bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Silent Witnesses: Deaf-mutes in Graeco-Roman Antiquity
Authors: Laes Christian
Published: February 2012

This article highlights all known instances of individual deaf-mutes in antiquity, with special attention as to how their symptoms were described, which effects were emphasized, and in what context the cases were reported. Next, the Greek and Latin vocabulary to denote deaf-muteness will be examined. Then comparative anthropology, literary sources, papyri, inscriptions, and juridic cases are used to describe daily life conditions of deaf-mutes. As a conclusion, I suggest that misconceptions about the anatomy of deaf-muteness, combined with the focus on rhetoric, might have had an impact on the lives of the deaf-mutes and the approach towards these people, at least in certain social environments.
Poetological-Technical Operations: Representation of Motion in Adalbert Stifter
Authors: Strowick Elisabeth
Published: February 2012

The essay examines the representation of motion in Adalbert Stifter in a twofold way: on the one hand with respect to the dynamization of description, and on the other in regard to its discursive context. Stifter's descriptions—as will be shown based on a reading of Aussicht und Betrachtungen von der Spitze des St. Stephansturmes and Der Hoch-wald —are not descriptions of "reality," but stagings of visual perception. In relation to optical media and in the discursive context of the modern physiology of perception, Stifter explores visual perception through literary means. In contrast to the topos common in Stifter scholarship that his descriptions bring about a standstill of motion and time, I argue that Stifter decidedly works on the temporalization of description. It is thus not the description of motion on the thematic level that the essay is concerned with, but rather that the motion of description itself is inscribed. Depicting visual perception through the syntagmatic structure of writing, Stifter stages the active gaze. The telescope is particularly important in this respect. As will be argued, the telescope does not confirm the stasis of realism, but on the contrary serves as a medium of representing motion by investigating the active gaze. In a second step, Stifter's representation of motion will be considered within its discursive context: motion, as will be demonstrated in a reading of Der Condor , will itself be profiled as an interdiscursive transfer among literature, aesthetics, natural science, and the development of technology.
Thinking about/on Thinking: Observations on the Thought Photography of the Early Twentieth Century
Authors: Flach Sabine
Published: February 2012

The essay starts out from the neuroscientific debate regarding the epistemic status of brain images. Even though it is widely acknowledged as common sense that such images bear no simple reference to their object, but rather are constructs that do not present immediate representations of the brain, their epistemic status is unclear. The essay focuses precisely on the ongoing debate on the epistemic status of such images. By assuming that cognitive science and the scholarly study of art are closely related, it will show that both fields are concerned with forms of inner and outer representation, in that for art, an image is at once a material substratum and a mental image. While the images of the cognitive sciences have come into existence against the background of cultural studies, the brain is an arena where intensive negotiations occur between traditional notions of the image and current innovations. The essay discusses this argument with reference to a paradigmatic historical example from the turn of the nineteenth century, located at the interface between discourses such as neurobiology, occultism, media technology, and iconic criticism.
Where Has All the Music Gone?: Reflections on the Fortieth Anniversary of Fiji’s Independence
Authors: Lal Brij V.
Published: February 2012

Fiji’s postcolonial journey has been fraught. The promise of prosperity and political stability, high at the time of independence in 1970, dissipated soon afterward as the politics of ethnicity came to the fore and as disagreements developed among indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians about the nature and direction of public policy. A military coup in 1987 removed a democratically elected government, but instead of ensuring the entrenchment of Fijian political control, it unleashed forces whose ultimate effect was the undermining of Fijian political unity. Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s coup in 2006 removed from power an indigenous Fijian–led government, promising in the process to overturn the assumptions and understandings about power sharing that underpinned the understandings and assumptions that were embedded in the Independence constitution and to lead the country towards a non-racial future. The reaction to the latest coup from Fiji’s different communities remains a matter of intense debate in the country.
A Partnered Approach for Structured Observation to Assess the Environment of a Neighborhood With High Diabetes Rates
Authors: Kleinman Lawrence C. , Lutz David , Plumb Ellen J. , Barkley Pearl , Nazario Hector R. , Ramos Michelle A. , Horowitz Carol R.
Published: February 2012

Background: The Communities IMPACT Diabetes Center uses partnered methods to address diabetes-related conditions among African Americans and Latinos in East Harlem, New York.
Objectives: To describe a novel, partnered approach that integrates simultaneous structured observation by community and academic partners with “on-the-spot” resolution of differences to collect baseline data regarding the built and food environments in a two census tract area of East Harlem and present select findings.
Methods: We designed an environmental assessment to explore characteristics of the environment related to walking and eating. We paired community and academic partners to assess each block, resolve any differences, and report results. Nearly one year later, we surveyed the data collectors and analyzed responses using standard qualitative methods.
Results: Key themes included connection to and characteristics of the community; interactions with partners; surprises and learning, and aspects of data collection. All but the first were common to academic and community partners. Relationships between partners were generally amiable. Both community — “I think it was very helpful, we made sure neither of us made mistakes, and helped each other when we could”—and academic–“I really enjoyed it . . . I learned a lot about the areas I surveyed”—partners were complimentary. Community partners’ strengths included local knowledge of the community, whereas academic partners’ focus on adherence to the specifications was critical. Structured observation identified many sidewalks in disrepair or obstructed, few benches, and highly variable times allocated for pedestrians to cross at cross walks.
Conclusions: The partnered data collection was both successful and formative, building additional relationships and further capacity for ongoing partnership. Community partners saw their community in a new way, seeing, “little things that are important but people don’t pay attention to.” Structured observations added to our understanding of how an environment may contribute to diabetes.
A Community Mobilizes to End Medical Apartheid
Authors: Golub Maxine , Calman Neil , Ruddock Charmaine , Agarwal Nisha , Davis Joyce H. , Foley Robert L. , Purcaro Ellenrita , Backer Barbara A. , Devia Carlos , Linnell Jill , Mathur Ruchi , Sachdev Neha
Published: February 2012

Problem: People of color suffer worse health outcomes than their White counterparts due, in part, to limited access to high-quality specialty care.
Purpose: This article describes the events that led to the Bronx Health REACH coalition’s decision to file a civil rights complaint with the New York State Office of the Attorney General alleging that three academic medical centers in New York City discriminated on the basis of payer status and race in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Hill-Burton Act, New York State regulations, and New York City Human Rights Law.
Key Points: Although the problem has not yet been resolved, the related community mobilization efforts have raised public awareness about the impact of disparate care, strengthened the coalition’s commitment to achieve health equality, and garnered support among many city and state legislators.
Conclusion: Community groups and professionals with relevant expertise can tackle complex systemic problems, but they must be prepared for a long and difficult fight.
Cardiovascular Knowledge Among Urban American Indians and Alaska Natives: First Steps in Addressing Cardiovascular Health
Authors: Brega Angela G. , Noe Timothy , Loudhawk-Hedgepeth Crystal , Jim Dakotah M. , Morse Bradley , Moore Kelly , Manson Spero M.
Published: February 2012

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is common among American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/ANs). Given limited access to health care, urban AI/ANs may be at particular risk. Lack of available data, however, limits our understanding of cardiovascular health in this population.
Objectives: We conducted a survey to characterize CVD-related knowledge, behavior, and risk of urban AI/ANs. Results related to knowledge are reported.
Methods: In collaboration with the Indian clinics in two urban communities, we surveyed 298 AI/ANs.
Results: Respondents recognized approximately half of the symptoms of heart attack and stroke, and were significantly less likely to recognize each symptom than reported in national studies using the same items. General CVD knowledge (e.g., risks of high blood pressure) was stronger, although areas for improvement were noted.
Conclusions: Urban AI/ANs would benefit from efforts to enhance CVD knowledge. These preliminary data are providing the foundation for community-based efforts to address CVD risk among urban AI/ANs.
Children’s Hospital Boston Community Asthma Initiative: Partnerships and Outcomes Advance Policy Change
Authors: Sommer Susan J. , Queenin Lisa Mannix , Nethersole Shari , Greenberg Joshua , Bhaumik Urmi , Stillman Laurie , Hoppin Polly , Chan Elaine , Wilkinson Ronald B. , Woods Elizabeth R.
Published: February 2012

Problem: Rates of poorly controlled asthma among low-income children, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, remain disproportionately high. Comprehensive asthma programs, including education, case management and home environmental interventions have reduced disparities. Few sustainable payment models exist.
Purpose: The Children’s Hospital Boston’s Community Asthma Initiative (CAI) demonstrated dramatic reductions in hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits among African American and Latino patients with a return on investment (ROI) of 1.46. A strong coalition focused on sustainability plus CAI outcomes contributed to the state legislature’s approving a bundled payment pilot for high-risk pediatric asthma patients on Medicaid/MassHealth.
Key Points: Cost-effective, comprehensive asthma programs and policy makers’ interest in new payment models created an opportunity for a new payment approach for pediatric asthma care.
Conclusion: A community coalition that successfully addresses asthma health disparities with a strong business case and program outcomes can be leveraged to persuade policy makers of the value of innovative financing strategies for asthma care.
The Impact of Family Support on the Success of Black Men at an Historically Black University: Affirming the Revision of Tinto’s Theory
Authors: Palmer Robert T. , Davis Ryan J. , Maramba Dina C.
Published: February 2012

This qualitative study of 11 Black male students who entered a public historically Black college and university (HBCU) as academically underprepared and persisted to graduation, provides insight into the ways in which family promotes academic success for Black male students at a public HBCU. The study’s findings encourage practitioners at HBCUs to reassess the relationship between family involvement and academic success for Black male students. Further, the findings affirm the justification to revise Tinto’s theory of student departure to account for relationships minority students have with support networks outside the campus milieu.
Toxic Terror
Authors: Rosen Ruth
Published: February 2012

Steve Lerner's story of Diamond, Louisiana, is one of the most remarkable tales that has ever been told about the environmental justice movement, which began in the early 1980s. Through the voices of the major characters in the battle, he offers a vivid account of how a local struggle for clean air gradually gained international support and became part of the global campaign to redefine environmental health as a human right.
Change the Vocabulary
Authors: Alpert Avi , Luck Zach
Published: February 2012

Readers respond to Michael Walzer's Fall 2004 "Editor's Page," which claimed that the 2004 election was won based on "family values." Alpert and Luck argue that the real issue of this election, however, was the failure of the Democrats to articulate a message of their own.
The European and American Left since 1945
Authors: Markovits Andrei S.
Published: February 2012

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the European-along with the much weaker American-left has been in a crisis that has challenged its very identity. In fact, this profound crisis predated the events of 1989; it was in full swing by the time the Wall tumbled in good part because of the ineptitude and moral bankruptcy of at least part of this left. Still, with the events of 1989 and 1990, a period that began in the late 1860s and early 1870s and entered its political salience in the 1880s came to a close. A political manifestation and social formation that defined the very idea of progressivism in the advanced industrial societies for exactly one century collapsed. Some would say that the radicalism of this period, its revolutionary potential to transform capitalism, ended with the tragedy of 1914. After all, it was then that the left realized that its internationalism and perceived universal class solidarity had lost its primacy to the much more powerful sentiment of particularistic nationalism. The left's innocence was most certainly lost by the early fall of 1914. Others would date the crisis from the end of World War I, the events of 1918, which already pointed toward the coming of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and National Socialism in Germany.
Genocide by Attrition: Agony in Darfur
Authors: Reeves Eric
Published: February 2012

As the Darfur conflict in western Sudan approaches the two-year mark, it is clear that the international community is unwilling to provide either the diplomatic resources or material assistance that might halt what has become massive genocide by attrition. The gradual deployment of an African Union force of 3,500 troops for monitoring purposes is woefully inadequate to the crisis, but international refusal to entertain more ambitious plans for intervention has led to excessive and disingenuous celebration of this very modest achievement. Expediency rules in Washington, at the UN in New York, within the European Union, and within the African Union itself. Coupled with the intensive lobbying for a policy of "non-interference" by the Arab League, such expediency ensures that far too much of Darfur's future will resemble its present.
Working-Class Republicans and 'False Consciousness'
Authors: Wiener Jon
Published: February 2012

If only working-class and poor people would register and vote, liberal Democrats would win every election-that's what we thought, until November 2, 2004. Democrats work on voter registration, Republicans work on vote suppression. So tens of millions were spent on Democratic voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts over the summer and fall. But on November 2 we discovered how wrong we were. Turnout in poor and working-class precincts was unprecedented, but many of those voters cast their ballots for George W. Bush-especially white people from non-union households, especially outside of cities. How did the Republicans do it? How did they get poor people to vote for tax cuts for the rich?
Re-thinking the Politics of the Family: Part II
Authors: Skolnick Arlene
Published: February 2012

It's not yet clear how big a role the "moral values" issue played in the outcome of the election; it seems to have been less decisive than first reports indicated. And war and terror may have come to G.W. Bush' s political rescue, as September 11 did before. Nevertheless, it does seem clear that liberals and progressives have not done a good job in presenting our own ideas in a framework of values or challenging the right's narrow version of morality, which seems to stop at the bedroom door. Nor have we exploited the right's own vulnerability: the contradiction between its family values rhetoric and its economic and social policies.
Re-thinking the Politics of the Family: Part III
Authors: Skolnick Arlene
Published: February 2012

The post-election stress disorder afflicting Blue Americans (wherever we live) continues four months after the election. We still obsess about what went wrong. Was gay marriage the determining factor? Moral values in general? Was it the threat of terrorism? Did we suffer from a flawed candidate and a poorly managed campaign? How can we be more successful in 2006 and 2008, or are we doomed to remain a minority party overwhelmed at the polls by a rising tide of religious fervor and social conservatism?
Working Hard or Hardly Working?
Authors: McNeill Jim
Published: February 2012

Jim McNeill discusses Rick Fantasia and Kim Voss's Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement; Dan Clawson's The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements; Steven Henry Lopez's Reorganizing the Rust Belt: An Inside Study of the American Labor Movement; and Rebuilding Labor: Organizing And Organizers in the New Union Movement, edited by Ruth Milkman and Kim Voss.
Liquid Gold, Poisoned Potion
Authors: Cook Jonathan
Published: February 2012

On August 21, 2003, the president of Ecuador, Lucio Gutiérrez, drove with his retinue to a small windswept hilltop in the Andes, not far from the capital city of Quito. He was there to inaugurate the new $1.5 billion Heavy Crude Pipeline, or OCP (Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados), which would be the second oil pipeline to stretch from east to west across this small, poverty-plagued country. Built in the face of great domestic and international controversy, the OCP represented the latest chapter in the almost forty-year history of Ecuador's tethering its economy to petroleum. And now, though the first oil would not gurgle its way westward for several months, the politicians, oil barons, and other VIPs were ready to celebrate. Outfitted for the occasion in an engineer's hardhat, Gutiérrez strode forward to turn a large crank that would symbolically open the floodgates to a new wave of Ecuadoran oil wealth. But with flashbulbs popping and OCP officials looking on, the president could not make the wheel turn. Members of the press fingered their notebooks and played with their cameras. After several embarrassing minutes, the wheel turned, the flashbulbs flashed—the next era of Ecuadoran oil development was dawning.
Search Order, and: Manifesto for the General Customs Office of the Republic, and: Open Gift
Authors: Rivero Raúl
Published: February 2012

A note on these poems: "Search Order" was published in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres, in the May 2003 issue, with the following commentary: "Blanca Reyes, the wife of the poet, journalist and peaceful dissident Raúl Rivero, was able to rescue this poem after the political police of Cuba took him prisoner and confiscated all his books and papers. Rivero was condemned to twenty years in prison this past April." Rivero has told me that "Manifesto for the General Customs Office of the Republic" was the last poem he composed in Cuba, before departing into exile. I discovered "Open Gift" in the magazine Crítica (Puebla, Mexico), December 2001.
The Paradoxes of Anti-Americanism
Authors: Bruckner Pascal
Published: February 2012

In Europe, especially in France, anti-Americanism fundamentally structures political life and thought. In its most extreme forms, it embodies a whole way of interpreting the world. Explanation by means of America offers us the vertiginous feeling of the panoramic and allows us to embrace the totality of the real. If America didn't exist, we'd have to invent it: upon what other convenient scapegoat could we so conveniently load our sins and dump our garbage? Where else would we find such a place to whitewash the crimes of the planet, since anything that goes wrong on earth, from global warming to terrorism, can be laid at America's door? It's a stroke of good luck for a dictatorship or a criminal gang finally to be chased down and singled out by the United States.
Moving Right?: Bush's Decline and American Conservatism
Authors: Plotke David
Published: February 2012

Have George W. Bush's administrations produced a large shift to the right in politics in the United States since 2001? The answer is no—but this is mainly because of prior shifts in that direction. My aim in addressing this question is to understand the recent past and to help provide a framework for thinking about the next presidential election. With the administration's approval ratings plummeting, Democratic victories seem possible. But no outcome is guaranteed. I will begin with the political context of Bush's evident decline, and then assess the effects of the administrations' efforts both for public opinion and policies.
How Class Disappeared From Western Politics
Authors: Lappin Shalom
Published: February 2012

Recent political developments in Europe and America present two apparent paradoxes. First, much of what remains of the radical left has aligned itself with extreme Islamic political movements that promote the establishment of religious regimes in Asia and Africa, with the ultimate objective of a global caliphate. In Europe a not insignificant part of what currently passes for the liberal left also expresses sympathy for these movements. Second, in the United States, working-class voters consistently and consciously vote against their class interests by supporting conservative Republican politicians whose plutocratic economic policies they reject. Although these phenomena seem to be unrelated, it is possible to discern a connection between them when one looks at the more general historical context within which they have emerged.
Another Inconvenient Truth
Authors: Meyer John M.
Published: February 2012

Al Gore's global-warming slideshow, An Inconvenient Truth , is now one of the top-grossing documentaries of all time; by the time you are reading this, it's likely to have settled in at #3, behind Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins . His accompanying book spent a very hot summer near the top of the best-seller lists. Most viewers and reviewers have been enthusiastic. In part, this reflects the contrast between our collective memory of the programmed and stiff Democratic presidential candidate and Gore's movie persona. Ironically, by being in the wonkiest context imaginable, he comes across as passionate, sincere, and likable. Gore also delivers his message well. He simplifies the science without oversimplifying. His clear graphs and often captivating images can propel viewers to the conclusion that climate change is a present and fast-paced reality, rather than a far-off and slowly evolving possibility. This is the "inconvenient truth" that he counterposes to denial by both leaders and the public.
The Politics of the Thriller: On Munich and Moral Ambiguity
Authors: Dickstein Morris
Published: February 2012

Standard thrillers, the action kind that Hollywood still churns out, care little for credibility: the genre formula demands simple villains but deviously complex conspiracies. Writers like John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, le Carré, and, most recently, Alan Furst, had something different in mind. They made spy stories a medium for serious themes. Their agents were burnt-out cases who had lost their ideals or decent men abused or cut loose by their callow or corrupt superiors. They could be covert operatives, posing as diplomats or businessmen, or entrepreneurs of intelligence working in a demimonde of double agents and Mata Haris. In this shady territory, political loyalty, vital information, and even human life itself were always up for sale. These serious thrillers still belonged to a bipolar world; Soviet agents replaced ruthless Nazis as the ultimate enemy, but the good guys and bad guys were not always easy to tell apart. They could be secret sharers, brothers under the skin. The protagonists, weighed down by past experiences, moral scruples, and the distractions of their own messy lives, operated within a gray zone of moral ambiguity. At the same time, the colorful villains took on confusing traits of humanity, including their own family lives and some remnants of idealistic beliefs, however tarnished.
The End of Denial: Solidarity, Diversity, and Constitutional Patriotism in Germany
Authors: Müller Jan-Werner
Published: February 2012

In the 1980s and early 1990s, one could be forgiven for getting the impression that Germans had a monopoly on self-obsessed debates about their "identity." When the country was still divided, politicians and intellectuals joined in what seemed to be an interminable series of ceremonies, conferences, and televised discussions about the meaning of Germany. Today, a united Germany has hardly found consensus on its ever elusive national identity; and yet, both the tone and the parameters of the debate have changed profoundly, and not just because of unification. Slowly, there is convergence on a definition of "Germanness" that is no longer ethnic, that is more accepting of immigrants, and that implies a less tortuous, though not complacent relation to its own past. This new self-conception might even hold lessons for the pan-European discussion about the integration of minorities and the future of the welfare state—a discussion in which it is often assumed that there has to be a trade-off between "solidarity" and "diversity."
Fanatics Without Borders
Authors: Finkielkraut Alain
Published: February 2012

Freedom of Expression and respect for the beliefs of others begins with a painful renunciation of the absolute authority of your own particular convictions. And it's against this renunciation that Islamic fundamentalist elites and masses raise their holy rage. The picture that lit the fuse shows Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. Insulting picture, they tell us. A hurtful connection, an offensive connection, a defamatory connection between the Prophet and terrorism. Certainly. But this link wasn't suggested by Danish cartoonists, it was forged by the Jihadists. Why were there no demonstrations in the Arab/Muslim worlds against the bloody attacks in New York, Madrid, Mombasa, Bali, and elsewhere? Moreover, the pictures of furious and screaming crowds sacking the Scandinavian embassies are infinitely more obscene, infinitely more caricatured than the sketches from Scandinavia. The believers who count themselves outraged and calumniated by such a representation of Muhammad respond by saying "Kill those who insult Islam!" And those who insult Islam, in their eyes, are not only the authors of these incriminating drawings, but the governments of the countries where the drawings were published and all those within the jurisdiction of these countries.
Michael Kazin Responds
Authors: Kazin Michael
Published: February 2012

Susan Jacoby writes under a misconception. I did not advocate that all American progressives should justify their politics by referring to the Sermon on the Mount or other biblical passages that imply that God is just. Rather, my point was that Christian activists and politicians have always done so. For much of U.S. history, their faith and their rhetoric often served causes we can still applaud—the abolition of slavery, the rights of labor and women and Native Americans, opposition to militarism, and more. But since the Second World War, with the exception of the black freedom movement, evangelical zeal has mostly benefited the right.
Immoral Hazards: New Orleans Style
Authors: Miller S. M.
Published: February 2012

"Moral hazard" is a term deployed by many economists and politicians to criticize and dismantle public programs. Missing from their vocabularies is the parallel term "immoral hazard." New Orleans' hurricane and aftermath reveal that immoral hazards have been ignored. The moral hazard concept developed in the insurance field. If an insurance company reimbursed home owners or auto drivers for all the costs of a fire or auto accident, they might be encouraged to be inattentive to fire threats or dangerous driving. Full coverage of home or auto losses would therefore produce a hazard, a moral hazard in that it induced antisocial behavior. Enter, therefore, "deductibles," so that the insured could not count on full reimbursement from the insurance company and would have an incentive to pay attention to fire and driving hazards.
The Authoritarian Reflex
Authors: Hausknecht Murray
Published: February 2012

Those who still remember their high school biology lessons will recall how a simple reflex works: touch a hot stove and "instinctively" your hand jerks away; it is automatic—no thought involved. Although most animal behavior is instinctive, almost all of human behavior is learned and requires thought even when life is threatened; firefighters enter burning buildings to save the lives of others. Because "certainty" is rarely, if ever, present in human affairs, Vice President Dick Cheney believes that our response to a perceived threat must be like a simple reflex: without "analysis." In The One Percent Doctrine , Ron Suskind quotes him as saying, "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. . . . It's not about our analysis or finding a preponderance of evidence. . . it's about our response." But, what about that response?
Banning the Bomb: A New Approach
Authors: Wilson Ward
Published: February 2012

In July of 1945, U.S. president Harry Truman wrote in his diary, "It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful." Terrible and useful. For sixty years, people have focused on the terrible aspects of nuclear weapons. They have made films about nuclear war, detailed the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and imagined the end of life on earth. In those sixty years, on the other hand, people have rarely talked seriously about the usefulness of nuclear weapons. Do they really win wars? Are they effective threats? Fear—engendered by real and imagined cold war dangers—constrained real inquiry. Absorbed by images of destruction, most people didn't ask practical questions. But it turns out that the area that we've explored the most—the terribleness of nuclear weapons—is not the key to understanding them. The key is investigating whether or not they are really useful.
"They Love Us Here": American Migrants in Mexico
Authors: Croucher Sheila
Published: February 2012

The town I was destined for is full of immigrants, and over the past decade they have arrived in increasing numbers. Most do not learn the local language and reside and socialize within an isolated cultural enclave. These immigrants practice their own cultural traditions and celebrate their national holidays. Grocery stores are stocked with locally unfamiliar products that hail from their homeland. Few choose to pursue citizenship in their adopted land, and most follow closely and participate in the political and economic life of their homeland. Some live and work in the new country without proper documentation and have even been involved in the illegal transport of drugs across state borders. Their presence is so pervasive that local governments have been forced to adapt by providing services to address the needs of this growing foreign population. "They" are U.S. citizens living in Mexico.
Neoconservatism á la Française
Authors: Rule James B.
Published: February 2012

Pascal Bruckner's embarrassing anti-anti-American diatribe ("The Paradoxes of Anti-Americanism," Summer 2006) starts out by reminding us of some things that most of us thought we knew. For one, that visceral antipathy to America and Americans is widespread around the world these days. For another, that these attitudes often coalesce into worldviews that resist nuance or revision in the face of evidence.
Designer Babies and the Pro-Choice Movement
Authors: Tuhus-Dubrow Rebecca
Published: February 2012

Over the last century, the link between sex and reproduction has weakened. Feminist activism, aided by technological advances, has given middle-class women in the United States widespread access to effective contraception and safe, legal abortion. Although far too many exceptions persist, for large numbers of women, sex today has no necessary relationship to childbearing. Meanwhile, a burgeoning fertility industry has, for thousands, taken baby-making from the bedroom to the laboratory.
Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?
Authors: Benhabib Seyla
Published: February 2012

Even those, like myself, who opposed the Iraq War from the start on moral, legal, and strategic grounds cannot rejoice at whatever confirmation of our judgment comes from the scene of carnage, political turpitude, and human misery presented by contemporary Iraq. The world is a more dangerous place than at any time after September 11, 2001; the Middle East is perched on a precipice; and the spectacle of a superpower, mightier then ever in military terms, but increasingly losing its legitimacy, prompts anxious analogies to doomed empires of the past.
Universal Health Insurance 2007: Can We Learn from the Past?
Authors: Marmor Theodore
Published: February 2012

While most commentators decry our peculiar ability to combine insecurity with high cost, the substantial reform of American medicine at the national level has been enormously difficult to achieve, and comprehensive reform has been impossible. This is not simply a description of the Clinton Health Plan debacle of 1993–1994. On many occasions before and after the Second World War, comprehensive national reform was attempted (and in 1973–1974, appeared imminent). In all those instances, reform fell short of the necessary political majorities. Each of these failures has its own history, and in each there are many contributing causes. One fact remains: Americans have long been dissatisfied with the nation's medical arrangements, but our political system has been unable to come up with a solution that satisfies enough of the public to overwhelm the institutional and interest group barriers to reform.
Why Aren't U.S. Cities Burning?
Authors: Katz Michael B.
Published: February 2012

The summer of 2007 marks the fortieth anniversary of America's worst season of urban disorder. The most famous riots happened in Newark and Detroit. But "nearly 150 cities reported disorders in Negro—and in some instances Puerto Rican—neighborhoods," reported the 1968 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Today, the most intriguing question is not why the riots occurred but why they have not recurred. With the exception of Liberty City, Miami, in 1980, and South-central Los Angeles in 1992, American cities have not burned since the early 1970s. Even the botched response to Hurricane Katrina did not provoke civil violence.
Further Beyond the "M" Word: A Response to Arlene Skolnick
Authors: Trimberger E. Kay
Published: February 2012

I have long admired Arlene Skolnick's writing on the family, but both my empirical study of long-term single women and my reading of the demographic data lead me to reject her view in "Beyond the 'M' Word" (Dissent, Fall 2006). Skolnick argues that the United States is experiencing just a period of flux in the indestructible institution of marriage. She believes that the high divorce rate, decreasing remarriage rates, rise in out-of-wedlock births, increasing cohabitation, and the rising age of marriage reflect merely difficulties in moving from a male breadwinner marriage system to one of a union of working and intimate equals—a transition that, she says, may take another generation or so. During this period and beyond, Skolnick asserts, marriage will "remain central to American culture."
Can the Populist Moment Last?
Authors: Ross Benjamin
Published: February 2012

Newly elected Senator Jon Tester, reports the New York Times, is "your grandfather's Democrat—a pro-gun, anti-big-business prairie pragmatist whose life is defined by the treeless patch of hard Montana dirt that has been in the family since 1916." Virginia's new senator, Jim Webb, is an ex-marine who served as Ronald Reagan's secretary of the navy and writes novels celebrating the fighting heritage of the Scots-Irish. He writes that "The most important—and unfortunately the least debated—issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century." Pennsylvanians elected Senator Bob Casey, who is as much anti-abortion as he is pro-union. Former National Football League quarterback Heath Shuler of North Carolina won election to the House on a similar program, and joined the next day in a press conference with the new Ohio senator, Sherrod Brown, to denounce unfair trade agreements.
Pascal Bruckner Responds
Authors: Bruckner Pascal
Published: February 2012

I have bad news from Paris for James B. Rule: the French love America and love to hate it. They whip the Republican administration only to give freer rein to their lust for everything that comes from the United States. Such is the ambivalence of our anti-Americanism, an impossible passion.
A Wrench in the Machine for Living: Frank Gehry Comes to Brooklyn
Authors: Taylor Charles
Published: February 2012

Like many utopian visions that someone is crazy enough to attempt to realize, modernist architecture has always contained an element of fascism. It wasn't just that a cuckoo notion like Le Corbusier's "radiant city," those celery stalks of lone skyscrapers surrounded by a verdant wasteland, was meant to simplify life, but that it was in some basic sense meant to replace it. The light and space essential to early modernist design were a response to the darkness and claustrophobia of Victorian architecture in which so many poor were imprisoned. But the modernists' own language suggested that the masses would simply be serving a new master. You can't describe a dwelling as a "machine for living," as Le Corbusier did, without having abandoned what most of us associate with the word "home": comfort, refuge, freedom from regulation, a respite from routine. If a house or a high-rise apartment building is a machine, those living in it must be the cogs. The ultimate fulfillment of Le Corbusier's vision might be like a Prozac version of the workers trudging off to the mines in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, drudgery tidied up and narcotized.
Alive and Not Well: Affirmative Action on Campus
Authors: Barkan Joanne
Published: February 2012

In the ever-evolving and convoluted story of affirmative action in the United States, June 28, 2007 will stand out as a paradox. The Supreme Court's conservative majority managed in one ruling to undermine racial integration in primary and secondary education across the country, twist the milestone civil rights case, Brown v. Board of Education, inside out, but also uphold what little remains of a policy they've always opposed—racial preferences in higher education.
"Show Me the Money": Labor and the Bottom Line of National Health Insurance
Authors: Gottschalk Marie
Published: February 2012

A well-known political scientist once declared that the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power. The simple question—single-payer or not—conceals major differences over whether to frame the health care issue primarily as an economic question or a moral one. Economic considerations are critical to propelling the cause of universal health care. But advocates of universal health care should not cast the economic competitiveness of U.S. business as the central economic issue at stake in the debate over health care reform.
1968: Lessons Learned
Authors: Berman Marshall
Published: February 2012

Charles Dickens, at the start of A Tale of Two Cities, his novel of the French Revolution, portrays 1789 as a magical year that crystallized "the best of times" and "the worst of times" within itself. Living through 1968 in America felt like this, though "the best" was concentrated in the year's first half, and "the worst" in its last. "The best" of 1968—indeed, the whole idea of "1968"—lay in the fusion of the mass movement against the Vietnam War with cultural currents that had flourished and grown all through the 1960s. The clichés that our mass media used to describe them—"the counterculture," "sex, drugs, rock-and-roll," "the greening of America"—for once conveyed something real. The uncanny feeling of "1968," of what it was like to be here then, was that somehow, maybe for fifteen minutes, all these pretentious labels were real.
1968: Lessons Learned
Authors: Rubin Lillian B.
Published: February 2012

It's impossible to look back on the sixties without thinking, What a time that was! Politics and culture intermingled in a heady mix, the personal was political and the political personal; every act—whether demonstrating against the Vietnam War, smoking dope, having sex, or listening to rock and roll—had meaning beyond itself. The civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, the women's liberation movement, and the counterculture were all demanding changes that would alter the social landscape forever. Peace, freedom, equality, justice were the watchwords of the time. Yet, even among the young male revolutionaries of the New Left, equality didn't mean the women with whom they worked, studied, and slept.
Resisting the Threat to Public Education
Authors: Meier Deborah , Harman Susan
Published: February 2012

Too many Americans have bought into the idea that most of our nation's problems can be blamed on our school system, and that the only way to solve them is through "school reform." It's an old story, but it became the bipartisan line in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk and came to fruition in the catastrophic No child Left Behind Act of 2001. An odd alliance pulled this story together, led by corporate interests, neoconservatives, and the media, and joined by civil rights organizations, activists, some institutional liberals, and some school leaders eager for the attention that brings money. Together they have relentlessly sold a story that has wasted our time, energy, and resources and pointed us in the wrong direction.
Has Conservatism Cracked Up?
Authors: Mattson Kevin
Published: February 2012

Kevin Mattson reviews David Frum's Comeback: Conservatism that can Win Again , Donald T. Critchlow's The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History , and Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons .
The Worlds Warden: Crime, Punishment, and Politics in the United States
Authors: Gottschalk Marie
Published: February 2012

Throughout American history, politicians and public officials have exploited public anxieties about crime and disorder for political gain. The difference today is that these political strategies and public anxieties have come together in the perfect storm. They have radically transformed U.S. penal policies, spurring an unprecedented prison boom. Since the 1970s, the U.S. prisoner population has increased by more than fivefold. Today, the United States is the world's warden, incarcerating a higher proportion of its people than any other country—or about one out of every hundred adults. A staggering seven million people—or one in every thirty-two adults—are either incarcerated, on parole or probation, or under some other form of state supervision.
A Southern Strategy For Unions
Authors: Lalas Jonah
Published: February 2012

Although Jacob Abbott traveled the South in the nineteenth century, my experience in twenty-first-century Texas was eerily similar. Except instead of riding a horse, I drove a Honda Civic. And rather than stopping in for lunch at a plantation, as a union organizer I knocked on doors in suburban developments looking for leaders who could help unite their co-workers and fight the boss. But today, as in Abbott’s time, the workers kindly let a complete stranger into their home, where we would sit down on the couch, drink iced tea, and talk union.
1968: Lessons Learned
Authors: Stansell Christine
Published: February 2012

In early September 1968, American feminism announced its arrival to the nation, when a hundred women demonstrators from New York traveled down to Atlantic City to disrupt the Miss America pageant. The protest on the boardwalk was more or less antic and funny, skewering the proceedings inside the hall, which even then were starting to seem a bit tawdry. The feminists' major events included the crowning of a sheep as Miss America. And although the substance of the protests was not so frivolous, the slogans and denunciations seemed to many viewers as absurdities, the latest sign that the country had gone mad. Women?? Them too?? What's next??????!...
Teaching Aristotle in Indonesia
Authors: Fraenkel Carlos
Published: February 2012

Getting from Montreal to Makassar is not a picnic. During the thirty-six hours my partner and I spend in transit, we debate whether it is more important to teach public health or philosophy in Indonesia, because this is the reason for our three-week trip to the capital of the Indonesian province of Sulawesi. We both teach at McGill University: my partner is a medical doctor, specializing in public health; I'm a historian of philosophy, working, among other things, on Muslim and Jewish thought. The classes we give at Alauddin State Islamic University—one of fourteen academic institutions in Indonesia that make up the public system of Islamic higher education under the auspices of the ministry of religious affairs—are part of a McGill-based Indonesia Social Equity Project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Nobody denies the usefulness of teaching medicine and public health, especially in a developing country. But why does CIDA send a philosopher instead of a second doctor or, for that matter, a social worker, an engineer, or an economist? Someone, in other words, whose expertise is of immediate use for improving the living conditions of Indonesians? Most people—in Indonesia and elsewhere—don't even know that the problems philosophers turn over in their minds exist. Much less do they feel the need to understand or resolve them. Are their lives any less happy for that reason? Many would say that the opposite is the case.
1968: Lessons Learned
Authors: Fuecks Ralf
Published: February 2012

Nineteen-sixty-eight has become a political myth that won't go away. The debate on its interpretation continues and continues. The year marks a historical break, comparable to the beginning of the cold war or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Making this connection may seem to be an exaggeration at first glance, but the cultural and political upheavals that resulted from "1968" have been truly revolutionary.