scholarly journals The Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Volunteer Movement and Its Significance in Latest History, Politics, and Culture of Ukraine

Author(s):  
Mykola Kravchenko
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Kuisel

There are over 1,000 McDonald's on French soil. Two Disney theme parks have opened near Paris in the last two decades. And American-inspired vocabulary such as “le weekend” has been absorbed into the French language. But as former French president Jacques Chirac put it: “The U.S. finds France unbearably pretentious. And we find the U.S. unbearably hegemonic.” Are the French fascinated or threatened by America? They Americanize yet are notorious for expressions of anti-Americanism. From McDonald's and Coca-Cola to free markets and foreign policy, this book looks closely at the conflicts and contradictions of France's relationship to American politics and culture. The book shows how the French have used America as both yardstick and foil to measure their own distinct national identity. France has charted its own path: it has welcomed America's products but rejected American policies; assailed Americ's “jungle capitalism” while liberalizing its own economy; attacked “Reaganomics” while defending French social security; and protected French cinema, television, food, and language even while ingesting American pop culture. The book examines France's role as an independent ally of the United States, but he also considers the country's failures in influencing the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. Whether investigating France's successful information technology sector or its spurning of American expertise during the AIDS epidemic, the book asks if this insistence on a French way represents a growing distance between Europe and the United States or a reaction to American globalization. Exploring cultural trends, values, public opinion, and political reality, this book delves into the complex relationship between two modern nations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 59-75
Author(s):  
Hilde Løvdal Stephens

Today, evangelical Christians in the U.S. are known for their passion for the so-called traditional family and engagement in political and cultural battles over children and child rearing. That has not always been the case. This article examines how parenting became a cultural and political battleground for evangelicals in the last decades of the 20th century. Conservative Protestants have engaged with politics and culture in the past. They supported the Prohibition movement; they opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution; they worried about the decadent culture of the 1920s. In the late 1900s, however, child rearing and parenting became a catch-all framework for all their concerns. Parenting took on new, profound meaning. Preachers like Billy Graham would reject his former notions that he was called to preach, saying he was first and foremost called to father. Evangelical Christian family experts like James Dobson and Larry Christenson linked parenting to social order. Family experts guided evangelicals in their political and cultural activism, telling them that the personal is political and that political issues can be solved one family at a time.


Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Blake

Why do people participate in controversial symbolic events that drive wedges between groups and occasionally spark violence? This book examines this question through an in-depth case study of Northern Ireland. Protestant organizations perform over 2,500 parades across Northern Ireland each year. Protestants tend to see the parades as festive occasions that celebrate Protestant history and culture. Catholics, however, tend to see them as hateful, intimidating, and triumphalist. As a result, parades have been a major source of conflict in the years since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. This book examines why, given the often negative consequences, people choose to participate in these parades. Drawing on theories from the study of contentious politics and the study of ritual, the book argues that paraders are more interested in the benefits intrinsic to participation in a communal ritual than the external consequences of their action. The book presents analysis of original quantitative and qualitative data to support this argument and to test it against prominent alternative explanations. Interview, survey, and ethnographic data are also used to explore issues central to parade participation, including identity expression, commemoration, tradition, the pleasures of participation, and communicating a message to outside audiences. The book additionally examines a paradox at the center of parading: while most observers see parades as political events, the participants do not. Altogether, the book offers a new perspective on politics and culture in the aftermath of ethnic violence.


Author(s):  
Stephanie L. Derrick

Lewis was widely admired by his contemporaries, but the recollections, letters, and diaries of those who knew him also make clear that many British intellectuals found him less than satisfying as a writer and scholar or difficult and abrasive as an individual. The plethora of negative critiques from colleagues and students should be seen in light of his persona and his tendency to look back to the authorities and sensibilities of a past age. His stance as a reactionary outsider and his speaking from within a type of British controversialism cost him a more serious hearing on intellectual matters. Then again, the 1930s–1950s were years in which universities and their faculties were being pressed into a more meritocratic and pluralistic future. Lewis’s reception among his intellectual contemporaries was complex, indivisible from his persona and the politics and culture of his insular Oxbridge milieu.


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