scholarly journals Social Activism Among Some Early Twentieth-Century Baha’is

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Will C. Van den Hoonaard

This article discusses the socialist involvement of three of Canada’s earliest Bahá’ís, namely Paul Kingston Dealy, Honoré Jaxon, and Rose Henderson. Given that the Bahá’í Faith had an authentic interest in economic and social justice from its earliest days, a number of these early Bahá’ís were involved in socialism. This paper seeks to explain such an engagement despite the Bahá’í proscription of involvement in partisan politics. Because of the paucity of Bahá’í core writings until the early 1920s, a number of early Bahá’ís fit what they perceived to be Bahá’í teachings to their personal views, which led a number of them to engage in political activism. These views stand in sharp contrast to the Bahá’í teachings forbidding such involvement. Moreover, the porous membership boundaries in the early days of the Bahá’í community did not allow members to be consistent about criteria of Bahá’í membership. However, by the 1920s, membership in the Bahá’í community had become formalized and the prohibition against engaging in political affairs became a sine qua non for such membership. As a result, these early Bahá’ís either formally relinquished their membership or withdrew from active participation. At the current time, the Bahá’í Community of Canada numbers approximately 33,000 adherents. It is a religion that was founded in 1844.

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saty Satya-Murti ◽  
Jennifer Gutierrez

The Los Angeles Plaza Community Center (PCC), an early twentieth-century Los Angeles community center and clinic, published El Mexicano, a quarterly newsletter, from 1913 to 1925. The newsletter’s reports reveal how the PCC combined walk-in medical visits with broader efforts to address the overall wellness of its attendees. Available records, some with occasional clinical details, reveal the general spectrum of illnesses treated over a twelve-year span. Placed in today’s context, the medical care given at this center was simple and minimal. The social support it provided, however, was multifaceted. The center’s caring extended beyond providing medical attention to helping with education, nutrition, employment, transportation, and moral support. Thus, the social determinants of health (SDH), a prominent concern of present-day public health, was a concept already realized and practiced by these early twentieth-century Los Angeles Plaza community leaders. Such practices, although not yet nominally identified as SDH, had their beginnings in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social activism movement aiming to mitigate the social ills and inequities of emerging industrial nations. The PCC was one of the pioneers in this effort. Its concerns and successes in this area were sophisticated enough to be comparable to our current intentions and aspirations.


2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.


Author(s):  
Sidney M. Milkis

This chapter examines the wayward path of Progressivism from Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign to the Obama presidency. Committed to “pure democracy,” many early-twentieth-century reformers hoped to sweep away intermediary organizations like political parties. In their disdain for partisan politics and their enthusiasm for good government, they sought to fashion the Progressive Party as a party to end parties. However, the Progressives failed in that ambition, and their shortfall has had profound effects on contemporary government and politics. By transforming rather than transcending parties, they fostered a kindred, though bastardized, alternative: executive-centered partisanship. The transformation of parties set in motion by the Progressives has subjected both Progressivism and conservatism to an executive-centered democracy that subordinates “collective responsibility” to the needs of presidential candidates and incumbents.


Author(s):  
Edward Caudill

This chapter traces the origins of Young-Earth creationism by focusing on the Scopes trial of 1925, with particular emphasis on how it became a template for subsequent clashes over the irreconcilable issue of evolution versus religion. That template includes public schools as the battleground of choice as well as Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. The Scopes trial was not just a reaction against Charles Darwin and evolution, but against science in general. Despite creationism being suspect science, it is a model of political activism that took form at the Scopes trial. This chapter considers the rapid growth of antievolutionism in the early twentieth century and how antievolutionists worked their way into the cultural mainstream with savvy media campaigns. It also examines how Bryan and Darrow defined the subsequent place of antievolutionism for fundamentalists.


Kavkazologiya ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 181-193
Author(s):  
T.Sh. BITTIROVA ◽  

This article aims to determine the place of the topic of social justice in the work of the classic of Karachai-Balkarian literature Kyazim Mechiev and the forms of its artistic embodiment. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time the poet's social lyrics are viewed in a broad historical context, in relation to the chronotope. The results obtained showed the scale of the poet's thinking, his sensitivity to historical and political transformations in the life of highland society. The work establishes how the events of the early twentieth century are refracted through the author's worldview and what place the theme of social protest occupies in the poetic heritage of the classic of Karachai-Balkarian literature K.B. Mechiev. Analyzed the poems of K. Mechiev, dedicated to the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary events, the civil war, their accordance to historical realities. The article reveals the depth and scale of reflection of the challenges of the time in the poet's work, his pain, despair and hope.


Author(s):  
Manish Sharma

Age long custom of Child Marriage could not be challenged in nineteenth century because neither reformer did have shastric evidences nor organized female voice opposed it, except sporadic cases.  The main argument of this paper is that the first half of Twentieth century witnessed active participation of organized women of India, which raised their questions themselves and determined the enactment of the Child Marriage Restraint Act in 1929.  Simultaneously, this paper also aims to contradict an idea that towards the end of Nineteenth century women’s question was disappeared from agenda of public debates. I have used Government of India official papers, journals, contemporary books both in Hindi and English.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Robin Rodd

Amidst a global turn towards authoritarianism and populism, there are few contemporary examples of state-led democratization. This article discusses how Uruguay’s Frente Amplio (FA) party has drawn on a unique national democratic cultural heritage to encourage a coupling of participatory and representative institutions in “a politics of closeness.” The FA has reinvigorated Batllismo, a discourse associated with social justice, civic republicanism, and the rise of Uruguayan social democracy in the early twentieth century. At the same time, the FA’s emphasis on egalitarian participation is inspired by the thought of Uruguay’s independence hero José Artigas. I argue that the cross-weave of party and movement, and of democratic citizenship and national heritage, encourages the emergence of new figures of the citizen and new permutations for connecting citizens with representative institutions. The FA’s “politics of closeness” is an example of how state-driven democratization remains possible in an age described by some as “post-democratic.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 47-66
Author(s):  
Dariusz Słapek

Jerzy Starnawski asserted the existence of the so-called “third generation of modern histori- ans of literature or, more broadly, “modern Polish representatives of the humanities with substan- tial merit in various fields.” He added that he referred to the generation born in the last decades of the nineteenth century, who then attended higher schools in the early twentieth century and be- came professionally active in the interwar years. Starnawski’s argument did not rely on meticulous prosopographic analyses and, apart from that, it was almost exclusively concerned with the scholarly achievement of the individuals he mentioned. This paper aims to verify Starnawski’s opinion based on a case study, i.e. the biography of Stanisław Dedio, a little known figure in the annals of the Polish humanities. The author argues that if Dedio did belong to the aforementioned “third generation of the modern representatives of the humanities”, then an immanent trait of the generation – besides scientific achievement – was deeply patriotic social and political activism, which peaked in the diffi- cult period of building the Second Republic of Poland.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-68
Author(s):  
Jennifer Horne

This essay considers the historical and conceptual framing of the American better films initiatives of the early twentieth century. Starting with the observation that the film betterment campaigns coincided with the moment women en masse began to be admitted to decision-making processes of government and civic enterprises, the article connects the advances achieved in both spheres with the downplaying of better films achievements by historians of cinema. In doing so, it calls for a more complex explanation of this so-called movement in order to understand women's active participation in their own social subordination. It proposes that women's well-documented exclusion from politics, and the systematic exemption of their collective and individual activity in matters of social organization and politics, should be taken into greater consideration by theorists of cinema.


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