WP 04 : Economic factors of conflict and violence

Articles

• Economic profiles of general border security and their opportunity costs

  14 May 2009, by Lock Peter
  This paper focuses on the economic implications of border security policies within the European Union and the-Schengen-area in particular. As countless national and international agencies claim to take part in the execution of these policies, which are handled with high priority in the political arena, accounting for the direct and indirect costs becomes a rather complex exercise. Not least because the execution of controls is often externalised and thus may actually shift the location of the physical and legal borders.

• Fraunhofer Symposium Future Security

  25 June 2008, by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
  These annual conferences were initiated by defence research institutes. They hope that the internal security programme launched by the federal government in 2006 will make good for the shrinking defence research contracts.

• Europe’s internal and external borders

  25 June 2008, by cilip
  It offers an excellent comprehensive update of the emerging border control regimes in Europe with particular reference to Germany

• Rechtsstaat unter Bewährungsdruck

  2. April 2008, von Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin
  Der Rechtsstaat steht unter Druck. Schon die Bekämpfung der so genannten Organisierten Kriminalität hat den staatlichen Zugriff auf die private Kommunikation erheblich erweitert – Stichwort: Großer Lauschangriff. Der nach dem 11. September 2001 ausgerufene «War on Terror» bedeutet eine neue Dimension im Verhältnis von staatsfreier Privatsphäre und einem präventiv handelnden «Sicherheitsstaat».

• Biometrie in der Zutrittskontrolle

  2. April 2008, von Baier Konrad
  Es ist davon auszugehen, dass biometrische Systeme in den kommenden Jahren zur Standardausstattung eines modernen Unternehmens gehören werden. Der dicke Schlüsselbund gehört dann der Vergangenheit an.

• Annual report 2007 of the Working Group on arbitrary detention

  31 March 2008, by United Nations
  The present report includes several issues which have given rise to concern during 2007. In particular, the Working Group identifies several shortcomings it has observed in connection with the detention of illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers. The Working Group recalls the obligation of States to consider alternatives to administrative custody from which foreigners can benefit. The report also analyses the situation of certain vulnerable groups of detainees and prisoners susceptible to sexual violence by co-inmates and prison staff, including minors, young women, the mentally disabled, indigenous people, vulnerable men and the poor.

• Crime and violence: Global economic parameters

  22 May 2006, by Lock Peter
  Violence, crime and social fragmentation, the latter increasingly taking forms of social apartheid, are pervasively associated with the current form of economic globalisation. The public good „security« progressively mutates into a commodity, supplied by the private sector in the form of services or as physical commodification of security. The suppliers can be regular enterprises or informal, illegal or criminal actors. Often members of the state security apparatus offer their services to paying clients, which amounts to an informal self-privatisation, while still wearing their uniform representing the state. The commodification is epitomized by the global spread of gated communities and similar schemes of social separateness. Here in South Africa there is no need to elaborate this further, because these phenomena have become a constitutive element of daily life and determine the social topography, as did apartheid before.

• Ökonomie der « neuen Kriege » : Kalte Friedenskonsolidierung durch Kriminalisierung?

  7. Februar 2006, von Lock Peter
  Current wars represent a blend of different forms of violence, many of which can also be observed in societies not at war. Economic constraints of statehood under the current regime of global economic regulation have made the traditional distinction between the military and the police obsolete. Modernisation of economic activities in combination with rapid urbanisation, often leading to ungovernable mega-cities pose a new dramatic constraint to armed conflict. As a result certain forms of armed violence are transformed and render the distinction between war and not-in-war increasingly me

• Kriegsökonomien und Schatttenglobalisierung

  7. Februar 2006, von Lock Peter
  The hypothesis underlying the debate about « new wars » that there are fundamental differences between countries classified as « in war » and those « not in war » is questioned throughout the paper. The economic conditions and constraints war fighting parties face in the current environment do not disappear after a peace is negotiated. This explains that as rule to outcome of internationally supervised elections lend legitimacy to former warlords and other thugs. The continuation of their violence-based clientelistic power remains the only source for individual security.

• Lock Peter : curriculum vitae

  31 May 2005, by Lock Peter
  Peter Lock graduated in sociology and economics and expanded into political science/international relations with his doctoral degree. Civil-military relations in all its aspects was the focus of his research and teaching during the Cold War period. Ever since the privatisation of security in all its aspects was at the centre of his research interest. As a result «shadow globalisation» as a dynamic social system mirrors the neoliberal transformation of the global economy and the ensuing «transsubstantiation» or «diffusion» of the nation state into markets turned into the current paradigm of the on-going research endeavour.

• Economic Factors of Conflict and Violence

  30 November 2004, by Lock Peter
  This work package conceives of globalisation as a complex web of intertwined parallel dynamics, which determine both the regular economy and the rapidly expanding shadow economy. It aims at identifying the growing numbers of social groups developing transnational identities in the twilight of shadow globalisation. Social and economic spheres beyond state control and outside the rule of law appear to be expanding and transforming into dynamic transnational networks. New forms of social control emerge alongside shrinking states whose monopoly of legitimate violence is weakening. For systemic reasons the economic spheres of shadow globalisation are not fully accounted for in official statistics. As a result methodological descriptions of emerging patterns on the basis of diverse, widely scattered information form the main building blocks of this research.