Social Conflict Theory

"This essay argues that heterogeneous conflicts should be a fertile ground for critical work and, in so doing, hopes to point at least some of the CCT work toward this underrepresented area.

In Conflict and Defense [i], Kenneth Boulding dedicated a chapter to what he called “heterogeneous conflicts.” These are conflicts in which the parties are not of the same type. Boulding saw the most interesting of these as involving conflicts where one party is an individual and the other a group or organization [ii]..."

The chapter examines variations in health care services delivery as perceived by users of health care facilities in Lagos and Ibadan cities of southwest Nigeria. Using questionnaire survey of 300 respondents and secondary sources, access, effectiveness, and forms of health care services was measured in five local government councils respectively in the two cities. It was discovered that health care seekers have evolved a pragmatic accommodation between the usage of local herbal medical practitioners and the modern formalized health care delivery system. Also, commoditization of health care services is gaining ground and new forms of health care institutions such as the private-in-public health care units are being entrenched. In these units, the relatively high cost associated with health care procurement is commensurate with higher quality of care received by patients. Questions arise as to who the revenue accrue to when health workers deliver services using government facilities, during working-hours for which they are paid for. Implications of the private-in-public system on inequality and exclusion remains a conjecture for health care access and provisioning in contemporary Nigeria.

Convidamos todos os interessados para o lançamento do livro "As Novas Guerras Sexuais: diferença, poder religioso e identidades LGBT no Brasil", trabalho do antropólogo Marcelo Tavares Natividade produzido em co-autoria comigo. O lançamento ocorrerá em 1o de abril às 19:00h, na Livraria Blooks, na Praia de Botafogo, 316 (Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro - galeria do "Unibanco Artplex"/ Espaço Itaú de Cinema). Realizaremos, na ocasião, uma mesa de debates sobre o tema do livro, contando com a participação dos autores e dos antropólogos Peter Fry (Professor Emérito, PPGSA/ IFCS/ UFRJ) e Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte (Professor Titular, Museu Nacional/ UFRJ).

Since 1979, the Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts have claimed thousands of attacks worldwide targeting property. While these protest movements have been relatively impervious to infiltration, disruption and arrest, the US and UK governments have made investigation and prosecution of these groups a number one priority. Since the mid 2000s, with the disclose of the State’s targeted surveillance and criminalization of these movements, activists quickly labeled the prevailing political environment the “Green Scare”—drawing linkages to the surveillance and prosecution of leftist activists in the century prior. The Green Scare, as diagramed within a matrix of juridical, legalistic and political mechanisms has criminalized forms of political dissent—providing a disincentive for activists’ oppositional political engagement. The current study’s analysis applies an emergent method of conflict analysis and mediation to the subject of the violent non-State actor. In this manner it attempts to adapt this conflict mediation approach to examine how counter-terrorism exists as an articulation of the State’s epistemological framework and lived experience of State-personhood. Though examining the State as an entity capable of synthesizing experiences and generating a perceived “threat”, one can examine a resulting juridical “defense”. Utilizing the Insight approach to conflict mediation as developed by scholars including Bernard Lonergan (1992; 1998; 2004), Robert Fitterer (2008), Cheryl Picard (2010; 2011) and Jamie Price (2012), one can understand the State’s threat perception, narrative construction, and finally, policies that emanate from such a conflict understanding. The analysis contained herein attempts to adopt the Insight approach in order to undertake a critical, interpretive analysis of the Green Scare. The aim here is to extend Insight’s application to an analysis of Statecraft and by doing so, offer a challenging case study for consideration.

"Capitalismo e riconoscimento" presenta, in cinque saggi per la prima volta raccolti insieme e tradotti in italiano, una densa e pregnante analisi di taluni cruciali processi socio-strutturali, morali e normativi delle società capitalistiche contemporanee dalla prospettiva delle dinamiche del reciproco riconoscimento e del disrispetto concernenti la sfera del lavoro. Particolare attenzione è dedicata ai paradossali rovesciamenti delle istanze di autorealizzazione, autonomia e responsabilità personale registratisi negli ultimi decenni nel quadro di un mercato del lavoro sempre più deregolato.

"Civil war and conflict ‘changed’ dramatically since the fall of the iron curtain, in the same way our understanding of internal conflicts and they way we explain them changed. As this paper will argue, all this could be wrong, especially in a field of study that addresses complex interactions and mutations of armed groups in explosive environments. The paper argues that any dichotomist definition (old /new) is useless. I propose a return to cold war definitions, the return to the classic theories of conflict, particularly the idea of the importance of the state and its relationship with war.

To do this, the article will address the emergence of the concept of new wars presented by Kaldor (1999), contesting their nature as an epistemic breakthrough. The papers positions itself seeing the label of “new wars” as a marketing-like exercise where violence that is historically rooted is ‘sold’ as a novelty, focusing more on the way violence is exerted and the sources of funding for armed groups, rather than on the causes of it. Later an analysis of classic war concepts and their relation with the idea of state building will be analyzed in a particular case. Finally, it discusses the neutrality and the strength of the impartiality of the theories we have built around conflict studies.
 
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