Search results

The geopolitical scenario in South Asia has of course assumed a new dimension at least in three fields: ethno-cultural, strategic configuration and psychological. In the ethno-cultural field, South Asia has become highly volatile and explosive. In most of the states of South Asia, ethno-cultural conflicts exist: for instance, in Sri Lanka where the LTTE militant group is engaged in a bloody warfare vis-à-vis the Sri Lankan State; in Pakistan Shia-Sunni conflicts and the Mohajir Qaumi movement for autonomy; and in India the religious fundamentalism due to the rise of Hindutva that has created a panic among minority groups like Christianity. In Nepal, the Communist Party (ML) is indulged in the worst kind of political violence. These trends show the upper hand of ethno-cultural elements in the geopolitical setting of South Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate direct, cultural, and structural violence in education system in the midst of armed conflict in Southern Thailand.

The exploratory qualitative case study conducted in-depth interviews and focus groups with 40 participants, consisting of students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors, principals, experts, education specialists, and administrators from seven schools across the three southern border provinces.

The study reveals some misconceptions of violence, normalization of direct violence in armed conflict, and pinpoints the ways in which cultural violence is used to legitimize structural and direct violence in the education system, as well as adverse effects and ethno-religious segregation in schools and the larger society.

Some policy recommendations are offered to address violence and promote sustainable peace through the education system in Southern Thailand.

This paper offers new perspectives on the inter-relationship between education and violence and adverse effects on violence in the education system in the midst of armed conflict in Southern Thailand.

The purpose of this paper is to explore work-life conflict and work-life facilitation among employed Muslim men, a growing ethno-religious minority in Australia.

The study is guided by the interpretive paradigm and is qualitative in nature. The primary data collection method was semi-structured in-depth interviews and 20 participants participated in the study.

Australian Muslim men experience both work-life conflict and facilitation simultaneously; however, facilitation is reported more frequently. Work flexibility, work and family support, and religiosity promote work-life facilitation. In contrast, workload and work hours lead to feelings of conflict, with workload being the stronger antecedent. Importantly, religious values and beliefs are an underpinning influence on participants’ experiences.

The study is conducted with a small sample and hence, lacks the power to generalise findings to the broader Muslim male population.

There is a strong need to modify the traditional western models of work-life conflict and facilitation and workplace policies designed to assist workers when dealing with minorities, such as Australian Muslims. By including religion, the research offers a fresh voice to work-life research and encourages to think about the salience of other life domains beside family, an issue of great concern within the work-life literature.

This is one of the few studies to focus on Australian Muslim men and explore how religion fits into the current understanding of work-life balance.

Conflict resolution efforts have larger implications for democratic development: they provide a valuable discursive space where social change can be collectively conceptualized and negotiated to the benefit of democratic development, and where participants gain democratic experience, providing a constructive catalyst in the ongoing social transformation of values, norms, and political cultures. Through a fusion of discourse-based and democratic culture analysis of the Nigerian case, we explore how conflict resolution practices may better engage and catalyze public discourses that promote processes of constructive social change, and how conflict resolution practices can help to build democracy and good governance. We use the example of Nigerian discourses on democratic governance to investigate the broader importance of recognizing and engaging discursive realities. Secondly, we explore how transformative conflict resolution methods, such as workshop models, promote democratic values at the same time that they provide a valuable democratic experience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how school principals in Southern Philippines approached issues related to religious diversity because of its long history of ethno-religious conflict. Religion has particular importance in the field of education, since how and in what ways religion is included in formal and non-formal curricula can have large bearing on student learning and engagement.

Data for this exploratory qualitative case study were collected over five months in Cagayan de Oro, located in Northern Mindanao, Philippines. The interview sample included 42 principals. School site observations took place in 23 public schools. Data were analyzed and sorted using an inductive and iterative process that thematically coded the data that focused broadly on leadership and religiosity.

The presentation of findings is organized by leadership typologies that emerged through the analysis of the data. Findings suggested that school leaders approached religious diversity in one of five ways, namely, as evangelical leaders, devotional leaders, separational leaders, respectful leaders, or uninformed leaders.

This study is a unique contribution to understanding how principal spirituality informs leadership, especially in the non-western cultural contexts where there is need for a localized leadership inquiry.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the mutually reinforcing drivers of violent conflict in rural and urban communities in Central Nigeria.

This study adopts mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative research methodology through multi-stage sampling technique. This involved the purposive selection of Benue and Plateau States in Central Nigeria. The combination of household data collection and Geographic Information System led to the identification of 2,772, 117, 2,668 and 106 grids in Jos, Barkin Ladi, Makurdi and Gbajimba, respectively. This proportion constituted the clusters where household heads were chosen for questionnaire administration. Furthermore, a total of ten in-depth interviews were conducted.

The prominent precipitators of violent conflicts were: rise of criminal groups and criminal activities, hate speech, state’s inability to protect most citizens against violent crime, political intimidation by ruling party, over militarization of the public space. Others are rising population pressure, proliferation of small arms and light weapons and ban of open grazing.

This study could be strengthened if broadened to include communities with different socioeconomic realities. Hence, the view presented in this paper may not be considered generalizable to other parts of the country with different cultural settings.

The methodology offers a reliable alternative to combine sampling approaches for household surveys that can help address problems occasioned by the lack of census data.

This chapter examines the dynamics of the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria and its effects on higher education in Nigeria. Insurgency has affected all the nook and crannies of northern Nigeria and has gone unabated, owing particularly to the institutional framework adopted to manage peace and resolve the conflict with severe implication on higher education in the region. Insurgency has caused catastrophic humanitarian crises through widespread infrastructural devastation, and massive dislocations and losses of human life. The incidence of insurrections, insurgencies, and counter insurgency activities in each of the conflict clusters in the northeast geo-political zone of Nigeria has been associated with widespread human insecurity and displacement of populations. Using both primary and secondary methods of data collection, the chapter examines how the role of government and policies has become central to educational development in the country. It also shows the extent to which the activities of the Boko Haram insurgency have affected students’ school enrolment and performance in northeastern Nigeria. The chapter further examines internally displaced persons (IDPs) and access to education in northeastern Nigeria and interrogates the role of the Nigerian state and agencies responsible for the management of IDPs in meeting their education needs in camps. It also examines the extent to which stakeholders in the management of IDPs have gone in initiating policies and programs that promotes access to education in IDP camps in northeast Nigeria. It concludes that the number of schools available in the conflict spots has reportedly been reduced because of the fact they are now occupied by IDPs. Most of the students in high school as well as universities in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states have had their opportunities for higher education severely constrained. The chapter recommends among others that protection of staff, students, and education workers working in the northeast region is imperative. In order to do so successfully, changes must be effected in the provisions contained in the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that relate to the management of IDPs.

The paper aims to examine the influence of urban violence on residential property rental value in Kaduna metropolis. This is motivated by the spate of insurgency and the attendant destructions of land and properties in the past few years in the study area.

This paper adopted a survey of key sites of urban violence and also a total enumeration of all the 67-estate surveying and valuation firms in the study area to elicit from them vital information on trends on rental from 2011 to 2019. The data obtained were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential methods of statistical analysis.

The result of this study revealed that among other sources of urban violence, violence fueled by ethnic affiliations/convictions is the only significant factor that influenced rental value of residential property in the study area. The regression analysis shows that ethnic violence accounted for 21.6% of the variability observed in residential property rental value over the period of study. Furthermore, the correlation result showed that ethnic violence is negatively correlated (−0.458) and significantly related to residential property rental value.

This study concluded that the emergence of urban violence in Kaduna metropolis contributed to a fall in the rental value of residential property in the study area. This study thus suggested policy directions that could engender harmonious coexistence among different ethnic groups in the study area.

This study is expected to enhance improvement in residential property rental value in Kaduna metropolis through increase assurance to security of lives and property.

Accounting for locational effects in determining price is of fundamental importance. The demise of the mainstream property market has culminated in increasing appetite and investment activity within the private rental sector. The primary purpose of this paper aims to analyse the local variation and spatial heterogeneity in residential rental prices in a large urban market in the UK using various geo-statistical approaches.

Applying achieved price data derived from a leading internet-based rental agency for Belfast Northern Ireland is analysed in a number of spatially based modelling frameworks encompassing more traditional approaches such as hedonic regressive models to more complex spatial filtering methods to estimate rental values as a function of the properties implicit characteristics and spatial measures.

The principal findings show the efficacy of the geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique as it provides increased accuracy in predicting marginal price estimates relative to other spatial techniques. The results reveal complex spatial non-stationarity across the Belfast metropole emphasizing the premise of location in determining and understanding rental market performance. A key finding emanating from the research is that the high level of segmentation across localised pockets of the Belfast market, as a consequence of socio-political conflict and ethno-religious territoriality segregation, requires further analytical insight and model specification in order to understand the exogenous spatial and societal effects/implications for rental value.

This study is one of only a few investigations of spatial residential rent price variation applying the GWR methodology, spatial filtering and other spatial techniques within the confines of a UK housing market. In the context of residential rent prices, the research highlights that a soft segmentation modelling approaches are essential for understanding rental gradients in a polarised ethnocratic city.