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ID: 120002

Missing link in human security research: dialogue and insecurity in Kosovo / Kostovicova, Denisa; Martin, Mary; Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Vesna

Kostovicova, Denisa	Journal Article
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2013.

Summary/Abstract

The concept of human security continues to defy definitional clarity at the same time as it is being embraced by policymakers. This article proposes a practice-grounded approach that focuses on investigative method as a way of linking conceptual understanding of human security to the research process. Probing the 'actorness' of individuals in volatile contexts, a study of insecurity in Kosovo shows how dialogue can be applied as a research tool to access and assess human security in the field. Dialogue permits recognition of the power of the researched in the construction of knowledge of security, and accordingly reflects the conceptual shift represented by human security from states to communities and individuals. In the Kosovo study, dialogic research captured individual agency in the face of pervasive insecurity and revealed contradictory effects of such agency. This led to the formulation of the idea of the multidirectional security marker as a means of understanding experiences of insecurity in relation to strategies to combat it. Three such markers - self-reliance, informality and community solidarity - emerged and are analysed in the case of Kosovo. Simultaneously denoting restrictions on people's security and possibilities for overcoming those very same limitations, the markers express the agential dimension of human security and show how agency and security interact.

Key Words

KOSOVO ; Human Security ; Dialogue ; Method ; Multidirectional Security Marker

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ID: 141896

Organised crime and international aid subversion: evidence from Colombia and Afghanistan / Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Vesna; Kostovicova, Denisa ; Escobar, Mariana ; Bjelica, Jelena

Kostovicova, Denisa	Article
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Summary/Abstract

Scholarly attempts to explain aid subversion in post-conflict contexts frame the challenge in terms of corrupt practices and transactions disconnected from local power struggles. Also, they assume a distinction between organised crime and the state. This comparative analysis of aid subversion in Colombia and Afghanistan reveals the limits of such an approach. Focusing on relations that anchor organised crime within local political, social and economic processes, we demonstrate that organised crime is dynamic, driven by multiple motives and endogenous to local power politics. Better understanding of governance arrangements around the organised crime–conflict nexus which enables aid subversion is therefore required.

Key Words

Afghanistan ; Organised Crime ; Colombia ; Corruption ; Relations ; Aid Subversion

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