National Reconstruction Research Articles

War by other means at the extractive frontier: the violence of reconstruction in ‘post‐war’ Peru

AbstractThis article examines the meeting of local and national reconstruction priorities in the wake of Peru's internal war (officially, 1980‐2000). I focus on the impact of the state's extractivism‐led agenda on indigenous Asháninka people's projects of remaking themselves into Asháninka sanori (‘real Asháninka people’). Taking an Asháninka sanori‐centred analysis of their experience of war and post‐war violence, I propose an approach to understanding the impact of mainstream reconstruction efforts on survivors that centres on the latter's articulations of personhood. This approach, possible through ethnographic engagement, sets anthropology at the forefront of the necessary rethinking of mainstream reconstruction interventions to foster approaches that are supportive of survivors’ priorities. The article explores a continuum of violence through war and extractivism that is undoing the networks of relations through which a group of survivors constitute themselves as people and communities and set their aspirations for the future.

Panacea or problem: New governance structures for disaster recovery

Newly formed post-disaster governance structures are entities vested with special authority and powers that allow them to bypass the established norms and procedures of governance. They are increasingly becoming the normative model for governments to coordinate and execute recovery after catastrophic events. Yet, little is known about the challenges such structures face. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews and document analysis of legislation, government reports, and news accounts, this paper compares new governance structures that were initiated in Japan and Nepal to ensure that post-disaster long-term recovery efforts were coordinated. We examine the National Reconstruction Agency, established after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan and the National Reconstruction Authority, established after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal. The study finds that the new governance structures were characterized by a number of challenges. These include delays in establishment, confusion over jurisdictional authority, and lack of input from local governments. The paper offers policy recommendations to mitigate such challenges.

Writing on the limits of the Estonian diaspora: belonging, gender, and sexuality in Heljo Liitoja’s autobiographies

ABSTRACT This article analyzes two autobiographies of the Estonian-Canadian Heljo Liitoja (1923 − 2010) as participation in the post-Soviet national reconstruction of Estonia. The article argues that some of Liitoja’s experiences, such as her connection to the Toronto gay and lesbian community and the controversies within the Estonian diaspora, could not be addressed in an autobiography framed within an Estonian life story writing competition. The article suggests that Liitoja’s autobiographical book that discussed these topics was able to stretch the limits of the Estonian diaspora narrative.

The Capital Commons: A Plan for Building Back Better and Beyond

To build our Republic back better we must build our banks better. The overwhelmingly greater part of our investment capital is now publicly generated yet privately managed. But pervasive and still underappreciated recursive collective action predicaments endemic to all exchange economies, combined with the decoupling of profits from production made possible by stratified capital ‘markets’ in such economies, render this unsustainable. The only way to get public capital allocation right, and thus to get credit modulation and long-term productive investment right, is to manage public capital publicly and private capital privately. This paper shows how to do that through the simple organizing framework of a public balance sheet conceived as a central bank balance sheet. Restoring our Regional Federal Reserve Banks to their original status as a network of regional development banks – ‘Spreading the Fed’ – will ensure that all assets financed with public capital are productive assets. This it will do both by discounting production-associated business paper, as in the past, and by strictly conditioning Fed lending to private sector banks upon promised local and regional production. The liability side counterpart to this asset side supplementation of the Fed balance sheet will be the provision to all citizens, businesses, and legal residents of digital P2P Citizen and Business wallets through which an upgraded ‘People’s Fed’ issues ‘Democratic Digital Dollars.’ This will end commercial and financial exclusion, leaky monetary policy, and consumer financial data ‘harvesting,’ while enabling the equitable sharing of public wealth growth through ‘Commonwealth Growth Dividends.’ A macro-prudential Price Stabilization Fund – or ‘People’s Portfolio’ – and FSOC-inspired National Reconstruction & Development Council, comprising the heads of all cabinet-level executive agencies with jurisdiction over infrastructure and industry, completes the picture, enabling perpetual democratic determination of what nationally ‘counts’ as ‘development’ and, therefore, ‘productive.’

The Capital Commons: Digital Money and Citizens' Finance in a Productive Commercial Republic

All societies must address two questions where the organization of productive activity is concerned. The first is whether production will be mainly publicly managed, privately managed, or 'mixed.' The second is whether the financing of production will be mainly publicly managed, privately managed, or mixed.In the American commercial republic, we seem more or less to have answered the 'who does production' question to our own satisfaction. From the founding era to the present, we have elected to leave production primarily, though not of course solely, 'in private hands.' Where the financing of production is concerned, on the other hand, we have been more ambivalent. For the past 160 years, our financial system has operated as a public-private franchise arrangement. At the core of our franchise lie the sovereign public (the 'public' of our 'republic') and its money-modulator - the issuer and manager of its monetized full faith and credit, its 'money' - on the one hand, and the private sector financial institutions and markets we publicly license to allocate most of the resultant Wicksellian 'bank money' or 'credit-money' on the other hand. At the periphery of the franchise lie those institutions and markets that 'shadow bank' through relations with the banking core.In recent years, developments in several distinct spaces have prompted what amounts to a broad reassessment of our hybrid financial arrangements. One such development is weariness with our system's penchant for over-generating public credit that fuels bubbles and busts rather than production, a product of leaving our public capital - by far the greater part of investment capital - to private management. This is what the author has long called poor credit modulation. Another ground of critique is our hybrid system's poor record on what the author has long called credit allocation, from which modulation turns out to be inseparable. Our morbid fear of explicitly, rather than implicitly, ‘picking winners and losers’ is the culprit here. Finally, other sources of disenchantment are our system's long-term worsening of inequality, the scandal of commercial and financial exclusion our system permits, and the promise offered by new financial technologies where ending both that and leaky monetary policy are concerned. The current COVID pandemic and recent murder of George Floyd of course underscore these sources of disillusion.This article embraces these critiques, which the author himself has leveled continuously over the past fifteen years, argues that privately ordered production requires publicly ordered finance, and shows how to order finance publicly on a Fed balance sheet forthrightly recognized as a Citizens’ Ledger. New public investments will make up the asset side of the upgraded Fed balance sheet, while a corresponding system of digital public banking through ‘FedWallets’ will upgrade the liability side of the same. Newly restored regional Fed functionalities ('Spreading the Fed'), an FSOC-inspired National Reconstruction and Development Council (NRDC) and its financing arm (a restored RFC), and a price-stabilizing 'People's Portfolio' round out the new system of Citizens' Finance. In the course of its arguments, the article traces all salient consequences that flow from its complete overhaul of our system of financing production, from banking through ‘shadow banking’ to the capital markets. It also makes some surprising discoveries along the way. Among these is that full separation of Fed and Treasury and hence monetary and fiscal policy, itself an artifact of franchise finance and hence the false hope of separating credit modulation from credit allocation, is no longer tenable. Another is that global central bank digital currency (CBDC) development is now corroborating much of what the article argues.

Pandemics and soft power: HIV/AIDS and Uganda on the global stage

AbstractThe COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 threatened years of effort by the Chinese authorities to extend its influence around the world. This article seeks to enhance understanding of China’s defensive engagement with global health agencies, and more broadly of the relationship between pandemics and soft power, through an analysis of Uganda’s evolving response to HIV/AIDS. As with COVID-19, HIV/AIDS presented a fundamental threat not only to countries’ internal social stability and population health, but also to governmental legitimacy and nation-states’ international reputation. HIV, however, also provided Uganda with an opportunity to enhance its global standing, influence international policy, and achieve national reconstruction. This case study highlights the importance of viewing international affairs from the perspective of the Global South. It argues that the very weakness of Uganda, and the structural marginality of HIV/AIDS, provided the leverage which would in the end deliver radical shifts within global health.

The National Reconstruction and Continuous Development Act of 2021

For the past 50 years at least, many American economists and policymakers have erred in their implicit understanding of ‘economic development.’ Instead of the perpetual process of technological advance and responsive macroeconomic adjustment that it is, development has been conceived as a one-off achievement through which ‘underdeveloped’ countries become ‘developed’ countries, then coast on their technical laurels. Likely stemming as it does from Cold War competition for influence over ‘underdeveloped’ countries up till the 1990s, this ‘takeoff’ conception and strategy of economic development, first associated with U.S. National Security Council economist Walt Rostow, is ripe for replacement. The present author’s InvestAmerica Plan is one such prospective replacement. This proposed bill would for its part now institute the InvestAmerica Plan. Like the Plan itself, the Bill accordingly aims to work ‘big,’ transformative changes by levering four surprisingly minimal ‘tweaks’ to existing federal instrumentalities. These are as follows. First, the heads of all cabinet-level executive agencies of the United States with jurisdiction over primary infrastructures and industries are organized into a strategic development planning body – the National Reconstruction & Development Council (‘NRDC’). The Council is charged with developing, regularly updating, and overseeing the implementation of a National Development Strategy (‘NDS’) analogous to the nation’s regularly updated National Defense Strategy and Defense Posture Statements formulated by its defense and security agencies. This task includes, among other things, the functions of (a) identifying sectors and Congressional Districts in need of concerted startup assistance, and (b) approving responsive projects, entities, and investment securities as Eligible targets of development investment. Second, the Federal Financing Bank (‘FFB’) through which Treasury already funds federal agencies is upgraded with respect to fund inflows and outflows. Inflows will continue to include Congressional appropriations and proceeds of Treasury Securities sales, as presently, but will also include additional public and private sector capital raised through Special Purpose Trusts funding diversified portfolios of Eligible NRDC-designated national development projects. Outflows for their part will continue to include credit-extension and –support afforded to federal agencies, again as at present, but will now also include debt, equity, and hybrid investments in both (a) sub-federal units of government, and (b) private sector firms and consortia of private sector or mixed public-private sector firms designated as Eligible by the NRDC. Third, the Federal Reserve System is restored to its original role as a network of regional development finance institutions (the Federal Reserve District Banks) overseen and coordinated by an independent executive agency (the Federal Reserve Board of Governors). The Act does this by requiring the Fed to employ its Federal Reserve Act Section 10B, 13, and 14 discounting powers to seek out and afford short- to medium- term liquidity assistance to small businesses designated as Eligible by the NRDC. This form of proactive productive lending, mandated by the text of the Federal Reserve Act itself since 1913 but in recent decades ‘honored only in the breach’ by the Federal Reserve System, is to replace, where allocative trade-offs have to be made, the speculative lending to secondary and tertiary financial market institutions that the Fed presently favors. Complementary adjustments to the Comptroller of the Currency’s bank-chartering and portfolio-regulatory mandates, and to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s capital-regulatory mandate, round out this ‘Spread the Fed’ pillar of the Plan. Finally fourth, the Act requires the Department of Treasury to upgrade its present TreasuryDirect system of citizen-accessible Treasury Securities accounts in two ways. First, U.S Digital Service is instructed to upgrade TreasuryDirect Accounts into universally available peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) digital wallets through which Treasury, all citizens, and all approved businesses and guests can transact with each other. And second, the resultant wallets are enabled to receive, hold, and pay out digital Federal Reserve Notes (‘dollar bills’) in addition to the Treasury Notes, Bills, and Bonds presently authorized to be held. The upshot is a universally accessible digital savings and payments platform that will not only eliminate the problems of commercial and financial exclusion and ‘leaky’ monetary policy, but also facilitate the efficient and high-velocity operation of those new functions established by the first three pillars of the Plan elaborated above.

National Investment in National Renewal – Three Why’s and Three How’s

I identify one crucial error that accounts for recent American economic decline, three obstacles to rectifying that error, and three reforms to existing institutions that remove the three obstacles. The error is to have thought of ‘national development’ as a one-off achievement, rather than as a perpetual process of ongoing renewal. The three obstacles, all in the nature of classic collective action problems, are how to coordinate the formulation and execution of a regularly updated national development policy, how to capture and incentive-compatibly channel the gains to continuous infrastructural renewal in a mixed public/private economy, and how to control macro-financial conditions in a manner that renders investment in continuous industrial renewal privately rational. The three responsive institutional reforms are a National Reconstruction and Development Council (NRDC) that combines all cabinet-level executive agencies into ‘an FSOC for continuous national development,’ a National Investment Corporation (NIC) that designs price-signal-impounding and equity-stake-justifying financial instruments in connection with national infrastructure projects, and a newly ‘Spread Fed’ that restores the Regional Federal Reserve Banks to their original status as a network of regional development banks. Here is the ‘three-legged stool’ on which Building Back Better – and Beyond’ can succeed.

An FSOC for Continuous Public Investment: The National Reconstruction and Development Council

The crisis our nation now faces does not stem from Covid alone. That is the ‘match.’ The kindling is simply our having forgotten for decades that ‘national development’ both (a) is perpetual, and (b) requires national action to guide it, facilitate it, and keep it inclusive. Hamilton and Gallatin, Wilson and Hoover and Roosevelt, … all ‘got’ this. They built institutions to operationalize it – imperfectly operated, but soundly conceived and designed. Our having abandoned these truths and these institutions these past fifty years has enabled not only our public health, but also our nation’s industrial and infrastructural muscle, to degenerate to a critical point. The same now increasingly holds of our social fabric. Full national regeneration – ‘Reconstruction’ in both the post- Civil War and the mid-20th century senses of the word – has thus become a matter of urgent, even ‘existential,’ necessity. And continuous ‘National Development,’ in the ‘perpetual renewal’ sense of the phrase, must follow that Reconstruction. This is what ‘Building Back Better’ must mean.Key to any such national project is how it is organized and then orchestrated. This Paper proposes means of both organizing and orchestrating. These means are simultaneously ‘incrementalist’ in their reliance upon existing institutions, while also ‘regenerative’ in enabling new synergies among those same institutions – much as our Financial Stability Oversight Council is meant to enable our post-Lehman financial regulators to develop. An FSOC for national reconstruction and development will better use what we already have, and augment it with a financing arm linked to the Fed and the Treasury.I call the resulting synthesis a National Reconstruction and Development Council (NRDC) and National Investment Council (NIC), which will both rebuild capacity now, and perpetually renew such capacity going forward, as knowledge and technology progress as they always do. ‘Building Back Better’ means Building Back Now and Forever.

Public-Private Partnering in Crisis and Beyond: Why Now for a National Investment Authority, a National Reconstruction & Development Council, or a Health Finance Corporation

I briefly lay out the case for expeditious establishment either of a National Investment Authority (NIA) or a National Reconstruction & Development Council (NRDC) of the kinds I have advocated elsewhere for several years now, or of a National Health Corporation (NHC) such as Jamie Galbraith and Michael Lind have advocated in in the midst of the present Covid Pandemic. National investment both in pandemic response and in productive capacity more generally, I argue, present challenges in the nature of classic collective action predicaments, which require means of regularized collective agency to address. The NHC, NIA, and NRDC are successively more ambitious such means, at least one of which must be commenced as expeditiously as possible.

The Shanghai News (1950–1952): New Democracy and External Propaganda in Early 1950s Shanghai

AbstractThe Shanghai News was the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) first English-language newspaper. The News played an important, but forgotten, role in the development of the PRC's “external propaganda” apparatus, used to fight the ideological Cold War. The News was unusual in that it adopted a commercial business model and juxtaposed vehement anti-imperialist propaganda with advertising for multinational companies from “imperialist-capitalist countries.” This article argues that the News was a product of “New Democracy,” the central political paradigm of the PRC between 1949 and 1953. New Democracy, a policy of cross-class cooperation in the name of national reconstruction, is often dismissed as cynical tactic deployed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to diminish resistance during the takeover of China. The author argues for taking the real world impacts of New Democracy on life and work in early 1950s Shanghai seriously and cautions against teleological narratives.

Asia, 1945-1954: Three Wars in One.

The conflicts waged in Asia between 1945 and 1954 are examined here as part of the anti-colonial struggle and national independence, giving rise to free and original Asian practices. The background is the emergence and consolidation of the bipolar powers of the superpowers involved in the cold war. The decolonization of the region was part of the Western Allies' ideals. However, the Cold Conflict's political conveniences lead the Truman Administration to tolerate and support the colonial presence. American policy on Asia-Pacific feared that independence would jeopardize regional stability. This desideratum frustrated the aspirations of the local populations and elites and the communists. After 1949 starting its huge task of national reconstruction, the People's Republic of China recovered imperial diplomatic practices. In addition to expanding his agricultural and industrial production bases, he supported the communist side in the war between the two Koreas and Vietminh, in Indochina. Exercising dominance over its allies the Maoist China, it consolidated its regional projection, suggesting to several important actors on the western side that the three conflicts were part of a single war against communism that they believed to be expanding.

História, política e educação

Busca-se compreender com essa Pesquisa o Ensino Primário na transição entre Repúblicas nos anos de 1920 a 1934 no estado do Paraná e seu papel como ator de mudanças na sociedade. A metodologia utilizada, se deu a partir da análise sob a ótica do conceito de “Entusiasmo pela Educação” configurado por Jorge Nagle (1974), das fontes impressas disponíveis no Arquivo Público do Paraná e no site Hemeroteca, bem como em documentos levantados no Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Município de Paranaguá. O recorte temporal inicia em 1920 como ponto de partida das reformas educacionais no Paraná até 1934 com a promulgação da Constituição Federal de 1934. O Paraná, inicia em 1920 o processo de reformulação educacional com Caetano Munhoz da Rocha e foca no combate ao analfabetismo, onde o “grande problema da nação brasileira” consistia na “ignorância do povo”. Com este trabalho, foi possível observar a transição do Ensino Primário no Paraná a partir de 1930, onde os processos de disseminação do Ensino Elementar foram rompidos com a revolução de 1930 no Brasil. Concluiu-se então, que o Ensino Primário no Paraná, serviu primeiramente como agente de mudanças sociais em busca das mudanças no campo político e os primeiros passos para abraçar os interesses da camada social ligadas a burguesia-urbano-industrial, em busca de mão de obra para as novas indústrias que iam emergindo, enquanto na segunda República, com Vargas e consequentemente Manoel Ribas no Paraná, o plano de reconstrução nacional, se embasava no Ensino Profissional vinculado ao trabalho.

Revisitando responsabilidades e violência através de agentes religiosos, na África do Sul e no País Basco.

Este texto trata de aspectos novos e desconfortáveis que enfatizam processos de gestão da violência interna e reconstrução nacional. Especificamente, analiso mobilizado por agentes religiosos que questionam esses esforços, mostrando outras figuras de responsabilidade e de sofrimento que normalmente são minimizados para colocar todos os olhos e dispositivos no atividades vítima-agressor essencializada par. Discuto isso a partir de exemplos de dois contextos diferentes: o pós-apartheid da África do Sul e o processo de paz basco (Espanha). O material etnográfico aborda os efeitos e várias facetas que envolvem pedidos de "restituição" mobilizada pela entidade sul-Africana Restitution Center que, sem abandonar a categoria de reconciliação que dominava o CVR, visa sensibilizar a comunidade branca sobre sua dívida, a sua responsabilidade durante o apartheid. O segundo é xm registro etnográfico de um mobilizados pela Diocese de Bilbao (País Basco) "BAKE topaketa, Encontro para a Paz", que visa sensibilizar o público em geral sobre casos de evento vítimas menos conhecidas, que por sua vez têm relacionamento com os vitimadores do ETA (organização ETA). É interessante pensar na complexidade das dimensões que englobam processos de violência interna que, com o passar dos anos, mostram novas facetas e novos protagonistas. A dimensão religiosa aqui funciona como uma força motriz para outros movimentos, através de especialistas ativistas religiosos, com sua retórica e recursos específicos.

Post-Earthquake Reconstruction in Nepal: Conformance the Assumptions, Actions, and Achievements

Post-earthquake reconstruction works is a consequential mission. The principal premises of the mission are the goal of speedily rebuilding, well-structured plans, extensive local resources mobilization, and commissioning leadership in the reconstruction and rehabilitation works. Nepal’s pluralistic character, political upheavals, and shortcoming of resources are real-time challenges to mission accomplishment. Congruence of the assumptions, actions, and achievements concerning physical, socio-psychological, cultural, and financial dimensions of vulnerabilities is of foremost significance because the social acceptance and/or rejection is a critical determinant of the mission accomplishment. This study aims to determine the congruence level of assumptions, actions, and accomplishments concerning the managerial process activities of the National Reconstruction Authority, which are addressing the concerns of reconstruction work, national interest, and social justice. An exploration on the Authority’s attention to the reciprocal eco-cultural resiliency measures has also been made to find a balance among the concerns. The study begins with reviewing the Acts, policies, directives, standards, and working procedures concerning the reconstruction works. The Authority’s annual reports and decisions of the Appellate Committee are taken as the sources of information. A matrix form of NRA’s process activities, key assumptions, major actions, and notable accomplishments is prepared for analysis. Matchmaking of the assumptions with the actions and achievements has been made, and the level of their congruence assessed. The level of congruence among the assumptions, actions, and achievements concerning the consequential mission is found unsatisfactory. There is an absence of process activities concerning the reciprocal eco-cultural resiliency, national interest, and social justice. Partially adapted the process activities and corresponding assumptions, actions, and achievements seems insufficient to achieve the envisioned transformation in the disaster-affected districts. Deeply rooted self interest of the people and institutions associated with the consequential mission stands as a major challenge in the process of reconstruction.

Before the dust settled: is Nepal’s 2015 settlement a seismic constitution?

ABSTRACT Two significant institutional developments occurred in the aftermath of the major earthquakes that struck Nepal in 2015: a new national constitution was drafted and promulgated and a National Reconstruction Authority was established. The constitution had been promised for over seven years, and was now completed within just over three months, while it took seven months for a Bill establishing the NRA to be passed in parliament. Many commentators have posited a direct causal relationship between the earthquake and the ‘fast-tracking’ of what was in certain respects a contentious constitution. Drawing upon conversations and interviews conducted in Nepal over the winter of 2017–18 and a close reading of media discourse and political analysis from 2015, this article will examine and assess the extent of this supposed causality. Given that the most radical and contentious change ushered in by the new constitution was the introduction of a federal structure for the state, particular attention will be paid to the evolution of the debate on this issue.

China’s Involvement in Syria’s Postwar Reconstruction

After years of war and chaos, the situation in Syria has stabilized with the active intervention of external forces, providing necessary conditions for national reconstruction. Security reconstruction, economic recovery, and political reconciliation will be the three key areas in post-civil war rebuilding. As an important node country along the Belt and Road Initiative, Syria’s urgent need for reconstruction makes it possible for China to play a larger role. Deeper Chinese involvement in postwar reconstruction will not only help restore political and economic order in a war-torn country and its neighborhood, but also improve Beijing’s image as a responsible stakeholder. At the same time, Beijing may find a bumpy road ahead as great power rivalry, Syria’s factional politics and weak economic foundation, and regional terrorism will pose significant challenges. While economic reconstruction should be the focus of Beijing’s efforts, China should also not lose sight of the role it can play in facilitating national political reconciliation in Syria.

Public Relations and Communication Strategies in Construction of Large-Scale Cohorts and Biobank: Practice in the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project.

The Tohoku Medical Megabank Project was designed as part of the national reconstruction project for addressing the damage from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. It is an integrated project involving the genome cohort study of 150,000 participants, integrated biobank construction, and multi-omics analyses. Public relations and communication activities emerged to be extremely important in the successful development of this project. To gain insights into the contributions of these activities, we divided the public relations and communication activities for the project into three phases based on the situations surrounding the project. Prior to the start of the cohort study (Phase I), a cooperative relationship was established with a focus on concluding cooperation agreements with local governments. Until the participants reached the target number (Phase II), we actively communicated with the media to publicize the project. During the phase in which use of the constructed biobank is promoted (Phase III), for ensuring the industrial utilization of the biobank, visits from the industry are promoted. Throughout the execution of these activities, we explored the best strategies for building relationships with multiple stakeholders like local government, media and industry. By paying attention to these phases that have been changing according to the project's progress, we were able to adapt the strategies and methods of public relations and communication. The success of these activities has enabled the overall project to progress smoothly. We hope that the process of designing our project's public relations and communication activities will be useful for other similar initiatives.

The synergy of topoi and socio-cognition in ideology construction and identity reformation: war on terror discourse

ABSTRACT Based on 29 Armed Forces' statements produced on the Comprehensive Counterterrorism Operation of Sinai 2018, this case study argues a consequential faculty and a constitutive functionality of war on terror discourse in reproducing social national identity. Examining an under researched discourse, this paper claims an underlying ‘crowd discursive manipulation' as a function of this discourse. In doing so, it contends a delicate reformulation in the compositional perspective of a terrorist using dialectical formation of a fellow-citizen/kindred enemy who is combated rationally, ethically, and emotionally. This paper proposes an additional dimension of the terrorist's social identity which may render a consequential restructure of the dynamics of social context. Informed by a fuse of Reisigl and Wodak's Theory of Argumentative Topoi (2001) and Van Dijk's Ideology Square (1998) in Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper critically analyses the dialectical and the discursive construction of ideology, and the reformation of identity deploying new socio-political realities. It conceives at least three cardinal dialectal strategies: conflict, fear, and legitimacy which work consecutively to sell ‘noble war’. The results suggest that war on terror discourse relies on constructive, transformative, destructive, exclusionary, and justificatory meso-strategies. This marks the discursive reconstruction of nationalism instantiating social exclusion, impersonalisation and Otherness.

Ethics "Upfront": Generating an Organizational Framework for a New University of Technology.

A powerful set of projections has constructed post-apartheid higher education in South Africa. Among these is the expectation that technikons (institutions similar to the British polytechnics) would become universities of technology, with a mission to drive the technology of national reconstruction and development. In this paper, one of the new universities of technology serves as a case study to explore organizational structure and to highlight the ethics of university management and leadership. Building a new university provides the opportunity to place ethics "upfront", rather than as an afterthought, by constructing an organizational framework that makes ethical issues integral to management and decision-making processes. In imagining the structure of a university of technology, the authors were inspired by future scripting methods developed by Bastiaan De Laat, and by Duncan Den Boer, Arie Rip and Sandra Speller. The research process firstly involved the identification of themes related to values and ethics through an analysis of the environment. These themes were incorporated into three scenarios of possible futures for this new university type. Using these scenarios, the ethical issues that emerged (according to how the university of technology might choose to organise itself), are compared with the original themes. Conclusions are then drawn with regard to management structures that are hierarchical and entrench compliance, or that are traditionally collegiate and expertise-based, or that might enable mutual appreciation and allow for leaders to emerge within any functional space at a university of technology.