Critical and Emancipatory Theory (CET) of peacebuilding emerged as the sixth school of thought in Peace and Conflict Studies to critique the liberal and neoliberal approaches to peacebuilding. CET contends that liberal and neoliberal approaches to peacebuilding are discriminatory and biased, perpetrates the interest of Western elites, hinders the achievement of social justice, and considers the local as insignificant for peacebuilding. A call for the reformation of the liberal and neoliberal approaches necessitated the CET school of thought to outline certain principles and guidelines that could guide the practice of peace-building. Different methodologies, intervention strategies, principles and approaches that could guide praxis have therefore been advanced by scholars, researchers, and practitioners. This paper therefore examines and reflects on the multiplex methodologies in peacebuilding, the adoption of a multidisciplinary approach to understanding peace and peacebuilding, and the question of intervention in post-war peacebuilding, the principles that guide the implementation of peacebuilding from the lens of Critical and Emancipatory school of thought. This piece contend that CET approach may not be self-sufficient but would be the most appropriate way to decentralize the peacebuilding process and, as such, local or indigenous peacebuilding processes must be encouraged while acknowledging the salient role of the international community as well.

The paper examines the tension in the social construction of pandemic by doctors, traditional healers, and faith-based healers and considers the potential public health implications. Methodologically, the author uses a case study of Mwenezi District in Masvingo Province in Zimbabwe and draws on autoethnographic experiences to observe and analyse local level asymmetric confrontations as the Coronavirus pandemic unfolded. What emerges is how values, beliefs and scientific interpretations are contributing factors to conflict, and more significantly, the deleterious impact it has on mobilizing community action against the pandemic. Research findings reveal how untenable and inconceivable it will be to contain the pandemic without paying appropriate attention to apostolic sects and traditional healers. Interventions have so far ignored this social capital.

Though the heroic strides, accomplishments and sacrifices of many clerics who have led exemplary lives in the Catholic priesthood remain indelible, we are faced today with a preponderance of allegations and claims of clerical sexual abuse suggesting that both the Catholic Church and priesthood are experiencing crises of different kinds. Clerical sexual abuse is a contradiction of the life of chastity, one of the evangelical virtues which are corollaries of responding to the call to the Roman Catholic priesthood. How those evangelical virtues concern us and the needed critical family roles for addressing the challenges of clergy sexual abuse are often overlooked; but our lives are inter-connected. This article has been prompted by the need to see the other side of the problem, which is general huge family failures, and to awaken our consciences to assume our own responsibilities that would, by collective action, help to bring about positive and peaceful change.

The Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy promised to make America more competitive, to challenge China’s revisionist global agenda, and to push back against the new ‘gray zone’ conflicts of great power competition. Fundamentally, the strategy required the government to exercise a Whole of Government (WoG) approach to bring to bear all elements of national power. Despite wide-ranging calls for WoG, the administration eschewed basic reforms, destroyed interdepartmental trust networks, and over time expelled the conduits of national security, pushing WoG more thoroughly into the military. While departmental emphasis on Indo-Pacific issues took place in the Trump administration, this occurred largely in isolation of grand strategic goals.

The pursuit of accountability for perpetrators of mass violence is a significant aspect of peace negotiations. However, different groups often hold conflicting views on what justice means to them. While scholars increasingly discuss the contested nature of transitional justice processes, accountability continues to be seen as a relatively objective aspect of justice. However, examining the interpretations of accountability in the theory and practice of transitional justice reveals that the term often connotes very different meanings simultaneously, arousing conceptual dissonance. The paper argues that, unlike contestation, dissonance is characterized by a hidden or suppressed plurality of meaning, affecting the legitimacy and relevance of policy as well as the ability to pursue it coherently. The paper explores the conceptual dissonance around the notion of accountability in transitional justice broadly and its impact on the political and legal negotiations of accountability policies in the two cases studies of Liberia (2003-2009) and Uganda (2000-2007), with broader ramifications for the future of Jus post-Bellum.

While secessionists have had their dreams, both furtive and as announced intentions, throughout American history, we may be entering a period of increased fervor for various ideologically driven campaigns that either seek new state boundary shifts, annexation of portions of the US to Canada or other nation-states, or outright sovereignty as new nation-states. The contestation between perfervid far-right ideologues often associated with Donald Trump and a leftist eco-racial justice amalgam of groups and individuals mutually coalescing around complete separation is not unimaginable presently. There are also dreams and talk of complete independence for descendants of slaves and some indigenous tribes. What are the trends and tendencies in the world around these questions and how might they be expressing themselves in the US? If the culture wars militate separations, can we avoid a devolution into US Civil War 2.0?

Based on a qualitative method, this study narrates the condition and status of women workers engaged in the unorganized handicraft sector in Srinagar. The city, considered Kashmir’s economic hub and business capital, is known for handicrafts and tourism. In this study, 20 women involved in the Kashmiri handicrafts sector were interviewed face to face. The study recruited participants using purposive and snowball sampling methods. After a thorough review of the collected data, it was thematically interpreted. A descriptive phenomenology analysis of the dataset identified three themes: (i) role of conflict in the region, (ii) urge for economic independence, and (iii) social prejudice. This study argues that even though the work environment in the unorganized sector is exploitative and oppressive for women, there is an element of liberation for women in the social sphere.

“Reservation Policy: An Analysis of Scheduled Tribes Reservation on Higher Education in Manipur.” This paper examines how marginalized social groups are admitted to Manipur’s universities, notably Manipur University. In Manipur, the reservation proportion is as follows: unreserved 40%, economically weaker 10%, Scheduled Tribes (ST) 31%, Scheduled Castes (SC) 2%, and Other Backward Classes (OBC) (17%). This research focused on Manipur’s shortage of quota provisions in higher education admissions. Tribal peoples, who already have 31% of the reservation opportunity, were outraged by this. All ministries of the Indian Union Government have a 7.5% allocation for ST. However, the problem with these figures is that they are radically different from Manipur’s current demographic reality. The Indian Central Educational Institutions (CEI) Reservation in Admission Act, 2006, as revised in 2012, is also the basis for the paper.

The general consequentialist argument for the global education of girls is examined with a view toward explicating the necessity of sensitivity to cultural factors. The work of Nussbaum, Chen and Yousafzai is alluded to, and it is concluded that educational work for girls and women cannot meaningfully be done without some advertence to local cultural standards, even if they seem restrictive.

This paper presents a curricular justification for teaching undergraduate college students in the United States about the practice of management. This justification turns on a conception of management as the routine, daily practice of seeking just relationships between an organization and distinct constituents of that organization. This search is an act of essay, the verb. With this interpretation of managerial practice as routine justice inquiry, I convene teachers from dozens of academic disciplines in a hypothetical endeavor to re-purpose managerial practice for purposes of General Education teaching. The resulting justification is an alternative to the customary defense that teaching about business and management enhances a college’s cash flow through substantial enrollments in those classes, a defense that stops well short of anything intellectual, much less curricular.

Solidarity is one of the primary principles of Catholic Social Teaching. Pope Francis invoked it and called for prayer and fasting in his August 20, 2018 letter addressing the sexual abuse scandal and attendant cover-up in the church. Offering some thoughts regarding what the duty of solidarity requires in light of the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal and subsequent cover-up, this article suggests a number of concrete things that lay Catholics can do in claiming our place as church.

A pastoral response to challenges faced by lay leaders in a Catholic parish that has experienced an allegation of sexual abuse and the subsequent removal of a priest is described. Organized around a theological reflection, the four-part program draws on the Book of Lamentations and a contemporary understanding of the grieving process mediated by Jewish mourning practices.

In North America, across the political spectrum, we have a strong tendency to reduce religion to nothing more than a tool to promote our own socio-political views. This is a natural consequence of our hyper-polarized culture and our impoverished view of “religion.” It is also, however, a problem—particularly for those inspired by the call to renewal through an integration of the quest for social justice and the pursuit of the spiritual life. By focusing on the value of participating in religious liturgy, I show how a renewed respect for religion can help the proponents of social justice fulfil some of the foundational desires of the original movement and, thereby, to bring to fruition some of its dormant promise. This includes, in particular, the desire for social harmony and the desire to pay greater attention to our concrete reality.

After three years of political turmoil, the USCCB decided to reissue its 2015 statement Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. The document lacks theological clarity and reduces all considerations to a narrow set of moral issues. This essay argues that the bishops have an understated framework for robust participation. By analyzing the papal sources cited in Faithful Citizenship and considering the recent insights from contemporary scholars, the author urges the bishops to remain engaged, include the faithful, maintain social teaching, and, at the very least, describe their theological rationale. Above all, the risks remain too great to continue repeating the current iteration of Faithful Citizenship, as they have done for the past three election cycles. The nation’s divisions, injustices, and crises make the bishops’ future work an urgent responsibility.

This paper explores the reasons that led many Catholics to support the candidacy of Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in the United States and the role played by the leadership of the U.S. Catholic bishops in the electoral process. Also explored are the outlines of an alternative approach, shaped by the more holistic “consistent ethic of life” contained in the teachings of Pope Francis. Attention is given to how this Francis-inspired alternative could provide a model for more constructive and prophetic engagement of the U.S. Catholic Church in the political arena. Brief profiles are presented of several U.S. Catholic bishops modeling this more holistic approach.

The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus has disrupted many sectors of normal life, including the communal worship of religious bodies. This essay first looks at the recent case of the Minnesota Catholic bishops and the Governor of Minnesota which came close to civil disobedience. Then the essay will consider the thought of John Courtney Murray on when it is legitimate for the coercive powers of the state to be used to limit religious freedom, including the right to worship. Finally, those standards are applied to the Minnesota case, arguing that the initial actions of the Governor failed to meet Murray’s test, while the revised executive order succeeded in meeting Murray’s standards.

In 2020, it is clear that racism must be a moral priority for white American Catholics, as for all white Americans. To face racism maturely, our consciences need more robust formation than we received as children preparing for First Reconciliation—or as adolescents at Confirmation, when we were instructed that we must be prepared to act boldly to defend our commitment to Christ. One way to build a racially-mature conscience is to seek feedback from anti-racism accountability partners, as the author did. Another is to explore the distinction in Catholic moral theology between invincible and vincible ignorance—what we can know and what we cannot—in order to discern whether an action or inaction is moral. Much of what liberal whites claim we can’t know without input from Blacks is readily available if we have ears to hear.