scholarly journals History, the Nation-State, and Alternative Narratives: An Example from Colonial Douala

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Schler
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Community Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Diverse Population ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Elite Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Conceptualization

Abstract:This article examines processes of community-building in the immigrant quarter of New Bell, Douala, during the interwar years. Historians of Douala have overlooked the history of New Bell, focusing instead on the political and economic activity of Duala's Westernized elite during this period. This historiographic oversight reflects a preoccupation with elite politics identified as the seeds of nationalism in Cameroon. An examination of the community of immigrants provides us with an alternative conceptualization of a multiethnic collective. By tracing the construction and evolution of public space in interwar New Bell, we can uncover elements of group solidarity binding together this highly diverse population.

scholarly journals Fatma Aliye Hanım: Gender Debates in Turkey

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 693-716
Author(s):  
Zeynep Direk
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Republic Of Turkey ◽  
Late Ottoman

Abstract This essay explores the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century gender debates in the late Ottoman Empire, and the early Republic of Turkey with a focus on Fatma Aliye’s presence in the public space, as the first Ottoman woman philosopher, novelist, and public intellectual. I choose to concentrate on her because of the important stakes of the gender debates of that period, and the ways in which they are echoed in the present can be effectively discussed by reflecting on the ways in which Fatma Aliye is read, presented, and received. In the first part of this paper, I talk about Fatma Aliye’s life and experience of her gender as a woman, and point to her key interests as a writer and philosopher. In the second part, I situate her in the political history of feminism during the Rearrangement Period (Tanzimat), the Second Constitutional Era (II. Meşrutiyet), and the institution of the modern Republic of Turkey. Lastly, in the third part, I discuss the diverse ways in which she is interpreted in contemporary Turkey. I explore the political impact of the reception of Fatma Aliye as an intellectual figure on the current gender debates in Turkey.

Norman Davies. Heart of Europe. A Short History of Poland. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1984. Pp. xxi, 511.

2004 ◽  
pp. 336-337
Author(s):  
L. R. Lewitter
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
European Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Post War

This chapter examines Norman Davies's Heart of Europe (1984). The delicate subject of Polish–Jewish relations in history, not being strictly relevant to the main theme of Heart of Europe, receives little attention. Davies writes with sympathy about the extermination of most of the Jewish community by the Germans during the last war and with restraint about the participation of Jews in the activities of the Communist Party before the war and in those of the political police in the post-war period. Those who regard the Poles as traditional anti-semites will do well to note the autonomy and the scope for economic activity and religious life enjoyed by the Jewish community in the Republic of Poland–Lithuania. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, a conjunction of pressure and reform opened the flood gates of a reservoir of Jewish talent stored up in those areas, making a unique contribution to Polish, and very soon also to western European culture. Nevertheless, Heart of Europe can be considered as an initiation into the arcane elements of Polish history and politics.

The cult of Awo: the political life of a dead leader

2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wale Adebanwi
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
African Society ◽  
Elite Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the ‘posthumous career’ of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late leader of the Yoruba of Nigeria. It focuses on why he has been unusually effective as a symbol in the politics of Yorubaland and Nigeria. Regarding Awolowo as a recent ancestor, the essay elaborates why death, burial and statue are useful in the analysis of the social history of, and elite politics in, Africa. The Awolowo case is used to contest secularist and modernist assumptions about ‘modernity’ and ‘rationality’ in a contemporary African society.

scholarly journals LANGUAGES OF FREEDOM IN DECOLONISING AFRICAThe Gladstone Prize Winner

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 253-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

ABSTRACTThe ‘triumph of liberalism’ in the mid-twentieth-century west is well known and much studied. But what has it meant for the way the decolonisation of Africa has been viewed, both at the time and since? In this paper, I suggest that it has quietly but effectively shaped our understanding of African political thinking in the 1950s to 1960s. Although the nationalist framing that once led historians to neglect those aspects of the political thinking of the period which did not move in the direction of a territorial nation-state has now been challenged, we still struggle with those aspects of political thinking that were, for instance, suspicious of a focus on the individual and profoundly opposed to egalitarian visions of a post-colonial future. I argue that to understand better the history of decolonisation in the African continent, both before and after independence, while also enabling comparative work with other times and places, we need to think more carefully and sensitively about how freedom and equality were understood and argued over in local contexts.

The Politics of Black Self-Determination and Neighborhood Preservation in Lincoln Park

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-185
Author(s):  
Courtney Elizabeth Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Historically Black ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Advocacy Group ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Lincoln Park ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Chapter 9 discusses the politics of public space and neighborhood self-determination in the historically Black, working class neighborhood of Lincoln Park. The work describes a thirty-year history of neighborhood-level community building and planning, including the present struggles of the Coalition to Save Lincoln Park, an advocacy group that emerged in 2013 after the city announced its plans to extend Central Avenue through the historic park space and neighborhood.

A Short History of the Cross-Class Coalition

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
Yael Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Short History ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter begins with narrating the creation of a cross-class coalition to offer all citizens a set of valuable goods and opportunities. It notes that nationalism started as a project of the elites, and in order to materialize it, they had to gather the support of the people. The chapter emphasizes that for social cooperation to prevail, participants need not attain identical goods and benefits; it is sufficient that they secure for themselves significant benefits they could not have otherwise acquired. It argues that membership in the nation became the relevant criteria for inclusion (and exclusion). Wealth, education, skills, and social status were still relevant for the distribution of power but could not be used as benchmarks for participation in the political game. The chapter also examines how the nation-state gave members of all classes a reason to participate in a collective effort to form a national political unit that would benefit (albeit in different ways and to a different extent) all its members. Ultimately, the chapter investigates why the emergence of the modern nation-state paved the way for inclusive social policies.

scholarly journals DEFINITIONS AND THEORIES OF PUBLIC SPACE

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Aleksander Łupienko
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Book Order ◽  
History Of

The part of the book ‘Order in the Streets. The Political History of Warsaw’s Public Space in the First Half of the 19th Century’Detailed information is here https://storage.googleapis.com/flyers.peterlang.com/March_2020/978-3-631-80070-6_normal_English.pdf

Theater and the Immigrant Public

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wing Chung Ng
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Male Population ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Chinese Migrants ◽  
Cantonese Opera ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The One

This chapter delineates the history of Chinatown theater as a public space for social interaction and community building in migrant societies. With Chinese migrants living under highly circumscribed conditions without much access to resources and amenities in mainstream society, the theater acquired extra significance within the enclave. Especially noteworthy is the active involvement of traditional organizations in promoting Cantonese opera and cultivating patronage with the touring companies and itinerant actors. On the one hand, the close-knit personal and social networks, and the group affiliations and loyalties associated with these organizations, were critical ingredients for the success of the theater business. On the other hand, the theater personnel and the spectacle of the stage became available to aid the organizations and the leaders in furthering their agendas by gaining visibility and public support. On the overseas stage, the enthusiastic reception afforded to actresses unleashed interesting dynamics of gender in an overwhelmingly male population. Aside from an entertainment venue enjoyed by many, the immigrant theater was acted upon by those concerned as an important site for the negotiation and inscription of power relations, normative behaviors, and community politics in exclusion-era Chinatown.

Ahad Ha’am

2018 ◽  
pp. 90-123
Author(s):  
Dmitry Shumsky
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
History Of

This chapter analyzes the political outlook of Asher Ginsberg (Ahad Ha'am, 1856–1927), the founder of spiritual–cultural Zionism. The approach to Ahad Ha'am in this historiography, however, is another instructive example of the distortion that the nation-state paradigm creates in the study of the history of Zionist national thought, and any reevaluation of the ideological history of Zionism must contend with this distortion as well. Here, it will also become clear that the nation-state methodology creates a somewhat artificial dichotomy in its representation of the Jewish national vision held by Zionism's founders. This time, the dichotomy to be overcome is between the Herzlian “Jews' state” and the Ahad Ha'amian so-called spiritual center.

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