scholarly journals Ubuntu feminism: Tentative reflections

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Drucilla Cornell ◽  
Karin Van Marle
Keyword(s):  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
Western Idea ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Social Belonging ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Intervention

The starting-point for the article is to provide a brief background on the Ubuntu Project that Prof. Drucilla Cornell convened in 2003; most notably the interviews conducted in Khayamandi, the support of a sewing collective, and the continued search to launch an Ubuntu Women�s Centre. The article will reflect on some of the philosophical underpinnings of ubuntu, whereafter debates in Western feminism will be revisited. Ubuntu feminism is suggested as a possible response to these types of feminisms. The authors support an understanding of ubuntu as critique and ubuntu feminism accordingly as a critical intervention that recalls a politics of refusal. The article ends by raising the importance of thinking about spatiality through ubuntu, and vice versa. It may seem strange to title an article Ubuntu feminism when feminism itself has often been identified as a European or Western idea. But, this article will argue that ubuntu offers conceptions of transindividuality and ways of social belonging that could respond in a meaningful way to some of European feminism�s own dilemmas and contradictions. Famously, one of the most intense debates in feminism was between those who defended an ethic of care in a relational view of the self, on one side, and those feminists who held on to more traditional conceptions of justice, placing an emphasis on individuality and autonomy, on the other side. The authors will suggest that ubuntu could address this tension in feminism. Thus, in this article the focus will not simply be on ubuntu, in order to recognise that there are other intellectual heritages worthy of consideration, other than those in Europe and the United States. It will also take a next step in arguing that ubuntu may be a better standpoint entirely from which to continue thinking about what it means to be a human being, as well as how to conceive of the integral interconnection human beings all have with one another. This connection through ubuntu is always sought ethically, and for the authors it underscores what we have both endorsed as ethical feminism. In this essay it is considered how ubuntu feminism could refuse the demands of patriarchy, as well as the confines of liberal feminism. The authors are interested in thinking about ubuntu in general as critique, as a critical response to the pervasiveness of a liberal legal order. Their aim is also to explore tentatively ubuntu and spatiality � how could one understand ubuntu in spatial terms, and more pertinently, how could ubuntu and ubuntu feminism relate to spatial justice? Before turning to the theoretical discussion, some of the on-the-ground history of the Ubuntu Project will be reviewed, including the Project�s attempt to build an Ubuntu Women�s Centre in Khayamandi in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Rights, Dignity, and Public Accommodations

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-619
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Moral Issue ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
National Debate ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Public Rights ◽  
History Of

In this essay I consider why debates over applying anti-discrimination norms to public accommodations have long been, and remain today, such a resilient presence in the history of the United States. I use as my starting point the most famous iteration of this phenomenon, the national debate sparked by the 1960 sit-in movement and culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations across the nation. The battle over racial discrimination and public accommodations in the early 1960s illuminates the moral issue at the heart of the issue, the lines of argument that characterize the debate over how to define legal rights in this area, and the ways in which different legal institutions have resolved, or failed to resolve, the issue. I then move backward time, highlighting the continuities between this episode and the struggle over race and public accommodations during Reconstruction. The history of the civil rights era provides a useful framework to analyze the terms of debate from a century earlier, and it provides particular insights into the significance of the concept of public rights that Rebecca Scott has so effectively brought to our attention.

IV. Big-Business Pressure Groups and Bismarck's Turn to Protectionism, 1873–79

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Böhme
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
The United States ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Short Period ◽  
History Of

Although the first decade of the German Empire has long been a central topic of historical research, the question with which this essay is concerned—Bismarck's relationship to the pressure groups at this time—cannot be answered satisfactorily on the basis of the material known hitherto. This is due to the fact that until very recently historians have concentrated on the diplomatic-political occurrences. Bismarck's eastern policy, the Livadia affair, the ‘war-in-sight crisis’, the Berlin Congress, and the change from the Three Emperors' Alliance to the ‘Eternal’ Treaty with the Danube monarchy—these are the events always used to demonstrate Bismarck's ‘genius’ in the field of foreign policy. On the problem of the ‘Kulturkampf’ much less effort has been expended. Here Bismarck's outstanding political skill was not as apparent as it was in his judgement of international relations. Moreover, this question was bound up from the very beginning with a strong ideological bias which only slightly weakened after World War II for the first time. Even less attention has been paid to the problems of domestic and social policy and economic developments have been almost totally neglected. It is true that these items have recently obtained new historical relevance from the new socio-political point of view, but up to the present day they have not been clarified. The chief general contributions of this kind have been published by non-German historians (e.g. Rosenberg, Lambi, and Pflanze) in the United States or in Canada. These studies, however, give inadequate answers to specific questions, as do the detailed essays of Karl-Erich Born and Wolfgang Zorn with their systematizing way of reflexion. They do not deal with our formulation of the question: the relationship between economic development and political events in a comparatively short period. Nevertheless, the essays of Born and Zorn will serve as a starting-point for our own investigation. Born in particular realizes the urgent need for more detailed research in the social and economic sphere, and pleads for a ‘supplementary’ approach (Ergänzungsgeschichte). He states thatthe history of the aristocracy during the industrial age has to be completed by studies dealing with the history of the trade unions; by dissertations on the history of industrial branches, commercial centres, and companies; and last but not least by works on the disintegration of the old bourgeoisie. Then we shall be able to extend the political history of the German Empire, which is largely clarified, to a comprehensive view of a German historical epoch by adding the social and economic history of the late nineteeth century.

scholarly journals Growing Pains and Other Things: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Supreme Court of the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-796
Author(s):  
Edward G. Hudon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Growing Pains ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of

This article is in part a book review and in part a study of two institutions. In it, the author compares the origin and growth of the Supreme Court of Canada and of the Supreme Court of the United States. He uses Professors James G. Snell and Frederick Vaughan's The Supreme Court of Canada: History of the Institution as a starting point, and he compares various aspects of the two Supreme Courts. He points out similarities in the problems that the two have confronted since the beginning, and he indicates the manner in which these problems have been resolved by each.

Native Americans, Law, and Religion in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Guéno
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
American Values ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

Religion was a point of cultural conflict, political motivation, and legal justification throughout the European and American colonization of North America. Beginning in the 14th century, Catholic monarchs invoked Christian doctrine and papal law to claim Native American “heathenry” or “infidelity” as legal grounds that legitimized or mandated their policies of military invasion and territorial occupation. More progressive Christian thinkers argued for the recognition of Native Americans as human beings entitled to certain natural-law protections that morally obligated Spain to conquer and convert them for their own benefit. Spain and France worked with the church throughout the 16th and 17th centuries to establish missions throughout seized Native American territories, while English colonists often segregated Native Americans into “praying towns” for their moral benefit or the sanctity of the colonies. After the United States declared independence, American politicians quickly identified dissolution of Native American cultures as a necessary step in undermining tribal saliency and in ensuring the political dominion of state and federal governments. By the 19th century, policymakers were convinced that encouraging Indians to put aside their “savage ways” would help tribal populations achieve cultural and spiritual salvation through Christianity. In 1869, President Grant initiated a “Peace Policy” that granted Christian missions contracts and federal funding to civilize and Christianize the Native American peoples of assigned reservations. The federal government established boarding schools for the children of tribal communities to teach English, Christianity, and occupational skills in order to “Kill the Indian in him and Save the Man.” During the 19th and 20th centuries, federal legislation stripped Native Americans of lands, property, and rights, while federal agencies forbade the practice of indigenous Native American religions. Subsequent courts legitimated the historic claim of European nations to Native American lands pursuant to the “Doctrine of Discovery,” thus ruling these policies either legal or unreviewable. While judicial decisions throughout the 20th century also recognized tribal rights to land, water, and self-government as well as the legal obligation of the federal government to protect tribal resources, these rulings have been inconsistently realized. Throughout the history of the United States, law has articulated, in the language of privilege, right, and moral prescription, American values and visions of ideal relations. As American culture has changed, federal policy has swung back and forth among initiatives to relocate, terminate, assimilate, and appropriate Native American cultures. Religion and law have advanced agendas of conquest and colonization and become means by which Native Americans peoples have resisted those agendas.

Imperialism and China, c. 1800-1949

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph W. Huenemann
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Military Action ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

Not surprisingly, to this day, the history of imperialism in China is a contentious, bitter history. If imperialism is understood in the broadest terms, consisting of one large group of human beings (a “tribe” or “state” or “nation”) asserting domination over another group by force, then the history of imperialism reaches far back into time—certainly to Hammurabi of Babylon or even earlier. The motivations of imperialism have varied considerably from one empire to another: partly a matter of hyper-patriotic rivalry (chauvinism); partly an appetite for expanded territory, especially thinly populated territory (the Lebensraum argument); partly a sense of cultural superiority (the crusade to bring “civilization” to “barbarians” or “benighted heathen”); and partly a quest for perceived economic benefits, either from trade (as imports of scarce resources or as exports of excess products) or from investment (a vent for excess capital). Thoughtful critics have raised doubts about the validity of all of these motivations, but such voices have been relatively ineffective in curtailing the appetite for empire. In modern times, China’s experience with imperialism has entailed two chronologically parallel stories during the 19th and 20th centuries—stories that are different in their geographic location, in their motivations, and in their outcomes. The facet of imperialism that has received the most attention is that of aggression against China by capitalist nation-states (primarily along the coastline) and China’s nationalistic response. This story evolved in a low-key way before the 19th century, but then entered a more aggressive phase with military action by the British in the First Opium War (1839–1842). Both economic issues and cultural issues have received attention in this story, as discussed at length under Economic Theories of Imperialism and Cultural Analyses of Imperialism, respectively. The simultaneous story of Qing Imperialism in Eurasia entailed a multilateral rivalry, with China, Great Britain, Russia, and Japan jockeying for position. Again, the origins lay well before the 19th century, and again significant military action was important—in this case, led by Zuo Zongtang on behalf of the Qing dynasty. An important aspect of this second story is that the territory in dispute was inhabited by non-Han peoples. For the most part, Chinese writings do not treat this episode as an example of imperialism, much as American history books do not generally treat the incorporation of the swath of Mexican territory from Texas to California into the United States as an act of imperialism.

Punk and the White Atlantic

Damaged ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 139-170
Author(s):  
Evan Rapport
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
Rock And Roll ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Sex Pistols ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Resources

Punk emerged as a fully formed and recognizable style in the mid-1970s in the United Kingdom, primarily in London, and in the United States, primarily in New York and Los Angeles. British punk musicians such as the Damned, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols during this period put together elements from American punk and its precedents, including elements that were previously heard in distinction from each other, such as the riff-based blues of the Stooges and back-to-basics rock and roll songs of the Ramones. Although this period is marked by a preoccupation with whether punk was “invented” in the US or UK, in fact, punk is a product of exchanges between musicians across the Atlantic, with much of the music continuing a long history of white people using a vocabulary of Black musical resources, including blues and reggae, to explore identity, class distinctions, and the nature of whiteness itself. These exchanges in punk are comparable to the so-called “British Invasion” of the prior decade. The discourse of making the mid-1970s UK a starting point for punk also appears to be an idea that American musicians were primarily invested in, and an idea that further dissociated punk from its basis in Black American music.

Edward W. Blyden, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the ‘Color Complex’

1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. C. Echeruo
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Color Complex ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind

This article is an attempt to present (and thereby to come to terms with) an important aspect of the meaning of race as it relates to the experience of black people, especially in America. It commences with Edward W. Blyden because his ‘color complex’ is of a kind that brings us back, not without much embarrassment, to the realisation that while colour may be a state of the mind, it is also and even primarily a matter of the body. Blyden is particularly appropriate as a starting point, for he is an epitome, in many ways, of the African experience in the later nineteenth century, linking (as he does) the multiple experiences of the Caribbean, the United States, and mainland Africa. He wrote at a time when the intellectual and other currents in ‘Negro’ America flowed easily to the new centres of influence in Liberia and colonial West Africa. He was thus the product of the history of Africanity in his period, and for a long time after.

The Structure of Theological Revolutions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of

Using Thomas Kuhn’s understanding of “paradigms” within the history of science, this book examines how different models of natural law were presented by Catholic theologians in order to offer more compelling and coherent understandings of what the natural law is, and how Catholic theology uses it. The author explores whether the application of Kuhn’s ideas to the heated Catholic debates over natural law might offer a more dispassionate way of understanding the development of a theological micro-tradition. The book argues that the micro-traditions of theology (most specifically the micro-tradition of natural law) do not build seamlessly on each other. The year 1968 is offered as the starting point for the narrative that follows because that was when, in the United States, the unquestioned dominance of the specific type of natural law discourse (neo-scholasticism) that had defined Catholic moral theology for generations came to a dramatic end with unnerving specificity.

St. Mary's (1820-1830), Halifax: An Early Example of the Use of Gothic Revival Forms in Canada

1986 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-147
Author(s):  
J. Philip McAleer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quebec City ◽  
Gothic Revival ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Architecture

Early Gothic Revival architecture in Canada, particularly from the period prior to the 1840s, when the influence of A. W. N. Pugin and the Ecclesiologists began to be felt, has been little studied. This paper reconstructs a lost monument-St. Mary's, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as erected 1820-1830-which may have been the first ambitious essay in the Gothic Revival style, especially as it apparently precedes by a few years the single and most famous monument of this time, the parish church of Notre-Dame in Montréal, itself often considered the starting point of the style in Canada. Although the exterior of St. Mary's was modest-essentially it was an exemplar of the rectangular box with "west" tower, definitively formulated by James Gibbs, and ubiquitous since the 1720s-with Gothic detailing replacing Baroque, the interior, known only from one watercolor and partly surviving today, is of greater interest. Divided into nave and aisles by piers of clustered shafts, the piers' form, plus plaster vaults and pointed arches, helped create an aura reminiscent of the Gothic period. The interior was dominated by the design of the sanctuary (now destroyed), where an unusual congregation of architectural forms suggests both the appearance of illusionistic architecture, with a possible connection to New York, and a further transformation of Baroque forms into their Gothic equivalents, with a possible connection to Québec City. Tenuous, circumstantial evidence will be provided to substantiate the plausibility of such sources. This paper also attempts to place St. Mary's in the context of the Gothic Revival in North America c. 1820-1830. As a result, it will be seen that its exterior, although without precedents in Canada, is typical of Gothic Revival churches of the period in the United States. By contrast, the interior design, especially of the sanctuary, suggests it was one of the more imaginative creations in either context. It therefore emerges as a more significant monument in the history of Canadian and North American architecture than heretofore suspected.

scholarly journals Introduction to the Issue

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-5
Author(s):  
Katherine K. Preston
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

The history of music in nineteenth-century America, and the place of music within American culture of the period, is an area of scholarly inquiry that recently has received increased attention. It is also, as the varied articles collected in this issue illustrate, a complex topic and an area ripe for much additional research. The four articles deal with different aspects of nineteenth-century American music history and culture; in each, however, there are also areas of overlap and intersection. All four authors use as a starting point issues that have already been the subject of some scholarly attention, and examine these topics either more thoroughly or from a new theoretical or contextual point of view. The resulting aggregate should help readers to understand better a complicated and under-explored world, for all four articles highlight the complexity of musical life in America and explore some of the many ways that cultural life in the United States reflected and resonated with that of Europe. All four authors, furthermore, either hint at or explicitly mention areas that are ripe for further research.

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