Confrontational Politics Research Articles

All eyes on the armourer

All eyes on the armourer

Women and irrigation in highland Peru

Abstract Women remain invisible in Peruvian highland irrigation despite their increasing participation in other aspects of political life. Despite norms that define irrigation as men's work, women irrigate crops and contribute labor to system surveillance and maintenance. Women who work in irrigation tend to be members of poor, smallholder households and single heads of households. Their labor contributions are not matched by participation in system management, because, with the bureaucratic transition in highland irrigation, the critical task is no longer controlling water per se, but gaining and controlling access to external resources and government assistance. Interactions with the male‐dominated irrigation bureaucracy are dominated by the paternalistic politics of normalcy, rather than the open, confrontational politics of crisis. With token exceptions, women are informally excluded from these interactions or co‐opted into peripheral roles as users of domestic water.

Estimates and public policy: The politics of numbers

Abstract Estimates of the number of homeless persons in the United States are frequently said to range from 250,000 to three million. In fact, the latter number is an invalid guesstimate that developed staying power for political reasons. National estimates of homeless persons based on explainable methodologies actually range from 230,000 to 736,000, with the most likely estimates around the half‐million mark. Despite the confrontational politics surrounding the numbers issue in the 1980s, a consensus is developing in the 1990s among private groups, including some major advocacy organizations, and all levels of government regarding policy direction in assistance programs for the homeless. There is widespread recognition that the goal should be to end homelessness, not simply to provide emergency assistance. Permanent housing solutions for special populations are needed in the context of renewed efforts to combat poverty. In the public debate about the policy implications of divergent national estimates of...

The History and Theology of Soka Gakkai: A Japanese New Religion. By Daniel Metraux. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988. viii, 193 pp.

The Soka Gakkai, with 10 million members, is seen as a critically important force in Japan and remains the biggest of Japan's new religions. Here, the author outlines the eschatological worldview of the Soka Gakkai and gives an analysis of its American branch. The text gives a picture of Soka Gakkai as a rather `mature' or mellow religion grown older, both in membership and in institutional character. The religion is seen to have given up the rather aggressive proselytizing style and confrontational politics that made it notorious in Japan and among [Soka Gokkai] `bashers' in the West.

Modernization Reappraised: The Kentucky Mountains Revisited and Confrontational Politics Reassessed

Twelve years ago I lived for awhile in an eastern Kentucky coal town completing my doctoral research and laying the groundwork for a study of the attitudes of local elites to economic and social change in the area. 1 In the intervening years there has been a revolution in the social science world out of which that research came, and yet the problems in deciding upon and bringing about deliberate social change today seem curiously familiar and no less intractable. 2 An opportunity presents itself to reflect upon what has been learned or unlearned and to take stock of the ways of thinking which have prevailed or are being abandoned. Initially conceived as a reaction to the article by Berman in this issue, my article is intended to sketch out a position that undoubtedly needs more detailed development and reference. Although it is concerned with the recent history of certain ideas, its primary intent is not epistemological; it is hoped that it can help to shed some light on such vital questions as the following: Is our new selection of concepts and methodologies more fruitful than the old? What changes have there been in the kinds of values and objectives guiding economic and social change in less developed regions or societies? Has there been a shift in how we perceive the role and responsibilities of the social scientist in the study of society and in the implementation of deliberate social change?