bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
"The Other White Meat": Princess Superstar, Irony, Sexuality, and Whiteness in Hip Hop
Authors: Diner Robyn
Published: January 2007

This text takes you on a theoretical romp through Concetta Kirschner's hip-hop persona, Princess Superstar. To begin, I draw on Kim Nicolini's work regarding the ways in which one can perform the slut while calling both the category and the good girl / bad girl binary that grounds and surrounds it into question. I also elaborate on how such performances rely heavily and hopefully on irony. In order to flesh out these ideas, I re-present snatches of three specific Princess Superstar tracks: "NYC Cunt," "Kool Keith's Ass," and "Bad Babysitter." Then I pause to reflect on the highly positive media coverage associated with Princess Superstar. In many of these journalistic texts, whiteness as an identity category takes centre stage. As Richard Dyer suggests, when whiteness becomes visible-remarkable
Ethnic or Religious Cleavage? Investigating the Nature of the Conflict in Southern Thailand
Authors: Harish S. P
Published: January 2007

The provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat in Southern Thailand have witnessed a sharp spike in violence in the past few years. The unrest is threatening to tarnish Prime Minister Thaksin's period in office. The contemporary literature as well as the media tend to portray the strife as one between Buddhists and Muslims. This is markedly different from earlier studies which place less importance on religion and treat the discord as one between Thais and Malays. In this regard, this article aims to explain the transformation from a primarily "ethnic" strife to a predominantly "religious" conflict. It argues that despite the rise of the religious factor in the discord, it is flawed to treat the violence in Southern Thailand as entirely between Buddhists and Muslims. It further contends that the ethnic Thai-Malay divide is still deeply entrenched in the insurgency.
Indonesia Seven Years after Soeharto: Party System Institutionalization in a New Democracy
Authors: Tan Paige Johnson
Published: January 2007

This article examines what the performance of Indonesia's political parties seven years on from Soeharto's resignation can tell us about politics in the country. Using the party system institutionalization framework first developed by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully in Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (1995), the article finds that Indonesia's parties and party system show a mixed score card, strengths and weaknesses mixing to deprive the parties of legitimacy. On balance, the 2004 elections and 2005 regional elections represent a step towards further deinstitutionalization due to the primacy of personalities in the direct elections of the president and the regional heads. Democracy may indeed now be the only game in town, but its operation is likely to be rocky. There is a silver lining, however; accountability has been somewhat improved due to the electorate's realization of its power to reward and punish parties and political leaders.
The Gap between Educational Aspirations and Attainment for First-Generation College Students and the Role of Parental Involvement
Authors: McCarron Graziella Pagliarulo , Inkelas Karen Kurotsuchi
Published: January 2007

The primary purpose of this study was to examine if parental involvement had a significant influence on the educational aspirations of first-generation students as compared to the educational aspirations of non-first-generation students. Additionally, the study investigated if the educational aspirations of first-generation students differed from their actual educational attainments. Lastly, the study explored the differences in educational attainment for first-generation students by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of 1,879 students generated by the National Educational Longitudinal Study 1988-2000 was used as the basis for analysis.
The Voice of Reason: A Qualitative Examination of Black Student Perceptions of Black Culture Centers
Authors: Patton Lori D
Published: January 2007

Black Culture Centers (BCCs) represent safe and welcoming spaces for Black students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Resulting from the Black Student Movement of the 1960s, BCCs have become institutional mainstays that provide services and programs to the entire campus community. This study examined Black students' perceptions of the Institute of Black Culture at the University of Florida. The discussion and implications provide an in-depth understanding of the historical, current and future role, and mission of BCCs, as well as insights on the importance of BCCs as PWIs strive to better serve the needs of Black students.
Family structure and income inequality in families with children, 1976 to 2000
Authors: Martin Molly A.
Published: January 2007

Using 24 years of data from the March supplements to the Current Population Survey and detailed categories of family structure, including cohabiting unions, I assess the contribution of changes in family structure to the dramatic rise in family income inequality. Between 1976 and 2000, family structure shifts explain 41% of the increase in inequality, but the influence of family structure change is not uniform within this period or across racial-ethnic groups. In general, the estimated role of family structure change is inversely related to the magnitude of the changes in inequality. Furthermore, by including cohabitation, I find lower levels of total inequality and a weaker role for demographic shifts in family structure for trends in income inequality.
Female Consumerism and Household Authority in Early National New England
Authors: Sievens Mary Beth
Published: January 2007

This article explores connections between female consumer activity, male household authority, and concerns regarding the survival of the republic in late eighteenth, early nineteenth-century New England. Newspaper essays warning of the dire individual and national consequences of excessive female consumerism and husbands' newspaper advertisements accusing their wives of excessive spending reveal a contest within New England households over control of economic resources, the extent and meaning of women's consumer activities, and the implications of these activities for the nation. Wives' consumer spending challenged their husbands' authority and could threaten the men's position as economically independent citizens. Many New Englanders feared that women's spending would disrupt male household authority and undermine the success of the new republic.
Women's Trading Networks and Dangerous Economies in Eighteenth-Century New York City
Authors: Zabin Serena R
Published: January 2007

Ideologies of gender and ideologies of exchange came together in complex and contradictory ways to construct the Anglo-American marketplace. Poor and wealthy women alike had access to New York City markets, yet their trading activities exposed them to markedly different dangers. Court records, both civil and criminal, demonstrate the extent to which poor and enslaved women traded in an "informal economy." The business papers of three middling and elite white women reveal a different world in which women traded both locally and internationally. In both social strata, however, women's legal and economic practices both overrode and were constrained by the common-law fiction of coverture. Examining women's trading networks within and beyond the limits of the family shows many ways that female status helped and hindered their trading activities.
Post-Marital Return to Natal Home to Have the First Birth: Does This Sociocultural Tradition Disempower Women? Evidence from Gweru, Zimbabwe
Authors: Madebwe Crescentia , Madebwe Victor
Published: January 2007

Using a clinic-based questionnaire survey among first union postpartum women, and focus group discussions, the study analyses aspects of the sociocultural tradition of post-marital return to natal home to have the first birth that disempower women. Up to 64.8% of first time mothers surveyed had returned to natal homes to have first marital births. Mean duration of pregnancy at return to natal homes was 6.5 months. In over 60% of cases, the total period of stay at natal homes was five to six months. Return to natal homes is perceived as apprenticing women into motherhood. None of the women surveyed had achieved the optimum 12-13 prenatal care visits. The paper posits that in some social contexts, the tradition undermines survivorship status of mothers and their babies. Protracted spousal separation reduces partner(s)' involvement in childcare, increases vulnerability of women to STDs, HIV/AIDS infection, abandonment and union dissolution.
Market Oriented Reforms and Changes in Urban Household Income: A Study in Selected Small Towns of Ethiopia
Authors: Mulugeta Solomon
Published: January 2007

Ethiopia's economy, which was ailing severely during the 17 years of heavy-handed rule by a Marxist junta, recovered considerably following the introduction of market-oriented reforms during the early 1990s. Nonetheless, as the results of a household survey conducted in four small towns of the country show, it seems that the negative consequences of the reforms have outweighed their expected positive outcomes. In general, the findings suggest that the incidence of poverty has increased considerably in the study towns. On the whole, households in the small towns of coffee producing regions fared considerably better than those found in the towns of predominantly grain producing regions. It also appears that the economic liberalization has led to a considerably wider gap between the wealthier and the economically less fortunate households of the study towns.
Fitting In: Emily Dickinson Among Others
Authors: Leader Jennifer
Published: January 2007

This review of recent books addressing Dickinson as one part of a larger project suggests that Dickinson studies are having an influence on scholars who are dealing broadly with theories of literature, the lyric, or American canonicity. The essay reviews books by Nina Baym, Thomas Foster, Diana Fuss, Adam Sweeting, Helen Vendler, and Leslie Wheeler.
Hemingway and Cultural Geography: The Landscape of Logging in "The End of Something"
Authors: Godfrey Laura Gruber
Published: January 2007

One of Hemingway's early short stories, In Our Time's "The End of Something," demonstrates his acute spatial awareness in the form of cultural geography. The abandoned mill and the second-growth timber in the fictional landscape of "The End of Something" are more than a backdrop. Instead, the presentation of geography in "The End of Something" serves as a form of cultural history and preservation, demonstrating the careful interweaving of human characters with their communities and their landscapes, creating an evocative portrayal of how the Michigan logging industry influenced the history and emotion of an American geography.
History with a Mission: Abraham Kawadza and Narratives of Agrarian Change in Zimbabwe
Authors: Leedy Todd H.
Published: January 2007

He was the first man who was clever enough to realize he could sell some green maize at the mine in Penhalonga… Even to build the good houses, you had to come and copy from Kawadza. To buy ploughshares, they had to come and copy from Kawadza… Even those who bought cars, they had to copy from Kawadza… Chief Gandanzara used to walk on foot whenever he wanted to meet anyone. But because of seeing Kawadza riding a horse, he himself decided to ride on a horse… We can say in Mani-caland, or we can say in Zimbabwe, most of the good things were started with Kawadza.

Histories of Africa produced during the colonial period generally begin with the premise that indigenous societies existed in a timeless, static condition. The sort of broad social changes that formed the very basis of history had seemingly never occurred within Africa. Therefore history in Africa began with early European contacts and colonial-era accounts proceeded to chronicle the variety of European activities in Africa. Even more than most Europeans in the colonies, missionaries viewed themselves as direct agents of change and therefore creators of history. Their personal accounts, usually written for public consumption back home, inevitably included both struggles and successes inherent to mission work. More specifically, in their accounts of agricultural change among African societies, missionaries frequently attempted to script for themselves the central role as protagonists driving a story of progress and civilization. In order to highlight the problematic nature of missionary accounts and their influence on other interpretations, I examine here a variety of historical sources relating to Abraham Kawadza. His life experiences support a self-peasantization approach to rural history that challenges any mission-centric interpretation of agrarian change in colonial Zimbabwe.
Cued Speeches: the Emergence ofShaurias Colonial Praxis in German East Africa, 1850–1903
Authors: Pesek Michael
Published: January 2007

In 1891 the German explorer Theodor Bumiller wrote an angry letter from the shores of Lake Nyassa (modern Lake Malawi) to the Committee of the German Anti Slavery Lottery, the financiers of his expedition. The goal of the expedition was to bring a steamship onto the lake to fight alleged slave hunters. The initiator and leader of the expedition was no less a person than Hermann von Wissmann, then the empire's most popular explorer and conqueror and first Governor of German East Africa. Bumiller had been Wissmann's long-standing friend and companion on several expeditions. Since the very first days, there had been disputes over the equipping and organization of the expedition. In all previous letters that Wissmann and Bumiller had written to the committee, they had responded to reproaches of throwing the lottery's money around by arguing that Africa is not Europe and there were many eventualities with which nobody was able to reckon, if being on an expedition.

However, a member of the expedition, a certain Captain Max Praeger, whose duty was to navigate the steamer on the lake, had sent a report, in which he had sharply criticized both Wissmann and Bumiller. Bumiller answered with the argument that Praeger was not in a position to give an expert opinion on the expedition, because he was not a trueAfrikaner, a person who has gained first-hand experiences of the African continent and its people. Praeger, Bumiller sneered, was only sitting on the steamer's deck and thus having no contact with Africans. To Bumiller, what qualified anAfrikaneras expert on Africa were eye-to-eye encounters with African people.
The It in the I: Patrice Leconte, Henry James, and Analytic Love
Authors: Bersani Leo
Published: January 2007

To what extent can the psychoanalytic dialogue help us to define and perhaps practice what Foucault called a "new relational mode," or, in Adam Phillips's terms, a new way for human subjects to be present to one another? This question is addressed in a discussion of Patrice Leconte's film, Intimate Strangers, and Henry James's The Beast in the Jungle (a work cryptically referred to in Leconte's film). The analytic exchange and the work of art can both explore the possibility of a relational context that needs potential being. What is the viability of that context outside of art and analysis?
Henry James and "the forces of violence": On the Track of "big game" in "The Jolly Corner"
Authors: Horne Philip
Published: January 2007

This paper tries to increase the range and complexity of the connection between Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. They only met on four occasions, yet the greatest American statesman and the greatest American writer of their age were intensely conscious of each other. Each one's sense of the other, which certainly involves some misreading of that other's aims and achievements, is formative and representative. The story of James and Roosevelt raises a ghost of inward, metaphorical adventure and shows James's spirit as more hauntedly, more directly, more adventurously engaged with the forces of violence than might have been thought.
Tangible Objects: Grasping "The Aspern Papers"
Authors: Rosenberg Joseph Elkanah
Published: January 2007

"Sir Dominick Ferrand" suggests that letter burning may be a way of setting the captured past free from the vagaries of the present. And nowhere in the Jamesian canon would this be more clear than in "The Aspern Papers." The author moves from looking at what it means to grasp the past to viewing the object that is being grasped. To do so means viewing the tale's "time-vision" as being bound up in a matrix of paper and ash: a system of circulation and exchange in which the most intimate markers of identity—names—are addressed in burning letters.
"The Beldonald Holbein": The Artist's Power and Its Dangers as Narrative Center
Authors: Yacobi Tamar
Published: January 2007

"The Beldonald Holbein" (1901) is generally read as a tale of jealousy and revenge: Lady Beldonald victimizes her companion, supposed to be a plain-looking foil to her patroness's beauty, but hailed by the art world as an embodied Holbein. The narrator-painter is typically considered the perceptive and reliable witness. I question this consensus from two complementary angles. First, the painter's interpretation of events—not least, of his own role(s)—throws doubt on his reliability. Second, his problematic narrative joins forces with other pointers to indicate that the painter has a stronger claim than the two ladies to the tale's center of interest. A running comparison with James's poetics elsewhere further supports and elaborates this convergence of narrational and hierarchical centrality.
Using Mail to Reach Patients Seen at an Urban Health Care Facility
Authors: Duffy Donna , Goldberg Jack , Buchwald Dedra
Published: January 2007

Urban American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) are highly mobile, and little is known about ways to include them in research or clinical activities. We evaluated postal mailings as a means of reaching patients seen at an urban Indian health care facility (60% of whom were AI/AN) and identified factors associated with receipt of mail. As part of a clinical trial, a Native art calendar was sent via first class mail to 5,633 clients seen at the urban Indian clinic during the prior two years. A multi-step address verification process was conducted, including telephone contacts, Web searches, and in-person visits. Logistic regressions examined the association of client characteristics with accurate addresses. Based on initial mailings and in-person location efforts, we estimated that only 61% of clients actually received the calendars. The multi-step address verification process was significantly less likely to identify working addresses for clients who were AI/AN and clients who were seen more than 3 months before the study. Reaching urban AI/ANs for research activities and health care is difficult. Innovative strategies are needed to locate this highly mobile and understudied population.
Training Welfare Caseworkers in Service Excellence: Increasing Children's Medicaid Coverage
Authors: Lichtenstein Richard , Banaszak-Holl Jane , Calloway Joy , Allen Rochelle , Lopez Ellen , Ross Rachel , Johnson Penni , Riley Sherry
Published: January 2007

Many low-income children who are eligible for public sector health insurance remain uninsured. There are many barriers to enrolling these children, but one key issue is parents' reluctance to use the services of the local enrollment agency, which is usually the welfare office. The Eastside Access Partnership, a community-academic coalition on the Eastside of Detroit, addressed the problem of uninsured-but-eligible children through a variety of interventions focused on (1) enhancing community members' understanding of the enrollment process and (2) reducing institutional barriers to enrollment. One of these interventions addressed the institutional barriers by developing a customer service excellence training program for welfare caseworkers. The training program curriculum, which was developed following the principles of community-based participatory research, included extensive input from community residents, welfare agency staff, and academic researchers. The training sessions received positive evaluations from participants and agency executives. A more thorough evaluation of the project is under way.
Health Literacy among English-Speaking Parents in a Poor Urban Setting
Authors: Lo Sarah , Sharif Iman , Ozuah Philip O
Published: January 2007

We surveyed English-speaking parents attending an inner-city health center. Subjects read the label on a bottle of liquid medicine and 1) demonstrated how much medicine they should give, 2) stated how many times a day they should give the medicine, and 3) stated when they should give the next dose. We calculated adjusted odds ratios to test for the likelihood of incorrect medication dosing for subjects with and without demographic risk factors. Three hundred twenty six subjects participated. Overall, 252 (77%) demonstrated incorrect medication dosing. Medication dosing was more likely to be incorrect among young parents (AOR 2.45; CI 1.14, 5.26), immigrants (AOR 2.27; CI 1.04, 4.96), subjects without a high school degree (AOR 2.05; CI 1.04,4.05), and those who did not recall ever having been shown how to use a medicine dropper (AOR 1.79; CI 1.01,3.19). Implications for practice are discussed.
The Financial Value of Services Provided by a Rural Community Health Fair
Authors: Dulin Mary Katherine , Olive Kenneth E , Florence Joseph A , Sliger Carolyn
Published: January 2007

There has been little discussion in the literature regarding the financial value of the services provided to the participants in health fairs. This article examines the financial value of preventive services provided through a community health fair in an economically depressed area of southwest Virginia. Current Procedural Terminology codes were assigned to the services provided in order to estimate costs participants might incur for such services. An average 50-year-old man would have paid up to $320 to obtain commonly recommended preventive services available free at the fair. An average 50-year-old woman would have paid up to $495. Overall, over $58,000 in services were provided through the health fair. This community health fair provided preventive services that many participants otherwise might have found to be cost-prohibitive.
Increasing Access to Care for the Uninsured: Considering the Options in California Counties
Authors: Gardner Annette , Kahn James G
Published: January 2007

We interviewed California county health agency staff and administered a 58-county survey in 2002 and 2004 to inventory programs designed to improve access to care for the uninsured, and to assess county ability to meet the needs of California's uninsured during slow economic periods. Most counties have established means to connect people to existing public insurance programs and services have been expanded. Growth in new health care insurance programs for children and modest growth for adults are apparent. Counties pursue funding opportunities by a variety of strategies (e.g., leveraging of existing funding to secure new funds such as federal Healthy Community Access Program (HCAP) grants). While counties vary in their resources, political will, and barriers to care, they share a strong commitment to access to care. The implications of local efforts for state and federal policymaking are significant. In the absence of federal or state reform, county initiatives, particularly children's coverage expansions, may coalesce into state-level reform. Second, the state may move closer to access to health care for all as it recognizes the complementarity of county programs.
Primary Care for Urban Adolescent Girls from Ethnically Diverse Populations: Foregone Care and Access to Confidential Care
Authors: McKee Diane , Fletcher Jason
Published: January 2007

Adolescent girls face unique challenges in health care utilization, which can result in unmet needs. We sought to describe settings of usual care and primary care use, and to identify predictors of foregone care and experience of confidential care in a primarily racial/ethnic minority low-income sample. We conducted an anonymous computer-assisted self-administered survey of 9th–12th grade girls (n=819) in three Bronx public high schools, the majority of whom were Hispanic (69.8%) and Black (21.4%). Most (80%) reported having a usual source of care. Of these, 77.2% had a regular doctor. Those least likely to have a usual source of care were non-U.S. born girls (73.1% vs. 83.1%) and less acculturated girls. Predictors of foregone care in the last year include being sexually active, poor family social support, and low self esteem. Predictors of access to confidential care at last visit were age, self-efficacy for confidential care, having a regular doctor, setting of care, and having had a recent physical exam. Many urban adolescent girls, especially non-U.S. born girls, lack a usual source of care and regular health care provider. Continued attention to reducing both financial and non-financial barriers to care is required to ensure access to and quality of care for diverse populations.
A Cervical Cancer Curriculum for Hispanic Adolescents in Rural High Schools: A Pilot Study
Authors: Tejeda Silvia , Thompson Beti , Coronado Gloria D , Rees Jane Mitchell
Published: January 2007

We assessed the effectiveness of a one-hour curriculum about cervical cancer for high school students. The curriculum was developed and delivered to 142 female students in the 9th to 12th grade at two high schools in rural Eastern Washington State. Self-administered questionnaires assessed changes in knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes related to cervical cancer and Pap smears. Baseline results from a predominantly Hispanic adolescent sample (73%) indicated low pre-test knowledge and negative beliefs and attitudes. Post-test results indicated that there was a significant change in the intervention group for knowledge questions when compared with the control group. Only some changes to more positive beliefs and attitudes about cervical cancer and screening were significant in the post-test. The findings suggest that a culturally appropriate high school curriculum may inform young Hispanic women about important cervical cancer screening practices.
Worker Rights and Low Wage Industrialization: How to Avoid Sweatshops
Authors: Arnold Denis Gordon , Hartman Laura Pincus
Published: January 2007

Disputes concerning global labor practices are at the core of contemporary debates regarding globalization. Critics have charged multinational enterprises with the unjust exploitation of workers in the developing world. In response, some economists and "classical liberals" have argued that these criticisms are grounded in a naïve understanding of global economics. They contend instead that sweatshops constitute an inevitable and essential feature of economic development. To the contrary, we argue that there are persuasive theoretical and empirical reasons for rejecting the arguments of these defenders of sweatshops. In particular, we argue that respecting workers entail an obligation to adhere to local labor laws, and we demonstrate that it is feasible for multinational corporations (MNCs) to provide decent working conditions and fair wages to workers. The main conclusion of this essay is that there are compelling ethical and strategic reasons for MNCs to embrace voluntary codes of conduct.
Dancing the Divine Female: Diasporic Women's Encounters with the Hindu Goddess through Indian Classical Dance
Authors: Mruthinti Harshita K
Published: January 2007

Within the American diasporic context, the significance of the Hindu Goddess takes on new interpretative meanings for both Indian females and western feminists interested in the female divine; these women interact with the Goddess through an array of diverse practices and discourses, which in turn shape their own religious identities. This article observes the variety of perspectives on the Hindu Goddess across a broad spectrum of female practitioners, including western feminists, traditional Hindu women from India, and Hindu women living within the American diaspora. Furthermore, the article examines how Hindu diasporic women utilize the classical Indian dance forms of Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi to mold their religious identities, and to encounter Hinduism's divine female.
Metaethnography in the Age of "Popular Folklore"
Authors: Anagnostu Yiorgos
Published: January 2007

This article focuses on the current proliferation of ethnographies written by nonprofessional ethnographers, a mode of cultural production I call "popular folklore." My task in this work is twofold. First, I discuss the function of professional folklore and anthropology as well as of the cultural commodification of ethnicities in the United States in reconfiguring the "common people" from objects of ethnography into legitimate ethnographic authors. Second, I discuss the value of a metaethnographic perspective on popular folklore for the discipline. I do so by undertaking a close analysis of the politics of a feminist popular ethnography of the "folkness" of Greek America. My reading makes a case for the productive cross-fertilization between the metaethnography of popular folklore and professional ethnography. The circulation of popular folklore, I suggest, opens a discursive space for a tactically interventionist folklore ethnography that engages in a critical dialogue with its nonprofessional counterparts. This proposed research agenda seeks to enlarge the universe of alternative meanings about the social constitution of selves or collectivities while raising acute questions about the ways to enhance the public resonance of critical folklore scholarship.
The Tempest Revisited in Martinique: AimÃ© CÃ©saire's Shakespeare
Authors: Khoury Joseph
Published: January 2007

This paper is concerned with how Aimé Césaire in Une tempête d'après de Shakespeare proceeds along the colonizer/colonized lines of Shakespeare's composition. The difference between the two playwrights, however, is that Shakespeare was problematizing the colonizer/colonized relationship for his strictly English (i.e. colonizer) audience, while Césaire was writing for both the colonizers and the colonized. And though there are differences in the way the playwrights thought out the problem of master-slave relations, there is a striking similarity in how they expounded this relationship of Magician-Duke and Monster-Slave. Only the slave who desires freedom resists the master. It is this very relationship of resistance that must be discussed. Because Césaire was unabashedly Hegelian in his thinking, and because Shakespeare's understanding of the master/slave relationship was Hegelian avant la lettre, the study takes a Hegelian line of thought as its core, specifically Alexandre Kojève's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (most notably, chapter 1). Central to this reading is the fact that in order to become free the slave must engage the master in mortal combat. But having the slave die would symbolize the perpetual oppression and death of all colonized peoples, and so neither author allows Caliban to die. In order to highlight today's postcolonial reality, Césaire extends this theme further: by not killing Caliban, and by remaining on the island, Prospero admits that his own being is defined by the Other, his slave.
Re-Imagined Histories: Rewriting the Early Modern in Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh
Authors: Narain Mona
Published: January 2007

This essay argues that Salman Rushdie's novel presents a re-imagined history of India through the palimpsest of the early modern antecedents of its Jewish-Catholic protagonists. Conceptually, a palimpsest refers to the erasure or partial erasure or alteration of a text to provide room for a new imprint. Previous critical evaluations of the novel have tended to center on its postcolonial appeal to the aesthetic of difference and to the political locations of hybridity in a multicultural society. Yet Narain points out that this is a novel written in the shadow of the fatwa and intense Hindu-Muslim riots in India and as such, it responds strongly to the religious dimensions of history. Rushdie shifts the focus away from the binaries of Hindu and Muslim that inform the metanarratives of both radical fundamentalist Indians as well as multicultural assimilationists. Instead, he deliberately focuses on an early modern Moorish-Portuguese-Jewish Indian past that challenges and destabilizes the familiar dichotomies of Indian political discourse. Narain argues that Rushdie's palimpsest of the early modern influx of the Jews and Portuguese to India gains an agency that reconfigures both an allegorical and actual past and retrieves history from its passive shelf to inform a contentious present. The essay also interrogates the epistemological problem of postcoloniality's usage of the early modern as an alternative to colonial modernity.
Of Cannibals and Colonizers: Irony, Gender, and Ecology in Rouge BrÃ©sil
Authors: Racevskis Roland
Published: January 2007

This essay develops a detailed reading of Jean-Christophe Rufin's Rouge Brésil, an historical novel recounting the failed sixteenth-century French colonial project in South America. This tale of religious war, of cultural difference, of voyage and attempted (but failed) colonization gives an ironic, critical account of French colonialism. On the blurry borderline between Western culture and the New World, a number of Rufin's characters create hybrid identities that reveal the complexity of initial encounters between the colonizers and the colonized, questioning this very dichotomy in the process. The essay's analysis of Rouge Brésil focuses first on irony and satire as instruments of critical reflection on colonialism, then on the representation of women and gender in the colonialist enterprise, and thirdly on the role of nature and ecology in the story. While it profoundly affected the indigenous population of Brazil, the French colonial mission as recounted by Rufin also had a devastating impact on the non-human environment. The conclusion situates Rufin's postcolonial revision of early modern history in the context of twenty-first-century environmental issues and cultural conflicts.
Japan in the Life of Early Ryukyu
Authors: Nelson Thomas
Published: January 2007

The sources detailing the history of Ryukyu between 1372 and 1609 pay great attention to links with China. Ties to Japan, by contrast, have either gone unrecorded or else the documents describing them have been lost. The aim of this essay is to redress the balance by drawing on scattered Korean and Japanese records to demonstrate that Japan both exerted an important cultural and economic influence on Ryukyu and dominated the northward leg of Ryukyu's foreign trade.
Profound Forces in the Making of Modern Japan
Authors: Pyle Kenneth B
Published: January 2007

The structure, governance, institutions, principles, and norms of the international system have decisively influenced modern Japan's international behavior and its domestic political structure. It is a common characteristic of the conservative elites to vigilantly monitor and to adapt to its workings. This strategic style is a legacy of premodern influences and the formative experience of the Meiji Restoration. Each of the major transformations of the international system since the mid-nineteenth century induced sweeping changes in Japan's foreign policy and domestic institutions. The end of the cold war system is doing likewise. Historiography should reflect this powerful influence.
Justice Not Done : The Hanging of Elizabeth Workman
Authors: Gaffield Scott M.
Published: January 2007

Dans l'histoire judiciaire du Canada, une seule femme fut exécutée contre la recommandation du jury : Elizabeth Workman. Pendue en 1873 à Sarnia, en Ontario, cette mère de classe ouvrière et immigrante avait été condamnée du meurtre de son époux. Cet article vise à approfondir notre compréhension de la pendaison d'Elizabeth Workman en répondant à un ensemble de questions reliées : Pourquoi fut-elle condamnée? Pourquoi le jury recommanda-t-il qu'elle soit graciée? Pourquoi cette recommandation ne fut-elle pas acceptée? Pour répondre de manière fondée à ces interrogations, un corpus substantiel de sources primaires et secondaires a été consulté, incluant le dossier judiciaire, des données de recensements, des quotidiens locaux ainsi que des travaux scientifiques plus récents sur le contexte social et légal du procès et de l'exécution. Ces données suggèrent qu'EIizabeth Workman est devenue la seule femme à être exécutée contrairement à la recommandation d'un jury suite à une convergence d'actions individuelles, du contexte social et de la culture et pratique légales.
The Use and Abuse of the Cultural Defense
Authors: Renteln Alison Dundes
Published: January 2007

Invoquer la défense culturelle est devenue une stratégie judiciaire populaire bien que controversée. Expliquant dans un premier temps que la portée de la défense culturelle est plus vaste que généralement comprise et qu'elle sert aussi bien à atténuer des sentences, à créer des exceptions à des politiques établies qu'à augmenter les montants de dommage et intérêts accordés, j'identifie ensuite les principes normatifs qui justifient ce type de défense. Même si elle peut être appuyée fondé sur des principes, si la défense culturelle a une chance d'être adoptée formellement, des politiques doivent être établies pour prévenir des abus. Je propose des critères d'application de la défense culturelle qui sont illustrés par quelques cas. La présentation d'exemples où la défense culturelle est appropriée est suivie d'une démonstration des abus potentiels, à partir de cas particuliers dans lesquels les arguments culturels avancés ne remplissaient pas les critères du test proposé. L'article se termine sur des recommandations pour assister les tribunaux à trouver les experts qui peuvent authentifier les requêtes culturelles.
Legal Consciousness and Resistance in Carribean Seasonal Agricultural Workers
Authors: Smith Adrian A.
Published: January 2007

On considère que les travailleurs des Antilles du Commonwealth qu'embauchent les producteurs agricoles au Canada en vertu du Programme canadien des travailleurs agricoles saisonniers ignorent tout des normes du travail en vigueur. Cet état de fait constitue non seulement une affirmation empirique concernant l'ignorance et la connaissance du droit, mais aussi une affirmation théorique concernant le rôle du droit dans les relations capitalistes, et surtout la façon dont il façonne les consciences et les comportements. Le cas des travailleurs agricoles saisonniers présente une occasion intéressante d'appliquer les études sur la conscience du droit. En s'appuyant sur les assises de ce nouveau domaine en émergence qui examine la conscience du droit chez les non-juristes, le présent article conteste l'aspect à la fois empirique et théorique de l'affirmation relative à l'ignorance du droit. Les nouvelles études en conscience du droit font l'objet d'une révision importante pour expliquer le ro1e du droit dans l'énoncé des règles de base d'un capitalisme libéral. En ce sens, cet article ouvre la voie à des études subséquentes sur le rapport qui existe entre la résistance du travailleur agricole saisonnier et le droit.
Doing Justice After Conflict : The Case for Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission
Authors: Ameh Robert Kwame
Published: January 2007

Le Ghana a rejoint le groupe des démocraties en transition en créant la Commission de réconciliation nationale (CRN), qui débuta ses travaux en 2002. Elle reçut le mandat d'enquêter sur les atrocités et violations des droits humains passées, de recommander des compensations adéquates pour les victimes et de réconcilier la nation. Or, les attentes et la confiance des Ghanéens en la capacité de la CRN de guérir les blessures du passé, mettre un terme au cycle de vengeance et de vendettas et de réconcilier la nation furent partagées depuis que la Commission termina ses travaux et remit son rapport, en octobre 2004. Cet article prend position pour la Commission de réconciliation nationale au Ghana, soutenant qu'elle est la meilleure parmi les solutions possibles pour traiter des violations passées des droits humains au Ghana.
Entre éthique, justice et politique : la demande de pardon des États. Le cas des Unangan (Aléoutes) de l'Alaska
Authors: de la Casinière Annik Chiron
Published: January 2007

This paper deals with the official apology offered by governments to peoples or groups, often a minority of their own nation, who were once victims of a crime against humanity. After staying six months in Alaska with the Unangan people who, in 1988 for the first time in the country's history, received from the American Congress official apologies and financial compensation for their evacuation and internment during WWII, I have returned with a significant amount of data. They tend to show that if such apologies, although considered unanimously as a positive gesture, are not accompanied by certain essential conditions, they are viewed mainly as a political strategy and comedy. Furthermore, if this evolution results directly from recently-acquired historical, legal and political consciousness of peoples, especially of Aboriginal peoples, it represents a new kind of test for individuals and groups in our democracies who are really concerned with common welfare.
Like Strangers in a Foreign Land: Chinese Officers Prepared at American Military Colleges, 1904-37
Authors: Sacca John Wands
Published: January 2007

The lives of Chinese "returned students" who had studied military science in the United States between 1904 and 1937 straddled the end of the Qing dynasty and the creation of the Chinese Republic—a turbulent era of foreign hegemony and almost constant civil war. National and provincial military establishments held unique positions in the fragmented republic, yet commissions and postings were limited by alumni association membership. Tainted by their foreign education and distrusted for their lack of membership in dominant alumni cliques, they were denied significant roles in the line and staff of the Nationalist Army. Forced by circumstances to rely on one another, most would eventually abandon its ranks.
Military History and Its Fictions
Authors: Spiller Roger J
Published: January 2007

The conception and practice of military history, once regarded as the foundation for any understanding of war, has responded cautiously to the momentous intellectual and contemporary developments of the past half century. While our conservative habits have encouraged a degree of professional maturity as a field, military history's intellectual authority has declined as other disciplines have taken more adventurous approaches to the study of war and assumed a more prominent role in contemporary military criticism. Yet because of military history's intellectual progress, the power of military history to range beyond its conservatism and to address contemporary military problems is greater than ever.
The Palestinian Elections: Sweeping Victory, Uncertain Mandate
Authors: Shikaki Khalil
Published: January 2007

Abstract: The surprise victory of Hamas in the 26 January 2006 Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections has captured worldwide attention and raised major questions about the direction of Palestinian politics and the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations. By giving Hamas a parliamentary majority, Palestinian voters were neither endorsing extremism nor rejecting the peace process. Other Palestinian institutions have the potential to restrain Hamas, but there is a risk that it will turn to Iran or Syria for help. A Hamas-led PA aligned to an Iranian-Syrian axis could lead to either the collapse of the PA or the end of the Palestinian democratic experiment.
Reforming Intelligence: Russiaâs Failure
Authors: Tsypkin Mikhail
Published: January 2007

Abstract: The origins of today's Russian intelligence services suggest that their transition to real democratic civilian controlâwhich has yet to happenâis likely to be anything but easy. While the last months of the Soviet Union's existence saw the splitting of the KGB into several agencies, there has been no basic change in either the personnel of the state-security establishment or the its broad scope of responsibilities. Nothing about the underlying situation will change until the Russian people face the malign role that spies and secret police responsible only to some supreme leader have played in their country's history.
Mistaking Data for "Theory"
Authors: Cook Steven A
Published: January 2007

We should not be too hasty to discount the prodemocratic political ferment in the Arab world, nor be fooled into thinking that Islamist groups will play a constructive part in democratic transitions.
History Repeats Itself in Pakistan
Authors: Haqqani Husain
Published: January 2007

General Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 military coup, has made it clear that he intends to continue running Pakistan, combining the offices of army chief and president in his own person. Musharraf's political system revolves around his personality and is dependent upon the army's position as the final arbiter of Pakistan's politics. If Musharraf is to leave a legacy different from those of previous military rulers, he must tackle the contempt for civilians and the prejudice against politicians found in the higher military ranks. Not until the army's institutional thinking changes or its hold becomes weaker can Pakistan be expected to make a transition to democratic rule.
Belarus: Learning From Defeat
Authors: Silitski Vitali
Published: January 2007

Before Belarusian voters went to the polls for the March 2006 presidential election, incumbent president Alyaksandr Lukashenka had taken steps to guarantee that the voting would be a meaningless exercise which he could not lose, but could use in order to claim the "democratic" legitimacy he needs. Despite the disappointment that the opposition must feel after its defeat, the outburst of political protest and social activism that the opposition campaign called forth offers reason to take heart. Advocates of political change can still raise the costs of repression and strengthen the democratic movement in preparation for future opportunities to advance the cause of freedom.
A “Left Turn” in Latin America? Problems of Success in Chile
Authors: Valenzuela Arturo , Dammert Lucia
Published: January 2007

Abstract: Chile’s new Socialist president Michelle Bachelet will seek to maintain the country’s socioeconomic progress, but her attempt to cure growing alienation from the traditional parties could create a new set of problems. Chile’s success has owed much to the ability of disciplined parties with roots in society to agree for the sake of governance. The country still faces many challenges, including reducing inequality, renewing the educational system, and strengthening economic competitiveness. Chile’s leaders can best address them by working with the population to overhaul democratic institutions to make them more open, participatory, and responsive.
Hearth and Home in Cape Town: African Women, Energy Resourcing, and Consumption in an Urban Environment
Authors: Lee Rebekah
Published: January 2007

This article adds to the literature on energy consumption in South Africa through the contribution of a historical and gendered perspective. It focuses on how differing generations of African women in the apartheid (1948â1994) and post-apartheid periods resourced, consumed, and related to various types of fuels. "Energy histories" solicited from twenty-five African female residents of Cape Town across three generational cohorts show women's broad and complex engagement with the material fabric of the city. In an era of globalized access and technological change, electricity was increasingly seen as essential to a modern, "easy" lifestyle. Electrical appliances themselves provided a medium through which women questioned and brokered household power relations. Yet women also revealed a tenacious loyalty to older patterns of energy use. This was reflective of the historically uneven progress towards electrification of African townships, as well as issues more intimately related to gendered and generational dynamics.