Changes to Urban Society in Angola: From Limited to Multi-Criteria Stratification

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Society Today

Abstract:This article examines the transformations to urban social stratification in Angola during the last decades. The analysis is centered on the indicators of social difference throughout these years: the racial criteria of the colonial times; the political precedence in the first years after independence; and the multi-criteria of the postwar period. Based on research conducted before and after the end of the civil war in 2002, the article explores the construction and reconfiguration of urban society today, providing evidence of increased social mobility—despite the poverty and deeper inequalities—and of the importance of economic and residential criteria.

scholarly journals International Trade and Institutional Change: Medieval Venice’s Response to Globalization*

2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (2) ◽  
pp. 753-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Puga ◽  
Daniel Trefler
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Domestic Institutions ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Broad Group ◽  
Before And After

Abstract International trade can have profound effects on domestic institutions. We examine this proposition in the context of medieval Venice circa 800–1600. Early on, the growth of long-distance trade enriched a broad group of merchants who used their newfound economic muscle to push for constraints on the executive, that is, for the end of a de facto hereditary Doge in 1032 and the establishment of a parliament in 1172. The merchants also pushed for remarkably modern innovations in contracting institutions that facilitated long-distance trade, for example, the colleganza. However, starting in 1297, a small group of particularly wealthy merchants blocked political and economic competition: they made parliamentary participation hereditary and erected barriers to participation in the most lucrative aspects of long-distance trade. Over the next two centuries this led to a fundamental societal shift away from political openness, economic competition, and social mobility and toward political closure, extreme inequality, and social stratification. We document this oligarchization using a unique database on the names of 8,178 parliamentarians and their families’ use of the colleganza in the periods immediately before and after 1297. We then link these families to 6,959 marriages during 1400–1599 to document the use of marriage alliances to monopolize the galley trade. Monopolization led to the rise of extreme inequality, with those who were powerful before 1297 emerging as the undisputed winners.

Rethinking the Postwar Period in Spain: Violence and Irregular Civil War, 1939–52

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 492-513
Author(s):  
Jorge Marco
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Prison System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Franco Dictatorship ◽  
Guerrilla Movement

There is a consensus among scholars regarding the slow transformation of ‘hot-blooded terror’ into ‘cold-blooded terror’ during the Civil War and the postwar period in Spain. This article challenges this framework in two ways. First, it argues that the Spanish Civil War did not end in 1939, but lasted until 1952, divided in three stages: symmetric nonconventional warfare (July 1936 – February 1937), conventional civil war (February 1937 – April 1939), and irregular civil war (April 1939–52). Second, it argues that the narrative of ‘cold-blooded terror’ after 1939 has obscured the complexity of the political violence imposed by the Franco dictatorship. The author argues that throughout the three stages of the Civil War the Francoists implemented a process of political cleansing, but that from April 1939 two different logics of violence were deployed. These depended on the attitude of the vanquished – resignation or resistance – after the defeat of the Republican army. The logic of violence directed against the subjugated enemy was channelled through institutional instruments. In contrast, the logic of counterinsurgency directed against the guerrilla movement, alongside instruments such as military courts and the prison system, imposed a wide repertoire of brutal practices and massacres against civilians and combatants.

Making Americans Feel Great Again? Personal Significance Predicts Political Intentions of Losers and Winners of the 2016 US Election

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Personal Significance ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Times

Reactions of losers and winners of political elections have important consequences for the political system during the times of power transition. In four studies conducted immediately before and after the 2016 US presidential elections we investigated how personal significance induced by success or failure of one’s candidate is related to hostile vs. benevolent intentions toward political adversaries. We found that the less significant supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Donald Trump felt after an imagined (Study 1A) or actual (Study 2) electoral failure the more they were willing to engage in peaceful actions against the elected president and the less they were willing to accept the results of the elections. However, while significance gain due to an imagined or actual electoral success was related to more benevolent intentions among Clinton supporters (Study 1B), it was related to more hostile intentions among Trump supporters (Studies 1B, 2, and 3).

Language Movement and Civil War in West Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ericka A. Albaugh
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Language Spread ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines how civil war can influence the spread of language. Specifically, it takes Sierra Leone as a case study to demonstrate how Krio grew from being primarily a language of urban areas in the 1960s to one spoken by most of the population in the 2000s. While some of this was due to “normal” factors such as population movement and growing urbanization, the civil war from 1991 to 2002 certainly catalyzed the process of language spread in the 1990s. Using census documents and surveys, the chapter tests the hypothesis at the national, regional, and individual levels. The spread of a language has political consequences, as it allows for citizen participation in the political process. It is an example of political scientists’ approach to uncovering the mechanisms for and evidence of language movement in Africa.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Antebellum Era ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
The Future

This conclusion explains how American temporalities changed after the war and sketches how expectations and anticipations of the future have alternated as the dominant view in American culture through the twentieth century to today. This chapter also shows how the short war myth, the story that Civil War Americans expected a short, glorious war at the outset, gained currency with the public and consensus among scholars during the postwar period. It contrasts the wartime expectations of individuals with their postwar memories of the war’s beginning to show how the short war myth worked as a tool for sectional reconciliation and a narrative device that dramatized the war by creating an innocent antebellum era or golden age before the cataclysm. It considers why historians still accept the myth and showcases three postwar voices that challenged it.

Playing with Positionality?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kingston
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Research Site ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions

The chapter outlines how researchers take on different roles and positionalities as they adapt to the field, moving, for instance, from that of an “outsider” laden with externalized theoretical assumptions and having few contacts with and knowledge of the research site to one approaching, to varying degrees, that of a “pseudo-insider.” Indeed, the argument here is that researchers make choices when moving from outsider to insider roles (and between them), contingently adapting their positionality in the hope to better understand the political dynamics that underlie research projects. The setting is post-civil war Lebanon and the research project revolves around an examination of the micropolitics of civil society and associational life in this re-emerging but fragmented polity.

The Concept of the Political

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 2 reinterprets Schmitt’s concept of the political. Schmitt argued that Weimar developments, especially the rise of mass movements politically opposed to the state and constitution, demonstrated that the state did not have any sort of monopoly over the political, contradicting the arguments made by predominant Weimar state theorists, such as Jellinek and Meinecke. Not only was the political independent of the state, Schmitt argued, but it could even be turned against it. Schmitt believed that his contemporaries’ failure to recognize the nature of the political prevented them from adequately responding to the politicization of society, inadvertently risking civil war. This chapter reanalyzes Schmitt’s political from this perspective. Without ignoring enmity, it argues that Schmitt also defines the political in terms of friendship and, importantly, “status par excellence” (the status that relativizes other statuses). It also examines the relationship between the political and Schmitt’s concept of representation.

Pax and the Politics of Peace

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Cornwell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Pax Romana ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Insight Into

This book examines the two generations that spanned the collapse of the Republic and the Augustan period to understand how the concept of pax Romana, as a central ideology of Roman imperialism, evolved. The author argues for the integral nature of pax in understanding the changing dynamics of the Roman state through civil war to the creation of a new political system and world-rule. The period of the late Republic to the early Principate involved changes in the notion of imperialism. This is the story of how peace acquired a central role within imperial discourse over the course of the collapse of the Republican framework to become deployed in the legitimization of the Augustan regime. It is an examination of the movement from the debates over the content of the concept, in the dying Republic, to the creation of an authorized version controlled by the princeps, through an examination of a series of conceptions about peace, culminating with the pax augusta as the first crystallization of an imperial concept of peace. Just as there existed not one but a series of ideas concerning Roman imperialism, so too were there numerous different meanings, applications, and contexts within which Romans talked about ‘peace’. Examining these different nuances allows us insight into the ways they understood power dynamics, and how these were contingent on the political structures of the day. Roman discourses on peace were part of the wider discussion on the way in which Rome conceptualized her Empire and ideas of imperialism.

Women, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Native American Women ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Us ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
Us Civil War

The rapid transformations brought on by the US Civil War and its aftermath touched women’s lives in contradictory ways. The disruption caused by war and the destruction of slavery opened up space, and at times created the necessity, for radically new roles for women that challenged antebellum gender norms and racial and class hierarchies. This essay examines the wartime and postwar experiences primarily of black and white but also Native American women. In this period, many women faced new circumstances that inspired them to confront power in novel ways—by, for instance, fleeing slavery, petitioning governors, organizing bread riots, participating in political parades, or protesting segregation. The chapter also explores political violence in the postwar period that affected women differently across class, race, and region and that eventually helped to shut down the radical potential of the era.

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