scholarly journals One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Miller Kirkland

Peace efforts in Palestine are continuous and failing. In order to explain the failed peace attempts, experts draw different conclusions. Thomas Getman, member of a private consulting group specializing in international affairs, explains the conflict in terms of Christian Zionism, a religious doctrine prominent in the United States, and its detrimental role in the peace process. While social justice manifests itself in the cultural practices of traditional, mainstream religions, Christian Zionism ignores the rights-based approach to theology, and it perpetuates myths (Getman). Dennis Ross, the principle informant in the Israeli-Arab conflict under the Bush and Clinton administrations, blames a number of factors. He explains, “The lack of public conditioning for peace, the reluctance to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other side’s grievance and needs, the inability to confront comfortable myths, the difficulty of transforming behavior and acknowledging mistakes, the inherent challenges of getting both sides ready to move at the same time, the unwillingness to make choices, and the absence of leadership, especially among Palestinians, are all factors that have made peace difficult to achieve” (Ross 14). Ultimately, Ross says that it is “myths that prevent all sides from seeing reality and adjusting to it” (Ross 14). The failed peace efforts can be better understood by combining the two stances. Due to the stronghold Christian Zionism has held on United States politics, the Christian Zionist narrative has upheld peace talks in Israel-Palestine and disrupted the process.

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baburhan Uzum ◽  
Bedrettin Yazan ◽  
Netta Avineri ◽  
Sedat Akayoglu

The study reports on a telecollaboration exchange between two teacher education classes in the United States and Turkey. In synchronous and asynchronous conversations, preservice teachers (PTs) engaged in social justice issues and made discourse choices that captured culture(s) and communities as diverse or essentialized. These choices were affected by PTs’ positionings and impacted how PTs connected to individuals only and/or to broader society.  PTs asked questions that created space for critical discussions and facilitated awareness of diversity, yet sometimes led to overgeneralizations. The study has implications for designing telecollaborations that promote language and practices to unpack the issues of social justice.


2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (9) ◽  
pp. 871-888
Author(s):  
Andreas Paulus

Robert Kagan's article and book on the future of transatlantic relations have gained much prominence in the debate on the reasons for and impact of the transatlantic rift on the war against Iraq. However, and regrettably, Kagan's work confirms rather than challenges the prejudices and stereotypes of both sides. After putting Kagan's approach in a political perspective, I intend to show that the antinomies used by Kagan and other participants in the debate, such as might and right, unilateralism and multilateralism, prevention and repression, hegemony and sovereign equality, democratic imperialism and pluralism, constitute useful analytical tools, but do not in any way capture the divergence of values and interests between the United States and Europe. However, the result of such an analysis does not lead to the adoption of one or the other extreme, but to the realization that international law occupies the space between them, allowing for the permanent re-negotiation of the place of “Mars” and “Venus” in international affairs.


Author(s):  
Emilbek Dzhuraev

In a period of fast-evolving international dynamics over the Central Asian region, it is important to consider the foreign policy choices and exercised agency by the governments of the five states of the region. While the projects and agendas of China, Russia, the United States and other external players over the region have understandably dominated much recent discourse, the ‘inside-out’ perspective – the Central Asian policies and stances toward international affairs and geopolitics involving them – is necessary to draw a more accurate picture of the region’s international affairs. Such a perspective would reveal the evolution and variations of the regional foreign policies of ‘multi-vectorism’ and challenges such policies face today.


Linguaculture ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-32
Author(s):  
Oana Cogeanu

Abstract Prompted by the observations of a European scholar in African-American studies living in South-East Asia, this article addresses the ideological value of whiteness with a view to understanding its apparently global aesthetic fascination and societal power. To this purpose, the article traces the European, American and Asian conceptualization and employment of the signs of whiteness. The first section investigates the correlated philosophical and scientific construction of whiteness as a racial signifier in Europe. The second section focuses on social and cultural practices of white vs. black identification and the critique thereof in the United States. The third section highlights the appeal of whiteness as a status signifier in Asia. Whiteness is commonly employed as a sign of superiority, assumed by the self or assigned to the other (within): the article suggests that such power derives from a common mystical symbolism, upheld by philosophy, sanctioned by science, implemented by social policy and marketed by corporations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (16) ◽  
pp. 15-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henriette W. Langdon ◽  
Terry Irvine Saenz

The number of English Language Learners (ELL) is increasing in all regions of the United States. Although the majority (71%) speak Spanish as their first language, the other 29% may speak one of as many as 100 or more different languages. In spite of an increasing number of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who can provide bilingual services, the likelihood of a match between a given student's primary language and an SLP's is rather minimal. The second best option is to work with a trained language interpreter in the student's language. However, very frequently, this interpreter may be bilingual but not trained to do the job.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Laith Mzahim Khudair Kazem

The armed violence of many radical Islamic movements is one of the most important means to achieve the goals and objectives of these movements. These movements have legitimized and legitimized these violent practices and constructed justification ideologies in order to justify their use for them both at home against governments or against the other Religiously, intellectually and even culturally, or abroad against countries that call them the term "unbelievers", especially the United States of America.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Holslag

The chapter argues that India has a strong interest to balance China and that the two Asian giants will not be able grow together without conflict. However, India will not be able to balance China’s rise. The chapter argues that India remains stuck between nonalignment and nonperformance. On the one hand, it resists the prospect of a new coalition that balances China from the maritime fringes of Eurasia, especially if that coalition is led by the United States. On the other hand, it has failed to strengthen its own capabilities. Its military power lags behind China’s, its efforts to reach out to both East and Central Asia have ended in disappointment, and its economic reforms have gone nowhere. As a result of that economic underachievement, India finds itself also torn between emotional nationalism and paralyzing political fragmentation, which, in turn, will further complicate its role as a regional power.


Author(s):  
Celine Parreñas Shimizu

Transnational films representing intimacy and inequality disrupt and disgust Western spectators. When wounded bodies within poverty entangle with healthy wealthy bodies in sex, romance and care, fear and hatred combine with desire and fetishism. Works from the Philippines, South Korea, and independents from the United States and France may not be made for the West and may not make use of Hollywood traditions. Rather, they demand recognition for the knowledge they produce beyond our existing frames. They challenge us to go beyond passive consumption, or introspection of ourselves as spectators, for they represent new ways of world-making we cannot unsee, unhear, or unfeel. The spectator is redirected to go beyond the rapture of consuming the other to the rupture that arises from witnessing pain and suffering. Self-displacement is what proximity to intimate inequality in cinema ultimately compels and demands so as to establish an ethical way of relating to others. In undoing the spectator, the voice of the transnational filmmaker emerges. Not only do we need to listen to filmmakers from outside Hollywood who unflinchingly engage the inexpressibility of difference, we need to make room for critics and theorists who prioritize the subjectivities of others. When the demographics of filmmakers and film scholars are not as diverse as its spectators, films narrow our worldviews. To recognize our culpability in the denigration of others unleashes the power of cinema. The unbearability of stories we don’t want to watch and don’t want to feel must be borne.


Author(s):  
E. Douglas Bomberger

On 2 April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to enter the European war, and Congress voted to do so on Friday, 6 April. On the 15th of that month, Victor released the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s record of “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixieland Jass Band One-Step”; it caused an immediate nationwide sensation. James Reese Europe travelled to Puerto Rico in search of woodwind players for the Fifteenth New York Regiment Band, and the Creole Band ended its vaudeville career when it missed the train to Portland, Maine. German musicians in the United States came under increased scrutiny in the weeks after the declaration of war, as the country prepared to adopt new laws and regulations for wartime.


Author(s):  
Ramón J. Guerra

This chapter examines the development of Latino literature in the United States during the time when realism emerged as a dominant aesthetic representation. Beginning with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and including the migrations resulting from the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Mexican Revolution (1910), Latinos in the United States began to realistically craft an identity served by a sense of displacement. Latinos living in the United States as a result of migration or exile were concerned with similar issues, including but not limited to their predominant status as working-class, loss of homeland and culture, social justice, and racial/ethnic profiling or discrimination. The literature produced during the latter part of the nineteenth century by some Latinos began to merge the influence of romantic style with a more socially conscious manner to reproduce the lives of ordinary men and women, draw out the specifics of their existence, characterize their dialects, and connect larger issues to the concerns of the common man, among other realist techniques.


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