|
|
|
CIAO DATE: 04/07
Spring and Summer 2006 (Volume 5, Number 1&2)
Political Sociology in Light of Globalization: New Perspectives and Future Directions (PDF, 19 Pages, 129 KB)
Amandeep Sandhu
In this essay, I examine political sociology under the light of the process of globalization and argue that it needs to change its focus and expanse to sustain itself in the new global society. I argue that political sociology as a field is marked by its own western traditional understanding of bases of power. I critically examine the three traditional approaches to understanding power in sociology: pluralism, elite theory and Marxist theory of power and points to the strength and weaknesses of each approach. I draw upon examples from politics in the Muslim world to point to the inability to a western centered political sociology to account for the religious basis of political power. The contemporary global politics, I argue, is held in the shadows of 1989, with the demise of Soviet Union and the consolidation of capitalism into one global systemand the resistance to this has increasingly become fragmented. For a fully rounded analysis of the contemporary political situation in the global society, political sociology will have to include new bases of power along with the historical conceptions and it will have to bridge its nation-centric concepts into more transnational concepts to capture changing nature of global politics.
Refugee Protection Policies in Belgium, Slovenia, Greece and Turkey (PDF, 31 Pages, 132 KB)
Sule Toktas, Aspasia Papadopoulou, Mila Paspalanova, and Natalija Vrecer
The issue of refugees and asylum seekers has been an important aspect of international migration both for the academic researchers on the field as well as for the policy makers at national and international levels. After the ‘crisis’ in the management of refugees during WWII, international bodies, primarily United Nations, have allocated significant proportions of its attention plus its resources to build up and develop norms of refugee protection as part of the international system of governance. The primary goal of these collective attempts was to lay down the basics for refugee protection in cases of political turmoil, civil or national wars and ethnic conflicts. These attempts were not only the result of the dramatic events experienced in WII but also accompanied the development of human rights regime at the global level since the late years of the 1940s. It is in this context that the Convention Related to the Status of Refugees had been drafted and was released on 28 July 1951. Additional international document in the field is the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees known as the New York Protocol.
Competition over the Caspian oil routs: Oilers and Gamers perspective (PDF, 14 Pages, 141 KB)
Enayatollah Yazdani
Competition over the oil routes has become the central focus of most of the literature on Caspian energy politics since the mid-1990s. From the many approaches taken, two different schools of thought can be identified, whose adherents might be described respectively as ‘Gamers’ and ‘Oilers’.1 ‘Gamers’ focus on the states as players in the ‘oil game’ whereas ‘Oilers’ focus on the role of the non-governmental actors the oil companies.
This paper aims to analyze both schools' view. It argues from the schools' standpoint how the involved powers, states and companies, have attempted to maximize their benefit from the Caspian's hydrocarbons.
A Military History of the New World Order and the Emergence of the U.S. Hegemony (PDF, 8 Pages, 74 KB)
Sener Akturk
In this paper, I trace the rise of the United States (U.S.) military power and the different military strategies the U.S. pursued in this process, outlining in particular the military-economic aspect of the role that the United States came to play in the New World Order. In this regard, I argue that the institutional arrangements made in the 1950s between the U.S. and Western European countries, which are now being presented as the New World Order, lag behind the radical economic, demographic and political shifts that have occurred since then. As a result of this discrepancy, I contend that the United States increasingly resorts to military force to enforce these archaic arrangements, which do not correlate with the current state of the world. Finally, I claim that a plausible way to prevent further militarization of the world order would be to reform the international institutional order to better represent current economic, demographic, and political realities.
The ‘Colorful’ Revolution of Kyrgyzstan: Democratic Transition or Global Competition? (PDF, 9 Pages, 249 KB)
Yilmaz Bingol
This paper aims to analyze the reasons behind the recent revolution of Kyrgyzstan. I will argue that explaining the revolution through just the rhetoric of “democracy and freedom” needs to be reassessed, as comparing with its geo-cultural environment; Kyrgyzstan had been the most democratic of Central Asian republics. Thus, the paper argues that global competition between US and China-Russia should seriously be taken under consideration as a landmark reason behind the Kyrgyz revolution.
Challenges to Democracy in the Arab and Muslim World
Alon Ben-Meir
The Postmodern Penelope: Coelho’s The Zahir and the Metamorphosis in Gender Relations (PDF, 5 Pages, 57 KB)
Wisam Mansour
Coelho’s narrator tells us “if a book isn’t self-explanatory, then the book is not worth reading” (248). Though such a statement may not appeal to a Formalist critic in the sense that literature should alienate, defamiliarize and make difficult the literary experience, Coelho proves in The Zahir the assumption of his narrator. The book is so simple and its narrative flows so smoothly like a running stream of water in the early months of spring. Coelho’s narrative magically transfixes its readers and absorbs them into the mystical and mythical world of its narrator.