Sustainable development blog : ecology and humanitarian aid

Humanitarian development isn’t for the lighthearted.

Every type of job is based on specific rules of conduct and in international development adherence to strong values and commitments leads not only to acceptance, but also to easy interaction and partial inclusion in the local culture. In order to create closeness and a relationship based on understanding, it is vital to respect local practices and uphold the rules of neutrality. Read more »

The principle of community-based interventions stems from anthropological theory and became refined through sociologic field research during the last three decades. About a century ago, even renowned Oxford professors of anthropology would commonly denigrate the lives of ‘savages’ in their books without offering much insight into the culture or customs of aboriginals. To give a vivid example, one of the most influential social studies that paved the way for modern anthropology and psychoanalysis in the 1930s, Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”—which Freud used as reference for his essay “Totem and Taboo”—was compiled in the library. However, with the field-based work of Bronisaw Malinovski, anthropological methodologies metamorphosed the ‘savage’ community into diverse groups differentiated through their culture, ethnicity, and other traits examined from an empathetic, comprehensive, and thoroughly holistic perspective. Read more »

And this is why the Americans did not win the war... As an expatriate living in Afghanistan, I am always started at how far-fetched articles on progress in negotiations between the national government and the Taliban are.

Knowing the demographic and geographic constitution of the country, the Taliban will always have a significant military advantage over all invaders: the Russians gave up their fight ten Read more »

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1. The Theoretical Framework of Disability

On an international level, disability issues have become prevalent on the agendas of NGOs and UN agencies. Theoretical models of disability provide a social reference for laws and policies designed for disabled people[1]. At present, two models are predominant in the international arena: the medical and the social model. While previous policies were rooted in a medical approach, current programs addressing disability issues use a community-focused perspective based on the social model of disability. These two approaches will be discussed more at large in this article.

An ethnological reflection on the disempowering effect of globalization, "Free Tibet" can reversely be interpreted as the disenchantment of any individual who

Recent attention on the independence of Kosovo sparked new interest in an area long forgotten by Western prophets and demagogues. While adepts of the conspiracy theory rush to unmask the alleged ‘fakeness’ of the 1998 Racak massacre and similar murders, international politicians urge locals to uphold ‘global’ values delivered through the express U.N. caravan. Kosovars finally have a word. Their freedom had been extracted painfully after...

UNMIK and KFOR: A False Pattern of National Identities beyond Ethnic Hatreds, part 2/6 : The Context in which the 1999 War Developed

2.1) International Factors

2.1.1) Military Developments: From Land Conquest to Artificial Demographics

Since modernity “was born under the stars of acceleration and land conquest” (Bauman 2000: 112), it generated a renewal of in trends of war through the deployment of new techniques and methods that became readily available with the rise of industrialization and of globalization. During this process of civilization, wartime violence became

1.1 A Communist Construction of Eternal Ethnic Hatreds

The weak state structure inherited from Titoist communism facilitated the dissemination of Serbian nationalism in Kosovo (Ignatieff 2003: 85). Like in Bosnia (Malesevic 2006: 225), the collapse of communist state structures after Tito’s death—intertwined with the rise of modern ideology and technology and with changes in the geopolitical situation—created a ‘status vacuum’ that favored

UNMIK and KFOR: A False Pattern of National Identities beyond Ethnic Hatreds, part 4/6 : The Negotiations between Milosevic and the KLA

By 1998, the failed structures of power in Kosovo became a European problem of peace and security. The blatant violations of the rights of minorities[1] by the Milosevic government could no longer be ignored. For the first time after Bosnia, NATO expanded its mandate beyond