scholarly journals Racism in the Theory Canon: Hannah Arendt and ‘the One Great Crime in Which America Was Never Involved’

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Owens
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Racial Conflict ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The One ◽  
Vexed Question

Hannah Arendt’s monumental study The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, is a founding text in postcolonial studies, locating the seeds of European fascism in the racism of imperial expansion. However, Arendt also harboured deep racial prejudices, especially when writing about people of African descent, which affected core themes in her political thought. The existing secondary literature has diagnosed but not adequately explained Arendt’s failures in this regard. This article shows that Arendt’s anti-black racism is rooted in her consistent refusal to analyse the colonial and imperial origins of racial conflict in the United States given the unique role of the American republic in her vision for a new post-totalitarian politics. In making this argument, the article also contributes to the vexed question of how international theorists should approach important ‘canonical’ thinkers whose writings have been exposed as racist, including methodological strategies for approaching such a body of work, and engages in a form of self-critique for marginalising this problem in earlier writing on Arendt.

Underemployment and Meaningful Work: The Role of Psychological Needs

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taewon Kim ◽  
Blake A. Allan
Keyword(s):  
Meaningful Work ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Working Adults ◽  
Economic Recessions

Underemployment is a global problem that is increasing in the context of recovering economic recessions and insecure job markets. In this context, vocational psychologists can play a unique role by determining the processes by which underemployment relates to aspects of work well-being, such as meaningful work. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the relation between underemployment and meaningful work as well as to investigate potential mediators of this relation. Specifically, with a sample of 351 working adults in the United States, we investigated how underemployment related to the meaningful work via the self-determination needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Partially supporting hypotheses, underemployment was negatively related to autonomy and relatedness but positively related to competence. In turn, autonomy and competence were positively related to meaningful work, whereas relatedness was unrelated to meaningful work. These results offer insights into how underemployment might affect the meaningfulness of work and how employers and practitioners can help underemployed workers.

scholarly journals Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 113-145
Author(s):  
Ethan B. Kapstein
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Development ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This article sheds light on the role of foreign direct investment as an instrument for economic development and, in turn, for the advancement of U.S. foreign policy goals during the Cold War. From the earliest days of the Cold War, and especially after the U.S.-Soviet competition for influence in the developing world began in the 1950s, the United States sought to promote private enterprise on behalf of U.S. goals. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, U.S. officials believed that foreign investment would suffice to fuel international development, obviating the need for official development assistance. These hopes, however, were largely disappointed. On the one hand, U.S.-based multinational companies preferred to invest in the industrial world; on the other hand, some Third World governments were uninterested in promoting private enterprise rather than state-led development. In part because foreign investment did not meet expectations, the U.S. government ended up elaborating an official foreign aid program instead.

“It's the Politics, Stupid.” Or is Reality more Complex?

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Weimer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
The One

Reality is complex, and often does not lend itself to generalization or simplifying explanations. Yet at the same time, explaining reality often requires the shaping of notions and concepts of it through generalization and the reduction of complexity. This tension between complexity and particularity on the one hand and generalization and the search for abstracting explanatory patterns on the other is beautifully illustrated by two recently released publications on precaution and risk regulation in the United States and Europe, namely “The Politics of Precaution” by David Vogel1 and “The Reality of Precaution” edited by Jonathan Wiener, Michael Rogers, James Hammitt, and Peter Sand.Both books together can be seen as the latest significant contribution to the ongoing debate on the role of the precautionary principle in risk regulation in a comparative EU-US perspective. Both contributions are significant in that they consolidate the trend towards an empirically informed analysis of the actual practice of the application of precaution in risk regulation.

Jean Charlot and the Mexican Mural Renaissance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Charlot
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Mexican Art ◽  
Print Medium ◽  
Carnegie Institution Of Washington ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Participant Observer ◽  
Chichen Itza

That the Mexican mural renaissance is understudied is clear from the fact than not one of its artists has been the subject of a scholarly biography. Moreover, the movement as a whole has usually been viewed through nationalist prejudices and partisan interpretations. A current reevaluation uses the wedge of several hitherto marginalized artists who figure more prominently in documents and chronology than in popular history. Among them, Jean Charlot can be placed securely at the beginning of several major developments, which were continuations of his work in France. At the open air art school of Coyoacán, he helped the young teachers move from impressionism to a geometry-based postimpressionism more appropriate for mural composition. He introduced woodcut, which he had practiced in France and which became the print medium of choice for generations of Mexican artists. His first mural, The Massacre in the Main Temple, was important for its successful use of fresco—immediately adopted as the preferred medium by other muralists—and its dynamic geometric composition, an alternative to Diego Rivera’s static classicism in Creation. Charlot further broadened the thematic and stylistic options of the movement in a series of small oils and in the first studies of the indigenous nude. He continued to nourish his colleagues with the results of his work as an archeological draughtsman at the Chichen Itza expedition of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC. Charlot also participated in the notable collaboration between artists and writers in 1920s Mexico. Along with Manuel Maples Arce, he was on the two-man Direction Committee of the estridentista movement, illustrating books of poetry and joining group exhibitions. His writings are among the earliest discussions of contemporary Mexican art—publicizing the movement in Europe and the United States—and continue to influence interpretation today. His collections of documents and interviews, as well as his personal experience, became the invaluable basis of books like his The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920–1925 and numerous articles in several languages. His latest bibliography is 173 pages long. Charlot fulfilled the unique role of insider-outsider, participant-observer, in the Mexican mural renaissance.

scholarly journals The Problem of Ukrainian-Polish Coexistence in the Ukrainian Conservative Political Thought of the Interwar Period: Lypynskyi Versus Tomashivskyi in the Framework of Epoch

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Potulnytskyi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The One ◽  
Territorial Group

While studying Polish-Ukrainian relations, outstanding Ukrainian conservative thinkers, namely Vjacheslav Lypynskyi and Stepan Tomashivskyi, focused mainly on the problem of distinguishing the role of Poland in the history of the Ukrainian people and on the issue of orientation towards Poland as a factor in the emergence of the Ukrainian state. The role of Poland in the history of the Ukrainian people, according to conservatives, was twofold. On the one hand, it was Poland that paved the way for Ukraine to Europeanization, providing examples of state-style literature and culture. This constructive role of Poland was especially fruitful in comparison with the Asian influences of Moscow. In this context, the conservatives emphasized that these were the Poles who played a key role in the process of separating Ukrainians from Russia, promoting the rise and establishment of the Cossacks and the Hetmanate, as well as creating the very name “Ukraine”. Conversely, the conservatives negatively assessed the Treaty of Hadiach for Ukraine, which, in their opinion, was very rational, on the one hand, and contributed, on the other hand, to the extermination of the elite and aristocratic democracy, and which disorganized the nobility and made it republican by eliminating its chivalrous essence and adding destructive anarchism instead. The conservatives also sharply assessed the Treaty of Warsaw between Petliura and Pilsudski. Simultaneously, Ukrainian monarchists did not consider Poland a force that could play a role in the creation of the Ukrainian state, although they considered the territorial autonomy of Halychyna under Poland as the first stage in educating the citizens of Western Ukraine in the spirit of the state monarchical idea. They took the position of mutual understanding between Ukrainian conservatives and Halychyna Poles in achieving the autonomy of Ukrainian lands under Poland, although they condemned the concept of a federation of Poland and Ukraine in Halychyna under the conditions put forward by Halychyna Ukrainian National Democrats. Conservatives considered such a strategy doomed to failure without the creation of a conservative territorial group in Halychyna composed of local Poles and Ukrainians. Relying heavily on local Poles not affiliated with metropolitan Warsaw, they placed the main emphasis on the internal organization of the monarchists rather than on external allies, including Poland

scholarly journals Measuring voluntary and policy-induced social distancing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (16) ◽  
pp. e2008814118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youpei Yan ◽  
Amyn A. Malik ◽  
Jude Bayham ◽  
Eli P. Fenichel ◽  
Chandra Couzens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Initial Step ◽  
The United States ◽  
Relative Effect ◽  
Smart Device ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
Voluntary Response ◽  
Voluntary Behavior ◽  
The One ◽  
At Home

Staying home and avoiding unnecessary contact is an important part of the effort to contain COVID-19 and limit deaths. Every state in the United States enacted policies to encourage distancing and some mandated staying home. Understanding how these policies interact with individuals’ voluntary responses to the COVID-19 epidemic is a critical initial step in understanding the role of these nonpharmaceutical interventions in transmission dynamics and assessing policy impacts. We use variation in policy responses along with smart device data that measures the amount of time Americans stayed home to disentangle the extent that observed shifts in staying home behavior are induced by policy. We find evidence that stay-at-home orders and voluntary response to locally reported COVID-19 cases and deaths led to behavioral change. For the median county, which implemented a stay-at-home order with about two cases, we find that the response to stay-at-home orders increased time at home as if the county had experienced 29 additional local cases. However, the relative effect of stay-at-home orders was much greater in select counties. On the one hand, the mandate can be viewed as displacing a voluntary response to this rise in cases. On the other hand, policy accelerated the response, which likely helped reduce spread in the early phase of the pandemic. It is important to be able to attribute the relative role of self-interested behavior or policy mandates to understand the limits and opportunities for relying on voluntary behavior as opposed to imposing stay-at-home orders.

scholarly journals Political Ideology and the Outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

At the state level within the United States, did political ideology predict the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19)? Throughout March 2020, the United States became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, recording the most cases of any country worldwide. The current research found that, at the state level within the United States, more conservative political ideology predicted delayed implementation of stay-at-home orders and more rapid spread of COVID-19. Effects were significant across two distinct operationalizations of political ideology and held over and above relevant covariates, suggesting a potentially unique role of political ideology in the United States’ COVID-19 outbreak. Considering political ideological factors may offer valuable insights into epidemiological processes surrounding COVID-19.

Putting Africa's House in Order to Deal with Developmental Challenges

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Government ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
White House ◽  
American Military ◽  
Rogue States ◽  
The One ◽  
Abundant Supply

However proud Africans must be to have a person of African descent in the White House, they should have no illusions as to how much President Barack Hussein Obama can do for Africa. Africans must put their own house in order for purposes of dealing successfully with the major challenges facing the continent, the most important of which is that of democratic and developmental governance. Obama's priorities are not necessarily those of Africans. They have to do with the role of the United States as a superpower in a global system in which the American military and business corporations play a hegemonic role. In this context, Africa is relevant to American and Obama's global priorities when its resources are needed to strengthen this role, on the one hand, or its humanitarian crises are likely to affect them in an adverse manner, on the other.What are these global priorities, and how are they likely to affect Africa during Obama's tenure? Following is a brief examination of four major priorities. The first is limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. Operating on the premise that nuclear weapons should be limited to the few countries now possessing them (U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan), the U.S. government has led an international campaign against the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology by other countries, particularly those deemed hostile to Western interests, such as Iran and North Korea. Since South Africa destroyed the nuclear arsenal of the former apartheid state and Libya gave up its nuclear ambitions, the only relevant issue with respect to Africa's role in the spread of nuclear weapons is the question of who has access to Africa's abundant supply of uranium. Denying access to African uranium to “rogue states” and terrorist organizations is an important foreign policy objective of any American government, including the Obama administration.

scholarly journals American Slavery Through the Eyes of British Women Travelers in the First Half of the 19th Century

Ad Americam ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 113-121
Author(s):  
Justyna Fruzińska
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Social Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Frances Trollope ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century

My paper investigates 19th-century travel writing by British women visiting America: texts by such authors as Frances Trollope, Isabella Bird, or Frances Kemble. I analyze to what extent these travelers’ gender influences their view of race. On the one hand, as Tim Youngs stresses, there seems to be very little difference between male and female travel writing in the 19th century, as women, in order to be accepted by their audience, needed to mimic men’s style (135). On the other hand, women writers occasionally mention their gender, as for example Trollope, who explains that she is not competent enough to speak on political matters, which is why she wishes to limit herself only to domestic issues. This provision, however, may be seen as a mere performance of a conventional obligation, since it does not prevent Trollope from expressing her opinions on American democracy. Moreover, Jenny Sharpe shows how Victorian Englishwomen are trapped between a social role of superiority and inferiority, possessing “a dominant position of race and a subordinate one of gender” (11). This makes the female authors believe that as women they owe to the oppressed people more sympathy than their male compatriots. My paper discusses female writing about the United States in order to see how these writers navigate their position of superiority/inferiority.

scholarly journals Artificial Intelligence: Serving American Security and Chinese Ambitions

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
H. Obeid ◽  
F Hillani, ◽  
R. Fakih ◽  
K. Mozannar
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
United States ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Us ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Technological Strength

In recent years artificial intelligence has entered a new era, which gives rise to many hopes for powerful states such as the United States and China. In this paper, we analyze the importance and role of artificial intelligence in technological development in each of the two countries on the one hand, and its influence on China-American relations in terms of technological and geopolitical conflict. To get the right results, we rely on a literature review of dozens of articles published on the phenomenon in order to compare the power of artificial intelligence between the United States and China where we found that the US still has technological strength, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, but we can say that a large force is beginning pose a threat for it which is China that has great technological capabilities so, we can say that the United States should work more in this field. Also, we found that artificial intelligence has a primary goal in both countries, it helps China to achieve its ambitions to be the leader of the world, and this intelligence, on the other hand, provides protection and security to the United States. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section focuses on the importance of artificial intelligence in achieving China’s ambitions, the second section explains the role of artificial intelligence in the US protection service, and the third section describes the technological and geopolitical conflict resulting from the competition in artificial intelligence between these two countries. Keywords: Artificial intelligence, United States, China, Conflict, leader.

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