Interpersonal violence, the rule of law and its enforcement

The Social Developmental Construction of Violence and Intergroup Conflict, 2016

This volume has covered a range of human rights abuses and their binational causes. Indeed, the volume can be read as a sustained indictment against Mexican and U.S. policies on immigration, drug interdiction, gun possession, trade, and security for fueling human rights abuses including the criminal violence perpetrated by cartels, bajadores, and other extra-legal actors. Taken as a whole, the contributions in this volume provide a sobering outlook on the ways forward to address these crises. The main solutions proposed so far by the Mexican and U.S. governments—more border enforcement and a stepped up war on drugs—will most likely lead to increased human rights abuses. The fact that these human rights abuses have increased exponentially despite generally good objective conditions for human rights protection also suggests very few good steps forward, at least in the short term. Traditional human rights tools for drawing attention to these issues have already been used to little effect. The media is covering these issues. Transnational activist networks have come and gone. Cases are being brought to human rights tribunals. The Mexican government has already passed or considered a plethora of laws to address these situations and set up independent human rights commissions. The U.S. has attached human rights conditions to aid packages to Mexico. Clearly, the human rights abuses are rooted in deeper and more intractable causes—enormous profits from illicit activity, poverty, income inequality, misogyny, corruption, xenophobia, racism—and so they will not go away any time soon. Poverty will continue to fuel massive migration and the cartel war by providing a constant flow of immigrants travelling to the U.S. and producing thousands of foot soldiers to be arrested or killed in the cartel wars. As long as it is profitable for the cartels and others, migrants will be treated as commodities; they will be branded as inferior. Indeed, these chapters show that there is a self-sustaining quality to many of these abuses. Immigration enforcement will be hailed as working if more migrants are apprehended, or if the numbers decrease, and thus, the argument for more enforcement is easy to promote, despite the human consequences. The drug war has made drug trafficking even more profitable and the cartels more powerful and fueled an arms race between and among the cartels and the government. As noted in the Introduction, the binational human rights situation is quite fluid and complex. Indeed, as I write this in June 2013 several significant events have occurred; many of them positive for human rights. After sketching some of these events, I will conclude by asking whether they should cause us to temper the pessimistic conclusions listed above; are they significant enough to change the underlying structures fueling the human rights crises?

A.On Nations and Cultures The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof .We need to uphold the basic rights of peoples and nations to determine their own future. This is what sovereignty is about. We recognize the variety and richness in diversity of peoples and cultures. We uphold the belief that we are all connected in the web of life. That any principle is global at the same time local. (Glocal). We recognize that no nation or culture (people group) is absolutely just and right in the same way that they can be absolutely wrong in treating their citizens. In such cases, we affirm the quadrilateral guide of Scripture, reason, experience and tradition in guiding us as stand for peace and justice in the world. We hold nations accountable in how they treat their citizens. We support peoples and nations struggle for genuine freedom and sovereignty, free from foreign influence and domination. (The UMC Social Principles) 1.Yet we realize that nations and peoples have been diminished as pawns in the global economy where the separation of the global north and the global south are so stark. (A postmodern phenomenon is that of migration. Migrants are human beings with dignity who cannot be reduced to mere commodities to be traded and exchanged in a global economy. Exploitative economic conditions unregulated and expanding access of multinational corporations to natural resources , extreme poverty, natural and calamities have forced people to migrate. There are about 86 million migrant workers worldwide, remitting $200 Billion each year.) 2.We also realize that there are alternative communities which are not necessarily nations and cultures. These communities are popular in Africa, Latin America which has produced Liberation Theology and Asia particularly the Philippines which has developed its own Theology of Struggle. The small Christian communities are involved in grassroots organizing, a place that invites fuller participation as against big organizations and churches, and allows the opportunity to person to person interaction. The small group takes seriously the context of the people, where they are. The group challenges them to grow.

Ethnicities, 2005

Sie hier: http://www.peerproject.eu Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an.

Konfrontasi: Jurnal Kultural, Ekonomi dan Perubahan Sosial, 2021

I. Introduction The Structure of Opportunities and Rational Expectations Humans are not violent when they born, they are made violent. The insertion in the violent act (physical or symbolic), rather than a choice, it is primarily the result of a prevailing context in various rationalizations, conditions, and stimuli. The researchers speak of a favorable opportunity structure1 to the outbreak of violence, a prerequisite, but not enough for its outbreak. These conditions may indicate mainly the following. 1) The first is political and consists in placing the emphasis on the lack of recognition or access to power for certain groups, who use violence to access to a distant State or to obtain recognition. 2) From a Marxist perspective, violence is seen primarily as a response to a situation of economic alienation that very often feeds frustration and anger. 3) Finally, the presence of sociocultural determinants that encourage violence, proposing models for justification, or judging as natural in public spaces, likewise occurs in many countries affected by long conflicts, conflicts that have become structuring for community relations. Notwithstanding, the reasons for the violence rarely can be understood with a single causal explanation for all types. The structural conditions are important, but the turn to violence is also the result of a decision which, although it does not come from the pure individual consciousness, responds to rational expectations and is therefore inserted into large collective criteria. Such decisions may be three orders: the pursuit of profit, which claims that violence pays; the pursuit of pleasure of a brutal and illegal act may provide; and the reaffirmation of the self-esteem induced by acts of violence, which can sometimes seem an act of pride. In any case, we must look at these opportunities and expectations as interconnected spheres whose separation is due only to analytical deployment. A good example of how to articulate an integrated manner occurs in the study of these specific forms of urban contestation and violence we see in the next section.

This essay opens with a brief foreword on the status and challenges posed by intersectionality as a 'highly successful theory' in the European context (Davis, 2008; Knapp, 2004). The essay that follows addresses the panel questions by using intersectionality as a critical resource within the influential field of transitional justice. The globalization of transitional justice as a framework for the resolution of conflicts is a remarkable phenomenon of the post-Cold War era (Bell and Craig, 2000). Transitional justice is understood by its advocates as a mechanism for enabling politically conflicted and/or post-colonial societies to institutionalise 'universal' principles of equality and human rights embedded in liberal democratic norms and processes of state building or regime reform (Teitel, 2003). Intersectionality theory enables critical analysis of the application of these principles in practice. In particular, it poses useful theoretical and empirical questions fo...

Philosophy & Social Criticism

The article deals with the ontological configuration and political appropriation of difference in modern, capitalist societies. Against fragmented accounts of difference, it is examined the evolution from situations of wide socio-spatial diversity to the gradual instrumentalisation and selective hierarchisation of those elements of difference that can be inserted in market-based relations, whilst the majority of differences are ignored and disregarded. The instrumentalisation of difference under capitalism – the reduction of extended socio-spatial difference to the interests and priorities of the stronger segments of society who emphasise their distinctive features in the attempt to exert power and control over those considered inferior and subordinate – has more than just an impact on social or interpersonal relations but constitutes an active worldmaking force that operates, primarily, via the promotion of indifference. The analysis is informed by the Hegelian framework of conscio...

2005