6 - Barrier models of context

Summary

Paul Thibaud – Quelle liberté voulez-vous fabriquer?

Pierre Bourdieu – La réponse que je fais est d'une extrême banalité, peutêtre simplement parce qu'elle est vraie: une des voies de liberté, c'est de savoir un peu mieux les constraintes auxquelles on est inévitablement soumis. A partir de cette liberté-là, on peut etre un petit peu libérateur.

Pierre Bourdieu (1992, p. 6)

P.T. – What liberty would you like to create?

P.B. – My response is extremely banal, maybe because it is true: one of the ways to freedom is to know a little better the constraints under which we inevitably live. With this we can become a little bit liberators ourselves.

(The translation is my own.)

Introduction

War diffusion research has shown that wars and military conflict do not occur “randomly” or “sporadically” but rather cluster in time and space. Many important events and changes in the international system have the same character:

conflicts and wars in Europe, 1907–18

nationalization of oil, 1971–76

“waves” of democratization, 1980s and 1990s

“coup contagion,” military coups in Latin America and Africa, 1950s and 1960s

independence of African colonies, 1950s and 1960s

bank lending to South American governments, mid 1960s to mid 1970s.

All these events were rapid changes in the international system which occurred over a short period of time. The independence of most of the English, French, and Belgian African colonies took place within a short period of about ten years.