Reflective Diaries Week 3 by Nurnabila Husna binti Abu

30 January 2013 is the third week that we learn about our subject, which is Seminar on Current Affairs. For this week, we have taught about conflict. Conflict comes from a Latin word, which is ‘confligree’, which mean stride together. Moreover, conflicts also can define as a psychological state of affairs in which the parties are aware of the incompatibility of potential future position. As Mr Ahmed Fousil told us incompatibility is, something you have and I do not have. In addition, it also an issue that does conflict occur. Furthermore, I learned about the nature of conflict such as parties in conflict, issues in conflict, environment of conflict, behavior in conflict, types of conflict, political conflict and ethnic conflicts. Actually, I have heard about these things before but I do not know the exactly what it is about and today I knew it even not all but I got the idea about that. Parties in conflict are an analytical construct referring to those units, which initiate a conflict, pursue it and determine the outcome. Besides, this conflict occurs from individual to nation and international organizations. The conflict occurs may experience intra parties’ strife, which means third parties. For instance, one person and another person fighting but we do not know the reason why they are fighting but it actually because of third parties or the person behind the scene. Moreover, issues in conflict I learned is the three questions we should ask that is what, who, and why. Who are fighting? Why are they fighting? I also learned three categories of conflicts, conflicted evaluation which about disagreement over means and ends, differential rewards about rewards and punishment, and contending contents is about survival or scarcity. The third categories, contending contents are the most common issues of conflict. Furthermore, structured environment determined kind of behavior, which considered an illness or estimate. In addition, conflict management is institutionalized. Unstructured environment gives room to zero- sum relationship, which mean win and lose. There have three types of conflict behavior that are persuasion, coercion and reward. Besides that, there have around eight types of conflict. The first is intral-state conflict. It occurs between the armed forces as the government and opposing civil organized group (for example Syria, between the group and the government), and between two governments implying to their perspective two armed forces (for example, India and Pakistan). Then, non-state conflict happen because of violence between two organized groups, which are not government of the state. The fourth type of conflict is political conflict and the fifth is socio-cultural conflict. Socio-cultural conflict is incompatibility over ethnic, religious or ideology conception for example, Shiite and Sunni in Iran. The next type conflict is economic conflict. This conflict occurs everywhere around the world. Territorial conflict is incompatibility over boundaries regional predominance or autonomy, example Syria and China. Moreover, ethnic conflict is, when the incompatibility is defined along the ethnics’ distinction and the same goes to religious conflict is defined along the religious distinction for example Buddhist and Muslim in Myanmar. The last type of conflict is ethnic- political conflict. It is incompatibility between ethnic group and the political organization for example in Nigeria, on 1993, the president is Christian but the population of them are Muslim. Furthermore, typology of conflict refers to the way in which the filter is connected each other. Besides, I learned about political conflict and ethnic conflict. Political conflict is incompatibility over the political system, desire for secession or autonomy. The source of political conflict can be ideas or value, resources (natural resources, land or money), power (dominance and influence) and social identity. Ethnic conflict or EC is a human population that shares a number of attributes such a common origin, history, territory religion, language, culture and so on. During the tutorial, we learned about ‘Globalization’. Globalization cannot only see to economic but we can see it general. The environment also part of globalization. Globalization are eroding of ‘local’, interdependence of economic cultural activities and interchange of worldview, product, ideas. There have four basic aspects of globalization. The first is trade + transaction, then capital + investment movement, third migration + movement of people and the last basic aspect of globalization is dissemination of knowledge. After our lecturer taught us about globalization, we did an activity, which has formed a small group and choose from the model, which contain science and technology, environmental, economic, social, cultural and political. After you choose one from the model, you have to find how the model that you choose becomes part of the globalization. For example, our group decided to choose economic so we have to find what make economic becomes globalization. Actually our group quite blur and do not have any idea about that, then we ask our lecturer and he gave some points to us. After that, we got some idea and discuss about that. After we discuss we have to present and one of our member volunteers to go and present our points. The first point is transportation and telecommunication internet. Let me elaborate more about this. As all know, the past 100 to 200 century there is no transportation such as airplanes but now there have that kind of transportation and make people become easier to go around the world. Nowadays, there have telecommunication and internet and it is helpful to us especially to those who are live outside of their country. They can easily call or communicate with their family through the phone or maybe through the Skype. The second point is conmunism. The outsider company advertised their product to the other country. For example, company from Israel advertised their product such as Milo in Malaysia. People from Malaysia may be interesting with their product and buy it. Moreover, this might be able to make the economy in Malaysia collapse. In conclusion, I learned much new knowledge that I do not know before and I enjoy in the lecture and class. It’s interesting but I have to focus more because this subject new for me because before I am not so interested in the current issues round me.

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