22nd edition – The Fringe – Pike & Hurricane

Exploited, Abandoned, Banished – Pregnant but Unmarried in Burkina Faso

Sarah Pfaffernoschke — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 13:00:46 +0000

If one walks the dirty and muddy paths of the small town of Dédougou, Western Burkina Faso, it might happen that one stumbles upon a new-born lying in the trash at the roadside where pigs and emaciated dogs are grubbing. The mother crouched down next to it, empty gaze, not older than 15, the tattered remains of her clothes maybe even still covered in blood from the delivery.

What sounds like a scene from a horror movie is the result of widely practiced traditional superstition in uneducated Western African tribes according to which an unmarried woman who gets pregnant will bring calamity over the entire village. As a consequence, these young girls, mostly uninformed about the process of insemination and the ease of conceiving a child, are being chased away from their families, relatives and friends and end up in the street, often in prostitution. Not only does this tradition traumatise the woman, it also severely affects the relationship between mother and child. In many cases, the mother, herself still a child, is unable to love her new-born, as she holds the child responsible for her misery.

I met Zénabo when I started volunteering in a little institution, named Haus Yorosin. It is a place where these banished girls can give birth to their babies, get shelter, food and a basic education so that they can sustain themselves eventually. Zénabo never went to school and did not know how old she was – nobody cared about a birth certificate for her when she was born – , but she did love her son Claude deeply when she delivered him, despite the past weeks and months she spent begging and pleading for food in the dusty streets. However, the permanent malnutrition during the pregnancy had left its mark on Claude and severely weakened his immune system. He did not even survive his first week on earth.

Another horror story is that of Marcéline. She was a happy woman, married to a man she loved and with whom she had three little children. One day, however, her husband died unexpectedly and instead of solacing Marcéline, her family blamed her for his death. Believing that her presence would cause further deaths, the villagers chased her away and took her two oldest children, two and three years old, from her. Sylvestre, still a baby at that time, was dependent on his mother and could thus stay with her. After months of begging in the street, a priest brought her to Haus Yorosin where she recovered from sickness, malnutrition and mental breakdown. Now, three years later, she has a job in an orphanage which allows her to support herself and her three year old son. She will never be able to return to her family or her village since she is afraid that they would also take Sylvestre from her.

Many girls across Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and the surrounding sub-Saharan states share a similar fate. Most of them come from the poorest groups of society and never went to school, are illiterate and do not know about how to get pregnant or even the dangers of unprotected sex. Their families are living far below the official poverty line of 1.25 USD per day. Education for the numerous children cannot be afforded. Instead, they are expected to work on the fields in order to help provide for enough food to survive. In this situation, these young girls are easy victims for wealthier men who promise them a proper meal in exchange for sex. Not knowing when they will get some food the next time, many girls desperately agree.

A lot of girls at Haus Yorosin I took care of never learned to read or write. They did not know that the Earth was round, where Africa was situated on this planet and that the same sun also shines in Europe. Most of them had never heard of ‘pizza’ or ‘ice-cream’ and when I showed them pictures of European animals such as squirrels, they wanted to know about every single one whether this was food. And they have dreams: Dreams of a self-sustained life in a little shop in Dédougou, where they could follow their profession as weaver, tailor or hairdresser. Dreams of a family and a loving husband. Dreams of seeing the capital city Ouagadougou. After all they have been through their entire life, they still believe in their future and fight for it.

It took Zénabo a while to recover from the loss of her child. She stayed at Haus Yorosin and continued her education as a weaver which she successfully finished this year. Constant communication and reconciliation attempts with her family were fruitful at last, and now Zénabo has been reintegrated into her family. Probably however, a major facilitating factor was that Claude was not alive anymore. Yet, the fact that she is now able to sustain herself brought her a lot of respect from her father who now is openly proud of his formerly ‘lost’ daughter.

Meanwhile, young women across the region continue to suffer tremendously due to this unhuman tradition. The greatest problem thereby lies in the lack of education of the large number of very poor people who truly believe this barbaric punishment will keep misfortune away from their homes. Many new-born fatherless children still die every year because nobody cares for them.
In the dirty streets of Dédougou, the sight of a blood-covered young mother has become scarce. Yet, the problem continues to be urgent in many rural areas across sub-Saharan Africa as the dusty roads are still home for countless despaired women who are deprived of dignity and humanity.

By Sarah Pfaffernoschke

Image credit:

Picture 1, 2: Eric Montfort, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Abkhazia – A Frozen Conflict

Michael Schätzlein — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 13:00:39 +0000

Imagine you live your entire life in one place, but one day, suddenly you’re told that you have to leave, and that you will be shot if you do not. This has happened many a time in human history, be it indigenous people being expelled from their homelands, or ethnic cleansings taking place during wars. In most cases, it is the minority or a technologically inferior indigenous population that is being persecuted. However, there are exceptions – and Abkhazia is one of them.

New Athos Monastery

Abkhazia is a region in the north-west of Georgia, with its own language, culture, and a long history of violence. Colonised by the ancient Greeks, it later on became a frontline between the Byzantine Empire and various outside threats. In the 780s, the Kingdom of Abkhazia was established, and it flourished for more than 200 years, until it was incorporated into the Georgian Kingdom through succession. Weakened by numerous invasions by Mongols, infighting and economic decline as a result of being isolated from the rest of the Christian world, Georgia fell under Turko-Iranian influence after 1400. Following a power struggle between the Russian and Ottoman Empires over the region, more than 40% of predominantly Muslim Abkhazians were expelled from the region. Ethnic Georgians soon took their place, and the Abkhazians became a minority in their own country.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Abkhazia, just like Georgia, longed for independence. By then, ethnic Georgians made up almost half of the population. In 1992, only months after an unsuccessful war with the breakaway region of South Ossetia had come to an end, Georgia waged war against Abkhazia over the question of Abkhazia’s independence. As a result of Russia backing Abkhazia, Georgia had to back off after a year. Today, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, just like Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh, with whom Abkhazia forms the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations, are frozen conflicts. Their autonomy and borders remain disputed, and without outside support from Russia or Azerbaijan, none of them would be able to survive economically or politically.

During and after the 1992-1993 war, the Abkhazian side pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing. Between 8,000 and 10,000 Georgians were killed, and between 200,000 and 250,000 became internally displaced persons, making the Abkhazian territory deplete of inhabitants of Georgian ethnicity. While about 50,000 have returned to Abkhazia’s southernmost province of Gali, many still remain within Georgia proper.

Abkhazia has a lot to offer

Lika Kvaratskhelia is one of those who left and never returned. She was born in Ukraine during the war, as her parents had sought refuge there. They stayed in Ukraine and later moved back to Georgia. As most of her family moved back to the Gali district after the war, she has travelled to Abkhazia on various occasions. To her, Abkhazia is a beautiful country, but still overshadowed by the scars the war has left. One can still find scorch marks and bullet holes on walls, and there are still buildings around that clearly were reconstructed from ruins.

Economic mismanagement, a weak administration and a high corruption have so far hindered the reconstruction of the country. In the home village of her grandparents, abductions still occur frequently, with subsequent extortion of the victims’ relatives, and one time, Lika’s grandparents were robbed by eight men in their own home and badly injured in the process. In 2008, a marauding band of Russian soldiers came to the village from the nearest military base, occupied a house, plundered the village and raped at least three of Lika’s neighbours at the time.

Although she always was open about being Georgian, even in Abkhazia’s capital of Sochumi, Lika was never met with hostility by the locals. Common Abkhazians tend to blame the Georgian government and its “puppeteer”, the USA, for the bad blood between the two countries, while Georgians – including Lika – tend to blame Russia.

The official flag of Abkhazia

Indeed, Russia has a huge influence on Abkhazia. Russia was the first country to recognise Abkhazia in 2008 and since Abkhazia lacks international recognition, most people use Russian passports to travel outside of the country. Russia is Abkhazia’s major trading partner, with more than 60% of Abkhazia’s exports and imports flowing between itself and Russia, and the Rubble being Abkhazia’s official currency. Since 2008, a vast majority of the country’s profitable tourist industry is financed by Russian tourists, and most of the media are Russian in language as well. Further, the Abkhazian and Russian military are deeply integrated, and Abkhazia has relinquished control over its borders to the Russian Federation. In the Abkhazian public sphere, pictures of Putin and Russian Flags are ubiquitous. Russia is presented as a caring big brother of the feeble nation of Abkhazia, and Putin as the strong man that keeps the Georgian enemy away.

An abandoned building in Sochumi

In the end, the fate of Abkhazia is that of a frozen conflict. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been cut off, and the views of the common people are not exactly reconciliatory either. Like other Georgians, Lika thinks that Abkhazia rightfully belongs to Georgia. Abkhazians, on the other hand, still see their culture and heritage threatened by Georgia, as evidenced by the 1998 onslaught on the Gali region and the political crisis of 2014, when the acting president at the time, Aleksandr Ankvab, was ousted from his position over accusations that his liberal policies towards the Gali Georgians would endanger Abkhazia as a whole. The Russian Federation also continues its aggressive stance towards the helpless Georgia, silently annexing Georgian territory around South Ossetia by moving its border ever further south.

For Abkhazia, a bright future is still very distant. As long as peoples’ attitudes and those of the governments don’t change, there will be no chance for reconciliation and international recognition. The heavy involvement of Russia in Abkhazia begs the question whether Abkhazia in its quest of ousting the Georgian “oppressors” has not been occupied by a much larger actor.

By Michael Schätzlein

Image credit:

Picture 1, 4: Marco Fieber, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 2: mikesub, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 3: Wikipedia, licensed in the public domain

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Living on the Edge of Society

Ida Scharla Løjmand — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 13:00:22 +0000

To many, the Romani people are shrouded in mystery and prejudices. Some might think of a woman in a long skirt reading the future on your palm. Others may picture beggars and poor people living in caravans when hearing the word “Roma”.

Prejudices seem to stick to the Romani people wherever they go and it seems hard – if not impossible – to figure out the truth about who these people are and why many of them live in severe poverty, isolated from the rest of the society.

Citizens of Malmö, Sweden may remember the Malmö Police shutting down a Roma camp outside the city in the beginning of November 2015.

Shortly before the clearing of the camp, the Romani peoples’ translator, Catalon Mihai, was quoted in the Danish newspaper, Berlingske, saying that the Romas did not want to return to their home country, and that they were “determined to create better conditions for their children in the Swedish welfare state”.

If “better conditions” equal living in a caravan on a polluted industrial site, what kind of life have the Romas left behind in their home countries? Poverty, unemployment and discrimination is what they escape, according to reports from both the Council of Europe and supporting NGO’s.

In fact, the Romani people have faced ruthless and unending discrimination through history.

According to the Austrian database of Roma history and culture, Rombase, the Roma people originally came to Europe from today’s India. They are said to have their origin in the Indian Dom caste, a caste placed very low in the Indian hierarchical system centuries ago.

Historians assume that the Doms had their own small kingdom, which was destroyed by the Gupta Dynasty in the 6^th or 7^th century. At that time, the Doms lost their power and position and became a lower caste. The Romas seem to have been considered a lower class all the way back to their Indian ancestors.

From India, the Romas came to Iran, Greece and East and Western Europe.

Some historical sources on Rombase refer to the Roma as “terrible looking people” with bad manners, but they were also known as good blacksmiths, musicians and fortunetellers practicing palmistry.

However, many Europeans were skeptical as the Romani people started to arrive in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Racism against the Roma became entrenched in peoples’ minds so deeply that the Roma during World War II also suffered from Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, and where subjected to persecution and deportation to concentration camps. After the war, the Romas did not receive any compensation or help in order to recover from the trauma.

The survivors of persecution during World War II remain in many European countries today.

“Human rights of Roma and Travellers in Europe” report from the Council of Europe, 2012, states that Roma people are being threatened and beaten up in several European countries.

Roma houses have also been set on fire and occasionally the perpetrators have shot the victims trying to escape the flames.

In other countries with less violent incidents, the Council reports about Roma families and groups receiving threats from local non-Romas in order to prevent them from camping in the area.

The threats and violence do not only come from skinheads and neo-Nazi groups. “Normal” non-Roma citizens are also reported to have participated in the attacks.

Apart from the violence, many Romas suffer from poverty and unemployment, often just because of their ethnicity. In a survey carried out by the FRA (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) and UNDP (United Nations Development Program) in 2011 at least one quarter of Roma respondents from 11 European countries stated, that they experienced discrimination because of their background in daily life and when looking for jobs.

In Romania, being a Roma is the worst social stigma, according to ERRC (European Roma Rights Center) and many politicians and artists of Roma origin hide or reject their identity to avoid discrimination and the ending of their career.

Incidents like those mentioned above block the road to integration, according to Gabriel Moreno, a Spanish Roma or Gitano, as they call themselves in Spain.

“The society cannot expect the Roma to integrate as if no harm has been done to them,” he argues in the documentary “Romanipen” by Ima Garmendia & Kike del Olmo.

To Gabriel and his family it is normal to be aware of danger. Thereby, he highlights that his and his family’s approach toward the non-Romani Spanish society is shaped by the fear created through the past experiences.

Gabriel Moreno thinks that something needs to be done: “Society has built a stereotype of the Roma that we need to break once and for all, in the same way society is breaking architectural barriers for handicapped people. In the same way we have to work against the barriers of racism.”

On the other hand, Beata Olahova, a Roma social worker from Slovakia, argues that the Roma people also need to take a responsibility themselves.

“Roma in general are not doing enough to change their situation,” she says. She admits, though, that the non-Romani people bear a great deal of the guilt, also: “I do understand it is not an easy task, because for a long time the Roma have been discriminated against. That’s why it is difficult for them to start doing something for themselves and fight for their rights,” she says.

So are the Romani people poor because they are discriminated against or do they make a conscious decision not to be a part of society?

There seems to be no definitive answer to this problem, but a definitive fact is that something needs to be done, as Europe now has an entire ethnic group living on the edge of society. The crucial question is how Romani and non-Romani allies should stand up for their rights when discrimination, persecution and fear is a major part of their history.

The Romani history is not only one of travelling, but also one of insecurity, suffering, and suspicion from both the surrounding communities and the Romani people themselves. It seems like many Roma people have embraced the identity as Europe’s outcasts, and neither they – nor the surrounding societies – know how to heal the historical wounds that have been bleeding for centuries.

Years of mutual suspicion are hard to break free from, both for the discriminated and those who discriminate.

By Ida Scharla Løjmand

Image credit:

Picture 1: Giusi Barbiani, licensed by CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 2: Giusi Barbiani, licensed by CC BY-NC 2.0

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International Relations Theory: An Interview with Barry Buzan

Suzanne Snowden — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 12:00:02 +0000

Acclaimed author in the field of International Relations, Professor Barry Buzan recently spoke at Malmö Högskola on the topic of ‘Geopolitics and Geoeconomics in the Emerging World Order’. Prior to that fascinating lecture, Luke Richards and Suzanne Snowden from the Pike and Hurricane had the opportunity to ask him about the many publications he has been working on.

LR: In your book “The Global Transformation” you credited Justin Rosenberg for “showing the way”. Having studied at Sussex, I think Justin is a forward thinking scholar, but how important is history to you in understanding international relations?

BB: To me it is extremely important, in the sense that the understanding I eventually arrived at was that most of what passes for mainstream IR theory is just an abstract version of Western history. Since Western history became world history it does in some senses work, but also the interests in “where is the non-western IR theory”? If all of this had started in China it sure wouldn’t look like it looks now, there would be IR theory, but there would not be IR theory as we know it. So I think history is foundational and the attempt to forget that much of the theory we have in IR is actually just an abstract from history, to kind of pretend this abstract history theory is methodical is all wrong. Therefore that book is very much aimed at trying to introduce a dynamic sense of history into the teaching of international relations.

LR: Since you have started your career, when have been the biggest changes in international relations theory?

BB: That’s actually a surprisingly difficult questions to answer, because there’s has been a lot. I mean when I started out there wasn’t all that much in the way of IR theory as such, it was basically different versions of realism and something called utopianism or idealism and that was about it. So there have been many revolutions and attempted revolutions along the way and IR has now become, in some senses ridiculously diverse theoretically, unlike most disciplines, function based disciplines. It doesn’t have a core theory, it has a whole nest of theories that fight amongst themselves whether their commensurable or not. I don’t find that problematic, partly because I’m not very interested in the kind of philosophy of science issues, I’m rather pragmatic and it seems to me that the diversity of theories is kind of…in the sense that you pick the theory according to what type of question you want to answer and what you are interested in and different theories can do different things. None of them can do everything and they can be mixed up to a point. There are bits of this that attract me. I’m not terribly attracted to the quantitative statistical side of things, I’m not terribly attracted to the postmodern deconstructive side of things, but there are aspects of both of those that I think work and are valuable. In that sense I’ve been happy to see the theoretical toolkit of IR grow and expand and I don’t find that particularly problematic as I’ve been part of that myself. There is an overview there I’m certain but I don’t think I want to go inside that and start picking things apart. Part of it is just a matter of personal preference and what you are intellectually inclined to and, up to a point, what you are trained to do. I wasn’t trained in the mathematical arts and so that side of things is difficult for me, I’d have to learn another language in order to do it.

LR: Speaking about the diversity of international relations, do you not find this a problem at all, do you not see the discipline moving towards a grand unified theory of IR?

BB: No I don’t and I’m not too bothered about that. I’m pretty old fashioned now and therefore I like grand narratives and other things which are beyond the pale for some sections of the IR community. I’ve got nothing against attempts at grand unifying theory but I mean that’s my own preference. I’m a kind of high flyer in the sense that I like to look down upon the world from a high altitude. In the extent that I have any talent, that’s where it lies. That’s my natural area and one reason why the English school was attractive, you can pretty much do anything within the English school within a certain framing. I’m not troubled by that, I think you need to be very clear within your work what theoretical framings you are using and what you’re trying to combine and not combine and what the difficulties with that might be. You will notice if you paid any attention to my opus as a whole that I co-author a rather unusually large amount with an unusually wide cross section of people and I find that an extremely good way at coming to grips with the theoretical diversity. Ole Weaver was very much post structuralist, that was his background training, and that was the same with Lene Hansen and I learned a great deal from them and George Lawson. George is a historical sociologist, he’s given me a crash course in sociology which I’ve never studied. So co-authoring, although in some ways inefficient, is extremely efficient if you want to widen your theoretical scope and learn something fast and deep from somebody else.

SS: I loved reading that about you. I read about the fact that you’ve co-author so much that you almost saw it as a third person in the sense that you each had the different perspectives of what you wanted to work on and combined, it was a third perspective you may not have had on either of your own.

BB: Yeah, it makes me a bit schizophrenic. If you place a high value on the consistency and the coherence of your opus then this is troublesome. I don’t, I mean you do different things with different people and then you are different people for those purposes. I think that’s a fair way of approaching it. I don’t know whether I’ve set a record for the number of people I’ve co- authored with or not, there are plenty of co-authoring partnerships around.

SS: My question then is if you had to co-author another book, who would your ideal person to co-author with and on what?

BB: Well, I can answer that in triplicate as I am working on 3 books at the moment. It depends on the book basically, Lene was the perfect partner for the book on the evolution of international security studies because we had the Copenhagen School in common and we knew each other very well, so we had a kind of middle ground on which we had shared ground that we could use as a kind of benchmark, and then she covered most of the post structuralist and feminist stuff much better than I did. I had to teach her about the ex post, ex ante dilemma and all of that, and she had to teach me about all of the other stuff. That was great, so it was a very efficient and effective partnership. The same with George on the 19th century book, we both had an interest in the 19th century but we came to it from very different directions. The books I’ve got underway now is one with Evelyn Goh which is about the history problem in north East Asia, particularly between China and Japan. I could do that by myself, that’s dangerous work. I mean I’d never get invited back to China once it hits the presses. There were quite a few people I’d thought about doing that with, but she was enough of an outsider, but also enough of an insider to be safe in the sense she could take that risk. Whereas there are various people both inside China and out, who couldn’t…or whom I would not wish to subject to that risk. And I think she’s incredibly smart and bright. I like everything she’s done, I’ve worked with her a bit and I know she’s good. I teamed up with a former PHD student of mine to do a rather theoretical nerdy book on the idea of international society at the global level and what that might mean. There’s a good division of labour between him and me on that, that’s essentially an intellectual division of labour. The idea is to get a slightly wider perspective of the topic, because he’s much younger than me obviously and sees these things in a different way. And the third one is with Yongjin Zhang who (in 1998) wrote a book on China and International society which took it up to the late 90’s. So he and I are working on not quite a successor to that book, but in a sense maybe with a little bit of a twist on it. We’ve written together as well and worked together quite a bit so we know where we stand. He’s not done any co-authoring before, so he’s got to learn how to do it, and wants to. That’s a good partnership as well. At my age I also have this, I don’t want to play the old fart too much, but I’ve got some problems with my eyes and I’ve not seen too many people still at the top of their game in their mid-70’s. I don’t know when the top of my game passes by as it were. But there becomes some possibilities that if I start on long term projects I won’t be able to finish them for one reason or another, therefore having a co-author alongside is some guarantee that it gets finished in some way.

SS: So your legacy continues regardless, I love it.

BB: Not that my legacy continues, it’s more that I’ve not wasted all that bloody time and it dies just because I can’t finish it off!

SS: I was fascinated to see your collaboration with the Chinese, I lived in Asia for 5 years myself, in Hong Kong and Beijing. You were saying obviously with China involved it would have been a very different history or slant with IR. What do you see the future of IR being in the next 50 years?

BB: One of the reasons for my engagement with China is that I’ve had for quite a long time, a kind of general aim in what I do to try to internationalize international relations, because it’s a weird disciplined discipline, in lots of ways. It’s not like the other disciplines because it’s kind of scale based rather than function based or time based. I think that trend is going to continue, like the stuff I did with Amitav.

SS: The book? (Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia by Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan)

BB: Yeah, the book. It started off as a forum for International Relations in Asia Pacific in 2007. Amitav did most of the work of turning it into the book to his credit. I wasn’t a big believer in the need for a book, but he was absolutely right so he added some papers to it and it has done well. It’s worked very well as a provocation, basically going out and saying “where is your voice in all of this dammit”? Are we right? Are you going to say OK the Western IR theory is the IR theory, or do you have something to say, and if so what is it? That was fun to do as it’s always nice to irritate people, and it did. A lot of people have responding to that in quite major ways. The Chinese of course are doing it quite systematically. They are extremely keen to get their voice in, and one of the things I can do there is help them a bit with that in a sense they haven’t the foggiest idea of how to run an international standard academic journal, as nobody’s ever done it before. Inside China, the environment is rather weird and very different for obvious reasons, but the Chinese journal for international politics is now pretty good. It’s moving up the ranks. I involve myself with everything on the same basis, that we needed to have world class journals edited in lots of different places, not just in the US, and that’s working, I think. So IR is growing fast in all kinds of places. Downstream, you’re giving a 50 year time horizon, I think that in 50 years IR will become much more effectively globalized and other histories will be woven into the Western history and the global history, and that will have an impact on the theories. Because at the end of the day IR theories are all reflective of histories in some way. So whether this will produce novel, unique theories? It might do. I mean, the Japanese got a bit close to that with the Kyoto School stuff which had very different philosophical foundations and at least some of the Chinese IR is working on those very different philosophical foundations that underpin Chinese society and indeed are the same ones that underpin Japanese society in some respects. So there may be some bigger surprises there than one can predict, I’m just not sure. Institutionally I think the discipline will become more global, and that’s a good thing. I’m very happy to see that, I’ve tried to work for that in a variety of ways. Both, to some extent, in academic things like journals and who I write with and what I write about, but to some extent in practical things like politics. There is a world international studies committee which holds conferences and that sort of stuff. It’s slow and it’s small, but it’s going the right way.

LR: Speaking of the globalization of the theory, with the emerging global order and with lots of research still done in the US and the UK, is international theory as it currently stands ready to understand the emerging global order?

BB: No, in a word. It seems to me, to put it in a bit of a nutshell, it’s basically the argument in the book The Global Transformation that I did with George Lawson. What we argue is that we’re moving into a structure that we haven’t seen before. It certainly doesn’t fit with the realist polarity theory and all of that and it doesn’t really fit with any of the other stuff either, although it can be seen as a bit of an amalgam. So going back to Justin Rosenberg and Uneven and Combined Development, we’ve been in a system that that has been ever more highly combined and extremely uneven. It seems to me that the combination aspect of that simply goes on forever, we will go on getting more and more combined, denser, more interdependent, more connected, however you want to put it. That seems to me to be a fairly linear thing, so an agenda of shared fates is going to become more and more pressing. On the other hand, the huge inequality of the 19th century is diminishing. So, thus this idea of decentred globalism, which is not the same as multipolarity, it seems to me the whole apparatus of neorealism and neoliberalism just does not work with this. Because it’s not multi-polarity because it’s not working systemically, you would need a system of super powers for that to happen and the diffusion of power is going to be too wide for that. It’s a new structure we are moving into.

LR: If you were a young academic today, trying to leave your English School bias aside, what would you be interested in? Is there anything that stands out?

BB: I don’t know whether I am going to be able to answer that, I mean, would I not go into the English School? In the sense that it enables you think big that I like, it enables you think historically which I like doing and it enables you think structurally, in a kind of social structural sense, which I like doing. So, that’s where I want to be, I’m not very attracted to the quant methods thing, although some useful work can be done there, I’m happy with the division of labour that leaves that to somebody else. I’m not particularly drawn to most of the “posty” kinds of analysis, although I think some of them are fascinating. I’m glad they’re there but I don’t want to do that myself, it’s not the way I think. So if it’s still me that we are talking about, so probably I’d end up drifting this way. I mean I got into it for very boyish reasons when I was young, in a sense that as a kid and as a teenager I read quite a lot of war stuff, because that was the atmosphere in which one grew up, and I read a lot of science fiction stuff. I liked it because it wasn’t very literary in that sense and the science fiction stuff gave me a taste for thinking big, because it’s like history, the mirror image of history in some ways, and I like that. The war stuff gave me an impetuous into strategic studies and that’s how I got into international relations basically. There were random variables along the way, I was lucky enough to be introduced to the subject by Kal Holsti, a name you may or may not know, still alive and going strong. But he was there was in 1967, teaching the basic intro to IR course which I took, and it was just at the point he had finished turning it into the first edition of his text book, so this was a perfectly honed course and it just blew me away. All of this stuff I had been reading about war and its complexities suddenly was, wow, you could think about this in other ways. So that was a turning point for me in a sense that my eyes were opened and my interests were engaged by a good teacher. That can happen to anybody. You’re lucky if it does, the choices are not only yours. As a young person, where you end up going depends to extent on who you encounter.

By Luke Richards and Suzanne Snowden

Image credit:

Picture 1-4: UF Malmö

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UF Malmö Goes to Athens

Suzanne Snowden — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 12:59:45 +0000

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,” Socrates famously wrote. Greece holds a rich history that can be recalled as a source of inspiration for the present. Socrates words were a fitting phrase for the UF Malmö seven-day visit to Athens, Greece during October. Eighteen students from the Association embarked to visit Athens. Even now, Athens is a bastion of knowledge and a reflection of humanity’s greatest trials. This visit was timely as the group had the rare opportunity to actively engage in political issues with a wide variety of people at the forefront of Greek politics, humanitarian aid and the Greek economy. Visiting these officials and volunteers, one could not ignore how they are dealing with their financial crisis and the ongoing refugee crisis. Indeed, both crises are a hard battle. The serious agenda for the week was impressive and well-organised by the travel committee.

The week started with a prestigious visit to the Hellenic Parliament. It was not surprising that this former Royal Palace was impressive inside with exhibits depicting some highlights of the formation of the nation. The guided tour of this building was historically rich and culminated at the seats of Parliament with an explanation of how it is organised in Greece. This was a familiar structure of any nation where Parliament is run by a democratically elected body of Members of Parliament (MPs). In Greece there are 300 members, who are elected for a term of 4 years. This was a good introduction prior to our meeting with some members of the Syriza political party, which is the largest party in the Hellenic Parliament, with their party chairman Alexis Tsipras serving as Prime Minister of Greece. Once the UF group had a firm grasp of the political situation in Greece, the meeting with the European commission and the Swedish Embassy outlined the international community’s involvement in the recent political and economic developments in Greece.

All meetings emphasised the need to improve the economic and refugee crisis. Every meeting made sure to say that 60% of Greek youth are unemployed. The visit to Athens University of Economics and Business was a highlight as the UF Students met with Greek students studying their Masters in Finance. The Greek students were of similar ages to the UF students, which made the Greek economic crisis even more relatable and almost personal. Hearing the perspective of these Masters students and their concerns for their own professional futures was sobering as all acknowledged that they would most likely need to leave Greece if they were to have a career in their field of study. When considering the number of refugees currently entering Greece as their first step towards a new life while the Greek youth plan to leave their own country’s troubles, it is ironic.

The refugee crisis was on everybody’s minds when thousands of refugees are entering Athens everyday. The meeting with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was hopeful but unpromising. Statistics and stories of the 3,840 recent refugee deaths at sea illustrated the crisis. It is imperative that Greece is given the help it needs when facing this immense challenge. IOM is looking for donations, especially of warm equipment, regularly.

The UF group also had an informal visit to Victoria Square in Athens where refugees from various countries, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, wait for buses to take them onward throughout Europe. There are many organisations and volunteer groups working tirelessly with the refugees. One specialist volunteer group from the Netherlands, the Boat Refugee Foundation, focuses on the needs of the most vulnerable demographic, such as women, children (including unaccompanied children) and pregnant women. The Dutch organiser of this group took the time to talk about their involvement as her team were packing up from their 15 hour day. Her main message was the same as the IOM – these refugees need donations of tents, sleeping bags, shoes and warm clothes as winter has befallen the country.

The UF Malmö trips are designed to be a healthy mix of political discussions and cultural appreciation. This UF trip was deeply impactful for all participants and, although the information from the meetings can be shared with anyone who would like to have copies of the slides, the personal perspectives and emotional connections that were developed first-hand are essential in understanding Greece. For the UF students, there was enough free time to fully explore the ancient sites and to discover the amazing food, music and dancing of Greece. It was a full immersion into the country. What was most significant was the kindness of the Greek people and refugees. If you are able to participate in a UF travel experience in the future, grab the opportunity with both hands because it is a trip that would be hard to replicate on your own.

By Suzanne Snowden

Image credit:

Picture 1-3: Carolin Jamusch for UF Malmö

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