This thesis examines the complex interplay between violence and concepts of masculinity using the case study examples of former members of pro-Indonesian militia groups and current members of gangs, martial arts and ritual arts groups in Timor-Leste. Thirty-eight former and current members of these groups were interviewed in both Timor-Leste and Indonesian West Timor. While the members of these groups and their violent acts are often cast in relatively simplistic terms as being the work of misguided, socio-economically marginalised, violent young men, the thesis argues that the phenomena of these groups are far more complex and are intricately intertwined with local East Timorese and imported concepts of what it means to be a man. In addition to being political and economic projects, membership in these groups gives the men new, albeit often violent, ways of defining their masculine identity and defining their place in post-colonial, post-conflict East Timorese society. The violent enactments of masculinity displayed by the young men involved in the various groups examined in this thesis have been formed by the violent history of Timor-Leste but simultaneously the young men have also been personally involved in forming this history of violence. Both on the personal and on the level of the East Timorese state, these histories of violence are dealt with strategies of denial when it comes to taking personal responsibility for violence, leading to impunity and denial of justice to the victims. For the perpetrators, though, denial of responsibility and justifications of violence are used in an attempt to regain masculine honour and respectability in the eyes of broader society. Violence continues to be one of the tools they are willing to resort to for addressing real and perceived grievances, both on the personal and public level. Given the disruptive and deadly ways in which the activities of these young men have affected Timor-Leste, a central challenge for building a peaceful, just and equitable society will be to overcome the ways in which masculinities are defined through violence – a task which requires the involvement of East Timorese boys and men, but also their mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, wives and lovers. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010.

This volume critically examines what happens when war formally ends, the difficult and complex challenges and opportunities for winning the peace and reconciling divided communities. By reviewing a case study of the West African state of Sierra Leone, potential lessons for other parts of the world can be gained. Sierra Leone has emerged as a 'successful' model of liberal peacebuilding that is now popularly advertised and promoted by the international community as a powerful example of a country that they finally got right. Concerns about how successful a model Sierra Leone actually is, are outlined in this project. As such this volume: provides a critical understanding of the nature, dynamics and complexity of post-war peacebuilding and development from an internal perspective; critically assesses the role and contribution of the international community to state reconstruction and post-war peacebuilding and evaluates what happens when war ends; and explores the potential relevance and impact of comparative international efforts of post-war state building and reconstruction in other parts of Africa and the world. The collection focuses not only on understanding the root causes of conflict but also identifying and appreciating the possibilities and opportunities for peace. The lessons found in this book resonate well beyond the borders of Sierra Leone and Africa in general.

An enhanced attitudes methodology within the framework of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR) is developed and applied to a range of environmental disputes, including a sustainable development conflict, an international climate change negotiation and a selection of brownfield conflicts over a proposed transfer of ownership. GMCR and the attitudes framework are first defined and then applied to a possible Sino-American climate negotiation over reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A formal relationship between the attitudes framework and relative preferences is defined and associated mathematical theorems, which relate the moves and solution concepts used in both types of analysis, are proven. Significant extensions of the attitudes methodology are devised in the thesis. The first, dominating attitudes is a methodology by which the importance of a decision maker’s (DM’s) attitudes can be used to evaluate the strength of a given state stability. The second, COalitions and ATtitudes (COAT), is an expansion of both the attitudes and coalitions frameworks which allows one to analyze the impact of attitudes within a collaborative decision making setting. Finally, the matrix form of attitudes, is a mathematical methodology which allows complicated solution concepts to be executed using matrix operations and thus make attitudes more adaptable to a coding environment. When applied to environmental management conflicts, these innovative expansions of the attitudes framework illustrate the importance of cooperation and diplomacy in environmental conflict resolution.

This thesis examines distinctive issues related to conflict theoretically and empirically. The theoretical part in this thesis investigates the following issues: the entitlement failure model, the defence spending allocation model and the terror cycles model. The empirical part focuses on the following: the CMP, the beta-index and beta-mobility idea, and the relation between economic inequality and violent social conflicts. The thesis argues that the introduction of market ethos and democratisation in developing nations has created a fragile economic and social system. It demonstrates the existence of a political equilibrium that maximises the probability of re-election of an incumbent government. This demonstrates the existence of a region of capital allocation such that if the optimal allocation of capital lies in this specific region there does not arise any distribution failure. In the second part we highlight two types of conflicts, namely market conflicts and political conflicts and attempt to weave them together to illuminate an important intersection between the economy and the polity. The thesis argues that conflicts are to some extent driven by international tension, or global, ideological and geo-political factors. Notwithstanding the global influence, local factors such as income inequality, income growth or lack of it, and political institutions, have an influence on conflicts. The thesis proposes a participatory conflict management procedure (CMP) that aspires to discover stable points for collaboration between confrontational parties. Stable points are mutual joint cooperative arrangements that diminish the probability of conflict re-escalation. The thesis presents a fundamental theoretical analysis for a new index of conflicts beta (b ) driven by international tension. In this section we show how to measure the extent to which local conflict in a country is driven by international tension/ global factors. We then offer an empirical foundation to the beta index by calculating the beta values for 92 nations for which we have data from 1970–2004. The thesis analyses the relationships between violent conflict and inequality. An econometric model is estimated using binary dependent variable techniques to capture the relation between violent conflict and inequality across Middle Eastern and Arab countries. It constructs two models based on the theoretical model and actual data: the first is a dummy variable that takes a value of one when a conflict has resulted over 1000 battle deaths in a given year and country. The second is a dummy variable that takes a value of one if the conflict is completely internal, and another which is equal to one when the conflict involves an external actor. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Paul Begley.

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2005. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references.

Univ., Diss.--Göttingen, 2005. / Literaturverz. S. 176 - 185.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Kentucky, 2006. / Advisers: Joachim Knuf, Chike Anyaegbunam. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2007. / Adviser: Maureen Perry-Jenkins. Includes bibliographical references.