This chapter introduces the themes of criminality and criminalisation. It first studies the various Chechnya groups from 1996 to early 1998, and then examines the evolving dynamics of Russian law enforcement and the combination of Russian law enforcement organisations that are involved in the second conflict that occurred in 1999. It also discusses the emergence of the KLA from the 1980s to the 1990s, the issue of multiple allegiances, and the bridging of the earlier work on stories of war and peace.

This introductory chapter argues that films are part of reality. It tries to see films as part of the reality people typically inhabit, as part of the world they live in, as parts of their lives. This is an attempt to acknowledge the reality of film that can be called filmic reality. Film scholars and students are invariably drawn towards trying to determine what a film represents by looking at films as at best a secondary mode of being, so that any claim for the reality of films is most often met with either the blank stare of bafflement or outright repudiation. Only by opening oneself up to the experimentation, hypothesizing, reverie and imagination that are presented by films can one hope to accept the realities that films provide. It has to be accepted that films are part of reality, not things which have to live up to an already-conceived reality, or which have to mirror reality, represent or reflect reality or, conversely, ‘criticize’ reality. Only if people give up on the understanding that films are somehow severed from reality can they begin to account for the realities that films themselves are.

This chapter examines a national alarm in the UK, said to be have been provoked by the careless talk of a junior health minister in Margaret Thatcher's last administration. The minister concerned, a colourful Conservative politician, Edwina Currie, vehemently denied that she had acted irresponsibly by drawing the public's attention to health risks associated with the presence of salmonella in eggs. Her claims that salmonella in eggs posed a serious health threat produced more heat than light in Whitehall, Parliament and the press; but it was a story that the press proved reluctant, until the minister's departure, to let go. It has been described as a classic example of a media ‘feeding frenzy’. The political turbulence caused by Currie's warnings about salmonella in eggs signalled a deep disturbance in food policy and interactions between media, politics, and public opinion that were to become increasingly difficult to manage.

This chapter provides a general survey of Stanley Cavell's most important contributions to theorizing cinema. A study of his approach to the ontology of film, The World Viewed, proves that for him films are real rather than realistic. For him, experiences of films cannot simply be seen as some kind of lesser version of the so-called real world. Instead, films provide something akin to a more intense or ‘truer’ experience of reality. Films cannot be said to offer representations of the world or of some purportedly ‘real’ or ‘true’ world. Instead, films are exhibitions of the world; they offer experiences that are as much a part of reality as any other experience. While at the movies, people are less on guard, more receptive, more vulnerable and less fearful of the possibilities the world is capable of offering to them. Stanley Cavell; The World Viewed; films; experiences; reality

This chapter deals with one of the more controversial contributors to recent debates in film studies: Slavoj Žižek. His reconceptualization of Lacanain psychoanalytic theory around the category of the real has steered psychoanalytic film theory in new and interesting directions. He declares that they are shaped by the ideals people posit in the real, but in so far as that is the case, their experiences of reality are always shaped by ideological fantasy. This, ultimately, is Žižek's most fundamental breakthrough: that ideological fantasy is a good thing, not something that should be eschewed or dispensed with. In other words, ideological fantasies are not illusions. Rather, it is only by way of ideological fantasy that people can come to experience reality itself in the first place. Žižek's conclusion is that ideological fantasy effectively makes the world in which people live: ideological fantasy is at the foundation of what we call ‘reality’.

This chapter explores post-conflict attitudes and behaviour of those former non-state combatants in Northern Ireland who have engaged in broader formations of social and political reconciliation and transformation through various post-prison and community initiatives. It examines how the influx of former prisoners into organisations such as Sinn Féin, the Progressive Unionist Party, and the Ulster Political Research Group has reshaped the political thinking of those groups, and whether former prisoners have been able to maintain a distinct standpoint within such organisations or have been marginalised by leadership-driven change. The chapter also considers contemporary reconstructions of ‘the other’ and whether, and to what extent, these have changed in the post-conflict era. Despite visible efforts to build inter-community linkages, it is also important to consider the ideological and discursive divisions that remain between loyalists and republicans. Central to the processes of conflict transformation are the effects of social cohesion on the broader civil society.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about the impact of Europeanisation on the patterns of governance in Ireland. It analyses the historical and political dimensions of the Irish state prior to European Economic Community (EEC) membership and the changes after Ireland's entry into the EEC in January 1973. This study also investigates the complex interplay between the domestic and external influences which framed and nurtured Ireland's enigmatic transformation.

This book aims to understand the US failure to impose its political preferences on the institutional design of the ICC and the subsequent transatlantic debate over the Court by exploring the discursive dynamic of this conflict. From this perspective, the official statements and explanations of diplomats and negotiators concerning the ICC become the main focus of research, since they are the main site of political power struggles. This chapter introduces the main themes of the book and explains why the book focuses on the transatlantic debate over the ICC.

This chapter argues that the geographical concepts of place and space are paramount to the understanding of social movement behaviours and, therefore, social movement networks. It considers the spatiality of global justice networks (GJNs) exploring how they prosecute political action across multiple geographical scales. It concludes by introducing the concept of convergence space with which to understand the dynamics of GJNs.