Underground Multiculturalism: Contentious Cultural Politics in Gold-Mining Regions in Chocó, Colombia

This article maps the contentious forms of political life that emerge when multicultural rights and non-formal gold extraction coincide. Specifically, it shows how, in the Colombian department of Chocó, Afro-descendant community councils have produced a unique form of mining governance that, while depending for its legitimacy on everyday uses of Afro-Colombian legislation, consists of the organisation, taxation and policing of mining activities that are in tension with official notions of extractive and multicultural law. In exploring such ‘underground’ cultural politics, the article highlights the limits of state-centric analyses of ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ and, accordingly, underscores the instrumental role that governed subjects play in the on-the-ground unfolding of multicultural governance regimes.

Legal Nature of the Community Councils in Venezuela

The 21st century is a historical milestone for new ways of managing public affairs, as a result of the political, social and economic transformations that were generated in various countries in South America, in which Venezuela is the protagonist with the approval of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic in December 1999; based on the organization of society for participation in decision-making on matters of collective interest. In this perspective, the Community Councils arise. Therefore, they constitute the interest of the investigation to characterize the applicable legal regime in Venezuela, according to the theoretical contributions and the institutional devices that comprise them. It is a descriptive investigation, with a documentary design. The findings reveal: since the constitutional precepts, regulations for community organization and participation were created, referring to the Communal Councils, which have been the subject of discussion about the nature of their actions, based on the legal nature; it is evident that its praxis responds to features of a mixed legal nature, that is, constitutional and community. It is concluded that the Communal Councils must advance in the legal recognition of the actions related to certain competences of the public administration, to build the administrative and legal bases for an innovative community development community management.

Sephardi Leadership in Israel

This article seeks to examine the impact of the transition from Yishuv to state on the Sephardi and Mizrahi leadership, as reflected in the patterns of organization and action of the Sephardi community councils in general, and the Councils of the Sephardi Community in Tel Aviv and Haifa in particular. Against the background of the growing centralized power of the state under the leadership of Mapai and the application of the principle of statism (mamlachtiut), the article will discuss the activities of the Councils of the Sephardi Community in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The article analyzes the process that led in 1951 to the dissolution of the Sephardi and Oriental Communities Union as a political framework, as well as the decision made in the same year by the community councils in Haifa and Tel Aviv to withdraw from political activity.

The Awakening of the Coptic Church

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's role in the reformist movement within the Coptic Orthodox Church. To understand the position of the Copts in Egypt during Simaika's lifetime, it is important to revisit the year 1854, when Said Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali Pasha, became wali (viceroy) of Egypt. In that same year, Cyril IV ascended to the patriarchal throne as the 110th successor to Saint Mark. Two years later, the Hatt-i Humayon, the most important Turkish reform edict of the nineteenth century, was decreed by Sultan Abd al-Mejid I. This edict established community councils for Christian and other non-Muslim communities. Simaika became a member of the community council, or majlis milli, in 1889 and became involved in the campaign for church reform. The chapter examines Cyril V's banishment and triumphant return and the subsequent defeat of the reformist movement within the Coptic Church.

Assignment of functions to local authorities in Lesotho

In Lesotho the adoption of the new constitution in 1993 made provision for local development. These constitutional provisions were only operationalised in 1997 through an Act of parliament (Local Government Act 1997). The question of how functions are assigned between the central and local governments has always been an area of dispute. The Act attempted to demarcate the assignments through the Schedules to the Act which embody the functions of local authorities at various levels – community councils, urban councils and district councils. However, local development and service delivery continue by and large to be undertaken by central government despite the demarcation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to critically analyse the challenges of assignment of functions to local authorities in Lesotho. The paper contends that as the assignment of functions is integral to decentralisation in Lesotho, intergovernmental relations and assignment of functions should be incorporated into the country’s constitution.

Expanding Black Settlement in the 1940s

This chapter follows Glenville and Mount Pleasant from World War II into the early post-war years. As increasing numbers of African Americans moved into these historically heavily-Jewish neighbourhoods, racial tensions escalated and the phenomenon of panic selling first emerged, even as upwardly mobile black buyers expressed satisfaction and hope at their expanded housing choices. Into the early post-war period, interracial community councils seeking to stabilize population turnover counter-mobilized against exclusionary white homeowners’ associations attempting to choke off black housing access. Jewish residents were more active in these interracial neighbourhood mobilizations, but at the same time Jews departed for the suburbs at above-average rates, to the point where their demographic and institutional presence had diminished to an insignificant point by 1950.