The Universality of Civil War Definitions: A Study of How Regional Considerations Impact Civil War in Somalia, Colombia, and Angola

Civil war is a socially intimate phenomenon. The viability of the conflict hinges on recruitment for the cause, military strategy, community support, and a variety of other conditional factors. Despite this dependence on local society, many researchers approach civil war from a global perspective, attempting to discover universal truths about this kind of conflict. This capstone project focuses on restricting the operating parameters of civil war research projects to the span of a single continent, hoping to achieve deeper insight by focusing the research using a more culturally sensitive set of parameters. By using cultural data to guide civil war research, conflict indicators can tailor conflict prevention to escalating violent scenarios.

Social Inequity and Globalization: Understanding Violent and Nonviolent Responses

Globalization generates economic growth that is dominated by the free market dynamics of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization. The benefits of this growth are not distributed equally. The resulting inequities cause poverty, marginalization, exclusion, and instability. People respond to these inequities in both positive/nonviolent and negative/violent ways. This capstone project investigates the reasons for divergent responses to globalization by contrasting the underlying social factors in two case studies: peace communities in Colombia and piracy in Somalia. By measuring the level of vulnerability, considering security in a variety of domains, and examining stress on socio-cultural norms, this project develops a social factors framework for understanding the reasons for negative/violent versus positive/nonviolent responses to globalization.