What Do You Mean It's Not There? Doing Null History

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Edward Janak

What happens when a researcher arrives at an archives, only to find that the materials requested are not in the repository? This article argues that when applying Eliot Eisner's concept of the null curriculum (what is missing is just as important as what is present), the absence of materials is just as significant to a researcher as the contents of present materials. To accomplish this, it uses a case from a larger study of General Education Board (GEB) funding in the US West comparing the holdings of the Rockefeller Archive with those in the state of Texas. Ultimately, archivists and researchers should do null history to recognize that rather than setting limitations on the project, a lack of evidence instead can be used to expand the project by applying the principles of the null curriculum. This article is not intended to be an interrogation of the archives themselves, but another lens through which the researcher can view (and an archivist can prompt) both the holdings and lack of holdings. The article is not meant to argue the semantics around the absence of the phrase “null curriculum” from the fields of history or archives; instead, it is meant to open the door to conversations about silences and the power of the archive.

Author(s):  
Roberto Alvarez

I utilize my situated position as anthropologist, academician, and citizen to argue not only that we should “think” California, but also that we should “rethink” our state—both its condition and its social cartography. To be clear, I see all my research and endeavors—my research on the US/Mexico border; my time among the markets and entrepreneurs I have worked and lived with; my focus on those places in which I was raised: Lemon Grove, Logan Heights; the family network and my community ethnographic work—as personal. I am in this academic game and the telling of our story because it is personal. When Lemon Grove was segregated, it was about my family; when Logan Heights was split by the construction of Interstate 5 and threatened by police surveillance, it was about our community; when the border was sanctioned and militarized it again was about the communities of which I am a part. A rethinking California is rooted in the experience of living California, of knowing and feeling the condition and the struggles we are experiencing and the crises we have gone through. We need to rethink California, especially the current failure of the state. This too is ultimately personal, because it affects each and every one of us, especially those historically unrepresented folks who have endured over the decades.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
O. D. Safonova

Recognizing the existence of a crisis of civil identity, Russian state proclaims patriotic values an integral part of Russian state policy in documents of strategic importance. The need to educate citizenship and patriotism has ceased to be only a theoretical problem, and has found its embodiment in a large number of federal and regional programs. In comparison with the previous decades, the role and importance of civic identity and civic competence in modern Russia are becoming much more important. The civil competence of the student is formed by education-pedagogically organized purposeful process of development of the student as a person, a citizen, the development and adoption of values, moral attitudes and moral norms of societies. National security strategy of the Russian Federation (2015) relates to Russia's traditional spiritual and moral values: the priority of the spiritual over the material, protecting human life, rights and freedoms of the individual, family, creative work, service to the Fatherland, the norms of morality, humanity, mercy, justice, mutual aid, collectivism, historical unity of the peoples of Russia, the continuity of the history of our country. The formation of the civil identity of the young Russian personality forms with the help of Federal state educational standards of primary General, basic General and secondary General education, so the state policy in overcoming the crisis of civil identity devotes a large number of documents and programs to the field of education. The article attempts to trace how through normative and legal acts the state consistently tries to overcome the crisis of civil identity, identified by the scientific and expert community. Following the authors of state programs and the expert community studying the problems of identity crisis, it is noted in the article that the formation of civil identity is one of the most important conditions for the successful development of the country.


Author(s):  
Sara Riva ◽  
Erin Routon

Abstract This article explores the mechanisms in which, through the US family detention asylum process, neoliberal ideas of citizenship are reinforced and contested. Through ethnographic research, and using a Foucauldian lens, we take a closer look at the neoliberal processes involved within so-called family detention. Specifically, we focus on legal advocates who are helping detained women prepare for their legal interviews. This paper argues that humanitarian aid work becomes knowable through attention to microlevel details and forms of practice—on the ground and at the margins. This affords a recognition of not only areas of functional solidarity or symbiosis with the state, but also those less visible forms of contestation. We claim that while legal advocates play a role within the neoliberal regimes at work inside these centres, they also contest this system in various critical ways, ensuring both access to legal representation for all detainees and their eventual release.


Author(s):  
Francis N. Botchway

The Act of state doctrine essentially serves to truncate or end proceedings against a state in the court of another state for actions attributed to or owned by the first state. Originally, the actions against which the defense could be raised were wide and all encompassing. It included exercise of police powers, takings, maritime and commercial acts. However, starting with cases such as Bernstein, Dunhill and others, and goaded in part by legislation such as the second Hickenlooper Amendment in the US, a number of exceptions have been carved into the doctrine. It is such that some academics have called for the end of the doctrine. This paper argues that although the doctrine is now limited, compared to its original compass, it is resilient. That resilience, this paper contends, is predicated on its International law pedigree. It is further argued that the swings in the role of the state in economic matters accounts for the growth, downturn and upturn in the viability of the doctrine as a defense in international economic law.


2014 ◽  
Vol 01 (03) ◽  
pp. 1450023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Li ◽  
Qihe Tang ◽  
Lihe Wang ◽  
Xiaowen Zhou

We aim at quantitatively measuring the liquidation risk of a firm subject to both Chapters 7 and 11 of the US bankruptcy code. The firm value is modeled by a general time-homogeneous diffusion process in which the drift and volatility are level dependent and can be easily adjusted to reflect the state changes of the firm. An explicit formula for the probability of liquidation is established, based on which we gain a quantitative understanding of how the capital structures before and during bankruptcy affect the probability of liquidation.


Water Policy ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 837-850 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. McIntyre ◽  
David C. Mays

Colorado manages water using an administrative structure that is unique among the United States following the doctrine of prior appropriation: Water rights are adjudicated not by the State Engineer, but by Water Courts – separate from and operating in parallel to the criminal and civil courts – established specifically for this purpose. Fundamental to this system is the notion that water rights are property, with consequent protections under the US Constitution, but with the significant constraint that changes in water rights must not injure other water rights, either more senior or more junior. Population growth and climate change will certainly trigger changes in water administration, to be guided by the recent Colorado Water Plan. To provide the foundation necessary to appreciate these changes, this paper reviews the history of Colorado water administration and summarizes the complementary roles of the Water Courts and the State Engineer. Understanding water administration in Colorado depends on a firm grasp on how these two branches of state government formulate and implement water policy.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Fabbrini

Voting rights – Citizens and aliens – European multilevel architecture – US federal system – Comparative methodology – Different regulatory models for non-citizens suffrage at the state level in Europe – Impact of supranational law – Challenges and tensions – Analogous dynamics in the US constitutional experience – Recent European legal and jurisprudential developments in comparative perspective – What future prospects for citizenship and democracy in Europe?


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document