Massey Documents by Type
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/294
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item Resisting an unfolding genocide: reflections from radical struggles in the Global South(Taylor and Francis Group on behalf of the National Communication Association, 2024-03-20) Dutta MJThis essay theorizes radical struggles at the world’s end, emergent from registers of organizing against colonial–imperial–capitalist violence in the Global South. Working through the ongoing genocidal violence carried out by Israel in Gaza, I explore the role of voice infrastructures in the Global South as the spaces where Global South theories are imagined, tested, and continually transformed. The tenets of the culture-centered approach (CCA), reflected in the everyday organizing work of the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), guide the conceptualization of the relationship between theorizing and struggle as embodied practice. For radical organizing to materialize at the world’s end, I argue the urgency of reorganizing the relationship between struggles and theorizing, cultivating a rhetoric and politics of suspicion, enacting sovereignty, forging connections, and sustaining a politics of preparation.Item The changing face of Palestinian leadership : the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement : a thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Politics at Massey University,Turitea, New Zealand(Massey University, 2014) Barnes, PippaThe face of Palestinian leadership has developed and diversified greatly since the British Mandate period, with many groups claiming representation of the Palestinian people and the national movement. The unresolved matter of Palestinian leadership is central to Israeli occupation and any resolution. Established in 2005, the development and success of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement represents a new chapter in Palestinian leadership building upon Palestine’s established history of popular resistance. This thesis examines the effects of the BDS movement on the direction and strength of Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian national movement. Using a distributed leadership framework, the research analyses how the grassroots, transnational nature of the BDS movement has modernised and globalised the Palestinian struggle. The difficult political environment of the occupation has caused formal Palestinian leadership to be greatly compromised through the restrictions tied to the Oslo Accords and formal peace process. The organisational structure of the BDS movement allows it to operate outside of these realms, counter-positioning itself against the failed US-led diplomacy. The thesis questions the use of the common comparison of BDS with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; the wider politics of the situation and relationships between Palestinian leadership bodies differs vastly from those of apartheid South Africa. The comparative thread throughout the research is two-fold: an objective comparison of the BDS movement with anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; and an analysis of BDS’s own use of the comparison as a strategic and organisational tool. The recent rise of protest movements present an alternative to formal political institutions. The BDS movement represents a broader trend in political leadership as the advent of new media has shifted an element of power into grassroots mass movements. This thesis finds that the BDS movement has reintroduced grassroots resistance and leadership to the Palestinian political system. Its distributed leadership model has provided an alternative outlet that circumvents the restrictive formal political process. However, as the BDS movement does not seek the institutionalised power that any future Palestinian state requires, formal Palestinian leadership must incorporate the movement’s grassroots elements traditional to Palestine.Item The ties that bind : Iran and Hamas' principal-agent relationship : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Politics at Massey University, Turitea, New Zealand(Massey University, 2012) Thomson, AmyThe evolution of the Iran-Hamas relationship can be mapped using Principal-Agent analysis. It is a cost-benefit approach based on rational choice theory. In contrast to narrowly emphasising these actors‘ rhetoric, which is often used to mislead others, Principal-Agent analysis focuses on how these two actors react, or are perceived to react, to events to infer how their cost/benefit calculi change. This is in contrast to narrowly emphasising their rhetoric, which is often used to mislead others. The types of costs and benefits the actors receive from the relationship remain the same, although the changing geostrategic environment since the Iranian Revolution has increased and decreased their relative importance. For Iran, the relationship is most important for its ability to enhance legitimacy on the Arab Street, commit to retaliation, and plausibly deny responsibility helping to prevent conflict escalation with Israel. However, there are significant costs arising from the relationship for Iran because the effectiveness of Iran‘s control mechanisms is constrained by the influence of the Palestinian people over Hamas. Thus, when Palestinian preferences diverge from Iran‘s, the state‘s ability to control the organisation is limited. For Hamas, the funding and training it receives from the relationship are crucial. Despite this, the control mechanisms Iran attempts to place on Hamas can be damaging and contribute to divisions within the organisation when Palestinian preferences diverge from Iran‘s. Most of the time, however, the costs for Hamas are minor compared to other violent non-state actor/state Principal-Agent relationships.