Violent Unrest Research Articles

Rescripting contested monuments amid shifting regionings of concern: the case of the President M.T. Steyn statue

The way monuments hold sway seem stable and predictable, yet their ‘meanings’ migrate and their traditionally accepted roles shift. In South Africa there are monuments that commemorate achievements once considered laudable, that have become symbols of oppressive systems. The challenge facing the current generation is to make sense of these monuments in a way that will dignify the lived situation of all stakeholders. One such contested monument is the statue of President M.T. Steyn that used to stand in front of the Main Building of the University of the Free State. The statue divided the campus community. It provoked some students to violent unrest, while others saw it as an important heritage marker. How could the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between these stakeholders be resolved while adhering to heritage laws and without alienating a significant portion of the student body? The complex process that followed relied on creative leaps to provoke public participation and stimulate new forms of appreciation amid shifting regions of concern. One important facet of this process was the construction of a reflective triangular prism installation which provoked new visual, experiential and spatial relationships with the monument, including the visual removal of the statue from the ‘axis of power’, the celebration of oblique views, and opportunities to face the statue in a distorted mirror. This article will critically reflect on the poetic process of strange-making that was followed in the relocation of the President M.T. Steyn statue in order to illustrate how traditional conflict resolution strategies can be reinterpreted in terms of German philosopher, Martin Heidegger’s notion of inceptual thinking. The resulting approach opens new possibilities for creatively rescripting contested monuments; a way of thinking which engages the inceptual regionings impacting the way people live as beings of emplaced care.

Human Security and Accountability in the Central African Republic: A Bridge Half-Crossed

Abstract In its rhetoric, the United Nations foregrounds the importance of individual accountability for human rights violations. It also emphasizes the necessity of transitional justice in which individual survivors deserve recognition for their suffering and should take a central place in decisions on what happens after periods of violent unrest. These commitments are in line with the central tenets of human security, another key discursive element of the UN’s work, which calls for putting people front and center in the organization’s conflict response. People working in and on UN peace operations have put considerable effort into mainstreaming this approach in the organization’s accountability work. However, this commitment runs into several obstacles on the ground. This paper analyzes these challenges in the context of the UN’s efforts to support transitional justice efforts in the Central African Republic, where the UN has an exceptionally extensive mandate to promote accountability for atrocity crimes.

From national capital to provincial capital: Transformation of Hangzhou’s political spaces in the Early Yuan Dynasty

After achieving the unification of all under Heaven, the early Yuan rulers began to reform the political space of the Southern Song capital. The evolution of their policies was closely related to the ruling situation in Jiangnan. After the Yuan army captured Lin’an, ritualistic buildings with strong overtones of imperial power within and outside the city were gradually abandoned or transformed; out of consideration for the political impact, certain protective measures were taken. Due to Kublai Khan’s apprehensions that the situation in Jiangnan would worsen, as well as Sangha’s administration, the transformation tended to be radical: The imperial palace, imperial Daoist temples, Circular Mound Altar of the southern suburbs, the mausoleums of the emperors and empresses, and so on were forcibly transformed into Buddhist temples, sparking violent unrest in Jiangnan society. The Yuan court later adjusted the relevant measures, assigning to Hangzhou the status of a provincial capital, respecting local cultural traditions, and building government offices, ancestral shrines, gate towers, and so on in accord with the Confucian code of etiquette. At the turn of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the historical facts associated with the transformation of Hangzhou in the early Yuan Dynasty had gradually become obscured, and many mystical legends were later derived therefrom, becoming an important historical reference for governance of Jiangnan by the rulers of later generations.

Contesting the growing city? Forms of urban growth and consequences for communal violence

How does rapid urban growth affect risks of communal violence in cities? In rapidly growing cities, poor planning and weak institutions combined with an unregulated influx of migrants can create a potent recipe for violent mobilization. In addition, politicized identity groups often compete for resources and interact in close proximity in urban areas. Despite a growing research agenda on the relationship between rapid urban growth and urban violent unrest, findings remain inconclusive. One explanation for the disparate conclusions is that the theoretical pathways connecting urban growth and unrest largely fail to consider both the violence-generating and violence-stemming effects of urban growth. With a focus on conflict-ridden societies, we theorize processes through which urban growth influences different aspects of group relations in the city, and thereby contribute to prevent, suppress or generate communal violence. To illustrate the framework, we draw on insights from Nairobi, Kampala and Addis Ababa. By paying attention to processes, we are able to identify a range of developments associated with city growth which in turn have different implications for communal violence.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES: FUNDAMENTALS FOR EFFECTIVE MUNICIPAL SERVICE DELIVERY AND PREVENTIVE HEALTH OUTCOMES

One of the main reasons proposed for the widespread community protests in South Africa has been ineffective service delivery by local municipalities. The growing frustration of citizens has led to violent unrest, damage to infrastructure, service payment boycotts and litigation. Official reports have highlighted weaknesses including flawed governance, financial management, operational processes, and inter-governmental relations. This also applies to environmental health services (EHS) which is an intrinsic part of municipal health services, despite being the first line of defence in protecting the population against environmental risks. This grounded theory study, which forms part of a PhD dissertation, applied an integrative literature review to identify the fundamentals of effective environmental health service delivery. Four factors emerged: mandate cognisance; mandate execution; leadership support; and community satisfaction. Using the Schutte-dendrogram technique, the prerequisites for effective preventive environmental health services were explored and a conceptual model with sub-components was constructed. Viewing the model through a systems theory lens underscored the relational aspect of effectiveness. Rather than each factor independently contributing to effective service delivery, the interconnections and reliance on collaboration, communication, and contingencies among them lead to success. A strength or inadequacy in one of the four fundamental domains affects all the others, allowing progress or deterioration to permeate the entire system to enhance or weaken goal achievement. Improving the effectiveness of local government basic services thus requires a holistic view of the organisational system and the relational nature thereof.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease: Violent civil unrest and global social assistance provision.

What are the contemporary determinates of social assistance provision? What is the role of contentious politics? Social assistance literature is dominated by economic and demographic accounts, which under-examine the possibility that governments extend social assistance to contain social unrest. We test factors associated with these “structuralist” and “political” theories on a new panel dataset which includes 54 OECD and emerging market countries between 2002 and 2015. The results indicate social assistance coverage has a significant positive relationship with riots. We explain this outcome as policymakers expanding social assistance as a means of containing violent civil unrest. This effect is more significant in emerging markets, suggesting that the domination of structural explanations is a result of sample bias toward the OECD. Finally, we find that governments consider World Bank social policy recommendations only insofar as there is violent unrest.

What’s Constitutional about Revolutions?

Abstract Theorists have flirted with the idea of revolution for quite some time, mainly exploring the political, social and constitutional implications of this idea. Revolutions are easily associated with images of violent upsurges, social unrest and overturning of ruling leaders. However, there is a close link between revolutions and constitutionalism more generally: in fact, a revolution is often followed by a new constitutional moment, and the idea of ‘revolution’ has even been used in the context of judicial decision making. In theoretical terms, the intersection between constitutions, constitutionalism and revolution has emerged as a theme in academic legal scholarship in the past few years.1 In this review article, we engage with one of the latest publications in this area, Constitutional Revolution by Jacobsohn and Roznai whose purpose is to offer a theoretical and comparative account of the concept of revolution as applied in/to constitutional law. The article is structured as follows. First, we consider the central claim made in the book, and then comment on some of the methodological choices made by the authors. Next, we situate the book within the broader scholarship on revolutions, exploring the resurgence of the idea of (constitutional) revolutions as unfolded in the social sciences. We then try to ‘recast’ the concept of revolution in constitutional theory by exploring the analytical value of the theorisation and some limits to its application, reflecting on some of the tensions that emerge from such conceptualisation. Finally, we test the theory through the constitutional experiences of two jurisdictions not considered in the book: Sri Lanka and Italy.

Beyond Law and Order: Detecting State Violence and the Search for Justice in Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star

Violent political unrest and militarised regime change was endemic to Latin America in the 1960s and 70s. As a result, writers working within the genre of detective fiction produced work influenced by the socially critical and cynical attitude of American hardboiled fiction. Known as neopoliciaco fiction, this work responded to circumstances where violence was perpetrated and authorised by governments against their own citizens in the name of political and social stability. Bolaño's unique adaption of crime fiction in Distant Star combines neopoliciaco crime writing with the testimonio, a genre which resists dominant narratives of history that downplay and even actively deny the criminality of state actors. In Distant Star, Bolaño explores how detective work functions within a paradigm beyond that of law and order, and the implications this has for the pursuit of reconciliation and justice in post-regime Chile.

Death by Paperwork: Determination of Citizenship and Detention of Alleged Foreigners in Assam

In late 2019, worldwide attention turned to India as masses mobilized across the country to protest an amendment to India’s citizenship laws that was criticized for discriminating against Muslims. Lesser known, however, is that another process to determine Indian citizenship that had been underway for decades in the northeastern state of Assam had gained steam in recent years. Assam, which shares a 263-kilometer (163-mile) border with Bangladesh, has long been a site of fuid cross-border migration and ethnic tensions. The greatest surge of migration into Assam occurred in 1971 when over 10 million refugees fed modern-day Bangladesh to escape its war for independence from Pakistan. In the decades after the 1947 Partition, Assamese leaders who rejected the changing ethnic composition of the state stoked a popular movement aimed at detecting, disenfranchising, and deporting “foreigners” from Assam. Following years of violent unrest, the Government of Assam and the All Assam Students Union (AASU) reached an agreement with the Indian government in 1985 to provide amnesty to anyone who had arrived in Assam before March 24, 1971. While anyone born in India prior to 1987 was granted Indian citizenship, those born in India after 1987 could receive citizenship by birth only if at least one parent was an Indian citizen. On August 31, 2019, upon mandate by the Supreme Court of India, Assam published the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is a list of people residing in Assam who have been deemed Indian citizens. But the NRC excluded over 1.9 million people, many of whom likely satisfy the requirements of Indian citizenship. To be included in the NRC, all residents of Assam were required to submit documentary evidence of “legacy” showing that they or their ancestors lived in Assam before March 24, 1971. Persons who were excluded from the NRC can appear before quasi-courts known as Foreigners Tribunals (FTs) to contest their adverse citizenship determination. To be successful, however, they must provide significant and often cumbersome paperwork and overcome the arbitrary whims of FT officers. Under the applicable law, the Foreigners Act, 1946, the purported foreigner has the burden of proving that they are an Indian citizen. This report finds that numerous facets of the citizenship verification process contravene international treaties and Indian constitutional law, including due process, fair trial rights, equality provisions, and norms against arbitrary detention. The functioning of FTs are problematic for the reasons described below and deviate from international and Indian law in the following ways:

Trade, war and industrial policy in Southeast Asia: Spanish shipbuilding outside the Philippine Islands (1619–1753)

The purpose of this article is to understand a specific variant of the Spanish shipbuilding policies in Asia during the early Modern period: the attempts to transfer the shipbuilding industry from the Philippines, where it was based since almost the beginning of the Spanish occupation of that Archipelago, to different foreign maritime regions in the Southern Pacific. Important studies on the Spanish presence in the Philippines have mentioned a few of these episodes, but their significance for the Spanish shipbuilding industry in that region, and for the Spanish Pacific system as a whole, remains undiscussed. It demonstrates that the motivation behind these policies did not obey a single cause, but rather reflected specific strategic mercantile and military contexts, among which State-intervention, private interest, and violent social unrest played a prominent role. This interpretation is based on existing historiography and the examination of first-hand sources still unused to this day.

Social Mix Policies in the French Eco-Districts: Discourses, Policies and Social Impacts

In the 1960s, France built large high-rise developments to house poor and immigrant populations. This policy led to the rise of crime and violent unrest in those developments. Responding to that failure, France has tried, especially since the eighties, to promote a social mix policy in its new housing developments. In the first decade of the twenty first century, France elaborated an eco-district (eco-quartier) program whose guidelines emphasize the goals of this social mix policy together with affordability in public social housing. In light of these developments, this paper focuses on the socio-economic aspects of French eco-districts, especially with respect to low-income populations. The eco-quartier housing distribution has shown that social mix goals are barely reached. In affluent cities, where property prices are high (such as Paris, its middle-class suburbs and some large cities), the municipalities build eco-quartiers in substandard neighborhoods, to attract middle class families. In average cities, some municipalities have implemented more social housing than planned, to provide developers with access to State subsidies and loans – but can still privilege the middle-class in the allocation of the resulting housing. In the poorest French towns, eco-quartiers can improve living conditions for local residents but do not effectively promote social mixing.

Heterogeneous Effects of Development Aid on Violent Unrest in Postwar Countries: Village-Level Evidence from Nepal

AbstractMany countries experience massive aid surges when civil wars end. However, operational contexts tend to remain particularly sensitive due to a combination of persisting local-level cleavages and low-quality state institutions. Consequently, aid provision risks inciting distributional conflicts and violent unrest—most notably when resources are injected into areas of high social heterogeneity or particularly weak state administration. I investigate this argument in the case of postwar Nepal. I combine geo-coded aid data with village-level information on various forms of violent unrest, as well as on social demographics and institutional quality. The panel analyses indicate positive short-term effects of aid on social unrest. More fine-grained estimations reveal that this effect is driven by a short-term escalation of violence against nonstate actors—in particular in ethnically fractionalized villages under the administration of weakly performing local-level state institutions. Descriptive cross-country analyses indicate that aid may have similar violence-inducing effects in other postwar contexts.

What Motivates an Oligarchic Elite to Democratize? Evidence from the Roll Call Vote on the Great Reform Act of 1832

AbstractThe Great Reform Act of 1832 was a watershed for democracy in Great Britain. We study the vote on 22 March 1831 in the House of Commons to test three competing theories of democratization: public opinion, political expedience, and threat of revolution. Peaceful agitation and mass-support for reform played an important role. Political expedience also motivated some members of Parliament to support the reform, especially if they were elected in constituencies located in counties that would gain seats. Violent unrest in urban but not in rural areas had some influence on the members of Parliament. Counterfactual scenarios suggest that the reform bill would not have obtained a majority in the House of Commons in the absence of these factors.

Silencing the past in Ugandan schools. The role of education in reconciliation processes

ABSTRACTThis article assesses how reconciliation in post-conflict Uganda is currently approached in the country’s education sector. It highlights that education is in the main equated with economic development thereby side-lining the legacies of past conflicts and social injustices. In the view of Uganda’s highly politicised reconciliation process, this may not come as a surprise. Interviewees pointed to a general fear, that addressing past conflicts in official curricula could revive tensions. However, fieldwork further revealed that a sheer absence of reconciliation through the education sector could be dangerous in two ways. First, silencing past conflicts in schools may have a depoliticising effect on a population as a whole. It deprives a society of constructing a social, cultural and national identity that is based on multiple understandings of a conflict. Second, the absence of a social truth based on different narratives of the conflict can in the long-term trigger new forms of structural violence if not conflict or violent unrest.

Horizontal Inequality and Violent Unrest in Jerusalem

ABSTRACT In 2014 and then again in 2015-16 in Jerusalem, some Palestinians attacked Israelis and others, including through stabbings and vehicular attacks. A case study of Israeli rule of Palestinians in Jerusalem highlights the causal role of horizontal inequality or inter-group disparities in cultural, economic, political, and social realms. Palestinians are shortchanged in each realm, and this helps fuel the violence in the city. The case also adds further nuance to some of the supporting arguments put forward by scholars in the horizontal inequality tradition. Miodownik & Nir’s focus on perceptions suggests the possibility of a gap between reality and perceptions, but in East Jerusalem, Israeli policy and Palestinian perceptions appear in synch. The spontaneous grassroots violence with only limited organizational support contrasts with other cases where violence was the result of the interaction between elites influenced by political inequality and masses motivated by economic inequality. Lastly, Stewart’s policy recommendation of more aid to reduce economic inequality assumes that the rulers will provide more aid or allow others to do so. In East Jerusalem, Israel has not provided sufficient resources but also has blocked the most likely substitute, the Palestinian Authority, from freely operating in East Jerusalem.

Discourse and discrimination in Charlottesville: The rhetoric of white supremacists during the violent unrest in August 2017

AbstractThis paper explores the discourse of white supremacists in the context of the violent protests that took place in August 2017, in the American city of Charlottesville. During the demonstrations, one person was killed and many others were seriously injured after a car rammed into the anti-racist and anti-fascist counter-protestors. The research scrutinizes the utterances of the white supremacist protestors before, during, between, and after the demonstrations, as presented in the Vice News documentary, “Charlottesville: Race and Terror”. The systematic analysis emphasizes that the rhetoric of the white supremacists was blatantly discriminatory and racist, and the significance of this in the assessment of the violent demonstrations shall not be downplayed. The rhetoric of the white supremacists in Charlottesville targeted Black Americans, Jews, and political opponents. The speakers utilized a full-fledged rhetorical arsenal to discriminate against and attack the out-groups. This included (1) plural personal pronouns; (2) the possessive form “ouf”; (3) victim-victimizer reversals; (4) vulgar referencing; (5) dehumanizing metaphors; and (6) appeals to violence. Through introducing the role and relevance of these devices in the language of white supremacists in Charlottesville, the research also maps their interconnectedness in the analyzed discourses in particular and in discriminatory and racist rhetoric in general.

Food scarcity and state vulnerability: Unpacking the link between climate variability and violent unrest

Increased scholarly focus on climate variability and its implications has given rise to a substantial literature on the relationship between climate-induced food insecurity and violent conflict. In this article, we theorize this relationship as contingent on the institutional and structural vulnerability of the state. States’ institutional and structural capabilities and constraints – such as the strength of the agricultural sector and domestic regime type – influence the probability that climate-induced food insecurity will translate into conflict, because they determine the degree to which countries are able to successfully address insecurity. We estimate the effect of food insecurity and state vulnerability on the occurrence of violent uprisings in Africa for the years 1991–2011. We find that these effects are interactive, with state vulnerability moderating the impact of food insecurity on the likelihood of violence. We also find that capable governance is an even better guarantor of peace than good weather. We conclude that a two-pronged approach that both combats the impact of climate variability on food insecurity and strengthens government institutions would be a much more effective strategy for preventing violent uprisings than either policy would be in isolation.

A Digital History of Anglophone Demography and Global Population Control, 1915–1984

A Digital History of Anglophone Demography and Global Population Control, 1915–1984

The ties that bind: Internet communication technologies, networked authoritarianism, and ‘voice’ in the Syrian diaspora

ABSTRACTInternet communication technologies (ICTs) enable diasporas to act transnationally by facilitating ties to their places of origin and providing low-cost ways to mobilize against home-country regimes. However, studies neglect to address how ICTs globalize regimes’ methods of social control and impact anti-regime diasporas. In order to investigate the operation and effects of what I call digitally-enabled transnational repression, this study analyzes data that include original interviews with pro-revolution Syrian activists based in the US and Britain. The findings demonstrate that the presence and tactics of pro-regime agents online during the onset of Syria’s 2011 uprising (i) eroded respondents’ transnational ties and (ii) deterred many from using ICTs to contest the Assad regime. The study shows how networked authoritarianism mitigates diaspora members’ voices and tactics during periods of violent unrest, which is precisely when ICT-enabled activism can aid home-country movements in significant ways. I conclude by discussing implications for the study of authoritarian regimes, diasporas, and transnational dynamics of contention.

Die verhouding tussen vertroue en diversiteitsklimaat by 'n Suid-Afrikaanse universiteit

Hierdie studie stel ondersoek in na die verwantskap tussen vertroue en die diversiteitsklimaat binne 'n Suid-Afrikaanse tersiêre inrigting. 'n Kwantitatiewe benadering met behulp van 'n nie-waarskynlikheidsgerieflikheidsteekproef (N=350) is gevolg. Die vraelys wat in die studie gebruik is, maak gebruik van 'n kombinasie van drie vooraf-gevalideerde instrumente. Die resultate dui aan dat die werknemers saamstem dat die instelling bereid is tot diversiteitsbestuur en die uitskakeling van diskriminasie. 'n Korrelasie-analise tussen die dimensies vertroue en diversiteitsklimaat het getoon dat al die vertrouedimensies, met die uitsondering van een - geneigdheid tot vertroue - 'n verwantskap met die belewing van 'n diversiteitsklimaat aantoon. Die resultate het ook verder aangedui dat die groep werknemers wie se opleiding net tot matriek/graad 12 gestrek het, 'n groter geneigdheid tot vertroue gehad het as die groep met 'n diploma of nagraadse kwalifikasie. Geneigdheid tot vertroue en onthullingsgebaseerde vertrouedimensies het die enigste opvallende verskille tussen wit en swart groepe getoon. Daar was geen praktiese betekenisvolheid tussen die diversiteitsklimaatkonstruk as dit kom by geslag, opvoedingsvlak, etnisiteit, werkstatus of vlak van werkstatusgroepe nie, en ons voer dus aan dat hierdie bevinding as n positiewe uitkoms vir die organisasie beskou moet word.