Advocating Suffrage and Sovereignty

Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Manley

Chapter 1 traces the increasing involvement of Dominican women in national politics through the 1920s and 1930s from the U.S. Occupation to the first decade of the Trujillo regime. During this period, Dominican women used the Pan-American arena to press for changes at the local level and they employed the rhetoric of egalitarian rule to assert their place in the theatre of democracy that Trujillo had begun to act out locally for the international stage. By proving themselves as skilled, networked, and non-threatening agents, the women active prior to and during the first decade of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo made themselves central to a carefully orchestrated national and international reputation, garnered concrete political gains like suffrage, and allowed for their continued engagement with the politics of the Dominican state through an intense period of transition.

Africa ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Nyamnjoh ◽  
Michael Rowlands

The development of elite associations has been a consequence of the growth of multi-partyism and the weakening of authoritarian state control in Cameroon in the 1990s. The attachment of electoral votes and rights of citizenship to belonging to ethnicised regions has encouraged the formal distinction between ‘natives’ and ‘strangers’ in the creation of a politics of belonging. The article argues that this development has also led to the replacement of political parties at the local level by ethnicised elite associations as prime movers in regional and national politics.


Author(s):  
Angela M. Eikenberry

AbstractSocial transformations around the world have increased the need for philanthropy and motivated people to become more active at the local level. Giving circles have emerged from this context, providing a hands-on, “do-it-yourself” approach to philanthropy. They involve individuals collaborating to support causes of mutual interest and frequently include social, educational, and engagement opportunities for members. In this research, I focus on understanding if participation in these new forms of philanthropic voluntary association lead to greater civic and political participation. That is, do giving circles serve as schools of democracy? I draw on survey data from current and past members of giving circles and donors outside these circles, as well as interviews with giving circle members, in the U.S. and U.K. The findings suggest that giving circles have a positive impact on giving, volunteering, and efforts to address problems in the community, but little effect on participation in changing government policy or other political activities.


2015 ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Susan Barr

Remarks at the opening of a workshop, sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, and held in Oslo, Norway, from 12-13 May 2015, to discuss the historic place names of the High Arctic archipelago of Franz Josef Land. The visiting students from Penn State University, none of whom had ever before been to Europe, were anxious to hear how Dr. Barr, a native of the United Kingdom, had come to Norway and made a life for herself in a different country with a different language, as a female in a then-largely male universe of polar research, and, in a nation of hunters, as a vegetarian.


Author(s):  
Tsolin Nalbantian

Chapter 3 examines the 1956 Catholicos election in Lebanon.While the excitement and success of the repatriation movement was a public relations victory for the USSR supported by local Armenian institutions and assisted by Lebanese and Syrian governments, this election became a site of contestation by Cold War powers and by their state and non-state allies and proxies in the Middle East. This analysis allows us to look at the Cold War in the Middle East not from the top down, through the eyes of Washington or Moscow (or Lebanon’s or Egypt’s state authorities, for that matter) during flash points like the 1958 U.S. intervention in Lebanon or the U.S. and Soviet reactions to the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt in 1956. Rather, in that election, Armenians made use of Cold War tensions to designate a leader of the Armenian Church who was seen to suit the community’s interests. That story also expands our understanding of Lebanon’s Armenians: from refugees and outsiders in national politics to true participants, whose own internal politics, moreover, were of interest to Lebanon’s authorities and who by now felt free to invade and use public spaces beyond their own neighborhoods to make political statements.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Manley

Chapter 2 charts the activism of the cadre of elite Dominican women from the granting of suffrage through the end of the Trujillo dictatorship, examines their national and international efforts, and addresses the shifts of feminine leadership that began after suffrage given the difficult compromises confronted under the harsh rules of dictatorship. On the one hand women continued their activism within the inter-American arena, while on the other they worked to create new clubs and groups that linked the international component with the local rhetoric of democratization and anti-communism. The chapter argues that female participation continued to be central to the functioning of the regime’s international reputation and domestic welfare programs, but that this same involvement would also serve as a catalyst for many other women to challenge the deployment of this maternalist vision and subsequently join the resistance movement.


Author(s):  
Miroslava Chávez-García

To explore the ways in which migrants negotiated longing, gender, intimacy, courtship, marriage, and identity across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the 1960s and 1970s, chapter 1 opens by examining and analyzing the broader racial, labor, and environmental contexts shaping José Chávez’s—the author’s father—experience as a Mexican laborer in Imperial Valley in the 1950s and 1960s. Specifically, it pays attention to working and living conditions in el valle and how those contributed to his loneliness, isolation, and ambivalence as a border dweller, despite his status as a green card holder and his ability to engage in return migration. Next, it examines letter writing as a form of courtship as detailed in the love letters he crafted and the cultural tools—stylized letter writing, the English language, portraits, songs, movies, and the radio—he drew upon to convince Maria Concepción “Conchita” Alvarado—the author’s mother—to accept his marriage proposal. Finally, it shows that while Conchita never formally agreed to the nuptials, she walked down the aisle and married José, an act that set her life on a new course. Indeed, within a few days, she left her hometown and relocated with José to the Mexicali-Calexico border, where they set out to create a new future for themselves.


2011 ◽  
pp. 185-199
Author(s):  
Donald F. Norris

In this paper, I examine the delivery of electronic democracy (e-democracy) by U.S. local governments through their e-government activities. In particular, I examine three issues related to local e-democracy through data from focus groups with officials from 37 municipal and county governments across the U.S. The issues are: (1) why local governments decided to adopt e-government, and whether e-democracy was among the reasons for its adoption; (2) whether e-government has produced or affected local e-democracy; and (3) what plans, if any, local governments have with respect to e-democracy in coming years. My principal findings are that e-government at the local level was adopted principally to deliver governmental information and services and to provide citizen access to governmental officials; that e-government does not operate in a manner that either produces or impacts local e-democracy (at least as the term is broadly defined herein); and that e-democracy is not on the radar screens of most American local governments for future deployment.


2005 ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Cecilia Menjívar ◽  
Néstor Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld

Chapter 1 presents an overview of how the movement for marriage equality was victorious in the U.S. and why public attitudes toward marriage equality changed more than any other public attitude in American history. The chapter offers a brief explanation of the role of individuals coming out of the closet and an explanation for why national movements need to be studied with national survey data as opposed to focusing only on movement leaders. A time line of key events considers the background of public opinion support for gay rights in order to identify when attitudes began to change and which events were proximate to the change in attitudes.


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