Based on extensive field research, the essays in this volume illuminate the experiences of migrants from their own point of view, providing a critical understanding of the complex social reality in which each experience is grounded. Access to medical care for migrants is a fundamental right which is often ignored. The book provides a critical understanding of the social reality in which social inequalities are grounded and offers the opportunity to show that right to health does not correspond uniquely with access to healthcare.

The first IVF baby was born in the 1970s. Less than 20 years later, we had cloning and GM food, and information and communication technologies had transformed everyday life. In 2000, the human genome was sequenced. More recently, there has been much discussion of the economic and social benefits of nanotechnology, and synthetic biology has also been generating controversy.
This important volume is a timely contribution to increasing calls for regulation - or better regulation - of these and other new technologies. Drawing on an international team of legal scholars, it reviews and develops the role of human rights in the regulation of new technologies. Three controversies at the intersection between human rights and new technology are given particular attention. First, how the expansive application of human rights could contribute to the creation of a brave new world of choice, where human dignity is fundamentally compromised; second, how new technologies, and our regulatory responses to them, could be a threat to human rights; and, third, how human rights could be used to create better regulation of these technologies.

Political blogs have grown astronomically in the last half-decade. In just one month in 2005, for example, popular blog DailyKos received more unique visitors than the population of Iowa and New Hampshire combined. But how much political impact do bloggers really have? In Blogwars, David D. Perlmutter examines this rapidly burgeoning phenomenon, exploring the degree to which blogs influence--or fail to influence--American political life. Challenging the hype, Perlmutter points out that blogs are not that powerful by traditional political measures: while bloggers can offer cogent and convincing arguments and bring before their readers information not readily available elsewhere, they have no financial, moral, social, or cultural leverage to compel readers to engage in any particular political behavior. Indeed, blogs have scored mixed results in their past political crusades. But in the end, Perlmutter argues that blogs, in their wide dissemination of information and opinions, actually serve to improve democracy and enrich political culture. He highlights a number of the particularly noteworthy blogs from the specialty to the superblog-including popular sites such as Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, Powerlineblog, Instapundit, and Talking Points Memo--and shows how blogs are becoming part of the tool kit of political professionals, from presidential candidates to advertising consultants. While the political future may be uncertain, it will not be unblogged. For many Internet users, blogs are the news and editorial sites of record, replacing traditional newspapers, magazines, and television news programs. Blogwars offers the first full examination of this new and controversial force on America's political landscape.

From consumer boycotts and buycotts to social movement campaigns, examples of individual and collective actors forging political struggles on markets are manifold. The clothing market has been a privileged site for such contention, with global clothing brands and retailers being targets of consumer mobilization for the past 20 years. Labels and product lines now attest for the ethical quality of clothes, which has, in turn, given rise to ethical fashion. The Fight for Ethical Fashion unveils the actors and processes that have driven this market transformation through a detailed study of the Europe-wide coordinated campaign on workers' rights in the global textile industry - the Clean Clothes Campaign. Drawing on insights from qualitative fieldwork using a wide range of empirical sources, Philip Balsiger traces the emergence of this campaign back to the rise of 'consumer campaigns' and shows how tactics were adapted to market contexts in order to have retailers adopt and monitor codes of conduct. By comparing the interactions between campaigners and their corporate targets in Switzerland and France (two countries with a very different history of consumer mobilization for political issues), this ground-breaking book also reveals how one campaign can provoke contrasting reactions and forms of market change.

In this superb volume, James C. Cobb provides the first truly comprehensive history of the South since World War II, brilliantly capturing an era of dramatic change, both in the South and in its relationship with the rest of the nation.
Here is a panoramic narrative that flows seamlessly from the Dixiecrats to the "southern strategy," to the South's domination of today's GOP, and from the national ascendance of southern culture and music, to a globalized Dixie's allure for foreign factories and a flood of immigrants, to the roles of women and an increasingly visible gay population in contemporary southern life. The heart of the book illuminates the struggle for Civil Rights. Jim Crow still towered over the South in 1945, but Cobb shows that Pearl Harbor unloosed forces that would bring its ultimate demise. Growing black political clout outside the South and the contradiction of fighting racist totalitarianism abroad while tolerating it at home set the stage for returning black veterans to spearhead the NAACP's postwar assault on the South's racial system. This assault sparked not only vocal white resistance but mounting violence that culminated in the murder of young Emmett Till in 1955. Energized rather than intimidated, however, blacks in Montgomery staged the famous bus boycott, bringing the Rev. Martin Luther King to the fore and paving the way for the dramatic protests and confrontations that finally brought profound racial changes as well as two-party politics to the South.
As he did in the prize-winning The Most Southern Place on Earth and Away Down South, Cobb writes with wit and grace, showing a thorough grasp of his native region. Exhaustively researched and brimming with original insights, The South and America Since World War II is indeed the definitive history of the postwar South and its changing role in national life.

As an organizer, writer, publisher, scholar-activist, and elected official, Barbara Smith has played key roles in multiple social justice movements, including Civil Rights, feminism, lesbian and gay liberation, anti-racism, and Black feminism. Her four decades of grassroots activism forged collaborations that introduced the idea that oppression must be fought on a variety of fronts simultaneously, including gender, race, class, and sexuality. By combining hard-to-find historical documents with new unpublished interviews with fellow activists, this book uncovers the deep roots of today s identity politics and intersectionality and serves as an essential primer for practicing solidarity and resistance."

As a child growing up in Cambodia, Ronnie Yimsut played among the ruins of the Angkor Wat temples, surrounded by a close-knit community. As the Khmer Rouge gained power and began its genocidal reign of terror, his life became a nightmare. Teenaged Ronnie was left orphaned, literally buried under the bodies of his family and friends. In this stunning memoir, Yimsut describes how, in the wake of death and destruction, he decides to live. Escaping the turmoil of Cambodia, he makes a perilous journey through the jungle into Thailand, only to be sent to a notorious Thai prison. Fortunately, he is able to reach a refugee camp and ultimately migrate to the United States, another frightening journey to the unknown. Yet he prevailed, attending the University of Oregon and becoming an influential leader in the community of Cambodian immigrants. Facing the Khmer Rouge shows Ronnie Yimsut's personal quest to rehabilitate himself, make a new life in America, and then return to Cambodia to help rebuild the land of his birth.

This collection of essays on the current human rights climate in 19 countries includes Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Israel, Poland, the USA, and USSR, and represents a variety of regimes, cultural traditions, and geographical areas. . . . For analysis of the facts this volume excels. A well-crafted introduction describes current debate about human rights theory and practice, traces the development of human rights instruments, and discusses problems of implementation. Strongly recommended.

"Library Journal"

The bulk of the scholarly literature on human rights deals with international law and politics. In contrast, this volume offers nineteen case studies of national human rights practices. Although international factors cannot be ignored, most human rights violations are perpetrated by states against their own citizens; the principal causes of the respect for and violation of human rights lie in national social and political structures.

Since 1952, when Eisenhower's media consultants decided they could warm up the General's personality and overcome selective exposure by using short spots on television, advertising has played a major role in American presidential campaigns. By the late 1990s, candidates and their political parties spend hundreds of millions on TV ads. Political spots have become the dominant form of communication between voters and candidates.

Kaid and Johnston report the results of a systematic and thorough analysis of virtually all of the political commercials used in general election campaigns from 1952 through the 1996 presidential contest. Important to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with political communications, mass communications, and presidential elections.

"In The Human Rights Movement," the author examines why human rights abuses have continued to exist and even increase in number. According to Holleman, the reason for this failure is that Western and non-Western nations and cultures disagree as to the meaning of human rights and the means for promoting human rights from nation to nation and culture to culture. Christian theological anthropology suggests a via media between Western and non-Western points of view.

An eighth-generation Charlestonian with a prestigious address, impeccable social credentials, and years of intimate association with segregationist politicians, U.S. District Court Judge Julius Waties Waring shocked family, friends, and an entire state in 1945 when, at age sixty-five, he divorced his wife of more than thirty years and embarked upon a far-reaching challenge to the most fundamental racial values of his native region. The first jurist in modern times to declare segregated schooling "inequality per se," Waring also ordered the equalization of teachers' salaries and outlawed South Carolina's white primary. Off the bench, he and his second wife--a twice-divorced, politically liberal Northerner who was even more outspoken in her political views than Waring himself--castigated Dixiecrats and southern liberals alike for their defense of segregation, condemned the "sickness" of white southern society, urged a complete breakdown of state-enforced bars to racial intermingling, and entertained blacks in their home, becoming pariahs in South Carolina and controversial figures nationally. Tinsley Yarbrough examines the life and career of this fascinating but neglected jurist, assessing the controversy he generated, his place in the early history of the modern civil rights movement, and the forces motivating his repudiation of his past.

In "Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America," Kenneth Morgan shows how the institutions of indentured servitude and black slavery interacted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He covers all aspects of the two labor systems, including their impact on the economy, on racial attitudes, social structures and on regional variations within the colonies. Throughout, overriding themes emerge: the labor market in North America, the significance of racial distinctions, supply and demand factors in transatlantic migration and labor, and resistance to bondage.

This is an ideal introduction to an area that is crucial for understanding not just Colonial American society but also the later development of the United States.

The book reviews the origin and development of the exclusionary rule in China, and systematically explains the problems and challenges faced by criminal justice reformers. The earlier version of the exclusionary rule in China pays more attention to confessions obtained by torture and other illegal methods, reflecting that the orientation of the rule aims mainly to prevent wrongful convictions. Since the important clause that human rights are respected and protected by the country was written in the Constitution in 2004, modern notions such as human rights protection and procedural justice have been widely accepted in China. The book compares various theories of the exclusionary rule in many countries and proposes that the rationale of human rights protection and procedural justice should be embraced by the exclusionary rule. At the same time, the book elaborately demonstrates the thoughts and designs of the vital judicial reform strategy--strict enforcement of the exclusionary rule, including clarifying the content of illegal evidence and improving the procedure of excluding illegal evidence. In addition, the book discusses the influence of the exclusionary rule on the pretrial procedure and trial procedure respectively and puts forward pertinent suggestions for the trial-centered procedural reform in the future. In the appendix, the book conducts case analysis of 20 selected cases concerning the application of the exclusionary rule. This is the first book to give a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the exclusionary rule of illegally obtained evidence in China. The author of the book, senior judge of the Supreme People's Court in China, with his special experience of direct participation in the design of the exclusionary rule, will provide the readers with thought-provoking explanation of the distinctive feature of judicial reform strategy and criminal justice policy in China.

Recent decades have seen growing concern regarding problems of electoral integrity. The most overt malpractices used by rulers include imprisoning dissidents, harassing adversaries, coercing voters, vote-rigging counts, and even blatant disregard for the popular vote. Elsewhere minor irregularities are common, exemplified by inaccurate voter registers, maladministration of polling facilities, lack of security in absentee ballots, pro-government media bias, ballot miscounts, and gerrymandering. Serious violations of human rights that undermine electoral credibility are widely condemned by domestic observers and the international community. Recent protests about integrity have mobilized in countries as diverse as Russia, Mexico, and Egypt. However, long-standing democracies are far from immune to these ills; past problems include the notorious hanging chads in Florida in 2000 and more recent accusations of voter fraud and voter suppression during the Obama-Romney contest. When problems come to light, however, is anyone held to account and are effective remedies implemented? In response to these developments, there have been growing attempts to analyze flaws in electoral integrity and transparency using systematic data from cross-national time-series, forensic analysis, field experiments, case studies, and new instruments monitoring mass and elite perceptions of malpractices. This volume collects essays from international experts who evaluate the robustness, conceptual validity, and reliability of the growing body of evidence. The essays compare alternative approaches and apply these methods to evaluate the quality of elections in several areas, including the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Election Watchdogs:Transparency, Accountability and Integrity presents new insights into the importance of diverse actors who promote electoral transparency, accountability, and ultimately the integrity of electoral governance.

A definitive survey of the Iranian women's movement from its origins in the Pre-Pahlavi period to its status under Khomeini.

In early 1864, as the Confederate Army of Tennessee licked its wounds after being routed at the Battle of Chattanooga, Major-General Patrick Cleburne (the "Stonewall of the West") proposed that "the most courageous of our slaves" be trained as soldiers and that "every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war" be freed. In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at such Confederate plans to arm and free slaves. He shows that within a year of Cleburne's proposal, which was initially rejected out of hand, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Robert E. Lee had all reached the same conclusions. At that point, the idea was debated widely in newspapers and drawing rooms across the South, as more and more slaves fled to Union lines and fought in the ranks of the Union army. Eventually, the soldiers of Lee's army voted on the proposal, and the Confederate government actually enacted a version of it in March. The Army issued the necessary orders just two weeks before Appomattox, too late to affect the course of the war. Throughout the book, Levine captures the voices of blacks and whites, wealthy planters and poor farmers, soldiers and officers, and newspaper editors and politicians from all across the South. In the process, he sheds light on such hot-button topics as what the Confederacy was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South. Confederate Emancipation offers an engaging and illuminating account of a fascinating and politically charged idea, setting it firmly and vividly in the context of the Civil War and the part played in it by the issue of slavery and the actions of the slaves themselves.

In this study of literature and law from the Constitutional founding through the Civil War, Hoang Gia Phan demonstrates how American citizenship and civic culture were profoundly transformed by the racialized material histories of free, enslaved, and indentured labor. Bonds of Citizenship illuminates the historical tensions between the legal paradigms of citizenship and contract, and in the emergence of free labor ideology in American culture. Phan argues that in the age of Emancipation the cultural attributes of free personhood became identified with the legal rights and privileges of the citizen, and that individual freedom thus became identified with the nation-state. He situates the emergence of American citizenship and the American novel within the context of Atlantic slavery and Anglo-American legal culture, placing early American texts by Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Brockden Brown alongside Black Atlantic texts by Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano. Beginning with a revisionary reading of the Constitution's "slavery clauses," Phan recovers indentured servitude as a transitional form of labor bondage that helped define the key terms of modern U.S. citizenship: mobility, volition, and contract. Bonds of Citizenship demonstrates how citizenship and civic culture were transformed by antebellum debates over slavery, free labor, and national Union, while analyzing the writings of Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville alongside a wide-ranging archive of lesser-known antebellum legal and literary texts in the context of changing conceptions of constitutionalism, property, and contract. Situated at the nexus of literary criticism, legal studies, and labor history, Bonds of Citizenship challenges the founding fiction of a pro-slavery Constitution central to American letters and legal culture.Hoang Gia Phanis Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.In theAmerica and the Long 19th CenturyseriesAn ALI book

Examining political campaigns and political advertising through the analytical lens of media literacy, this well-illustrated and timely handbook guides readers through the maze of blandishments and spin that is the hallmark of the modern political campaign. It dissects the persuasive strategies embedded in the political messages we encounter every day in the media and demonstrates the importance of critical thinking in evaluating media "stories." Key concepts of media literacy are applied to political advertising in traditional media (newspapers, television, radio) and on the Internet, the new frontier of the political advertising wars. Dealing with blogs, social networking, user-generated web sites, and other electronic formats familiar to young voters, this lively introduction to the new world of political messaging appeals to readers' affinity for visual learning as well as their ability to discern messages in text. Unique in applying media literacy concepts to the political context while directly addressing students and general readers, this book not only explains but graphically demonstrates both established techniques of political "framing" and the new avenues of persuasion being pioneered in digital media. It will also interest viewers who like their political news in traditional media but unconventional formats. Comprehensive coverage of the media as a tool of political campaigns Accessible format intended to appeal to students who are very familiar with the visual organization of the Internet Sidebars highlighting critical thinking/viewing questions; key definitions, facts, dates, and data; telling but offbeat and entertaining trivia Substantial resources section, includingtimeline, glossary, and annotated lists of print and electronic materials Presentation correlating with state and national curriculum standards

David Saari provides an extended essay on the nature of freedom in contemporary America, its historical roots, and its present-day manifestations. Drawing on the fields of history, law, politics, business, and philosophy, this wide-ranging study examines three facets of freedom--national freedom, freedom from the state, and freedom within the state--as they have developed in American law, politics, and society. Each of these facets is carefully defined and then applied to such contemporary issues as authority, property, equality, justice, and privacy.

This authoritative book provides a deeply informed overview of one of the most dynamic social movements in Latin America. Focusing on contemporary Indigenous movements in Ecuador, leading scholar Marc Becker traces the growing influence of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which in 1990 led a powerful uprising that dramatically placed a struggle for Indigenous rights at the center of public consciousness. Activists began to refer to this uprising as a "pachakutik," a Kichwa word that means change, rebirth, and transformation, both in the sense of a return in time and the coming of a new era. Five years later, proponents launched a new political movement called Pachakutik to compete for elected office. In 2006, Ecuadorians elected Rafael Correa, who many saw as emblematic of the new Latin American left, to the presidency of the country. Even though CONAIE, Pachakutik, and Correa shared similar concerns for social justice, they soon came into conflict with each other. Becker examines the competing strategies and philosophies that emerge when social movements and political parties embrace comparable visions but follow different paths to realize their objectives. In exploring the multiple and conflictive strategies that Indigenous movements have followed over the past twenty years, he definitively documents the recent history and charts the trajectory of one of the Americas' most powerful and best organized social movements.

The debut of a brand-new civics series for high school seniors and college freshmen that clearly, concisely, and cleverly explains how the United States elects its president.

The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. Du Bois's prophetic statement, made at the beginning of the century, is as true today at the dawn of the 21st century. Presenting fresh, contemporary perspectives on a centuries-old problem, the contributors to this volume, including top scholars in sociology and political science, show that race-politics remains a part of the new millennium despite past efforts to erase discriminatory practices. From an initial reconsideration of the DuBois-Washington debate to Derrick Bell's essay on the pitfalls of doing good, the book illustrates that the debate about race remains a firm part of our social fabric, begging for a solution to change old and new feelings about race in the United States.

Grappling with enduring issues of race and identifying new racial realities, the volume examines the white backlash to affirmative action, the organizational structure of affirmative action, the impact of social networks on occupational mobility, upward mobility and minority neighborhoods, and inner-city entrepreneurship. America's changing configuration to a multi-ethnic, multi-racial population is considered in a chapter speculating on the impact for African Americans. In conclusion, the book suggests ways to take positive action.

This vital book considers the compelling and addictive hold that racism has had on centuries of Americans, explores historical and contemporary norms complicit in the problem, and appeals to the U.S. government to improve race relations, rectify existent social imperfections, and guard against future race-based abuses. Despite an assertion by the founding fathers that "all men are created equal" and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees "equal protection," the race-based oppression that has characterized most of America's history shows that in practice our society has rarely measured up to principle. Why has deep-seated racial conflict in America continued for so long? This unprecedented examination into the topic explores the evidence and consequences of what seems to be an "addiction" to racism in the United States, analyzing the related disconnect between our nation's stated moral principles and social realities, and assessing how U.S. citizens of all races can take individual action to start the long-needed healing process. The contributors to this work present interdisciplinary perspectives and discussions on American history, politics, philosophy, and 21st-century psycho-social conditions as they relate to the oppression, social injustice, and racism that have occurred-and continue to occur-in the United States. The discussions allow readers to grasp the serious challenges at hand and direct them towards recognizing the potential for conflict transformation and reconciliation through a non-conventional co-created Truth, Reconciliation, and Peace Process (TRPP) to begin resolving America's dysfunction. This is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the sources of perpetual racially based conflict, disparity, and hatred in the United States; identify the social injuries of exposure to centuries of racism; move America towards harmonious interracial relationships; and improve its international standing as a peace-building nation that is truly committed to human rights throughout the world. Presents the inescapable evidence of persistent social violence, inequalities, and injustices perpetrated against blacks within America's borders prior to and for centuries since the nation's founding Identifies the negative psycho-social consequences and harmful impact of "transgenerated trauma"-based on the experiences of living in an overtly oppressive society for centuries-on both the oppressed and the oppressor in America Emphasizes the necessity for all American citizens to share the responsibility for exposing historical truths, working through painful memories and realities, engaging in long-avoided dialogue, and implementing systems to assure a more just America for all its citizens