2020 ASR Distinguished Lecture: African Voices Matter: Reflections on Fifty Years of Historical Research in Southern Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 760-775
Author(s):  
Robert Edgar
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Black Voices ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Past Half

AbstractThe recent racial reckoning has challenged scholars to recover Black voices that have been erased from historical accounts. This essay is my reflections on the challenges I faced in conducting research on African voices in politically and racially charged settings in Lesotho and South Africa over the past half century. After the political atmosphere began changing in South Africa in 1990, I served the individuals and communities I write about by rectifying historical injustices such as returning a holy relic to a religious group, the Israelites, and facilitating the return of remains of Nontetha Nkwenkwe from a pauper’s grave in Pretoria to her home.

New taxa, new records and name changes for southern African plants

Bothalia ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. Gibbs Russell ◽  
W. G. Welman ◽  
G. Germishuizen ◽  
E. Retief ◽  
B. J. Pienaar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
New Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Infraspecific Taxa ◽  
African Plants ◽  
New Research ◽  
Name Changes ◽  
Past Half

Alterations to the inventory of about 24 000 species and infraspecific taxa of bryophytes and vascular plants in southern Africa are reported for the year 1987. The inventory, as presently maintained in the Taxon component of the PRECIS system, contains the accepted name for each taxon, synonyms previously in use as accepted names during the past half-century, and literature references necessary to identify species in each genus and to establish the synonymy. The inventory is updated as new research affecting plant classification in southern Africa is published. During 1987 there were 678 alterations, representing about 2,8% of the total number of taxa.a

YEZID SAYIGH, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Pp. 96. £70.00 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-196
Author(s):  
Ann M. Lesch
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Movement ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Palestinian National Movement ◽  
Past Half

Yezid Sayigh's encylopedic history focuses on the role that the idea of armed struggle played in the Palestinian national movement as it evolved over the past half-century. His central thesis is that “armed struggle provided the political impulse and organisational dynamic in the evolution of Palestinian national identity and in the formation of parastatal institutions and a bureaucratic elite, the nucleus of government” (p. vii). The concept of armed struggle reforged Palestinian national identity, mobilized Palestinians, provided political legitimization to the Palestinian movement, made the Palestinians a distinct political actor in relation to the Arab states, helped to create institutions that could form the basis of a government, and established a well-defined political elite. Thus, even though Palestinian leaders never transformed the armed struggle into a people's war along the lines of Algeria or Vietnam, and never liberated any part of Palestine by force, armed struggle served other important, statist functions.

scholarly journals Mass Mobilization and the Durability of New Democracies

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ali Kadivar
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Original Data ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Government ◽  
Past Half

The “elitist approach” to democratization contends that “democratic regimes that last have seldom, if ever, been instituted by mass popular actors” (Huntington 1984:212). This article subjects this observation to empirical scrutiny using statistical analyses of new democracies over the past half-century and a case study. Contrary to the elitist approach, I argue that new democracies growing out of mass mobilization are more likely to survive than are new democracies that were born amid quiescence. Survival analysis of 112 young democracies in 80 different countries based on original data shows that the longer the mobilization, the more likely the ensuing democracy is to survive. I use a case study of South Africa to investigate the mechanisms. I argue that sustained unarmed uprisings have generated the longest-lasting new democracies—largely because they are forced to develop an organizational structure, which provides a leadership cadre for the new regime, forges links between the government and society, and strengthens checks on the power of the post-transition government.

scholarly journals Discussion, Dream, Art, People

Theater ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Tom Sellar
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Altered Consciousness ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Future ◽  
Past Half

In this article, Tom Sellar, the editor of Theater for sixteen years, reflects on the five-decade legacy of the magazine. Sellar’s personal retrospective looks both backward and forward, from Theater’s polemical beginnings in the late 1960s and his own encounters with the magazine as a student in the 1980s to the political exigencies of the present day and the demands this moment makes on the future of theater and criticism. As Sellar writes, Theater’s early radical spirit has not left the magazine’s mission: “Part muse, part archive, part mirror, Theater has held tightly to … its permanent stance that the theater can provide a vessel for transformation, bringing altered consciousness and maybe a better society.” Tracing this history, Sellar illuminates how Theater, as a journal and a reflection of its object of inquiry, has responded to the evolving idea of a public — a sphere that has narrowed and expanded, fractured and recombined over the past half century.

scholarly journals Demons, Spirits, and Elephants: Reflections on the Failure of Public Administration Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvin J. Dubnick
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Past Half

For the past half-century, those defining the field of Public Administration in their role as its leading “theorists” have been preoccupied with defending the enterprise against the evils of value-neutral logical positivism. This polemical review of that period focuses on the Simon-Waldo debate that ultimately leads the field to adopt a “professional” identity rather than seek disciplinary status among the social sciences. A survey of recent works by the field’s intellectual leaders and “gatekeepers” demonstrates that the anti-positivist obsession continues, oblivious to significant developments in the social sciences. The paper ends with a call for Public Administrationists to engage in the political and paradigmatic upheavals required to shift the field toward a disciplinary stance.

New taxa, new records and name changes for southern African plants

Bothalia ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. C. De Wet ◽  
G. E. Gibbs Russel ◽  
G. Germishuizen ◽  
B. D. Schrire ◽  
M. Jordaan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
New Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Infraspecific Taxa ◽  
African Plants ◽  
New Research ◽  
Name Changes ◽  
Past Half

Alterations to the inventory of about 24 000 species and infraspecific taxa of bryophytes and vascular plants in southern Africa are reported for the year 1988. The inventory, as currently maintained in the Taxon component of the PRECIS system, contains the accepted name for each taxon, synonyms previously in use as accepted names during the past half-century, and literature references necessary to identify species in each genus and to establish the synonymy. The inventory is updated as new research affecting plant classification in southern Africa is published. During 1988 there were 744 alterations, affecting about 3% of the total number of taxa.

Sexual Propositions

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Josh Sides
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Ballot Initiatives ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Past Half

California—simultaneously celebrated and reviled for its fabled sexual tolerance for the past half-century—has pioneered the use of sexual propositions, ballot initiatives designed to either expand the scope of “obscenity” censorship or to suppress the rights and aspirations of homosexuals. Viewed through the prism of the sexual propositions, the political landscape of California looks quite different than we generally imagine. This article examines the history of these propositions, their financial backers, and the politicians involved with them, including E. Richard Barnes’s Proposition 16, John Briggs’s Proposition 6 (The Briggs Initiative), and William J. “Pete” Knight’s Proposition 22.

Myth, Misogyny and Male Neurosi

1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-167
Author(s):  
Myron Gochnauer
Keyword(s):  
Narrow Range ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Past Half

In the past half century most legal philosophy has been limited to a fairly narrow range of traditional topics such as adjudication, legal reasoning, interpretation, legal persons, obligation and authority, the possibility of legal knowledge, the relationship of law to power, morality, economics and class struggle, and positivism vs. natural law. For those of us comfortable in the tradition, the range of questions appeared to outline an intellectually and politically adequate domain. The basic problems fell neatly into the major philosophical departments of epistemology, logic, value theory and, in some cases, metaphysics, and allowed participation by everyone along the political spectrum from the radical Marxist left through the liberal center to the fascist right.

Political Science at the Crossroads

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Deborah Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Metaphysical Theory ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Past Half

Political science is at the parting of the ways. Its foundations have been undermined by the claims of law and jurisprudence, into whose hands it has been deliberately surrendering itself for the past half-century or more, and now its chief strongholds are under fire from the neighboring fields of sociology, economics, and ethics. So severe and so persistent have these attacks become that the time has arrived when the political scientist must decide whether he will allow his subject to be absorbed in any one or all of these various fields, or will attempt to reëstablish it as a distinctive discipline.The reasons for this state of things are not difficult to discover. They quite obviously lie in the fact that in the pursuit of their basic problem—the search, namely, for the nature and source of sovereignty—political philosophers have so generally followed two equally futile and fruitless paths: either the path of pure speculation leading to a supernatural or metaphysical theory, or the path of legal analysis, leading ultimately to the juristic theory of the state. Indeed, during these recent years political theory has been so increasingly “under bondage to the lawyers” that it is little wonder that a reaction has come, and that thinkers in their determination to find the reality behind the formal juristic conception, are now repudiating not only the legal, but even the political, character of the state.

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