This study explores the power of ethnonationalist conflict-generated diasporas (CGD) as external actors in homeland conflict by exploring the nature of their political engagement on a transnational level using Internet Communication technologies (ICTs), with Rwanda as a case study. Virtual ethnography was chosen as the research methodology to explore the online activities of Rwandan CGD using social media (social networking sites) to form virtual transnational networks for political purposes. Diasporic online formations and activities were mapped in order to gain increased insights into ways that CGD use social media to engage in homeland conflict, and the effect their engagement has on the conflict cycle in the home country. Results of the study revealed that Rwandan CGDs demonstrate attitudes and motivations to act in ways that are consistent with other case studies of CGD, including exhibiting an enduring commitment and loyalty to co-ethnics, a romanticized conceptualization of homeland and a myth of return home. The results also revealed Rwandan CGDs' strong propensity to use social media to engage in homeland conflict on a political level through the development of a large and dense transnational network used for a range of political purposes, including the dissemination of genocide denial and propaganda consistent with the pre-genocide propaganda campaign. Implications for peace-building and conflict analysis are discussed.

This paper talks about the international standards for commercial mediators. It introduces the standards of eight different jurisdictions and afterwards, evaluates whether there should be one accrediting standard for all international commercial mediators. In the introduction chapter, the paper talks about the problems with the current legal system and then explains the growth of mediation in today’s society. By discussing the nature and practice of mediation, whether mediation should be compulsory or voluntary in light of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, rationale of the various jurisdictions covered, the paper then talks about the attributes that make a good mediator as well as the accreditation and training of mediators. From chapter two to chapter nine, the paper focuses on eight jurisdictions in which mediation is firmly enshrined within one legal culture to those that are just embarking on the concept (namely Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, California and Canada). Each chapter talks about the developments of commercial mediation, law and institutions as well as training and accreditation of mediators within their respective jurisdictions. In the concluding chapter, it discusses whether there should be one accrediting standard for international commercial mediators by exploring the advantages and disadvantages of having one accrediting standard as well as the author’s analysis and point of view on the subject.

This study took a novel experimental approach from the field of cognitive linguistics to quantitatively describe the impact of culture on the use of mobile information and communication technology (ICT) in the context of peace and conflict. Beginning with the hypothesis that ICT reflects a mono-cultural perspective for collecting and organizing information, this study tested how a failure to adapt at a cognitive level resulted in distorted narratives. This distortion has problematic implications for democratic participation in postconflict contexts and in data aggregation initiatives that inform policy decisions related to governance, election monitoring, human rights abuse reporting, and conflict management more broadly. Fieldwork from the Acholi region of Uganda supported the conclusion that current ICT tools used in conflict management contexts fundamentally distort the narratives they were designed to collect at a cognitive level. Findings from this research also presented avenues for software development around a new variable for cultural communication preference.

This research is about territory, mining conflicts and social movements in South East Ecuador. The Andean country with no large scale mining history is experiencing a recent expansion of large scale mining with growing levels of social conflict. Social movements have been questioning and contesting the forms being taken by the extractive economy as well as proposing an alternative pathway to development through the indigenous concept of sumak kawsay. The Socialist Government is pushing the nation’s extractive model forward to include large scale mining, motivated by the much needed revenues to diversify Ecuador’s oil based economy. El Pangui, my field site, is located on the foothills of the Cordillera del Cóndor, where a large copper deposit is proposed to be developed by a Chinese mining corporation. The Cordillera is an area of great biological diversity and home to the traditional territories of the Shuar, one of the largest indigenous ethnic groups in Ecuador. The years of colonization of ancestral lands and of border war with Peru, the establishment of parks-for-peace, small scale gold mining activity and an expanding agricultural frontier, together have formed a complex territorial mosaic that contribute in shaping the social and physical landscapes. Since 2005 a mining conflict has been unfolding and that can be considered yet another layer of territorial disputes and symbolic contestation in the regions´ history. My fieldwork was carried out from an engaged research and activist scholarship position. I used an ethnographic methodology to explore the bidirectional influences of territorial dynamics and the anti-mining struggle by looking at multi scalar impacts these have on people’s daily life, corporate social responsibility and environmental development debates. I also looked at the ways in which memories and meanings associated with past conflicts resonate in subsequent resource struggles to form a layering of conflicts. I was particularly interested in the less visible dimensions of environmental mobilisation embedded in the routines of daily life, as well as in the ways in which the memory and history of territorialisation and settlement influence social movement organizing. Theoretically, I propose a territorial approach to studying natural resource struggles and social movements that contest mining. This concept allowed me to examine the effects of the extractive projects on pre-existing territorial dynamics and the influence of these dynamics on the ways in which mining investments are contested.

This thesis explores the dynamics of narrative production and contestation within individuals’ stories and the collective stories of the communities in which they live. The research is focused on trying to understand the relationship between public stories constructed about place and community, and the stories told by the inhabitants of those places. A case study in the city of Bradford provides a focus for inquiry. A qualitative research design is utilised, combining theory with primary data collection and analysis. A narrative analysis of national, academic and local stories about Bradford is used to disaggregate collective narratives of the city and explore the relationship between popular, political and academic discourses. It provides a context for the analysis of in-depth interviews with a range of inhabitants from a selected geographic area within Bradford, centred on how their individual stories relate to the identified collective stories of Bradford. Analysis of the fieldwork data shows that individuals are often engaged in complex negotiations of public discourse in ways that may reinforce and contest existing stories, but also complement them with parallel stories that neither reinforce nor contest but construct a different narrative. It reveals and reflects on apparent contradictions within everyday storytelling, for example, how nostalgia can be displayed about harsh times of socio-economic decline, or how attitudes to change over time can be variably positive and negative depending both on the speakers’ positioning of themselves and of the interviewer, and the speakers’ purpose in the interaction.

This dissertation focuses on the 'theo-political' core of US Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism. The political militancy characterizing two Millenarian/Messianic movements such as Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism constitutes a still under-researched and under-theorized aspect that, at present, is paramount to address for its immediate and long terms implications in the highly sensitive and volatile Israeli-Palestinian issue, in the US and Israeli domestic domain, and in the wider international community. Although processes of the 'sacralisation of politics' and 'politicisation of religions' have already manifested themselves in countless forms over past centuries, Christian Zionism and Jewish Religious Zionism are unprecedented phenomena given their unique hybridized nature, political prominence and outreach, mobilizing appeal amongst believers, organizational-communicational skills and degree of institutionalization.

This thesis was planned as an -interdisciplinary work, a possible exemplar of 'a peace study' (see Appendix 5). It offers an analysis of the situation of the Asian children of immigrant families, socially and racially disadvantaged in Britain, in the Bradford school system from the mid-1970's to 1980*, and their relative success in terms of external examination assessment in comparison with their peers. This is seen against the backcloth of pioneering Local Authority policies to support their education and observations of practice in schools. The findings are generalised as models of what is perceived by the policy-makers and practitioners to be progress towards racial justice and peace. It is argued that the British school system has shown limited facility to offer equal opportunity of success to pupils in socially disadvantaged groups and that this is borne out in an analysis of the situation of the Asian pupils in the County Upper schools in Bradford (CB), less likely to be allocated to external examination-orientated groups or to gain success in these than their peers. There are indications that their potential may not be being realised. It is argued that while language support for the bilingual child is important, account should also be taken of a more general cultural dominance in the school system and stereotyped low expectations from teachers which may feed racial bias in institutions. The data show that the LEA policies, though benevolent in intention, demonstrate institutional racism in effect. With four case studies from observations in Bradford schools, models are developed for practice that has potential for power-sharing and greater equity of opportunity -for pupils, involving respect for cultural diversity and antiracist education strategies supporting and supported by community participation in schools. It is argued that white educationists need to listen to black clients, pupils and their parents, involving them in dialogue to ascertain their real needs, to implement appropriate policy. As there was a considerable lapse of time between the field work research and writing up of this thesis, and its final presentation, an addendum (with bibliography) reviews some of the research and literature in the fleld since 1980. This situates the field work historically. The issues raised and discussed in the context of the 1970's are still far from being solved. The additional work stregthens, rather than changes my original conclusion that society is locked into a cycle of inequality. A counter-hegemony must emerge from 'grass-roots', community initiatives with a values-base linked not to self-seeking or confrontational power group politics but to a notion of the common good.

Cette recherche porte sur les dynamiques de fusion et de dispersion traversant le corps social et culturel guadeloupéen. Le conflit hérité de l'esclavage et de la colonisation n'ayant pas été résolu, a été mis en latence devenant sous-jacent à toutes sortes de relations sociales. Ce conflit, à l'origine de la société et de la culture guadeloupéennes, engendre désormais des dynamiques de dispersion. Il s'agit donc ici de relever diverses formes conflictuelles se déployant dans les champs économique, socioculturel et politique, pour en faire émerger la trame culturelle. Ce conflit opposant originellement dominés et dominants ou soi et l'autre, a été intégré à la culture, il la façonne et se transmet par son biais. L'étude des représentations et pratiques liées à la consommation, des perspectives de changement social, de la mémoire collective ou des relations hiérarchiques au travail, permet de saisir la reproduction et la transmission de certaines grilles d'interprétations de la réalité, de schèmes de comportements et de modes de relation à l'autre. Les protagonistes réels ayant disparu à la fin de la colonisation, ce conflit oppose désormais des systèmes de valeur, des références culturelles et identitaires, des paradigmes de pensée ou en encore des figures, en somme, des forces contradictoires internes et transversales à cette société. L'assimilation politico-culturelle à la France ayant cours depuis la loi de départementalisation de 1946, les frontières entre soi et l'autre se sont partiellement estompées, renforçant les sentiments de déréalisation et la menace de disparition du collectif. Les dynamiques d'unification du corps socioculturel se réalisent alors dans l'adversité, dans une relation de pouvoir problématique avec un autre. Ce phénomène entraîne des formes de recentrement identitaire et des tentatives d'expulsion de l'autre en soi. La figure du dominant est ainsi projetée hors de soi. Ce schéma récurrent est notamment mis en avant dans les notions de pwofitasyon, de masse et d'identités nèg donnant lieu à des tentatives de production d'authenticité culturelle et d'appropriation du pouvoir. Il est donc aussi question d'étudier les paramètres selon lesquels les sujets individuels et collectifs se construisent, les identités produites et leurs relations, mais aussi les façons dont ces sujets composent avec la diversité pour se construire une existence. Dans un tel contexte, la gestion permanente de ce conflit se manifeste par la fluidité des positions, la porosité des références et la multiplicité des allégeances et des outils culturels, donnant forme au processus syncrétique. Ainsi, ce conflit transversal, global, donne lieu à l'émergence de sujets périphériques, dont l'existence est surdéterminée par le déséquilibre de la relation à l'autre. Et parce que ces sujets ont intégré une part de cet autre, qu'ils n'ont d'existence qu'à l'intérieur de cette relation conflictuelle, leurs quêtes identitaires consistent à se positionner à la marge de l'autre, mais aussi d'eux-mêmes. / This research focuses on the dynamics of fusion and dispersion throughout Guadeloupean social and cultural groups. The unresolved conflict inherited from slavery and colonization has become latent and underlies all kinds of social relationships. This conflict, which is at the origin of Guadeloupean society and culture, now encompasses dynamic dispersion. It is therefore a matter of diverse conflicting forms unfolding within the economic, social, cultural and political fields that emerge through the cultural fabric. This conflict, originally between the dominated and the dominant or oneself and the other, has been incorporated into the culture, and is shaped and transmitted by its bias. The study of representations and practices related to consummation, perspectives of social change, collective memory and hierarchical relationships at work, captures the reproduction and transmission of certain interpretations of reality, patterns of behavior and ways of relating to each other. This conflict is left with now opposing value systems, cultural and identity references, paradigms of thought and even figures as the real protagonists disappeared at the end of colonization, in fact, these are contradictory internal and transverse forces within this society. Since the politico-cultural assimilation that took place in France with the law of departmentalization of 1946, the boundaries between oneself and the other have become partially blurred, reinforcing feelings of déréalisation and the threat of the extinction of the collective. The dynamics of the unification of the socio-cultural body then occurs in adversity, in a power struggle relationship with another. This phenomenon leads to forms of re-centering of identity and attempts to evict the other in oneself. The dominant figure is thus projected outside itself. This recurring schematic is particularly highlighted in the notions of pwofitasyon, of mass and neg identities resulting in attempts to produce cultural authenticity and the appropriation of power. It is therefore also a matter of studying the parameters within which individual and collective subjects are constructed, identities produced and their relationships, and how these subjects are created with diversity to construct an existence of oneself. In such a context, the ongoing management of this conflict is manifested by the fluidity of positions, porous references and multiple allegiances and cultural tools that give shape to the syncretic process. Thus, this transversal and global conflict resulted in the emergence of peripheral subjects, whose existence is determined by the imbalance in the relationship with the other. And because these subjects have included a part of the other, they only exist within this conflicting relationship, their quest for identity consists not just of positioning oneself at the margin of the other, but also at the margin of themselves.

Episodes of aggression and violence continue to beset our public spaces. This thesis explores how well we understand the transition to violence—and how aggression and violence in public spaces can be managed or controlled. We begin by arguing that established social psychological approaches to aggression and violence are inadequate for the task. Existing models explain violence through the failure of individuals to inhibit their own impulses or control their own emotions sufficiently. At best the models allow for the importance of dyadic interactions as individuals provoke each other as part of an escalation cycle. We argue that public space aggression and violence involves multiple parties and more complex sets of social dynamics. We suggest that, at the very least, the roles of third-parties and social categories need to be at the heart of theorising about violence in public spaces. To support our arguments, we examined violence directly through detailed behavioural microanalyses of real-life aggressive incidents captured on CCTV footage. We also built agent-based models (ABM) to explore different theoretical approaches to the impact of groups and third-parties on aggression and violence. The thesis contains seven studies. We begin with a CCTV behavioural microanalysis (Study 1) that showed collective group self-regulation of aggressive and violent behaviour in both within- and between-group conflicts. This study demonstrated an ‘intergroup hostility bias’, showing a greater likelihood of aggressive, escalatory acts towards outgroup members in intergroup conflicts than towards ingroup members in intragroup conflicts. Furthermore, this study demonstrated an ‘intragroup de-escalatory bias’, showing a greater likelihood of peace-making, de-escalatory behaviours towards ingroup members in intragroup conflicts than towards outgroup members in intergroup conflicts. Overall, we found that the majority of coded actions were acts of de-escalation performed by third-parties. With evidence stressing the importance of social dynamics, we compared dyadic models of aggression against an alternative social model (which allowed normative influence of others) in a dynamic agent-based modelling environment. We modelled the dynamics of metacontrast group formation (Studies 2 and 3), and found that group processes can produce both escalation of violence and inhibition of violence (Study 4). We found greater polarisation of violent positions in intergroup interactions than in intragroup interactions (Studies 5a and 5b). However, an emergent intergroup hostility bias did not emerge from this polarisation process. In Study 6, we re-examined the intergroup hostility bias present in our CCTV footage. We found an intergroup hostility bias for non-physical escalatory acts but not for physical escalatory acts. We examined the standardised number of actions contributed by third-parties and assessed the relationship between specific third-party conflict management strategies (policers and pacifiers) and conflict violence severity (Study 7). Overall, our results showed that third-parties and groups are integral features of the dynamics of violence. Third-parties largely attempt to de-escalate conflict, and the conflict management strategy they employ has a direct relationship to the violent outcome. Groups have a tendency to de-escalate their own members, and self-policing and collective inhibition take place. These findings have importance for current models of aggression and violence and also for evidence-based violence reduction initiatives.

The term ‘global peacelessness’ is used to describe the impact of persistently high rates of interpersonal violence throughout the world, and particularly violence against women (Flaherty, 2010). This violence is epidemic and constitutes a global health problem and pervasive human rights violation. Responses are critiqued as narrow in scope, reactive and lacking in coordination. The research presented in this thesis contributes to addressing this gap by exploring measures community citizens from diverse backgrounds defined as important to ending violence. Specifically, the research question asked ‘What do community members of Lunenburg County say about the structural and cultural influences on interpersonal violence?’ It links the field of peace studies with the interpersonal anti-violence field and the field of addiction. The meta-analysis that frames this dissertation asserts that grassroots community peacebuilding will involve defining and connecting measures at the local level that can lead to defining and challenging broad, oppressive cultural and structural factors linked to the persistence of violence at provincial, national, and international levels. Situating interpersonal violence within a peacebuilding framework provides a critical lens that moves from a narrow focus on individual responsibility to include a wider analysis of the origins of violence to include social, cultural, economic, and political factors and ultimately compel a collective community response. This emancipatory function of peacebuilding must include a focus on promotion of environments where boys and men, girls and women, can live safe and satisfying lives that include the development of skills that promote nonviolence and peace.