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This book analyses European foreign policy as the activity of the European Union (EU) as a global actor and explores its efforts to raise its visibility in Southeast Asia through its relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Myanmar. Contributors examine the EU’s engagement in a process of dynamic consolidation of its relationship with Asia and the Pacific region. They shed light on how interregional relations with ASEAN and interactions with Myanmar can be viewed as a perfect opportunity to promote the EU’s presence in the region. Chapters examine the EU’s efforts to inspire Myanmar to connect with security cooperation and Myanmar’s engagement with the EU...
In marked contrast to literary, historical and cultural studies, there has been a limited engagement with the concepts and politics of trauma by political science and peacebuilding research. This book explores the debate on trauma and peacebuilding and presents the challenges for democratization that the politics of trauma present in transitional periods. It demonstrates how ideas about reconciliation are filtered through ideological lenses and become new ways of articulating communal and ethno-nationalist sentiments. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière and Iris Marion Young and with specific reference to the Northern Irish transition, it argues for a shift in focus from the representation of trauma towards its reception and calls for a more substantive approach to the study of democracy and post-conflict peacebuilding. This text will be of interest to scholars and students of peace and conflict studies, ethnic and nationalism studies, transitional justice studies, gender studies, Irish politics, nationalism and ethnicity.
This book analyses the role tourism plays for sustainable development in Southeast Asia. It seeks to assesses tourism’s impact on residents and localities across the region by critically debating and offering new understandings of its dynamics on the global and local levels. Offering a myriad of case studies from a range of different countries in the region, this book is interdisciplinary in nature, thereby presenting a comprehensive overview of tourism’s current and future role in development. Divided into four parts, it discusses the nexus of tourism and development at both the regional and national levels, with a focus on theoretical and methodological foundations, protected areas, lo...
Aljunied examines how the Singaporean government developed a comprehensive state–society strategic relationship by ‘securitising’ vital policy areas because of Singapore’s vulnerability as a global city state. In the twenty-first century, the Singaporean government has strategically renewed an existing form of authoritarian rule by ‘militarising’ national security governance. The main objective is to widen and deepen state power. Senior military-trained civilian political leaders and bureaucrats use military personnel, command and control, terminology and strategy of war to deal with non-traditional security challenges leading to the state’s further domination over civil libert...
Ireland and the Balkans have come to represent divided and (re)united communities. They both provide effective microcosms of national, ethnic, political, military, religious, ideological and cultural conflicts in their respective regions and, as a result, they demonstrate real and imaginary divisions. This book will specifically focus on the history, politics and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, while making comparative reference to some of Europe’s other disputed and divided regions. Using case-studies such as Kosovo and Serbia; Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus; Greece and Macedonia, it examines ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘border’ discourse, the topography of war and violence, post-war settlement and reconciliation, and the location and negotiation of national, ethnic, religious, political and cultural identities. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of cultural studies, history, politics, Irish studies, Slavonic studies, area studies and literary studies.
Amongst the most serious consequences of the 2008 global financial collapse and sovereign debt crisis were a series of unprecedented international bailouts for Greece, Ireland, and Portugal between 2010 and 2011. This book analyses the development policies of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal between 1990 and 2008, before the Eurozone crisis. It identifies national-level differences between the policy strategies and outcomes that have characterized recent developments in the Greek, Irish, and Portuguese political economies. In addition, it provides an explanation for these differences that takes into account variations in political institutions and state-society relations. In doing so, it locate...
Becoming a Buddhist monk in Thailand has for a long time provided the opportunity for access to a good education and to social advancement, both to bright, poor rural youths and to members of the urban elite whose youth often become monks for a few months as a rite of passage into adulthood. Moreover, although women are not allowed to become fully fledged monks, recent developments have encouraged a special status akin to nuns for many devout Thai Buddhist women. All this has resulted in large numbers of well-educated, well-motivated Buddhist religious people, keen both to engage in religious contemplation and also determined to contribute to this-worldly social, economic, educational and me...
The contributors to this volume examine the actual workings and on-the-ground effects of contemporary political economic shifts in the Global South, and implications for reconfiguring social networks, conceptions and practices of governance, and burgeoning social movements. How do various groups in the Global South respond to and manage chronic states of insecurity and precarity concomitant with contemporary globalization processes? While drawing on diverse ethnographic viewpoints in the Philippines, the authors analyze the impact of these processes through the conceptual framework of "emergent sociality," a purported connectedness among individuals fostered through interactions, copresence, and conviviality within a community over a long duration. In so doing, the case studies in this volume suggest, illuminate, and debate insecurities that may be commonly shared among populations in the Philippines and throughout the Global South. This anthology will be of great interest to students and scholars of cultural anthropology, globalization and Philippines society.
This wide-ranging and comparative text reviews the major theoretical and substantive debates on social inequality in Europe. It provides a valuable dual focus on European society and individual societies while placing Europe in its wider global context. Demonstrating the continued importance of national difference within Europe, the author argues that nonetheless the European Social Model has softened social inequalities such as those of wealth and income distribution, social class, gender and possibly even ethnicity. However these achievements are now being undermined, partially by the European Union itself. The book also challenges conventional wisdom on Europe’s alleged need for immigration and highlights the UK’s distinctiveness within Europe, explaining the country’s uneasy relation to the European project. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Politics, European Societies, Social Policy and Comparative Studies.
Over the past five years, the EU has established a new system of diplomacy centred on the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. This new system reflects a process of evolution in a changing context, and has been faced by major challenges since its inception. This book examines the diplomatic system of the EU, locating it within the broader study of diplomacy and the European integration project. The volume is structured around the interrelated themes of institutional change and the evolving practices of EU diplomacy. It tracks the development of the EU’s system of diplomacy, with particular reference to the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, the establishment of the EEAS and the emerging practices of EU strategic and structural diplomacy. Bringing together contributions from leading experts in the field, this book provides an original approach to the development and operation of the EU’s diplomatic system. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union international relations, European Union politics and diplomacy.