Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

Divided we stand

Abstract: For Durkheim, the society integrates as dual, separately in a mechanical and in organic way. The first individuals in their interactions habituate new local rules which integrate society in its specific issues in a bottom-up direction. When new rules are institutionalisded and enforced for all, they feed back as mechanical restriction of behaviours from the top-down. Micro to macro structuration is seen as a circular process and does not err in descriptions of integration process that is also circular in nature. However, it fails to explain what integrates society constituted on unresolvable oppositions, and so how translate integration efforts into the integration outcome.

To fill this gap, integration is reorganised from dual to triadic concept first and so adjusted to fit a meso, instead of conventional micro or macro frame. The case is illustrated with evaluation study. Three measures of integration are derived. A strong balance is a measure of the mechanical integration between primary oppositions involved in the evaluated issue. Cohesion is a correlative measure of cooperative achievements. The third is a weak balance which measures mutuality of relations, assessing if they weave social ties in an emancipatory way. Circular interpretation is thus not rejected here. It is only reframed in a triadic concept having in its centre a meso category which is soft in its logic, intermediary in its function, but radical in transformative consequences.

Bojan Radej ( bojan.radej@siol.net), Mojca Golobič, Slovenian Evaluation Society, Working paper, vol. 6, no. 1 (June 2013), 23 pp.;

Today’s Tripolar Power Struggle

A few days ago I came across a map as part of research intended to expand the current Shia/Sunni labels applied to the Syrian conflict into the regional actors that fuel it. Egypt was given a prominent role that likely dated back to thinking about the United Arab Republic, formed early on in the Cold War. Today I undertook creating a map based on current conditions.

Turkey certainly has a role, with Syria melting down on their doorstep, and Iran views Syria as an ally, part of the Shia arc from the northeast Mediterranean to Iran’s eastern border. Egypt is bogged down with internal issues and the other player is a composite of the Saudis and the Qataris, both of whom fund radicalized Sunni groups. The 68 million population number is for all countries of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, not just the two who fund adventures.

Twenty percent of Saudia Arabian peninsula residents are Shia. Tiny majority Shia Bahrain, home to the U.S. 5th Fleet, has simmered with dissent over injustice that flows from the Sunni dominated regime, and Saudi Arabia has intervened directly in order to keep the troubles from overflowing into their own Shia population, some 10% of the total, and concentrated in the provinces near Bahrain.

Yemen, formerly the nations of North and South Yemen, who merged in 1990, is evenly split between Shia and Sunni adherents, and has been at a rolling boil for the last four years. As recently as three weeks ago U.S. drones struck al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)  leadership in Yemen.

I recently posted Bipartisan Opposition To Syrian Intervention, a report on both sides of Capitol Hill weighing in on their disinterest in an unsupervised adventure in Syria. Congressman Peter Welch had this to say:

Syria is in a brutal and tragic civil war the roots of which go back hundreds of years

Read full post.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: Turkey – Iran – Saudi Arabia in Conflict”