Reality Of Conflict Research Articles

Chapter Eleven. Israel: Between the Ambition of Regional Integration and the Reality of Conflict

Chapter Eleven. Israel: Between the Ambition of Regional Integration and the Reality of Conflict

Moderasi Beragama pada Tradisi Nyadran dalam Membangun Hubungan Masyarakat Plural di Desa Bungah

The reality of conflict or friction between individual and group interests in various regions. It cannot be separated from being a vehicle for society, because there are good values that the community practises. In the present context, the issue of harmony among followers of a religion remains relevant. In the meantime, local traditions are less popular, and the study of the Nyadran tradition has not received a lot of attention. The tradition of nyadran is rooted in the Dukuh Muslim community, which follows and implements it. In developing social relations in a plural society in Dukuh village, Bungah district, this dissertation examines the moderation of religion in the nyadran tradition. The research aims to analyse and discover the nyadran traditions that are carried out within the community, activities, symbols and values of religious moderation in this tradition among peoples of Dukuh Village, Bungah Gresik District. Qualitative naturalistic field research methods are used. The analysis data shall be compiled, classified, processed and the next stage is interpretation and conclusion. Data mining by means of documentation, observation and interviews. In three main formulations of activities, symbols and values, the nyadran tradition has been identified in this research. The Nyadran tradition is a tradition that strengthens the moderation of religion in aspects of local wisdom. The solidarity of the Nyadran tradition is reflected in Nyadran as a ritual. Nyadran is an important element in maintaining religious moderation and part of cultural education for communities. The meaning of education taught by Islamic religious education. This research shows that for developing social relations in a plural society there is an important role to be played by moderate Islamic education based on the culture traditions of the country.

Blood is Thicker than Water: A Genealogy of Water in Nation-State Building

This work explores the multifaceted relationship between India and Pakistan, starting with India’s very recent decision to renegotiate the terms of the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 between the two countries. This treaty, considered to be a time-tested hallmark of peace on the Indian subcontinent, is particularly heralded by mediators like the World Bank. This desire for peace is confronted with the reality of border skirmishes and conflicts over Kashmir, a state through which the Indus River flows. Accordingly, I interrogate the interactions between various political actors over the Indus Waters themselves, specifically focusing on partition and the subsequent period that led up to the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty. This piece seeks to understand the role of nature in cohering international, national and subnational identity. Specifically, I focus on the two countries’ historical conflicts over water as well as sovereign claims to water in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, which are regions that must balance domestic priorities with the looming national interests of India and Pakistan. By linking water to the economic, cultural, and social language that comprises political imagination and identity, I hope to reveal new insights about how the relationship between nature and humanity has transformed from mutual cooperation to one of commodification and displacement.

The political culture of Caribbean sovereignty

ABSTRACT This article is part of a continuing discourse in the Caribbean about the exercise of sovereignty and the need to hold steadfast to the concept as a bulwark against imperial erasure of cultural identity. The essay argues against such conventional wisdom. It is intended to move beyond popular notions of sovereignty to unmask the reality of conflict, subordination and violence embedded in the idea of sovereignty. The article also looks at the way sovereignty is deployed in the Caribbean as part of popular, political discourses, and provides examples of how the concept is made unsustainable in its practice. It is an approach which allows for a materialist reading of the political development of the role the state plays in shaping the consciousness of the nation into an understanding of the idea of sovereignty. In conclusion, the paper returns to the specifically cultural logic of sovereignty, engaging the notion of “the sovereignty of the imagination,” articulated by the eminent Caribbean novelist, George Lamming, as a way of reconceptualizing this political concept. The paper ends with the notion that sovereignty in the Caribbean is a myth and should be abandoned for a more realistic understanding of the actual power of the postcolonial state in the global political economy.

Serial adapters? Local government chief officers and the navigation of space and time

This article analyses the everyday practices of ‘doing’ socio-spatial relations, drawing upon a series of in-depth interviews with local authority chief officers from across the UK. It argues that for chief officers ‘thinking spatially’ is played out in and through the practice of leadership on the move as they navigate the multiple spaces and temporalities that constitute the landscape of local government. Such leadership on the move resonates in part with predominant explanations of boundary spanning in studies of public governance. But importantly, boundary spanning suffers, our evidence suggests, from a temporal deficit, a ‘thin’ account of time which fails to address the constitutive function of boundaries and the complex politics of fluidity and fixity that follow. Articulating a ‘thicker’ approach to time, we argue that chief officers experience everyday socio-spatial relations less as boundary spanners and more as serial adaptors, who persistently reproduce sedimented boundaries and perform different modes of governance as they move from one arena to another. Serial adaptation, we conclude, challenges the potential managerialist bias of boundary spanning, in which the quest for harmonisation and unity masks over the irreducible complex reality of fragmentation and political conflict within which chief officers move.

Islamic Scholars’ Influence on Western Scientific Discourse During the Medieval Era

This study explores the substantial influence of Muslim scholars on the intellectual progress of Western society during the Medieval Era. By examining the dynamic relationship between Arab-Islam and European-Christianity, this research emphasizes the significant impact of Muslim scholars in various fields such as philosophy, science, astronomy, art, and literature. Utilizing historical methods, the study uncovers how Islam played a crucial role in shaping the development of scientific discourses in the West since the 11th century. Toledo and Sicily functioned as pathways for the Latinization of Arabic texts, extending initiatives from the Abbasid Caliphate period in the 8th century AD, particularly the translation of Greek texts into Arabic. Emphasizing the collaborative role between Islamic and Western civilizations, this research underscores that amid the historical realities of Islamic-Christian tension and conflict that marked the Middle Ages, interfaith interaction and cooperation could foster scientific progress. In this context, Islamic influence emerges as a key factor in comprehending the reciprocal exchange of ideas and knowledge that simultaneously moulded these two cultures.

Collective Aggressivity in Numerical cales

The social reality of conflict (group violence) is now occurring in many spheres of our society, including students who are synonymous with educated groups and prioritize rationality in making decisions. There are several reasons why conflicts between student groups occur. Firstly, the social reality triggers the tendency for students to behave aggressively and individual conflict occurs between students, which then shifts or switches to inter-group conflicts. This is deliberately created so that actors gain sympathy, support, even assistance from members of their group. Secondly, clashes between student groups tend to increase. This is because each conflicting group has seeds of conflict symptoms which at any time give a strong contribution to student’s aggressive behavior, in the form of group prejudice, ethnocentrism, and discrimination. Lastly, when compared with the existing conflict symptoms, group prejudice ranks first in contributing to the emergence of student aggressive behavior tendencies (ry2 = 0.98 or 98%), followed by discrimination (0.96 or 96%), and ethnocentrism (0.94 or 94%).
 Keywords: collective aggressivity, Universitas Negeri Makassar

Is Reality in Conflict with Perception? The Impact of Technology-Enhanced Active Learning and Formative Assessment on the Formation of Pre-Service Teachers in the Social Sciences

Active learning environments mediated by technologies in which learners assume ownership of their learning and receive daily feedback are gaining in popularity. Nevertheless, variables such as pre-service teachers’ learning gains and their perception towards these educational approaches have been little studied in the field of social science teaching. This quantitative study analyses to what extent (if any) an active methodology such as inquiry-based learning (IBL) supported by a Learning Analytics (LA)-based formative assessment process impacts on the academic achievement attained by 240 prospective teachers and their perception of the quality of the teaching–learning process compared to lecture-based teaching. Results show higher pre-service teachers’ performance in those lessons in which IBL supported by LA were used. However, the class dynamic and the lecturer’s role were rated lower by prospective teachers who used this methodology compared to those who attended lecture-based teaching classes. Results evidence that educational research should not only pay attention to the academic benefits of active methodologies, but also to the necessity of educating (future) teachers about these innovative approaches.

Narratives of geopolitical representation in the discourse of the Russia–Ukraine war

This paper explores the discourse of the Russia–Ukraine war to outline the dominant narrative schemas anchored in the spatial geopolitical representations of globalness and localness. It uses tools from the domains of critical cognitive discourse studies and narrative research (alternative futures, discourse scenarios, deictic space, proximization) to distinguish between two most salient schemas: the Global Conflict Reality (GCR) narrative and the Local Conflict Reality (LCR) narrative. The GCR narrative conceptualizes the Russia–Ukraine war as a growing international conflict, producing serious political, economic and material consequences for the global community. GCR uses coercive rhetoric to call for immediate measures to support Ukraine so the war can be stopped before spreading beyond its current borders. The principal narrator of GCR is Ukraine, though the narrative is re-contextualized in other countries located in geographical proximity to the conflict. The LCR narrative, performed mostly by the Kremlin, construes the war as a local conflict providing no reasons for foreign intervention. LCR is distinctive for its large number of sub-narratives appropriated for different geopolitical audiences, which include the Russian and Ukrainian people, and different audience groups in the West and the Global South. The latter groups re-contextualize the LCR narrative, focusing primarily on economic issues.

Development Dilemma and Governance Strategy of County General High Schools in Guangxi

In recent years, the construction of a high-quality, balanced, universal and inclusive senior high school education system has been placed in a more important position, especially for the development of county general high schools, which has been emphasized more and more strongly. This paper analyzes the reality of social conflict in the development process of county general high schools in Guangxi from the perspective of social conflict theory, and finds that there are multiple problems such as resource allocation conflict, internal structural conflict and value conflict. Therefore, this paper proposes three paths to resolve and avoid the real conflicts in the development of Guangxi county general high schools by establishing a reasonable resource allocation mechanism, constructing a county education community, and improving the quality of county general high school education, which not only faces the real conflicts in the development of county general high schools, but also tries to solve the diversified problems of the resource allocation mechanism, the construction of teachers’ talent team, and the education and teaching community in the county education system.

Leveraging digital methods in the quest for peaceful futures: the interplay of sincere and subjunctive technology affordances in peace mediation

ABSTRACT Efforts to support the resolution of armed conflicts through the facilitation of peace negotiations and dialogues increasingly involve digital technologies. While traditionally perceived as a human-centered activity, peace mediation now commonly entails information- and data-driven methods to enhance talks, support the analysis of conflict stakeholder needs and interests, and ground mediation efforts in better evidence. Digital technologies also promise to make peace efforts more future-oriented by helping to predict or anticipate upcoming developments, build scenarios, and increase readiness for emerging challenges. However, little is known about how such methods can be employed in dialogue and negotiation settings, where participants may have subjective and incompatible views on the conflict context, and more data and evidence don’t necessarily help to determine what a more peaceful future could look like. Through a qualitative study of the use of digitally enhanced dialogue efforts in Yemen and Libya, we demonstrate that future-oriented peacemaking requires the balancing of ‘sincere’ technology affordances that encourage an engagement with the past and present reality of conflict, with ‘subjunctive’ technology affordances that encourage an engagement with possible futures that are more peaceful. In practice, this requires combining data- and evidence-generating methods concerned with the world ‘as is’ with data analysis and visualization methods concerned with how the world ‘should’ or ‘could’ be. Our findings have implications for the study of digital methods in the facilitation of contentious political processes where the provision of data and evidence may create hurting deadlocks.

Counting bodies, preventing war: Future conflict and the ethics of fatality numbers

With conflict prevention as a commonplace agenda of international organisations, numerous instruments for gathering knowledge about potential armed conflict have emerged. This article focuses on the mode of knowing war through quantification in the form of fatality statistics or ‘death counts’, which are taken by analysts and policymakers to indicate the severity and extent of conflicts. Drawing on official documents and interviews, I argue that fatality numbers are productive of the reality of violent conflict as they shape what counts as conflict and what does not. In the reporting by prevention actors, such numbers indicate past and future trends of armed violence and, in this way, bolster the imperative to prevent by creating quantified futures of conflict. However, fatality numbers also normalise deadly violence as a baseline criterion, thus also limiting the scope of what is known as future conflict and omitting lived experiences from the abstractions behind such numbers.

The meaning of hope for Israeli peace activists: consolidation of collective identity, antidote to despair and spiritual resource

Twenty years after the outbreak of the Second Intifada and with the collapse of the Oslo Peace Process, many Israelis perceive the conflict with Palestinians as inevitable and unsolvable, yet some still mobilise for peace. This article investigates the meaning of hope for Jewish and Arab-Palestinian peace activists who joined the two newest peace movements in Israel, Women Wage Peace (2014) and Standing Together (2015). The article draws on qualitative methodologies – in-depth interviews with activists and ethnographic work conducted from 2018 to 2021. It finds that within the context of a protracted conflict, in addition to the distant and more abstract objective of peace, activists view hope as an objective in and of itself. As an attachment to a political vision, a capacity to imagine positive change or a visceral substance, activists embrace hope to consolidate their collective identity, protect themselves from crippling emotions such as despair, resignation and cynicism and/or regain spirituality. Far from being a fraudulent form of hope, the article suggests that this is a radical, authentic and active form of hope to save what can be a political vision, the shattered dream of peace, that remains central to the activists’ sense of identity and belonging. This hope is valuable: it mobilises Israeli peace activists and allows them to avoid despair as they refuse to accept the protracted conflict reality as an unchangeable given.

Dirty Hands Defended

Abstract This paper defends the possibility of dirty hands against the longstanding skepticism that an action cannot be simultaneously right and wrong and that dirty hands cases are therefore impossible. While skeptics are right to recognize that prima facie reasons against violating moral duties may be overridden, they are wrong to deny that actions required by necessity may nevertheless remain wrong. Dirty hands cases capture the simultaneous necessity of disregarding moral duties in certain circumstances and the reprehensibility of wronging people even in cases in which this is all-things-considered permissible. Rather than indicating any deficiency in our moral reasoning, the capacity to accommodate the possibility of dirty hands, along with the reality of moral conflict, is a strength of a moral theory.

Knowledge, power and the failure of US peacemaking in Afghanistan 2018–21

Abstract The power of narrative and norm entrepreneurship in shaping policy and practice is increasingly appreciated in the study of international relations but rarely investigated in the context of international peacemaking and mediation. Applying constructivist analyses and drawing on empirical evidence from US diplomacy in Afghanistan between 2018 and 2021, this article demonstrates how emergent western policy discourses, knowledge production, and the mediator's ideas and practices interacted in a dynamic context to induce a significant shift in US policy, legitimate it, and fundamentally reshape the conflict and peacemaking landscape. Approaching the reality of conflict and peacemaking as socially constructed and drawing on documentary analysis, in-depth interviews and insights from first-hand participation in the Afghan ‘peace’ process, I argue that these new narratives influenced and sanctioned a coercive US peacemaking approach that reshaped the interests and behaviors of Afghan stakeholders, with violent material consequences on the ground. In doing so, the article highlights the potential of constructivist analyses of peacemaking to provide a more holistic, multi-dimensional understanding of these processes and their outcomes in ways that purely rationalist or structurally-based accounts can not.

Identity of tribes and the modern state: Contestations in Naga civil society

The armed Naga political movement resulted in the statehood of Nagaland with a special provision for administration of the state based on customary laws and procedures under Article 371 (A) of the Indian Constitution. Like caste and religion which, formed the basis of associational life in postcolonial India, the colonial categorization of tribes, along with Article 371 (A) in the postcolonial state, deepened the identity of tribes in the associational life of Naga society. Naga society also interacts with the realities of militarized conflict. The identity of belonging to a tribe provides social capital in civil society organizations, and in the electoral democratic process. The contestations emanating from the enmeshment of identity politics in civil society and the dynamics of these interactions in the background of an armed conflict are explored in this article.

At war? Party status and the war in Ukraine

AbstractMilitary support to Ukraine has been accompanied by debates as to when Western states would find themselves ‘at war’ with Russia. This political and legal discourse reminds us that international law needs concepts to identify who is a party to an international armed conflict. Identifying parties is crucial because the international legal regulation of armed conflict remains, in many ways, structured by reference to party status – even if the legal meaning of being a party today differs significantly from the traditional implications of being ‘at war’. To capture the increasingly complex co-operation patterns of today’s and tomorrow’s wars, this article identifies the contours for a framework of legal criteria for establishing when a state has become a party to an ongoing international armed conflict. To become a party under this framework, a state must knowingly make a contribution to the conflict that is of a character such that it is directly connected to harm caused to the adversary. That contribution must be sufficiently closely co-ordinated with fellow parties to allow for involvement in the decision-making processes regarding co-ordinated military operations. Applying these criteria to key support scenarios, as exemplified in Russia’s war against Ukraine, permits reasonable distinctions, also with a view to future conflicts. More widely, the analysis of party status may enhance our understanding of the architecture of the international legal regulation of armed conflict as a whole, and its ability to respond to the realities of contemporary conflicts.

Religiosity: Conflict Resolution in the Hikayat Prang Cumbok

This study interpreted the religiosity aspect of the Hikayat Prang Cumbok as a method of resolving social and ethnic conflicts in Aceh. What were the problems explored by the value of religiosity that caused the emergence of social conflicts in Aceh, and what concepts of religiosity were the alternative resolutions for resolving these social conflicts? The data collection method used was the manuscript study method. The data was taken from the text of the Hikayat Prang Cumbok because this saga is powerful in telling the reality of social conflict in Aceh. The data were analyzed in descriptive qualitative. The results of the study showed that the aspect of religiosity that appears in the Hikayat Prang Cumbok can be seen in three forms: (1) social religiosity, (2) divine religiosity, and (3) universal religiosity. The religiosity aspect of conflict resolution in this saga is based on reasons of faith and morality. Aqeedah is related to the relationship with Allah (hambluminallah), while morality is related to the relationship between humans (hambluminannas) and humans and the universe. From these three things, it can be seen that morality towards humans and the universe cannot be separated from morality towards God.

Representation of Religious Conflict in Local Media

The media always try their best to represent reality for their audiences, with the hope of retaining readers and increasing company revenues. However, in depicting the reality of religious conflict, the media often contradicts the norms, ethics, and code of ethics of journalism itself. The purpose of this study was to determine the representation of religious conflict in local media, namely the Ahmadiyah conflict in West Java, which was published in the Pikiran Rakyat in news coverage from 2010 to 2011. This study used Teun A. van Dijk's critical discourse analysis method. The results of the study show that Pikiran Rakyat represents the Ahmadiyah conflict in various ways, including dividing the object of its reporting into two camps, strong and weak, by branding Ahmadiyah as a deviant, banned, and disbanded organization. The strong side is an organization supported by the government, and the weak side is Ahmadiyah, which does not receive government protection and support. Pikiran Rakyat presents news sources in this religious conflict in an unfair and balanced manner, presenting more news sources from the majority than Ahmadiyah as a minority. Pikiran Rakyat also represents ways of resolving the Ahmadiyah conflict.

Is Transitology Relevant for Effective Gender Sensitive Conflict Transformation Practice in Africa?

The continuously evolvement of complex conflicts like terrorism and cyber warfare necessitate the quest for theories that are relevant and applicable across the global geographical divide. This triangulation of theories aids to a better understanding of how past and present human relations, historical dynamics and material conditions intersect to shape conditions for conflict and peace. Few researchers have inquired how the triangulation of old and new theories can enhance an understanding of modern democratic transitions. To address this research gap, I reflect on transitology and feminist epistemology, to explore their relevance, rationality and value addition to the study of conflict transformation in modern Africa. Transitology, one of the oldest theoretical frameworks that enhanced the study of conflict transformation in the West before the end of the Cold War, is majorly criticised as outdated and irrelevant to the study of modern governance and democracy processes (Mohamedou & Sisk, 2017; Saxonberg and Linde, 2016). Likewise feminist epistemology is criticised for narrowly focusing on women and girls’ rights, thus detaching itself from realities of conflict and peace studies (True, 2014; Anderson, 2020). Against this background, I strive to establish the link between transitology - a framework of theories of change towards democracy and feminist epistemology - a framework of theories of change towards inclusive conceptualisations of knowledge, to prove the relevance and rationality of both frameworks, and their capability to catalyse democratic practice towards egalitarian relations and societies. This study contributes to new modalities of knowledge production in the field of women, peace and security. Using secondary data from seventy-five articles, I juxtapose transitology against feminist epistemology, drawing examples from various African countries, to build evidence that demonstrates the relevance of both theoretical frameworks in the study of conflict transformation.