Filming Modernity in the Tropics: The Amazon, Walt Disney, and the Antecedents of Modernization Theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 193-207
Author(s):  
Barbara Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
Human History ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Tropics

Through an analysis of the documentary film The Amazon Awakens (1944) this essay posits the use of the tenets of modernization theory in the film’s representation of the Amazon as a way to invent it as a region ripe for development as long as the necessary technological and financial resources become available. In contrast to earlier “civilizing missions” that characterized the heyday of colonialism and neo-colonialism when imperial powers emphasized the need to inculcate “backward” peoples with the rudiments of modern culture and civilization, The Amazon Awakens portrays a society poised to take immediate advantage of the technology and capital the US is eager to provide. To be sure, the Amazon had to be “awakened,” and had to throw off old habits and attitudes, but the film portrays the region’s inhabitants as predisposed to do precisely that. Finally, Weinstein focuses on the elements that the movie decides to include (local industry) and exclude (ecology and indigenous rights), to argue these decisions are systematic and serve to advance and enhance a narrative of Amazonian (natural and human) history that is coherent with the film’s modernization discourse.

Like a Town Sacked and Burned by the Enemy

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-194
Author(s):  
Charles D. Ross
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Normal State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Partner ◽  
The Us ◽  
Ardent Supporter ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
The City

This chapter narrates how Nassau resumed its normal state as a forgotten and destitute outpost. It outlines the effects of the Civil War in the United States, the cessation of blockade running, and the financial windfall of 1862–1864. The chapter then looks at the powerful hurricane that hit the city, in which hundreds of homes and businesses were completely destroyed. It recounts the center of opposition to blockade-running efforts during the war — the US consulate, and the four men who occupied that office to stop the shipping of contraband: Sam Whiting, Seth Hawley, and Vice-consul William Thompson. It also discusses the significance of Charles Jackson, John Howell, and Epes Sargent in providing aid to the consul's office during the war. The chapter argues that former US consul Timothy Darling was the only prominent merchant to be an ardent supporter of the Union cause, adding he was a true New Englander living in the tropics and was in strong opposition to the slave-holding Confederacy. The chapter also notes the contributions of Lewis Heyliger in Confederate departments, the cotton brokers, and the shipments coming in from Europe. Ultimately, it highlights how Henry Adderley, his son Augustus, and their business partner and Henry's son-in-law George David Harris epitomized the success of the opportunism surrounding the Great Carnival.

The Tea Party Movement and the 2012 House Election

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (04) ◽  
pp. 799-805
Author(s):  
Andrew D. McNitt
Keyword(s):  
Tea Party ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Political Resources ◽  
The Us ◽  
House Election ◽  
Open Seat

ABSTRACTThis article examines Tea Party candidates for the US House of Representative in 2012. Tea Party and Tea Party–endorsed candidates are similar to other Republican candidates. Although they have served in the House for a shorter period, they have approximately the same financial resources, prior political experience, and reelection rate as other Republicans. Multivariate analysis finds that Tea Party membership and endorsement have no impact on electoral outcome when other political factors are controlled for (e.g., incumbency, running for an open seat, quality of opposing candidate, prior political experience, financial resources, and Obama’s vote). Consequently, the success of Tea Party candidates depends on acquiring the traditional political resources, having weak opponents, and running in favorably disposed constituencies rather than identification with this highly visible political movement.

scholarly journals Policing paedophilia: Assembling bodies, spaces and things

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Sex Offenders ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Citizen Involvement ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Mixed Economy ◽  
The Us

In recent years, digital vigilantism, often dubbed ‘paedophile hunting’, has grabbed media headlines in the US, UK and Europe. Though this novel style of policing carries no legal or moral authority, it is nonetheless ‘taking hold’ within a pluralised policing landscape where its effectiveness at apprehending child sex offenders is capturing public attention. While the emergence of digital vigilantism raises normative questions of where the boundaries of citizen involvement in policing affairs might be drawn, this paper is concerned with firstly, how this kind of citizen-led policing initiative comes into being; secondly, how it emerges as an identifiable policing form; and thirdly, how it acquires leverage and makes its presence felt within a mixed economy of (authorised) policing actors, sites and technologies. The paper sets out a detailed case study of a ‘paedophile hunter’ in action, read through a provocative documentary film, first broadcast on mainstream UK television in October 2014. This lays the groundwork for thinking through the cultural relations of digital vigilantism, and how this proliferating mode of policing practice is engendered and mobilised through affective connectivities, performative political imaginaries and culturally-mediated dialogical praxis. In seeking an entry point for theorising emergent policing forms and their connectedness to other policing bodies, spaces and things, the paper concludes with a thumbnail sketch of assemblage thinking.

scholarly journals De-centring Managua: post-earthquake reconstruction and revolution in Nicaragua

Urban History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-685
Author(s):  
DAVID JOHNSON LEE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Earthquake Reconstruction

ABSTRACT:The reconstruction of Managua following the 1972 earthquake laid bare the contradictions of modernization theory that justified the US alliance with Latin American dictators in the name of democracy in the Cold War. Based on an idealized model of urban development, US planners developed a plan to ‘decentralize’ both the city of Managua and the power of the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. In the process, they helped augment the power of the dictator and create a city its inhabitants found intolerable. The collective rejection of the city, the dictator and his alliance with the United States, helped propel Nicaragua toward its 1979 revolution and turned the country into a Cold War battleground.

Sensorineural hearing loss in sickle cell anaemia – a United Kingdom study

1993 ◽  
Vol 107 (9) ◽  
pp. 790-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. O. Ajulo ◽  
A. I. Osiname ◽  
H. M. Myatt
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Sickle Cell Disease ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing Loss ◽  
Sickle Cell ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Cell Disease ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Tropics

AbstractSensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) has been a well-documented complication of sickle cell disease in the literature from West Africa, West Indies, United States of America and the Middle East. We present a study of 52 patients with homozygous sickle cell disease and 36 control patients with haemoglobin genotype AA, matched for age and sex. Seven patients with sickle cell disease (13.5 per cent) were found to have sensorineural hearing loss i.e.>20 dB at two or more frequencies, while all the patients in the control group had normal hearing (p<0.05).Our study shows the incidence of SNHL in the UK to be similar to that reported in the US A and much lower than that found in malaria endemic areas of the tropics.We highlight the factors which we consider responsible for these differences and suggest that the crucial period in the development of SNHL in sickle cell disease may be intra-uterine or during the first few years of life. All sickle cell patients should be encouraged to have regular hearing assessment.

scholarly journals Deconstructing Walt Disney's The Lion King

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicky Wong
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Hong Kong Chinese ◽  
Summer Vacation ◽  
Aesthetic Appeal ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Us

DECONSTRUCTING THE WALT DISNEY ANIMATION THE LION KING: ITS IDEOLOGY AND THE PERSPECTIVE OF HONG KONG CHINESE Walt Disney's animations have always been popular, largely of course due to their aesthetic appeal, vivid characters, interesting plots, and for the parents, obvious moral standards that save their time teaching their children. The artifact this paper is going to study is one of Disney's most popular animation The Lion King released in 1994 both in the US and in Hong Kong. The film broke all records in the first weekend, grossing USD42 million. It was similarly popular when it was released in Hong Kong during the summer vacation in the same year. Simply put, the story is about how a regal lion is victimised by his uncle: experiences an exile and a life free from responsibility: free by whim or by chance, when he grows up, meets up with his friend...

Trading Places: Das doppelte Lottchen and The Parent Trap

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantine Verevis
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
The Us ◽  
Walt Disney Productions ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
Transnational Film ◽  
Live Action

In 1961, Walt Disney Productions released The Parent Trap. A huge popular and commercial success for the Disney studio, it was theatrically re-issued in 1968; extended through three television sequels (1986, 1989, 1989); and remade in 1998. Perhaps less well known is that Disney’s 1961 version of The Parent Trap was itself already a remake of German, Japanese and British versions – Das doppelte Lottchen (1950), Hibari no komoriuta (1951), and Twice Upon a Time (1953) – each in turn derived from Erich Kästner’s 1949 novel Das doppelte Lottchen. While the cultural production does not end here – with subsequent versions reported in India, Iran and Korea, and animated and live action remakes in Japan and Germany – this chapter inquires into the transnational connections between Kästner’s novel and the US and German versions (originals and remakes). This chapter extends its analysis beyond Kästner’s twin figures of Lisa (from Vienna) and Lotte (from Munich) to chart not only a cartography of transnational flows – a political economy of textual production and reception – but also indicate the way in which the films’ exchange of twins is symptomatic of that between original and transnational film remake.

Terrorist Vampires: Religious Heritage or Planetary Advocacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Federal District ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Biological Warfare ◽  
Mixed Species ◽  
Mixed Blood ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
The Us ◽  
True Blood

This chapter unpacks depictions of US foreign policy in Hollywood blockbusters, franchises, and series, whose content was repurposed and production was often offshored. Vampire hunters perform the racialized warfare of the failed War on Drugs and ongoing War on Terror. Vampires advocate for planetary consciousness after neoliberalism’s ascendancy. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), From Dusk till Dawn (1995), and Vampires (1998) organize fears of so-called Islamic fundamentalists and Mexican border hoppers. Deterritorialized biological warfare also manifests in films that return to the historical trauma of mixed blood via stories of mixed species in franchises like Blade (1998–2004) and Underworld (2003–2016) and series like True Blood (2008–2014), The Vampire Diaries (2009–present), and The Originals (2013–present). Others examine resilience through multiple conquests, as in Cronos (1992) set in México’s federal district and released on the quincentennial of Columbus’s conquest. Meanwhile, the Twilight franchise (2008–2012) christianizes the figure of the vampire and, by extension, the concept of the US secular democracy, but also evokes indigenous rights to land. Films ask us to find a space for empathy amidst the terror of economic and military violence.

Water use in the tropics and subtropics and human health

Scire Salutis ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Manoel Gonçalves Rodrigues ◽  
Josimar Ribeiro de Almeida ◽  
Jackeline Maria Cardoso de França Bahé
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
The Public ◽  
Good Population ◽  
Quality Of Living ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Public Politics

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the environmental degradation and its effects in the human health particularly related to the use of water of the tropics and subtropics areas on Earth. In this conception towards a healthy society a continuous investing in basic and environmental sanitation is very important and simultaneously less expensive than dealing with illnesses. In order to improve a better and friendly society linked to Sustainable Development with a good population life quality will need to point out a series of services to the community such as treated water supply, collection and disposal of sewers and solid residues. The public politics that efficiently provide investments of financial resources in sanitation, preventively collective health, must be a strategy to achieve the human being quality of living in the XXI century.

No ““Perfect Garden””: American Constructions of Hawaiian Landscapes and the Making of a Climatic Borderland

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Kessler
Keyword(s):  
The Us ◽  
The Tropics

Based on earlier published descriptions by missionaries and others, the US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842, under Charles Wilkes, expected to find Hawai‘‘i a fertile tropical garden. Instead, they found a significantly westernized climatic borderland between tropical and temperate zones. Wilkes’’s report is a case of landscape creation. It represented Hawai‘‘i in terms of comparison to American readers’’ experience and expectations. In presenting Hawaiian landscapes as distinct from the tropics, the expedition made the islands seem more inviting to American expansionism.

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