Book Notes
| Author | Chuck Thiessen,Ole Magnus Theisen,Pavel Baev,Andreas Tollefsen,Kjell Erling Kjellman,Åshild Kolås,Scott London,Jørgen Jensehaugen,Marianne Dahl,Ulrich Pilster,Helga Malmin Binningsbø,Jack David Eller,Max Abrahms,Yücel Vural,Erlend Paasche,Nils Petter Gleditsch,Kendra Dupuy,Hilde Wallacher,Kristin M Bakke |
| Published date | 01 March 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343310397975 |
| Date | 01 March 2011 |
Book Notes
Abraham, Itty; Edward Newman & Meredith L Weiss,
eds (2010) Political Violence in South and Southeast Asia:
Critical Perspectives. Tokyo: United Nations University
Press. 224 pp. ISBN 9789280811902.
As introduced by the editors, this book considers and
evaluates the nature, roots, meanings and consequences
of political violence, seeking not to explain, but rather
to ‘understand it better’. The volume focuses on South
and Southeast Asia because political violence in these
regions is ‘everyday, commonplace, strategic, widespread
and instrumental’. Still, according to the editors, the
understanding sought in this book is enabled by an inter-
disciplinary framework that encompasses external, sub-
national, state and non-state actors. In addition to the
editors’ introductory chapter, contributors to the volume
are Sankaran Krishna, Paul R Brass, Varun Sahni and
Shamuel Tharu, all writing on India or South Asia,
Geoffrey Robinson, Natasha Hamilton-Hart and Vince
Boudreau, each with a chapter on Southeast Asia, and
finally Naureen Chowdhury Fink, writing on Bangla-
desh. The introduction reviews the most influential the-
ories of armed conflict and provides an outline of the
book, claiming that the approach taken stands in marked
contrast to the familiar and ubiquitous approaches, nota-
bly the view of armed conflict as an aberration to the nor-
mal condition of social life and the view of the territorial
state as a given and fixed agent. This would have been a
highly interesting framework, had it actually been
applied by most of the contributors. However, some of
the chapters simply fail to live up to the promises made
in the introduction. Others, including the chapters by
Krishna & Brass, certainly do deserve the label ‘critical
perspectives’. However, it is difficult to see how, or
whether, these and the more conventional, sometimes
even uncritical contributions, have anything to say to
each other.
Åshild Kolås
Bolton, Matthew (2010) Foreign Aid and Landmine
Clearance: Governance, Politics and Security in
Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sudan. London: IB Tauris.
267 pp. ISBN 9781848851603.
The literature on mine action has tended to be dominated
by technocratic and activist perspectives. Social science
approaches, meanwhile, have been relatively rare. This
work addresses this lacuna by exploring the linkages
between institutions, power structures, and politics, and
their impact on the provision of security through mitigat-
ing the risks posed by landmines. Drawing upon
three case studies, Bolton contends that traditional
state-centric responses to human security are no longer
effective; instead, a combination of civil society and com-
mercial networked governance ‘complexes’ have sup-
planted previous approaches to security. According to
Bolton, these have significant implications for demining
and the provision of security to mine-affected popula-
tions. While commercial networks may strengthen
state security organs, they also tend to lead to the fragmen-
tation and privatization of security. Conversely, civil
society-based complexes effectively focus on marginalized
populations and prioritize areas of high human impact,
thereby strengthening human security. In positioning his
discussion of mine action in a wider context that includes
donors, strategic interests, and human security debates,
Bolton avoids falling into the trap of divorcing demining
from its broader political context. He demonstrates the
way in which mine action initiatives are subject to multi-
ple layers of interests and governance, and the manner in
which these can mitigate even the most well-intended
efforts. In combining empirically-driven case studies with
a social science theoretical framework, Bolton succeeds in
providing an insightful understanding of the complexities
of mine clearance and security. For those wishing to
understand the way in which mine action is enmeshed
in broader institutional power structures and the
Journal of Peace Research
48(2) 261–270
ªThe Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343310397975
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