Citizens Of America Research Articles

Two nations in three worlds? Images of the US and China in ethnic, homeland, and host media

This study investigates disparities in the portrayals of US and China images across ethnic media, homeland media, and host media that are serving the Chinese migrants in the United States. A quantitative content analysis of 156 news articles was conducted. Results reveal that ethnic media share more similarities with homeland media than with host media, which adds empirical explanations to ethnic and homeland media’s commonalities in retaining migrants’ ethnic identity. This also signals a pervasive impact of homeland news organizations on overseas ethnic media – although ethnic media are registered by US citizens or permanent citizens in America, they are actually owned or operated by Chinese news companies. As a result, ethnic media may have followed the same journalistic practices as their counterpart agencies from China. Implications of these findings for public opinion are also discussed.

THE POSTCOLONIAL IMMIGRANT IDENTITES IN JHUMPA LAHIRI'S NOVEL, THE NAMESAKE

The post-colonial period is a time when colonial states secretly continued their colonial policies in different ways after World War II. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is a novel about the challenges and difficulties of a Bengali couple who travel to the United States to build a life. The novel deals with the concepts of cultural identity, rootlessness, tradition, and family expectations in a straightforward style. Memory, nostalgia, loss, and longing are some of the themes addressed in this novel. Ashoke and Ashima, first generation immigrants, come to the U.S. hoping for a better life, but the past haunts them like a shadow, reminding them of their origins. On the other hand, unlike them, the children of this family cannot form ties with India, but they are not accepted as citizens of America, to which they want to belong. In other words, the identity crisis in the novel manifests itself in different ways in the first and second generation immigrants. The purpose of this article is to examine the complicated cultural interactions and identity crises as presented in modern cultural discourse. This essay is an attempt to examine the attractions of the American way of life as well as the tug of war between two separate cultures through a comparative lens. In addition, this essay attempts to address the problems of identity and cultural conflict faced by first and second generation immigrants.

The effects of Donald Trump

ABSTRACT What effect did Donald Trump have within and beyond America? This article assesses the policy impact of the President using the new layered framework for understanding the impact of political leaders, which considers their effect on the connected layers of societal structures, political institutions and policy. Firstly, the article extends the framework with a new typology of change. Secondly, it draws from the empirical articles in this volume to map his effects under the new typology and the layered approach. Trump is found to have largely acted as an accelerant for already existing causal processes in society, rather than providing a radical break with past politics in many areas. By undermining democratic institutions and encouraging hyper-partisanship within political institutions, for example, he was strengthening prevailing causal forces rather than constructing new forces. However, there were some more substantial effects such as the reversal of progress towards racial equality. In the layer of policy, he crucially failed to slow or reverse destructive pressures on the economy and public health or even fulfil major campaign promises on healthcare. Overall, Trump illustrates neither the strength nor weakness of the office of presidency, but instead the dangers of poor political leadership to citizens in America and beyond, especially in times of crisis.

Trump’s Digital Rhetoric of Hate: The Use of Enthymemes in Creating Division

Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric is a common topic among scholars and citizens of America and the World. Trump’s ability to connect with his followers through Twitter created a different environment than what past politicians encountered due to the unique affordances of social media and the negative attributes of Twitter. Trump’s communication style combined with the rhetorical device of the enthymeme in his tweets conveyed a range of bigoted ideologies, from misogyny to racism to classicism. This paper examines how Donald Trump’s tweets actively promote a hateful divide between Americans by investigating how enthymemes in his tweets are used, the ideographs contained within these enthymemes, the role Twitter’s attributes play, and how rhetor and audience create these understandings together. This analysis explicates the power of Trump’s hateful digital rhetoric and how his continued influence presents a clear and present danger to American democracy.

From the black church basement to the public pavement: Grassroots alliances, the sunday school, organized youth activism, and a public theology of education

This article examines the efforts of Sunday school attendees to challenge racism in America during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Participants formed alliances with nonreligious Black activist movements such as the Southern Youth Negro Congress and the Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to address issues that impacted African-American youth and adults as a result of racism and White supremacy while fighting for social, political, and economy equality and status as first-class citizens in America.

Syrian Refugees and Americans: Perceptions, Attitudes and Insights

In recent years, the United States (US) has seen an influx of refugees from the Syrian Crisis, highlighted by a public declaration from then President Obama that 10,000 refugees would be admitted. National surveys suggested that roughly half of US citizens were uncomfortable with this decision. This study serves as an extension of these previous surveys by further elucidating the underlying causes of this discomfort. As such, this study explores Americans’ perceptions of Syrian refugee resettlement as well as Syrians’ perceptions of America using face to face interviews and content analysis. Analyses revealed conflicting meanings of immigration for both Syrians and Americans as well as co-occurring compassion and fear directed towards Syrian refugees. In addition, Syrian refugees perceived their American resettlement as an opportunity for engagement with society and to contribute socially and economically, while also noting their marginalization and stigmatization in their transitional countries. Americans expressed a lack of understanding of the legal status of Syrian refugees, often equating them with undocumented and illegal migrants. Americans held oppositional attitudes towards Syrian refugees, expressing both empathy towards and fear of terrorism. This study extends the literature on immigration through a more dynamic exploration of attitudes of both refugees and citizens in America, capitalizing on the distinct advantages of qualitative approaches.

Strategic citizens of America: transnational inequalities and transformation of citizenship

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the process whereby ‘natural' citizens of one country mobilize their resources so that their children receive by birthright, the citizenship of a rich liberal democracy. Utilizing the case of Turkish upper classes, who give birth in the USA in order to benefit from the jus soli principle, we trace the emergence of new inequalities at the intersection of multiple citizenship regimes. We show that, by mobilizing resources in markets of health care, travel, and real estate, those with means can acquire US citizenship for their children in expectation of future benefits. Because they are able to access ‘valuable' citizenships, these actors can strategically combine privileges within nation states with inequalities between citizenship regimes at the global level for the children. Their differential access to citizenship enhances the gate-keeping functions of citizenship. Based on these observations, we draw an analogy between citizenship and property regimes, understood broadly.

Religious Education and the Challenge of Pluralism

This is an edited volume rich in analysis and written with authority. Seligman's book deals with difference and how societies live with it. The scholars present a nuanced account of present-day phenomenon of religious and cultural diversity through country and continental cases studies: “Teaching Religion in the European Union” (Silvio Ferrari); “Religion and Ethical Education in Divided Societies: The Case of Cyprus” (Dilek Latif); “Teaching Religion in Bulgarian schools: Historical Experience and Post-Atheist Developments” (Daniela Kalkandjieva); “The Vanishing State: Religious Education and Intolerance in French Jewish Schools” (Kimberley A. Arkin); “The Crisis of Liberal Citizenship: Religion and Education in Israel” (Schlomo Fischer); “Secularism(s), Islam, and Education in Turkey: Is E Pluribus Unum Possible?” (Ahmet T. Kuru); “Walking the Tightrope: Prospects for Civil Education and Multiculturalism in ‘Ketuanon Melayu’ Malaysia” (Joseph Chinyong Liow); “Educating Citizens in America: The Paradoxes of Difference and Democracy” (Ashley Rogers Berner and James Davison Hunter). Nicely sandwiched between the European and American continental overviews are case studies of lesser studied societies. Of course there could be more exemplars: we have Israel but no Palestine, Turkey but no Syria, and perhaps above all, Bulgaria but no Russia. Yet among the book's many qualities is its power to get the reader thinking about what those gaps are, perhaps even why such gaps exist in the literature. Here we have templates of historical, political, and religious analysis that provide not only an ethnographic wealth of detail but also the methodological tools for further investigation.

Global Force for Branding: A Study of Attitudes, Intentions, the Military, and the Wars Overseas

Through the years, the United States Armed Forces has advertized to the citizens of America in times of peace and war. The present study explores the attitudes and intentions regarding the military by two groups of study participants during the United States’ active engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. One group of participants viewed a military ad and one group was asked to recall a military ad. Mediation analysis revealed partially mediated relationships among attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the military (where the military has “brand” characteristics), and the discussion of one's own intention to enlist in the armed forces as well as one's intention to recommend enlisting to friends and family. Post hoc analysis indicated that sex has a strong direct effect on enlistment discussion intentions. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Dead Newspapers and Citizens’ Civic Engagement

Using data from the 2008 and 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the United States Census Bureau, this article assesses the year-over-year change in the civic engagement of citizens in America's largest metropolitan areas. Of special interest are Denver and Seattle, where the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed during the intervening year. The data from the CPS indicate that civic engagement in Seattle and Denver dropped significantly from 2008 to 2009—a decline that is not consistently replicated over the same time period in other major American cities that did not lose a newspaper. The analysis suggests that this decline may plausibly be attributed to the newspaper closures in Seattle and Denver. This short-term negative effect is concerning, and whether it lasts warrants future attention.

Writing Home: Domestic Space, Narrative Production, and the Homeland in Roth’s American Pastoral

On 18, 2002, as part of Lannan Foundations literary awards ceremony, author and activist Arundhati Roy delivered a moving speech entitled Come September which addressed America's relationship global terrorism and our country's involvement in projects of political violence in decades leading up 9/11. Adopting a stance that clearly challenged narratives of America's political innocence, Roy suggested that 9/11 opened Americans' eyes political violence as a very real symptom of globalization. With her speech, she sought to share grief of history. To thin mists a little. To say citizens of America, in gentlest, most human way: 'Welcome World.' Whether they have become more savvy critics of global politics as a result of 9/11 is unclear, but, as Roy points out, event forced Americans consider country within a global community, a community with complex economic, religious, and social dimensions, each equally powerful and capable of producing violence. As a consequence of 9/11 and of this changing perception of America's position in a global community, debates on national security gained newfound urgency as Americans sought secure homeland--both materially and rhetorically--against threat of other. Underlying these impulses protect American is a deeply rooted attachment domestic space. From creation of sprawling Department of Homeland Security in November of 2002 increasingly heated debates over illegal immigration and tightening of borders, Americans--contrary Roy's hopes--have become even more exclusionary, opting define America as a only those who have a legitimate claim on it, whatever that might mean. Our attachment domestic space as predominant model for understanding homeland and front is not particularly surprising, as domestic space on its most basic level suggests stability and protection, two concepts integral nationhood. Less obvious is how domestic space is intertwined with narrative, and how political narratives produced by state embed themselves in our everyday lives. Considering metonymic relationship between the and the nation, it is worth examining how our negotiation of former bears upon our construction of latter. The anxieties over security that continue pervade American national consciousness in many ways emerge from processes of narrativization inherent in constructions of domestic space. Philip Roth's American Pastoral, published in 1997, offers a prescient critique of security, suggesting that rhetorical foundations of security state existed in latent forms well before attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon. Roth's novel describes a bourgeois fantasy of security and domesticity embodied in and articulated through trope of house, and its implicit commentary on home and demonstrates that, no matter how exhaustively we fortify our domestic spaces, political will always intervene and will often do so violently. (1) Narratives of political innocence and American exceptionalism, integral American notions of domesticity, both function as defense mechanisms housed in and protected by home and homeland. Although American Pastoral focuses on politics of Vietnam War era, novel's narrative structure, which situates Nathan Zuckerman, in 1995, as source of narrative invention, suggests that Roth is as much concerned with critiquing politics of nineties as he is politics of sixties. Through Zuckerman's narration, Roth implies that narrative violence--that is, attempts challenge expectations of conventional narrative by means of radical formal experiments--functions like an act of domestic terrorism: both seek dismantle a political infrastructure that sustains dominant discourses of power. …

Game Changer

Game Changer

Critically Analyse Sovereignty and Independent Political Society and Locate Sovereign in Indian Legal System

According to Austin sovereign is the person who has the last word in a particular connection. But the issue is that how can one determine the 'highest authority' in a democratic country like India; to identify the strongest power would involve an investigation of a lot of legal as well as well extra legal forces which determine how a state shall operate. ... At the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects...with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty. (CHISHOLM v. GEORGIA (US) 2 Dall 419, 454, 1 L Ed 440, 455 @DALL 1793 pp. 471-472)

Keeping Our Eye on the Ball: The American Society of Preventive Oncology in 2009

A common adage among those who play games that involve balls-baseball, for example-is that one must keep one's eye on the ball. The baseball player attempting to catch a grounder or fly ball must watch the ball-where it has been, where it is-into his or her glove; the player who diverts his or her

Elephant Pipes and Israelite Tablets: the controversy between the United States Bureau of Ethnography and the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences

The Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences, founded in 1867, is a classic example of the small urban-based associations that characterized the democratic spread of knowledge throughout the United States in the post-Civil War era. Among their missions was to promote the gospel of scientific truth among the citizens of America. Members facilitated research, sponsored lectures and introduced responsible data collection. They sought to turn relic hunters and ‘arrow head’ collectors into serious archaeologists (C. E. Putnam 1885: 35–36) who would ‘share their wealth’. In the words of W. H. Pratt, one of the four founders: ‘Personal proprietorship is rather antagonistic to a liberal public spirit and true interest in the increase and diffusion of knowledge’ (McDonald 1992: 4). Therefore, the establishment of a museum became one of their missions.

The Politics of Consumption/The Consumption of Politics

As consumer culture pervades the social life of citizens in America and Europe, it becomes increasingly important to clarify the relationship between consumption and citizenship. With this in mind, faculty and students at the University of Wisconsin organized a conference titled “The Politics of Consumption/The Consumption of Politics.” Held in October 2006, the meeting provided a forum for leading scholars to discuss the interplay of markets, media, politics, and the citizen-consumer. Revised and expanded versions of the papers they presented are collected in this volume with the goal of advancing this emerging area of inquiry. It is our hope that the essays and research papers we have collected here help define the next wave of theory building and research inquiry on the intersections of consumer culture, civic culture, and mass culture.

Gross Domestic Product is Directly Proportianal to the Global Poverty Syndrome

GDP α GPS where neurosis is directly proportional to poverty (as a single factor of a multi-dimensional relationship). In the global economy, it is evident that the effects of poverty in one area of the world is felt in other regions. For example, if the issues of poverty in volatile areas in the 'Middle East' are not addressed by the technologically advanced nations, the American Government, hypothetically speaking, may continue designing and manufacturing useless weaponry that are of absolutely no value to the citizens of America. When highly precious labor is expended on design, manufacture, and deployment of weaponry to stablize other poverty stricken nations, due to gross neglect of the incompentence of previous world leaders, the the design and manufacture of exportable consumables is diminished. Hence the Gross Domestic Product of America decreases! The average income per capita falls, and the mental state of American citizens deteriorates!

Transnational Migrants, Cultural Citizenship, and the Politics of Language in California

In this article, the authors explore, through the notions of cultural citizenship, how newly arrived immigrant students in California seek to carve out social space. They argue that students in Santa Ana, California, both embrace and challenge the prevailing ideologies on language embedded in Proposition 227, the so-called "English for the Children" initiative. Students here are at least moderately successful in exploiting the "translocality " of cities like Santa Ana to become polyglot citizens in America.

Liberalism, Parental Rights, Pupils’ Autonomy and Education

Summary Liberals, from Mill to Rawls see personal autonomy as paramount in civil society. They see human dignity to consist essentially in personal autonomy, that is, ‘in the ability of each person to determine for himself or herself a view of the good life’ (Taylor, C. (1992) p. 27). Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” p. 57 (Princeton, Princeton University Press). This emphasis on personal autonomy underlies much of liberal emphasis on freedom of conscience, justice, rights and fairness. Its core thesis is that a just society seeks not to promote any particular view of the good life, but enables its citizens to pursue their own ends consistent with a similar liberty for all others. Yet, when some citizens in America attempted to pursue their own view of the good life, they came up against head‐on conflict with the liberal state. These groups saw civic education with its emphasis on individual choice, on reflecting and weighing of alternative viewpoints and on personal autonomy, as threatening to their way of life and to their fundamental religious beliefs, and consequently they challenged the state in the courts. What ensued raised profound educational problems for educating children, parental rights, and the right of the State in a liberal democratic society, which are discussed in this paper.

Poisoning the Ivy: The Seven Deadly Sins and Other Vices of Higher Education in America

This text discusses the attitudinal and behavioural differences between government employees, bureaucrats and other citizens in America. Focusing on implications for government spending and for growth in the size of the public sector, it analyses the bureau voting model of government growth.