Chapter 1: The State of African American Election Data

2014 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
The State

The Challenge of Mass Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Mass Democracy

Chapter 1 analyzes Schmitt’s assessment of democratic movements in Weimar and the gravity of their effects on the state and constitution. It emphasizes that the focus of Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar was mass democracy rather than liberalism. Schmitt warned that the combination of mass democracy, the interpenetration of state and society, and the emergence of total movements opposed to liberal democracy, namely the Nazis and the Communists, were destabilizing the Weimar state and constitution. Weimar, Schmitt argued, had been designed according to nineteenth century principles of legitimacy and understandings of the people. Under the pressure of mass democracy, the state was buckling and cannibalizing itself and its constitution. Despite this, Schmitt argued, Weimar jurists’ theoretical commitments left them largely unable to recognize the scope of what was occurring. Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar democracy was intended to raise awareness of how parliamentary democracy could be turned against the state and constitution.

“An Inside Thing to Live by”: Refusal, Conjure, and Black Feminist Imaginaries among Granny Midwives

Hypatia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Lindsey Stewart
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Conjure Woman ◽  
Birthing Practices ◽  
American Thought

Abstract “Granny midwives” often based their authority to practice midwifery on the spiritual traditions of rootwork or conjure passed down by the foremothers who trained them. However, granny midwives were compelled to give up their conjure-infused methods of birthing if they wanted to become licensed (that is, to get a “permit”) or be authorized by the state to continue their practice of midwifery. In response, some granny midwives refused to recognize the authority of the state in the birthing realm, willfully retaining rootwork in their birthing practices. In this article, I contrast the response of granny midwives, a politics of refusal, with another major tradition in African American thought, a politics of recognition, such as gaining citizenship and rights, permits, and licenses from the state. Due to the political stakes of the granny midwife's conflict with the state, I argue that black feminists often endow the figure of the granny midwife (or more broadly, the conjure woman) with the political significance of refusal in our emancipatory imaginaries. To demonstrate this, I will analyze the interventions in black liberation politics that two black feminist writers make through their invocation of granny midwives: Zora Neale Hurston's essay, “High John de Conquer,” and Toni Morrison's novel, Paradise.

The Awakening Giant

2018 ◽  
pp. 171-200
Author(s):  
Patricia de Santana Pinho
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
State Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The State ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
African Heritage ◽  
The Government ◽  
Tourist Demand ◽  
Roots Tourism

The role of local governments in attracting roots tourists is one of most important factors analyzed in the studies of diaspora tourism. Governments of several countries have actively sought to promote varied forms of roots tourism in order to attract members of their respective diasporas. In contrast, African American roots tourism in Brazil is marked by the almost complete inaction of the government, at both the state and federal levels. This type of tourism was initiated and continues to develop largely as the result of tourist demand, and with very little participation on the part of the state. This chapter analyzes the belated response of the state government of Bahia to African American tourism, examining how the inertia that dominated since the late 1970s was later replaced by a more proactive, although still inadequate, position, when the state tourism board, Bahiatursa, founded the Coordination of African Heritage Tourism to cater specifically to the African American roots tourism niche. The chapter also analyzes whether the left-leaning Workers’ Party, then in charge of the state government, challenged the longstanding discourse of baianidade (Bahianness) that has predominantly represented blackness (in tourism and other realms) through domesticated and stereotypical images.

Japan in the 1950s: Symbolic Victims

Alegal ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 15-37
Author(s):  
Annmaria M. Shimabuku
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The State ◽  
Sexual Slavery ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
The Family ◽  
Sexual Labor

Chapter 1 presents a genealogy of sexual labor in Japan from licensed prostitution and the so-called “comfort woman” system of sexual slavery in the imperial period, through the state-organized system of prostitution for the Allied forces in the immediate postwar, and to the full-fledged emergence of independent streetwalkers thereafter. It links protest against private prostitution in the interwar period to aversion toward the streetwalker in the postwar period through an examination of Tosaka Jun’s Japanese Ideology. There, he defined Japanism as the symbolic communion between the family and state and showed how Japanists attacked private prostitution for purportedly interfering with the integrity of both. What was at stake was the ability of a budding middle class to manage the reproduction of labor power for the biopolitical state. Through Tosaka, this chapter delineates a mechanism of social defence amongst the middle class that targeted life thought to be unintelligible to the state such as the streetwalker and her mixed-race offspring. Further, it shows how this occurred through cultural productions such as anti-base reportage that focused obsessively on the figure of the streetwalker.

Emerging Class Awareness

2019 ◽  
pp. 26-62
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Caste Status ◽  
David Walker ◽  
Key Terms

Chapter 1 examines key terms pertaining to socioeconomic distinction, particularly “caste,” “status,” and “class,” as they apply to mid-century narratives. The chapter notes factors that differentiated the enslaved economically as well as socially, among them types of work, kinship, and connections to whites. It explains the importance of class awareness to the slave narrative and differentiates that awareness from standard ideas about class consciousness. Also discussed are commonalities of experience shared by most of the fifty-two African American slave narrators whose life stories are the focus of this book. Concluding the chapter is an overview of discourse involving class critique and social advancement among African Americans as articulated by black writers from David Walker to Martin R. Delany and Frederick Douglass. The widening range of class-inflected ideas expressed in mid-century narratives attests to an emerging class awareness in contemporary essays and journalism, as well as autobiography, by black Americans.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Georg Wenzelburger
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Law And Order

Chapter 1 gives an overview of the politics of law and order and presents the research design for the volume. Based on a discussion of the state of the art, it argues why it is crucial to analyze party politics to fully understand why some countries moved law and order policies toward the more repressive poles while others didn’t follow the same path.

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