CREOLE NATIONALISTS AND THE SEARCH FOR NATIVIST AUTHENTICITY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ZANZIBAR: THE LIMITS OF COSMOPOLITANISM

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathon Glassman

AbstractThe founders of the Zanzibar National Party can be understood as creole nationalists, who imagined their political authority as stemming from membership in a transnational Arab elite. But in the mid-twentieth century, prompted by the rising hegemony of territorial nationalism and by subaltern challenges informed by pan-Africanism, they crafted a new historical narrative that depicted their movement as having originated with indigenous villagers. Party leaders then related this narrative to Western scholars, whose publications helped reproduce the myth throughout the rest of the century. This article traces the genesis of this masquerade and asks what it implies about the nature of the creole metaphor and its supposed link to discourses of cosmopolitan hybridity. The conventional contrast betweencréolitéand nativist essentialism is shown to be illusory.

2020 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-50
Author(s):  
M. Paulina Hartono

This essay focuses on the history and politicization of radio announcers’ vocal delivery in China during the mid-twentieth century. It explores how Chinese Communist Party leaders used internal party debates, national policies, and broadcasting training to construct an ideal Communist voice whose qualities would ostensibly communicate party loyalty and serve as a sonic representation of political authority.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
JAIME SÁNCHEZ

Abstract:The Democratic Party faced a crisis of political legitimacy in the late 1960s as distrust and protest permeated its electoral base. In response, the Democratic National Committee established the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, tasked with restructuring the party’s presidential nomination process. Contrary to the conventional historical narrative of the McGovern-Fraser Commission that has focused on a supposed displacement of the party’s old guard by radical insurgents, this article instead argues that the main impetus for reform came from national party leaders seeking to build up the legitimacy and authority of the National Committee. Commission Chair George McGovern and the DNC used a particular reform rhetoric that charged state parties with the corruption of the political process, necessitating rescue by an empowered national party. This focus on the nationalizing impulses behind McGovern-Fraser serves to shift our attention away from ideological struggles and toward institutional motives.


Author(s):  
Tara Baldrick-Morrone

Abstract This essay explores issues of identity and power in twentieth-century scholarship on abortion in the ancient Mediterranean world. I consider how two scholars, John T. Noonan, Jr. and Beverly Wildung Harrison, approach the same ancient Christian sources from different theoretical frameworks: narrative historiography and feminist liberation ethics, respectively. While Noonan’s historical narrative on ancient Christian opposition to abortion demonstrates the “moral supremacy” of Christianity, Harrison’s historical counternarrative reads the ancient sources as borne out of the “sex-negativism” of a minority of ancient Christians. In this analysis I focus on the ways in which the production of history manufactures power by means of authority and legitimacy, particularly for each scholar’s own religious identity and views on the morality of abortion in America. In conclusion, I consider the interests of the respective authors in the production of these histories.


2014 ◽  
pp. 106-124
Author(s):  
Konrad Sebastian Morawski

Status of the newspaper “Politika” in Karađorđevićs’ Yugoslavia (1918-1941)The newspaper Politika was founded on 25 January 1904 by Vladislav F. Ribnikar. Since that time the Serbian Press market has begun to develop, and the Politika permanently has taken the important role up to this day. The newspaper witnessed important events in the Balkans in the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century but at the same time it was also under strong influence of Serbian centers of political authority. One example of such an influence was the status of the Politika in the period during the reign of Karađorđević dynasty in Yugoslavia, in 1918-1941. The newspaper then served a propaganda function for the royal court, particularly in 1929-1934. Then king Aleksander ruled in an authoritarian way and Politika played an important part in the country. The mechanism of functioning of the newspaper in the period of the royal authoritarianism, as well as in the remaining years of the interwar Yugoslavia was thus discussed in the article to help clarify the status of Politika under the rule of Karađorđevićs. Status gazety „Politika” w Jugosławii Karađorđeviciów (1918–1941)Gazeta pod nazwą „Politika” została założona 25 stycznia 1904 roku przez Vladislava F. Ribnikara. Od tego czasu zaczął kształtować się serbski rynek prasowy, w którym „Politika” trwale zajmuje istotne miejsce do dzisiejszego dnia. Gazeta była świadkiem ważnych i doniosłych wydarzeń na Bałkanach w XX wieku i na początku XXI wieku, ale zarazem znajdowała się również w strefie ścisłych wpływów politycznych serbskich ośrodków władzy. Jednym z przykładów takiego wpływu był status „Politiki” w okresie panowania dynastii Karađorđeviciów w Jugosławii w latach 1918–1941. Gazeta pełniła wtedy funkcję propagandową dworu królewskiego, co dało się szczególnie zauważyć w latach 1929–1934. Wtedy bowiem król Aleksander I sprawował autorytarne rządy w państwie, których ważną częścią stała się „Politika”. Mechanizm funkcjonowania gazety zarówno w okresie autorytaryzmu królewskiego, jak i w pozostałych latach międzywojennej Jugosławii został więc poddany omówieniu, które umożliwiło wyjaśnienie statusu „Politiki” pod panowaniem Karađorđeviciów.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Heersink

Political scientists have traditionally dismissed the Democratic and Republican National Committees as “service providers”—organizations that provide assistance to candidates in the form of campaign funding and expertise but otherwise lack political power. I argue this perspective has missed a crucial role national committees play in American politics, namely that national party organizations publicize their party's policy positions and, in doing so, attempt to create national party brands. These brands are important to party leaders—especially when the party is in the national minority—since they are fundamental to mobilizing voters in elections. In case studies covering the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) in the period 1952–1976, I show that minority party committees prioritize their branding role and invest considerably in their publicity divisions, inaugurate new publicity programs, and create new communication tools to reach out to voting groups. Additionally, I show that in cases where the party is out of the White House, the national committees have considerable leeway in deciding what party image to publicize. Rather than being mere powerless service providers, I show that party committees have played crucial roles in debates concerning questions of ideology and issue positioning in both parties.


Author(s):  
Eric Schickler

This chapter analyzes the battle for control of the national Democratic Party as the players empowered by the coalitional and ideological changes after 1937 battled not just against southern Democrats but also against national party leaders desperate to hold together the fragile North–South coalition. The bland national platforms that Democrats adopted in the 1940s and 1950s belied the vigorous efforts by the liberal civil rights coalition to push for a strong platform plank, which became a regular focal point of dispute starting in 1944. The national platform fights exemplify both the much stronger push for civil rights on the part of important Democratic constituencies (compared to Republicans) and the efforts of national party leaders to avoid a clear stand. A survey of convention delegates from 1956 shows that despite the two parties' similar national platforms, the distribution of delegate preferences was decidedly more pro-civil rights among Democrats.


2020 ◽  
pp. 248-258
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin

This concluding chapter addresses the implications of anti-system politics for the future of capitalism and democracy in the advanced countries. It argues that the current wave of anti-system support reflects the ultimate failure of the project of “market liberalism,” in that the limitations of the market logic have been laid bare by the financial crisis and the inability of the free market model to deliver prosperity and security. The answer to this crisis is likely to involve a reassertion of political authority over the market: either a revival of social democracy, the guiding ideology of the inclusive capitalism of the second half of the twentieth century, or a return to the nationalism and mercantilism of the interwar period.


Author(s):  
Laura Robson

This chapter introduces the main question of the book: how did mass violence come to be a primary—perhaps the primary—mode of making political claims in the twentieth and twenty-first century Middle East? It asks when mass violence became a constitutive aspect of the political landscape of the region, why it took precedence over other strategies of state building and establishing political authority, and how governments, armies, and civilians alike came to think of mass violence as a viable and legitimate mode of claiming political space and national rights. Drawing on several different and largely separate historiographies, this introduction argues, makes it possible to produce a synthetic account of violence in the twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean that takes account of regional developments as much as individual national histories.


Author(s):  
Joy K. Langston

This chapter examines how the PRI’s candidate selection and recruitment changed from the hegemonic to the democratic era to capture how electoral competition strengthened the governors at the expense the corporatist sectors and other PRI groups. Under hegemony, the president controlled (through choosing or vetoing) which PRI politician appeared on the ballot, and thus could punish or benefit ambitious politicians within the wide-flung coalition. Once competition grew, however, a candidate’s popularity with voters began to weigh on these decisions and governors began to demand control over nominations for subnational and federal posts. Regime leaders had to devolve power over federal candidacies to state executives because of their ability to win votes for the party, decentralizing the party. National party leaders won a good deal of control over the closed-list PR seats for both the Chamber and the Senate. Most party-affiliated unions lost nomination power because they were unable to choose popular candidates or procure electoral victories, weakening their position within the party.


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