bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
When Parrots Learn to Talk, and Why They Can't: Domination, Deception, and Self-Deception in Indian-White Relations
Authors: Sider Gerald
Published: June 2009

If the expansion and consolidation of state power simply undermined, homogenized, and ultimately destroyed the distinctive societies and ethnic groups in its grasp, as various acculturation or melting-pot theories would have it, the world would long ago have run out of its supply of diverse ways of life, a supply presumably created in the dawn of human time. To the contrary, state power must not only destroy but also generate cultural differentiation—and do so not only between different nation states, and between states and their political and economic colonies, but in the center of its grasp as well. The historical career of ethnic peoples can thus best be understood in the context of forces that both give a people birth and simultaneously seek to take their lives.
Ethnicity and Practice
Authors: Bentley G. Carter
Published: June 2009

A perusal of the contents of any social science journal will indicate that ethnicity has been a popular topic during the past two decades. Yet despite the volume of material produced, this period has not seen a notable increase in theoretical sophistication in the field (Drummond 1983:803; Young 1983). For the most part students of ethnicity remain mired in antique arguments about motivation that obscure as much as they illuminate. The following discussion attempts to break through some entrenched conceptual blinders by drawing on the theory of practice outlined by Pierre Bourdieu (1977). This theory avoids the explanatory gaps and fallacious reasoning and at the same time allows richer interpretations of ethnic phenomena, individual and collective, than do conventional models of ethnicity. Since individual and collective expressions of ethnicity have elicited divergent theoretical treatments, the practice theory of ethnicity promises to give new unity to a fragmented field of study.
The Best of Two Worlds, the Worst of Two Worlds: Reflections on Culture and Field Work among the Rural Irish and Pueblo Indians
Authors: Scheper-Hughes Nancy
Published: June 2009

Despite its title this article does not pretend to be or to offer a study in comparative ethnography, since my expertise in the cultures to be discussed is limited and uneven. I know somewhat more about the rural Irish of the Dingle Peninsula, among whom I lived during 1974–75, than I do about the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, among whom I spent the greater part of the summer in 1979 and again in 1985. Nor do these remarks have any pretense to social history, although it is to these peoples' collective responses to aspects of their histories that the article is addressed. Rather, it should be taken as a critical reflection on the vulnerabilities of the human spirit and on the vulnerabilities of a science that tries to pierce the meanings of that spirit. It is a tale of two cultures, and of the ethnographer as a teller of tales, and of the pitfalls of cultural interpretation.
Disengagement from the State in Africa: Reflections on the Experience of Ghana and Guinea
Authors: Azarya Victor , Chazan Naomi
Published: June 2009

Few questions have galvanized the attention of observers of African affairs in recent years as forcefully as the performance of the state on the continent. The debate on the nature of the state—its capabilities, weaknesses, external and societal connections, and impact—has come to occupy center stage in the field of African political studies. This overriding preoccupation emanates from the underlying assumption that the state constitutes a superior means for the fulfillment of economic and social aspirations; participation in its activities is deemed beneficial, and various sectors of society strive to associate with its institutions and gain access to its resources. Some recent works have cast doubt on this assumption, however, and the trend in the literature has been shifting towards an emphasis on the diminishing role of the state in African social life. However, even in these new studies the focus has been primarily on the state itself, its difficulties, incapacities, and failures, rather than on societal response to its actions.
State Involution: A Study of Local Finances in North China, 1911–1935
Authors: Duara Prasenjit
Published: June 2009

Beginning around the turn of the twentieth century, the Chinese state launched onto a course of development that seemed to resemble the process in early modern Europe that Charles Tilly and others have called state making (Tilly 1975). The phenomenon of an expanding state structure penetrating levels of society untouched before, subordinating, co-opting, or destroying the relatively autonomous authority structures of local communities in a bid to increase its command of local resources, appeared to be repeating itself in late imperial and republican China. The similarities include the impulse toward centralization, bureaucratization, and rationalization; the insatiable drive to increase revenues for both military and civilian purposes; the violent resistance of local communities to this inexorable process of intrusion and extraction; and the formation of alliances between the state and local elites to consolidate their power (Duara 1983).
Reinterpreting Burmese History
Authors: Lieberman Victor B.
Published: June 2009

Problems of periodization have received but limited attention in Burmese historiography. Precolonial, that is to say, pre-nineteenth-century history, is said to be of a piece, without significant institutional or social transformations. Dynasties and rulers changed, of course, sometimes with stunning rapidity; but it is always assumed that these oscillations occurred within a static framework. Lamenting the failure of the early Kon-baung kings to move their capital to the coast, G. E. Harvey, whose history remains the standard work on the precolonial era, observes, “Their ideas remained in the nineteenth century what they had been in the ninth. To build pagodas, to collect daughters from tributary chiefs, to sally forth on slave raids, to make wars for white elephants—these conceptions had had their day, and a monarchy which failed to get beyond them was doomed.” In the same vein, it has recently been argued that no “significant transformations” occurred between the origins and collapse of monarchical Burma. The entire precolonial royal era “should be viewed as one entity,” for from the mid-ninth to the late nineteenth century “the major features of [Burma's] political, economic, social, administrative, and religious systems were also virtually identical.”
The State and the Transformation of Political Legitimacy in East and West Germany since 1945
Authors: Fulbrook Mary
Published: June 2009

Recent German history has produced a remarkable succession of state forms: an empire riddled with internal social tensions, brought down by external defeat in a world war for which it bore a large degree of responsibility; an unstable and ultimately suicidal parliamentary democracy; a genocidal dictatorship which eventually collapsed, totally defeated by opponents of its expansionist and increasingly radical foreign and domestic plans; and, concurrently, two remarkably stable and enduring instances of quite different political types, liberal parliamentary democracy in the capitalist west, and “actually existing socialism” based in democratic centralism in the communist east. Compared to their respective Western and Eastern European neighbours, the Germans on both sides of the inner-German border are now sustaining and reproducing their respective political systems with remarkable efficiency. Put crudely, it seems that good Nazis have been turned into good democrats and good communists, respectively.
Confession, Conversion, and Reciprocity in Early Tagalog Colonial Society
Authors: Rafael Vicente L.
Published: June 2009

If one were a Tagalog convert to Christianity in the seventeenth or early eighteenth century, one would have probably been compelled to go to confession at least once a year. Confronting the Spanish priest, one would be subjected to his anxious probing in the vernacular as he proceeded through a checklist of possible transgressions against each of the Ten Commandments. Such checklists in the local language, calledconfessionarios, were common throughout the colonial period. Compiled by missionaries skilled in the Tagalog, they were designed to serve as mnemonic devices to aid Spanish clerics in eliciting the confessions of their native flock.
Black and White and Color: Cardenismo and the Search for a Campesino Ideology
Authors: Becker Marjorie
Published: June 2009

It is well known that upon emerging victorious from the Mexican Revolution in 1920, the Constitutionalists confronted a dilemma. Having defeated the popular armies of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, they believed that they had won the right to construct a postrevolutionary state reflecting their interests. Yet the spectors of the popular armies were to haunt them. The new revolutionary elites were forced to determine how to create a state in their own Constitutionalist image and simultaneously how to avoid provoking further popular insurrection.
Explaining Social Movements in Two Oil-Exporting States: Divergent Outcomes in Nigeria and Iran
Authors: Burke Edmund , Lubeck Paul
Published: June 2009

If one were to survey social movements in the last decade that were inextricably linked to global socioeconomic processes, the significant social movements that have emerged in Islamic oil-producing countries could hardly escape notice. Since nine oil-exporting states possess Muslim majorities, there appears to be an objective relationship between the global consequences of the post–1973 oil-price revolution and the socioeconomic transformation of Muslim populations. Although most Muslim states experienced social movements in this period, it is clear that in the oil-producing Islamic countries, the particular social impact and institutional location of petroleum rents greatly intensified the disruption of urban social networks. Indeed, the cases of Shi‘ite Iran and Muslim northern Nigeria indicate how this disruptive element may have contributed to Islamic revolutionary movements which, though having quite distinct goals, ideologies, and social bases, remain inexplicable without analyzing the consequences of the petroleum boom on the relationship between state and society.
Religion and Communal Life in an Evolutionary-Functional Perspective: The Orthodox Kibbutzim
Authors: Fishman Aryei
Published: June 2009

My purpose in this study is to refine understanding of the functional role of conventional religion for the viability of communal life (Bainbridge 1985). I shall endeavor to do this by broadly coordinating Talcott Parsons's evolutionary perspective of human society (1966, 1971) with that of Robert Bellah on religion (1964), and applying them to the formation and development of the Religious Kibbutz Federation (RFK) in Israel. By examining the historical experience of the groups that formed religious communes during the Mandatory period in Palestine, I shall attempt to demonstrate that religion can play a dysfunctional as well as a functional role in a communal system.
Austerity and Unintended Riches
Authors: Moore Barrington
Published: June 2009

What are the social and psychological sources of social movements that are committed to (1) equality among their members, (2) communitarian ideals emphasizing strong ties of affection among members and a belief in spontaneous cooperation without direction by authority, and (3) austerity in the consumption of physical goods and also in the use or display of comforts and ornaments? In the course of time what becomes of such a movement as it tries to put its ideals into practice? Many but not all of those that have lasted—and I shall limit this inquiry to examples that have lasted for at least several generations—have become quite wealthy. How and why does this change come about, and what are its consequences?
Class and Patriarchy as Competing Paradigms for the Study of Middle Eastern Women
Authors: Hatem Mervat
Published: June 2009

During the last nine years, while Western feminists were directing critical attention to what they described as “the curious courtship,” the “unhappy marriage,” and the “uneasy hyphen between marxism-feminism,” Western students of Middle Eastern women were pushing the field toward a serious consideration and adoption of Marxian social and economic theories. In two very important articles, Nikki Keddie and Judith Tucker argued that the field can expand its understanding of the different worlds of women by studying their roles in production and social reproduction. This new materialist approach promised to overcome what both said was a serious idealist bias in the literature that derived the status of Middle Eastern women from the major Muslim religious and legal texts and/or relied on the culturally biased Western/Orientalist conceptions of these women.
Race, Ethnicity, Species, Breed: Totemism and Horse-Breed Classification in America
Authors: Borneman John
Published: June 2009

Totem: the iconic representation of a specific ordering of plant and animal species. Clan: the representation of a group identity. Totemism: the relationship between totem and clan. From Emile Durkheim and his nineteenthcentury antecedents to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the discussion of totemism has addressed the way in which people classify themselves with reference to the animal and plant world. This discussion began with the observation among different exotic peoples of the widespread practice of arranging certain animal and plant species into a pattern that, while differing from culture to culture in content, seemed to indicate a consistent formal relationship between totem and clan. The iconic representation of so-called nature—the totem—seemed invariably the model for the representation of intra- or intergroup identity—for the clan.
Imperial Dilemmas, the Politics of Kinship, and Inca Reconstructions of History
Authors: Silverblatt Irene
Published: June 2009

I am extremely fortunate to have discussed issues of hegemony, consciousness, and class transformations with Nan E. Woodruff, who brought Southern and European perspectives to my own Peru-centered understandings. Julie Saville, a scholar of emancipation and reconstruction in the United States, made me aware of the fine points of cultural resistance and taught me not to underestimate its strengths. Jane Collier also taught me much about chiefdoms and their internal tensions. And thanks to the anonymous reviewer for interesting and helpful suggestions. This article was presented in various incarnations at several professional gatherings. I am grateful to have benefited from the insights and criticisms of co-panel members and audience. “Contradictions in Inca Ideologies" was presented at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Canadian Ethnology Society (Montreal, 1984); ‘Politics of Reproduction and Inca Expansion’ was pre- sented at the Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (Wrightsville Beach, 1986); and ‘Politics of Reproduction and the Inca Construction of History’ was presented at the Symposium on Andean and Lowland South American Cosmologies, organized by the University of Chicago (Chicago, 1986). Generous grants from the Doherty Foundation, Wenner Gren Foundation, and Organization of American States allowed me to conduct research on the Incas in Peru from June 1975 to December 1978. I will always be grateful to them for affording me that special opportunity.
Violence in the Dutch Patriot Revolution
Authors: Te Brake Wayne P.
Published: June 2009

In the small provincial cities of the eastern Netherlands, the annual election of magistrates and town councilors was perhaps the most important public ritualof the year under the old regime. The elaborate and often solemn ceremony symbolized ancient chartered liberties—even when results of the co-optative elections were a foregone conclusion—and thus served to reinforce the community's sense of corporate identity. In 1786, however, in the midst of astruggle for control of the city, the annualPetrikeur in Deventer got out of hand. The day started out normally enough with the traditional worship service in the Grote Kerk, but after the black-robed members of the town council had passed in procession across the square to thestadhuis, a group of dissident councilors, who called themselves Patriots and were implacably opposed to the influence of thestadhouderin municipal politics, attacked aportrait of Prince William III of Orange, the stadhouder who in 1675 first insinuated himself into the electoral process.
Russia's Debt to the Mongols in Suretyship and Collective Responsibility
Authors: Dewey Horace W.
Published: June 2009

Theterms poruka(suretyship or collective responsibility) andporuchnik(surety, guarantor) rarely appear in pre-Mongol Russian texts. Formal poruka seems to have expanded enormously only after the Mongol invasion. The institution clearly flourished in Muscovite Russia, where q“surety bonds” (poruchnye zapisi) were drawn up to cover debts and contractual obligations, military and administrative service, payment of fiscal levies, obligatory labor, trial procedure, personal conduct, public safety, political allegiance—and even matters of conscience and orthodoxy (“spiritual suretyship”). In all those areas, individuals or groups of people could, as “sureties,” be held responsible for the conduct of others, the “principals.” Sureties faced harsh penalties—fines, forced labor, corporal punishment, and worse—for their principals' misconduct or failure to fulfill certain obligations.
Rethinking Tenancy: Explaining Spatial and Temporal Variation in Late Imperial and Republican China
Authors: Shepherd John R.
Published: June 2009

Studies of the role of land tenure in the economic and social history of China are flawed by the unexamined assumption that the sale of land by impoverished farmers was the only process that generated high rates of tenancy and concentration of ownership of land. Debt-sales are assumed to occur as part of a cycle of immiserization in which a peasant population outgrows its landed resources and owner-farmers are forced to sell their lands and become the tenants or hired laborers of wealthy landlords. This essay demonstrates the improbability of such a scenario and establishes its opposite: that rates of tenancy and concentration of landownership rise, not in periods of economic decline but in periods of prosperity, and not through debt-sales but through the alternate processes of reclamation, migration, and changes in the mode of landlord farm management.
German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization
Authors: Gispen C. W. R.
Published: June 2009

When historians turn to the social sciences for help with the task of ordering their data or making their sources speak more clearly, the results can be rewarding in unexpected ways. So it is if one applies the twin concepts profession and professionalization to the German context-in particular, to the history of German engineers in the nineteenth century. At first sight, an idea like the “professionalization of the German engineers” seems straightforward enough. In tandem with the growth of Germany's science-based industries and unparalleled system of technical education, it suggests the emergence of the men who occupied the critical positions in these institutions and embodied technological progress. A notion such as the “rise of the German engineering profession,” therefore, stirs visions of a grand metamorphosis, in which the land of poets and thinkers—and of Junkers, bureaucrats, and mandarins—turned into the world of Siemens, Porsche, Mannesmann, Bosch, Diesel, Daimler-Benz, etc.
On the Substantiality of Form: Interpreting Symbolic Expression in the Paradigm of Social Organization
Authors: Korovkin Michael , Lanoue Guy
Published: June 2009

The publication of Sir James Frazer's Totemism and Exogamy raised as many problems for anthropologists as it tried to solve: namely, why do symbols that stand for any social group become imbued with religious, ritual, social, and mystical significance, and how do these totemic conceptual systems relate to systems of action? More often than not, symbols of group unity—whatever the group—possess more than one dimension, and these dimensions are often hard to differentiate analytically and ethnographically. In the mainstream of anthropology symbols and their use have been deemed to reflect patterns of social organization. Within this paradigm the majority of authors treat the choice of symbol as either essentially arbitrary or deterministically compelled. We find that the old paradigm of symbol as a reflection of something essentially social—cultural inversion, as some authors would have it, or vaguely and vulgarly determined as others put it—is rather suspect.
Sport, Cultural Imperialism, and Colonial Response in the British Empire
Authors: Stoddart Brian
Published: June 2009

Throughout the vast literature on British and general imperialism, the emphasis is largely upon the winning, then subsequent loss, of political control by the imperial power in colonial settings. Consequently, debate about the accession to that power has revolved largely about the great triad of considerations: economic necessity, strategic calculation, and civilising zeal. Similarly, discussion of emergent nationalist movements has hinged upon remarkably similar lines: Was the leadership of those movements motivated solely by ideologically inspired desires for independence, by the ambition to command the new sources of economic wealth developed under imperial rule, or by a simple thrust for political power to protect other interests? These are generalisations certainly, but, to take India as a case in point, much of the modern historiography has been concerned to demonstrate either how Britain “lost” or how the Indian National Congress “won” that power. But among such generalisations upon the British imperial experience, one interesting question has gone begging.
The Scandinavian Origins of the Social Interpretation of the Welfare State
Authors: Baldwin Peter
Published: June 2009

If a question can bemal posée, surely an interpretation can bemal étendue. This has been the fate of the social interpretation of the welfare state. The cousin of social theories of bourgeois revolution, the social interpretation of the welfare state is part of a broader conception of the course of modern European history that until recently has laid claim to the status of a standard. The social interpretation sees the welfare states of certain countries as a victory for the working class and confirmation of the ability of its political representatives on the Left to use universalist, egalitarian, solidaristic measures of social policy on behalf of the least advantaged. Because the poor and the working class were groups that overlapped during the initial development of the welfare state, social policy was linked with the worker's needs. Faced with the ever-present probability of immiseration, the proletariat championed the cause of all needy and developed more pronounced sentiments of solidarity than other classes. Where it achieved sufficient power, the privileged classes were forced to consent to measures that apportioned the cost of risks among all, helping those buffeted by fate and social injustice at the expense of those docked in safe berths.
The Gift Economy and State Power in China
Authors: Yang Mayfair Mei-Hui
Published: June 2009

The state apparatus in China today has taken upon itself almost total responsibility for administering the social and economic domain. The welfare and control of the population, the organization of production, planning all social activities, and the distribution of the means of subsistence have become primary concerns of organs of the state. The types of power relationships and their social and symbolic expressions, which have crystallized around the distribution and circulation of desirables in such a political economy, are the subject of the present study. The study will also examine how certain counter-techniques of power deviate from the larger strategy of power exercised through the state socialist political economy, forming pockets of intransigence from within.
The Economics of Intervention: American Overseas Investments and Relations with Underdeveloped Areas, 1890–1950
Authors: Frieden Jeffry A.
Published: June 2009

This essay has presented a framework for the analysis of economic factors in political relations between developed and developing areas. The most relevant considerations in this regard are the potential costs of imperial intervention in enhancing the return to metropolitan economic interests, and the potential benefits that intervention might bring to these interests. The essay has emphasized the differential political implications of various types of metropolitan economic activity, and especially of different forms of foreign investment.
Of Crowds and Empires: Afro-Asian Riots and European Expansion, 1857–1882
Authors: Cole Juan R. I.
Published: June 2009

Comparative studies pose special problems for historians, given their long tradition of being wed to the political history of individual countries and given the limitations of their methods, which lend themselves to (at most) middlerange generalizations. Sociology and anthropology have always seemed better poised to deal with the big questions across cultures. The rise of social history, however, provides new opportunities for comparative studies, insofar as such social entities and processes as cities, social classes, crowds, and women lend themselves better to comparison than do micropolitics within the framework of a single country's history. Despite these new possibilities, most historians demand intense contextualization and mistrust secondary sources, making it difficult for one scholar to master the relevant languages and archives in more than one culture, or to pose a broad enough question for comparative analysis. Much social history, even by the most sociologically minded historian, is likely to be based on archives and concerned largely with a single country or culture. Social historians can, however, legitimately inject a comparative element into their writing by paying special attention to the international aspects of their subject and by considering their works about particular social groups in individual countries as case studies in related phenomena.
Economic Changes and Surges in Micro-Nationalist Voting in Scotland and the Basque Region of Spain
Authors: Zirakzadeh Cyrus Ernesto
Published: June 2009

I During the 1970s, residents in Scotland and the Basque region of Spain began to vote in large numbers for nationalist candidates. Almost overnight the Scottish National Party and a collection of three Basque parties became important electoral forces, expanding their shares in general elections by more than 15 percent of all ballots cast (see Tables 1 and 2).
Ethnicity in the Soviet Union: Analytical Perceptions and Political Strategies
Authors: Shanin Teodor
Published: June 2009

Social facts and policies can be understood only in light of our own perceptions. This holds true with a vengeance where ethnicity, nationhood, or nationalism are concerned. All through the twentieth century this syndromecum-terminological chain has played an extensive, puzzling and usually unpredicted part in structuring social life and political action. New ethnic identities (for example, Tanzania'ism or Indonesian'ism) with their related designations and loyalties have cometo the fore with a speed that reveals the transitional and relational nature of ethnic phenomena. The same holds true for the ups and downs of acute nationalism. On the other hand, many throughout the world would agree with the great Catalonian historian, Pierre Vilar, whose internationalist values are not in doubt, that “in the relationship between my own life and history, nationals problems seem to overwhelm all others.” However one may conceptualize ethnicity and nationalism, their political impact has provided a major and continuous dimension of social action.
Why the Scottish Enlightenment Was Useful to the Framers of the American Constitution
Authors: Howe Daniel Walker
Published: June 2009

A large body of research conducted over a period of many years has demonstrated the enormous contribution that Scottish thought made to early America. Curiously enough, the evidence for this important influence accumulated gradually without attracting widespread attention until 1978, when Garry Wills published a book on the Declaration of Independence, orienting that document within the context of Scottish thinking. All of a sudden, eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophy was being discussed in theNew York Times, theNew York Review of Books, and all the major relevant professional journals. Wills' work aroused a storm of controversy, and by now it appears certain that his discussion of the philosophical issues underlying the Declaration was garbled. Nevertheless, his book proved to be a landmark of a certain kind: It focused attention on the relevance of the Scottish Enlightenment to the American Revolutionary generation. Sometimes a forceful statement, even if wrong, can have a constructive effect, and so it seems to have been with Garry Wills's account,Inventing America.
Statistics and the Modern State
Authors: Woolf Stuart
Published: June 2009

“Lies, damned lies,” the possibly apocryphal comment of a British political leader on statistics about the unemployment consequences of his economic policy in the 1920s, sums up the impotent, frustrated acceptance of the ubiquitous presence of this tool of modern administration. We have slipped into living with statistics as we have with television or computers, even into accepting the assertions of value-free neutrality of its more brash exponents. The study of statistics is integral to the development of the modern state and modern society. Hence the relative paucity of studies of how statistics became what they are today is somewhat surprising, not least because its history offers insights into so many aspects of modern life, from the self-perception of society to the internal history of the exact and medical sciences, from the relationship between state and citizen to the social implications of the production of knowledge.
Narrative Form and Political Incorporation: Changing Uses of History in Aceh, Indonesia
Authors: Bowen John R.
Published: June 2009

Writing about the development of historical writing in the West, Hayden White argues that “narrative in general, from the folktale to the novel, from the annals to the fully realized ‘history’, has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority.” But precisely how does narrative treat the different forms of social authority? One answer is that historical narrative is a universal form representing time and experience that Western historians have made particularly persuasive and authoritative. The modern historian, according to this view, has brought narrative to its natural culmination by constructing such historical plots as the “Rise of the Nation-State” or the “Development of Modes of Production.” This perspective is put forward primarily by students of European historiography.
Capitalist Dreams: Chile's Response to Nineteenth-Century World Copper Competition
Authors: Culver William W. , Reinhart Cornel J.
Published: June 2009

Hernando de Soto's recent book, The Other Path, argues that capitalism has not failed in Peru and Latin America, rather, it has not been tried. Basing his case on the observation that Latin American economies are strangled by arcane policies and regulations, de Soto goes on to bolster his point by providing a fresh and powerful look at the undeniable reality of the large “informal,” and thus unregulated, economic sector in Peru. As with any such generalization, how strongly does its explanatory value remain when measured against specific events, over long periods of time? This article seeks just such a perspective. It examines the impact of such regulations as mining codes and mineral taxation on the efforts of Chilean copper entrepreneurs to compete worldwide in the nineteenth century. De Soto may be correct in his contention that today's highly regulated economies keep Latin Americans from being as productive as their resources justify, but to extend this view into the past ignores earlier productive accomplishments, as well as significant efforts at different times and places to cast off Latin America's mercantile legacy.
A Cultural Analysis of the Role of Abolitionists in the Coming of the Civil War
Authors: Ellis Richard , Wildavsky Aaron
Published: June 2009

“Any basic interpretation of American history,” one prominent historian contends, “will have to account for…the coming of the Civil War.” Yet the two basic interpretations that have dominated the study of American politics, the progressive and consensus paradigms, have spawned partial and unsatisfactory explanations for what is arguably the most central event in the American past. After briefly analyzing the insights and limitations of these approaches to the Civil War, we propose an alternative perspective: cultural theory.
Folklore, Anthropology, and the Government of Social Life
Authors: Linke Uli
Published: June 2009

Despite the enormous diversity of research within the anthropological tradition, a common unifying theme has been the “reach into otherness” (Burridge 1973:6), the venture of discovering humanity through the exploration of other cultures. From the inception of anthropology as a distinct domain of knowledge, this ethnographic curiosity has been staged within a comparative frame of reference (Hymes 1974). Early inquiries into different customs and social forms were based on the writings of European travelers, whose observations about people in distant lands provided the narrative material for constructing a plausible vision of their own world. Initially, insights into the workings of society remained implicit, hidden beneath the projected images of “otherness.” By the second half of the eighteenth century, these encounters with the unfamiliar through travel and commerce had begun to generate a conscious desire for societal self-knowledge among Europeans. The haphazard collection of ethnographic information was gradually transformed into a reflective methodology.
Sanitation and Seeing: The Creation of State Power in Early Colonial Fiji
Authors: Thomas Nicholas
Published: June 2009

British rule in the former Crown Colony of Fiji was a paradoxical affair in several ways. The first Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, had been shocked by the dispossession of the New Zealand Maori and was determined to subordinate settler interests in Fiji to those of the indigenous population. From the time of cession by a group of paramount chiefs in 1874, administrative policies and structures aimed to defend, protect, and institutionalize the traditional Fijian communal system. For example, what were thought to be traditional chiefly privileges, such as rights to produce, were legally enshrined and articulated with an indirect rule system of appointed village, district, and provincial chiefs. Land was made the inalienable property of clan groups of certain types (which Fijians were obliged to create where they did not already exist).
Popular Speech and Social Order in Northern Mexico, 1650–1830
Authors: Martin Cheryl English
Published: June 2009

In recent years historians of Europe and North America have discovered the importance of the spoken word in past times and have explored the ways in which language reflects particular social contexts. Retrieving fragments of popular speech from police reports, court records, and other sources, these scholars have sketched colorful vignettes which reenact such mundane activities of daily life as a game of cards or an argument over a stray calf. Their work has shown that seemingly trivial face-to-face encounters offer valuable clues for understanding social hierarchies and community values of a given time and place. Abstract relationships of class, gender, and social rank take concrete form in the routine conversations of men and women in streets, taverns, and markets, as “ordinary” people tell us about the societies in which they lived—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, but always in their own words. The historian of popular speech moreover recognizes that the social order, far from being static, remains subject to continuous modification not only by the powerful but also by those in subordinate positions, whose words and gestures may either reinforce or undermine accepted standards of behavior and social precedence.
Metamorphoses of the Jesuits: Sexual Identity, Gender Roles, and Hierarchy in Catholicism
Authors: McDonough Peter
Published: June 2009

Since the Second Vatican Council opened in 1962, several changes have occurred in the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits have suffered a drop in manpower: Membership in the international order peaked at over 36,000 men in 1965 and had fallen by 1988 to below 25,000. Another change has been ideological: The Jesuits seem to have shifted from a conservative or disengaged posture toward a progressive and occasionally radical stance on social and political matters, and they have struggled to implement this orientation by abandoning some of their routine commitments and taking on new ventures in “faith and justice.” Finally, the Society of Jesus has deregimented its procedures in the areas of training and governance. It would appear that the liberalization that took place in mainline Protestant denominations over several decades was recapitulated by the Jesuits in a shorter period.
Organizing, Ideology, and Moral Suasion: Political Discourse and Action in a Mexican Town
Authors: Foley Michael W.
Published: June 2009

Recent scholarship on peasant protest has shifted from the speculative analysis of large-scale historical trends to the limited testing of hypotheses to a preoccupation with micro-level analysis of peasant consciousness and decision making. That shift has been salutary, sharpening our attention to the role of people's perceptions in shaping behavior and to the subtle ways in which people act out their discontent; but we still understand too little about the origins of these perceptions and about the ways in which everyday discontent gets transformed into politically viable action. The present paper argues that, while people's perceptions are grounded in their material and social situation and in past experience, they are continuously reshaped in interaction with new experience and with the claims of others. Understanding the role of political discourse in such interactions is essential to understanding popular mobilization.
Peasants, Prophets, and the Power of a Millenarian Vision in Twentieth-Century Brazil
Authors: Diacon Todd A.
Published: June 2009

Flood lights illuminated the southern Brazilian night as thousands of railroad workers struggled to meet their daily trace construction quotas. Brazil Railway Company foremen shouted their orders so as to be heard above the din of massive steam-powered earth movers. These machines, a novelty for the region in 1910, were the North American-owned company's newest ally in its push to meet the rapidly approaching construction deadline. On December 17, 1910, a gayly decorated train crossed the Santa Catarina-Rio Grande do Sul border, thereby inaugurating Brazil's newest railroad line. The company had succeeded in connecting the agricultural south with Brazil's rising industrial star, the state of São Paulo.
Women and Inheritance in Japan's Early Warrior Society
Authors: Tonomura Hitomi
Published: June 2009

In the second half of the Kamakura age (1190–1333), Japan's elite warrior society began to undergo a gradual but radical structural transformation. The outline of this change was the shift from a divided to a unitary inheritance practice, with a progressive consolidation of family property and authority into one “chief” (sōryō), to the exclusion of his brothers and sisters. Kinship relations changed accordingly. As in the twelfth-century Mâcon described by Georges Duby, there was a progressive emphasis on lineal solidarity, along with a trend toward multiplication of independent branch lines. Through this shift, each warrior family sought territorial and organizational cohesion—a requirement for survival in an atmosphere of intensified social unrest and competition.
Intragroup Conflict in African–American Leadership: The Case of Tchula, Mississippi
Authors: Morrison Minion K. C.
Published: June 2009

Black electoral leaders in the post-civil rights South have exhibited broad agreement on the nature of the political task of displacing unresponsive white elites from power and directing attention to the previously excluded black constituency. There are a few cases, however, in which the commonly expected solidarity and consensus among the black elected leaders has not occurred, despite intensified hostility from the white elite. In this analysis these circumstances are explored from one small town in Mississippi where blacks won nearly total administrative control in 1977. However, the apparent leadership consensus, though fragile, quickly evaporated, due to conflicts of ideology, class, idiosyncrasy, and racial invidiousness. This ultimately led to administrative paralysis in the allocation and management of scarce political goods. In this town where there were broad disagreements between three sets of political contenders, each sought to dominate the policy process by staffing various public positions. The scarcity of these positions, the diametrically opposed goals of the contenders, and the precariousness of the control exerted even by the administrative leadership produced a hopeless struggle. Eventually the government crumbled. Analysis reveals that the complex sociopolitical environment and certain aspects of the political structure contributed to this breakdown. The rapid development of a tripartite leadership cleavage was hardly accommodated by political structures designed to serve the ends of a racial caste system. The fragility of the political environment and the absence of structural mechanisms for conflict resolution severely diminished the ability of the new leaders to perform.
Popular Groups, Popular Culture, and Popular Religion
Authors: Levine Daniel H.
Published: June 2009

This paper examines the emergence and character of popular religious groups and considers their implications for long-term cultural change in Latin America. Particular attention is given to the link between religious change and the creation of apopular subject, a set of confident, articulate and capable men and women, from hitherto silent, unorganized, and dispirited populations. I argue here that creation of such a popular subject is nurtured by transformations in key expressions of popular religion, by the way these take form in new patterns of community organization and group solidarity, and by efforts to rework the ties that bind popular groups to dominant institutions.
The Myth of Cultural Homogeneity and Its Implications for Chiefly Power and Politics in Fiji
Authors: Lawson Stephanie
Published: June 2009

Since Fiji's independence in 1970, a chiefly establishment drawn largely from the eastern regions of the island group has dominated the government there and, through the Alliance Party, has managed, in one way or another, to retain power in successive electoral contests until its outright defeat in the general elections of April 1987. The new government comprised a coalition of the National Federation Party (NFP), supported largely by the Fiji Indian community, and the Fiji Labour Party, which was essentially multiracial. Before the elections, Dr. Timoci Bavadra, the Labour leader, had been chosen to head the coalition. An indigenous Fijian “commoner” from the western region of Fiji, Bavadra's victory in April 1987 represented a break in a long history of eastern chiefly political predominance established and consolidated under colonial rule, and carried forward into the modern context of post-independence politics.
Smashing Idols and the State: The Protestant Ethic and Egyptian Sunni Radicalism
Authors: Goldberg Ellis
Published: June 2009

Recent scholars of the Middle East have implicitly and suggestively noted similarities between contemporary Muslim activists and sixteenth-century Protestant reformers. A more explicit and rigorous argument comparing Protestantism and contemporary Sunni movements in Egypt can yield insights into both movements.
“Charity Properly Understood”: Changing Ideas about Poor Relief in Liberal Spain
Authors: Shubert Anrian
Published: June 2009

When the English cleric Joseph Townsend visited Spain at the end of the eighteenth century, he was impressed by the apparent tolerance with which beggars were treated and by what he called the “excessively generous” way in which charity was distributed. He cited, with both surprise and disapproval, the Bishop of Cordoba, who daily fed some 7,000 people by distributing 1,000 kilograms of bread.1 This image of Spain as a paradise for the poor persisted until well into the nineteenth century. George Borrow, who travelled through the country in the 1830s trying to sell Bibles without much luck, remarked approvingly that poverty was not despised in Spain as it was in other countries:

Yet to the honour of Spain be it spoken, it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is never insulted nor looked upon with contempt.…In Spain the very beggar does not feel himself a degraded being for he kisses no one's feet and knows not what it is to be cuffed or spitten upon.
In the Light and Shadow of the West: The Impact of Western Economics in Pre-Emancipation Russia
Authors: Kingston-Mann Esther
Published: June 2009

The notion that “Westernization” is a process that is unconditionally positive in its impact has dominated both Western and Soviet accounts of Russian intellectual and cultural history during the period before the Emancipation of 1861. As a consequence, Westernization has been described as synonymous with progress, rational economic behavior, greater tolerance, civilization, and the advancement of individual freedom. Although this rather uncritically pro-Western approach to the study of Western influences has produced important research and analytical insights, the assumption that a homogeneous Western culture everywhere generates liberal and democratic influences is in fact highly problematic. As I have suggested elsewhere, it is very difficult to make the empirical case that any one Western political or economic model can be applied to Germany, France, and Italy as well as England. And in the Russian context, a belief in the unmixed benefits of Westernization obscures some of the most important ironies and contradictions that characterize Russian economic debates and strategies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The Personalist Ethic and the Market in Korea
Authors: Yun-Shik Chang
Published: June 2009

The pattern of development that emerged in the early stage of industrialization in South Korea, according to the British sociologist Ronald Dore, is closer to the classical (nineteenth-century) small-scale, individualistic entrepreneurial type than the large-scale bureaucratic type that characterizes development in many other countries embarking upon modernization programs in recent years (Dore 1980:292). This arguably stems from the fact that economic growth accompanied by development of a market (in the broader sense of that term) that created opportunities for individual choices and initiatives.