'The Psychological Marshall Plan': Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
World War

“The Psychological Marshall Plan”: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara Zahra
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
The Sun ◽  
World War ◽  
Vichy France ◽  
Europe Today ◽  
New Item

In 1940, Howard Kershner, director of European relief for the American Friends Service Committee, was stationed in Vichy France, where Quakers were organizing relief for refugees. He had witnessed any number of wartime atrocities in his years of service during the Spanish Civil War, including violence directed at civilians, bombings, starvation, and disease. Now he added a new item to the litany of wartime suffering: “One of the greatest tragedies of all times is the separation of families in Europe today: wives in one country, husbands in another, with no possibility of reunion and often no means of communication; babies who have never seen their fathers; scattered fragments of families not knowing if their loved ones are living or dead, and often without hope of ever seeing them again. There are multitudes of wretched souls for whom it seems the sun of hope has set.”

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

Human Rights Naturalized

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Status ◽  
Naturalistic Theory

This chapter helps to confirm the explanatory power of the naturalistic theory of moral progress outlined in previous chapters by making two main points. First, it shows that the theory helps to explain how and why the modern human rights movement arose when it did. Second, it shows that the advances in inclusiveness achieved by the modern human rights movement depended upon the fortunate coincidence of a constellation of contingent cultural and economic conditions—and that it is therefore a dangerous mistake to assume that continued progress must occur, or even that the status quo will not substantially deteriorate. This chapter also helps to explain a disturbing period of regression (in terms of the recognition of equal basic status) that occurred between the success of British abolitionism and the founding of the modern human rights movement at the end of World War II.

scholarly journals ‘Little Gunshots, but with the blaze of lightning’: Xavier Herbert, Visuality and Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Jane Lydon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Work ◽  
The North ◽  
Significant Difference

Xavier Herbert published his bestseller Capricornia in 1938, following two periods spent in the Northern Territory. His next major work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975), was not published until thirty-seven years later, but was also set in the north during the 1930s. One significant difference between the two novels is that by 1975 photo-journalism had become a significant force for influencing public opinion and reforming Aboriginal policy. Herbert’s novel, centring upon Prindy as vulnerable Aboriginal child, marks a sea change in perceptions of Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society, and a radical shift toward use of photography as a means of revealing the violation of human rights after World War II. In this article I review Herbert’s visual narrative strategies in the context of debates about this key historical shift and the growing impact of photography in human rights campaigns. I argue that Poor Fellow My Country should be seen as a textual re-enactment, set in Herbert’s and the nation’s past, yet coloured by more recent social changes that were facilitated and communicated through the camera’s lens. Like all re-enactments, it is written in the past conditional: it asks, what if things had been different? It poses a profound challenge to the state project of scientific modernity that was the Northern Territory over the first decades of the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Human Rights at Stake: Shirley Jackson’s Social and Political Protest in “The Lottery”

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Zaid Ibrahim Ismael ◽  
Sabah Atallah Khalifa Ali
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
World War ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Social Custom ◽  
American Author ◽  
The One

Nowhere is American author Shirley Jackson’s (1916-1965) social and political criticism is so intense than it is in her seminal fictional masterpiece “The Lottery”. Jackson severely denounces injustice through her emphasis on a bizarre social custom in a small American town, in which the winner of the lottery, untraditionally, receives a fatal prize. The readers are left puzzled at the end of the story as Tessie Hutchinson, the unfortunate female winner, is stoned to death by the members of her community, and even by her family. This study aims at investigating the author’s social and political implications that lie behind the story, taking into account the historical era in which the story was published (the aftermath of the bloody World War II) and the fact that the victim is a woman who is silenced and forced to follow the tradition of the lottery. The paper mainly focuses on the writer’s interest in human rights issues, which can be violated even in civilized communities, like the one depicted in the story. The shocking ending, the researchers conclude, is Jackson’s protest against dehumanization and violence.

What Future for Human Rights?

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Nickel
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Cold War

Like people born shortly after World War II, the international human rights movement recently had its sixty-fifth birthday. This could mean that retirement is at hand and that death will come in a few decades. After all, the formulations of human rights that activists, lawyers, and politicians use today mostly derive from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the world in 1948 was very different from our world today: the cold war was about to break out, communism was a strong and optimistic political force in an expansionist phase, and Western Europe was still recovering from the war. The struggle against entrenched racism and sexism had only just begun, decolonization was in its early stages, and Asia was still poor (Japan was under military reconstruction, and Mao's heavy-handed revolution in China was still in the future). Labor unions were strong in the industrialized world, and the movement of women into work outside the home and farm was in its early stages. Farming was less technological and usually on a smaller scale, the environmental movement had not yet flowered, and human-caused climate change was present but unrecognized. Personal computers and social networking were decades away, and Earth's human population was well under three billion.

scholarly journals Doing It for Themselves: The Steel Company of Wales and the Study of American Industrial Productivity, 1945–1955

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
LOUISE MISKELL
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Steel Industry ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Iron And Steel Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Steel Company ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
Industrial Productivity ◽  
Steel Sector ◽  
Anglo American

This article examines the efforts of one British steel company to acquire knowledge about American industrial productivity in the first post-World War II decade. It argues that company information-gathering initiatives in this period were overshadowed by the work of the formal productivity missions of the Marshall Plan era. In particular, it compares the activities of the Steel Company of Wales with the Anglo-American Council on Productivity (AACP), whose iron and steel industry productivity team report was published in 1952. Based on evidence from its business records, this study shows that the Steel Company of Wales was undertaking its own international productivity investigations, which started earlier and were more extensive and differently focused from those of the AACP. It makes the case for viewing companies as active participants in the gathering and dissemination of productivity knowledge in Britain’s steel sector after 1945.

Triangulating Labor, Capital, and Land: Italian Emigrant Colonization in Latin America and the Contradictions of US Hegemony, 1947–1953

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-566
Author(s):  
Dario Gaggio
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
World War ◽  
Us Hegemony ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Peasant Farmers ◽  
Latin American Countries

In the aftermath of World War II, Italy’s centrist leaders saw in the emerging US empire an opportunity to implement emigration schemes that had been in circulation for decades. Hundreds of thousands of Italian peasant farmers could perhaps be able to settle on Latin American and African land thanks to the contribution of US capital. This article examines the Italian elites’ obsession with rural colonization abroad as the product of their desire to valorize the legacy of Italy's settler colonialism in Libya and thereby reinvent Italy's place in the world in the aftermath of military defeat and decolonization. Despite the deep ambivalence of US officials, Italy received Marshall Plan funds to carry out experimental settlements in several Latin American countries. These visions of rural settlement also built on the nascent discourses about the ‘development’ of non-western areas. Despite the limited size and success of the Italian rural ‘colonies’ in Latin America, these projects afford a window into the politics of decolonization, the character of US hegemony at the height of the Cold War, and the evolving attitude of Latin American governments towards immigration and rural development. They also reveal the contradictory relationships between Italy's leaders and the country's rural masses, viewed as redundant and yet precious elements to be deployed in a global geopolitical game.

Contemporary Issues

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tolan ◽  
Gilles Veinstein ◽  
Henry Laurens
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
First Century ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
World War ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Newly Independent States

This chapter chronicles the struggles of the Muslim world and Europe during World War II as well as its aftermath. It shows how the war had helped to end European rule and begin the process of decolonization for Muslim nations such as Libya. And with the Muslim state now independent of direct European domination, the second half of the chapter explores the ways in which the Muslim world tackled the issue of development as well as a fresh wave of problems regarding human rights, universality, and other pitfalls of newly independent states struggling to survive in a world that has changed profoundly after a series of major conflicts. The chapter also reflects on the still-intertwined relationships between the Muslim world and Europe as history progresses into the twenty-first century.

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