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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights
The people of Africa emerged from colonial rule with optimism and determination to transform their society and bring prosperity to the continent, but today there is neither economic nor political freedom. In order to seize control of its destiny, Kofi Apraku contends, Africa must mobilize all of its resources, and recognize the contributions that emigrants in the United States can make toward its development. In this work, Apraku offers a comprehensive look at these emigrants, demonstrating that Africa has well-trained, experienced, and productive personnel in the United States, and that they are willing to return to their native lands only if African leaders are willing to undertake the necessary political and economic reforms. Apraku's study addresses four main questions concerning African emigrants: Who are the skilled emigrants employed in the United States? Why did they come to America? What potential role can they play in Africa's development? and What types of reforms are needed to allow them to contribute to Africa's development? In addition, the book discusses contemporary African issues, including agriculture and food production, population growth, economic integration, diversification of African economies, privatization, democratization of political systems, and industrial policy for the 1990s. A review of failed economic policies is presented, along with suggestions for new approaches and a new emphasis on sustained economic growth and political stability. This work will be an important reference source for students of African studies and international development, as well as for international policymakers and professionals in development agencies.
Immigrants from South Asian countries are among the fastest growing segment of our population. This work, designed for students and interested readers, provides the first in-depth examination of recent South Asian immigrant groups--their history and background, current facts, comparative cultures, and contributions to contemporary American life. Groups discussed include Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, and Afghans. The topics covered include patterns of immigration, adaption to American life and work, cultural traditions, religious traditions, women's roles, the family, adolescence, and dating and marriage. Controversial questions are examined: Does the American political economy welcome or exploit South Asian immigrants? Are American and South Asian values compatible? Leonard shows how the American social, religious, and cultural landscape looks to these immigrants and the contributions they make to it, and she outlines the experiences and views of the various South Asian groups. Statistics and tables provide information on migration, population, income, and employment. Biographical profiles of noted South Asian Americans, a glossary of terms, and selected maps and photos complete the text. The opening chapter introduces the reader to South Asian history, culture, and politics, material on which the rest of the book draws because of its continuing relevance to South Asians settled in the United States. Leonard provides a fascinating look at the early South Asian immigrant Punjabi Mexican American community whose second and third generations are grappling with the issue of being Mexican, Hindu, and American. A comparative examination of immigrant groups from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan illuminates the similarities and differences of their rich cultural and religious traditions, the social fabric of their communities, and how these immigrants have adapted to American life. Leonard looks closely at the diversity of cultural traditions--music, dance, poetry, foods, fashion, yoga, fine arts, entertainment, and literature--and how these traditions have changed in the United States. Keeping the family together is important to these immigrants. Leonard examines family issues, second generation identities, adolescence, making marriages, and wedding traditions. This work provides a wealth of information for students and interested readers to help them understand South Asian immigrant life, culture, and contributions to American life.
What is the basis for choosing a nonviolent response to conflict and violence? By presenting and analyzing some of the most significant answers that have been given to this question throughout history, this anthology of writings from both Western and nonwestern traditions proposes principled and strategic nonviolence as a realistic alternative. It includes a selection of historical sources on nonviolence--ranging from the Bhagavad-Gita to the Bible--as well as a wide range of writings by authors such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, who have contributed to both the theory and the practice of nonviolence. Besides tracing the historical development of the concept, this volume also suggests ways of applying nonviolence to our everyday lives in the first decade of the 21st century, which the United Nations General Assembly has declared to be the Decade for Education for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence.
This book offers a unique exploration of the current state of freedom of speech as a basic right available to everyone. The research focuses on the different development stages of the concept of freedom of speech and the use of modern indicators to depict the its treatment in different legal cultures, including the obligations under international treaties and the effects that the globalising and digitalising environment have had on it. The authors conduct a broad survey of freedom of speech around the world, from Europe over Russia and both Americas to Africa, Asia, and Australia. The aim of this survey is to identify safeguards of freedom of speech on both a national and an international level, violations and threat scenarios, and in particular challenges to freedom of speech in the digital era.
This book examines the remaking of women's citizenship in the aftermath of conflict and international intervention. It develops a feminist critique of consociationalism as the dominant model of post-conflict governance by tracking the gendered implications of the Dayton Peace Agreement. It illustrates how the legitimisation of ethnonationalist power enabled by the agreement has reduced citizenship to an all-encompassing logic of ethnonational belonging and implicitly reproduced its attendant patriarchal gender order. Foregrounding women's diverse experiences, the book reveals gendered ramifications produced at the intersection of conflict, ethno-nationalism and international peacebuilding. Deploying a multidimensional feminist approach centred around women's narratives of belonging, exclusion, and agency, this book offers a critical interrogation of the promises of peace and explores individual/collective efforts to re-imagine citizenship.
This book builds a compelling picture of injustices inside immigration detention centers, within the context of the rise of the use of immigration detention in the Global North. The author presents the rarely heard voices of refugees, bringing their perspectives to light and personalising and humanising a global political issue. Based on in-depth interviews with formerly detained refugees who were involved in a wide range of protests, such as sit-ins and non-compliance, hunger strikes, lip sewing, escapes and riots, Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention presents a comprehensive insight into immigration detention and protest. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt, the book challenges contemporary human rights discourses which institutionalise power and will be a must-read for scholars, advocates and policymakers engaged in debates about immigration detention and forced migration.
Following the vexed codification attempts of the International Law Commission and the relevant jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, this book addresses the permissibility of the practice of diplomatic asylum under general international law. In the light of a wealth of recent practice, most prominently the case of Julian Assange, the main objective of this book is to ascertain whether or not the practice of granting asylum within the premises of the diplomatic mission finds foundation under general international law. In doing so, it explores the legal framework of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, the regional treaty framework of Latin America, customary international law, and a possible legal basis for the practice on the basis of humanitarian considerations. In cases where the practice takes place without a legal basis, this book aims to contribute to bridging the legal lacuna created by the rigid nature of international diplomatic law with the absolute nature of the inviolability of the mission premises facilitating the continuation of the practice of diplomatic asylum even where it is without legal foundation. It does so by proposing solutions to the problem of diplomatic asylum. This book also aims to establish the extent to which international law relating to diplomatic asylum may presently find itself within a period of transformation indicative of both a change in the nature of the practice as well as exploring whether recent notions of humanity are superseding the traditional fundaments of the international legal system in this regard.
At the dawn of the 1700s the Natchez viewed the first Francophones in the Lower Mississippi Valley as potential inductees to their chiefdom. This mistaken perception lulled them into permitting these outsiders to settle among them. Within two decades conditions in Natchez Country had taken a turn for the worse. The trickle of wayfarers had given way to a torrent of colonists (and their enslaved Africans) who refused to recognize the Natchez's hierarchy. These newcomers threatened to seize key authority-generating features of Natchez Country: mounds, a plaza, and a temple. This threat inspired these Indians to turn to a recent import-racial categories-to re-establish social order. They began to call themselves "red men" to reunite their polity and to distance themselves from the "blacks" and "whites" into which their neighbours divided themselves. After refashioning their identity, they launched an attack that destroyed the nearby colonial settlements. Their 1729 assault began a two-year war that resulted in the death or enslavement of most of the Natchez people. In Natchez Country, George Edward Milne provides the most comprehensive history of the Lower Mississippi Valley and the Natchez to date. From La Salle's first encounter with what would become Louisiana to the ultimate dispersal of the Natchez by the close of the 1730s, Milne also analyses the ways in which French attitudes about race and slavery influenced native North American Indians in the vicinity of French colonial settlements on the Mississippi River and how Native Americans in turn adopted and resisted colonial ideology.
For most of the 19th century, Germans represented the largest continental immigrant population in Britain, yet to date no study has concentrated on them. They entered the country for a combination of religious, political and economic reasons and established themselves in thriving immigrant communities. Hostility towards them spread throughout the 1800s and escalated with the growth of Anglo-German hostility in the period leading up to the outbreak of World War I.
This book is a comprehensive introduction to dalits in India (who comprise over one-sixth of the country's population) from the origins of caste system to the present day. Despite a plethora of provisions for affirmative action in the Indian Constitution, dalits are largely excluded from the mainstream except for a minuscule section. The book traces the multifarious changes that befell them during the colonial period and their development thereafter under the leadership of Babasaheb Ambedkar in the centre of political arena. It looks at hitherto unexplored aspects of the degeneration of the dalit movement during the post-Ambedkar period, as well as salient contemporary issues such as the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party, dalit capitalism, the occupation of dalit discourse by NGOs, neoliberalism and its impact, and the various implicit or explicit emancipation schemas thrown up by them. The work also discusses ideology, strategy and tactics of the dalit movement; touches upon one of the most contentious issues of increasing divergence between the dalit and Marxist movements; and delineates the role of the state, both colonial and post-colonial, in shaping dalit politics in particular ways. A tour de force, this book brings to the fore many key contemporary concerns and will be of great interest to students, scholars and teachers of politics and political economy, sociology, history, social exclusion studies and the general reader.
This book discusses voting procedures in collective decision-making. Drawing on well-established election processes from all over the world, the author presents a voting procedure that allows for the speedy but fair election of a proportional, all-party coalition. The methodology - a matrix vote - is accurate, robust and ethno-color blind. In the vote, the counting procedure encourages all concerned to cross the gender as well as any party and/or sectarian divides. While in the resulting executive each party will be represented fairly and, at best, with the consensus of parliament, every minister will be the one most suited to his/her new portfolio. By using preferential voting and thus achieving consensus, the matrix vote will be fundamental to the resolution of conflicts. The matrix vote can also be used when: * two or more parliamentary parties elect a coalition government * one parliamentary party elects a government or shadow cabinet, or organizations in civil society elect their governing boards or executive committees * any group chooses a fixed number of individuals to form a team in which each member carries out a different function
It has long been argued that Islam liberated Muslim women by granting them full rights as citizens. Yet in much of the Muslim world women have been subjected to both cultural and political oppression. Instances such as forced marriages, arbitrary divorces, female mutilations and other abuses are common in the Muslim world, as are restrictions on women's education and on their role in the labour force.
View the Table of Contents. "In this densely written and tightly argued work, Mead (Northern
Michigan Univ.) presents answers to the often asked question of why
woman suffrage was accomplished in the US West well before it was
in the East." "In this superb study . . . Rebecca J. Mead convincingly
demonstrates the importance of the region to understanding the
success of the national suffrage movement." "This concise book is the most complete overview to date of the
woman suffrage movement in the American West." "Mead has produced a strong case for western women's
well-reasoned, winning plan and has provided a superb foundation
for renewed engagement with an important question. My thanks to
you, Professor Mead." "Thanks to Mead's extensive research and careful weighing of
evidence, no future scholar will be able to work from the
assumption that the East represents the nation in the history of
women's enfranchisement. She has laid the critical foundation for a
genuinely national history of one of the most important
developments in modern America." "Moving beyond the traditional emphasis on the work of radical
women to include the larger political and social context, Mead's
book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of our
history of nineteenth century women, western United States
politics, and issues of gender and law." "Mead...deserves respect for embarking on an ambitious
undertaking that necessitated very extensiveresearch which she
covered meticulously. She has revisited this significant political
transformation with the tools of recent historical scholarship to
the fore and contributed constructively to a complex area of modern
political history." "In this comprehensive estimation, Mead not only answers the
question of why western states were ahead of the curve in granting
women the vote, but also examines the relationships, often tense,
between the local, state, and national suffrage associations as
well as with farm, labor and progressive coalitions." "Rebecca Mead has crafted a detailed history of suffrage
campaigns in the western states." "This book should challenge historians of woman suffrage to look
more closely at other regions and states. . . . But it is Mead's
treatment of a political culture among women with its own history,
burdens, crosscurrents, and innovators that should have the wider
impact." "Rebecca Mead's new synthesis finally de-mystifies the West's
'radical and fundamental challenge to the exisitng political status
of women'." By the end of 1914, almost every Western state and territory had enfranchised its female citizens in the greatest innovation in participatory democracy since Reconstruction. These Western successes stand in profound contrast to the East, where few women voted until after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and the South, where African-American men were systematically disenfranchised. How did thefrontier West leap ahead of the rest of the nation in the enfranchisement of the majority of its citizens? In this provocative new study, Rebecca J. Mead shows that Western suffrage came about as the result of the unsettled state of regional politics, the complex nature of Western race relations, broad alliances between suffragists and farmer-labor-progressive reformers, and sophisticated activism by Western women. She highlights suffrage racism and elitism as major problems for the movement, and places special emphasis on the political adaptability of Western suffragists whose improvisational tactics earned them progress. A fascinating story, previously ignored, How the Vote was Won reintegrates this important region into national suffrage history and helps explain the ultimate success of this radical reform.
This handbook questions, debates and subverts commonly held assumptions about disability and citizenship in the global postcolonial context. Discourses of citizenship and human rights, so elemental to strategies for addressing disability-based inequality in wealthier nations, have vastly different ramifications in societies of the Global South, where resources for development are limited, democratic processes may be uncertain, and access to education, health, transport and other key services cannot be taken for granted. In a broad range of areas relevant to disability equity and transformation, an eclectic group of contributors critically consider whether, when and how citizenship may be used as a lever of change in circumstances far removed from UN boardrooms in New York or Geneva. Debate is polyvocal, with voices from the South engaging with those from the North, disabled people with nondisabled, and activists and politicians intersecting with researchers and theoreticians. Along the way, accepted wisdoms on a host of issues in disability and international development are enriched and problematized. The volume explores what life for disabled people in low and middle income countries tells us about subjects such as identity and intersectionality, labour and the global market, family life and intimate relationships, migration, climate change, access to the digital world, participation in sport and the performing arts, and much else.
Migration crisis, food crisis, economic crisis the most alarming tendencies in our contemporary world are related to the transnational social question. But what role does transnational law play in this context: Does it exacerbate the asymmetries by shielding the rich and exploiting the poor? Or is the emerging regime of international social human rights a promising candidate for countering the crisis of world society?This book scrutinises both the potentials and the boundaries of de-coupling the notion of "social rights" from the nation-state and of transferring it to the transnational sphere. By drawing on a critical theory of transnational law, it provides in-depth analyses of the different sites where the struggle for social rights is at stake, such as the emerging transnational food regime, the ILO, international environmental law and the accountability of private actors. It reveals enforcement structures, discusses judicial doctrine and relates these aspects to the social and political struggles which surround the transnationalisation of social rights.
In August 1914 the German labour movement did not oppose the decision to go to war, and workers responded with as much enthusiasm as other social strata: one of the most powerful labour movements in the world failed to live up to the ideal of class solidarity. The movement's relations with foreign workers, particularly Polish coal miners, in the Ruhr in the decades before the war foreshadowed this failure. The rural origins of the Polish migrants and their traditional Catholic religious beliefs led most observers, including their fellow workers as well as recent historians, to view them as obstacles to the labour movement and resistant to working-class consciousness. This study, based on extensive research in archives in Germany and Poland, documents a very different history - one in which Polish miners' militancy exceeded that of native miners, and whose relations with German workers were marked by both xenophobia and solidarity.
This important new volume analyzes relations among America's minority groups, specifically the prospects of political coalitions among those usually unrelated groups: African Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, Jews, Arab-Americans, and Native Americans. At the end of the 20th century, the United States is faced with a situation where minority groups are no longer assimilating but rather are moving toward separate mini-societies, complete with separate languages, cultures, and economies. Even if society accepts the notion that cultural pluralism is consistent with democratic principles, the possibility of political hyperpluralism (endless and nonproductive conflicts among groups) is disturbing. This volume, therefore, attempts to address the concerns, examining the background of minority organizations, voting behavior issues, and coalitional possibilities. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students alike in American government and ethnic and minority politics.
This book explores how new governments and societies deal with a legacy of past repression, in Portugal, Spain, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Germany after reunification, as well as Russia, the Southern Cone of Latin America and Central America, as well as South Africa. It looks at official truth commissions, trials and amnesties and purges and unofficial social initiatives to deal with the past. The book also assesses the significance of forms of reckoning with the past for a process of democratic deepening as well as the importance of international actors in shaping policies to deal with past legacies in some of the countries examined.
This volume presents an overview of the evolution of the current Chinese Constitution (1982) and the characteristics of constitutional studies since 1978. Readers are introduced to the basic principles of constitutional system in China and gain insights into the real state of Chinese law, allowing them to form their own opinions. It will also aid commercial communications with Chinese legal professionals as well as enterprises. The book covers a number of topics, including the history of constitutional communication between Chinese constitutionalists and the International Association of Constitutional Law since 1981, the most important academic contributions to international conferences concerning constitutional law by Chinese constitutionalists, the main characteristics of the current Chinese Constitution in the field of constitutional studies in China, the key issues of constitutional practice and implementation in China, the challenges of running the fundamental political system of the People's Representative Congress and the characteristics of rule of law specific to China.
This reference provides a comprehensive survey of human rights in Judaism. It includes both theoretical discussions of the nature and substance of human rights and practical applications of that theory either by Jews or to Jews. While numerous dissertations and audio-visual materials focus on human rights and Judaism, the bibliography is limited to books and articles. The majority of the works have been written in English or Hebrew, but significant studies in other languages, chiefly French and German, have also been included. The volume contains more than 700 citations, each accompanied by a descriptive annotation. The book begins with an introductory essay that examines the basic concerns of the works that follow. The annotated entries are then presented in five chapters. The first chapter includes anthologies, references, and periodicals. The second chapter includes studies of human rights in the Bible and Talmud. The third chapter includes works on Jewish theories of human rights. The fourth chapter, broken down into smaller sections, includes works on Judaism and particular human rights. The fifth chapter contains entries for works on contemporary Judaism and human rights. The volume concludes with author, title, and subject indexes.
View the Table of Contents. Read Chapter 1. aJackson is at his best when exposing the connections of leading
racialists with former Nazi party members and Holocaust-denial
groups.a aA well-researched and well-argued book....Jackson underscored
the nexus of asciencea and arace, a probes the ademarcation between
science and politics, a and questions the very meaning of
aobjectivea scientific inquiry.a aScience for Segregation adds considerably to our understanding
of racist ideologies and their persistance in the post-war era. The
author has done an admirable job of covering a forgotten chapter in
the struggle over segregation and shedding light on how scientific
research can become highly politicized.a "This book asks if science can be divorced from politics. . . .
Recommended." aA fascinating and comprehensive look at a largely neglected
aspect of American history--the role of science and scientists in
supporting and sustaining white racist thought and institutions
during the battle over de-segregation. And like most good social
history, it does not require much strain to draw the relevance to
today's debates about the salience of biological taxonomies of
race.a aA very important book that explores the fuzzy zone between
science and pseudo-science, exposing the political action of
right-wing scientists in the 1950s and 1960s who argued for school
segregation on ostensibly scientific grounds. The role of science
as an authority in society has never been more evident than in the
work and rhetoric of these zealouslyracist scholars. This
well-researched book is a must-read for anyone interested in modern
debates over the study of human diversity or the role of science in
contemporary society.a aA deeply-researched, fascinating, and judicious assessment of
the ascientifica arguments that were marshaled against the Supreme
Courtas landmark school desegregation decision. Jackson has made a
contribution that will endure.a aJacksonas thorough research and a nuanced understanding of the
complexities of race and law provide a disturbing cadence to the
ongoing debate on race in America.a In this fascinating examination of the intriguing but understudied period following the landmark "Brown v. Board of Education" decision, John Jackson examines the scientific case aimed at dismantling the legislation. Offering a trenchant assessment of the so-called scientific evidence, Jackson focuses on the 1959 formation of the International Society for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), whose expressed function was to objectively investigate racial differences and publicize their findings. Notable figures included Carleton Putnam, Wesley Critz George, and Carleton Coon. In an attempt to link race, eugenics and intelligence, they launched legal challenges to the Brown ruling, each chronicled here, that went to trial but ultimately failed. The history Jackson presents speaks volumes about the legacy of racism, as we can see similar arguments alive and well today in such books as "The Bell Curve" and in otherdebates on race, science, and intelligence. With meticulous research and a nuanced understanding of the complexities of race and law, Jackson tells a disturbing tale about race in America.
Veiled women in the West appear menacing. Their visible invisibility is a cause of obsession. What is beneath the veil more than a woman? This book investigates the preoccupation with the veiled body through the imaging and imagining of Muslim women. It examines the relationship between the body and knowledge through the politics of freedom as grounded in a 'natural' body, in the index of flesh. The impulse to unveil is more than a desire to free the Muslim woman. What lies at the heart of the fantasy of saving the Muslim woman is the West's desire to save itself. The preoccupation with the veiled woman is a defense that preserves neither the object of orientalism nor the difference embodied in women's bodies, but inversely, insists on the corporeal boundaries of the West's mode of knowing and truth-making. The book contends that the imagination of unveiling restores the West's sense of its own power and enables it to intrude where it is 'other' - thus making it the centre and the agent by promising universal freedom, all the while stifling the question of what freedom is.
This book analyses large-scale land investments for agricultural purposes in Africa's least developed countries from a law and economics perspective. Focusing on the effects of foreign land investments on host countries' local populations and the apparent failure of international law to create incentives to offset them, it also examines the legal and economic mechanisms to hold investors accountable in cases where their investment leads to human rights violations. Applying principal agent and contract theory, it elucidates the sources of opportunism and develops control mechanisms to ameliorate the negative effects. It shows that although judicial mechanisms fail to deliver justice, international law offers alternatives to safeguard against arbitrary and abusive state and investor conduct, and also to effectuate human rights and, thus, tackle opportunistic behaviour. |
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