scholarly journals Indigenous People and the New England Town Meeting: Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1730-1775

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Mandell
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Town Meeting

The Commission Plan of City Government

1911 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-56
Author(s):  
Oswald Ryan
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
City Government ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
State Governments ◽  
The People ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
New Period ◽  
Widespread Belief

To appreciate the real significance in municipal affairs of the lately inaugurated movement toward city government by commission some knowledge of the general trend of American municipal development is necessary; for it is as a phase of a general tendency and not as an isolated experiment that the movement is to be properly regarded. Like most of our institutions, our city government, both in form and substance, was transplanted from England to the colonies, where it underwent the usual differentiation under the influence of changed conditions. This differentiation, however, did not proceed to any marked degree during the colonial period, and at the beginning of the national era the general form of municipal government, with the exception of the New England town-meeting system, was that of the English borough. Then began a new period, during which the influence of the federal and state governments dominated the organic development of the municipalities. That the “federal analogy” should have thus become the controlling factor in this development was due partly to a widespread belief in the efficacy of the governmental principles which it involved, and partly to a misconception of the functions of the municipality. A cardinal feature of the federal plan was Montesquieu's principle of the separation of powers, having for its object to safeguard the interests of the people against the arbitrary and ill-advised acts of public officers.

From Neighborhood to Nation: The Democratic Foundations of Civil Society. By Kenneth Thomson. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. 195p. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-836
Author(s):  
Richard M. Flanagan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New England ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Federal Funds ◽  
Service Programs ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
The Town

It was New York Governor Al Smith's famous dictum that the ills of democracy could be solved with more democracy. Many agree with him some 75 years later. The shelves of political science overflow with books lamenting the decline of intermediary institutions that once plugged the hearts and minds of citizens into government and civic life. Democracy scaled down to the town and neighborhood allows people to address problems that are experienced in the routine of everyday life. Stripped of abstraction, politics loses its mystery and the sense of alienation that accompanies it. But Americans no longer gather at the political club, the town meeting, the church, and the union hall. Citizens are plugged into television, the family, or perhaps the job, interested in private concerns. In response, pundits, professors, and politicians call for a revival of local political and civic life. President George W. Bush's “Faith-Based Initiative,” which would use federal funds to support church social service programs, can be viewed as a response to the national mood of a people adrift. While many have forwarded tiresome critiques of what ails us, Kenneth Thomson does the nitty-gritty empirical work that should mark social science's unique contribution to this debate.

Stones of Power

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Hunter
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
New England ◽  
Indigenous People

British writer and artist Edward Augustus Kendall visits Dighton Rock and other petroglyphs in a tour of New England in 1807-09. He writes an effective defense of Dighton Rock as the work of Indigenous people. His analysis is steeped in Masonic esotericism that Freemasonry arrived in North America long before colonizing Europeans did.

Large Town Officeholding in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut: The Growth of Oligarchy

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce C. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local History ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Local Study ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Large Town ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial New England

The Colonial New England town has always intrigued American historians but, paradoxically, few historians until recently have placed the colonial town under a microscope and studied it in detail. Most, instead, like George Bancroft and Herbert Baxter Adams, simply heaped accolades upon it. Even the Progressive historians, writing in an age of scientific history and seeking to debunk the myth of town meeting democracy, still did not apply a close scrutiny to the actual sources but instead also talked in generalities. The only real exceptions to this pattern and the only persons to delve deeply into local sources were Charles Andrews in his River Towns of Connecticut and G. E. Howard in his Introduction to the Local Constitutional History of the United States, both published in 1889. The next serious professional local study did not appear until 1961. In the intervening seventy-two years hundreds of local histories were written, but by antiquarians who frequently wrote with intelligence and felicity but seldom asked the significant questions that a professional historian would. Indeed, to be involved in local history implied, to people living in this time period, that a person was an antiquarian and not a true historian. However, since 1961 a number of historians have attempted to put the New England town under a microscope and ascertain some specifics to replace the generalities.

scholarly journals Editorial

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Aileen Moreton-Robinson ◽  
Maggie Walter
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Fishing Rights

The articles in this edition of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies engage collectively with how different epistemologies and cultural values inform power relations in different locations, situations and contemporary contexts. As a group, these articles demonstrate, over varying facets, how meaning, communicative intent and interpretive effect are constitutive of power relations between Indigenous people and non Indigenous people. Jackie Grey discusses the labour of belonging as played out in a dispute over Indigenous fishing rights in a small New England town of Aquinnah, located on Noepe Island the traditional lands of the Wampanoag in the United States of America. She reveals the ways in which the jurisdiction of non Indigenous belonging operates discursively and materially to preclude Indigenous rights and self determination. Grey's analysis highlights the incommensurability of Indigenous and non Indigenous belonging that are played out in power relations born of colonisation.

Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (04) ◽  
pp. 835-836
Author(s):  
G. Thomas Taylor
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Town Meeting

Early Founders and the Founder Effect

2019 ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
James N. Stanford
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Founder Effect ◽  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Place Names ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
Early Settlement ◽  
Early English

This chapter discusses key social, geographic, and chronological patterns of early English development in New England, including the early European settlement patterns and how they have led to long-term sociolinguistic patterns in the region (the Founder Effect). These early settlement patterns affected which regions within New England came to have different dialect features, creating regional contrasts that endured for generations after the original settlers. The chapter also discusses the role of Indigenous people in the region that came to be known as New England, including their effect on New England place names and the continuing modern role of Indigenous people in the region.

The New England town meeting: democracy in action

1999 ◽  
Vol 37 (02) ◽  
pp. 37-1221-37-1221
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Town Meeting
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