bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Communism in Latin America
Authors: Gonzalez Mike
Published: February 2014

Latin America’s communist parties were shaped by the Soviet Union’s political priorities up to 1945. This sparked debate with those that emphasized the specificity of Latin American conditions, notably the Peruvian Marxist Mariátegui. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 launched a new continental strategy, based on the guerrilla warfare strategies advocated by Che Guevara. By the late 1960s, these had failed. The election of Salvador Allende to the Chilean presidency in 1970 briefly suggested an electoral strategy to socialism, until it was crushed in the military coup of 1973. Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution opened new hopes for a Central American revolution, but this movement was destroyed with the active support of the U.S.. In 1994 the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico signalled a new phase of resistance against neo-liberalism and a rising tide of new social movements carried Left governments to power in what President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela dubbed the era of ‘twenty-first-century socialism’.
The Cult of Personality and Symbolic Politics
Authors: Leese Daniel
Published: February 2014

The article discusses characteristics and relevance of leader cults and symbolic politics within state socialism. After defining distinctive features of modern personality cults, the article traces trajectories of major cults over time and highlights interconnections, similarities, and differences between them. Cults served to centre emotions and loyalties in a personalized symbol and were part of a wider cosmos of symbolic politics, which played an important role in communicating party policies and social hierarchies. However, a purely instrumentalist understanding fails to account for the manifold popular expressions of the cults, especially within local contexts. The article argues that both official and non-officially ascribed meanings should be taken seriously, and further explores state–society interactions in fostering and sustaining leader cults.
Communist Revolution and Political Terror
Authors: Strauss Julia
Published: February 2014

The convergence of terror and revolution has been noted from the time of the French and Russian revolutions. This article lays out the ways in which the concept of extreme political violence in communist revolution from Russia to Cambodia continues to be both politicized and resistant to agreement about such basics as definition, scale, and numbers of victims. There is particular disagreement about whether to count as victims of terror those who were the collateral damage from poorly conceived and brutally implemented policies such as collectivization and the Great Leap Forward alongside terror deliberately inflicted upon particularly targeted individuals and groups. The article suggests that whether deliberate or incidental, terror in communist systems is best understood as proactive and reactive campaigns to ensure regime security by mobilizing the bureaucracy and engaging in a display of communicative theatre with mass populations through such forms as mass trials.
Rural Life
Authors: Brown Jeremy
Published: February 2014

Everyday life under communism was predominantly rural, and most rural people living under communism were Chinese. This chapter examines rural work, including collective land arrangements, varying types of compensation, and creative survival strategies. It also focuses on the central roles of family and sex in the communist countryside. It concludes by assessing how technology, from tractors to electricity to irrigation, transformed villages. Centred on China but also covering rural life in Albania, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cuba, Hungary, Laos, North Korea, Romania, and Vietnam, the chapter shows that some villagers welcomed certain changes introduced by communist regimes, but systemic rural–urban inequality meant that rural people shouldered heavier burdens than city dwellers.
Workers under Communism
Authors: Vu Tuong
Published: February 2014

This essay compares the experience of workers and workplace politics under communism in the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, China, and Vietnam. State–labour relations in these contexts were fraught with tension from the start. Workers’ experience varied widely over time and space. Nevertheless, all workers were subject to state-imposed forms of domination at the workplace and in society at large. This domination was the effect of a powerful ideology, dense organizations, and social hierarchies that were mutually reinforcing. Many workers actively supported communist goals and were rewarded, but the system failed to motivate enough workers to make it work in the long term. Against the background of stagnant or declining living standards, propaganda failed to enlighten most workers while coercion could not produce disciplined and efficient ones. Socialist workers were disempowered but not powerless to manipulate and resist the system.
Privilege and Inequality in Communist Society
Authors: Filtzer Don
Published: February 2014

Like capitalist societies, the Soviet Union and the Soviet-type societies of Eastern Europe showed a high degree of social stratification and inequality. By the 1960s the rapid upward mobility of worker and peasant children in the intelligentsia and Party hierarchy had noticeably slowed, and an inherited class structure emerged. Because privileges in the Soviet Union were only weakly monetarized, and wealth could not be accumulated or inherited, privileged groups perpetuated themselves mainly through the use of internal ‘connections’ and by ensuring their offspring preferential access to higher education through which they would secure elite positions. We also see important differentiations within the workforce: urban vs. rural workers; ‘core’ workers vs. migrants; and men vs. women. China prior to the reform movement displayed a similar overall picture, with, however, some radical differences. Under Mao the gap in living standards between Party officials and ordinary workers was much more narrow than in the USSR, while the Cultural Revolution blunted attempts to ensure the reproduction of social stratification via access to higher education.
Nation-Making and National Conflict under Communism
Authors: Edgar Adrienne L.
Published: February 2014

Karl Marx was no friend of nationalism, yet the states that came into being in his name in the twentieth century were forced to reach an accommodation with it. The Soviet Union was a vast multi-ethnic empire that included more than a hundred different national and ethnic groups. The article shows how Marxists, notably the Austro-Marxists and Lenin, developed a theory of the ‘national question’, which in Lenin’s case linked support for national self-determination to anti-imperialism. The article examines the key facets of Bolshevik policy towards the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union, notably the strategy of ‘nativization’, and it discusses the recent historiography that tends to see the Soviet regime more as a ‘maker of nations’ than oppressor of them (although it was also that). It compares the efforts of the Soviet, Chinese, and Yugoslav governments to negotiate tensions between national equality, territorial autonomy, cultural development, and increasing national sentiment and, fundamentally, rising national sentiment with the imperative of centralization. It looks at the role of nationalism in the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Cultural Revolution
Authors: King Richard
Published: February 2014

Culture served communist-ruled states by presenting a vision of nations and peoples in transition from a dark and oppressive past into the projected bright future of communism. National and party leaders followed Lenin in ascribing great importance to the persuasive powers of the arts and insisting on their incorporation into the machinery of government. Artists creating works of literature, film, and the performing and visual arts according to the official doctrine of socialist realism presented images of new socialist persons overcoming difficulties and accomplishing tasks to instruct and entertain their audiences. While they might enjoy the benefits of state patronage, artists also risked condemnation and punishment if their works displeased the ruling party and its leadership. The arts of socialism have largely lost their political function and are now viewed as nostalgic memorabilia or kitsch.
Religion under Communism
Authors: Madsen Richard
Published: February 2014

Lenin began and Stalin completed the organizational structures and the repertoire of strategies and tactics that would be used as a model by almost all subsequent communist movements for suppressing religion. This model was primarily constructed to overcome the challenges posed to the revolution by a powerful Russian Orthodox Church. As such it did not fit the religious circumstances of other communist countries. It was poorly adapted to the decentralized patterns of religious practice in Asia, and it was unable to eliminate resistance from the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Europe, especially when that church was connected with nationalism. Even though the Stalinist model initially seemed successful in eliminating political opposition from religion in the Soviet Union, it was in the long run a failure on its own terms.
1968
Authors: Bracke Maud Anne
Published: February 2014

Around 1968 communism expanded as a global movement, especially in the developing world, while hitting a crisis of legitimation in Europe. In the Western world the late 1960s saw young people aspiring to revolutionary change that involved both individual liberation and social justice. Generational identity underpinned a revolt against authority, leading to acute political crises in France, Italy, and elsewhere. While presenting opportunities to communist parties, this revolt threatened, from Moscow’s perspective, a dangerous proliferation of ‘heterodox’ Marxist thought. In Eastern Europe rebellious populations in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia demanded greater rights of expression, causing the Soviet Union to intervene militarily in Czechoslovakia. By contrast, Maoism was able to capture the revolutionary, anti-imperialist spirit of the times. Claiming to offer an anti-bureaucratic alternative to the Soviet model, and resituating heroic agency at the heart of communist politics, Maoism appealed to Third World revolutionary leaders and radicals in the West.
The Comintern
Authors: Vatlin Alexander , Smith Stephen A.
Published: February 2014

The essay falls into two sections. The first examines the history of the Third International (Comintern) from its creation in 1919 to its dissolution in 1943, looking at the imposition of the Twenty-One Conditions on parties wishing to join the new International in 1920, the move from a perspective of splitting the labour movement to one of a united front in the early 1920s, the shift to the sectarian ‘third period’ strategy in 1928, and the gradual emergence of the popular front strategy in the mid-1930s. It examines the institutions of the Comintern and the Stalinization of national communist parties. The second section looks at some issues in the historiography of the Comintern, including the extent to which it was a tool of Soviet foreign policy, conflict over policy within the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI), and the relationship of ECCI to ‘national sections’, with a particular focus on the Vietnamese Communist Party. Finally, it discusses problems of cultural and linguistic communication within the Comintern.
Formal Pragmatics
Authors: Blutner Reinhard K.
Published: February 2014

In this article, three theoretic frameworks are discussed: optimality-theoretic, game-theoretic, and decision-theoretic pragmatics, the last being based on Ducrot’s argumentation theory. The close similarities between optimality-theoretic and game-theoretic pragmatics are pointed out. Concerning decision-theoretic pragmatics, some arguments are provided demonstrating that an independent, argumentation-theoretic grounding is neither needed nor useful. Rather, it seems more appropriate to incorporate the argumentation-theoretic insights into a general Gricean-oriented theory of natural language interpretation, let it be optimality-theoretic pragmatics or a game-theoretic variant.
The Labyrinth of the Continuum
Authors: Arthur Richard T. W.
Published: February 2014

This chapter traces Leibniz’s developing thought on the continuum problem from its earliest manifestation in the Theory of Abstract Motion to his last writings. Leibniz is adamant that his mature theory of substance is intended to solve the continuum problem: that is, what are the foundations of matter, given that it is infinitely divided, and how are bodies constituted from these foundations? How can motion be constituted from endeavours (instantaneous tendencies to motion), and what is their foundation in actuality? In his mature theory, the substantial constituent of bodies is identified as their entelechy or primitive force of acting, which is manifested phenomenally in the differing endeavours in a body from one instant to another. Such entelechies are presupposed everywhere in matter, and are what distinguish actually existing things from mere abstractions like the homogeneous matter of the Cartesians and the absolute space and time of the Newtonians.
The Problem of Evil and the Justice of God
Authors: Rateau Paul
Published: February 2014

This chapter questions two common interpretations of Leibniz's theodicy. The first interpretation maintains that, all considered, most of the arguments Leibniz uses are traditional. The second interpretation maintains that Leibniz's conception of evil and his justification of God are roughly fixed since the Confessio Philosophi (1672-3). The chapter argues that Leibniz regards injustice as the real evil. It also examines significant revisions in the conception of God and of his relationship (moral and physical concourse) to the action of his creatures, as well as revisions in Leibniz’s understanding of the nature of evil, its origin, and the reason of its permission. Furthermore, it focuses on the way Leibniz deals with difficulties concerning the "conduct of God" and his participation in evil; how he gives a rational justification of God that conciliates his omnipotence, his holiness, the existence of evil, and the freedom of man; and his early necessitarianism.
Molecular Neurobiology of Social Bonding
Authors: Barrett Catherine E. , Young Larry J.
Published: February 2014

Many psychiatric illnesses, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD), schizophrenia, and depression, are characterized by impaired social cognition and a compromised ability to form social relationships. Although drugs are currently available to treat other symptoms of these disorders, none specifically target the social deficits. In order to develop pharmacotherapies to enhance social functioning, particularly for ASD where social impairment is a core symptom, we must first understand the basic neurobiology underlying complex social behaviors. The socially monogamous prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) has been a remarkably useful animal model for exploring the neural systems regulating complex social behaviors, including social bonding. Prairie voles form enduring social bonds between mated partners, or pair bonds, and display a biparental familial structure that is arguably very similar to that of humans. Here we discuss the neural systems underlying social bonding in prairie voles, including the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin, opioids, dopaminergic reward and reinforcement, and stress-related circuitry, as well as the susceptibility of social functioning to early life experiences. We highlight some of the remarkable parallels that have been discovered in humans, and discuss how research in prairie voles has already led to novel therapies to enhance social functioning in ASD.
Consequences of Early-Life Experiences on Cognition and Emotion
Authors: Naninck E.F.G. , Lucassen P.J. , Korosi Aniko
Published: February 2014

Perinatal experiences during a critical developmental period program brain structure and function “for life,” thereby determining vulnerability to psychopathology and cognition in adulthood. Although these functional consequences are associated with alterations in HPA-axis activity and hippocampal structure and function, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The parent-offspring relationship (i.e., sensory and nutritional inputs by the mother) is key in mediating these lasting effects. This chapter discusses how early-life events, for example, the amount of maternal care, stress, and nutrition, can affect emotional and cognitive functions later in life. Interestingly, effects of perinatal malnutrition resemble the perinatal stress-induced long-term deficits. Because stress and nutrition are closely interrelated, it proposes that altered stress hormones and changes in specific key nutrients during critical developmental periods act synergistically to program brain structure and function, possibly via epigenetic mechanisms. Understanding how the adult brain is shaped by early experiences is essential to develop behavioural and nutritional preventive therapy.
Oxytocin and Vasopressin Gene Variation and the Neural Basis of Social Behaviors
Authors: Westberg Lars , Walum Hasse
Published: February 2014

Experimental studies in rodents and humans show that the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin are important regulators of behaviors related to social interactions. Evidence for positive effects of oxytocin treatment on symptoms of psychiatric disorders characterized by impaired social functioning has emerged. Numerous studies report associations between various social behaviors, the risk of autism, and polymorphisms inOXTRandAVPR1A. This chapter provides an overview of these genetic association studies. Although many of the published findings are inconclusive and need replication in independent samples, the chapter concludes that variants ofOXTRandAVPR1Aseem to moderate individual variation in different aspects of social behavior. The challenges for future studies include replication of current findings, identification of the functional variants, and characterization of the neural mechanisms mediating the gene-behavior associations, as well as exploration of the pharmacogenetic potential ofOXTRandAVPR1Ain future clinical trials.
“An Interesting Experiment in Eugenics”
Authors: Scolieri Paul A.
Published: February 2014

The “ethnic dance” movement in the United States is closely associated with Ted Shawn, the “Father of American Dance” (1891–1972). Shawn and his wife and dancing partner, Ruth St. Denis, founded a dance company called Denishawn, whose repertory incorporated Native American, “Negro,” and Spanish folk dances. By the mid-1920s, Shawn viewed American dance in terms of moral and physical purity—a philosophy he based on the discourse of eugenics. This article explores how the eugenics movement informed Shawn’s vision of American dance in the 1920s, particularly with respect to two of his related writings, The American Ballet and “An American Ballet.” It explains how Shawn’s personal and professional relationship with Havelock Ellis, a British physician who was a leading proponent of the eugenics movement in Europe and whom he considered his idol, influenced his views about eugenics. It also examines how Shawn’s anxiety about his own sexual “unfitness” (his homosexuality) shaped his racist, nativist, and xenophobic “experiment” with eugenics in American dance.
Authenticity and Ethnicity
Authors: Herzogenrath Jessica Ray
Published: February 2014

During the Progressive Era, settlement workers attempted to regulate dance both within and outside settlement house walls as a method to instill proper “American” body behaviors, particularly in immigrant bodies. This essay examines the paradoxes of folk dance as encouraged by settlement workers in early-twentieth-century Chicago and New York. Settlement workers aimed to assimilate immigrants to American ideals of health, refinement, and respectability through the body; in folk dance they found a satisfying mode of nonsexualized dance, which also acted out a romanticized desire for simplicity in the midst of rapid modernization. The evidence reveals that folk dance in settlement houses traveled two paths: ethnic clubs devoted to the practice of immigrant traditions and structured classes offered to girls and young women. These developments fulfilled the project of Americanization prescribed by the settlement movement and provided a means for immigrants to continue folk practices from their home countries.
Black Erased
Authors: Milazzo Kathy M.
Published: February 2014

One of flamenco’s many palos, or forms, is the tango, which was transported as the tango de negros or tangos de Americas from Cuba to Spain in the mid-nineteenth century. There, it was transformed into the tango de gitanos and the tango flamenco, an action which disassociated it from its Africanist roots. In order to illustrate the consequences of omitting negro references to the tango in flamenco narratives, this chapter addresses the mechanisms of myth-making in the construction of identity as the Cuban tango was appropriated and subsumed into the flamenco repertoire. This chapter argues that despite the open acknowledgement of negro influences in southern Spanish dance in the early nineteenth century, negotiations during the development of Spain’s national identity affected the eventual denial of the tango as “negro” because concepts of negro were less valued as imperial commodities in Romantic discourses.
LADO, the State Ensemble of Croatian Folk Dances and Songs
Authors: Shay Anthony
Published: February 2014

Unlike many European nations, Croatia has historically used folk dance as a form of representation, according to dance historian and ethnographer Stjepan Sremac. Following World War II, the Yugoslav State established several professional ensembles, among which was Lado, the Ensemble of Folk Dances and Songs of Croatia, under the direction of Zvonko Ljevakovic. Unlike Igor Moiseyev, and in direct opposition to the Moiseyev aesthetic, Ljevakovic employed many authentic details of dance movements, costume, and vocal and instrumental music in his theatricalized folk dance choreographies. Many of the people in Eastern Europe, in which nearly every nation had a professional folk dance ensemble, have turned away from the state-sponsored companies in favor of newer forms of cultural expression, however Lado’s popularity, due to performance strategies created by the new artistic director, Ivan Ivancan, Jr, has greatly increased.
Diasporic Ethnicity, Gender, and Dance
Authors: Silverman Carol
Published: February 2014

Focusing on Muslim Macedonian Roma in New York, this article analyzes dance as a gendered expressive behavior embedded in community ritual events. Dance expresses social relationships, status, and familial alliances; it is a dynamic interactive behavior that can transform and build relationships, foster communication in the community, or enact conflict. Because solo female dance may be interpreted as sexualized, its dynamics are carefully monitored; women thus performatively negotiate their display of dance in varied contexts. Two generations of Roma are compared in terms of attitudes, style, and repertoire, showing how dance and music have retained their symbolic place in community life and ritual.
“Do You Want to See My Hornpipe?” Creativity and Irish Step Dance in the Work of Jean Butler and Colin Dunne
Authors: McGrath Aoife
Published: February 2014

This chapter considers the radical reimaginings of traditional Irish step dance in the recent works of Jean Butler and Colin Dunne, in which the Irish step-dancing body is separated from its historical roots in nationalism, from the exhibitionism required by the competitive form, and from the spectacularization of the commercialized theatrical format. In these works the traditional form undergoes a critical interrogation in which the dancers attempt to depart from the determinacy of the traditional technique, while acknowledging its formation of their corporealities; the Irish step-dance technique becomes a springboard for creative experimentation. To consider the importance of the creative potential revealed by these works, this chapter contextualizes them within the dance background from which they emerged, outlining the history of competitive step dancing in Ireland, the “modernization” of traditional Irish dance with the emergence of Riverdance (1994), and the experiments of Ireland’s national folk theater, Siamsa Tíre.
European Migrations
Authors: Hoerder Dirk
Published: February 2014

The essay begins with the “imperial intrusions” into Native Peoples’ cultural spaces and the eighteenth-century (re-)peopling of the American colonies. It discusses the caesura and new patterns from the Revolution to industrialization. It emphasizes migrant agency and decision-making in the frame of Europe’s societies-economies of origin. The arriving, fully socialized men and women form ethnocultural groups with fuzzy borders and acculturate according to gender and class but face racialization, demands for Anglo-conformity, and “melting pot”–discourses. It is argued that they form a “transnational America.” The policy of “closed doors,” the Great Depression, and World War I and II (1917–1945) disrupt the Atlantic migration system. After a brief resurgence of immigration of “displaced persons” from Europe, the system ends in the mid-1950s. Continuing migratory connections do not assume the proportion of a migration system. In conclusion, the scholarship on European immigrants is critically evaluated.
Latino Immigration
Authors: García María Cristina
Published: February 2014

This article provides a brief history and profile of the Hispanic or Latino population in the United States. Latinos trace their ancestry to over a dozen nations in the Americas, and their history reflects a variety of experiences: some are first-generation immigrants to the United States, while others trace their families’ presence in the United States as far back as the seventeenth century. Some have come to the United States as immigrants—others as refugees, exiles, or guest workers. Yet others are the descendants of people who were conquered and colonized. While they have played a key role in U.S. nation building, they have also exerted a significant transnational influence on their countries of origin. Among the groups that are discussed in this article are the Mexicans Americans/Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans, as well as various Central and South American populations.
African American Migration from the Colonial Era to the Present
Authors: Trotter Joe W.
Published: February 2014

This essay explores several overlapping waves of black population movement from the African background through the early twenty-first century. It shows how enslaved people dominated the first two great migrations—from Africa to the tobacco-producing colonies of British North America and later from the Upper South to the cotton-producing lands of the Deep South. In the wake of the Civil War and the emancipation of some 4 million enslaved people, the great farm-to-city migration gradually transformed African Americans from a predominantly rural southern people into the most urbanized sector of the nation’s population. While massive black population movements resulted in substantial disruption of established patterns of cultural, institutional, and political life, African Americans built and rebuilt forms of community under the impact of new conditions, including the rise of a new wave of voluntary black migration from Africa and elsewhere by the close of the 20th century.
Race and Citizenship
Authors: Carter Gregory T.
Published: February 2014

Despite our national, secular rhetoric promising equality, white racial status has been the fundamental requirement for citizenship, and nonwhiteness meant subordination since the early republic. Determining who deserved the privileges citizenship bestowed depended on definitions of who was white—or, more important, who was not white. But racial mixture, social movements, expansion, and immigration have expanded those privileges beyond the definitions at the nation’s foundation. This essay surveys the broad contours of inclusion in citizenship, focusing on the legal and legislative arenas. Whiteness-as-citizenship (which describes whiteness as normative citizenship across time and place, and the state of having achieved it) is at the center of this survey, but prominent cases and legislation ultimately swayed local mores; specialized situations tested the meanings at large; and a variety of minority experiences showed how race has been the primary factor in determining citizenship throughout.
The World of the Immigrant Worker
Authors: Barrett James
Published: February 2014

Working-class formation in the United States was considerably complicated by waves of immigration from the mid nineteenth century down to the present. In some cases, the ethnic differences lead to conflict, in others to “ethnically hybrid” cultures based on class. Labor and radical organizations often played an important role in acculturating late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigrant workers. The kind of ethic “niches” in earlier industrial occupational structures can also be found in the employment available to immigrants today. By the late twentieth century, union organization was also complicated by shifts in the occupational structure from manufacturing to service jobs, yet much of the meager growth in union organization in recent decades has come in service industries with heavy concentrations of immigrant workers.
Neighborhoods, Immigrants, and Ethnic Americans
Authors: Seligman Amanda I.
Published: February 2014

One way that American urbanites have traditionally made sense of the city’s landscape is through the concept of the neighborhood. Clustering in urban neighborhoods brought immigrant Americans into contact with members of other ethnic communities. Relations between groups varied from hostile to amicable, with variations depending on gender, age, generation, group size, and city size. Interethnic alliances, however, stopped at racial lines; until the late twentieth century, few white Americans were willing to live in racially integrated neighborhoods. In the late twentieth century, the idea of neighborhood showed remarkable persistence despite the changes in American immigrant demographics. The purpose of this essay is to sketch out parameters for future scholars to use in assessing the power of neighborhoods in analyzing American ethnic history.
Immigration, Ethnicity, Race, and Organized Crime
Authors: Cooley Will
Published: February 2014

How immigration and ethnicity shaped delinquent youth groups (gangs) and adult organized crime syndicates (mobs) is examined. Ethnicity has played a key role in these organizations. Gangs and mobs used ethnic ties as an organizing principle to foster trust in their illicit activities. Scholars have usually applied the theory of ethnic succession to account for the changes in supremacy over the informal economy. Yet scholars have attached too much importance to the ethnic succession theory. To fully understand the underworld, scholars need to recognize interethnic cooperation, the persistence of class, and the rewards of whiteness.
Allegiance, Dual Citizenship, and the Ethnic Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy
Authors: Brundage David
Published: February 2014

Following a discussion of what some scholars have seen as “divided loyalties” among immigrants, this article surveys the history of the ethnic influence on U.S. foreign policy from the 1790s to the present. Specific topics include Irish American nationalism and its relationship to republicanism and anti-imperialism in the nineteenth century, the diverse aims of ethnic activism in the era of World War I, the alleged role of ethnic activism in shaping the isolationism that partly characterized U.S. foreign policy between the wars, and the role of U.S.-based diasporas and ethnic lobbies in the era of the Cold War and after. Attention is given to Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Cuban Americans, African Americans, Eastern Europeans, and others. The article closes with a discussion of the potential impact of the recent phenomenon of dual citizenship.
Written Forms of Communication from Immigrant Letters to Instant Messaging
Authors: Sinke Suzanne M.
Published: February 2014

This article discusses written communications by international migrants across time, from immigrant letters to instant messaging. Chronologically, it ranges from the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, and spatially, the focus is on the United States and those who migrated to or from the country. It covers the definition of an immigrant letter, particularly as it relates to systematic study of the genre, and some of the cultural associations bound to the term. It relates issues of literacy—who could write and how well—and the status of postal connections, how they influenced the production and distribution of correspondence by migrants. Other sections explore how scholars have used epistolary records by migrants as sources for various topics and in several disciplines, and types of analysis they use for both written and electronic communications, including e-mail. Finally, there are suggestions for further study of correspondence related to immigration.
Melting Pots, Salad Bowls, Ethnic Museums, and American Identity
Authors: Conn Steven
Published: February 2014

This essay examines the rise and role of ethnically specific museums in the United States. It explores the relationship of those museums to the larger questions of how to display American history in museums, how these museums function to create either a national or ethnic identity, and how these museums blur the line between a presentation of “history” and a celebration of “heritage.”
Social Provision before the Twentieth Century
Authors: Jensen Laura S.
Published: February 2014

This chapter traces the evolution of social provision in the United States from the colonial era forward, chronicling the local, state, and national-level policy developments that constituted the foundation on which the American welfare state would be built. Specific social welfare benefits discussed include local poor relief; institutional approaches to social provision, such as the poorhouse and the workhouse; state and federal veterans’ pensions and land grants; and federal land entitlements for nonveterans. The essay also considers the legacy of the English Poor Law; the social construction of citizen deservingness; the establishment of programmatic entitlement as a policy practice; the influence of federalism and of illiberal hierarchies of gender, race, ethnicity, and class on early social policy development; and the special challenges faced by women, the elderly, the disabled, slaves, free blacks, and Native Americans in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century America.
Political Institutions and U.S. Social Policy
Authors: Amenta Edwin , Tierney Amber Celina
Published: February 2014

United States political institutions provide a compelling account of American exceptionalism in social policy: why the United States has a social insurance system that was late to develop and remains incomplete; spends relatively little on direct social policy; and relies on indirect and private social policy that is relatively ineffective in addressing poverty, insecurity, and inequality. Formal political institutions—including the tardiness of universal suffrage, many institutional veto points, federalism, the underdevelopment of domestic administrative authority, and a political party system founded on patronage and skewed to the right—go far to explain the formation of this unusual welfare state. Feedbacks from policies, political institutions themselves, help to explain why a few U.S. social programs, notably Social Security, remain strong, and why the U.S welfare state generally remains mired in the residual liberal model and is subject to drift. Feedbacks related to the world’s most extensive military and imprisonment policies also harm social policy.
Pension and Health Benefits for Public-Sector Workers
Authors: Craig Lee A.
Published: February 2014

In the United States, retirement and health benefits make up a substantial proportion of the total compensation of public-sector workers. This chapter explores the history and the main characteristics of such retirement and health benefits, as they have developed in the United States. As shown, on average, these benefits tend to be more valuable than those provided to private-sector workers. Public-sector workers are more likely than their private-sector counterparts to be covered by a retirement plan and by employer-provided health insurance. Public-sector pension plans are more likely to be defined benefit plans than are private-sector plans. Many public-sector employers have promised their employees more in benefits than they have set aside to pay for those benefits. Estimates suggest that the 2,670 federal, state, and local retirement plans currently in operation are underfunded collectively by as much as $5 trillion, and public-sector health plans are probably underfunded by roughly $1 trillion.
The Great Depression and World War II
Authors: Morris Andrew
Published: February 2014

Although many American communities had erected an impressive array of charitable institutions by the 1920s, they crumbled under the unemployment and poverty generated by the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt, elected in 1932, set aside the concerns of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, about the dangers of federally provided relief, and presided over the creation of emergency public relief and employment programs as part of the New Deal. With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, Roosevelt and his Congressional allies established a permanent basis for a federal role in social welfare provision. The benefits of these programs were substantial, but they were sharply influenced by the race and gender of their recipients. Hopes for more robust federal programs were dispelled by the economic recovery associated with World War Two. Instead, the war saw the expansion of private, workplace-based benefits destined to be major elements of postwar social provision.
Inequality
Authors: Moller Stephanie , Misra Joya
Published: February 2014

Social policy plays a central role in redistributing resources to ensure greater equality or at least increased opportunities for members of disadvantaged groups. This essay considers how the U.S. welfare state redistributes incomes through social policies, while reinforcing other forms of stratification. The essay begins by comparing inequality in the United States to other advanced industrialized countries, and shows that the level of income inequality is higher in the United States than in most of these nations. It then presents data on inequality in the United States by race and gender. Finally, it discusses how specific policies alter levels of inequality by redistributing income or institutionalizing sources of income inequality. In general, U.S. social policies help to reduce inequality, but they have limited effectiveness, particularly in comparison to other advanced industrialized countries, in reducing inequality by race, class, gender, and family structure.
Constituencies and Public Opinion
Authors: Campbell Andrea Louise , Sances Michael W.
Published: February 2014

Public opinion alone cannot explain the trajectory of American social policy, but it is crucial in explaining the nature of social provision. Although most Americans are not highly knowledgeable about or interested in politics, and although their opinions are often shaped by misinformation, misperception, and framing effects, public opinion can offer broad guidance to politicians. Indeed, American social policy reflects majority preferences in a variety of ways: in the differential generosity of programs for "deserving" and "undeserving" target populations; in the extensive use of hidden and obscured modes of social provision such as tax expenditures; and in the modest degree of redistribution the American welfare state achieves. In addition, attentive and well-resourced members of the public, who receive the largest benefits from the system, have successfully prevented retrenchment attempts. Public opinion typically operates in conjunction with other factors, such as interest group influence or the institutional structure of the American system, to shape social policy outcomes.
Care and Work-Family Policies
Authors: Michel Sonya A.
Published: February 2014

In keeping with its long-term pattern as a public-private welfare model, the United States has developed a patchwork of provisions to reconcile the tension between families' care needs and wage-earning. These include child care, after-school programs, and family and medical leave, as well as tax policy and public assistance. Public funding for child care targets poor and low-income families, linking services to mandatory employment for recipients of public assistance. Public after-school programs are also targeted to low-income children, offering remedial and compensatory services as well as supervision. This leaves middle-income families to find and pay for private preschool and after-school care, with the cost only partially offset by tax breaks. The U.S. stands out for its lack of support to families, being the only advanced industrial society that does not offer paid maternity or parental leave. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act mandates up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and only a minority of firms exceed this by providing paid leave. As a result, take-up rates among low-income employees are low. Although many other advanced countries provide high-quality public preschool, there is less difference between them and the U.S. when it comes to care for school-age children.
Gender
Authors: Reese Ellen , D'Auria Stephanie , Loughrin Sandra
Published: February 2014

Reconceptualizing welfare-state regimes in terms of the interactions between markets, states, and gender and family relations, cross-national feminist scholarship reveals that the United States is relatively more "market-based" in its approach to both employment and care work than other wealthy democracies. Consequently female poverty, especially of lone mothers, is far higher in the United States compared to other wealthy democracies. Feminist scholarship also highlights the ways in which U.S. welfare programs are deeply gendered in terms of their underlying philosophies, recipient populations, and distribution of benefits. Feminist scholars have reconceptualized the origins and development of the U.S. welfare state in terms of a "two-track" system that has reinforced both gender and racial inequalities. Programs serving mostly men, such as veterans' benefits or unemployment insurance, provided relatively generous benefits and portrayed recipients as deserving. In contrast, programs serving mostly women, such as mothers' pensions, were relatively stingy, restrictive, and stigmatizing. At the beginning of the 20th century, reformers justified welfare for lone mothers in maternalist terms, emphasizing the value of full-time motherhood for child development. Support for maternalist welfare policies, although never strong, was further weakened as maternal employment grew and as more women of color and unwed mothers gained access to welfare. Since the late 1960s, efforts to reform the welfare system led to the expansion of federal welfare-to-work programs, which have largely tracked participants into low-wage jobs. Child-care subsidies also expanded in this period, but have remained relatively minimal and distributed in ways that reinforced class divisions among working families.
Unemployment Insurance
Authors: Woodbury Stephen A.
Published: February 2014

Unemployment insurance (UI) provides temporary income support to workers who have lost their jobs and are seeking reemployment. This chapter reviews the origins of the federal-state UI system in the United States and outlines its principles and goals. It also describes the conditions for benefit eligibility, the benefits themselves, and their financing. The UI system is complex and includes many interested parties, including employers, worker advocates, state UI administrators, and the federal government. These parties’ differing views have led to controversies over benefit eligibility, adequacy, and whether the states or federal government should bear primary responsibility for UI. The Great Recession caused most states’ UI trust funds to become insolvent and led to renewed debate over the structure and financing of the system.
A Cross-National Perspective on the American Welfare State
Authors: Lynch Julia
Published: February 2014

The welfare system in the United States is not simply “small,”“residualist,” or “laggard.” It is true that protection against standard social risks is generally less comprehensive and less generous in the United States than in other rich democracies, but there are other important differences as well: The U. S. welfare state is unusual in its extensive reliance on private markets to produce public social goods; its geographic variability; its insistence on deservingness as an eligibility criterion; and its orientation toward benefits for the elderly rather than children and working-age adults. Nevertheless, the U.S. welfare state is not sui generis. The actors involved in the construction of the U.S. welfare state, the institutions created in response to social problems, and the contemporary pressures confronting the welfare state all have parallels in other countries. The markets that provide so many social goods in the United States are the products of state action and state regulation, and hence should really be thought of as part of the welfare “state.” Even recent expansions to the welfare state in the United States have, with the partial exception of health-care reform, reinforced old patterns of elderly oriented spending and benefits for worthy (working) adults. In order for the U.S. welfare state to adjust successfully to ensure against new social risks, it must focus more on underdeveloped program areas like health care, child care, early childhood education, and vocational training.
Political Parties and Social Policy
Authors: Stonecash Jeffrey M.
Published: February 2014

Party battles for control of government are seen as efforts to reshape public policy. In prior decades, the impact of parties was limited by divided control of branches of government. The impact of party control was also limited because neither party had a distinctive constituency with clear and different policy goals. Over time, realignment has produced parties with very different electoral bases. Republicans now are more unified and willing to cut government while Democrats are more supportive of government programs. This chapter reviews our expectations of the impact of parties, the changes that have made party control mean more, and how these changes affect policy areas like economic policy, welfare, and health care.
Fantasia and Sensibility
Authors: Head Matthew
Published: February 2014

Fantasia and sensibility are not like other topics. Composed and improvised in all shapes and sizes, fantasias are not reducible to a single type of material. The fantasia was a host genre, a context of topical play, incorporating a range of stylistic and generic references. The frequent use of passages inspired by accompanied recitative and aria reveals an affinity with opera seria. The idea that the fantasia influences other genres is prominent in music criticism only after 1800 and represents an idealist trope foreign to much of the eighteenth century. Sensibility, though thematized in scenes of musical pathos and tenderness which display stylistic commonalities through a range of conventional materials, was not a musical style but a capacity for refined emotional response and sympathetic identification broadly relevant to the project of aesthetics and the fine arts.