From monuments to megapixels: Death, memory, and symbolic immortality in the contemporary United States

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Bennett ◽  
Jenny Huberman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Symbolic Immortality ◽  
Contemporary United States

SHIFTING POWER

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 417-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Remster ◽  
Rory Kramer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
Rural Districts ◽  
Contemporary United States ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Legislative Districts

AbstractWhile prisoners cannot vote, they are counted as residents of the often rural legislative districts where they are incarcerated rather than their home districts. We examine the extent to which incarceration shifts the balance of a representative democracy by considering its impact on legislative apportionment. Drawing on data from the Census, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and Pennsylvania Redistricting Commission, we develop a counterfactual framework to examine whether removing and returning prisoners to their home districts affects equal representation. Because prisoners are disproportionately African American, we also employ this counterfactual to assess racial differences in the impact of prison gerrymandering. Findings indicate that incarceration shifts political power from urban districts to suburban and rural districts through legislative apportionment. Moreover, non-White communities suffer the most. We conclude by considering how our findings fit a growing literature on the role of mass incarceration in [re]producing racial inequalities in the contemporary United States.

Why Should We Care about Group Inequality?

1987 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn C. Loury
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Group Preference ◽  
Economic Disparities ◽  
Practical Matter ◽  
Contemporary United States ◽  
Group Inequality

This essay is about the ethical propriety and practical efficacy of a range of policy undertakings which, in the last twenty years, has come to be referred to as “affirmative action.” These policies have been contentious and problematic, and a variety of arguments have been advanced in their support. Here I try to close a gap, as I see it, in this “literature of justification” which has grown up around the practice of preferential treatment. My principal argument along these lines is offered in the next section. I then consider how some forms of argument in support of preferential treatment, distinctly different from that offered here, not only fail to justify the practice but, even worse, work to undermine the basis for cooperation among different ethnic groups in the American democracy. Finally, I observe that as a practical matter the use of group preference can, under circumstances detailed in the sequel, produce results far different from the egalitarian objectives which most often motivate their adoption.It may seem fatuous in the extreme to raise as a serious matter, in the contemporary United States, the question “Why should we care about group inequality?” Is not the historical and moral imperative of such concern self-evident? Must not those who value the pursuit of justice be intensely concerned about economic disparities among groups of persons? The most obvious answer to the title question would seem, then, to be: “We should care because such inequality is the external manifestation of the oppression of individuals on the basis of their group identity.”

Wounded Warriors of the Future Disability Hierarchy in Avatar and Source Code

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Schalk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Source Code ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Disabled Veterans ◽  
The Future ◽  
Wounded Warriors ◽  
Contemporary United States

The article analyzes the representation of disabled veterans in James Cameron’s Avatar and Duncan Jones’s Source Code. The argument is that these two films use the figure of the heroic, technologically enhanced, white disabled veteran man to alleviate cultural anxieties, fears, and guilt about veterans and disabled people in the contemporary United States. In doing so, however, Avatar and Source Code perpetuate a disability hierarchy that reinforces a variety of oppressive cultural norms. The article, therefore, demonstrates how the films reflect the differential valuation and treatment of different kinds of disabled people in American culture at large via the genre of science fiction and its technological imaginative possibilities.

Introduction

Free Time ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie L. Rose
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Free Time ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Liberal Egalitarianism ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Conception Of The Good ◽  
Contemporary United States

This book defends the idea that workers are entitled to a fair share of free time. Contemporary liberal egalitarian theories of justice have implicitly assumed that how much leisure time citizens have is not an appropriate concern of a liberal theory of justice. The liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice is to ensure that all citizens have fair access to specific goods, the particular components of one's particular conception of the good, by ensuring a fair distribution of resources, the all-purpose means that are generally required to pursue any conception of the good. The book asserts that citizens have legitimate claims to free time on the basis of the effective freedoms principle, a foundational tenet of liberal egalitarianism. This introduction discusses some relevant features of the distribution of free time in the contemporary United States and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

The Global White Snake as Digital Activist Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-124
Author(s):  
Liang Luo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Green Card ◽  
Permanent Resident ◽  
Resident Alien ◽  
Human World ◽  
Contemporary United States

There is a long oral tradition and written record for the legend of the White Snake. As a woman, her “original sin” is being a snake. She is a snake who has cultivated herself for hundreds, if not thousands, of years to attain the form of a beautiful woman. Living as a resident “alien” (yilei) in the “Human Realm” (renjian), the White Snake has always been treated with suspicion, fear, exclusion, and violent suppression/exorcism. The White Snake is an immigrant to the human world, whose serpentine identity made her a “resident alien,” the legal category given to immigrants in the United States before they receive their “Green Card” and become a “permanent resident.” The implication of being a snake woman in the human world took on new meanings when the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the existing xenophobia, fear, and suspicion toward minority populations in the contemporary United States and throughout the world. Inspired by the Chinese White Snake legend, the three Anglophone opera, film, and stage projects from Cerise Lim Jacobs, Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri, and Mary Zimmerman, energetically engage with issues relevant to minority activism in the United States and more broadly, through digital media and digital platforms.

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