'Balance of Terror' -- Rival Militias and Vigilantes in Nigeria

Militias and vigilantes that assume public authority by fighting crime reject the laws of the state, yet they have no other set of rules to regulate their activities. Many of them claim to be accountable to their ethnic or religious community on whose behalf they operate. But their communities have found no means to institutionalise control over them. Moreover, there are no institutions to settle conflicts between different militias and vigilantes. On a local level, rival groups have reached informal arrangements. However, these compromises are unstable, as they reflect fragile alliances and shifting balances of power. Leaders of militias and other 'self-determination groups' have suggested organising a conference of all ethnic nationalities in Nigeria in order to design a new constitution that would give militias and vigilantes a legal role and define their authority. But the groups compared in this article – Oodua People's Congress, Sharia Vigilantes, Bakassi Boys, MASSOB, and Niger Delta militias – pursue very divergent interests, and they are far from reaching a consensus on how to contain violence between them.

Governing the Local? A Response to Kevin Stenson

Kevin Stenson’s article offers a powerful argument for examining governmentality in particular local configurations rather than as relatively abstract and text-centred studies of changing mentalities and rationalities of rule. I think this is an important endeavour, partly because more situated analyses of governmentality are necessary to enrich the analytical (and political) significance of the perspective; and partly because the view from governmentality has a capacity to enrich our understandings of governance, policy and practice. Kevin’s own discussion of community safety in the Thames Valley area demonstrates just how much such a situated analysis might add to an understanding of liberal rule in England in the 21st century. Let me highlight four points that I think are absolutely central to that analysis:

A Critical Response to Kevin Stenson’s Governing the Local: Sovereignty, Social Governance and Community Safety

In his compelling case study of local governance and community safety in the UK Thames Valley, Kevin Stenson makes several important contributions to the field of governmentality studies. While the paper’s merits are far-reaching, to this reader’s assessment they can be summarized in the following key areas: 1) Empirically, the article enhances our knowledge of the political economic transformation of a region otherwise overlooked in social science research ; 2) Conceptually, Stenson offers several theoretical and analytical refrains that, while becoming increasingly commonplace, are nonetheless still germane and rightly oriented to offer push back against otherwise totalizing, reified accounts of roll back/roll out neoliberalism. A welcomed new approach is offered as a corrective, The Realist Governmentality perspective, which emphasizes the interrelated and co-constitutive nature of politics, local culture, and habitus in processes related to the restructuring of social governance; 3) Methodologically, the paper makes a pitch for the ways in which finely grained, nuanced, mixed-method/ethnographic analyses have the potential to further problematize and recast a field of governmentality studies far too often dominated by discursive and textual approaches.

Landscapes of Education and the New Role of Social Work International Models of How to Combine Formal, Non-formal and Informal Education

Landscapes of education are a new topic within the debate about adequate and just education and human development for everybody. In particular, children and youths from social classes affected by poverty, a lack of prospects or minimal schooling are a focal group that should be offered new approaches and opportunities of cognitive and social development by way of these landscapes of education. It has become apparent that the traditional school alone does not suffice to meet this need. There is no doubt that competency-based orientation and employability are core areas with the help of which the generation now growing up will manage the start of its professional career. In addition and by no means less important, the development involves individual, social, cultural and societal perspectives that can be combined under the term of human development. In this context, the Capability Approach elaborated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum has developed a more extensive concept of human development and related it to empirical instruments. Using the analytic concept of individual capabilities and societal opportunities they shaped a socio-political formula that should be adapted in particular to modern social work. Moreover, the Capability Approach offers a critical foil with regard to further development and revision of institutionalised approaches in education and human development.

Cultural Heritage Online? Settle It in the Country of Origin of the Work

This article examines the conditions under which a system of extended collective licensing (ECL) for the use of works contained in the collections of cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) participating in Europeana could function within a cross-border basis. ECL is understood as a form of collective rights management whereby the application of freely negotiated copyright licensing agreements between a user and a collective management organisation (“CMO”), is extended by law to non-members of the organisation. ECL regimes have already been put in place in a few Member States and so far, all have the ability to apply only on a national basis. This article proposes a mechanism that would allow works licensed under an ECL system in one territory of the European Union to be made available in all the territories of the Union. The proposal rests on the statutory recognition of the “country of origin” principle, as necessary and sufficient territory for the negotiation and application of an ECL solution for the rights clearance of works contained in the collection of a cultural heritage institution, including orphan works.