Subaltern Resistance and Aporia in Shaheen Akhtar’s <i>The Search</i>

The war heroines of Bangladesh, who were ostracized from the public view for nearly two decades following the inhumane atrocities of the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, get an active voice in Nilima Ibrahim’s seminal non-fiction Ami Birangona Bolchi (A War Heroine, I Speak), originally published in 1994. In the framework of testimonies of seven war heroines, she attempts to delineate the exclusion of these war heroines from family and society, their consequent struggle to survive, and the process of eventual healing through familial and communal bonds. Shame, as depicted in this text, becomes a pervasive essence in the lives of the war heroines which evokes profound social withdrawal. However, this paper will examine how this gendered shame surrounding war heroines may also lead to productive outcomes. Ergo, this paper intends to take resources from the recent developments in the field of shame theory which has gained new momentum in the last two decades because of the ambivalence associated with it. Especially, intermingling gendered shame and various productive forms of shame into the reading of Ibrahim’s repeated emphasis on the relation between community and war heroines, this paper will inspect whether genuine human connection can be a productive mechanism for fostering shame resilience among the war heroines of Bangladesh.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between a Birangona, and the men of a patriarchal social system in Rizia Rahman's novel Rokter Okkhor (1978), translated into English as Letters of Blood (2016) by Arunava Sinha. It also explores the notion of honor as it is awarded to the war heroines and how the notion quickly changes into an idea of stigma as Barangona, which means prostitute. Yasmin, the protagonist of this novel, goes through traumatic experiences of being raped, ravaged, and tormented for a few months during the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971. After the war of independence, the state honors her as a 'War Heroine' for her sufferings and sacrifices. Looking through the lenses of social stigma and capitalist patriarchy, this paper argues that Yasmin falls doubly victim to the grasp of the patriarchal system and ideology, and her state-awarded "honor" turns into a "stigma"; consequently, she goes through social humiliation, rejection, and violation. Furthermore, this paper also demonstrates that the men deny her the inalienable right to live an everyday life and she is pushed to a tragic journey from a war heroine to be a whore.

Neelima Ibrahim’s (1921–2002) A War Heroine, I Speak (2017), translation of Ami Birangona Bolchi (1994), is a reportage on birangonas, the women who were raped and tortured by Pakistani armed forces and their collaborators in the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh. The word birangona means war heroine, an honorific that the first government of independent Bangladesh bestowed on them to give dignity and integrate them into society. The birangonas had undergone unbearable torture not only during the war but also after independence; they encountered another horrible phase of their life—societies and their families abandoned them. In the socio-political-religious-cultural context of post-Independence Bangladesh, the birangonas were persona non grata. Yet, they needed the mental support of their family members, neighbors, and relatives to heal themselves from the wounds of traumatic experiences, but they were denied access to their society. This article, thus, examines and explores how Ibrahim re-presents the birangonas and recounts their traumatic experiences and how they were treated in postwar Bangladesh. I argue that they navigated trauma and negligence through resilience as they faced their family, society, and the nation of Bangladesh.

Textual analysis of Shona and British settler memoirs describing life primarily during Zimbabwe's liberation war was undertaken to investigate non-traditional sources of environmental information and to understand how perceptions of human-environment relations and place may be shaped by gender, culture, and war experience. Findings from nineteen book-length works (three for each pre- and post-war periods and thirteen for the period during the war) established that most authors exhibited strong, generally positive feelings toward land, especially their home areas. Shona authors demonstrated knowledge of colonial ideologies of bringing progress and security, but settlers exhibited little understanding of colonialism's impact on traditional land tenure. Reflecting on the liberation war, settlers were more likely to comment on hardships faced in ‘wild’ lands, landscape aesthetics, road conditions, and leisure time activities, whereas Shona emphasized the need for land tenure reform, land as sacred and provider of material needs, and hardships faced due to racial discrimination, relocation, and forced labor. Threats from landmines, ambushes, disease, and wild animals affected both groups. The cultural background and degree of contact across these authors were instrumental in shaping their ideologies. Gender and combat experience were less relevant in shaping ideologies confirming findings from the analyses of East African memoirs.

104 SHOFAR Nonetheless, if these two groups provided the main impetus for Britain's decision to withdraw, the contribution of the Haganah should not be underrated. While the author cuts off his discussion in the fall of 1947, from then on, as the fighting against the British fell off and operations shifted more and more against Arab forces, soon operating in company, battalion, and even regimental formations, the Haganah came into its own, and without it the War of Liberation could not have been won. In conclusion, then, this book delivers what the title promises. It is strong in its evaluation of the British counter-insurgency effort, though somewhat weaker on the Jewish side where the author relies entirely on works translated into English and also seems to overestimate the influence of Jewish opinion on American policymakers. Happily, this study is free of the special pleadings and advocacy which so often mar works on the subject, and if, on occasion, the opinions cited are uncomfortable for the Jewish reader, it must be remembered that within the context of the time even a great Englishman such as Winston Churchill referred to the Jewish underground fighters as "brigands and bandits." Moreover, the reader should remember the statement already cited above, that the Jewish insurgents represented the "highest quality" of opponents the British army faced in the post-war period. Gunther Rothenberg Department of History Purdue University Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism, by Riv-Ellen Prell. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989. 335 pp. $37.50. Strange as it may1seem, given the plethora of books about American Jews and Judaism, we know next to nothing about the faith American Jews hold or what enables them to hold it. The number of times they go to shul, the percentage that observes dietary laws, their attitudes concerning Israel and antisemitism: on these subjects the data are plentiful. But as Riv-Ellen Prell notes correctly, researchers to date have "paid little attention to how religious experience is constituted." Her attempt to fill part of that gap with this anthropological account ora havurah-style minyan meeting in Los Angeles in the early 'seventies is most welcome, therefore. Prell's work takes its place among a small but growing literature devoted to the inner life of American Jews-in this case to the construction and authentication of contemporary Jewish identity through the "performance" ofJewish prayer. Prell's contribution is two-fold. First, she has culled from her participant -observation and interview schedules a rich set of quotations which VoLume 9. No.1 FaLL 1990 105 confirm the portrait of havurah Judaism offered by previous scholarship and personal contact with the movement. The language of the 'sixties is pronounced , the tension between tradition and "expressive individualism" acute, the ambivalence towards hierarchy and organization at the heart of the movement's travails. Members of the "Kelton Minyan" came together weekly to pray despite their difficulties with the act of prayer and their lack of clarity on just who or what they hoped would hear their prayer. They stayed together despite such difficulties because their gatherings offered a depth of experience, a sense of community and authenticity, a precious piece of continuity with past and future. Prell shows nicely how their tinkering with the aesthetics of the synagogue enabled them to reject the models of their parents without abandoning Jewish commitment itself. The core of the book is devoted to the origins of the prayer group, the structure of its prayer service, and two "crises" which threatened to break the group apart: one over discomfort with the act of prayer, the other over the relative "invisibility" of the group's female members. The account is convincing, at times even suspenseful . Prell transmits to the reader the affection which she developed for her subjects. We want the group to make it. The book's second contribution is a careful reading of the immense theoretical literature (particularly anthropological) on religious ritual, and its use to supplement primarily sociological accounts of the context in which modern Jewish religious activity occurs. Prell moves back and forth gracefully from her data to theory-Douglas and Turner are here, along with Tambiah, Geertz, and...

The article deals with issues of social housing and designing of residential buildings, implemented as part of social programs. The general development of the concept of social housing in the post-war period - from 1945 up to modern times, is presented. Area limits are shrunk to Polish conditions. The scope of the research covered the primary, completed architectural objects created in the above-mentioned period. Such a time frame shows the dynamics of building development and presents the concept of social housing in the so-called “late industrialization” in Central and Eastern Europe and the specific housing development situation in this part of Europe. The results of the research lead to the formulation of the basic idea that, in Polish conditions, there is a significant shortage of housing designed for poorer sections of the population - easily accessible, meeting the criteria for flexibility of housing systems for different users. This is a necessary background to the contemporary understanding of this issue, especially in the countries undergoing political transformation after 1989, covering the area of Central and Eastern European countries, especially Poland. There are visible attempts to change the model of use of social, urban, residential and private space. The problems of social housing development in Poland are supplemented with knowledge about the activities of new entities for creating the organizational framework of this type of construction (such as: Social Building Societies – “TBS” and others appointed by municipalities, social organizations and associations in urban and extra-urban areas) Poland in 1996 - now. Their participation in the creation of this type of architecture implies design and organizational solutions for the implementation of desirable residential buildings. Attention is also paid to the environmental effects of the designed architecture and adaptation to local conditions. It is important to recognize the current state of development of the design of this type of residential buildings to generate the form of such architecture in the conditions of transformation (social, political and economic, etc.) The emphasis here is on understanding the principles and specificity of designing a residential social architecture. The article calls for a wider application of new technologies and methods for the use of renewable energy sources in Polish conditions for social housing solutions. This approach to the design of environmentally sensitive architecture, in which new technologies for obtaining energy for social purposes play a key role, are becoming desirable in Polish conditions. The question of eco-efficiency in social housing solutions in Polish conditions is raised as an inseparable mechanism of organizational, design and implementation activities. The buildings and social estates currently designed in Poland are an example of searching for a pattern adapted to the new conditions in the 21st century.

There is a scene in Roberto Rossellini’s film Roma: città aperta (Rome: Open City) that helps put into sharper focus the main point I would like to discuss in this chapter: namely, the composition of the Italian Anti-Fascist forces, and the tensions that pervaded them in the final years of the Second World War and the immediate post-war period. From within Nazi headquarters in occupied Rome in 1944, we see, from our vantage point perched behind his right shoulder, a Nazi officer thumbing through the clandestine newspapers that were then produced by the political parties involved in the Italian Resistance. The camera angle makes sure that we get a good view of their names: Il Popolo, L’Unità, L’Avanti!, Voce Operaia, L ’Italia Libera, Risorgimento Liberale, and once more (for some reason), Il Popolo. Contemporary viewers would certainly have known which political party produced which newspaper: Il Popolo by the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy), L’Unità by the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party, hereafter PCI), L ’Avanti! by the Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party), L’Italia Libera by the Partito d’Azione (Action Party) and Risorgimento Liberale by the Partito Liberale Italiano (Italian Liberal Party), all members of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (Committee for National Liberation, hereafter CLN), the organism that coordinated Resistance activity at a national level. The contiguity of the array of party newspapers representing the whole gamut of Italian Anti-Fascism suggests a picture of the Resistance as the struggle of the entire Italian nation spread across class, ideological and religious barricades, united as one against the common foreign, usurping enemy, the Nazi. The Resistance, then, was here figured, as is amply confirmed by the rest of the film, in terms of a war of national liberation of and by the Italian people as a kind of second Risorgimento, fought in the nineteenth century against the Austrians, now in the twentieth against the Nazis.KeywordsItalian SocietyPolitical PartiAction PartyNational LiberationAutonomous OrganisationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Self-Determination, Human Rights, and the End of Empire in the 1970s Bradley R. Simpson (bio) [Henry] Kissinger: They’ve been going to put into [United States Secretary of State William] Roger’s speech at the U.N. some stuff that we want more self-determination in Africa. And I said, “absolute nonsense.” [Richard] Nixon: More self-determination would mean more nations. Kissinger: That applies—they’ll apply that to Mozambique and South Africa. They won’t apply it to black [unclear]. Nixon: Yeah. Goddamn. Just think, 42 countries in Africa. 42 countries. That’s ridiculous. 1 In October 1975 Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba, speaking to the French newspaper Le Monde, remarked on the controversy surrounding the future of the Spanish Sahara (Western Sahara), then claimed by Morocco and Mauritania. “Self-determination for 40,000 nomads?” he asked. “Let’s not exaggerate.” Western Sahara was “a little phantom state” best absorbed by its neighbors lest it destabilize the region. 2 A few weeks later, following a massive march to the border of the territory by hundreds of thousands of Moroccan citizens and a veiled threat of invasion, the Spanish government negotiated the handover of Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania, a move resisted by the armed, Algerian-backed Polisario independence movement. The predictable panoply of human rights abuses (as understood in the West, at least) followed: forced displacement of ethnic Sahrawi, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, torture and murder, little noticed because they took place in a territory whose claim to self-determination remained unresolved and in the context of what the Polisario termed a war of national liberation. The connection was not lost on the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Barbara White, who that same month spoke before the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly on “the importance of the realization of the universal right of peoples to self-determination.” Invoking the Americans’ historical experience as a model, she noted that “achievement of self-determination must mark renewed efforts to guarantee human rights and the dignity of the individual.” 3 In other words, where self-determination is achieved, human rights can begin. Yet the United States would exhibit a studied ambiguity on the question of self-determination in Western Sahara, as in East Timor, Palestine, and many other places where the denial of self-determination and other human rights abuses were directly connected, and just as it had bitterly opposed inclusion of a right to self-determination in the United Nations Charter in 1948. [End Page 239] It is no coincidence that the final collapse of European colonialism in the early 1970s paralleled the explosion of individual-based human rights activism in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, or that postcolonial states and anticolonial movements continued to insist that collective self-determination broadly construed was the “first right” from which all other human rights derived. 4 Kenneth Cmiel, however, has observed that Western nations in the 1970s “did not agree that this was a fundamental human right,” often viewing movements for self-determination as the untidy leftovers of state-building anticolonial campaigns of previous decades and threatening in the expansive claims made on its behalf. Historians of human rights mostly agree, consigning self-determination to the history of decolonization. Those who have explored their intersection, most recently Roland Burke, offer a declensionist narrative in which liberal, democratic visions of self-determination among the first generation of postindependence leaders in the 1950s gave way to the “organized hypocrisy” of authoritarian states in later decades, which used self-determination claims as a shield rather than as a sword. 5 Instead, the historical human rights literature emphasizes the emergence of local, national, and transnational movements for individual human rights in the postwar period and especially in the 1970s. Yet the latter, I will argue, is deeply connected to the former. The end of formal European colonialism, by delivering the “first right” to the vast majority of the world’s peoples, made possible the strategic embrace by the West of individual human rights and facilitated the explosion of rights activism. At the same time, even as the era of formal European colonialism shuddered to an end, the United States, Great Britain...

In explaining how one Oorlam group, the Afrikaners, lost their hegemony in Namaland in the 1860s, this article examines the impact on this region of Oorlam migrations, trade with the Cape and the advent of Christian missionaries. The kinship-based social organization of Nama pastoralists was largely replaced by the ‘commando’ organization, introduced by the Oorlams. By the 1850s, production throughout Namaland was geared less to subsistence than to the demands of Cape traders for cattle, skins and ivory. Raiding and hunting, with imported guns and horses, supplanted local traditions of good husbandry. While foreign traders made large profits, commando groups were locked into a cycle of predatory and competitive expansion. By the early 1860s, such conflict had polarised; the Afrikaners and their allies (including Herero client-chiefs) confronted several Nama/Oorlam chiefs and an army raised by a Cape trader, Andersson. The ensuing battles were not, as has been claimed, a Herero ‘war of liberation’; instead, they marked the replacement of Afrikaner by European hegemony; the country was freer than ever before to be controlled by agents of merchant capital and colonialism.

Volume 9, No.1 Fall1990 101 become a network of single-purpose and multi-purpose "authorities" to do the business of the Jewish people as a whole in such a way that threatened neither the political sovereignty of the State of Israel nor the local loyalties of diaspora Jewish citizens of other states, but that is a story for the next volume . In the contemporary world, new diasporas are sprouting as a result of the recent revolutions in transportation and communication. The Jewish people is playing a pioneering role in the generation of appropriate forms of state-diaspora relations. Not the least of that role is in the development of institutional frameworks for such relations, of which JAFI is the prime example . We owe Dr. Stock a debt of gratitude for having so well advanced the exploration of this phenomenon. Daniel 1. Elazar Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Bar-Ilan University The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1945-1947, by David A. Charters, foreword by General Sir Nigel Bagnall. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. 287 pp. $45.00. This book dates back to the era of "counter-insurgency studies," that is, the 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, it originated in the first military history seminar offered at the University of New Brunswick in 1970-71 and was originally submitted as a doctoral dissertation in the War Studies Department , King's College, London, in 1980. It takes as its major theme Clausewitz 's famous dictum that "the first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgement that the statesmen and commanders have to make is to establish ... the kind ofwar on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature." With this focus, the author tries to discover how well the British army adapted to the new challenges of what he calls the "Palestine campaign," specifically the period between May 1945 and the British government's decision to withdraw from Palestine in September 1947. If campaign it was, and at its highpoint the British army, including the militarized Palestine Police and "imperial forces" such as the Transjordian Frontier Force, deployed over 100,000 men, not including naval elements blockading the coast, it was a campaign the British lost. In his conclusion, the author quotes Maurice Tugwell, a "Palestine Veteran" and later a historian , that "the Jews had the highest quality of terrorists the British army faced in the post-war period" (p. 176). If one removes the objectionable term 102 SHOFAR "terrorist" and includes these operations under the Israeli heading as the opening stages of the War of Liberation in which all the three resistance groups involved, the Haganah, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, and the Lochmei Heruth Israel, participated as fighters, it becomes the first victorious operation conducted by the Israel Defence Forces, as they came to be known after May 1948. Still, this study is only marginally concerned with the insurgent groups, and among them more with the smaller, if more deadly, Irgun and the Lochmei Heruth Israel. Above all it focuses on actions taken and lessons learned on the British side, especially those that had applicability to later counter-insurgency operations in Malaya, Kenya, Aden, and the many other places from which the British retreated in the decades following World War II. Specifically the volume sets out to address two issues. The first is whether, and to what degree, the British army adapted to the problems created by the Jewish insurgency, and the second issue is how much the military operations contributed, in conjunction with the other security forces and governmental policies, including propaganda and intelligence activities, to the eventual outcome of this conflict. The questions and issues are discussed in six chapters. The first looks at the nature of insurgency, low-intensity conflict in the current military jargon, and its military and political implications. In the second chapter the political setting of the campaign is discussed, touching briefly on the place of Palestine in British Middle East policy, the history of the conflict between Jewish and Arab aspirations, and the desire of the British government to maintain a base...

Durante la época de la Resistencia al enemigo y ocupante alemán en 1944 y en los años de la posguerra, hasta 1947, Albert Camus escribió centenares de artículos en el diario Combat. Su compromiso en la lucha clandestina y en la gestión de la liberación es evidente. Su voluntad de afirmar principios morales corresponde con la mayor parte de los textos literarios que publicó. Para él hay que asociar lucha ideológica y ética. El análisis de sus colaboraciones periodísticas lo ilustra perfectamente. Camus adoptará una actitud semejante y distinta durante la guerra de Argelia: mantuvo en un primer momento una posición liberal, denunciando ciertas injusticias de la Colonización pero luego, durante el enfrentamiento militar entre Francia y los rebeldes argelinos, se refugió en un silencio dramático, a raíz del fracaso de su llamamiento para una tregua civil. Veremos que en ambas circunstancias históricas, Camus privilegió una actitud profundamente ética.

The elements that give shape to the new way society is organised in the contemporary city are three: The enormous, abnormal inequality, socially and in terms of power: nowadays the powerful on earth are like the semi-gods of mythology: they share only their mortal condition with the rest of humanity; the modern semi-gods do not even share places with us mortals: they live in separate spaces within or between the cities of men. The power of income or financial capital, power that exceeds official power. Following the ‘glorious thirty’ of the post-war period – an age of cold and hot wars, risk of mutual destruction and really harsh international wars and wars of liberation from colonialism, of totalitarian regimes in power over half of Europe, but an age of growth of collective well-being, a period of over 25 years of prosperity and progress – urban policies were abandoned and financial capital alone took over the management of transformations. New globalisation: today’s globalisation is special. It has enabled really rapid delocalisation of manufacturing activities and has brought to an end the need for spatial contiguity; in this age, for the first time, the semi-gods can do without being a part of the city and taking care of their part of the city.

The paper is devoted to the important problem of determining the directions of improving the management of the information and communication component of health care in the context of administrative-territorial reform, for example, united territorial communities. The problems of forecasting social contradictions and organization of relations in these conditions in the post-war period are studied. Possible measures for organized confrontation of crisis phenomena provoked by the conflict situation, by introducing modern information and communication support as a mean of regulating economic activity in the state, are considered. Measures to ensure effective consideration of applications and complaints and the impact on the quality of UTC medical care, prevention of negative consequences are proposed. The practical value of the research results on this topic is marked. It consists in the wide possibilities of using scientific developments and proposals and in particular the organizational and economic mechanism for state regulation of the national economy in the post-war period and improving the management of social and labour relations. functioning in the period of restoration of the post-war sphere of services. The author's approach to the investigation of theoretical and practical aspects of management of information and communication component of health care institutions in the administrative-territorial reform on the example of communication support of functional activities of medical institutions of united territorial communities, thus making more coordinated socio-humanitarian development of UTC economy is presented. The correspondence of the research topic to the current problem in accordance with the directions of implementation of the modern social economy and policy in Ukraine in accordance with the European integration processes is determined. It is investigated that the practical implementation of the obtained results consists in wide possibilities of using the developments to improve the quality of information and communication services by health care institutions, the development of advertising and strengthening the stability of UTC.

Chanoyu (literally “hot water for tea”), alternately known as Sadō/Chadō (“The Way of Tea”), often described as “tea ceremony” in English, is an art of social interaction based around the preparation and consumption of matcha (powdered green tea). Considered an art form in its own right, since its development in the sixteenth century, tea culture has provided an important context for the creation, consumption, and display of art forms such as calligraphy, painting, ceramics, lacquerware, and metalwork, to name but a few. Scholarship on chanoyu began in the early twentieth century and burgeoned in the postwar period. Much of the scholarship is dominated by authors associated with the Urasenke School of Tea which has become the largest school both within Japan and internationally in the postwar period and has its own publishing arm, Tankōsha. There is therefore a bias in existing scholarship toward this school, its style of practice and history, however, this has begun to be corrected in recent years. There has been a trend away from focusing on a linear narrative of the development of chanoyu with a focus on the three so–called “founders” of chanoyu: Murata Jukō (Shukō) (b. 1422/3–d. 1502); Takeno Joo (b. 1502–d. 1555); and Sen no Rikyū (b. 1522–d. 1591). More attention is given to developments after the formative period in which they lived, as well as more nuanced approaches to the contributions of these leading figures. The material culture of tea has become an increasingly fruitful area of study, with attention being given not only to the objects themselves but to patterns of consumption, the role of tea practitioners as producers of tea utensils and patrons of craftsman, and the function of tea utensils in gift exchange, identity construction, and for cultivating political capital. Another burgeoning area of study is the role of women in both historical and contemporary tea practice, and what the study of tea brings to women’s lives. This is correcting the male-centered narratives of earlier scholarship. Much tea scholarship is historical but there is a growing interest in bringing academic perspectives to bear on contemporary practice. Recent English-language scholarship has moved away from the term “tea ceremony” because it is not a translation of any existing Japanese term, nor does it capture the breadth of the practice. The term “tea culture” or even simply “tea” is now preferred as it is more encompassing of the various art forms included within chanoyu.

Athens—Greece’s deepest wounds are not the ones appearing on the world’s television screens. It’s not the neo-Nazi thugs ambushing migrants, hooded youths clashing with police, or the spreading decay of crumbling buildings and abandoned stores. The greater damage lies beneath the surface. It’s the silent despair of pensioners who cannot pay their utility bills but try to support younger, unemployed family members; the many Greeks who, by losing their jobs, lose their social security and are forced to rely on charity for food and health care. Just three years ago, our society was proud to take care of its citizens, immigrants, and visitors. Everyone was on the national health plan; even injured tourists received full treatment with no charge and no questions asked. Now, the safety net has been withdrawn—just as we need it most.It is not just the sacrifice of lower incomes and higher taxes, the hunger, and the fear that debilitate Greece. Above all, the greatest insecurity stems from the dawning realization that three years into the biggest bailout in history, the country is still not taking the necessary steps to escape the crisis. Each installment of borrowed funds is preceded by a crippling negotiation within the three-party coalition ruling Greece, further negotiations with our creditors and more virulent attacks on the reform process from extremists on the left and right. Each day is worse than the previous, with even healthy companies running out of funds as banks wait for emergency recapitalization. Hospitals struggle to do more with fewer funds. In the end, the only certainty left is of more upheaval as the country slides deeper into recession and despair.The drama playing out in Greece concerns the whole world. This small nation on Europe’s southeastern fringe, with barely 10 million of the European Union’s 500 million people and 2 percent of its GDP, is on the frontline of changes facing a continent that must deal with huge imbalances between its countries and regions. From Washington to China, officials fear that a collapse of Greece could trigger further turmoil in the EU, affecting their own prospects for growth. But it is not only the shockwaves it sends through the global economy that make Greece important. Domestic developments serve as a laboratory for the forces at work and their consequences when a modern society comes under intense economic, social, and political pressure. In the worst case, we will see chaos or dictatorship; in the best, we could work out policies that will ease the greatest dangers faced by individual countries and fortify their collective efforts.Forced to seek a bailout from the EU, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund in 2010 because of huge public debt, Greece’s economy has shrunk by 20 percent over the last five consecutive years of recession. One in four workers is now unemployed. Every day, we see more evidence of how politics and the economy are entangled—how bad politics ruined the economy, how a ruined economy poisoned politics, and how difficult it is for a democracy to find its way when presented only with the choice between the pain of austerity (leading to an unpredictable future) or certain collapse. This raises a host of questions—the answers to which could lead Greece to become a model to lead a troubled Europe out of the financial wilderness. Quite simply, economies are unable to grow when they cannot afford to provide citizens with a decent standard of living, when large numbers of unemployed and aging populations create an ever-greater burden on state treasuries. Efforts to curb debts are only likely to provoke instability that leads to anarchy or authoritarianism. In short, if democracy can first survive, then thrive, in Greece, then it can certainly do so in a host of other nations that face similar challenges.In today’s world, every nation is tied to others (like climbers on a rope that is at once a lifeline and mortal threat), so what happens in one nation can trigger developments elsewhere. This is not only because of the globalized economy, but also (as there are no obvious political solutions to today’s problems) because there is no template for dealing with such problems as those faced by Greece. By observing Greece, with its half-hearted reformers and passionate adherents on the left and right, others can learn from their tactics and mistakes.Greece is at the epicenter of today’s European crisis, but many countries—in Europe and beyond—will likely experience similar upheaval as they try to adapt to a changing world. At the start of the crisis, and for many months, Germany, which calls the shots in today’s Europe, presented Greece as a “unique case”—a country solely responsible for its problems and for its inability to stick to the program that would have extricated it from the morass. The idea was that if Greece became too expensive, too unpredictable, the rest of the euro countries could cast it overboard and sail onward without a heavy conscience and without suffering any consequences themselves.The failure to save Greece, however, sowed doubts about the EU’s own ability to deal with broader core issues. While EU leaders fretted about contagion from Greece’s debt crisis, the greater disease was latent in their inability or unwillingness to see the extent of Europe’s structural problems and take measures to remedy them. Those problems are as responsible for Greece’s mess as its politicians, whose profligacies we are just coming to understand as the crisis plays out. Several eurozone countries are in recession. Ireland and Portugal have joined Greece in taking bailouts; Spain and Cyprus are on the brink of doing so; Italian debt casts a long shadow; even Germany, the EU’s powerhouse, posted an anemic growth of 0.3 percent in the second quarter of 2012. It is difficult to see how Greece—a tiny, “unique case”—wrought so much damage on its own. Though, German officials now describe Ireland, too, as a “special case.”Very simply, the power of the single European currency, and the unprecedented drop in interest rates this brought, allowed individual countries to punch far above their weight, spending as though they were global powers. But none was able to withstand the counterpunch when it came, because the eurozone did not forge a collective response, forcing those embedded in the crisis to deal with their problems with their own resources. Clearly, eurozone members and the IMF have offered Greece help, without which it would have sunk, but only to the extent that they protect their own interests while forcing a woefully unprepared Greece to undergo a revolution of deprivation. In addition, the imbalances caused by the varying tension between national and collective interests in the EU, which first allowed Greece and other small countries to act like big players, has now swung in favor of the fiscally strong, allowing Germany to borrow money for next to nothing and to increase exports because of the weaker euro, thereby papering over its own weaknesses and need for reform.When interest rates or the euro return to more natural levels—or if the euro were to fall apart entirely—Germany will have to deal with the loss of some significant markets in the poorer EU countries, such as Spain, Greece, Portugal, and others, not to mention the broader reality that a stronger currency will make its exports more expensive outside the eurozone. Sixty percent of Germany’s trade is with its EU partners. This will force Germany to confront another tense issue—the need to achieve economic competitiveness abroad while safeguarding social harmony at home. Political tensions in the Netherlands (which along with Germany and Finland are the only eurozone nations retaining a top investment ranking of AAA) are most enlightening. Faced with protests, Dutch officials recently shelved two reforms aimed at reducing spending.Whether rich or poor, no European country will be able to weather the storm on its own, but collective action so far has been short-sighted, haphazard, and hesitant. At the heart of Greece’s problem is its people’s insecurity, as all they once held as constants are changing for the worse. They fear lower incomes and higher costs, health and social security systems under siege, savings in jeopardy, and their peaceful society suddenly wracked by rising crime and vigilantism. For a country that was, broadly speaking, center-left politically, the emergence of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which this year entered Parliament and appears to be gaining support after years of polling barely several thousand votes, has been nothing less than shocking. Golden Dawn, like Islamic militants providing services at a grassroots level in developing societies, has gained in strength by stepping in where the state has collapsed—providing security, food, and the bombastic absolutism craved by those who feel disenfranchised. Their answer to Greece’s problem is to promote themselves as the only “clean” and “patriotic” party, while presenting all their opponents as a single entity that must be swept away—from immigrants to the current political system. “The Greek state is doing absolutely nothing” to protect citizens. “The Greek people have to protect themselves,” declares Ilias Panagiotaros, one of Golden Dawn’s leaders. The party slogan is “Vote Golden Dawn to get rid of the scum,” referring to immigrants, many of whom have been attacked and injured by black-shirted thugs.Private psychiatric clinics, hemodialysis units, and other specialized health services have warned that, with social security funds drying up, they will have to evict their patients into the streets or pass them on to a state health system that is already collapsing from inefficiency, lack of funds, and an overworked staff. In October, the country’s private clinics, which provide psychiatric care to nearly 4,000 patients, warned they would have to discharge their patients if they were not paid money the state has owed them since May. After hasty promises of funding, they suspended their threat. Greeks now outnumber immigrants at soup kitchens. With a public sector hiring freeze and thousands pushed into early retirement (as if moving people from one set of books to another will relieve the state’s burden), many former employees offer to work without pay, so that services won’t collapse. Everyone knows of people who have chosen to stay at their jobs, even without being paid, rather than have nothing to do. Private health care workers, who have not been paid since May, borrow from friends and family members and hold off on paying debts. Retired professors regularly help out colleagues with coaching and evaluating papers. Volunteers staff underground clinics that help people with donated medicines. The demand has become acute, as people who have been unemployed for more than two years lose their health care benefits.Unemployment was at 24.4 percent in August, second only to Spain’s 25.1 percent. With 55.4 percent of Greeks under 25 without jobs, youths must choose between poverty, living off their parents’ dwindling resources, or emigrating. The minimum monthly salary of €751 ($967) has been cut to €586 ($758). Overall, wage cuts in the past three years have erased the 33 percent increase achieved between 1995 and 2009. Unemployment benefits are €360 ($464) per month, for up to a year. Consider that more than half of each active worker’s salary goes toward taxes and social security, and it is easy to see why there is so much anger at a system that has collapsed under decades of mismanagement.The crisis has been devastating not only for individuals, but also for the private businesses that are expected, one day, to lead the recovery. The unemployed are all from the private sector, though the public sector, too, has shrunk by some 100,000 jobs since 2009, mainly through retirement. Banks, which have suffered from a lack of liquidity since the international crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, have sunk under the weight of losses from debt restructuring. With the issue of Greece’s euro membership still unresolved, with each tranche of the bailout delayed, banks have failed to receive the recapitalization funding they so desperately need. For three years, businesses have been bled dry through the inability to raise capital, higher taxes (often retroactively imposed), lower turnover, and the inability to import materials without cash, while the government withholds some €7 billion in outstanding payments. So it’s hardly surprising that even healthy businesses have been devastated. Before the 2012 elections, when it appeared possible that an extreme left-wing party might gain power and renege on the bailout agreement, €70 billion were withdrawn from bank accounts. The €160 billion that remained are testament to a large number of Greeks’ stubborn hope that the country will remain in the eurozone.For Greeks, the crisis is not just economic. It is a crisis of personal and national identity. As a colleague says, “I never thought that at 39 I would feel like this, like my life is on hold. I can’t plan anything. I can’t do anything. I don’t spend, even to put a frame around a poster, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. We can’t even think about having children.”Greeks are keenly aware that what they thought of as a tolerant, progressive society is no longer something to be taken for granted. The social tensions, the image that has been cultivated abroad of a nation of spendthrifts who refuse to implement unpleasant reforms, and the rise of an insurgent racist and fascist movement are all at odds with the how Greeks once saw themselves in the world. After a long, sweet sleep in the arms of the European Union, which Greece joined in 1981, and the cheap credit brought by being part of the common currency after 2002, Greeks have awakened to a frightening reality that has shaken the very foundations of their world.These foundations have been decades in the making. After the Cold War ended in 1989, the rest of the world may have moved on, adapting to the challenges of a new era, but the Greeks seemed stuck in 1974, their own year of monumental change when the ruling right-wing military junta collapsed and Greece returned to its roots as a democracy. The Greek people never forgot that they stood resolutely by their Western allies in World War II and paid the price with a brutal occupation by German, Italian, and Bulgarian forces. This was followed by a civil war of merciless barbarism between right-wing government forces (backed first by Britain and then by the United States) and the Communist forces that had borne the brunt of resistance to the Nazis. The government forces won in 1949, establishing a repressive, fragile right-wing state that was itself overthrown by an even more brutal right-wing military dictatorship in 1967. The junta collapsed in 1974 after its venality and incompetence triggered Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus and the occupation of the northern third of the island republic. As a NATO member, Greece had expected its allies, including the United States, to support it against the aggression of fellow NATO member Turkey. This expectation was dashed, reinforcing the deeply held belief that great powers toyed with Greece at their pleasure.So in 1981, when Greece joined the European Economic Community as its 10th member, it saw itself taking a huge step toward national emancipation. As a member of perhaps history’s greatest experiment to create a political and economic power out of the enthusiastic participation of democratic nations, Greece could, for the first time, look forward to the rule of to its from the fear of and to from being a of European Greece’s democratic and its people feel that they were now After the poverty, and national that had the nation since its as a modern state in after a long war of from the Greeks unprecedented and as part of the They could be for that their long struggle was the that Greece within the EU set in today’s EU with a political revolution in Greece, as saw the of the country’s first left-wing an and party, the to power with the of and for the though to take Greece out of evict military and to the then European Economic Greece in NATO and But its political on a of and and now Greeks remain in a state of against the of 1974, with the invasion of Cyprus and the fall of the an and that and at many including the public and the system. the of Greeks an to the It a system of social benefits and from the losing of the civil war and their allowing civil as a on and a a member of NATO and the developments were by the of a lack of an in the number of public sector jobs in for votes, and a that every could have it as long as it even as the EU a for reform and to a great Greece the with those adapting to EU funds and Greek could every it without to the of the the forcing some companies to and the in the of in was a The Italian moved its to after a long to the of of the Greek left a years as part of its global after the fall of the the country that had percent of the it now With by their with the ruling party, with easy money from the EU, through and Greek and the country into the Greeks themselves with an economy in and a political system of or insurgent extremists from the left and right. This has only the of with banks their losses in banks and and out Greece’s biggest has moved from Greece to while has left for companies and unpredictable in is where we are and that is why the is so for many For the first time, we are facing an who will not and our own and political system are still in the past and are to the We from occupation an economic crisis that will The are and they have left with a huge to pay, while our our politics, and our economy are in no to deal with the This of insecurity has over the past year in the face of questions over Greece will remain in the eurozone. In this has been tied to an even more Greece be able to remain part of the European and then first questions in with a plan to over billion of Greece’s debt, with an loss of percent for private set off a crisis of in the more fragile eurozone nations, up the of in Spain and to the of euro by forcing to take a on a euro country’s debt, European then more as they now to the common currency against even greater The of EU leaders and of the European Central is by the way they have their own there was the EU to banks from the EU rather than another billion the debt of that already fragile there was the that it will it to support eurozone including a of if they to implement remained as to be by all They failed to of the to the EU’s of this to the very it or the of in its to increase with the of Greece’s every the euro crisis the EU’s has been to the get and then to This monumental stems from the that the nation are still on the of each what is for itself and not for the most of the crisis so far has been the need to a plan for the that will a to take the The steps aimed at and debt are in the but if they are not and some will be in so much that they will not be This is why Greece, being the for current an for the problem that Greece is how to out reforms that will make its economy more intense from our creditors and with the government the we are within a billion of the however, is by the of political a political system that has been by its of the country can implement austerity and reforms under and in the face of virulent from forces. For the the is out on Greece will be able to implement reforms that will it even a of the it to its within the European system. The three-party coalition ruling Greece must face public anger that benefits those political forces on or the reform It is not to that Greeks what they get because they did not reforms when they still had the We are dealing with an EU member facing the of that any other country might face when its debts cut at the foundations of its way to deal with this is to a of security citizens. the greatest of years has been the of any on Greek were and months, where it seemed very likely that Greece would be forced to drop out of the which would the of in Greek a program of with by the a that would have to the collapse of banks and the In other the could have been is the model for the economic growth cannot be on to the must be on political who are being to with have to receive something in it is political or the that they will not find themselves on the In Greece’s case, the EU, and Greece’s political have an to make that Greece will remain part of the European and its common Greeks it is in their interests to remain part of the This would certainly be if the austerity and reform process were to be In Greece, three years into the crisis, even the most has to where the program is The country is in its year of a recession deeper than people have their jobs since a country of 10 million and a work force of after the and in part to the of the European the European Central Bank, and the IMF the of the public debt, which was percent of in 2009, was at percent of this year. The of is also in where higher and taxes have to because of wage and a drop in economic more the for early and ability to pay for private care have to put a huge weight on the state health and social security systems at a when are Greece’s are with only percent of the than Greece immigrants and a that out of 10 people would like to with lower incomes are forced to support an economy that not to support are no that Greeks paying into the system will receive health and benefits when they need them. At every Greece the is where Greek citizens need to be that the EU is taking care of their most through the EU were and by a European this could social in the that people and businesses would no longer try to their way out of paying and were followed by a most by a health and social security then the citizens of every EU member state could be the minimum necessary to lead a decent life without fear of the a system would also the in Greece’s economy and where some social security than others, where at the of the the that Greece’s are the EU’s would and from having to of from the countries that it such security at a level of the most would for much of Greece’s economic pain and would its political a that is now being a in which to its have been in for decades because of the by a political that its power on providing rather than and The Greek people need a of to that those who on them taxes or taking will never do so They need to they are in their own country and in the than years ago, the reformers who the way toward the of democracy in that the only way to achieve social harmony was through and Those in Greece, will help Europe find its way toward a the and all its