bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Stories, Skulls, and Colonial Collections
Authors: Roque Ricardo
Published: February 2012

The essay explores the hypothesis of colonial collecting processes involving the active addition of the colonial context and historical past to museum objects through the production of short stories. It examines the emergent historicity of collections through a focus on the "histories" that museum workers and colonial agents have been attaching to scientific collections of human skulls. Drawing on the notions of collection trajectory and historiographical work, it offers an alternative perspective from which to approach the creation of singular histories and individual archives for objects in collections.
Development and Negative Constructions of Ethnic Identity: Responses to Asian Fisheries Investment in the Pacific
Authors: Barclay Kate
Published: February 2012

This article explores ethnic identities in representations of tuna fishing and canning companies in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. One point raised by the analysis is that while national identities in these countries are often disrupted by subnational ethnic identities, strong nationalist discourses pervade representations of these companies. The nationalism apparent in responses to these companies is negative, reacting against perceived exploitation by foreigners through narratives of corporate wrongdoing. This article investigates the significance of this style of identification and questions whether the national identities entailed in negative representations of foreign investment constitute resistance against development or a disempowering victim identification that reifies a subordinate position in the world political economy.
Instant Recess ® : A Practical Tool for Increasing Physical Activity During the School Day
Authors: Whitt-Glover Melicia C. , Ham Sandra A. , Yancey Antronette K.
Published: February 2012

Background: An increased prevalence of overweight/obesity among children has led to school district level policies to increase physical activity (PA) among elementary school students. Interventions are needed that increase activity levels without sacrificing time spent in academics.
Objectives: We evaluated a policy implementation intervention for to increase in-school PA in elementary schools in Forsyth County, North Carolina, in a randomized study with a delayed intervention control group.
Methods: The study included third- through fifth-grade classrooms in eight elementary schools. Instant Recess ® was used to introduce 10-minute PA breaks in classrooms on schedules determined by teachers. Direct observation was used to measure activity levels, other student behaviors, and teacher behaviors related to PA in the classrooms.
Results: Twenty-eight visits to schools were made during the spring and fall semesters of 2009. At baseline 11% to 44% of intervention and control schools were engaged in classroom-based PA. PA increased from baseline to spring follow-up in intervention schools and was maintained the following fall. Control schools decreased PA from baseline to spring and increased PA once they began the intervention. Students in classrooms engaged in Instant Recess exhibited statistically significant increases in light (51%) and moderate-intensity (16%) PA and increases in time spent in on-task behavior (11%). Control schools experienced similar benefits after they began implementing Instant Recess .
Conclusions: Instant Recess is useful for increasing PA and improving behavior among elementary school children. Additional research may be needed to understand how to create policies supporting classroom activity breaks and how to assess policy adherence.
The Making of a Marxist-Feminist-Latin Americanist Anthropologist: An Interview with Helen I. Safa
Authors: Yelvington Kevin A.
Published: February 2012

Helen I. Safa est une pionnière de l'anthropologie à Porto Rico, dans la Caraïbe et en Amérique Latine; ses travaux s'inscrivent dans une perspective marxiste et féministe, ils facilitent aussi les liens entre intellectuelles féministes et progressistes tant d'un point de vue administratif qu'au niveau des investigations. Durant sa longue carrière, Safa a démontré son intérêt pour des études de dimensions divers sur l'inégalité—spécialement sur les questions de genres, de classe et de race- et sa position sur les conditions structurelles, les relations sociales de domination et de subordination. L'article est une entrevue réalisée sur la vie de Safa dans laquelle elle a réfléchit sur son enfance et sa famille, sa transition vers la vie d'adulte, sa préparation académique et le développement de son approche théorique, ainsi que la relation avec ses collègues durant près de 50 ans de recherche anthropologique.
Anthropology in a Postcolonial Colony: Helen I. Safa's Contribution to Puerto Rican Ethnography
Authors: Duany Jorge
Published: February 2012

Cet article évalue l'apport d'Helen I. Safa à la pensée anthropologique sur Porto Rico. La première partie de l'article situe la recherche de Safa sur l'Île, au sein d'une longue tradition de travail sur le terrain par les érudits nord-américains depuis le début du XXe siècle. Des recherches plus récentes, menées surtout par des femmes portoricaines, anthropologues et d'autres spécialistes en sciences sociales, ont développé les aperçus de Safa sur les femmes et le travail. La deuxième partie de l'essai analyse la principale étude empirique de Safa, The Urban Poor of Puerto Rico : A Study in Development and Inequality . Par-dessus tout, ce livre a aidé à surmonter l'impasse théorique sur la culture de la pauvreté qui a caractérisé une grande partie de l'anthropologie urbaine pendant les années 1960 et 1970. L'article se termine par une appréciation de la pertinence de l'ouvrage de Safa pour l'ethnographie portoricaine contemporaine.
Women's Employment and Changing Gender Relations in Puerto Rico
Authors: Warren Alice Colón
Published: February 2012

L'article évalue les études réalisées par Helen Safa sur l'impact des stratégies de développement et les politiques sociales relatives aux rapports de genre et familles dirigées par des femmes dans la Caraïbe et à Porto Rico. L'évaluation tient compte des résultats d'une recherche dirigée vers les tendances de l'emploi des femmes, leur autonomie, les relations conjugales, la responsabilité des familles féminines et la pauvreté à Porto Rico durant la première décennie de l'année 2000. Des extraits d'entrevues ont été utilisés avec des ouvrières révoquées de l'industrie de vêtements et de vente de thon entre les années 2000 et 2002 (Colón et al. 2008) et des informations de l'échantillon de l'utilisation publique de l'Enquête de la Communauté de Recensement des Etats Unis à Porto Rico 2005-2007. En outre, l'article explique que l'emploi des femmes leur a permis d'être plus autonomes, a avoir plus d'équité de genre et a redéfinir leur rôle de pourvoyeur, à cause de l'instabilité de la contribution masculine. Ainsi, un grand nombre de femmes chefs de famille a été augmenté, y compris des femmes mariées. L'éducation et l'emploi des femmes constituent d'importants moyens pour réduire la pauvreté au sein des familles où les conjoints ont l'accès à l'emploi ainsi que celles dirigées par des femmes. Cependant, la trajectoire de cette utilisation qui continue de façon limitée dans l'Iles rend les femmes vulnérables face à la précarité économique même dans les secteurs de la population où les frais de scolarité sont très élevés.
Parent Involvement: Investigating the Parent-Child Relationship in Millennial College Students
Authors: Pizzolato Jane Elizabeth , Hicklen Sherrell
Published: February 2012

There is evidence of a surge in parent involvement in postsecondary education, and some scholarship suggests that this high level of parent involvement may inhibit epistemological development. Despite these claims, there is little empirical evidence on the level or impact of parent involvement during the college years. The aim of this research was to understand the level and type of college student initiated parent involvement. Results suggest that, although the majority of participants did not involve their parents in decision making, many participants did, but the type of parent involvement ranged from confrontation to thinking about parental expectations. Epistemological orientation was not related to level of parent involvement but did predict type of parent involvement. Theoretical implications are discussed.
Associations Between University Students' Reported Reasons for Abstinence From Illicit Substances and Type of Drug
Authors: Rosenberg Harold , Bonar Erin E. , Pavlick Michelle , Jones Lance D. , Hoffmann Erica , Murray Shanna , Faigin Carol Ann , Cabral Kyle , Baylen Chelsea
Published: February 2012

We recruited 211 undergraduates to rate the degree to which each of 34 listed reasons for not taking drugs had influenced their abstinence from MDMA/ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, and hallucinogens. Participants rated reasons such as personal and family medical histories, religion, and physiological consequences of drug use as having little or no impact on abstention from all four substances. Consistent with previous research and developmental theory, concerns about drug-induced impairment and drug use being contrary to one's self-image reportedly inhibited students' consumption of notably different types of illicit substances.
External Dynamics Influencing Tattooing Among College Students: A Qualitative Analysis
Authors: Firmin Michael , Tse Luke , Foster Janna , Angelini Tammy
Published: February 2012

The study utilized qualitative research methodology to assess external dynamics and their influences on tattooing practices among college students. Twenty-four undergraduates supplied in-depth interviews regarding the external variables related to college students' decisions to tattoo. The present research follows (Tse, Firmin, Angelini, & Foster, 2006), which reported findings regarding college students' internal dynamics for tattoo choices. Present findings suggest that health concerns, parental and peer influences, and social stigmas are particularly cogent external influencers in college students' decisions to tattoo.
The Reductions of the Left
Authors: Geras Norman
Published: February 2012

The attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, lit up the global landscape. Not only in these two cities, but wherever the news and the pictures reached during the first hours after the planes struck-all over the planet, therefore-there were people quickly able to make out features of the contemporary world that they had not previously taken in, or taken the measure of fully, things that challenged their earlier expectations and existing frameworks of understanding. Not, however, in one quarter. With a section of the Western left, the response was as if everything remained just as it had always been. Leave aside the callousness in much of the left's response toward the human dimension of the tragedy; but in explaining the crime of 9/11 the same thin categories that had been deployed in one conflict after another during a decade and more were instantly pressed into service. Imperialism and blowback-that was pretty much all one needed to understand what had befallen the citizens of Manhattan, the passengers on the planes, and the workers at the Pentagon, and there were accordingly people content to describe the attack as a comeuppance. The crime that so brutally illuminated the contours of the international political landscape thus revealed at the same time a frozen structure of concepts and assumptions. With the aid of it, many on the left shielded themselves from realities they didn't want to see or to assign their proper weight. In what follows I comment on some aspects of this theoretical nexus.
A Brief Reply to Marshall Berman
Authors: Yehoshua A.B.
Published: February 2012

In the Summer 2004 issue of Dissent, in "Israel: No Souvenirs," Marshall Berman referred to a published interview with novelist A.B. Yehoshua in which, according to Berman, "Yehoshua seemed skeptical about the Wall as security policy, but drawn to it as a foundation for a ahrd identity politics." Here, Yehoshua responds.
Why Don't They Listen to Us?: Speaking to the Working Class
Authors: Rubin Lillian B.
Published: February 2012

If Democratic ideas and our politics have been in the service of those less advantaged, as we believe so passionately, why have we had such a hard time making ourselves heard in ways that count? How did our voice-the voice of economic opportunity, the voice that speaks of justice in education, jobs, health care, and taxation-find so little resonance with the very Americans for whom we claim to speak?
Historical Analysis
Authors: Willis Ellen
Published: February 2012

Eli Zaretsky's Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis does not focus on the truth claims of psychoanalysis but on its social meanings and its influence, for good or ill. Its central idea is that psychoanalysis came into being as the theory and practice of "personal life"—that is, "the experience of having an identity distinct from one's place in the family, in society, and in the social division of labor." In Zaretsky's account, the self-conscious embrace of individual identity became a major social force with the advent of the "second industrial revolution," which transformed American capitalism into an instrument of mass consumption, stimulating fantasies of personal gratification, weakening familial authority, and promoting greater freedom for women and youth. Sigmund Freud's conception of a personal unconscious, of a distinction between public and private, social and individual meaning, resonated profoundly with these changes.
Women, the Values Debate, and a New Liberal Politics
Authors: Harrington Mona
Published: February 2012

November 2004: The election is over. The red states have prevailed. And a "values debate" has begun, as has a debate about the debate. Were values really a crucial factor in the Bush majority? And if so, what was at the heart of the red and blue divide? Whose values were most powerfully in play-evangelical Christians? conservative Christians? conservatives more generally? Was the dividing line a matter of moral values, questions of sexual morality, or more general, fuzzy cultural values? Or did the election actually turn on very specific social issues such as gay marriage and abortion?
The Dance of Civilizations: The West, the East, and Abu Ghraib
Authors: Linfield Susie
Published: February 2012

Millions of people throughout the world have now seen the Abu Ghraib images; surely they are among the most widely disseminated ever. And almost instantly, they became internationally recognized icons. They have appeared on the front pages of countless newspapers and magazines in East and West; on innumerable Web sites and television programs; on signs, leaflets, and posters. They have zipped through e-mails in the millions (billions?). They hang on walls all over the world, including four clean white ones in a New York museum and one of massive stone on a Tehran street, and on gravestones in Gaza City accompanied by the promise, "We Will Revenge." They can, like all photographs, be put to vastly disparate uses, and will surely be reproduced in both the recruiting videos of terrorist groups and the fundraising pamphlets of human-rights organizations. They have inspired a global conversation.
It's not Just Abortion, Stupid: Progressives and Abortion
Authors: Joffe Carole
Published: February 2012

Progressive men and women have found it extremely difficult to address issues of reproductive and sexual behavior-abortion, above all. Reproductive politics, in left circles, is not just about fighting the antiabortion movement or right-wing sexual conservatives for the hearts and minds of "Middle America," though there is plenty of that. Mirroring in some ways other gender struggles after the emergence of second wave feminism, there is a long history of reproductive rights activists striving to make such issues legitimate on the left. (Indeed, 0such struggles go back to the early twentieth century, when Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger fought a mostly losing battle to persuade their left-wing contemporaries to take seriously the campaign for legalizing birth control). And within the contemporary reproductive freedom movement itself—composed as it is of large mass membership organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), Planned Parenthood, the Feminist Majority, and numerous smaller grassroots groups, only some of which identify as "progressive"—there is hardly unanimity as to how best frame positions on abortion.
When Ethicists Have Conflicts of Interest
Authors: Elliott Carl
Published: February 2012

In February, the online magazine Slate published an article with the title, "Go Away, Ethics Police; Leave the NIH Alone." The author of the piece was Richard Epstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. The "ethics police" to whom Epstein objected were the critics who had pushed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) into adopting a strict new set of conflict-of-interest regulations. Last year, a muckraking series of reports in the Los Angeles Times revealed that some NIH scientists had parlayed their elite scientific positions into lucrative consulting contracts with the pharmaceutical industry. Several NIH scientists had received more than $2.2 million in company fees and stock options. The director of one NIH institute received more than $600,000 from Schering AG and other companies at the same time that his institute conducted studies for Schering and pledged it $1.7 million in grants. Another scientist wrote national cholesterol guidelines while accepting $114,000 from the makers of cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Undermining Democracy: "Compassionate Conservatism" and Democratic Education
Authors: Meier Deborah W.
Published: February 2012

We've had a long run at something like a democratic society, one that has steadily expanded the definition of who's "in." We've done this with wisdom and luck—and because of the unrelenting pressure of "the people," organized in one way or another. That accounts in part for my long-term optimism. Still, looking at history's arc, democracy seems a fragile and almost unnatural idea. We can hardly argue that we've paid much attention to how it is passed from generation to generation. Mostly, we count on word of mouth and the happenstances of growing up. Now, we are in a century that will challenge the ideas underlying democracy as never before, and the odds on its survival seem about even—so long as we depend on word of mouth and happenstance.
Freak Out
Authors: Smithsimon Greg
Published: February 2012

In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything , authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner claim that they are telling just such uncomfortable truths: that drug dealers are poor, that trying to be a good parent doesn't alter your child's prospects, that sumo wrestlers and schoolteachers cheat, and, most contentiously, that legalized abortion has led to a drop in crime. Although the book promises "a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything" (Levitt is an economist, Dubner a New York Times reporter who met Levitt while writing an enthusiastic profile of him), it dodges as many uncomfortable truths as it tells. That's because Levitt is the Times's version of a countercurrent thinker: not one who swims against the stream, but one who circles in interesting eddies. Here, what's hidden isn't the truth obscured by big business, the government, and corporate media. People who swim in these circles dismiss left as well as right, believing some privileged truth is available to the person talented enough to ignore all that partisan arguing.
Job Redistribution à la Française
Authors: Carpenter Luther
Published: February 2012

Everybody who matters—business federations, the business press, economists, conservative governments, Tony Blair, the New York Times—says that Europe (and especially France) has to "reform." "Reform" is a polite way of saying that somebody who isn't "everybody" ought to (has to) get less of something. Last year, unemployment insurance was that "something" in Germany. French "reformers" have gone after every social benefit, including basic social security pensions and health insurance. Two particular targets have been early retirement and the thirty-five-hour work week, which are pillars of the French practice of job redistribution.
Editor's Page
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

We have no articles in this issue about the Lebanon war. Nobody in his or her right mind would venture to do a piece now (end of August) to be read in mid-October—when there might be a stable cease-fire or another war or a diplomatic initiative or, most likely, when we will still be waiting for the UN. When we finally do write about the war, there will be a lot to criticize: the familiar pattern of UN inaction that allowed the buildup of Hezbollah's arsenal, the conduct of the war by both Hezbollah and Israel, the media coverage of the war around the world, and an outcome that could too easily produce a renewal of the fighting. But there is another issue that should be central for the Western left: the need for moral clarity about the politics of radical Islam, represented in this case by the president of Iran and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Good-bye to the 'Third World'
Authors: Colburn Forrest D.
Published: February 2012

"Emerging countries" is a hopeful expression, but it is far from an accurate description of what is going on in every poor country of the world. Another upbeat, optimistic term is "developing countries." The most evocative term, though, is "Third World." It is used to refer collectively to all the poorer countries of the world. While it suggests poverty, it also evokes countries "on the move"—politically and economically—and, above all, in solidarity with one another, pursuing a common political agenda, one that demands attention—and resources—from the rich countries of the world. This conception, however, is especially misleading. It is dated and has lost all of its conceptual usefulness. But what should replace it? Where are we today? What shorthand notation can we use to refer to the poorer countries of the world? How can we conceptualize their place vis-à-vis each other and the more prosperous countries of the world?
The Courage of the Poet
Authors: Medina Pablo
Published: February 2012

By 1999 Raúl Rivero was considered a dangerous person in Cuba. His independent journalism, published overseas, reported the tribulations of daily life in Cuba the regime wanted kept quiet. He was an active supporter as well of the independent libraries movement. In a few years he would be charged with collaborating with the United States and sentenced to twenty years in prison. The airport security guard made a phone call, and in minutes another man appeared in the room. He was somber and severe and asked me many more questions. After three hours, I was finally let go, with the warning that it would be wise if I did not visit the people whose names were on the list, notably Rivero.
Soul in a Maze
Authors: Wellington Darryl Lorenzo
Published: February 2012

Target Zero: A Life in Writing offers a retrospective of Eldridge Cleaver's career, consisting of selections from his works, published and unpublished, dating from Soul on Ice, his 1968 post-prison manifesto, to the mellower writings that characterized the decades preceding his death in 1998. The question underpinning Target Zero is introduced in Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s foreword, when Gates writes, "Even when I didn't understand Eldridge's opinions, I still admired him immensely. Eldridge's peers from his Black Panther years resented his religious and political conversions. But he was always firm in his beliefs despite the pain this rift inevitably caused him. Eldridge always had answers when I questioned him about his conversion to Christianity or his embrace of a most conservative approach to solving the problems of the black poor." Gates's words are admiring, but they also leave us wondering whether, if Gates can't finally make sense of Eldridge Cleaver's career, can we? Can Target Zero resuscitate Cleaver's reputation, or were his politics really just erratic and self-serving?
Letter from Olympic City
Authors: Barkan Joanne
Published: February 2012

Why do cities take the Olympics on? The visibility is usually ephemeral (what have you heard lately about Nagano?). They don't make a profit on the games; they hope to break even. After winter games, local governments are stuck with outsized luge tracks, ski jumps, and multiple ice rinks costing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to maintain. Yet cities around the world compete ferociously to host the games. "The Olympics become an opportunity to seize for urban renewal," said Alessandro Guala, professor of social sciences at the University of Torino. "Not just for building new sports facilities but for improving city services and launching or accelerating the work on major projects like a subway. It's a moment when you can mobilize political forces and bureaucracies and get everyone to work together."
For Freedom of Expression
Authors: Allal Tewfik
Published: February 2012

In response to the controversy surrounding the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting Islam's prophet, Muhammed, we, the Association of the Manifeste des Libertés, insist on a dual commitment. We condemn fundamentalism and those who feed it. And we reassert and nourish hope for a democratic, common future together, with pluralism of cultural backgrounds. This hope is hated by the extreme right parties in Europe and by the radical Islamists. They throw the ball back and forth between each other. We aim to seize it.
Immodest Proposals
Authors: Béruhé Michael
Published: February 2012

A casual reader could be forgiven for thinking that What Should the Left Propose? was written ten or twelve years ago, in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of "Third Way" leftism. For Roberto Mangabeira Unger's diagnoses of the left's decline are both plausible and familiar, and they say nothing about left debates since 2001. He lodges the standard complaint about neoliberalism (though he refrains from using the word).
Summer Internships: Liberals and Leftists Strike Out
Authors: Waxman Ben
Published: February 2012

When it's not clogged with protestors or full of summer concertgoers, the National Mall in Washington, D.C. is often overrun by softball players. Every year, staffers from dozens of congressional offices and nonprofit organizations field teams to compete in the annual summer league. As you might expect, there are some great rivalries—it's rumored that elected officials regularly bet on the outcome of some high profile matchups. Like the institutions they represent, the softball teams are buttressed by the influx of thousands of interns that flock to Washington every summer.
In the Shadow of the Volcano: Democracy and Justice in Congo
Authors: Clark Phil
Published: February 2012

Three key developments brought me back to eastern Congo in early 2006 after several years away: rapidly changing patterns of violence in the region, the buildup to Congo's historic first elections since independence, and new attempts to bring perpetrators of mass crimes to justice. As conflict rages, Congo confronts questions fraught enough during peacetime: Can a highly fragmented state of 250 ethnic groups, with a long history of violence, corruption, and extreme poverty, embrace democracy and create effective political institutions? Can individuals responsible for committing atrocities be held accountable? And can democracy and justice contribute to a stable, vibrant nation in the long term? Given Congo's strategic importance, bordered by ten countries in the heart of Africa, these are not merely questions for the nation but for the Great Lakes Region as a whole?
On Michael Walzer, Gaza, and the Lebanon War
Authors: Slater Jerome
Published: February 2012

For the last thirty years Michael Walzer has been acknowledged as the most eminent and authoritative political philosopher dealing with questions of war and morality. In his most important work in this vein, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), Walzer argues that we must make two separate evaluations of the morality of war: the justice of the cause or purpose for which war is fought and the morality or justice of the methods of warfare. After developing his just war theory with great sophistication and persuasiveness, Walzer then applies his analysis to many specific cases of warfare, from the ancient world until the present. No informed and serious discussion of morality and warfare can take place today without reference to Just and Unjust Wars and the debate it has engendered.
Justice Denied in Bosnia
Authors: Brkic Courtney Angela
Published: February 2012

Srebrenica Fell on July 11, 1996. Requests by the Dutch battalion for air support made it all the way to UN Commander General Bernard Janvier, and four hours later two bombs landed on Serb positions, but strikes were suspended when the Bosnian Serb Army threatened to kill Dutch hostages. The executions at Srebrenica took days. Bosnian Muslim men and boys were shot beside pits and buried in mass graves. They were caught as they tried to flee through mine-infested fields and mountains. They were taken to warehouses and factories where they were executed, or gunned down in the wilderness over a period of weeks. In all, up to eight thousand were killed. Today, One of the enduring questions about the 1991–1995 wars is the extent to which Serbia and Montenegro (the successor states to "Yugoslavia" or "rump Yugoslavia") were responsible for planning and facilitating the genocide in Bosnia. In February, the International Court of Justice attempted to answer this question by ruling that Serbia failed to prevent genocide in Srebrenica but had not been directly responsible for it.
MLK and the Road to Socialism
Authors: Isserman Maurice
Published: February 2012

Harrington did his work well, and the march attracted five to six thousand supporters, many more than organizers had anticipated. The day before it stepped off, Harrington picked up King on his arrival at Los Angeles airport. Over the next few days he shepherded King around Los Angeles, to the march itself, and to a meeting with the convention's platform committee. Harrington and King also found time for private discussions about political strategy and philosophy. In Fragments of the Century, his 1973 memoir, Harrington reported how he was heartened to learn from their time together that King had "in the course of a much more profound political and intellectual journey than mine, come to a view of America and the world that I largely shared." King, he believed, was a democratic socialist in all but name.
Choosing Sides
Authors: Hari Johann
Published: February 2012

The pro-invasion left was always a small battalion, made up almost entirely of journalists and intellectuals who believed toppling the Taliban and Saddam Hussein was a good idea—even if the only leader available to lead the charge was George W. Bush. Yet almost since the first statue of Saddam fell to the ground, it has been losing troops—to the antiwar side, to a sullen AWOL silence, or to despair. So far, there have been retractions from Peter Beinart, Norman Geras, David Aaronovitch, and more; only a few lone fighters remain, like Japanese troops hiding in the forest, unaware their war has been lost. Now, with What’s Left?, the most substantial work by a pro-war left intellectual has been published, and we can ask, Did this strange niche in Anglo-American politics—of which I was a part, for a time—produce any enduring insights?
Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?
Authors: Bengio Ofra
Published: February 2012

Four years after the war for democracy in Iraq began, it is evident that the project has failed dismally. Many analysts attribute this to flawed implementation. Although there is no denying that there were gross mistakes, the failure had much more to do with conceptual flaws and total lack of comprehension of, or worse still, disregard for Iraq's history and its problems. Had the project's architects taken these into account, they would not have opted to make Iraq the model democracy for the Arab world, even if only for lip service.
Gay Marriage: The Third Option
Authors: Hausknecht Murray
Published: February 2012

When the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in October 2006 that gay and lesbian couples must be guaranteed the same rights and benefits as heterosexual couples, the legislature saw only two possibilities: establishing civil unions or legalizing same-sex marriages. They chose the first alternative without considering a possible third option: civil unions for all couples and no marriages performed by the state.A formal definition of marriage clarifies the logic of this option. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, marriage is "the legal union of a man and a woman as husband andwife." Ignoring for the moment the last part of the definition, this means that a marriage is a "legal union" when a man and a woman secure a license—that is, the state's permission—to participate in a ceremony conducted by an agent of the state (typically an ordained member of the clergy, a judge, or simply any person so empowered) who pronounces them husband and wife. Legally speaking, then, marriage is a civil contract between a man and a woman sanctioned by the state, which thereby grants certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities to the couple.
Moving Left?: Bush's Decline and American Liberalism
Authors: Teixeira Ruy
Published: February 2012

Is America moving left? Such a question would have seemed odd before last November's election. Now it no longer seems so strange. Indeed, not only does the question not seem strange, but an affirmative answer can be given to it. I want to look at what happened last November, discuss what these voter shifts mean in terms of policy preferences, and assess what these developments mean for American liberalism as we look toward 2008 and beyond.
A Non-Zionist Reflects on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Authors: Goodheart Eugene
Published: February 2012

But the real problem lies not with the amount of attention given to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but with the kind and quality of attention. On the one hand, defenders of Israel, particularly in the political class in the United States, don't want to hear any serious criticism of Israel, while within Israel itself there is a ferment of criticism and self-criticism—a healthy reflection of its democratic character. Why shouldn't such criticism be tolerated outside of Israel? On the other hand, critics of Israel, mostly though not exclusively European, tend to obsess about Israel's violence toward the Palestinians, challenge its very existence, and pay little attention to the destructive policies and behavior of its adversaries. Criticism need not be mechanically balanced, as if every fault found on one side needs to be accompanied by a fault found on the other side. What is required is something close to the mediating spirit conducive to peace: an avoidance of an obsessive one-sidedness, which fails to hear and respond to the legitimate claims of the other side.
Genocide Without End?: The Destruction of Darfur
Authors: Reeves Eric
Published: February 2012

As genocidal destruction in the Darfur region of western Sudan enters its fifth year, we must accept not only the overwhelming disgrace of such prolonged human agony but register important shifts in the nature of the destruction—the appearance of new and different threats to the existence of both Arab and non-Arab populations in Darfur. Genocide is evolving in Darfur, mutating, and perhaps only now reaching the point of greatest human destruction.
Labor and the New Congress: A Strategy for Winning
Authors: Lichtenstein Nelson
Published: February 2012

A labor victory in the new Congress depends on the definition of what it means to win. Labor's broad agenda is passable in almost inverse relationship to that agenda's capacity to strengthen the institutional and political power of trade unionism itself. This has been true for more than forty years, ever since the mid-1960s, when, during the second of the two great surges of liberal legislation in the last century (the mid-1930s is the other one) civil rights, Medicare, immigration reform, and aid to education passed with relative ease, while the repeal of 14b, which allowed Southern and Western states to pass and maintain right-to-work laws had no chance in a Congress dominated by ostensible liberals.
The Weatherman Temptation
Authors: Wiener Jon
Published: February 2012

The National Book Award nomination in October for Eat the Document, a novel about the Weather Underground by Dana Spiotta, came at a time when several other strong novels addressed similar themes. Russell Banks's The Darling, Susan Choi's American Woman, and Neil Gordon's The Company You Keep, alongside Eat the Document, suggest a renewed interest in imagining what we might call "the Weatherman temptation." It arises when young activists are drawn toward violent tactics, out of despair for democracy—especially in the early seventies, when the Vietnam War seemed endless—and maybe again today, when the Iraq War and the war on terror also seem endless.
The Other Side of the Mountain
Authors: Wellington Darryl Lorenzo
Published: February 2012

As I write these words, Martin Luther King Day 2007 has just passed. As the years have gone by—2007 marks the thirty-ninth anniversary of his death—King's membership in the pantheon of great Americans and the historical uniqueness of the nonviolent protest movement he led appear indisputable. A national holiday is a deserved tribute. Yet, even though the annual memorial is the pinnacle of King's legacy, it is a burden upon it.
Is Socialism Liberal?: Democracy and French Socialist Ideas
Authors: Sadoun Marc
Published: February 2012

Arguments about the intellectual relationship between socialism and liberalism (understood in the European sense) are probably familiar to most left-wing Americans. To left-wing Europeans, and for the French in particular, it's a difficult matter. The idea that there is a positive relation between socialist and liberal concepts is scandalous in some quarters. Liberals are viewed by them as class enemies and false friends who threaten socialist integrity.
Root Causes and Rotten Ideas
Authors: Taylor Charles
Published: February 2012

Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home is a declaration of common cause with people who have declared themselves against the basic concept of democracy. It doesn't much matter that D'Souza is courting "traditional Muslims," the phrase he uses to denote those who don't share the radical Muslim belief in terrorism. His vision is of America as the altar of a West-East theocracy that would root out any American who doesn't share its values. D'Souza, he is careful to point out, does not support terrorism. The question The Enemy at Home leaves you with is, why not?
Editor's Page
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

The world is a grim place these days, but here at home, in the months since November, our spirits have lifted a bit, and in this issue of Dissent we are able to publish a few hopeful articles. It's not that we have stopped worrying, but we worry now with a new sense of purpose. Studying the 2006 voting statistics, Ruy Teixeira manages to look forward to 2008. (Benjamin Ross expresses some skepticism, which our readers will expect.) And Nelson Lichtenstein and Jim McNeill, analyzing the state of the unions, can write about (what we call on the front cover) "labor's agenda"—as if there might really be an agenda and not just a wish list. How all this will play out over the next eighteen months is uncertain, but things are possible now that we hardly dreamed of two years ago. In the next Dissent , we will carry our first article in years on national health insurance.
Gender and Politics in France: Ségolène Royal and the Socialist Party
Authors: Gaspard Françoise
Published: February 2012

Segolene Royal was opposed in the primary of the Socialist party (PS) by the "elephants." This is the nickname given to a handful of prominent and longtime party leaders with very impressive résumés and their own political aspirations (such as former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former prime minister Laurent Fabius, and former culture minister Jack Lang). They treated Royal's candidacy with mockery. "Who'll take care of the children?" asked Fabius when she announced her intention to run. Lang went further: "The presidential election is not a beauty contest." (Although he became a loyal campaigner for Royal, he has since joined a government commission under conservative victor Nicolas Sarkozy.) "It would have been better if she'd stayed home instead of reading her recipe cards," said Strauss-Kahn after one of her broadcasts (he now hopes to become head of the International Monetary Fund, thanks to Sarkozy). These remarks, widely reprinted in the press, worked against the three men in public opinion, which took them as signs of male chauvinism, and they did not hurt Royal. Quite the opposite. Members of the PS, demonstrating a desire to renew the political class and charmed by a female candidate, chose her by an unexpected majority of 60 percent. The party primary campaign thus indicated surprising popular backing for the candidate.
Taking Issue: Nick Cohen Disagrees with Johann Hari
Authors: Cohen Nick
Published: February 2012

My book What's Left ? is about deceit and the rich world's left, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the most deceitful piece to be written about it in any journal in any country should appear in a magazine of the intellectual left produced in New York ("Choosing Sides," by Johann Hari). As readers were not given an honest account of its contents, I should begin by saying that I ask how wealthy socialists, liberals, and feminists in Europe and North America came to turn their backs on the victims of movements that in their misogyny, homophobia, and racism represented everything the left is against—or says it's against. I ask whether the betrayals are merely a product of a justifiable revulsion against the Bush presidency that will go when he's gone or whether there are deeper and more uncomfortable causes that call into question what it means to be left wing today.
Arlene Skolnick Replies
Authors: Skolnick Arlene
Published: February 2012

Kay Trimberger and I are not far apart politically. We share a feminist perspective. We agree that "irreversible changes" have occurred to marriage and family life, and we agree that family change does not equate to moral decay. We agree about the kind of policies progressives should support—health care, child care, and so on that have been on the liberal agenda for decades.
Losing Sleep
Authors: Cheever Susan
Published: February 2012

Alexis de Tocqueville was so impressed with American jurisprudence that he called jury duty a free school for learning personal rights and practical law. But for decades being summoned to jury duty taught me different lessons-how to game the system and how to avoid serving. I was the Queen of Deferments: I was self-employed, I was a single mother, I moved and left no forwarding address. I thought serving on a jury would be annoying and time-consuming. "When you go to court you are putting your life in the hands of twelve people who aren't smart enough to avoid jury duty," someone once told me. I agreed. When the United States District Court finally caught up with me five years ago and I went downtown to serve like everyone else, I learned more about personal rights and practical law than I ever wanted to know. Jury duty wasn't just annoying and time consuming, it was haunting and heartbreaking.
Chosen by Default
Authors: Phillips Maxine
Published: February 2012

I had been called for jury duty before, and the results were always the same: everyone in the room where the lawyers questioned prospective jurors would laugh when I said that I worked for the Democratic Socialists of America or I would raise my hand when asked whether anyone had a problem with New York State's mandatory-sentencing drug laws. Either way, I was out of there. Even though now I worked for a magazine that didn't have the "S" word in its title, I thought Dissent might get the same reaction.
For Labor, Armageddon
Authors: Meyerson Harold
Published: February 2012

In the spring of 1995, when Lane Kirkland's old order was toppling and John Sweeney's young(er) Turks were poised to revitalize the American labor movement, one of the movement's leading operatives gave me his take on what was behind the revolt. "We didn't join the labor movement when it represented 20 percent of the work force," he said—and by "we," he meant a generation of more militant organizers, children of the sixties, who were then in their forties—"only to see it drift down to 5 percent on our watch."
Private Equity and Public Good
Authors: Diamond Stephen F.
Published: February 2012

The collapse of the credit markets over the last year has hit more than just the homebuilding and mortgage sectors of the economy. As interest rates increased, private equity, or "PE," an important new form of financial capital, was also rocked on its heels.
Democracy in Action
Authors: Rosen Ruth
Published: February 2012

Years later, I would tell my friends never to shirk their jury summonses. This is the most democratic experience you'll ever have, I'd insist. But when I first arrived at the Alameda County Superior Courthouse, located in what was the gritty area of downtown Oakland in the late 1980s, I had little desire to serve on a criminal trial. I simply assumed that no sane assistant D.A. would accept me as a member of a jury because I was a professor, a Berkeley resident, and a lifelong liberal activist.
Luck of the Draw
Authors: Barkan Joanne
Published: February 2012

It was a drug deal gone bad. Two white men from the suburbs drive to Harlem one night to buy cocaine. There's a hassle, a shot, and one of them ends up dead. The judge in the state criminal court in Lower Manhattan explains that much, and the voir dire (jury selection) begins with about forty of us sitting in the jury box. One by one, we answer the judge's list of questions, then the prosecutor's questions. But the defense lawyer wants our answers in unison.
The Alternate's Perspective
Authors: Wellington Darryl Lorenzo
Published: February 2012

I appreciate today that a jury summons is serious business, but I didn't two decades ago, when I was twenty-three years old and living in Savannah, Georgia. I received a jury summons and promptly ignored it. After ignoring the first summons, I received a second and ignored it. I am sure each summons spelled out the nature of my obligation and the penalties for absenteeism. But I did not think twice about dismissing them. I wasn't rebellious. I was young and self-centered and unimpressed. I simply didn't appreciate the difference between a jury summons and junk mail, such as letters from Ed McMahon claiming I had won a million dollars.
Employers and Domestic Workers: A Confucian Approach
Authors: Bell Daniel A.
Published: February 2012

About ten years ago, a close friend came to visit me in Hong Kong. This friend—now director of a center for ethics at a prestigious American university—seemed surprised when informed that my family had hired a live-in domestic helper to help care for our child and deal with domestic chores. He had just arrived from another trip, and since he was going to stay with us for a few days I told him to put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket and our helper would take care of it. My friend objected, saying he would do it himself. I didn't argue at the time, but after a few drinks I mentioned it again and he relented.
Catastrophic Exceptions
Authors: Bass Gary J.
Published: February 2012

Gary J. Bass Reviews Darius Rejali's Torture and Democracy .