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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > Civil rights & citizenship
One out of every seven people in the world today is on the move, voluntarily and involuntarily, within countries and between them. More and more people belong to several communities at once and yet the social contract between state and citizen is still bounded by questions of nationality. Where will the cultural building blocks come from with which we can imagine a different kind of nation, and different kinds of institutions, that better reflect this reality? This book looks at the potential role of international music competitions, beauty magazines, elite social clubs, and religious movements, among others, as potential breeding grounds for the creation of global citizenship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
The Dred Scott decision of 1857 is widely (and correctly) regarded as the very worst in the long history of the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision held that no African American could ever be a U.S. citizen and declared that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional and void. The decision thus appeared to promise that slavery would be forever protected in the great American West. Prompting mass outrage, the decision was a crucial step on the road that led to the Civil War. Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court traces the history of the case and tells the story of many of the key people involved, including Dred and Harriet Scott, President James Buchanan, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and Abraham Lincoln. The book also examines in some detail each of the nine separate Opinions written by the Court's Justices, connecting each with the respective Justices' past views on slavery and the law. That examination demonstrates that the majority Justices were willing to embrace virtually any flimsy legal argument they could find at hand in an effort to justify the pro-slavery result they had predetermined. Many modern commentators view the case chiefly in relation to Roe v Wade and related controversies in modern constitutional law: some conservative critics attempt to argue that Dred Scott exemplifies "aspirationalism" or "judicial activism" gone wrong; some liberal critics in turn try to argue that Dred Scott instead represents "originalism" or "strict constructionism" run amok. Here, Judge Ethan Greenberg demonstrates that none of these modern critiques has much merit. The Dred Scott case was not about constitutional methodology, but chiefly about slavery, and about how very far the Dred Scott Court was willing to go to protect the political interests of the slave-holding South. The decision was wrong because the Court subordinated law and intellectual honesty to politics. The case thus exemplifies the dangers of a political Court.
This book brings together scholars from various disciplines to explore current issues and trends in the rethinking of migration and citizenship from the perspective of three major immigrant democracies - Australia, Canada, and the United States. These countries share a history of pronounced immigration and emigration, extensive experience with diasporic and mobile communities, and with integrating culturally diverse populations. They also share an approach to automatic citizenship based on the principle of jus soli (as opposed to the traditionally common jus sanguinis of continental Europe), and a comparatively open attitude towards naturalization. Some of these characteristics are now under pressure due to the "restrictive turn" in citizenship and migration worldwide. This volume explores the significance of political structures, political agents and political culture in shaping processes of inclusion and exclusion in these diverse societies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.
Peter Ling's acclaimed biography of Martin Luther King Jr provides a thorough re-examination of both the man and the Civil Rights Movement, showing how King grew into his leadership role and kept his faith as the challenges facing the movement strengthened after 1965. Ling combines a detailed narrative of Martin Luther King's life with the key historiographical debates surrounding him and places both within the historical context of the Civil Rights Movement. This fully revised and updated second edition includes an extended look at Black Power and a detailed analysis of the memorialization of King since his death, including President Obama's 50th anniversary address, and how conservative spokesmen have tried to appropriate King as an advocate of colour-blindness. Drawing on the wide-ranging and changing scholarship on the Civil Rights Movement, this volume condenses research previously scattered across a larger literature. Peter Ling's crisp and fluent style captures the drama, irony and pathos of King's life and provides an excellent introduction for students and others interested in King, the Civil Rights movement, and America in the 1960s.
Taking into account the political and intellectual forces that shape Supreme Court decisions, Constitutional Debate in Action examines how and why the U.S. Constitution continues to grow and adapt to human wants, passions, and values. Not your traditional constitutional-law textbook, this three-volume set views the Constitution as an institutionalized form of debate by which people press their political demands and arguments upon the Supreme Court. This process-oriented approach goes beyond a straightforward examination of how the decisions of Supreme Court justices have transformed constitutional doctrine through the ages; it explores the actual process of adjudication itself. Each case study covers the legal and political background; including relevant out-of-court discussions, to help students understand the political framework in which the Supreme Court operates. Actual legal briefs filed in landmark cases, and corresponding oral arguments before the Supreme Court, provide students with a front-row seat to the process of constitutional argumentation. As they evaluate the opposing viewpoints, students are better equipped to evaluate critically final Supreme Court decisions and opinions. In addition, students gain a valuable perspective on the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional democracy. Each volume provides in-depth and updated examinations of key landmark decisions. Civil Rights & Liberties covers: Racial Discrimination: Brown v. Board of Education, Affirmative Action: Regents of University of Calif. v. Bakke, and Grutter v. Bollinger, Abortion: Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Hate Speech and Cross Burning: R. A. V. v. City of St. Paul, and Virginia v. Black, Peyote Use and Religious Freedom: Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith; and new to the second edition, Campaign Finance Regulation and Freedom of Speech: McConnell v. Federal Election Commission.
Many thousands of Irish peasants fled from the country in the terrible famine winter of 1847-1848, following the road to the ports and the Liverpool ferries to make the dangerous passage across the Atlantic. The human toll of "Black '47", the worst year of the famine, is notorious, but the lives of the emigrants themselves have remained largely hidden, untold because of their previous obscurity and deep poverty. In The End of Hidden Ireland, Robert Scally brings their lives to light. Focusing on the townland of Ballykilcline in Roscommon, Scally offers a richly detailed portrait of Irish rural life on the eve of the catastrophe. From their internal lives and values, to their violent conflict with the English Crown, from rent strikes to the potato blight, he takes the emigrants on each stage of their journey out of Ireland to New York. Along the way, he offers rare insights into the character and mentality of the immigrants as they arrived in America in their millions during the famine years. A brilliant analysis, rich with metaphors, The End of Hidden Ireland demonstrates the impact of modernization on Irish peasant behavior and makes a major contribution to migration, peasant, and famine studies. This book is also a tale of adventure and human survival, one that does justice to a tragic generation with sympathy but without sentiment.
When newly-liberated African American slaves attempted to enter the marketplace and exercise their rights as citizens of the United States in 1865, few, if any, Americans expected that, a century and a half later, the class divide between black and white Americans would be as wide as it is today. The United States has faced several potential key turning points in the status of African Americans over the course of its history, yet at each of these points the prevailing understanding of African Americans and their place in the economic and political fabric of the country was at best contested and resolved on the side of second-class citizenship. The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship, 1865-Present seeks to answer the question of what the United States would look like today if, at the end of the Civil War, freed slaves had been granted full political, social and economic rights. It does so by tracing the historical evolution of African American experiences, from the dawn of Reconstruction onward, through the perspectives of sociology, political science, law, economics, education and psychology. As a whole, the book is the first systematic study of the gap between promise and performance of African Americans since 1865. Over the course of thirty-four chapters, written by some of the most eminent scholars of African American studies and across every major social discipline, this Handbook presents a full and powerful portrait of the particular hurdles faced by African Americans and the distinctive contributions African Americans have made to the development of U.S. institutions and culture. As such, it tracks where African Americans have been in order to better illuminate the path ahead.
What does it mean for a society to be modern ? What beliefs, habits and behaviour does a modern state require of its citizens? How can these be fostered? In many non-Western contexts, modernization has tended to be equated with Westernization, and hence with an abandonment of authentic indigenous identities and values. This is evident in the recent history of many Asian societies, where efforts to modernize spurred on by the spectre of foreign domination have often been accompanied by determined attempts to stamp national variants of modernity with the brand of local authenticity: Asian values, Chinese characteristics, a Japanese cultural essence and so forth. Highlighting (or exaggerating) associations between the more unsettling consequences of modernization and alien influence has thus formed part of a strategy whereby elites in many Asian societies have sought to construct new forms of legitimacy for old patterns of dominance over the masses. The apparatus of modern systems of mass education, often inherited from colonial rulers, has been just one instrument in such campaigns of state legitimation. This book presents analyses of a range of contemporary projects of citizenship formation across Asia in order to identify those issues and concerns most central to Asian debates over the construction of modern identities. The book main focus is on schooling, but also features other vehicles for citizenship-formation, such as museums and the internet; the role of religion (in particular Islam) in debates over citizenship and identity in certain Asian societies; and the relationship between state-centred identity discourses and the experience of increasingly globalized elites. With chapters from an international team of contributors, this interdisciplinary volume will appeal to students and scholars of Asian culture and society, Asian education, comparative education and citizenship."
Between the 1950s and 1970s, Black Power coalesced as activists advocated a more oppositional approach to fighting racial oppression, emphasizing racial pride, asserting black political, cultural, and economic autonomy, and challenging white power. In Concrete Demands, Rhonda Y. Williams provides a rich, deeply researched history that sheds new light on this important social and political movement, and shows that the era of expansive Black Power politics that emerged in the 1960s had long roots and diverse trajectories within the 20th century. Looking at the struggle from the grassroots level, Williams highlights the role of ordinary people as well as more famous historical actors, and demonstrates that women activists were central to Black Power. Vivid and highly readable, Concrete Demands is a perfect introduction to Black Power in the twentieth century for anyone interested in the history of black liberation movements.
As an ethnic minority the Nubians of Kenya are struggling for equal citizenship by asserting themselves as indigenous and autochthonous to Kibera, one of Nairobi's most notorious slums. Having settled there after being brought by the British colonial authorities from Sudan as soldiers, this appears a peculiar claim to make. It is a claim that illuminates the hierarchical nature of Kenya's ethnicised citizenship regime and the multi-faceted nature of citizenship itself. This book explores two kinds of citizenship deficits; those experienced by the Nubians in Kenya and, more centrally, those which represent the limits of citizenship theories. The author argues for an understanding of citizenship as made up of multiple component parts: status, rights and membership, which are often disaggregated through time, across geographic spaces and amongst different people. This departure from a unitary language of citizenship allows a novel analysis of the central role of ethnicity in the recognition of political membership and distribution of political goods in Kenya. Such an analysis generates important insights into the risks and possibilities of a relationship between ethnicity and democracy that is of broad, global relevance.
The term 'civil rights' has such a familiar presence in discussions about American politics and law that we tend to use it reflexively and intuitively, but rarely do we stop to think about what exactly we mean when we use the term and why certain uses strike us as right or wrong. In this book, Professor Christopher W. Schmidt tells the story of how Americans have fought over the meaning of civil rights from the Civil War through today. Through their struggles over what it means to live in a nation dedicated to protecting civil rights, each generation has given the label new life and new meaning. Civil Rights in America shows how the words we use to understand our world become objects of contestation and points of leverage for social, political, and legal action.
Are elections out of fashion? Does it matter if voters don t show up at the polls? If yes, is legal enforcement of voting compatible with democracy? These are just a few of the questions linked to the thorny problem of electoral abstention. This book addresses the hot question whether there is a duty to vote and if this is enforceable in the form of compulsory voting. Divided into three parts, Anthoula Malkopoulou begins by expertly presenting the importance of compulsory voting today, situating the debate within the contemporary discussion on elections, representation and democracy. In part two, she questions the historical origins of the idea in Europe. In particular, she examines parliamentary discussions and other primary sources from France, Belgium and Greece, including a few additional insights from other countries, like Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia. Focusing especially on the years between 1870 and 1930, the reader learns about the historical actors of the debates, their efforts to legitimate punishment of abstention through normative arguments, but also their strategic motivations and political interests. While discussions at the beginning of the century focus on introducing compulsory voting, Malkopoulou criticizes its misuse and discusses the debate over its abolition after the Second World War, exposing the contingency of relevant normative claims today and the conditionality of compulsory voting. From ancient times until today, you learn about the ideological debates, their political context and how the problems of equal representation and political accountability persist through the ages."
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters created a sea of change in labour and race relations in the US. For the first time in US history, a black labour union played a central role in shaping labor and civil rights policy. Based on interviews and archival research, this new book tells the story of the union and its charismatic leader C.L. Dellums, starting from the BSCP's origins as the first national union of black workers in 1925. In 1937, the BSCP made history when it compelled one of the largest US corporations - the Pullman Company - to recognize and negotiate a contract with a black workers' union. C. L. Dellums was a leading civil rights activist as well as a labor leader. In 1948, he was chosen to be the first West Coast Regional Director of the NAACP. This book is an inspiring testament to both him and the unions transformative impact on US society.
The Subject of Human Rights is the first book to systematically address the "human" part of "human rights." Drawing on the finest thinking in political theory, cultural studies, history, law, anthropology, and literary studies, this volume examines how human rights—as discourse, law, and practice—shape how we understand humanity and human beings. It asks how the humanness that the human rights idea seeks to protect and promote is experienced. The essays in this volume consider how human rights norms and practices affect the way we relate to ourselves, to other people, and to the nonhuman world. They investigate what kinds of institutions and actors are subjected to human rights and are charged with respecting their demands and realizing their aspirations. And they explore how human rights shape and even create the very subjects they seek to protect. Through critical reflection on these issues, The Subject of Human Rights suggests ways in which we might reimagine the relationship between human rights and subjectivity with a view to benefiting human rights and subjects alike.
Whereas our nation was once united in purpose, today it is bitterly divided. Why? Racial discrimination, diminishing educational opportunities, poor economic mobility, greedy corporations, and an unresponsive federal government have combined to create two Americas. Presented in Gerston's characteristic, no-holds-barred style of wit and candor, Reviving Citizen Engagement: Policies to Renew National Community casts a harsh light on the current state of American public policy. It then offers approaches to healing some of the country's most pressing problems. The book begins with an assessment of the extent to which America has become a fractured society and the residual damage from the social implosion. It then examines the fragile condition of the 21st century electorate and a political system where private power too often has overcome values intended to protect the public good. The author argues it isn't American entitlement run amok, but suggests there really is a powerful disconnect. The large number of Americans who have been left out of the system are no longer engaged citizens. This development represents a monumental threat to American democracy, for our democracy can succeed only if its people believe they have the opportunity to succeed. This book not only provides evidence of our frayed society but also includes recommendations for strengthening America's social fabric. It details the steps we can-and must-take to repair, rebuild, and renew American society. Gerston contends they are within our reach if we are willing to make the sacrifices long overdue in what historically has been recognized as the world's most powerful and successful nation.
This book examines the convergence of conservation and security efforts along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. The author presents a unique analysis of the history of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, a federally protected border wilderness area. Beginning in the early 1990s, changes to U.S. immigration policy dramatically altered the political and natural landscape in and around Cabeza Prieta. In particular, the increasing presence of Border Patrol has contributed to environmental degradation in wilderness. Complicated human rights concerns are also explored in the book. Protecting wildlife in an area with high rates of undocumented border-crossing and smuggling results in complex and sometimes controversial conservation policies. Ultimately, the observations and analysis presented in this book illustrate ways in which the politics of race and nationalism are subtly, but significantly, interwoven into border environmental and security policies.
Why do countries differ substantially in the size of legal permanent immigration to the United States since 1965, even after the repeal of the discriminatory national origins quota system? The author demonstrates that development theory, world system theory and immigrants' social network theory all contain partial truths, but not one of them captures the entire immigration process. Here cross-national differences in the size of post-1965 immigration are shown as the outcomes of multi-dimensional forces, including the source country's development, U.S. involvement in the country, immigrants' resources, and the interactions of these factors. Scholars and readers interested in immigration, demography, sociology, history, international relations, cross-national analysis and social change will find this book an interesting and useful addition to their list of resources.
David E. Toohey s Borderlands Media: Cinema and Literature as Opposition to the Oppression of Immigrants is an in-depth analysis which explores the immigrant experience using a mixture of cinema, literary, and other artistic media spanning from 1958 onward. Toohey begins with Orson Welles s 1958 Touch of Evil, which triggered a wave of protest resulting in Chicana/o filmmakers acting out against the racism against immigrant and diaspora communities. The study then adds policy documents and social science scholarship to the mix, both to clarify and oppose undesirable elements in these forms of thought. Through extensive analysis and explication, Toohey uncovers a history of power ranging from lingual and visual to more widely recognized class and racial divisions. These divisions are analyzed both with an emphasis on how they oppress, but also how cinematic political thought can challenge them, with special attention to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. David E. Toohey s Borderlands Media is an essential text for scholars and students engaged in questions regarding the effect of media on the oppression of immigrants and diaspora communities.
One Dream or Two? is a critical historical, constitutional, and philosophical examination of Martin Luther King Jr's understanding of justice-his "Dream"-from within the context of the American political tradition. Nathan Schlueter introduces King's "I Have a Dream Speech" and then isolates elements of his larger vision for social justice-paying special attention to issues of racial discrimination, political economy, civil disobedience, and the relationship between politics and religion-situating those elements within historical, rhetorical, and political context.
This lively, moving narrative provides the first comprehensive account of the emigration of nearly 500,000 Soviet Jews to the United States between 1967 and 1997. By weaving a wide variety of immigrant voices and photographs together with historical, journalistic, social service, and psychological studies of Soviet Jewish immigration, this book offers a comprehensive and highly readable introduction to the history, politics, and culture of this important new American population. Topics covered include the varied reasons for their exodus from the Soviet Union, what they found in the United States, the communities they created there, and the cultural problems they encountered. The author, an expert on this group, dispels stereotypical notions about Soviet Jewish immigrants by exploring the tremendous social, political, and cultural diversity of the nearly half million Soviet Jews now living in the United States. Making abundant use of interviews and photographs, this book is as accessible as it is informative. It opens with a history of Jewish life in the Soviet Union as remembered by elderly immigrants. Theirs are gripping memoirs of the turbulence of revolutionary Russia, the horror of Nazi occupation, Josef Stalin's post-war assault on surviving Jewish leaders, and the emergence from the ashes of a flourishing Jewish counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s. Immigrant voices narrate the history of this Jewish exodus, which began as a protest movement by a handful of courageous activists and developed into a mass migration. The second half of the book vividly evokes life in Soviet Jewish communities across the United States, from the crowded urban landscape of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, tothe palmy, smoggy enclave of West Hollywood, California. Class, gender, and cultural and political divisions are all addressed in this fascinating portrait of a complex and diverse community.
Winner of the Helen and Howard Marraro Prize A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year "Perhaps the greatest study ever written of Renaissance political thought." -Jeffrey Collins, Times Literary Supplement "Magisterial...Hankins shows that the humanists' obsession with character explains their surprising indifference to particular forms of government. If rulers lacked authentic virtue, they believed, it did not matter what institutions framed their power." -Wall Street Journal "Puts the politics back into humanism in an extraordinarily deep and far-reaching way...For generations to come, all who write about the political thought of Italian humanism will have to refer to it; its influence will be...nothing less than transformative." -Noel Malcolm, American Affairs "[A] masterpiece...It is only Hankins's tireless exploration of forgotten documents...and extraordinary endeavors of editing, translation, and exposition that allow us to reconstruct-almost for the first time in 550 years-[the humanists'] three compelling arguments for why a strong moral character and habits of truth are vital for governing well. Yet they are as relevant to contemporary democracy in Britain, and in the United States, as to Machiavelli." -Rory Stewart, Times Literary Supplement "The lessons for today are clear and profound." -Robert D. Kaplan Convulsed by a civilizational crisis, the great thinkers of the Renaissance set out to reconceive the nature of society. Everywhere they saw problems. Corrupt and reckless tyrants sowing discord and ruling through fear; elites who prized wealth and status over the common good; religious leaders preoccupied with self-advancement while feuding armies waged endless wars. Their solution was at once simple and radical. "Men, not walls, make a city," as Thucydides so memorably said. They would rebuild the fabric of society by transforming the moral character of its citizens. Soulcraft, they believed, was a precondition of successful statecraft. A landmark reappraisal of Renaissance political thought, Virtue Politics challenges the traditional narrative that looks to the Renaissance as the seedbed of modern republicanism and sees Machiavelli as its exemplary thinker. James Hankins reveals that what most concerned the humanists was not reforming institutions so much as shaping citizens. If character mattered more than laws, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the precursor to our embattled humanities.
As the Soviet communist regime gave way to democracy, the emergence of an entirely new political and social landscape had the potential to turn Russian society upside down. In Mothers and Soldiers: Organizing Men andWomen in 1990s Russia, Amy Caiazza looks at the effects of this seismic change on gender roles, and specifically the role of women in a newly democratic Russia. By observing through a gendered lens institutions like the military, and the process of making public policy, Caiazza finds that despite the institutional disruption, the pattern of gender role ideologies maintained continuity from the former times while at the same time embracing aspects of Western feminism.
In 2015, Singapore celebrated 50 years of independence. The Institute of Policy took stock of how the choices people made have led the city-state to where she is today. As achievements are being celebrated, a conversation about the road ahead also begins. With much nation-building efforts premised upon the existence of this imagined community known as 'Singapore', it is an opportune moment to question and reimagine who 'we' are.The book documents the conference proceedings at Singapore Perspectives 2016 where the fourth generation of government ministers presented their thoughts on the social, economic and political future of Singapore and engaged in dialogues with panelists and audience members on the directions the country should take.
Melting Pot Soldiers is the story of how immigrants responded to the drama of the Civil War. When the war began in 1861, there were, in most states in the North, large populations of immigrants (primarily from Western Europe) whose leaders were active in American politics at the local, state, and national level. A characteristic feature of the formation of the Union armies was the role played by politicians in the recruitment of the regiment, the basic unit of the army. There were dozens of such regiments, mostly German and Irish, but also a Scandinavian unit, and there was an attempt to form a Scottish regiment. As the war progressed and casualties mounted, these regiments gradually lost their ethnic composition. Ethnic entrepreneurs were the key figures in the organization of these regiments, and such men ordinarily intended to parlay their military service into a post-war political career. Some succeeded; some lost their lives. The book stresses the social and political situation in the Union states from which the phenomenon of the ethnic regiments emerged, the individual leaders involved, relationships with the larger society, political fighting within and between the various ethnic groups, and the impact the war had on the ethnics. Central to this book is the theme that the war promoted assimilation - something of a paradox given the creation of separate regiments. Most immigrant volunteers, by the way, served in regiments that were not of specific ethnicity.
The biography of Carl Schurz is a story of an amazing life. At the age of 19, Schurz, a student at the University of Bonn, became involved in the Revolution of 1848. Participating in the revolutionary army, he managed to escape through a sewer during the siege of Rastatt, flee across the Rhine to France, and come back to rescue his professor, Gottfried Kinkel, from a jail near Berlin. This deed made him famous, and when he came to American in 1852, Schurz was nominated for lieutenant governor of Wisconsin on the Republican ticket. He quickly rose in the party and was the head of the Wisconsin delegation at the 1860 National Convention. He worked hard for the cause, and Lincoln rewarded him with the post of Minister to Spain. At the outbreak of war he returned to join the Union Army, became a Major General, and took part in several important battles. After the war, he moved to Missouri, was elected Senator from that State, and became a role model for his fellow German Americans. In 1871 he became one of the main figures in the Liberal Republican movement, and in 1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him Secretary of the Interior. After his retirement from the cabinet, Schurz became active in the politics of New York, as an advocate of municipal and civil service reform. He was a leading Mugwump who supported Grover Cleveland in 1884 and at the end of his life became a violent opponent of imperialism. He died in 1906. Carl Schurz, the man, his story, his ideals and his example, are particularly appropriate today because of the light his life sheds on the never-ending problems of immigration, assimilation, and the retention of ethnic identity. Carl Schurzas career furnishes a modelexample for all of these. |
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