriers, the so-called peacelines, between predominantly Catholic and predominantly Protestant communities. Finally, despite the onset of peace and the formation of a power-sharing and devolved administration (the Northern Ireland Assembly), disagreements remain over the responsibility and “commemoration” of victims, sentiments that still uphold division and atavistic attitudes between spatially divided Catholic and Protestant populations.

The geography of conflict between elk and agricultural values in the Cypress Hills, Canada

Complex ecological issues like depredation and its management are determined by multiple factors acting at more than one scale and are interlinked with complex human social and economic behaviour. Depredation by wild herbivores can be a major obstacle to agricultural community support for wildlife conservation. For three decades, crop and fence damage, competition with livestock for native rangeland and tame pasture, and depredation of stored feed by elk ( Cervus elaphus canadensis) have been the cause of conflict with agricultural producers in the Cypress Hills, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Tolerance of elk presence on private lands is low because few benefits accrue to private landowners; rather they largely perceive elk as a public resource produced at their expense. Government management actions have focused on abatement inputs (e.g., population reduction; fencing) and compensation, but incentives to alter land use patterns (crop choice and location) in response to damages have not been considered. Nor has there been information on spatial structure of the elk population that would allow targeted management actions instead of attempting to manage the entire population. In this study we analysed the spatial structure of the Cypress Hills elk population, the distribution of the elk harvest in relation to agricultural conflicts, developed models of the spatial patterns of conflict fields, and evaluated compensation patterns for damage by wild herbivores. We propose modifications to current abatement and compensation programs and discuss alternative approaches involving changes to agricultural land use patterns that may reduce the intensity of conflicts with elk, and increase the acceptance capacity of landowners.

Abandoning the Wardrobe and Reclaiming Religion in the Discourse on Afghan Women’s Islamic Rights

Previous articleNext article No AccessAbandoning the Wardrobe and Reclaiming Religion in the Discourse on Afghan Women’s Islamic RightsLeela JacintoLeela JacintoNew York Search for more articles by this author New YorkPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 32, Number 1Autumn 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/505275 Views: 157Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref © 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Sarah Shah Black and white or shades of grey: Religious approaches and Muslim marital conflict, Social Compass 69, no.11 (Jun 2021): 113–132.https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686211020567 , Sociology of Islam 3, no.1-21-2 ( 2015): 1.https://doi.org/10.1163/22131418-00301001Shahnaz Khan The two faces of Afghan women: Oppressed and exotic, Women's Studies International Forum 44 (May 2014): 101–109.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.10.003Jennifer L Fluri Bodies, bombs and barricades: geographies of conflict and civilian (in)security, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36, no.22 (Dec 2010): 280–296.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2010.00422.x

The New Geography of Conflict

In October 1999, in a rare alteration of U.S. military geography, the Department of Defense reassigned senior command authority over American forces in Central Asia from the Pacific Command to the Central Command. This decision produced no headlines or other signs of interest in the United States but nevertheless represented a significant shift in American strategic thinking. Central Asia had once been viewed as a peripheral concern, a remote edge of the Pacific Command's main areas of responsibility (Chinajapan, and the Korean Peninsula). But the region, which stretches from the Ural Mountains to China's western border, has now become a major strategic prize, because of the vast reserves of oil and natural gas thought to lie under and around the Caspian Sea. Since the Central Command already controls the U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, its assumption of control over Central Asia means that this area will now receive