This chapter discusses theoretical approaches to sovereignty and human rights and their mutual relationship. The aim is to overcome their major shortcoming, that is, the hierarchical dichotomy between sovereignty and human rights. The discussion argues that both sovereignty and human rights are contested concepts. The contestation of their meaning emerges from the typical ambivalences incorporated in each concept. By combining these ambivalences, a discursive formation opens up that consists of four competing discourses, each of which claims to constitute the same object, i.e. the configuration of sovereignty and human rights. It also introduces core theoretical concepts such as discourse, discursive power and hegemony. In addition, it includes a discussion of the methodological approach.

This chapter focuses on contemporary fiction that deploys passing plots in order to consider the act of writing, in particular, examining texts which invoke passing at both a narrative and meta-narrative level in order to reflect upon the politics of the literary marketplace. It looks at two African American novels: Percival Everett's Erasure (2001) and Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative (2002). In Erasure, the attempt to resolve the seemingly incompatible demands of autobiography and sociology, and the facility with which ‘authenticity’ may be faked, are evident in the publicity surrounding the appearance of Juanita Mae Jenkins's book, We's Lives in Da Ghetto.

This chapter brings forth Christian Metz's conception of cinema. On the one hand, he has been discredited with trying to reduce cinematic expression to linguistic terms while on the other hand he has been further criticised for being an advocate of ‘apparatus theory’. Metz's notion of the ‘imaginary signifier’ has been criticized because critics argue that his theorization of the imaginariness of the cinema signifier places an emphasis on cinematic illusion instead of endorsing cinematic reality. The chapter argues that imaginary signifier in no way signals the failure of cinema but instead accurately characterizes its triumph. The cinema signifier is not symbolic and nor does it evoke the real world directly. Rather, the cinema signifier is imaginary as it offers a reverie that gives people the possibility of re-imagining their relationship to the world. Filmic reality, by passing through the imaginary, allows imagining new orders of reality.

This chapter concentrates on the time frame between September 11 and October 3, 2001. It also addresses the responsibilities of and stakes for the agencies during this period. Allison and Zelikow argue that policy-making is a ‘game’ defined in terms of action channels and certain rules/laws. Their division of players helps to identify those who played key roles in the review of Irish national security policy immediately after 9/11. Senior Garda and Defence Forces leaders who advised government on the level of threat facing the State after 9/11 had considerable intelligence and experience at their disposal but also had to balance various competing parochial priorities. The recommendations that the general staff brought forward to government, while the outcome of an intelligence process, preserved the blueprint for the Army's progress.

This chapter places global justice networks (GJNs) in grounded contexts by examining their operational logics and strategies. By examining network relationality and power dynamics, it shows that contrary to claims that networks operate through horizontality, elements of both horizontal and vertical operational logics are present within the practices of networking. It examines how GJNs attempt to forge transnational ‘mutual’ solidarities between their participant movements. It also argues that the operation of GJNs requires ‘networking vectors’ to further the process of communication, information-sharing and interaction within grassroots communities.

This chapter looks into the introduction of genetically modified (GM) materials into food. If there is a crisis, a crisis of confidence in GM science and its use in agriculture, it can be viewed as a kind of pre-emptive or anticipatory crisis. Clear evidence that GM food threatens the health of consumers does not exist. Yet European governments have invested considerable amounts of financial and political capital in responding to public anxieties. They have invested heavily in enhancing the public's understanding of the science underpinning GM crops.

This chapter outlines the path to war in the Caucasus and the Balkans. It studies the social networks that gave information to the armed resistance movements in Kosovo and Chechnya. It then studies the 1998 battle of Gudermes in Chechnya in and the 1999 incursion into Dagestan, which shows the ways the former nationalist-separatist movement split. It also studies the first few months of the second war of the 1990s using a more localised perspective and the formation of the Kosovan armed resistance movement. Finally, it studies the two armed resistance movements as examples of social networks.

This chapter discusses the political institutions and administrative adaptation in Ireland and the impact of Europeanisation on domestic policy processes. It evaluates the impact of Europeanisation on Ireland's national and sub-national institutions and systems of public administration and public policy. It suggests that the central tenets of the political-administrative framework have not fundamentally changed and trends evident in other member states are apparent. This chapter also investigates whether the nature and extent of these changes over time led to a realignment of the institutional machinery and administrative practice.

This chapter reviews the literature on the struggle for legitimacy conducted by republican and loyalist former prisoners in Northern Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s. Although similar tactics were used by both sides in refusing to comply with prison authorities, the larger and more enduring campaigns conducted by republican prisoners were to reshape the conflict. The determination to be recognised as prisoners-of-war was replicated by republicans by their desire to prove that they enjoyed a sizeable electoral mandate. Due to their willingness to endure deprivation and hunger and view prison as another site of struggle, republican prisoners helped shape the direction of their movement, although the precise extent of influence remains disputed. Loyalist prisoners were disoriented by the experience of imprisonment by the state they purported to defend and loyalism struggled, within and beyond prison, to develop a political role. One important element of the prison experience for non-state combatants was access to education.

This chapter explains Buzan's model of threat intensity to evaluate Irish security policy against threats that the frontline agencies have identified. It also evaluates a key aspect of the Crime and Security Branch (CSB)'s on-island intelligence-gathering process in the context of shifting population patterns and the reform of the Garda. Anti-war groups, politicians and commentators have claimed that Ireland is a terrorist target. The Irish agencies have concentrated on more diffuse threats. The Irish government responded with wide-ranging legislative and institutional changes. Immigration control is a central pillar of Irish national security policy. The Irish government has recognised the need for integration in the face of early weaknesses in policy. Irish policy relies heavily on intelligence supplied by the agencies of other states that do not obviously have Ireland's security as their key concern.

This chapter focuses upon the International Federation for Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers (ICEM), a longer established global union federation with more a formal hierarchical organizational structure, with power largely centred on national affiliates. Its primary objective is concerned with improving the working conditions of its membership worldwide and contesting employment change through formal state structures.