Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism

Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism PDF Author: Simon Frankel Pratt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009090399
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Pratt investigates the potential erosion of prohibiting assassination, torture, and mercenarism during the US's War on Terrorism. In examining the emergence and history of the US's targeted killing programme, detention and interrogation programme, and employment of armed contractors in warzones, he proposes that a 'normative transformation' has occurred, which has changed the meaning and content of these prohibitions, even though they still exist. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, practice theory, and relational sociology, this book develops a new theory of normativity and institutional change, and offers new data about the decisions and activities of security practitioners. It is both a critical and constructive addition to the current literature on norm change, and addresses enduring debates about the role of culture and ethical judgement in the use of force. It will appeal to students and scholars of foreign and defence policy, international relations theory, international security, social theory, and American politics.

Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism

Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism PDF Author: Simon Frankel Pratt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009090399
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Pratt investigates the potential erosion of prohibiting assassination, torture, and mercenarism during the US's War on Terrorism. In examining the emergence and history of the US's targeted killing programme, detention and interrogation programme, and employment of armed contractors in warzones, he proposes that a 'normative transformation' has occurred, which has changed the meaning and content of these prohibitions, even though they still exist. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, practice theory, and relational sociology, this book develops a new theory of normativity and institutional change, and offers new data about the decisions and activities of security practitioners. It is both a critical and constructive addition to the current literature on norm change, and addresses enduring debates about the role of culture and ethical judgement in the use of force. It will appeal to students and scholars of foreign and defence policy, international relations theory, international security, social theory, and American politics.

Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism

Normative Transformation and the War on Terrorism PDF Author: Simon Frankel Pratt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316515176
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Sociological analysis of the transformation of prohibitions on assassination, torture, and mercenaries as components of the US War on Terror.

Asymmetric Warfare

Asymmetric Warfare PDF Author: Rod Thornton
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745633641
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
In recent years, the nature of conflict has changed. Through asymmetric warfare radical groups and weak state actors are using unexpected means to deal stunning blows to more powerful opponents in the West. From terrorism to information warfare, the Wests air power, sea power and land power are open to attack from clever, but much weaker, enemies. In this clear and engaging introduction, Rod Thornton unpacks the meaning and significance of asymmetric warfare, in both civilian and military realms, and examines why it has become such an important subject for study. He seeks to provide answers to key questions, such as how weaker opponents apply asymmetric techniques against the Western world, and shows how the Wests military superiority can be seriously undermined by asymmetric threats. The book concludes by looking at the ways in which the US, the state most vulnerable to asymmetric attack, is attempting to cope with some new battlefield realities. This is an indispensable guide to one of the key topics in security studies today.

Just Wars

Just Wars PDF Author: Alex J. Bellamy
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745632823
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In what circumstances is it legitimate to use force? How should force be used? These are two of the most crucial questions confronting world politics today. The Just War tradition provides a set of criteria which political leaders and soldiers use to defend and rationalize war. This book explores the evolution of thinking about just wars and examines its role in shaping contemporary judgements about the use of force, from grand strategic issues of whether states have a right to pre-emptive self-defence, to the minutiae of targeting. Bellamy maps the evolution of the Just War tradition, demonstrating how it arose from a myriad of sub-traditions, including scholasticism, the holy war tradition, chivalry, natural law, positive law, Erasmus and Kant's reformism, and realism from Machiavelli to Morgenthau. He then applies this tradition to a range of contemporary normative dilemmas related to terrorism, pre-emption, aerial bombardment and humanitarian intervention.

Work's Intimacy

Work's Intimacy PDF Author: Melissa Gregg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745637469
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.

Ending Wars

Ending Wars PDF Author: Feargal Cochrane
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745645178
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Many books have been written about war, but few have focused on how wars can be brought to an end. Wars are rarely inevitable however and this book is aimed at understanding how violent conflicts can be brought to a close through intervention, mediation and political negotiation. The simple premise underlying the book is that wars between states and wars within states are generally fought by rational people for particular political goals or perceived interests. War is better understood as a methodology rather than an ideology. When the context, issues and actors in these armed conflicts change then it is often possible to control, or even transform such violence. By bringing together a number of existing debates from peace and conflict research as well as scholars of international relations, the book examines the dynamic forces that lie behind the ending of wars and how these have changed over time. Examples are drawn from a wide range of armed conflicts to analyse the efforts that have been made to move from War-War to Jaw-Jaw, or more typically Jaw-War. Efforts at third-party intervention, mediation and political negotiation across a range of conflict zones from Europe to Sub-Saharan Africa are discussed in full. Neither idealistic nor fatalistic, this book is a must-read for all students of international politics and security studies.

International Security and Gender

International Security and Gender PDF Author: Nicole Detraz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745663052
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
What does it mean to be secure? In the global news, we hear stories daily about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about domestic-level conflicts around the world, about the challenges of cybersecurity and social security. This broad list highlights the fact that security is an idea with multiple meanings, but do we all experience security issues in the same way? In this book, Nicole Detraz explores the broad terrain of security studies through a gender lens. Assumptions about masculinity and femininity play important roles in how we understand and react to security threats. By examining issues of militarization, peacekeeping, terrorism, human security, and environmental security, the book considers how the gender-security nexus pushes us to ask different questions and broaden our sphere of analysis. Including gender in our analysis of security challenges the primacy of some traditional security concepts and shifts the focus to be more inclusive. Without a full understanding of the vulnerabilities and threats associated with security, we may miss opportunities to address pressing global problems. Our society often expects men and women to play different roles, and this is no less true in the realm of security. This book demonstrates that security debates exhibit gendered understandings of key concepts, and whilst these gendered assumptions may benefit specific people, they are often detrimental to others, particularly in the key realm of policy-making.

The New Dogs of War

The New Dogs of War PDF Author: Ward Thomas
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501758918
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
As Ward Thomas details in The New Dogs of War, militias and paramilitary groups wield greater power than national governments in many countries, while in some war zones private contractors perform missions previously reserved for uniformed troops. Most ominously, terrorist organizations with global reach have come to define the security landscape for even the most powerful nations. Across the first decades of the twenty-first century we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the use of military force by these nonstate actors in ways that have impacted the international system, leading Thomas to undertake this valuable assessment of the state of play at this critical moment. To understand the spread of nonstate violence, Thomas focuses on the crucial role played by an epochal transformation in international norms. Since the eighteenth century, the Westphalian model of sovereignty has reserved the legitimate use of force to states. Thomas argues that normative changes in the decades after World War II produced a "crisis of coherence" for formal and informal rules against nonstate violence. In detailed case studies of nonstate militias, transnational terrorist networks, and private military contractors, Thomas explains how forces contesting state prerogatives exploited this crisis, which in turn reshaped international understandings of who could legitimately use force. By considering for the first time all three purveyors of nonstate violence as aspects of the same phenomenon, The New Dogs of War explains this fundamental shift in the norm that for centuries gave states the monopoly on military force.

Believe and Destroy

Believe and Destroy PDF Author: Christian Ingrao
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745670040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
There were eighty of them. They were young, clever and cultivated; they were barely in their thirties when Adolf Hitler came to power. Their university studies in law, economics, linguistics, philosophy and history marked them out for brilliant careers. They chose to join the repressive bodies of the Third Reich, especially the Security Service (SD) and the Nazi Party’s elite protection unit, the SS. They theorized and planned the extermination of twenty million individuals of allegedly ‘inferior’ races. Most of them became members of the paramilitary death squads known as Einsatzgruppen and participated in the slaughter of over a million people. Based on extensive archival research, Christian Ingrao tells the gripping story of these children of the Great War, focusing on the networks of fellow activists, academics and friends in which they moved, studying the way in which they envisaged war and the ‘world of enemies’ which, in their view, threatened them. The mechanisms of their political commitment are revealed, and their roles in Nazism and mass murder. Thanks to this pioneering study, we can now understand how these men came to believe what they did, and how these beliefs became so destructive. The history of Nazism, shows Ingrao, is also a history of beliefs in which a powerful military machine was interwoven with personal experiences, fervour, anguish, utopia and cruelty.

Psychology of Terrorism

Psychology of Terrorism PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In compiling this annotated bibliography on the psychology of terrorism, the author has defined terrorism as "acts of violence intentionally perpetrated on civilian noncombatants with the goal of furthering some ideological, religious or political objective." The principal focus is on nonstate actors. The task was to identify and analyze the scientific and professional social science literature pertaining to the psychological and/or behavioral dimensions of terrorist behavior (not on victimization or effects). The objectives were to explore what questions pertaining to terrorist groups and behavior had been asked by social science researchers; to identify the main findings from that research; and attempt to distill and summarize them within a framework of operationally relevant questions. To identify the relevant social science literature, the author began by searching a series of major academic databases using a systematic, iterative keyword strategy, mapping, where possible, onto existing subject headings. The focus was on locating professional social science literature published in major books or in peer-reviewed journals. Searches were conducted of the following databases October 2003: Sociofile/Sociological Abstracts, Criminal Justice Abstracts (CJ Abstracts), Criminal Justice Periodical Index (CJPI), National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts (NCJRS), PsycInfo, Medline, and Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS). Three types of annotations were provided for works in this bibliography: Author's Abstract -- this is the abstract of the work as provided (and often published) by the author; Editor's Annotation -- this is an annotation written by the editor of this bibliography; and Key Quote Summary -- this is an annotation composed of "key quotes" from the original work, edited to provide a cogent overview of its main points.