A Corporate Stance for Social Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-156
Author(s):  
Cynthia Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Political Refugees ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dominican Sisters ◽  
San Rafael

This chapter explores the leadership role the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael played in the social movement known as “sanctuary” that emerged in the Bay Area, California, in the 1980s. The enactment of the 1980s Refugee Act and the political crisis in Central America during the Reagan administration galvanized the San Rafael Sisters to make a “corporate and public declaration” of support and sanctuary for political refugees fleeing the violence of a civil war in El Salvador. This chapter examines this pivotal moment within the larger historical context of the Dominican Sisters’ mission in California since the state’s founding in 1850.

Race and the Epigenetics of Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Soto Laveaga
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Dna Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Neural Function ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Race Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
Lasting Change

In my brief response to Terence Keel’s essay “Race on Both Sides of the Razor,” I focus on something as pertinent as alleles and social construction: how we write history and how we memorialize the past. Current DNA analysis promises to remap our past and interrogate certainties that we have taken for granted. For the purposes of this commentary I call this displacing of known histories the epigenetics of memory. Just as environmental stimuli rouse epigenetic mechanisms to produce lasting change in behavior and neural function, the unearthing of forgotten bodies, forgotten lives, has a measurable effect on how we act and think and what we believe. The act of writing history, memorializing the lives of others, is a stimulus that reshapes who and what we are. We cannot disentangle the discussion about the social construction of race and biological determinism from the ways in which we have written—and must write going forward—about race. To the debate about social construction and biological variation we must add the heft of historical context, which allows us to place these two ideas in dialogue with each other. Consequently, before addressing the themes in Keel’s provocative opening essay and John Hartigan’s response, I speak about dead bodies—specifically, cemeteries for Black bodies. Three examples—one each from Atlanta, Georgia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Mexico—illustrate how dead bodies must enter our current debates about race, science, and social constructions. 

Local Histories/Global Designs

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Central America ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
South Central ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Border Thinking ◽  
East West

This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. It explores the crucial notion of “colonial difference” in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which the book calls “border thinking.” Further, the book expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling on the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. The book's concept of “border gnosis,” or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. A new preface discusses this book as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History.

‘Soft Law in a Hard Shell’: India, International Rulemaking and the International Solar Alliance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Vyoma Jha
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Hard Shell ◽  
The Creation ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Political Economy Approach

Abstract This article examines the creation of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), a new international organization led by India and backed primarily by developing countries. Official documents and wide-ranging interviews offer insights into the treaty-making process. Using a political economy approach to the study of international law, the article analyzes politico-legal issues associated with the creation of the ISA. The legal form of the ISA is best described as ‘soft law in a hard shell’: it uses the legal infrastructure of a treaty while relying on the social structure of participating actors for its future implementation. Empirical evidence suggests that three factors explain the treaty structure of the ISA: India's leadership role in the treaty-making process, the early involvement of non-state actors, and the preference of developing countries for legal form. Ultimately, the case illustrates India's shift towards a leadership role in climate change governance, and the steady emergence of non-state actors in driving climate action.

Freedom Tide? Ideology, Politics, and the Origins of Democracy Promotion in U.S. Central America Policy, 1980–1984

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 60-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Dramatic Shift

The Reagan administration came to power in 1981 seeking to downplay Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights in U.S. policy toward Latin America. Yet, by 1985 the administration had come to justify its policies towards Central America in the very same terms. This article examines the dramatic shift that occurred in policymaking toward Central America during Ronald Reagan's first term. Synthesizing existing accounts while drawing on new and recently declassified material, the article looks beyond rhetoric to the political, intellectual, and bureaucratic dynamics that conditioned the emergence of a Reaganite human rights policy. The article shows that events in El Salvador suggested to administration officials—and to Reagan himself—that support for free elections could serve as a means of shoring up legitimacy for embattled allies abroad, while defending the administration against vociferous human rights criticism at home. In the case of Nicaragua, democracy promotion helped to eschew hard decisions between foreign policy objectives. The history of the Reagan Doctrine's contentious roots provides a complex lens through which to evaluate subsequent U.S. attempts to foster democracy overseas.

Transforming Labour: From the Workers’ State to the Post-Socialist Re-Organization of Industry and Workplace Communities

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-438
Author(s):  
Eszter Bartha
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
The Social ◽  
East German

Abstract The article seeks to place the workers’ road from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and Hungary in a historical context. It offers an overview of the most important elements of the party’s policy towards labour in the two countries under the Honecker and the Kádár regime respectively. It examines the highly paternalistic role of the factory as a life-long employer and provider of workers’ needs for the large industrial working class which the regime considered to be its main social basis. Given that the thesis of the working class as the ruling class was central to the legitimating ideology of the state socialist regimes, dissident intellectuals challenging this thesis were effectively marginalized or forced into exile. After the change of regimes, the “working class” again became an ideological term associated with the discredited and fallen regime. The article analyses the changes within the life-world of East German and Hungarian workers in the light of life-history interviews. It argues that in Hungary, the social and material decline of the workers – alongside the loss of the symbolic capital of the working class – reinforced ethno-centric, nationalistic narratives, which juxtaposed “globalization” and “national capitalism”, the latter supposedly protecting citizens from the exploitation by global capital. In the light of the sad reports of falling standards of living and impoverishment, the Kádár regime received an ambiguous, often nostalgic evaluation. While the East Germans were also critical of the new, capitalist society (unemployment, intensified competition for jobs, the disintegration of the old, work-based communities), they gave more credit to the post-socialist democratic institutions. They were more willing to reconcile the old socialist values which they had appreciated in the GDR with a modern left-wing critique than their Hungarian counterparts, for whom nationalism seemed to offer the only means to express social criticism.

scholarly journals Michael Katz's Contribution to Social and Social Welfare History

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 768-771
Author(s):  
Mark J. Stern
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Twentieth Century Literature ◽  
Welfare History ◽  
Social Welfare History ◽  
Undeserving Poor ◽  
Century Literature

Michael Katz began work on social welfare during the late 1970s with a project entitled “The Casualties of Industrialization.” That project led to a series of essays, Poverty and Policy in American History (Katz 1983), and a few years later to In the Shadow of the Poorhouse (Katz 1986). His reading in twentieth-century literature for Shadow—and the ideological and policy nostrums of the Reagan administration—allowed Katz to pivot to two books that frame contemporary welfare debates in their historical context—The Undeserving Poor in 1989 and The Price of Citizenship in 2001, as well as a set of essays Improving Poor People (Katz 1995) that he published between the two.

Reagan Administration Proposes Sharp Cut-Back in Federal Support for Social Science Research

1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (02) ◽  
pp. 262-263
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Mann
Keyword(s):  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
Race And Ethnic Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family

By now most of you are aware of the severe cuts in federal funding for the social and behavioral sciences and for the humanities proposed by the Reagan Administration.At the National Science Foundation, while support for the natural sciences is slated to increase, the proposed budget for the social and economic sciences calls for a 65 percent reduction.At the National Institute of Mental Health (ADAMHA), the Administration proposes toeliminateall social research, which is expected to include research on the family, socialization of children, effects of separation and divorce, evaluation of prevention efforts with children, effects of mass media on behavior of children. In addition, the definition probably will include social policy research, research on race and ethnic relations, studies of community structure and change and studies of social institutions.

Central America on the Reagan Watch: Rhetoric and Reality

1985 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique A. Baloyra
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Unstable Equilibrium ◽  
International Context ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Policy Arena

This essay discusses the Central America policies of the Reagan administration, focusing on the evolution of what has been described as a “two-track” approach to the region. The essay disputes this characterization, describing the emergence of an unstable equilibrium between different policy objectives and their proponents, underlining important differences between official rhetoric and specific initiatives, and evaluating the outcomes of those initiatives. The discussion emphasizes the complexity of the domestic and international context of the crisis and of the policy arena, underlining the failure of the administration's attempt to impose its own unilateral solution.

True Church, National Church, Minority Church: Episcopacy and Authority in the Restored Church of Ireland

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Rose Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The People ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Church

The Church of Ireland in the later seventeenth century faced many challenges. After two decades of war and effective suppression, the church in 1660 had to reestablish itself as the national church of the kingdom of Ireland in the face of opposition from both Catholics and Dissenters, who together made up nearly ninety percent of the island's population. While recent scholarship has illuminated Irish protestantism as a social group during this period, the theology of the established church remains unexamined in its historical context. This article considers the theological arguments used by members of the church hierarchy in sermons and tracts written between 1660 and 1689 as they argued that the Church of Ireland was both a true apostolic church and best suited for the security and salvation of the people of Ireland. Attention to these concerns shows that the social and political realities of being a minority church compelled Irish churchmen to focus on basic arguments for an episcopal national establishment. It suggests that this focus on first principles allowed the church a certain amount of ecclesiological flexibility that helped it survive later turbulence such as the non-jurors controversy of 1689–1690 fairly intact.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document