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This article investigates the association between personal networks and stress, both positively through support and negatively through conflict. In a representative sample of 755 individuals residing in Switzerland, each individual was asked to name people in their lives who they perceived as very important, as well as to report their mutual support and conflict interactions. First, the article develops and investigates a typology with five relational patterns based on indicators of emotional support and conflict relationships in personal networks. These patterns are the following: bonding social capital, bridging social capital, ego-centered conflict, overload, and ambivalent. Second, it explores the association of these patterns with stress levels that are perceived in various life domains. Results show that individuals involved in relationships that were predominantly supportive had lower levels of stress, whereas individuals experiencing relationships characterized by conflict, or an imbalance in support by giving more than receiving, had higher levels of stress. Finally, ambivalent relationships in which support and conflict were equally present were associated with an intermediate level of stress. These results show the importance of considering support and conflict relationships together in personal network structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on insecurity perceptions in conflict-affected areas. The authors apply sociological theories on the determinants of perceived security risks and test hypotheses concerning theories on social and physical vulnerability, social disorder and social integration in the area where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has operated. The study uses data from a survey conducted in 2013 in the territory of Faradje (Haut-Uele) and applies multilevel models to 443 individuals living within 21 different villages and internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. The results indicate that insecurity perceptions and fear of attacks are still widespread, causing individuals to adapt their behaviour and IDPs to refrain from returning home. These concerns are unaffected by social and physical vulnerabilities. The study finds a positive significant effect of the presence of IDPs in the villages and IDP camps on insecurity perceptions. This suggests possible effects of social disorder and a lack of social integration due to the arrival of IDPs in the area. Although improving the security situation itself is an important factor, this article shows that addressing insecurity perceptions might be an important factor as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies the case of Tali Fahima, an Israeli woman who was convicted of aiding the enemy during wartime, in order to analyse how the ethno-national community is threatened by members it fails to control and fit into existing categories. The author argues that what makes an assumingly bright boundary so sensitive and problematic to cross is not its impenetrability but its actual vulnerability. The state tries to police uncertain citizens and if necessary to expunge them from the collective in order to imagine the boundaries as bright again. The author examines how Fahima used her privileged body to protect a Palestinian insurgent and the ways in which her body is invested with the meanings of national, ethnic and sexual boundaries and analyses how the Israeli security services, courts, media and public define proper citizenship and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cet article analyse, à partir d’une ethnographie menée à Oussouye (Casamance), la manière dont s’incarnent et se traduisent les politiques nationales sanitaires, dans des contextes locaux spécifiques. Il discute des contraintes que rencontre une politique globalisante, ou plus exactement des points aveugles de cette politique pas suffisamment à l’écoute du contexte, c’est-à-dire, des spécificités régionales et géopolitiques.Les résultats indiquent que le contexte de la décentralisation et du conflit casamançais ont eu des effets sur le financement, la gestion des activités promotionnelles et la domestication des recommandations officielles de la lutte contre le paludisme. Par ailleurs, celles antérieures laissent des traces, qui s’expriment dans les discours des acteurs et structurent la façon dont ils pensent la lutte aujourd’hui, alors même que cette dernière est supposée s’inscrire dans un autre paradigme. Enfin la dissonance de la prescription d’antipaludiques à Mlomp et Elinkine fait penser à l’existence de « territoires » locaux de la santé où les recommandations nationales cèdent la place aux spécificités contextuelles et locales. Les politiques de santé ne peuvent faire l’économie ni des acteurs, ni des contextes locaux, cependant la prise en compte de la spécificité ne doit certainement pas se faire au détriment d’une certaine notion de « l’être ensemble ». [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

My native Sudan has been ravaged by conflicts over identity and socioeconomic marginalization since independence from Britain in 1956. Elitist debates confined the country’s diverse identities to two dichotomous categorizations: Arabism, associated with Islam and Arabic descent and culture, and Africanism, linked to Christianity, indigenous beliefs and African culture. These polarized views, along with the dominant ideology of the imposition of Arabism and Islam as the basis of national identification, triggered a national identity crisis. This crisis contributed to the escalation of armed conflicts notably the civil war between the North and the South and the current conflict in the Sudan’s Western province of Darfur. This article explores the Darfur conflict which erupted between the central government and liberation groups in 2003, and has been described both as the first genocide of the 21st century and an ethnic cleansing in which the Arab militia are killing the Africans. Using data gathered recently in the Sudan, this article extends the debates on Sudanese identities by showing that the boundaries between Africanism and Arabism are fluid, and by positing multiple identities that resurface as a result of globalization, migration and social ties among ethnic groups. By deconstructing the dominant conceptions of the Sudanese identities, and considering new conceptions about these identities, we can address social dynamics that impact the conflict and take them into consideration when it comes to conflict resolution. Multiculturalism is proposed as a model that could help to accommodate the country’s diverse identities and foster stability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Arjun Appadurai’s The Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (2006) draws largely on the case of India for empirical data. The ‘fear of small numbers’ that he discusses relates to the insecurity of contemporary societies, where ‘pollution’ of the national body by minority groups leads not only to irritation and discomfort but at times to the need for the violent cleansing of the pollutant, to conflict. Neville Alexander (2008), similarly, said that ‘to define yourself into a minority corner in a situation such as the transition in South Africa is to play with fire in an almost literal sense’. In South Africa, historically, concerns with population numbers concern neither minorities nor majorities, but the manipulation of both through classification and counting of categories. South Africa presents us with the fear of numbers, both large and small. Such an approach demands acknowledgement of the complexity and international comparative studies of census-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Education has been used in models of both econometricians and sociologists to explain differences in the speed of economic development. This important field of research is, however, theoretically underspecified, and the empirical tests have remained incomplete for they only model the direct effects of education suggested by the human capital school. This article complements this individualistic view by also considering functions of education stressed in sociology. The educational system is seen as a device to integrate society and legitimize socioeconomic inequality. Such a perspective allows one to consider both cohesion as well as socioeconomic conflict as mediating between public educational expenditure and economic achievement; this translates into a model that contains direct as well as indirect effects. The resulting proposition of a 'double dividend' of education in development suggests that in the short and medium term the educational efforts of governments may contribute to legitimizing society which is reflected in tempering socioeconomic conflict. This again fosters economic growth via greater motivation of citizens and higher propensity to invest. In this article, the double-dividend thesis is corroborated in an empirical test using a sample of 83 societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]