Call for papers

The contribution of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to the maintenance of international peace and security

Since the establishment of the United Nations, international intergovernmental organizations have played an increasingly important role in maintaining peace. Indeed, the UN Charter – in addition to having as one of its main purposes the maintenance of international peace and security (art. 1) – gives, in Chapter VIII, an important task to regional arrangements or organizations, in the context of measures both involving (art. 53) and not involving (art. 52) the use of armed force. In particular from the 90s regional initiatives have been often successful, as practice clearly demonstrates. Such initiatives enjoy “structural” benefits: the distrust, which disputing parties might have towards external actions, is mitigated; moreover, regional organizations have better control of the situation, since they know the history of the area, its traditions, local interests and internal affairs; finally, they are directly interested in avoiding the spreading of the dispute. The UN have effectively cooperated with regional organizations such as the African Union, the Arab League, the Organization of American States, but also with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and even with NATO (although with debatable results).

The actions carried on by international organizations in favour of peace have a complex and multifunctional nature, given the need to implement heterogeneous measures, such as social, economic, political and institutional ones. That's why non-governmental organizations (NGOs), too, have played a growing and significant role in maintaining international peace and security.

At the end of Cold War, endemic tensions existing in many countries have caused a new kind of conflicts. In particular intrastate or transnational conflicts, in which the ethnic and religious components often play a key role, involving the civil population in a relevant way. These conflicts are often characterised by great violence (which makes humanitarian aid even more necessary and urgent). Furthermore, the internal nature of the disputes and the aspirations to autonomy or independence frequently imply the collapse of State institutions.

Non-governmental organizations have proved they can operate effectively in such complex scenarios. Indeed, their flexible and non-top-down structure gives them a good capacity to dialogue with the components of civil society and not infrequently they are able to interact with local authorities thanks to the fact that they are recognised as super partes entities.

In the light of this scenario, Scienza e Pace / Science and Peace intends to devote a monothematic section of its next issue to the contribution of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to the maintenance of international peace and security. Applicants should ideally be lawyers, political scientists, social scientists, economists, historians and philosophers, but contributes from other areas are also welcomed.

Scienza e Pace / Science and Peace encourages, therefore, the submission of articles pointing out the potentialities and advantages of the involvement of both intergovernmental organizations (in particular regional ones) and non-governmental organizations such as, among others, the Community of Sant’Egidio, Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International, in peace operations. It also encourages the submission of articles dedicated to the interaction and mutual cooperation among the mentioned organizations and to the prospects for improvement of such cooperation.

Applications

Applications can be submitted via e-mail to the Editorial Committee (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and to the Guest Editor of the issue, Prof. Leonardo Pasquali (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), by 31 May 2019 in one of the following languages: Italian, English, French, Spanish or Portuguese.

Please include in your e-mail:

- the author's name, affiliation and contact details;

- a (max) 300 word abstract [.doc or .odt format] + eventual bibliography.

Applicants will be informed of the selection committee decision no later than 15 June 2019. The final paper must be sent by 30 September 2019. The papers must follow the Editorial Guidelines of the Journal.

In Winter 2020, in occasion of the publication of the monothematic issue of the Journal, a Conference will be held at the University of Pisa, in Pisa, Italy. It will be facilitated by Scienza e Pace / Science and Peace. The authors of the selected papers will be invited to present their paper either in Italian or in English.

This research notes highlight the completion of the armed conflict between the Colombian State and Farc-Ep. This changing present moment is characterized by the pugnacity of the participants in the current political debate on the peace deal with the so-called main insurgent organization of the country. Herewith the reflection over how conflicts end is based on Georg Simmel´s ideas. The exploration of the pro-peace deal presidential campaigns reveals some lines of analysis. One of the major ascertainments of our preliminary exam is that, besides the contribution of a sociology of conflict, studying transitional periods requires to take into account features related to philosophy of history and memory studies. We assert that a social science which seeks to address the Colombian present must inquire about shifting sociation forms.

Georg Simmel is one of the founding fathers of the modern Theory of Conflict, that is, a precursor to polemology. His theories as a researcher constitute one of the most original approaches in the construction of the Sociology of Antagonism as a process of socialization that was built during the twentieth century. This article attempts to connect, through a dialogical methodology, the approaches of Simmel with the general theory of Cartography of Peace with the concept of neutral peace from the School of Granada, Spain. This dialectic method tries to find some meeting points that can lead us to the construction of an Anthropology of Neutrality in which current society that is in conflict (such as resolution, management and transformation) defines them in a neutral way and uses the concept of neutral peace which seeks a meeting point between the tension (crisis and alternative) of the opposites.

The history of the ideas on peace and war in Western thought and in sociological theory is summarized in the first part of this paper, along with notes on the “peace research” school since the Sixties and its dawning in Italy, e.g. in the Institute of International Sociology of Gorizia (Isig). In the second section, some Simmel’s contributions are presented: the influence of his essay of 1904 on later sociological American work on “conflict resolution” and other sociological theories; his work on the spatial dimension of society; and a commentary on peculiar qualities of his mind. A critical note is inserted, on Simmel’s papers in support of the German stance in the Great War. In the third part, Simmel’s work on “spatial principles and configurations” are applied on the analysis of some theories on “one-world society”, on globalization, and its backlashes, like the no-global movement and the recent revival of nationalism in Europe and in the United States. A note on the moral dilemmas in a globalized society conclude the paper.

In the final pages of the second chapter of Soziologie, Simmel introduces the Mediator as "third and impartial role". Around this social figure converge a large part of the central themes of his entire theoretical proposal: mutual action as a structuring factor of social reality; the formal approach to the study of society; the integrative function of conflict. The present essay aims to bridge Simmel reflections on present days. The objective is to show how in a historical moment, like the current one, in which the out-of-court resolution of the conflict becomes increasingly important, the analysis of the relational dynamics proposed by Simmel is still an instrument of fundamental importance, both for civil and criminal mediator and for social workers.

In 1903 Simmel published his short study on the sociology of the competition, after the competition for the succession to the important chair of Georg von Gizicky in Berlin at the end of the years '90. On that situation he was defeated by Max Dessoir, a doctoral student of Wilhelm Dilthey, the latter in stark contrast to Moritz Lazarus, Simmel's teacher. So the competitive episode was part of a larger conflict. The article attempts to place Simmel's study on competition against the background of the biographical vicissitudes of its author. First, it traces the sociological nature of competition, which differs from conventional conflict in its triadic form, after it shows that if oriented to a common goal, competition has a socializing effect on the social circle of competitors. A concept that, in fact, seems to arise from the personal story that involved Simmel, given that the competition mentioned improved the condition of all the contenders involved and on the other hand, had a society-forming effect.

To Simmel it is neither realistic nor desirable to strive for a utopia of eternal peace. Humans can only collaborate and develop if some form of conflict among them prevails. Accordingly, they should invent and institutionalize the most humane type of conflict. Rather than subduing each other in war and submit the defeated partner to death or slavery, they ought to compete peacefully and thus provoke each other to higher levels of culture and performance. This Simmel applies to three levels: 1) The worldviews created by religion, art, and scholarship each depict the universe as a whole; they cannot replace each other, they cannot reasonably be in conflict, but they can and should compete. 2) Human groups alien to each other cannot enforce unification but should communicate via an exchange of strangers, reduce differences by competing, and eventually become more and more similar. 3) Businesses, offering goods and services on a market, should compete to gain the approval of the customer and thus perform a non-violent type of conflict in commerce to the advantage of those who pay them money. A summary at the end shows what the three levels have in common.

In this essay is a reflection of the sociological works of Georg Simmel, in the light of the various developments of the classical and contemporary sociological theory. In particular, the notion of sociality and the idea of the individual, discussed elements of the sociological analysis of this author that can be a first-rate tool for understanding social phenomena that characterize the capitalism contemporary and peripheral.

The central problem of the paper is a conflict which outbreaks in a group when one of its participants turns to a purposive action, aimed at disentangling of a lie. It is argued that by this sort of action, the said participant loses the group’s support but wins the autonomy from a lie-ridden narrative. The intricacies of such a conflict for the individual and for the group are analyzed. The author draws on Simmel’s Theory of Opposition, on his concepts of life, form, lie, faithfulness and purpose. Simmel’s theoretical statements are illustrated with vivid examples from literature, film and journalism.

The article intends to suggest a reflection upon the essay The Conflict in the Modern Culture by Georg Simmel; as a matter of facts the author gives a relevant contribution to the direction of an original explanation about the subject of the “opposition to the principle of the shape”, using just the same range of studies. The specific sphere where the article sets the perspective of the analysis of the essay by Simmel – among the most possible ones about the power, the richness of meanings and of contents it has got – is that one of the phenomenon, that can be observed both in the artistic field and the sphere of the culture and of the interpersonal relationships, of the progressive simplification of the exterior shapes. That, starting from the last decade of the nineteenth century, crossing the intellectual and scientific movements that characterized the German and the Austrian cultural life during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The consequences of this long historical process were the birth of the mass individualism of the twentieth century.