Morale and the Postwar Politics of Consensus

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 722-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ussishkin
Keyword(s):  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Social Reconstruction ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
British Industry ◽  
Second World ◽  
Privileged Site

AbstractThe aftermath of the Second World War saw massive efforts to promote morale management across British industry. While these new discourses and industrial practices have often been explained in terms of the development of expert knowledge, this article places them at the center of the politics of social reconstruction. While the proper management of morale was linked to greater productivity, this article argues that it was often their assumed benefits regarding social cohesion and harmony that mattered most. It shows the ways in which government officials, management experts, and social scientists mobilized the perceived links that the war had forged among morale, collective sacrifice, and democratic citizenship and thus turned the workplace into a privileged site for the manufacture of consensus.

scholarly journals Implications of the Second World War us Refugee Resettlement Efforts of Cecilia Razovsky and Varian Fry

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Stacey A. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Refugee Resettlement ◽  
Legal Assistance ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Second World

Despite anti-immigrant sentiment and severe restrictions on immigration to the us during the Second World War, many individuals and organisations fought to change attitudes and utilise the limited possibilities available. Cecilia Razovsky worked throughout this era to utilise quotas, increase awareness, and avoid negative attention that could hinder immigration. Varian Fry provided practical and legal assistance to refugees fleeing France until he was stopped by government officials. Razovsky has remained largely unknown but Varian Fry has drawn attention as an example of America’s best intentions. The Second World War is frequently invoked in contemporary discourse surrounding immigration and the stories of rescue during that era continue to fascinate, as Fry’s recognition shows. Through examining how the us immigration advocates Cecilia Razovksy and Varian Fry responded to restrictions during the Second World War, this article asks why aspects of humanitarian memory persist and examines why particular aspects of their work continue to resonate and hold meaning for contemporary resettlement work.

II. Some Remarks on the Development of Colonial Bureaucracies in India and Indonesia

Itinerario ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Fasseur ◽  
D.H.A. Kolff
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Refusal To Participate ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Second World

A systematic comparison of the development of modern bureaucracies in India and Indonesia during the colonial era has never been made. No equivalent of the excellent work done by J.S. Furnivall on the colonial administration in Burma and Java is available. Yet, much of what he said is useful for the subject of this paper and we shall therefore lean heavily on him. It would be an overstatementto say that Indians before the Second World War felt interested in the events and developments in Indonesia. In the other direction that interest surely existed. We need only to recall the deep impact the Indian nationalist movement made upon such Indonesian nationalists as Sukarno.‘The example of Asian nationalism to which Indonesians referred most often was the Indian one.’ This applies for instance to the Congress non-cooperation campaign in the early 1920s. Indonesian nationalists could since then be classified as cooperators and non-cooperators, although for them the principal criterion was not the wish to boycott Dutch schools, goods and government officials(such a boycott actually never occurred in colonial Indonesia)but the refusal to participate in representative councils such as the Volksraad(i.e. People's Council).

scholarly journals REFLECTIONS ON THE RECENT HISTORIOGRAPHY OF EASTERN CONGO

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
RENÉ LEMARCHAND
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Eastern Congo ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Second World

AbstractConsidering the scale of violence that has accompanied the crisis in eastern Congo, the avalanche of academic writings on the subject is hardly surprising. Whether it helps us better understand the region's tortured history is a matter of opinion. This critical article grapples with the contributions of the recent literature on what has been described as the deadliest conflict since the Second World War. The aim, in brief, is to reflect on the historical context of the crisis, examine its relation to the politics of neighboring states, identify and assess the theoretical vantage points from which it has been approached, and, in conclusion, sketch out promising new directions for further research by social scientists. A unifying question that runs throughout the recent literature on the eastern Congo is how might a functioning state be restored or how might civil society organizations serve as alternatives to such a state – but there is little unanimity in the answers.

Reporting the Retreat

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Woods
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Media History ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
War Correspondents ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

The British defeat in Burma at the hands of the Japanese in 1942 marked the longest retreat in British army history and the beginning of the longest campaign in the Second World War. It also marked a beginning of the end of the British empire, not only in Burma but also in south and south-east Asia altogether. There have been many studies of the military and civilian experiences during the retreat but this is the first book to look at the way the campaign was represented through the western media: newspapers, pictorial magazines, and newsreels. There were some twenty-six accredited war correspondents covering the campaign, and almost half of them wrote books about their experiences, mostly within a year or two of the defeat. Their accounts were heavily criticized by government officials as being misinformed and sensationalist. More recent historians, on the other hand, have criticized them for being too patriotic and optimistic in their coverage and thus giving the public an unrealistic view of how the war was progressing. This book assesses the validity of these criticisms by using original sources. It is the first book to seriously evaluate the contributions of the war correspondents and will be of value to students of journalism, media history, history and war.

Signaling perversion: Senator David Walsh and the politics of euphemism and dysphemism

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 772-792
Author(s):  
Clare Forstie ◽  
Gary Alan Fine
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Sexual Signals ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Second World

Discussions of sexual reputation typically involve hints and innuendos, as sexual behavior often cannot be explicitly addressed in public domains. In this article we explore the role of signaling in the creation of reputation, particularly when reputational claims may not be directly articulated. We describe sexual signals in their reach (who learns of the claim) and through their realm (the transparency of meanings). We focus on the publicity of and response to a dramatic sexuality scandal from the Second World War that alleged that a US senator frequented a gay brothel operated by Nazi spies. This scandal – like others involving hidden sexuality – depended on signaling through the discursive forms of euphemism and dysphemism, requiring bounded subcultural knowledge. Signaling relies on local knowledge, often sheltering the powerful by excluding broader publics. Although we focus on the Walsh case, similar dynamics operate in other scandals involving politicians, government officials, and public figures.

Social Events and Social Science: a Personal Case Report on Open‐ended Causality

1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 497-511
Author(s):  
Martin Seliger
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
Personal Case

THE OUTLOOK OF ALL MEMBERS OF THE GENERATION OF social scientists contributing to this issue certainly bears the imprint of the upsurge of National Socialism and the chain of events this entailed and which led to the Second world War. On their part, these events are directly embedded in the aftermath of the First World War which began with the Bolshevik Revolution and was in many respects overshadowed by it. Some specificality of my way of relating to the more immediate background is accounted for by the fact that I experienced the events as a German Jew who decided to join in the return to the Jewish homeland, then Palestine. Furthermore, I left Germany in 1936 not only as a Zionist but also as a ‘Bernsteinist’ revisionist who remained unshaken in his belief that ‘Weimar’ had not suffered defeat as the result of a basic systemic weakness of liberal democracy which could accommodate social reform acceptable to an electoral majority. Ineptitude, shortsightedness and above all the lack of toughness of the German leaders dedicated to the democratic republic were one set of factors that made possible the victory of the Nazis.

American Sovietology From 1917-1991: an Attempt At Diagnosis

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 406-432
Author(s):  
Vladimir Shlapentokh
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
American Social Science ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe goal of this article is to discuss the evolution of the views of American social scientists, particularly Sovietologists, on the origins and nature of Soviet society. The analysis of the American performance in Soviet studies is particularly interesting because American social science was considered, at least after the Second World War, on the cutting edge in research worldwide. In making such an appraisal we are, at the same time, using American Sovietology as a case study for making a judgement about the potential social science in any country has in claiming to understand developments in a foreign society..

Imagined Dragons

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-182
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Barnard
Keyword(s):  
Historical Review ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
Second World ◽  
Unique Species

The presence of a large lizard, the Komodo dragon, in eastern Indonesia first came to the attention of Dutch authorities in 1912. Over the next thirty years these reptiles became one of the most desired celebrity species in the world for explorers to seek, zoos to display, and the public to imagine. From these experiences with captive Komodo lizards, a greater understanding of the behavior and morphology of the animal developed. This literature was shared in polycentric networks of science prior to the Second World War among zookeepers, explorers, and government officials, reflecting early efforts in the development of transnational knowledge of the biology of a unique species. This article is part of the “Crossroads of Indo–Pacific Environmental Histories” special issue of Pacific Historical Review.

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