Social Conflict

""The paper proposes an interpretation of the social conflicts that have emerged in Europe since the ‘70s, in correspondence of the end of the long colonial period and the Western domination. In those years it opened a new historical phase, characterized by the postcolonial emergence. That has affected not only literature, culture and science, who liberated themselves from colonial rule, but also social and political action in the ex-colonizers countries. The paper aims to highlight the statement of post-colonial subjects, recognizing in this process one of the signs, and also one of the causes, of the end of European colonial project.
Protagonists of the observed conflicts are mainly the migrants but also other subaltern or subalternized groups. They promote classic demands - equal rights and the sharing of social richness - but the contemporary Europe is not able to answer them, because the social model of Europe has been based on the possibility to export the crisis outside its borders. This possibility has disappeared along with the model of social integration.

Resumén: El artículo propone una hipótesis para la interpretación de los conflictos sociales que  tuvieron lugar en Europa desde finales de los años 70, cuando se cerró definitivamente el largo  período colonial, y con ello el dominio del mundo occidental, también construido a través del  capitalismo monopolista y fordista. Se abrió así una nueva etapa, que se caracteriza por el  surgimiento postcolonial. Esto ha afectado no sólo a las áreas literarias, culturales y científicas  que se liberaron de la dominación colonial, sino también a la acción social y política dentro de los antiguos países colonizadores. El artículo tiene por objeto poner de manifiesto la afirmación de los conflictos y sujetos postcoloniales, que son portadores dentro de las zonas europeas, reconociendo en este proceso uno de los indicios, y además una de las causas, del final del proyecto europeo y colonial.""

""This anthropological study describes a specific form of mediation, as it is practiced in Ethiopia (Northeast Africa) by members of the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups. It introduces elders as male household-heads in their advanced ages, who settle conflicts and arrange marriages for the members of the junior generations. There are not only 'easy' cases dealt with, which one might assume to be too 'unimportant' for state courts or other juridical institutions but also aggravated cases that may affect the wider group or that have inter-ethnic dimensions. The study uses specific case studies of marriage, bride abduction, physical injury and homicide for illustration. Within the book, reference is made to speech-act-theory and the 'new ethnographic' approach related to it. Both rhetoric strategies and non-verbal means of communication are discussed, such as postures, gestures, spatial arrangements, numerical symbolisms, or the deliberate use of certain kinds of dress and of material objects. Special attention is paid to the use of ritual in mediation procedures. The book brings to light significant regularities that are inherent to the different types of elders' proceedings. Peculiar elements and phases can be distinguished that re-occur in all types of processes analysed in the study. This cannot exclusively be explained by reference to 'process', as a general idea of people negotiating law. It moreover hints to the existence of a formal 'procedure', which follows its own rules. Accordingly, a change of perspective 'from process to procedure' is suggested in the book's programmatic title.

http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_2776.ahtml

Book Order US:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Process-Procedure-Aethiopistische-Forschungen/dp/3447066113/

Book Order Germany:
http://www.amazon.de/Process-Procedure-Mediation-Formality-Ethiopia/dp/3447066113/
http://www.buchhandel.de/detailansicht.aspx?isbn=9783447066112""

This paper explores the relationship between parents and schools. Over the last 30 years the importance attached to parents’ views on education has increased significantly throughout the Western world. Policy‐makers encourage parental participation and involvement through the creation of councils in which parents have a say. In Flanders in Belgium in 2004 a new participation law was passed. We study the impact of this law on the micropolitical relations between parents, school heads and teachers. We conducted in‐depth interviews with teachers, parents, school heads and members of the organizing body in four primary schools and observed parents’ gatherings. Starting from the partnership–conflict opposition, we focus on the functioning of the parents’ associations and the way parents’ associations, school heads and teachers are dealing with this new law. We found that the parent–school relationship differs greatly from school to school. While the socio‐economic middle class predominates in the four parents’ associations, the results show that parental empowerment is enhanced only in those schools with mainly socio‐economically weak families.

O presente trabalho resume e sistematiza a dissertação apresentada para obtenção do grau de mestre Estudos Locais e Regionais (U.P. - Faculdade de Letras, 2004) sobre a análise interna e externa de um vínculo - o morgadio de Boassas - enquanto palco de afirmação de poderes, estratégias, relações individuais e sociais, desde a sua instituição (1580), até à morte do último administrador (1795). Numa primeira parte abordamos a fundação do vínculo no contexto social e jurídico português do século XVI, focando o espaço e os intervenientes na construção de uma nova «linhagem»; em seguida resumimos a evolução do morgadio e o seu «diálogo» enquanto «corpo», institucional e jurídico, à luz de metodologias da SNA (social network analysis) aplicadas à História - que nos permite aferir das relações e do diálogo dos indivíduos que o compõem (imersos numa sociedade de casas - pólos de afirmação de estatuto e poder); e, finalmente, contextualizamos o conflito como instrumento para ascenção social, manutenção de poder e afirmação de papéis e estatutos. Neste sentido, o estudo não só propõe metodologias e caminhos para o estudo familiar e da conflituosidade, mas apresenta também um arquivo de família inédito, apontando soluções para o seu tratamento arquivístico e estudo e disponibilização ao público. Metodologia: Análise documental, qualitativa e quantitativa, de fontes manuscritas na sua maioria resgatadas do Arquivo da Casa do Revogato (Cinfães), propriedade da Diocese de Lamego, que se encontra em fase de acomodação e inventariação. Objectivos: Questionar o modelo jurídico construído em torno do morgadio e dos papéis dos indivíduos que o compõem; contribuir para o estudo de conflitos intra e inter-familiares das casas senhoriais. Palavras-chave: morgadio, vínculo, família, casa, linhagem, elites, litígio, conflituosidade, História Local.

"By James M. Dorsey

Egypt is testing with a partial lifting of a ban on fans attending soccer matches whether the country after 18 months of political volatility, including violent protests before and after last year’s ousting of president Hosni Mubarak that led to the republic’s first free elections, has finally returned to a more peaceful resolution of political and moral issues.

An interior ministry decision to allow a limited number of fans, who played a key role in the protests before and after the toppling of Mr. Mubarak constitutes a political victory for newly elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. The ministry has in recent week resisted calls for a resumption of professional soccer matches in the presence of fans by members of the Morsi government, including sports minister El-Amry Farouq, and the government appointed acting head of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA).

The ministry suspended professional soccer and banned fans from matches in February in the wake of a politically loaded soccer brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said that left 74 militant soccer fans dead. It has since insisted that the suspension and the ban could only be lifted once cash-strapped soccer clubs had introduced proper security infrastructure and stringent security measures in Egyptian stadiums.

In an apparent softening of its position, the ministry this week said it would
allow some supporters of crowned Cairo club Al Zamalek SC, who are among the country’s most politicized, militant, well-organized and street battle-hardened fans, to attend an African Champions League game in Cairo against Ghana’s Berekum Chelsea.

In doing so the ministry appears to agree with scholars Eduardo P. Archetti and Amilcar G. Romero who almost two decades ago asserted that “football does not only reflect society or culture but is part of the way that a society models some of its central existential, political and moral issues.”

Fan behaviour on Saturday will serve as an indication of whether Egyptian society is shifting from street to parliamentary politics and the backroom horse trading associated with it. Mr. Mubarak’s overthrow at the end of 18 days of mass protests was followed by more than a year of street agitation and repeated vicious street battles between security forces and militant youth and soccer fan groups in which scores were killed and thousands injured.

The EFA has called on supporters of Zamalek to be on their best behaviour to ensure that they do not endanger next month’s planned resumption of premier league games. The matches are expected to be largely played in military stadiums.

Authorities are apprehensive following the storming of a pitch earlier this month in neighbouring Tunisia in which 22 police officers were injured. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has expelled Etoile Sportieve du Tunis from the African club championship as punishment for the incident. Zamalek fans invaded the pitch last year in the first post revolt Egyptian-Tunisian encounter.

EFA spokesman Azmy Megahed said that the soccer body was relying “on Zamalek fans to display sportsmanship and send a message to the world that Egypt is safe. That match will also pave the way for the resumption of domestic football ahead of the league’s launch on 17 September."

Scholars who have studied violence in stadiums caution that violence is as much dependent on fan behaviour as it on attitudes and perceptions of security forces. Much of the violence in recent years in Egyptian stadiums and the clashes in the last 18 months were the result of deep-seated fan animosity towards security forces who are widely viewed as having brutally enforced the Mubarak regime’s repression. Calls for a reform of the Egyptian police and security forces have so far remained unheeded.

To the protesters and the militant soccer fans, defeating the police amounted to defeating what School of Oriental and African Studies professor Salwa Ismail  described as “fear and the culture of fear that continuous monitoring, surveillance, humiliation and abuse have created.” To ordinary Egyptians, the state represented by the security forces in the words of London School of Economics and Political Science historian John Calcraft is “in the detention cells, in the corrupt police stations, in the beatings, in the blood of the people,
in the popular quarters.” 

Messrs. Archetti and Romero, describing Argentinian soccer violence noted that “the police in the stadia … are perceived not as neutral and shallow actors but as central and active participants. To resist and to attack the police force is thus seen as morally justified.” For their part, “the police came to define the fans as a political enemy. Stadiums were then converted into political arenas,” the two scholars said, warning that fan groups had evolved into well-trained fighting organizations.

Egypt’s militant soccer fans demonstrated their skill in the years of stadium battles in the run-up to Mr. Mubarak’s overthrow and the street battles since. By limiting the number of fans that will be allowed to attend Saturday’s African championship match, chances are the game will proceed peacefully. The threat of soccer violence is however likely to remain acute as long as the Morsi government does not move to reform the security forces and hold them accountable for their actions.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
"

"States remain a central form of ordering but only one among several. In the transnational space, a wide range of autonomous public- and private-norm producing organizations and regimes operates, which is not, or only partly controlled, by states. The consequence is that the contemporary world is characterized by a multiplicity of overlapping normative orders that rely on different organizational principles: for example, some are territorially bound and some are functionally delineated. Governance structures have emerged as the form through which the multiplicity of orders is linked together. They are inter-contextual forms which simultaneously serve as buffer zones and transmission belts between these orders. As such, governance structures can be understood as institutional mechanisms that fulfill the function of ensuring the societal embeddedness of autonomous normative orders in the wider world through increased reflexivity.

The type of law which has emerged in order to structure the governance phenomenon reflects the societal function of governance structures. Transnational law is an “in between worlds” law in the sense that a central aspect of transnational law is the framing of learning processes capable of ensuring mutual adaptability between normative orders. As such transnational law fulfills a different function than nation-state law which in essence remains oriented towards the upholding of already established normative expectations. As governance structures are the no man’s land between normative orders, they possess an intrinsic political quality. They are the battlefields were the delineation of normative orders are established and continuously reaffirmed. Grasping the kind of political processes unfolding within governance structures is however conditioned by the development of a concept of the political which reflects the inter-contextual function of governance structures.
"

This paper presents a multi-voiced examination of educating for global citizenship from critical, interdisciplinary perspectives. The paper explores how insights from theoretical work on multiculturalism, race, religion, gender, language and literacy, and eco-justice can contribute to a critical global citizenship education practice. It reports the learning of a group of six Canadian PhD Candidates, who engaged in a year-long collaborative process to explore critical approaches to global citizenship education by focusing on key intersecting concerns, particularly critically understanding globalization. Drawing on theoretical considerations and discussions, the authors consider pedagogical implications for classroom teaching and learning.

The creation of European citizenship was greeted as a ignificant step towards a more 'politicised' form of Union, although the limits to this new status posed by the nationality of member states were identified (Closa; 1995). Several years after the Treaty of Maastricht, some of the obstacles to the effective implementation of this new status are now evident. These are, in the one hand, genuine practical difficulties for putting rights into effect. But secondly, collusion with national views on citizenship have been more evident. The case of Spain is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Spanish government was the proponent and leading advocate for the inclusion of EU citizenship in the Treaty on European Union. The second and third reasons derive from Spanish political characteristics: democratic citizenship was only recovered in the 1970s after a 40 years dictatorship and it was recovered under the shape of a multilevel citizenship. This paper presents an overview of the relationship between Spanish and EU citizenship.

""This book offers an original, groundbreaking and analytical view of various religious antagonism in France and in Europe. The investigations were carried out in places such as prisons, schools, mosques, pentecostal churches, cemetaries, or on practices such as hallal food, martial arts, direct sale or judeo-buddhism. The sociological approach enlighten regulation and negociation modes and reaveals a wide range of compromise or adjustment opportunities.

[Cet ouvrage propose une lecture inédite et analytique des antagonismes religieux en s’appuyant sur une série d’enquêtes dans des lieux aussi variés que des prisons, des collèges, des mosquées, des églises pentecôtistes ou des cimetières, sur des pratiques aussi diverses que l’alimentation halal, le judéo-bouddhisme, les arts martiaux ou la vente directe. Le regard sociologique éclaire les modes de régulation et de négociation et révèle l’existence de nombreuses possibilités de compromis et d’ajustement]

Avec le soutien de l’Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR, programme thématique « Conflit(s), guerre(s), violence ») et de la maison inter-universitaire des sciences de l’homme Alsace (MISHA, programme thématique « Formes et enjeux du pluralisme religieux »).

Content 
•  Pouvoirs publics et régulation du religieux : identité nationale et religion(s) civile(s)
• La pluralité religieuse dans les établissements et services publics : tensions, pragmatisme et ajustements
• Conflits intra- et inter-religieux : solidarité sans consensus et identités en concurrence
• Comment les frontières du religieux révèlent les frontières symboliques d’une société

Co-authors : Balas Marie. Becci Irène. Bouzar Dounia. Donnet Claire. Fath Sébastien. Husson Jean-François. Illy Yannick. Kim Hui-Yeon. Knobel Brigitte. Lamine Anne-Sophie. Lorcerie Françoise. Luca Nathalie. Niculescu Mira. Rodier Christine. Sarg Rachel. Vivarelli Clémentine.  ""