Diminished citizenship in the era of mass incarceration

2020 ◽  
pp. 146247452095214
Author(s):  
Susan Starr Sered
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Full Complement ◽  
The Individual

This paper lays out a model of diminished citizenship as a tool for understanding the experiences of the large population of people who, at least in part by virtue of their relations with criminal justice apparatuses, do not benefit from the full complement of responsibilities and rights associated with citizenship in a modern democracy. The frame of diminished citizenship places mass incarceration within a larger historical and social context, moving ideas about “criminals” away from the individual focus of mainstream criminology and providing a useful framework for considering how a variety of marginalized groups navigate the American landscape. At the same time, the frame of mass incarceration offers insights into a crucial mechanism for constructing, diminishing and enforcing citizenship in the United States. Our argument draws on our decade-long ethnographic research with a cohort of women who had been released from prison in Massachusetts in 2007–2008.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin E. Zimring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
American Life ◽  
Peak Rate ◽  
Or Practice

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion? Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States? This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?

Ethnohistory's Ethnohistory

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Michael E. Harkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
European Contact ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Foundational Work

This article examines the first decades of the field of ethnohistory as it developed in the United States. It participated in the general rapprochement between history and anthropology of mid-twentieth-century social science. However, unlike parallel developments in Europe and in other research areas, ethnohistory specifically arose out of the study of American Indian communities in the era of the Indian Claims Commission. Thus ethnohistory developed from a pragmatic rather than a theoretical orientation, with practitioners testifying both in favor of and against claims. Methodology was flexible, with both documentary sources and ethnographic methods employed to the degree that each was feasible. One way that ethnohistory was innovative was the degree to which women played prominent roles in its development. By the end of the first decade, the field was becoming broader and more willing to engage both theoretical and ethical issues raised by the foundational work. In particular, the geographic scope began to reach well beyond North America, especially to Latin America, where archival resources and the opportunities for ethnographic research were plentiful, but also to areas such as Melanesia, where recent European contact allowed researchers to observe the early postcontact period directly and to address the associated theoretical questions with greater authority. Ethnohistory is thus an important example of a field of study that grew organically without an overarching figure or conscious plan but that nevertheless came to engage central issues in cultural and historical analysis.

Henry James, The Outcry, and the Possibilities of Connoisseurship

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Deli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Henry James ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
Cultural Hero

Abstract This article reveals Henry James’s commitment to professional connoisseurship as a means of asserting control over a mass reading public. Focusing on The Outcry (1911), James’s last published novel, it demonstrates the author’s deployment of connoisseurial strategies to produce a text that, perhaps surprisingly, turns away from the performance of authorial nuance. A related strand of analysis situates The Outcry within the cultural and social context of the Edwardian art drain, the period of time when a significant number of British-owned art objects were sold to museums and private collectors, most often in the United States. I argue that in this text, James seizes upon the figure of the professional connoisseur as a cultural hero and proxy for the novelist author. At the same time, he makes a point of celebrating and promoting the autocratic power exercised by this figure. Although The Outcry is often disregarded as a simple, even superficial work, these moves articulate a complex manifestation of class conflict, aesthetic training, and cultural power. They simultaneously reflect James’s late-in-life conviction that connoisseurship might itself serve as a literary strategy for seeing and shaping meaning.

Promoting divergent leadership philosophies to improve student success outcomes for black and brown students in higher education

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Petty ◽  
Dakota King-White ◽  
Tachelle Banks
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Student Success ◽  
Baccalaureate Degree ◽  
The United States ◽  
Retention Rates ◽  
Completion Rates ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Support Students

Abstract Throughout the United States there are millions of Black and Brown students starting the process of attending college. However, research indicates that students from traditionally marginalized groups are less likely than their counterparts to complete the process and graduate college (Shapiro et al., 2017). While retention rates for students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds continue to decline, universities are beginning to pay attention to the needs of this population in search of ways of better supporting them. The examination of these factors may also inform programmatic adjustments, leadership philosophies, and future practices to help retain students and lead to eventual completion of a baccalaureate degree. In this article, the authors review the literature to explore factors that can affect Black and Brown students’ completion rates in higher education. By reviewing the literature and the factors impacting Black and Brown students, the authors share with readers initiatives at one university that are being used to support students from a strengths-based approach.

scholarly journals Retirement Without God: Activism and Community Among Secular People Over 60

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 441-441
Author(s):  
Joseph Blankholm
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Vast Literature

Abstract There are more than 1,400 nonbeliever communities in the United States and well over a dozen organizations that advocate for secular people on the national level. Together, these local and national groups comprise a social movement that includes atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other kinds of nonbelievers. Despite the fact that retired people over 60 dedicate most of the money and energy needed to run these groups, the increasingly vast literature on secular people and secularism has paid them almost no attention. Relying on more than one hundred interviews (including dozens with people over 60), several years of ethnographic research, and a survey of organized nonbelievers, this paper demonstrates the crucial role that people over 60 play in the American secular movement today. It also considers the reasons older adults are so important to these groups, the challenges they face in trying to recruit younger members and combat stereotypes about aging leadership, and generational differences that structure how various types of nonbeliever groups look and feel. This paper reframes scholarly understandings of very secular Americans by focusing on people over 60 and charts a new path in secular studies.

Medicaid Not Required to Fund Medically Necessary Abortions

1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
George J. Annas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Medical Procedures ◽  
Poor Women ◽  
Law Enforcement Agency ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Joint Resolution

In an extraordinary and highly controversial 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court decided on June 30, 1980, that the United States Constitution does not require either the federal government or the individual states to fund medically necessary abortions for poor women who qualify for Medicaid.At issue in this case is the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment. The applicable 1980 version provides:|N]one of the funds provided by this joint resolution shall be used to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term; or except for such medical procedures necessary for the victims of rape or incest when such rape or incest has been reported promptly to a law enforcement agency or public health service, (emphasis supplied)

scholarly journals US Rural Surgeons Leading During COVID-19: Where Are They Now?

2020 ◽  
pp. 000313482096005
Author(s):  
Michael Sarap ◽  
Julie Conyers ◽  
Crystal Cunningham ◽  
Adam Deutchman ◽  
Glenn Levine ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Individual

Rural surgeons from disparate areas of the United States report on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in their communities as the virus has spread across the country. The pandemic has brought significant changes to the professional, economic, and social lives of the individual surgeons and their communities.

The great Chinese surprise: the rupture with the United States is real and is happening

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-437
Author(s):  
Xiangfeng Yang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Pendulum Swing ◽  
The Us ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Trade War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Ample evidence exists that China was caught off guard by the Trump administration's onslaught of punishing acts—the trade war being a prime, but far from the only, example. This article, in addition to contextualizing their earlier optimism about the relations with the United States under President Trump, examines why Chinese leaders and analysts were surprised by the turn of events. It argues that three main factors contributed to the lapse of judgment. First, Chinese officials and analysts grossly misunderstood Donald Trump the individual. By overemphasizing his pragmatism while downplaying his unpredictability, they ended up underprepared for the policies he unleashed. Second, some ingrained Chinese beliefs, manifested in the analogies of the pendulum swing and the ‘bickering couple’, as well as the narrative of the ‘ballast’, lulled officials and scholars into undue optimism about the stability of the broader relationship. Third, analytical and methodological problems as well as political considerations prevented them from fully grasping the strategic shift against China in the US.

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