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War remains a central feature of global politics and has been a core focus for politics and international relations, history, economics, sociology as well as other cognate disciplines. The analysis of the effects of war has, however, tended to be compartmentalised by sub-disciplines. This article proposes a heuristic framework to map the effects of war in terms of ripple and backwash across a range of interconnected layers of societies. Through this framework, the article then introduces a set of empirically rich and theoretically informed studies from across multiple disciplines which examine the first consequences of the war in Ukraine. Taken together, these studies show that the war has had deep and complex effects affecting human life; human development; economies; values and attitudes; policy and governance; and power distribution and relations around the world. Although broader international public interest in the war may have waned within weeks of the invasion, the effects of the conflict have been deep and continued in many areas, but also differentiated across space and time. Traditional public policy concepts used to frame the effects of "external shocks" such as punctuated equilibrium and critical junctures may overlook such deep-seated and diverse effects, warranting the multidisciplinary lenses used in this volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examinations the nexus between creativity and teacher identity in post-war peacebuilding. It aims to understand how infusing creativity into teacher preparation geared towards peacebuilding can help language educators reflect on their identities, values and their roles in bridging a fragmented society at the end of a war. Drawing on data generated from a visual ethnography carried out in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's civil war, one of the longest civils wars in recent history, this study explores the power of self-generated identity portraits in helping teachers to visualise their identities as second language educators. This paper highlights the potential of creativity and creative approaches to teacher education to help teachers articulate their identities, expectations, responsibilities towards their learners and challenges they face. The paper highlights the power of creative approaches to meaning making, especially in tapping into identities that are otherwise hidden and the need be for teachers to be included in larger discussions on educational reforms towards peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategic use of intimacy to achieve concrete objectives during war has not been systematically or comprehensively analysed. This article presents the cases of civilian women in armed conflict situations who acceded to or initiated intimate relationships with armed actors in order to achieve specific objectives. It focuses on 'strategic intimacy', analysing it from the perspective of civilian women in areas impacted by Colombia's armed conflict. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Colombian civilian women who were the intimate partners of armed actors, it demonstrates that in violent contexts where state protection is lacking and armed groups govern large swaths of territory, women civilians may resort to their own devices to achieve objectives that government institutions or other non-state protective entities would have otherwise been responsible for. Due to their status as intimate partners and the subsequent influence they could exert from this positioning, civilian women were able to sway how their armed actor partners behaved as a form of gendered micro-governance: they exerted pressure on them and encouraged them to protect others and to share and gather information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age" is an updated edition of a classic book on strategy. It features over 40 authors and covers a wide range of topics, including ancient warfare and modern statecraft. While some critics argue that the book could have included a broader range of practitioners and thinkers, it offers a comprehensive overview of strategic thinking throughout history. However, those seeking a more specific examination of military strategy may find it lacking. The author of the text provides a critical review of the book, questioning the inclusion of certain chapters and suggesting that it could have been more focused and comprehensive. [Extracted from the article]

One of the artistic motivations and main contributions of the late war photographer Tim Hetherington was to visually explain how young men fighting in war are influenced by representations of war--a process he referred to as a 'feedback loop'. This article accompanies Hetherington's 'visual explanations' with a theoretical one. Drawing on Gadamer's hermeneutics and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, I develop a framework for understanding how representations influence realities of war. In particular, I theorize how aesthetic forms are understood, embodied, and enacted, and how they thereby become historically continuous. To illustrate this framework, I conduct a brief genealogy of three aesthetic themes of war captured by Hetherington--of militarized masculinity, of the ideal of the professional soldier, and of the paradoxical absurdity of war. This article will be of interest to scholars seeking to better understand the culture of modern war and the intimate relationship between war and broader society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural heritage in Ukraine is presently endangered. As Russia's war against the country continues, Ukrainian cultural heritage has been damaged, destroyed, and remains at risk. Interventions into the war initiated by the international cultural heritage community commenced with the issuance of formal public statements regarding the war and its implications. This article reviews the statements by some of the world's leading cultural heritage organizations, specifically the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Twin objectives are offered: first, establishing an overview of the international cultural heritage community's early communications regarding the war; and second, comparing and critiquing these public pronouncements and implications for Ukrainian cultural heritage. Ultimately, a joint contemporary and historical snapshot situating the international cultural heritage community within the war's early stages is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role, interchangeability and liquidity of emotions in the speeches of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev during the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. It enquires about the functionality of emotions before, during, and after the war and finds that Aliyev prepared, mobilized and motivated society for the war through multiple 'Address to the Nation' speeches that aimed to evoke specific emotions such as shame, pride, and humiliation via portraying the occupation of Shusha and the surrounding region as a source of shame and humiliation and the military victories in 2020 as a source of pride for the whole nation, which, combined, constitutes a crucial example of the interchangeability and liquidity of emotions. The emotional appeals in his speeches also justify and garner support for the initiation of the conflict, which, after the victory, transforms into Azerbaijani pride and humiliation of Armenians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This book, titled "The United States and the East Asia Society in the Cold War Era," is a collection of articles that were presented in a 2017 workshop. The articles aim to shed light on the significant impact of the Cold War on both the United States and East Asian societies. The topics covered include the American garrison in mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and the Soviet troops in East Asia. The articles also explore the fate of medical institutions, women, diplomats, and scholars during this period. The studies in this book are based on primary sources such as police archives, official reports, newspapers, magazines, and diaries, and they aim to challenge the prevailing notion of the Cold War as solely a military and diplomatic contest by examining social issues and the impact on the societies involved. The book also highlights gendered perspectives, the history of drugs and violence, and features international, transnational, and comparative perspectives. While the book has received praise, there are some areas for improvement, such as further exploration of gender and racial dimensions, and providing more historical background in some articles. Overall, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the Cold War in East Asia and is recommended for both professional historians and the general public interested in history. [Extracted from the article]

The editorial discusses the importance of conflict archaeology in understanding and studying the impact of war on society. It acknowledges the ongoing conflicts around the world, such as the war in Ukraine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and political divisions in America, highlighting the relevance of conflict archaeology in such times. The editorial also introduces a new project that aims to document the experiences of civilians during war through photography and oral testimony, emphasizing the importance of including the perspectives of those affected by war. The issue of the journal includes papers on World War I and World War II, providing new insights into these conflicts. Overall, the editorial emphasizes the significance of conflict archaeology in comprehending the effects of war on individuals and society. [Extracted from the article]

Protests could exhibit properties of an asymmetrical, nonconventional war when paramilitary police utilise counterinsurgency measures and decentralised protestors adopt guerrilla tactics. This study examines the structural characteristics of the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the organisation of the police and protestors. Strategic challenges seen in civil wars emerged. Blurred frontlines and identification problems escalated violence for collaboration and control. The civil war theoretical framework explains the role of civilians, the logic of violence, and the realignment of social and economic life in prolonged protests. The resemblance of society at civil war suggests civilians were forced to take sides and participate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Radical War: Data, Attention, and Control in the 21st Century" by Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins explores the impact of digital technologies on the conduct of war. The authors argue that war is now about managing public attention and opinions, rather than compelling an adversary to comply with demands. They emphasize the importance of information in understanding various aspects of war, from terrorist radicalization to target acquisition. The book also discusses the challenges posed by the overwhelming amount of data available and the role of technology in controlling and surveilling societies. While the authors acknowledge the complexity of the changing landscape, they highlight the need for military adaptation to the data-saturated environments of modern warfare. [Extracted from the article]

The declaration of war in August 1914 seemed to sanction the impotence of the organized labor movement and these international bodies. The First World War would prove 'the gigantic force of imperialism', accelerating and intensifying a new period of globalization. Thus, while at the beginning of the twentieth century John Atkinson Hobson described inter-imperialist entente as one of the consequences of what he called 'patriotic parasitism' and, like Karl Kautsky, excluded the risks of a global war, other commentators saw precisely in the imperialism of the great powers, and in particular in their unequal development, the reasons for future conflict. The First World War also promoted an 'offensive war of self-defense' by the state and the ruling classes against the organized labor movement. This paper proposes to discuss the conflicting and contradictory links between internationalism, globalization and war by taking a transnational approach, conceived as necessarily attentive to the 'unequal and combined geographical development' of the world. The combined nature of the transformations affecting the various societies at war thus becomes essential in attempting to grasp the apparently simple idea that the processes at work in certain advanced societies 'irrevocably transform the conditions and character of similar processes about to take place elsewhere'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic politics constituted a challenging paradox for addressing international justice and injustice for Judith Shklar. It could be a primary source of redressing injustice in its capacity to mobilize international society against the worst kinds of cruelty suffered by international victims – refugees, exiles, immigrants, and victims of wars. Yet the link between democratic politics and nationalism also constituted a primary source of international injustice towards those, on either side of national borders, with whom democratic majorities did not identify and who became grist to the mill of democratic unity forged in entirely irrational hostility towards others. This was why Shklar strenuously criticised calls to highly participatory forms of democracy: the obverse of extreme democratic tightness was extreme hostility towards out-groups on either side of national borders. Shklar's aversion to nationalism had a status approaching her view of cruelty as the worst vice, for the irrational passions it unleashed were a great source precisely of that cruelty. A focus on international justice and injustice in Shklar's thought accordingly demands concertedexplorations of the part that domestic democratic politics, and especially democratic nationalism, plays in international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Palestinians' representations in visual art of the existential crisis they faced following the destruction of Palestinian society during the 1948 War, known as the Nakba. The article explores how this colossal event has been conveyed artistically, and discusses artworks that revolve around Palestinians' subsequent states of being, which are represented by two main motifs, the 'good Arab' and the cactus tree. In particular, it assesses how these motifs were used to convey varied, and even opposite, states of being and consciousness, as well as survival strategies, that go beyond commonplace views and perceptions about Palestinians in Israel after 1948. Moreover, this article discusses how the allegorical language of these artworks augments their meanings and might open a window into the world of the Palestinians, who lack archives, official historical narratives, and institutions of remembrance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike various natural disasters that some studies have highlighted as potential contributors to peace, the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic is neither short-term nor regionally confined. Thus, rather than invoking a compassionate response, the pandemic is likely to aggravate pre-existing divisions and create an environment that accentuates survival over compassion. Building on a large probability survey data gathered in May 2020 in Turkey, we demonstrate that the pandemic has disproportionally affected minority Kurds and exacerbated pre-existing inequalities and social polarization. Results from a series of regression analyses show growing dissatisfaction with the Turkish government's handling of the pandemic. However, this effect fails to translate into the sense of solidarity between majority Turks and minority Kurds necessary to build a peaceful society. Support for the government's approach to the Kurdish opposition seems to be conditioned by social categorization and increasingly partisan political identities in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst scholars have examined the long-term political, social, and cultural dynamics with regards to Yugoslavia's collapse, the military has largely escaped similar scrutiny. This paper explores the League of Communists of Yugoslavia's attempt to solve the nationalist problems of Yugoslavia through the ideology of self-management, and how the failure to do so affected the strategy of Total National Defence. The republics were able to construct their own armed forces due to Total National Defence's devolution of powers and self-management making changes to the policy extremely difficult for the federal government and Yugoslav People's Army. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on international significance for the academic field of teacher education. Topics include denigration of theoretical and researchinformed elements as part of teacher education and the desirability of training in schools instead of institutions of higher education; and pre-service teacher courses being linked to an academic qualification and involving research and research-active tutors.

The role of international organizations in fostering the evolution of education systems worldwide emerged in the 1950s, and the OEEC-OECD, in particular, contributed to shaping the so-called 'education-economic growth' paradigm. First, its education agenda was the push to spread technical and vocational education, being one of the key means for preparing citizens for modern society in a Cold War context. In addition, the spread of these relevant skills provided solutions to actual problems that affected the less-developed Western European countries. Consequently, Mediterranean Europe became a laboratory for new visions and practices for development. In the educational field, these countries were an ideal environment to observe the changes underway and, above all, evaluate the actual outcomes of these early programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: The Sacred Heart of Jesus was the protagonist of a devotion that became very popular in Spain during the second half of the 1800s and the former decades of the 20th century. In the Iberian Peninsula the heart of Christ became a symbol of an identity discourse that combined a fundamentalist conception of religion, a definition of the Spanish nation as intrinsically Catholic, and counter-revolutionary ideas. The aim of this article is to analyse why, during the years between 1899 and 1939, the Sacred Heart became a reference with a growing presence in the public space. Secondly, it explores why this presence caused a fierce dispute between those who considered that the Spanish Volksgeist was inherently Catholic, and those who believed otherwise. The existence of a war for the occupation and demarcation of public space stimulated the reproduction of the heart of Christ in scapulars, plaques or monuments, but also explains that the political groups who defended the secularization of society and a Spanish nationalism opposed to National-Catholic approaches reacted with anger to the spread of the Sacred Heart in the public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how historical analogies and collective memories of the 1990s wars figured in public discussions during the first wave of the coronavirus crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. The research is based on the analysis of political speeches, media articles and social networks posts, examining the presence – or absence – of war analogies in these sources in the first period of the coronavirus pandemic, from mid-March 2020 to mid-May 2020. The article examines in which ways historical analogies referring to the 1990s wars were used during the coronavirus pandemic in two societies which have a recent war experience. By analysing to what extent and in which ways analogies to the war were used in political and societal discourses in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, this article adds to the existing literature on the use of historical analogies by focusing on the use of war analogies in societies where the war is not an abstract reference, but a recent, lived experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the Great Patriotic War has become post-Soviet Russia's universal language for political discussion and the only effective "bond." As the most advantageous narrative from the perspective of the regime's interests, it is this narrative of war that the Kremlin seeks to control above all. Memory of the war has been "appropriated" by the state, and the more freedom it has to manipulate this, the less veterans are able to challenge its triumphal mythmaking. However, the memory of war is, for most Russians, not limited to any official narrative in school texts, books, or films. For each family, it is also a family history, an object of pride, and a memory of tragedy. The state's appropriation of the war and the pressure of "military-patriotic propaganda" have sparked resistance among a significant portion of society, along with a desire to affirm their own family memories. The "Immortal Regiment" was originally an attempt to seize power from the state monopoly and to assert the history of the war as a family history, one not inscribed in the state narrative alone, but that also subordinates the state narrative to family memory. Millions of Russians took to the streets to assert their right to history, the most powerful political statement in Russia's entire post-Soviet history. The state has tried to paint the Immortal Regiment as a loyalist movement, because it speaks to the same topic that constitutes the core of the regime's own political ideology, the Great Patriotic War. Meanwhile, it is clear even to the regime itself that this movement is discussing the war differently, in fact undermining the state's interpretive monopoly on the military past and, consequently, its right to make political statements that exploit the theme of the war. It nevertheless remains too early to say whether the state has fully integrated this action into the propaganda mainstream. Furthermore, the power of the Immortal Regiment is even forcing propaganda to adapt to the demands of family and personal memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

i An explanation may lie in Herzen's understanding of the war: "Emperor Nicholas sounded the alarm by launching a useless war - a fantastic, a I religious i war - that may readily spread from the shores of the Black Sea to the banks of the Rhine and will, no matter what, entail everything that is feared from revolutions: expropriations, imposts, violence, and, to boot, a foreign occupation, courts martial, mass shootings, and war indemnities."[60] Herzen's article, which is dated February 1854, was in many respects prophetic, even though the war certainly did not spread from the Black Sea to the Rhine (although it did affect Germany, in a way). Levin, A.I. Sheparneva, and others have also addressed it.[77] Aleksandr Koshelev commented on the Crimean War period in his I Notes i [Zapiski]: "The allied landing in the Crimea in 1854, the subsequent battles at Alma and Inkerman, and the investment of Sevastopol did not greatly grieve us, for we were certain that even defeats were more tolerable for Russia and more useful to it than the situation in which it had found itself of late."[78] He followed this comment by the remarks I mentioned early in my article, on the proximity of society's and popular sentiments on the war. I Russian intellectual society of the mid-nineteenth century greeted the Crimean War with varying degrees of enthusiasm that gradually yielded to the belief that defeat might prove necessary for fundamental reform of the government and social system. i The Crimean War exerted a significant influence on the mood and actions of Russian society, by which I mean primarily the social structure that was unrelated to the system of authority or to the people as such (the lower orders, that is - the direct producers of value). [Extracted from the article]

This paper investigates toys and their consumer spaces as a part of the history of early Soviet childhood in Ukraine. Particular consideration is paid to the influence of communist ideology on determining a toy's role in children's upbringing. The study highlights the various spaces established in Ukraine for children's collective consumption and the material world of play, such as the children's branch of the central department store and the Palace of Pioneers. However, it has been shown that the low purchasing power of households and the underdevelopment of light industry made hand-made play items an inseparable element of children's material culture, as well as an important part of children's everyday consumption practices. In the 1930s, the growing tensions inside Soviet society, Europe, and around the world caused the militarization of childhood and raised the role of war toys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the Balkan Wars have been undoubtedly overshadowed and relegated to the periphery by the First World War. Regardless of these critiques, Boeckh and Rutar have produced a nicely curated volume that expands our knowledge of the Balkan Wars and removes the historiography from under the shadow of the First World War. [Extracted from the article]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly expected to disrupt the ordinary functioning of society. From how we fight wars or govern society, to how we work and play, and from how we create to how we teach and learn, there is almost no field of human activity which is believed to be entirely immune from the impact of this emerging technology. This poses a multifaceted problem when it comes to designing and understanding regulatory responses to AI. This article aims to: (i) defend the need for a novel conceptual model for understanding the systemic legal disruption caused by new technologies such as AI; (ii) to situate this model in relation to preceding debates about the interaction of regulation with new technologies (particularly the 'cyberlaw' and 'robolaw' debates); and (iii) to set out a detailed model for understanding the legal disruption precipitated by AI, examining both pathways stemming from new affordances that can give rise to a regulatory 'disruptive moment', as well as the Legal Development, Displacement or Destruction that can ensue. The article proposes that this model of legal disruption can be broadly generalisable to understanding the legal effects and challenges of other emerging technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous weapons are robotic systems that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator. Advances in computer technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics may lead to a vast expansion in the development and use of such weapons in the near future. Public opinion runs strongly against killer robots. But many of the same claims that propelled the Cold War are being recycled to justify the pursuit of a nascent robotic arms race. Autonomous weapons could be militarily potent and therefore pose a great threat. For this reason, substantial pressure from civil society will be needed before major powers will seriously consider their prohibition. However, demands for human control and responsibility and the protection of human dignity and sovereignty fit naturally into the traditional law of war and imply strict limits on autonomy in weapon systems. Opponents of autonomous weapons should point out the terrible threat they pose to global peace and security, as well as their offensiveness to principles of humanity and to public conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout history, new military technologies have had profound ramifications: The rise of gunpowder and cannon created economies of scale that encouraged the emergence of nation-states, and Prussia used railroads to surprise the Austrians at Königgrätz, beginning the end of the Austrian Empire. Today, emerging military technologies—including unmanned aerial vehicles, directed-energy weapons, lethal autonomous robots, and cyber weapons—raise the prospect of upheavals in military practice so fundamental that they challenge assumptions underlying long-established international laws of war, particularly those relating to the primacy of the state and the geographic bounds of warfare. But the laws of war have been developed over a long period, with commentary and input from many cultures. What would seem appropriate in this age of extraordinary technological change, the author concludes, is a reconsideration of the laws of war in a deliberate and focused international dialogue that includes a range of cultural and institutional perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Xu Lanjun's book, "Ertong yu zhanzheng: Guozu, Jiaoyu ji dazhong wenhua" (Chinese Children and War: Nation, Education and Mass Culture), explores the reinvention of childhood in modern Chinese literature and culture during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The book examines how war propaganda and political ideologies shaped the conceptualization of childhood and the integration of children into the war experience. Xu analyzes various child-oriented literature and media, highlighting the blurred boundaries between children and adults and the role of children in nation-building. The book also discusses the connection between Chinese children's culture and war discourses during the Cold War and in Sinophone society. While the book could benefit from further exploration of age awareness, it offers valuable insights into the cultural construction of childhood in wartime China. [Extracted from the article]

An emerging school of thought contends that the world is becoming increasingly safe. Proponents of the peaceable-world argument point to statistical evidence that war and violence have diminished since prehistoric times and to the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945. The peaceable-world claim is misleading because it does not confront a continuing revolution in the technology of killing and the increasing capacity for numbed technological violence evidenced by the Holocaust, nuclear weapons use, and drone warfare. We, as human beings, are not surely destined for either extinction or continuation as a species. We must embrace a broadening identity and recognize the profound contemporary existential danger so we can reclaim technology and imagination to serve life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like other pop-cultural forms, videogames commonly reify militarist representations of warfare as straightforward, precise, and moral by obscuring conflict's embodied messiness. But videogames do not just reflect militarist interests in their content; they are materially, symbiotically entangled with militarist interests. Recognising this intimate connection, and the phenomenon of virtuous warfare that results, this paper takes videogames seriously as material cultural artefacts. This paper draws on feminist IR, critical military studies, and game studies to explore three categories of bodies, and their gendered logics, produced by virtualised warfare: the hypermasculine, technologised soldier; the oft-ignored broken bodies of the soldier and game developer; and the obfuscated civilian. Together, this analysis argues that the consumption and production of videogames benefits certain parties, in ways that are reproduced and sustained through the production and obfuscation of bodies. Such entanglements have real consequences for how war, and its popular culture production, is understood and imagined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the inability of the U.S. civil defense sector to protect citizens from terrorist attacks amid the war with Iraq which began on March 19, 2003. Statement released by the Department of Homeland Security in February; Objectives of the department; History of civil defense in the country; Role of citizens in national security. INSET: The cost of seucrity.

The history of the Great Patriotic War has become post-Soviet Russia's universal language for political discussion and the only effective "bond." As the most advantageous narrative from the perspective of the regime's interests, it is this narrative of war that the Kremlin seeks to control above all. Memory of the war has been "appropriated" by the state, and the more freedom it has to manipulate this, the less veterans are able to challenge its triumphal mythmaking. However, the memory of war is, for most Russians, not limited to any official narrative in school texts, books, or films. For each family, it is also a family history, an object of pride, and a memory of tragedy. The state's appropriation of the war and the pressure of "military-patriotic propaganda" have sparked resistance among a significant portion of society, along with a desire to affirm their own family memories. The "Immortal Regiment" was originally an attempt to seize power from the state monopoly and to assert the history of the war as a family history, one not inscribed in the state narrative alone, but that also subordinates the state narrative to family memory. Millions of Russians took to the streets to assert their right to history, the most powerful political statement in Russia's entire post-Soviet history. The state has tried to paint the Immortal Regiment as a loyalist movement, because it speaks to the same topic that constitutes the core of the regime's own political ideology, the Great Patriotic War. Meanwhile, it is clear even to the regime itself that this movement is discussing the war differently, in fact undermining the state's interpretive monopoly on the military past and, consequently, its right to make political statements that exploit the theme of the war. It nevertheless remains too early to say whether the state has fully integrated this action into the propaganda mainstream. Furthermore, the power of the Immortal Regiment is even forcing propaganda to adapt to the demands of family and personal memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2011, the war in Syria has reshaped the lives of millions of Syrians with the displacement of over ten million people—more than half the population—inside and outside Syria, and the severe destruction of historical and modern cities and countryside. In Homs, the third largest city in Syria and the focus of this paper, entire neighbourhoods have been turned into rubble, destroying the familiar and reshaping the urban, social and cultural fabric of the city. However, despite this mass destruction and displacement, local architects, urbanists and residents are showing incredible levels of resilience; rehabilitating their partially damaged homes and providing shelter to the internally displaced population. Based on a series of interviews with architects and urbanists who remained in Syria, and with members of the Syrian diaspora, this paper explores the emerging relations between the urban past and present as citizens struggle to survive, to sustain lives and to envision a future. Memories of the pre-war Homs, and the surviving parts of the city, have become imagined and material places of refuge for many Homsis in the work of remembering, reflecting and seeking to reconstruct a vanished past—but also might be used to rethink the city, and to imagine its future. By engaging with Syrians, and narrating their stories in the time of war, this paper brings the element of human agency to the question of Syrian reconstruction; a dimension that too often is lost in studies of the Syrian crisis and of cities at war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the characterization of catastrophic events in various terms including compound, complex, and cascading. Topics mentioned include the effects of natural calamities to human, economy, and environment, the importance of disaster resilience, and the forensic investigations of disasters (FORINs). Also mentioned are the casualties of natural disasters and the effects of Yemen war to food security, children's health, and water quality.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the theme of the issue, understanding war and violence as part of human history, how interests, ideologies, and war violence has changed over the centuries.

The paper builds upon distant suffering studies and the ‘analytics of mediation’. It observes how television performances of suffering expose spectators to dispositions to feel, think and act towards each instance of suffering. It analyses the news coverage of civilians’ suffering in the Syrian Civil War that was presented by Czech public television broadcaster. The interpretation of imaginative geographies expands the analysis because of the need for more spatially sensitive approaches to distant suffering. Imaginative geographies coproduce diverse spacetimes and distant suffering studies often overlook how media performances are shaped according to spacetimes where suffering occurs. Two spacetimes are contrasted here; the Syrian Civil War before and after the Islamic State gained prominence in it. In both cases, the aim is to interpret in what ways the distance is translated into difference through imaginative geographies and how it shapes television performances of suffering. The analysis shows that Orientalist imaginative geographies appear in both cases. However, while in the first case imaginative geographies empower pity and dispositions to act towards suffering, in the second case they do not. It is because of the difference between Bashar al-Assad as a local Oriental persecutor and the Islamic State as the global threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the collaboration of society to maintain the warfare state and, possibly, to assure its own destruction is paralleled by the routinization of unimaginable horrors in Nazi concentration camps. Analogies that appear in planning for nuclear war; Consideration of human behavior in the concentration camp; Observation on the arguments that preparation for nuclear war is necessary for reasons of national security.

This study analyzes how Kurdish women experience the violence and other consequences of the armed conflict raging between the PKK and the Turkish state. Interviews conducted in Istanbul, Ankara, and Diyarbakir suggest that Kurdish women experience the conflict both as members of an oppressed minority and as women. The study first focuses on identifying sources of conflict related stress that are specific to women, such as the need to be silent to protect their families, and then analyzes the strategies that Kurdish women use to deal with this stress as women, including networking and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses 845 posts across 78 threads on an English Defence League message board from 20 September 2013 to 4 October 2013 that examined how online activists construct and develop their racial prejudice. Through seeing whites as blameless victims, the posts highlighted the presence of hostility towards Islam and Muslims in a clear in-group and out-group racial binary, where racist comments were never contested or challenged. Rather, they were wholeheartedly supported with social and cultural division at the centre of the prejudice, scapegoating and stereotyping directed towards Islam and Muslims. For a movement that presents itself as anti-racist, the real-life everyday narrative indicates the reality of its most ardent supporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in terrorist attacks over the past two decades has generated a proliferation of images distributed across a wide range of media. Tragic scenes of bombings, shootings and their aftermath are screened over and over to the point of hypnotizing viewers by the excessive repetition. Yet not all forms of terrorism lend themselves to visual spectacle. Smell-related attacks—what I call odoterrorism—utilize noxious compounds to inflict harm and inculcate fear. What differentiates odoterrorism from other terrorist tactics is that visual evidence can be slight and so offers little to news media eager for dramatic footage. Odoterrorism, however, not only typifies the actions of malevolent agents to weaponize air, it can also serve as the means for a growing genre of performance using smell. War remains a preoccupation of contemporary artists, and odours are a potent means to introduce disgust, abjectness, decay and sometimes danger. Through a discussion of four olfactory works—by Critical Art Ensemble, Santiago Sierra, Survival Research Laboratories, and Clara Ursitti—this article explores how artists mobilize olfactory-based actions to destabilize normal viewing practices and to convey the vulnerability of the body. Nauseating smells effectively introduce viscerality to shock visitors into a state of intense sensory presentness, and to short-circuit rationalizations about war that gloss over its manifold horrors. Through strategies of simulation, participation, intervention, and post-performativity, these artists formulate pungent critiques of war and violence through its olfactory dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the incorporation of the Korean peninsula into the Japanese Empire in 1910 and its colonial occupation. Topics discussed include social conditions of Korean laborers; social discrimination during the pre-colonial era; and the social homogeneity of the Japanese along with the issues of Imperial Japan as soldiers or civilian employees.

The literature on the effectiveness of peacekeeping has been focused almost exclusively on conflict mitigation. This article expands the scope of this literature by developing a theory that explains how the presence of peacekeeping forces improves population health during periods of intrastate conflict. The argument is put forth that because civil conflict violence clusters geographically it undermines the herd immunity critical-mass threshold. This, in turn, leads to increased infection rates and a tragic surge in preventable deaths. Peacekeepers, because they target conflict ‘hot spots’ locally, put an end to this cycle and assist in the restoration herd immunity. Using a unique measure of peacekeeping that accounts for the area of the conflict zone, the empirical models uncover a positive relationship between peacekeeping forces and immunization rates, as vaccination rates increase when peacekeepers are deployed into violent conflicts. These findings suggest that peacekeeping missions have the potential to reduce the public health costs imposed by internal conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was conducted to understand the development of children’s understanding of war and peace and how they differ conditions of being exposed to war. Analysis of drawings of war and peace by children was utilized to access children’s conceptions. Syrian (n = 357) children who had been exposed to war and Turkish children (n = 285) who had not were included in the study. Hiloglinear comparisons of the frequencies of coded categories in the drawings of the two groups of children were undertaken. It was observed that war exposure had an effect on understandings of both war and peace. It was observed that war exposure was more influential on children’s conceptions than their developmental level. The implications of these findings in terms of resiliency were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from visual, material and written archival sources, this article critically explores some of the functions, uses and perceived values of recorded sound during the First World War and in its aftermath. An instrument of communication as well as commemoration, the gramophone helped bridge geographical (and, in some cases, cultural) distances between the home front and the rear, providing civilians with the fleeting illusion of presence, proximity, or even sentimental communion with the front. The article analyses (a) the affective and connective, but also propagandist, values of commercial wartime recordings as they circulated between the home and the front, (b) the popular notion of gramophones as regulatory instruments of civilisation, (c) the commemorative exploitations of recorded sound in the interwar period. The article focuses on the British experience, contrasting it with examples drawn from French and German experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Majority of temporary labour migrants in the Gulf originate in countries that are not involved in devastating armed conflicts. Migrations from conflict-ridden countries to the Gulf are not negligible, however, and they have been growing in the last decades. The overview of migrations from the major refugee-producing countries suggests that we may distinguish between different categories of mixed migrations; inter alia, migrants who migrated to the Gulf prior to, during and after the armed conflicts in their home countries. We argue that these migrations happened in parallel with the tremendous economic growth that the Gulf countries have experienced in the last decades. Of note, however, is that they also coincide with escalations of armed conflicts in several sending countries, which may indicate that some of these migrations are also the result of war- or security-related push forces. We also contend that the dynamics of migrations from countries in conflict may in addition be related to the foreign policies of the Gulf countries, which are often closely related to their treatment of different migrant groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether or not American policy after the 2013 Syrian chemical-weapons attack was wise, its execution was bungled, causing unnecessary harm to the US– France relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we introduce and utilize a new dataset that provides battle- and war- level Loss Exchange Ratios (LERs) for combatant states involved in multilateral wars between 1816 and 1990.The battle-level data provide an alternative to the widely used, but problematic, HERO/CDB-90 data set on battle outcomes. To demonstrate the utility of the new data, we weigh in on the debate over democratic military effectiveness arguments by replicating models by Reiter and Stam (2002, 2009) and Downes (2009), finding that, when effectiveness is measured using LERs, democracies do not have an edge over their non-democratic counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has grown rapidly over the last decade. This article consolidates existing social science research on CSRV according to two lines of inquiry: its causes and its consequences. Overall, research has considerably advanced our knowledge of the causes of CRSV, particularly in four aspects: purpose, context, individual motives and intra-group dynamics. However, there is a need to better understand the societal consequences of CRSV, in particular how it affects relations in families, and within and between communities. Overall there remains a shortage of empirical, in particular mixed-method, designs to produce research which is relevant for policymakers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]