Taking It from the Streets: The Politics of Collecting, Writing and Exhibiting History from Below

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 (01) ◽  
pp. 115-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Rickertt
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Interesting Observation ◽  
The People ◽  
The 1960S

Writing in Griffith Review 13 about ‘being political now’, Mark Bahnisch described the Museum of Brisbane's Taking to the Streets exhibition as a ‘monument to the symbolism of the '60s’. On display, he wrote, were causes and experiences that ‘symbolise a generation’. It's an interesting observation, especially in an essay concerned with debunking generational stereotypes. For it seems Bahnisch himself may have fallen for, well, a generational stereotype. Aside from apparently missing the 75 per cent of the exhibition that didn't deal with the 1960s, he also seems to have failed to notice that the people represented in the interviews, the written accounts, the grainy images, the shaky film footage and the lists of arrests were not all of one generation. Ranging from punks to pensioners, students to seafarers, communists to Christians, they were in fact an amazingly motley bunch of citizens who shared a history only because they shared a desire for a better society and a belief that protest was a legitimate and worthwhile political activity. And, despite the mythology, the issues they mobilised around — war, racism, the nuclear industry, sexism, workers' rights, civil liberties — had been around as causes well before 1965. Even that icon of late 1960s radicalism — the peace symbol — came from earlier times, as Ted D'Urso so carefully explained in his exhibition interview.

The Influence of Modern Party System on the Development of Parliamentarism in Russia: Institutional, Political and Psychological Aspects

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 266-273
Author(s):  
Ivan S. Palitai
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Party System ◽  
Psychological Aspects ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The People ◽  
Voting System ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Opinion Polls

The article is devoted to the modern Russian party system. In the first part of the article, the author shows the historical features of the parties formation in Russia and analyzes the reasons for the low turnout in the elections to the State Duma in 2016. According to the author the institutional reasons consist in the fact that the majority of modern political parties show less and less ability to produce new ideas, and the search for meanings is conducted on the basis of the existing, previously proposed sets of options. Parties reduce the topic of self-identification in party rhetoric, narrowing it down to “branded” ideas or focusing on the image of the leader. In addition, the author shows the decrease in the overall political activity of citizens after the 2011 elections, and points out that the legislation amendments led to the reduction of the election campaigns duration and changes in the voting system itself. The second part of the article is devoted to the study of the psychological aspects of the party system. The author presents the results of the investigation of images of the parties as well as the results of the population opinion polls, held by the centers of public opinion study. On the basis of this data, the author concludes that according to the public opinion the modern party system is ineffective, and the parties don’t have real political weight, which leads to the decrease of the interest in their activities and confidence in them. The author supposes that all this may be the consequence of the people’s fatigue from the same persons in politics, but at the same time the electorate’s desire to see new participants in political processes is formulated rather vaguely, since, according to the people, this might not bring any positive changes.

Physical Trauma As Presesnted In Monica Ali’s Brick Lane

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 156-159
Author(s):  
Roy PP
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Young Children ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Physical Trauma ◽  
The People ◽  
Provincial Capital ◽  
The 1960S

Monica Ali was born in 1967 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, but grew up in England. Her English mother met her Bangladeshi father at a dance in northern England in the 1960s. Despite both of their families` protests, they later married and lived together with their two young children in Dhaka. This was then the provincial capital of East Pakistan which after a nine-month war of independence became the capital of the People`s Republic of Bangladesh. On 25 March 1971 during this civil war, Monica Ali`s father sent his family to safety in England. The war caused East Pakistan to secede from the union with West Pakistan, and was now named Bangladesh.

‘Nature Has Its Own Soul and Speaks Its Own Language’

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-73
Author(s):  
Helena Ruotsala
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Reindeer Herding ◽  
Nature Protection ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Finnish Lapland ◽  
The People ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

Nature and environment are important for the people earning their living from natural sources of livelihood. This article concentrates on the local perspective of the landscape in the Pallastunturi Fells, which are situated in Pallas-Ylläs National Park in Finnish Lapland. The Fells are both important pastures for reindeer and an old tourism area. The Pallastunturi Tourist Hotel is situated inside the national park because the hotel was built before the park was established 1938. Until the 1960s, the relationship between tourism and reindeer herding had been harmonious because the tourism activities did not disturb the reindeer herding, but offered instead ways to earn money by transporting the tourists from the main road to the hotel, which had been previously without any road connections. During recent years, tourism has been developed as the main source of livelihood in Lapland and huge investments have been made in several parts of Lapland. One example of this type of investment is the plan to replace the old Pallas Tourist hotel, which was built in 1948, with a newer and bigger one. It means that the state will allow a private enterprise to build more infrastructures for tourism inside a national park where nature should be protected and this has sparked a heated debate. Those who oppose the project criticise this proposal as the amendment of a law designed to promote the economic interests of one private tourism enterprise. The project's supporters claim that the needs of the tourism industry and nature protection can both be promoted and that it is important to develop a tourist centre which is already situated within the national park. This article is an attempt to try to shed light on why the local people are so loudly resisting the plans by a private tourism enterprise to touch the national park. It is based on my fieldwork among reindeer herding families in the area.

From Property Rights to Liberty Rights: We the Corporations, A Review Essay

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Laura Phillips Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
State Action ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
We The People

A long-standing, and deeply controversial, question in constitutional law is whether or not the Constitution's protections for “persons” and “people” extend to corporations. Law professor Adam Winkler's We the Corporations chronicles the most important legal battles launched by corporations to “win their constitutional rights,” by which he means both civil rights against discriminatory state action and civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (p. xvii). Today, we think of the former as the right to be free from unequal treatment, often protected by statutory laws, and the latter as liberties that affect the ability to live one's life fully, such as the freedom of religion, speech, or association. The vim in Winkler's argument is that the court blurred this distinction when it applied liberty rights to nonprofit corporations and then, through a series of twentieth-century rulings, corporations were able to advance greater claims to liberty rights. Ultimately, those liberty rights have been employed to strike down significant bipartisan regulations, such as campaign finance laws, which were intended to advance democratic participation in the political process. At its core, this book asks, to what extent do “we the people” rule corporations and to what extent do they rule us?

A Difference in Degree (1964–75)

2019 ◽  
pp. 205-268
Author(s):  
Aijaz Ashraf Wani
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Strong Reaction ◽  
The People

Though Bakhshi with strong backing by Delhi succeeded in creating ‘cold peace’ phase by going for development and providing basic necessities to the people, yet, some of the policy instruments especially curbing of civil liberties and promoting corruption and nepotism went well with the hegemony project as goonda raj and misuse of power evoked strong reaction both within and outside Kashmir. Most importantly, however, Bakhshi showed diffidence in cooperating with further integrationist moves of the centre. Hence it was regarded necessary to change the leadership in Kashmir and install G.M. Sadiq whose alternative views were clearly known. The fourth chapter examines the nature and the changes in governance during the period of Sadiq and the extent of his success in a hostile environment to which he also added fuel notwithstanding his celebration of ‘liberalism and clean government

Sulla’s Sack of Athens

2020 ◽  
pp. 195-222
Author(s):  
Ian Worthington
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
The People ◽  
The City

Chapter 10 begins with a consideration of the constitution and political activity in Athens, followed by a change in the Athenian attitude toward Rome and the activities of Mithridates VI of Pontus. Mithridates’ clashes with Rome led to him seek allies in Greece, especially Athens. His case polarized Athenian politics, but the people voted to support him, and hence declared war on Rome. The Romans sent Sulla to Greece, who besieged Athens. Eventually the city capitulated, and Sulla’s men then killed many citizens and destroyed many buildings. The city’s economy was destroyed; Delos defected; further restraints were made on the city’s political life; and even artistic output was affected. Yet Roman visitors to Athens began to increase in the years after Sulla, including to study there, and Greek culture continued to be attractive to Romans.

The folk’ish heritage in Nordic democracy: Examples from Denmark and Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeppe Nevers ◽  
Jesper Lundsby Skov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The People ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Drawing on examples from Danish and Norwegian history, this article traces the ideological origins of Nordic democracy. It takes as its starting point the observation that constitutional theories of democracy were rather weak in the Nordic countries until the mid-twentieth century; instead, a certain Nordic tradition of popular constitutionalism rooted in a romantic and organic idea of the people was central to the ideological foundations of Nordic democracy. This tradition developed alongside agrarian mobilization in the nineteenth century, and it remained a powerful ideological reference-point through most of the twentieth century, exercising, for instance, an influence on debates about European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this tradition was gradually overlaid by more institutional understandings of democracy from the mid-twentieth century onwards, with the consequence that the direct importance of this folk’ish heritage declined towards the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, clear echoes of this heritage remain evident in some contemporary Nordic varieties of populism, as well as in references to the concept of folkestyre as the pan-Scandinavian synonym for democracy.

Labor Movements and Chicana/o Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcial González
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Labor Movements ◽  
United Farm Workers ◽  
The People ◽  
The 1960S

Chicano/a literature may not excel in representing labor movements, but the literature itself has been influenced by, and is often a response to, various labor struggles. Of the labor movements that have had an impact on Chicano/a literature, the farmworkers movement has been the most significant. Even though Mexican American farmworkers throughout the 20th century played a significant role in building an agricultural empire in the United States, they have not been properly credited with this accomplishment, nor have they prospered equitably from the economic gains of agribusiness. Historically, Chicano/a farmworkers have been physically visible in the workplace but not socially recognized—needed for their labor, but not always wanted as participatory citizens. The farmworkers movement led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) during the 1960s and early 1970s contributed to the emergence of the Chicano movement during those same years. The movement in turn served as a catalyst for the emergence of Chicano/a literature. The farmworker has been a central figure in Chicano/a literature since its inception, but representations of farmworkers in the literature have changed over time—from Tomás Rivera’s groundbreaking novel . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra in 1971 to Salvador Plascencia’s fantasy novel The People of Paper in 2005. One of the reasons for these changes has been the rise of neoliberalism, a politico-economic system that has debilitated, and in some cases destroyed, labor unions. Neoliberalism has also contributed to the deterioration of living and working conditions for the working class, especially for those at the bottom of the economic chain, such as farmworkers. Thus, contemporary Chicano/a farmworker literature tends to oscillate between nostalgia for a time when the farmworkers movement was powerful and cautious optimism that a strong movement can once again be built.

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