Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2006. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-192).

Why and under what conditions have the Kurds become agents of change in the Middle East in terms of democratization? Why did the Kurds’ role as democratic agents become particularly visible in the 1990s? How does the Kurdish movement’s turn to democratic discourse affect the political systems of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria? What are the implications of the Kurds’ adoption of “democratic discourse” for the transnational aspect of the Kurdish movement? Since the early 1990s, Kurdish national movements in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria have undergone important political and ideological transformations. As a result of the Kurds’ growing role in shaping the debates on human rights and democratization in these four countries, the Kurdish national movement has acquired a dual character: an ethno-cultural struggle for the recognition of Kurdish identity, and a democratization movement that seeks to redefine the concepts of governance and citizenship in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The process transformation has affected relations between the Kurdish movements and their respective central governments in significant ways. On the basis of face-to-face interviews and archival research conducted in Turkey, Iraq and parts of Europe, the present work challenges the current narrative of Kurdish nationalism, which is predominantly drawn from a statist interpretation of Kurdish nationalist goals, and argues instead that the Kurdish question is no longer a problem of statelessness but a problem of democracy in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The main contributions of this work are three fold. First, the research unfolds the reasons behind the growing emphasis of the Kurdish movement on the concepts of democracy, human rights, and political participation, which started in the early 1990s. Second, the findings challenge the existing scholarship that explains Kurdish nationalism as a problem of statelessness and shifts the focus to the transformative potentials of the Kurdish national movement in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria through a comparative lens. Third, this work explores the complex transnational coordination and negotiations between the Kurdish movements across borders and explains the regional repercussions of this process.

abstract: This dissertation examines incidents of conflict and violence amid communities of the Maya Tzotzil Chamula in Chiapas, Mexico. Despite ostensible homogeneity, or more social and cultural resemblances than differences, conflicts arise between many Chamula because of how they acquire desire according to others who mediate what is desirable. These conflicts relate well to Rene Girard's hypothesis that mimetic desire influences identity yet generates conflict as imitation fosters rivalry. Qualitative methods of participant observation, interviews, and document research depict how desire, identity, and conflict interrelate. Ethnographic cases show how conflict emerges "interdividually" as rivals compete to obtain objects imputed desirable. The study begins with how young Tzotzils today appropriate the desires of others, becoming lawyer, spiritual guide, rock and roll singer, or anthropologist. Complex examples exhibit groups struggling for power and privilege within or between members of communities as they vie over "objects of desire" such as status, land, water, or representations of power and pecuniary interests. For some Chamula, mimetic rivalry works to deny resemblances with others despite being alike as neighbor, relative, farmer, carpenter, or member of the same political or religious affiliation. The study also highlights mimetic interactions that have shaped Maya struggles in the past, such as the uprisings of 1712, 1867, and 1911. Interpretive analysis explores how identity formation (structures), imitative desire (motivated interaction), and practice (habitual agency) together galvanize material and psychosocial variables for conflict. Imitative desire is worth observing because of its long-term implications for human adaptation and social change. As a contribution to social conflict theory, this dissertation offers a critical perspective to current research on mimetic desire as a significant force in human relations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2012

Orientador: John Manuel Monteiro / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-11T10:47:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 OrtizContreras_VictorRaul_M.pdf: 4503214 bytes, checksum: 4b2b4d0da808204bc060f54cda3c1389 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Esta dissertação consiste em um estudo histórico e comparativo de dois processos de territorialização indígena no contexto sul-americano. Em primeiro lugar, trata da situação dos Mapuche no Chile, enfocando tanto o processo de etnogênese no período colonial quanto a ocupação de seus territórios autônomos no período que vai de meados do século XIX ao princípio do século XX. Em segundo lugar, aborda a situação dos Kaiowá-Guarani no Brasil, analisando os aspectos formativos de suas identidades sociais no período colonial e descrevendo o processo de ocupação agro-econômica, no final do século XIX, e o posterior aldeamento promovido pelo Serviço de Proteção ao Índio, entre 1915 e 1928, na fronteira sul-mato-grossense. O objetivo central da pesquisa é dimensionar comparativamente os processos sociais e os conflitos ideológicos que tornaram possível a criação de contextos básicos de ocupação dos territórios indígenas por parte dos respectivos Estados. Para tanto, é utilizado como marco analítico o conceito de territorialização, definido, conforme J.P. de Oliveira Filho, como uma intervenção da esfera política hegemônica que prescreve um território determinado a um conjunto de indivíduos e grupos sociais. Nossa hipótese é que tais processos não estabeleceram modalidades unilaterais, estáticas e cabalmente impositivas de delimitação espacial, sendo a própria manifestação de uma identidade territorial mapuche ou kaiowá-guarani conseqüência de suas intensas relações interétnicas e intersocietárias. Um segundo objetivo, que advém do anterior, consiste em entender as conexões temporais entre os processos históricos de territorialização indígena e a configuração de uma etnopolítica no presente, a qual se articula nas demandas e reivindicações de ¿recuperação¿ dos territórios tidos como tradicionais. Todos os indícios históricos apontam que a perda da autonomia territorial significou para ambos os grupos, Mapuche e Kaiowá, um momento crítico de sua história recente, a partir do qual se redefiniram, no decorrer do século XX, e se redefinem, no presente, as condições de suas relações intersocietárias. A partir desse duplo movimento analítico, pode-se concluir que efetivamente é o território o âmbito estratégico-administrativo mais relevante na situação de incorporação de populações indígenas dentro (e por parte) do Estado-nação. Do ponto de vista indígena, no entanto, a cronologia de fatos históricos que caracterizam a perda de suas autonomias territoriais tem profundas implicações para o modo como esses grupos pensam e agem nas conjunturas do presente / Abstract: This work consists of a historical and comparative study of two territorialization of indigenous groups processes in South America. First, it deals with the situation of the Mapuche in Chile, focusing both the ethnogenesis process during the colonial period and the occupation of their autonomous territories in the period between the mid-nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Second, it approaches the situation of the Kaiowá-Guarani in Brazil, analysing the formative aspects of their social identities in the colonial period; and describing the process of agroeconomic ocuppation, at the end of the nineteenth century, and the later settlement promoted by the Service for the Protection of the Indigenous (SPI - Serviço de Proteção ao Índio), between 1915 and 1928, in the borders of the Mato Grosso do Sul state. The main aim of the research is to comparatively measure the social processes and ideological conflicts that rendered possible the making of the basic contexts of occupation of indigenous territories by each of the two States. Therefore, we use as our framework the concept of territorialization, defined, following J. P. de Oliveira Filho, as an intervention of the hegemonic public sphere that prescribes an specific territory to a set of individuals and social groups. Our hypothesis is that such processes did not establish unilateral, static and entirely imposed procedures for the defining of borders. The manifestation of a mapuche or kaiowá-guarani territorial identity is a consequence of their intense interethnic and intersocietal relations. Another aim of the work, deriving from the first, consists of understanding the connection in time between the historical processes of indigenous territorialization and the configuration of an ethnopolitics in the present, this latter being expressed in demands and claims for the "recovery" of territories regarded as traditional. All historical evidence indicatesthat the loss of territorial autonomy was a critical moment in the recent history of both the Mapuche and the Kaiowá groups. From then on, along the twentieth century and in the present, they have been and are redefining the conditions for intersocietal relations. From this analytic double move one may conclude that the territory is in fact the most relevant strategic-administrative aspect of the incorporation of indigenous populations into (and by) the nation state. However, from the indigenous point of view the chronology of the facts that characterize their loss of territorial autonomy have deep consequences for the way these groups think and act in the present / Mestrado / Etnologia Indigena / Mestre em Antropologia Social

This study is essentially a critique of how the three dominant paradigms of explanatory international relations theory - (neo-)realism, liberalism, and systemic constructivism - conceive of, analytically deal with, and explain ethnic conflict and sovereignty. By deconstructing their approaches to ethnic identity formation in general and ethnic conflict in particular it argues that all three paradigms, in their epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies through reification and by analytically equating ethnic groups with states, tend to essentialise and substantialise the ethnic lines of division and strategic essentialisms of ethnic and ethno-nationalist elites they set out to describe, and, all too often, even write them into existence. Particular attention, both at the theoretical and empirical level, will be given to the three explanatory frameworks explanatory IR has contributed to the study of ethnic conflict: the 'ethnic security dilemma', the 'ethnic alliance model', and, drawing on other disciplines, instrumentalist approaches. The deconstruction of these three frameworks will form the bulk of the theoretical section, and will subsequently be shown in the case study to be ontologically untenable or at least to fail to adequately explain the complex dynamics of ethnic identity formation in ethnic conflict. By making these essentialist presumptions, motives, and practices explicit this study makes a unique contribution not only to the immediate issues it addresses but also to the wider debate on the nature of IR as a discipline. As a final point, drawing on constitutive theory and by conceiving of the behaviour and motives of protagonists of ethnic conflict as expressions of a fluid, open-ended, and situational matrix of identities and interests without sequential hierarchies of dependent and independent variables, the study attempts to offer an alternative, constitutive reading of ethnic and nationalist identity to the discourses of explanatory IR. These themes that are further developed in the empirical section where, explanatory IRA's narratives of ethnic group solidarity, ethno-nationalism, and national self-determination are examined and deconstructed by way of the case study of the relations between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Iraqi Kurdish ethno-nationalist parties in the wider context of the political status of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq. With this ambition this study makes an original empirical contribution by scrutinising these relations in a depth unique to the literature.

Cette thèse étudie la couverture de l’actualité en Macédoine faite par la presse internationale et albanophone pendant le conflit ethnique armé de 2001. Elle explore un corpus multilingue [français, anglais et albanais] composé de dépêches d’agences de presse [AFP et Reuters] et d’articles journaux français [Le Monde et Libération], américains [The New York Times et The Washington Post] et albanophones de Macédoine [Flaka, Fakti et Lobi]. Issue d’un cadre théorique et méthodologique complexe, l’analyse de ce corpus repose sur les traditions françaises et nord-américaines de la recherche en sciences de la communication. L’analyse du discours, combinée avec un matériel recueilli lors des interviews des journalistes et avec l’analyse statistique et lexicométrique de contenu, a produit des données qui sont interprétées dans le cadre de la théorie de l’agenda-setting. Les résultats de cette analyse ont permis de répondre à nos questions de recherche : Quelle était l’attention accordée à l’actualité macédonienne par la presse internationale ? Quelles sont la nature et l’importance des informations fournies par les journalistes qui ont couvert cet événement sur le terrain ? Comment cette actualité a-t-elle été traitée par la presse locale de langue albanaise en Macédoine ?Une approche géopolitique et historique fournit le cadre de cette thèse. / Cette thèse étudie la couverture de l’actualité en Macédoine faite par la presse internationale et albanophone pendant le conflit ethnique armé de 2001. Elle explore un corpus multilingue [français, anglais et albanais] composé de dépêches d’agences de presse [AFP et Reuters] et d’articles journaux français [Le Monde et Libération], américains [The New York Times et The Washington Post] et albanophones de Macédoine [Flaka, Fakti et Lobi]. Issue d’un cadre théorique et méthodologique complexe, l’analyse de ce corpus repose sur les traditions françaises et nord-américaines de la recherche en sciences de la communication. L’analyse du discours, combinée avec un matériel recueilli lors des interviews des journalistes et avec l’analyse statistique et lexicométrique de contenu, a produit des données qui sont interprétées dans le cadre de la théorie de l’agenda-setting.Les résultats de cette analyse ont permis de répondre à nos questions de recherche : Quelle était l’attention accordée à l’actualité macédonienne par la presse internationale ? Quelles sont la nature et l’importance des informations fournies par les journalistes qui ont couvert cet événement sur le terrain ? Comment cette actualité a-t-elle été traitée par la presse locale de langue albanaise en Macédoine ?Une approche géopolitique et historique fournit le cadre de cette thèse.

This paper contributes to the literature on post-conflict identity in exploring the question: which conditions favor the success of superordinate identity formation among former conflict parties in post-civil war societies? Building on the social psychological literature on terror management theory (TMT) and optimal distinctiveness theory (ODT), it argues that the presence of a common enemy among former conflict parties increases the likelihood of successful superordinate identity formation. An in-depth qualitative comparative study on national identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) after the 1992-1995 civil war and Lebanon after the 1975-1990 civil war is conducted in order to test the theoretical arguments of this paper. The empirical findings lend preliminary support to this hypothesis, yet also point to limits in the study’s theoretical framework, including the instability of an identity predicated upon a common enemy which may not exist in the future. This paper also identifies two alternative explanations to account for the outcomes observed in the two cases, including differences in the nature of the conflicts and the different ways consociationalism has been implemented in the two countries.

Magister Legum - LLM / This paper aimed to analyse the impact of power sharing on democracy. The paper also compared the approach of Burundi and Rwanda in their constitutions to the concept of power sharing. / South Africa

Les Baloutches sont un groupe ethnique résidant en Asie du Sud-central. Baloutchistan ou, à défaut, le Baloutchistan (qui signifie terre des Baloutches), est un territoire historique qui s'étend du sud-est de l‘Iran et sud de l'Afghanistan au sud-ouest du Pakistan. Le Baloutchistan historique est connu comme le Grand Baloutchistan. Le Grand Baloutchistan est aujourd'hui réparti entre trois pays: l'ouest du Pakistan, sud de l'Iran et le sud-ouest d‘Afghanistan. Les Baloutches sont donc principalement concentrés dans ces territoires. Cependant, il existe une population baloutche importante dispersée dans les Eats arabes du golfe Persique (comme l‘Oman, l‘Émirats arabes unis, etc), en Afrique comme ailleurs en Asie, ainsi qu’une petite diaspora en Europe, en Australie et aux Etats unis. Le nombre total des Baloutches dans les régions mentionnés est estimée entre 10 et 15 millions. Les frontières du Grand Baloutchistan d‘aujourd'hui sont le résultat d'une répartition territoriale officielle entre l'Afghanistan, l'Iran et l'Inde (Pakistan d‘aujourd‘hui) qui a eu lieu vers l‘année 1870. "Bien qu‘apparemment insignifiante dans le contexte de toutes les crises régionales et internationales qui affectent notre monde, le Baloutchistan est, en fait, un espace de liaison: le point à partir duquel les intérêts stratégiques diamétralement opposés convergent" (Draitser, 2012). En ce qui concerne la terminologie, l'utilisation du nom du Baloutchistan, il est utile de prendre en compte le fait que le Baloutche en persan signifie la crête de coq, et puisque les troupes baloutches qui ont combattu pour Astyages de Kai Khosrow en 585-550 BC portaient des casques avec une crête de coq, c'est pourquoi on a leur donnée le nom de « Baloutche ». Dans la liste des guerriers de Kai Khosrow de l'empire d‘achéménide, Ferdowsi a mentionné le baloutche dans le Shâh Nâmeh (Le Livre des Rois) sous l'autorité du général Ashkash (Dashti, 2012). Toutefois, la période pendant laquelle le nom du Baloutchistan ou Baloutchistan est entré dans l‘usage général n'est pas claire, mais elle peut être attribuée à la 12ème/18ème siècle qui a vu Nasir Khan I de Kalat devenir "le premier dirigeant indigène d'établir une autorité autonome sur une grande partie de la région" (Encyclopédie Iranica, 2014). Malgré qu'il n'y ait pas de consensus parmi les scientistes, l'histoire Baloutches et l'origine des Baloutches peuvent probablement être attribués à de pastorales nomades, des tribus indo -Iraniennes qui se sont installés dans le nord-ouest de la région iranienne Balashakan, étant eux- mêmes, les descendants des Aryens descendus au sud de l'Asie centrale il y a environ trois mille ans. Ces tribus indo-Iraniennes sont aujourd’hui connues sous le nom de Balashchik. Le Balashchik deviendrait connu sous le nom des baloutches, des siècles plus tard, quand ils ont migré du nord-ouest de l‘Iran au sud et de la périphérie orientale du plateau iranien, une région qui allait devenir Baloutchistan. Dans cette région du Baloutchistan, les Baloutches ont établi un nation-état indépendant ou semi-indépendant qui durerait environ trois cent ans (Dashti, 2012). Le Balûchistân attirerait les Britanniques dans la première moitié du 19ème siècle comme une voie stratégique pour sécuriser les routes commerciales vers l'Orient, et comme un tremplin vers l'Afghanistan contre les Russes pendant la Première Guerre afghane (1839-1842). Le Raj britannique continuait à statuer et d'administrer la région du Baloutchistan par les traités de 1841 et 1854 avec le Khan (souverain) de Kalat (la capitale du khanat de Kalat, qui était un état princier dominant une grande partie du Grand Baloutchistan). Le traité de 1876 assurerait l'indépendance et la souveraineté de Kalat, dès le départ des Britanniques de la région. Vers la fin du 19ème siècle, un certain nombre de processus de démarcation du Baloutchistan a eu lieu, la plupart du temps pour apaiser l'Iran. (...) / The Baluch are an ethnic group residing in south-central Asia. Baluchistan or, alternatively, Balochistan (meaning land of the Baluch), is a historic territory that stretched from southeastern Iran and southern Afghanistan to southwestern Pakistan. Historic Baluchistan is known as Greater Baluchistan. Greater Baluchistan is today divided into the boundaries of three countries: western Pakistan, southern Iran, and southwestern Afghanistan. The Baluch are therefore concentrated within these territories. However, there is a large Baluch population dispersed in the Persian Gulf States, and a small diaspora in Europe. Although there is no consensus among scholars, Baluch history and the origin of the Baluch can most likely be traced to pastoralist-nomadic, Indo-Iranic tribes that settled in northwestern Iranian region of Balashakan, having, themselves, descended from the Aryans who had moved south from Central Asia around three thousand years ago. These Indo-Iranic tribes became known as the Balashchik. The Balashchik would become known as the Baloch centuries later when they migrated from northwestern Iran to the south and eastern fringes of the Iranian plateau, a region that would become known as Balochistan or Baluchistan. Within this region of Baluchistan the Baluch established an independent or semi-independent nation-state that would last for approximately three hundred years (Naseer Dashti, 2012). Baluchistan would attract the British in the first half of the 19th century as a strategic pathway to secure trade routes to the East, and as a launching pad into Afghanistan against the Russians during the First Afghan War (1839-1842), The British Raj would go on to rule and administer the region of Baluchistan through the treaties of 1841 and 1854 with the Khan (ruler) of Kalat (the capital of the Khanate of Kalat, which was then a princely state controlling much of Greater Baluchistan). The Treaty of 1876 would assure independence and sovereignty for Kalat. Upon the departure of the British from the region. Late in the 19th century a number of demarcation processes of Baluchistan took place, mostly to appease Iran, then Persia. A dispute over claims to Sistan by both Iran and Afghanistan finally saw the division of the territory of Baluchistan in two, between Iran and Afghanistan, in 1904 by the British Commissioner, Sir McMahon. The Khan of Kalat would declare independence on 15 August 1947. The Khan also established an interim constitution that provided for a bicameral parliament. This period of independence lasted from 15 August 1947 to 27 March 1948. After a brief rebellion by the Baluch in Western Baluchistan against Persian rule, Western Baluchistan, or Iranian Baluchistan would finally be incorporated into Iran in 1928. The assimilation of Baluchistan into Pakistan following the 1947 partition of India, and subsequently the creation of Pakistan, was forceful, since the then Khan of Kalate, Mir Ahmed Yar Khan, refused to join Pakistan, and military force had to be used to placate the resistant Baluch, under the leadership of Mir Ahmed Yar Khan. The Baluch of Pakistan, therefore, consider Baluchistan occupied territory. The Khanate of Kalat ceased to exist on 14 October 1955 when the province of West Pakistan was formed. Since their forced accession into Pakistan up to the present, the Baluch have been subjugated to discriminatory policies that have assured their impoverished status. (...)

“Ghost Rations” draws on environmental history and the history of capitalism to explain the development of the communal conflicts that tore apart the multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Ottoman Empire. It focuses on the Ottoman East in 1839-94, a period that began with a Sultanic declaration of religious equality and ended with a dramatic wave of communal violence, the Hamidian Massacres (1894-97). Recent work has described how communal boundaries hardened thanks to the rise of new discourses and symbols of belonging put forth by powerful agencies like the Ottoman state, European colonial powers, and Protestant missionaries. This project builds on these discursive and intellectual explanations for ethnic and religious divides, but it argues that in order to understand how new ideas about difference and belonging came into practice, we must account for provincial partners and the material conditions that assisted in their spread and uptake. To accomplish this, “Ghost Rations” takes up famine, the most intense of material conditions, in the decades before the Hamidian Massacres. The first half focuses on the 1839-76 expansion of imperial institutions that worked to define and police communal boundaries. The second half analyzes three cases of famine between 1879 and 1894, when these reform-oriented institutions wielded outsized influence by distributing life-saving humanitarian aid. These institutions, however, also had the effect of distributing hardship and trauma unevenly along ethno-religious lines. New technologies like the telegraph, environmental forces like El Niño, and financial changes like the spread of banking combined to distribute hunger and hardship along confessional lines. Suffering unequally borne radicalized communal tensions and set the stage for unprecedented violence in subsequent years.