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The UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 calls for the establishment of peaceful, just and inclusive societies. The security sector can either contribute to or detract from SDG16 and parliaments play a role in directing the sector’s impact. The Covid-19 pandemic affected parliamentary operations globally during a time of increased security force utilisation in response to the pandemic. This study reviews the use of the security sector in South Africa, the Philippines and the UK during the first year of the pandemic as well as parliamentary responses. To ensure security sector contribution to SDG16, the study identifies the need for rapid parliamentary reaction to security sector utilisation, especially in cases of extraordinary deployments.
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In a world where information has never been so accessible, we are hungrier for the facts than ever before. And yet, strict paywalls put in place by multi-billion dollar publishing houses are still preventing millions from accessing quality, scientific knowledge.
On 4 September 2018, a bold new initiative known as ‘Plan S’ was unveiled, kickstarting a global shift in attitudes towards open access research. For the first time, funding agencies across continents joined forces to impose new rules on the publication of research, with the aim of one day making all research free and available to all.
Here, the scheme’s founder, Robert-Jan Smits, makes a compelling case for Open Access, and reveals for the first time how he set about turning his controversial plan into reality – as well as some of the challenges faced along the way.
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As modernity began to rapidly change and influence European culture, many nineteenth and twentieth-century writers and intellectuals struggled to identify themselves with this modern paradoxical context. As a result, the modern stranger was conjured up out of the uncanny depths of secularized modernity. Although a subject whose makeup is continually shifting, the modern stranger still exists as a strong allegory for secularized modernity, particularly because of its unsolidified and liminal characteristics and reflects not only uncanny otherness but likewise the horrors and anxiety of realizing the potential imperfections and weaknesses of the individual, society, and their utopian imaginings.
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In "The Star of Redemption", written at the end and after World War I and published in 1921, Franz Rosenzweig presented an epoch-making Jewish-inspired philosophy of religion. In three steps, each with three chapters or "books," Rosenzweig unfolds in it his view of God, the world, and man, their interrelationship, and their contribution and role in the redemption of the world. In this introduction, young and old Rosenzweig scholars take readers by the hand chapter by chapter, book by book. They lead safely through Rosenzweig's argumentation, making sometimes difficult lines of thought comprehensible and plausible. The chapter introductions open up reliable access for interested readers and new perspectives for connoisseurs.
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This monograph traces the emergence and evolution of the LSE Government Department from 1895 to 2020, focusing on the personalities that guided the development of the Department, the social and political contexts the Department existed within, its research agenda and course structure, and the location of the Department in British politics. It also charts the evolution of the discipline of political science in Britain itself. The volume is divided chronologically into four chapters, each covering roughly similar time periods in the Department’s history and focuses on the events that shaped it: personalities, events, and location. Key themes are the development of political science in Britain, the impact of location on the LSE Government Department, the professionalisation of academia in Britain, and the microcosm the Department presents of British political life during each time period. The conflicts between progressive and conservative forces are a recurring theme which helps link the internal dynamics of the Department with the wider social and political contexts that occurred from the beginning of the School to its 125th anniversary.
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Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage.
Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers.
The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments.
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This Security Sector Reform (SSR) Paper offers a universal and analytical perspective on the linkages between Security Sector Governance (SSG)/SSR (SSG/R) and Sustainable Development Goal-16 (SDG-16), focusing on conflict and post-conflict settings as well as transitional and consolidated democracies. Against the background of development and security literatures traditionally maintaining separate and compartmentalized presence in both academic and policymaking circles, it maintains that the contemporary security- and development-related challenges are inextricably linked, requiring effective measures with an accurate understanding of the nature of these challenges. In that sense, SDG-16 is surely a good step in the right direction. After comparing and contrasting SSG/R and SDG-16, this SSR Paper argues that human security lies at the heart of the nexus between the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations (UN) and SSG/R. To do so, it first provides a brief overview of the scholarly and policymaking literature on the development-security nexus to set the background for the adoption of The Agenda 2030. Next, it reviews the literature on SSG/R and SDGs, and how each concept evolved over time. It then identifies the puzzle this study seeks to address by comparing and contrasting SSG/R with SDG-16. After making a case that human security lies at the heart of the nexus between the UN’s 2030 Agenda and SSG/R, this book analyses the strengths and weaknesses of human security as a bridge between SSG/R and SDG-16 and makes policy recommendations on how SSG/R, bolstered by human security, may help achieve better results on the SDG-16 targets. It specifically emphasizes the importance of transparency, oversight, and accountability on the one hand, and participative approach and local ownership on the other. It concludes by arguing that a simultaneous emphasis on security and development is sorely needed for addressing the issues under the purview of SDG-16.
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The main argument is that improving migrants’ rights and conceptual linkages between SSG/R and migration is best achieved, by decentring our gaze, namely going beyond the ‘national’ and ‘state-centric’ view that characterizes traditionally SSG/R and to consider the agency of both migrants and SSR actors. First from a migrants’ perspective, it is key for SSR actors to go beyond traditional legal classifications and to consider the diversity of personal situations that involve refugees, stranded migrants and asylum seekers, which might endorse different roles at different times of their journeys and lives. Second, the transnational nature of migration calls for a transnationalization of SSG/R too. For too long the concept has mostly been applied within the national setting of SSR institutions and actors. Migration calls for a clear decentring that involves a transnational dimension and more work among transnational actors and policymakers to facilitate a norm transfer from the domestic to the interstate and international level. As such, the ‘transnational’ nature of migration and its governance needs to be ‘domesticated’ within the national context in order to change the mindset of SSG/R actors and institutions.
More importantly, the paper argues that poor SSG/R at home produces refugees and incentivizes migrants to leave their countries after being victims of violence by law enforcement and security services. During migrants’ complex and fragmented journeys, good security sector governance is fundamental to address key challenges faced by these vulnerable groups. I also argue that a better understanding of migrants’ and refugees’ security needs is beneficial and central to the good governance of the security sector.
After reviewing the key terms of migration and its drivers in section 2, section 3 reviews how SSG is part of the implementation of the GCM. SSR actors play a role in shaping migratory routes and refugees’ incentives to leave, in explaining migrants’ and refugees’ resilience, in protecting migrants and refugees, and in providing security. Although it cautions against artificial classifications and the term of ‘transit migration’, section 4 reviews what the core challenges are in the countries of origin, transit and destination. Section 5 provides a detailed overview of the linkages between migration and each security actor: the military, police forces, intelligence services, border guards, interior ministries, private actors, criminal justice, parliaments, independent oversight bodies and civil society. Section 6 formulates some recommendations.
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Cultural heritage was invented in the realm of nation-states, and from an early point it was considered a public asset, stewarded to narrate the historic deeds of the ancestors, on behalf of their descendants. Nowadays, as the neoliberal narrative would have it, it is for the benefit of these tax-paying citizens that privatisation logic on heritage sector have been increasing over recent decades, to cover their needs in the name of social responsibility and other truncated views of the welfare state.
This volume examines whether we can place cultural heritage at the other end of the spectrum, as a common good and potentially as a commons. It does so by looking at Greece as a case study, lately a battlefield of harsh and experimental austerity measures but also of inspiring grass-roots mobilisation and scholarship, currently blossoming to defend the right of communities to enjoy, collaboratively manage and co-create goods by the people, for the people.
Since cultural heritage -and culture in general- is hastily bundled up with other goods and services in various arguments for and against their public character, this volume invites several experts to discuss their views on their field of expertise and reflect on the overarching theme: Can cultural heritage be considered a commons? If so, what are the advantages and pitfalls concerning theory, practice and management of heritage? What can we learn from other public resources with a longer history in commons-based or market-oriented interpretation and governance? Can a commons approach allow us to imagine and start working towards a better, more inclusive and meaningful future for heritage?
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Recent developments in the field of archaeology are not only progressing archaeological fieldwork but also changing the way we practise and present archaeology today. As these digital technologies are being used more and more every day on excavations or in museums, this also means that we must change the way we approach teaching and communicating archaeology as a discipline. The communication of archaeology is an often neglected but ever more important part of the profession. Instead of traditional lectures and museum displays, we can interact with the past in various ways. Students of archaeology today need to learn and understand these technologies, but can on the other hand also profit from them in creative ways of teaching and learning. The same holds true for visitors to a museum.
This volume presents the outcome of a two-day international symposium on digital methods in teaching and learning in archaeology held at the University of Cologne in October 2018 addressing exactly this topic. Specialists from around the world share their views on the newest developments in the field of archaeology and the way we teach these with the help of archaeogaming, augmented and virtual reality, 3D reconstruction and many more. Thirteen chapters cover different approaches to teaching and learning archaeology in universities and museums and offer insights into modern-day ways to communicate the past in a digital age.
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