Economic Injustice Research Articles

Matthew Gandy and Alimuddin Zumla (eds), The return of the white plague: global poverty and the ‘new’ tuberculosis, London and New York, Verso, 2003, pp. vi, 330, £25.00 (hardback 1-85984-669-6).

Tuberculosis is now acknowledged as a global health catastrophe. A third of the world's population are infected with the bacillus; eight million people develop active tuberculosis every year; and some two million die. With co-infection with HIV and the emergence of drug-resistant strains that have led in turn to the adoption of the WHO Directly Observed Therapy, Shortcourse (DOTS) strategy, tuberculosis has “apparently made a resurgence almost everywhere in the world” (p. 100). This new book, edited by Matthew Gandy and Alimuddin Zumla, aims to provide an international survey of the historical, social, political and medical aspects of the crisis. Gandy and Zumla argue that the idea that infectious disease had been defeated, prevalent in the 1950s, has been proved to be wrong. With hindsight, it is now clear that public health professionals had too short a time horizon; looked only at people; played little attention to evolution and ecology; and were over-optimistic about development. Gandy and Zumla's overall argument is that the resurgence of tuberculosis is a telling indictment of the failure of global political and economic institutions to improve the lives of ordinary people. The book is organized in three sections. The first deals with historical and conceptual dimensions to the impact of tuberculosis on human societies, tracing the social and political context for its control, and exploring the roles of race, gender, and class. This includes historical studies; the connections between immigration, race, and geographies of difference; the links between tuberculosis and gender; and its association with war. The second section focuses on the “new” tuberculosis pandemic, including the impact of HIV infection and the spread of drug-resistant strains, not only in London, New York, and the former Soviet Union, but in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries. The third section explores issues around advocacy and action, looking at current understanding of tuberculosis and the implications of interdisciplinary, scientific, and ethical approaches for health policy. Thought-provoking and wide-ranging, it is not possible to do justice to the contents in the space available here. Among the highlights are Nick King's forensic dissection of essentialist and anti-essentialist views of disease. King argues that attention was focused on “the bodies of people crossing international borders” (p. 46), and in contrast the causal roles of inadequate health care and social and economic injustice were underplayed. The studies of New York and London link the tuberculosis epidemic to wider factors of “de-development”, that included internal migration and emigration, changes in housing, and homelessness, and they emphasize the need to deal with the “full spectrum of determinants” (p. 149). The chapter on Haiti and Peru contains striking portraits of the impact of tuberculosis on two families, showing its effects on health and family life, and linking this with access to appropriate treatment. The tuberculosis epidemic in Russian prisons in the mid-1990s showed how systems for tuberculosis control in the former Soviet Union were based on models from an earlier age, and also highlighted conflicts between the imperatives of public health and criminal justice. And an important chapter on interdisciplinary approaches shows the potential value of integrating the social sciences into operational research on tuberculosis control. Readers of this journal will find the historical dimensions of this story rather limited, and some of the arguments familiar from earlier secondary work. Similarly there is some repetition between the different chapters, for example, on the costs of treating multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. But this is a remarkably consistent and strong collection, with a powerful political message, and illuminating cross-national perspectives. Gandy and Zumla argue that the history of tuberculosis is one of medical failure, with the key question being why available means of treatment and control have not been more widely applied. They suggest that, while vaccines may become a new “magic bullet”, reliance cannot be placed on biomedical innovations alone. Gandy and Zumla conclude that “the failure to control TB worldwide is a direct consequence both of poor political leadership and of the burden of poverty borne by the great majority of its sufferers” (p. 241). Overall this is an important book that will be essential reading for all those—academics, policy-makers, medical personnel, students—interested in tuberculosis and global poverty.

Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. By John D'Emilio. (New York: Free Press, 2003. viii, 568 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-684-82780-8.)

In the recent biographies by Jervis Anderson and Daniel Levine, and in Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer's documentary film ther Outsider02), Bayard Rustin, major adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. during and after the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956 and the prime organizer of the March on Washington in August 1963, has also been revealed as a leader in the pacifist movement and a major proponent of nonviolent direct action protest to challenge war, militarism, racism, and social and economic injustice in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In Lost Prophet, John D'Emilio chronicles Rustin's domestic and international political exploits, but, rather than viewing him as a black social activist who happened to be gay in an era characterized by blatant homophobia and legalized repression, D'Emilio presents Rustin as a Christian man who happened to be gay and of African descent but who also was committed to the advancement of human rights globally.

Conflict and peace building in West Africa: the role of civil society and the African Union

The paper examines the problem of conflicts and the task of peace building in West Africa explicating the role of civil society and the African Union in that process. It argues that there is an inverse relationship between the causes of conflicts and the challenge of peace building in the sub‐region. The crisis of governance, which manifests in the problems of authoritarian rule, statism, identity and citizenship, minority agitation, economic and social injustice are key elements in the aetiology of conflicts, which have to be gradually deconstructed for meaningful peace building to take place in the sub‐region.

PREVENTION AND INSURANCE OF CONFLICT AND TERRORISM: ISSUES AND EVIDENCE FOR LATIN AMERICA

Political violence, conflict, terrorism cause severe dislocation to societies, often lead to losses of human lives and destroy economic assets. The causes of terrorism and conflict are very complex, often related to grievances associated with perceived social and economic injustices, the quest for political power and ethnic or religious motivations. The prevention of conflict and terrorism (C-T hereafter) is a very complex task that involves a combination of resources, intelligence capacities, institutional reforms that foster a culture of dialogue and peaceful resolution of conflict. Ultimately, economic progress and development are essential for peace and social stability.

Buried in mud, digging for gold.

CAPTURED IN THIS DRAMATIC 1986 photograph, some 50 000 workers toil in the Serra Pelada open-top gold mine in the Amazon region of Brazil. The garimpeiros, or diggers, scratch through the soil at the bottom of the open pit, fill it into sacks each weighing between 65 and 130 pounds, and then carry the sacks up some 1300 feet of wood and rope ladders to the top of the mine, where it is sifted for gold. Because they work in mud, the gold diggers are called “mud hogs.”1(19) The workers are paid an average of 20 cents for digging and carrying each sack of soil—with a bonus if gold is discovered. As recently as 1994, there were an estimated 400 000 garimpeiros working in some 2000 active garimpos (artisanal mines) in Brazil, which has been a leading producer of gold and diamonds since the early 18th century.2 The average annual income of the garimpeiros is $2000. Because of high unemployment rates for unskilled labor, the supply of workers is unending. The photographer, Sebastiao Salgado, was born in Brazil in 1944. He studied economics in Sao Paulo and Paris and, after earning his PhD in 1968, worked as an economist trying to aid development in the Third World. During a trip to Africa, he decided that he could convey the harsh lives and human courage of the people more vividly by photographs than through his economic reports. He became a photographer, and has since won more than 50 international awards for his work. This image was part of a large project to document manual labor throughout the world. Salgado insists that his photographs are to be regarded as journalism, not art. His “militant photography” compellingly, and with a sad tenderness, depicts human and economic injustice while always respecting the innate dignity of the workers.3

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life--and death--in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other. Farmer shows that the same social forces that give rise to epidemic diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis also sculpt risk for human rights violations. He illustrates the ways that racism and gender inequality in the United States are embodied as disease and death. Yet this book is far from a hopeless inventory of abuse. Farmer's disturbing examples are linked to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies will develop in tandem with a more informed sense of social justice. Otherwise, he concludes, we will be guilty of managing social inequality rather than addressing structural violence. Farmer's urgent plea to think about human rights in the context of global public health and to consider critical issues of quality and access for the world's poor should be of fundamental concern to a world characterized by the bizarre proximity of surfeit and suffering.

Pulled Up Short: Challenges for Education

I looked at my Daniel when he was four years old, and I said to myself, How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul? How will I teach this mind to understand pain? How will I teach it to want to take on another person’s suffering? That pain should be a focus for education is not a new idea. Maxine Greene writes: “Children and young persons inhabit a world of fearful moral uncertainty, a world in which it appears that almost nothing can be done to reduce suffering, contain massacres, and protect human rights.” Educators therefore must teach individuals “to strain toward conceptions of a better order of things...what ought to be.” Realizing Greene’s vision, teachers can provide students opportunities to develop the skills, judgments, and dispositions necessary to alleviate suffering caused by social, political, and economic injustice. On this view, pain is a legitimate educational concern because it represents the kind of experience individuals can and should learn to prevent and overcome.

Authoring Social Responsibility

To better understand how researchers author social responsibility, the authors closely examined the “privileged” language in Mitchell Duneier’s and Carol Stack’s ethnographic texts and the ways that they transformed their positions without decentering the voices of those living in poor communities. The authors then describe how these texts consider a new ethnographic sensibility for economic injustice that forces ethnographers to assume responsibilities for intersecting social class with all other oppressive structures. This ethnographic sensibility involves ethnographers writing texts that broaden and transform standpoints of economically privileged persons living and working in our local communities. That is, when ethnographers position their texts from a social class standpoint, they automatically change the dimensions of how individuals interrupt and explain race, gender, and other social injustices. The authors propose that to better understand hierarchical structures that dominate society in today’s world, ethnographers must responsibly position their texts from this standpoint. Specifically, the language of the text visibly indicates the ethnographers understood (a) that they entered a field to work with their participants to transform public consciousness, (b) how to participate in an environment where people live on the social sidelines, and (c) their responsibility in writing a reflexive text from an antihegemonic standpoint that identifies the strengths and struggles of the participants.

Beyond Neoliberal Globalization

Globalization has become the predominant framework for the analysis of the world political economy. The literature is replete with telling criticism of the consequences of globalization controlled by neoliberal ideology, namely, social and economic injustice and despoliation of the environment. What needs to be done is to construct an alternative model of global change and to elaborate a political agenda for its implementation. Establishment theorists, stung by widespread antineoliberalism mobilizations including ones in Seattle and Washington, DC (right in the neoliberal heartland), have rallied to resist the challenge to their model of a corporation-dominated world. They have responded with phase 2 reform as damage control for the current world system (transperialism) through trickle-down economics. This is avoidance of what really is demanded by our time: transcending neoliberalism to achieve another world.

Our Public Schools: Inclusive Mission Brings Us All Together

On a May Iowa morning, I sat in the sunlight pouring through the colored windows into Herrick Chapel at Grinnell College as I listened to one of my daughter’s classmates present her Baccalaureate address. Thirty-three years after my own graduation from this college, I had returned to celebrate with my daughter as she graduated. As I began to listen to Ms. Julia Haltiwanger, I did not realize that her speech and the other graduation events would become an important lens through which I would spend the summer reflecting on my work as a public schools advocate for the United Church of Christ. Ms. Haltiwanger exhorted her classmates to change the world, not so much because of the horrible injustices that surround us all, but because, “A world so full of important and wonderful things leaves absolutely no room for apathy and no excuse for being jaded.” “When we care, when we do the best we can to make things better, we’re doing it because of the things and people that are important to us. We should all be activists because of all the things we love about our world, the beautiful things that make us glad to be alive.” Ms. Haltiwanger’s speech has challenged me. Working as I do in the Justice and Witness Ministries of the UCC, I know that I cannot follow her advice entirely. Working as I do to eliminate economic and racial injustices in public schools in the United States, I am called to put the spotlight on injustice itself, to tear the blinders off the eyes of smug people who deny inequity and prefer to pretend we can manage away social injustice with a quick, simple remedy. As our nation’s largest social institution, public schools embody attitudes that desperately need challenging-attitudes about race and poverty, power and privilege, and cultural dominance and marginalization. Our unwillingness as citizens to fund public schools in particular locations is especially troubling because it reflects our attitudes, our biases, and frequently a level of bigotry we all prefer to deny. But what about following Ms. Haltiwanger’s advice? Should we set about working for public education justice on the premise that the schools many have come to disdain as “failing schools” are somehow worthy and

Just say no to psychotropic drugs!

Prescribing drugs for mental disorders by psychologists means accepting an invalid model--the brain disease, biological-defect explanation of psychopathology--that is advanced by political conservatives and accepted by some naive, well-intentioned, but misinformed moderates who have not thought critically about the issue. Conservative psychiatry serves the ruling class by rejecting or ignoring the fact that most mental disorders are learned in the context of social and economic injustice, and familiar dysfunction. If we accept the fallacy of brain disease and genetic defect as the major causes of mental disorder and succeed in getting prescription privileges we will have sold our soul to the devil!

Freud in the Pampas: The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina

With wit and erudition, Mariano Plotkin explores the history of the diffusion and reception of psychoanalysis in twentieth-century Argentina. The author sets for himself a daunting intellectual task: “Only a multidimensional approach that integrates into the narrative the complex of conditions that facilitated the phenomenon can explain why and how a psychoanalytic culture emerged” (p. 8). Notwithstanding the challenge of sifting through ever-changing interpretations of Freud, Marx, and Lacan—a challenge complicated still further by a confusing alphabet soup of organizations and splinter organizations—the author succeeds in his purpose. Furthermore, because Plotkin studies psychoanalysis as both a therapy and an “interpretative system,” this work transcends the confines of medical history.Psychoanalysis, which is an integral part of the cultural life of Buenos Aires, arrived in Argentina through visiting foreign psychiatrists, but met a cold response in the first decades of the twentieth century. By the 1920s, however, the decline of degeneracy theory and positivism, overcrowding in state run hospitals, and a climate of political consensus, permitted psychoanalysis to find a place in the medical community. Soon thereafter, through pediatricians and educators, as well as the popular press and artists, psychoanalytic ideas began to work their way into the porteño middle class.Psychoanalysis entered Argentine psychiatric hospitals in the 1930s through the work of the Mental Hygiene League, an organization that mixed anti-immigrant attitudes with progressive ideas about de-stigmatizing mental illness. The League’s early success in expanding the therapeutic tools available to doctors was shattered by the politicization of professional activity under Juan Perón. In the two decades following Perón’s fall, progressive psychiatrists, many of whom were influenced by psychoanalytic methods, enjoyed surprising levels of support from a string of military governments. Instrumental in the reformation of psychiatry was Mauricio Goldenberg, who developed the country’s first psychiatric clinic in a general hospital. The clinic, which attracted a wide range of mental health practitioners eager to expand their clinical training outside of large state-run asylums, is representative of a wide range of innovative and well-publicized programs that mental health professionals developed during this period.In addition to tracing the labyrinthine paths of its acceptance, Plotkin explains the growing enthusiasm of porteños for psychoanalysis. First, it was seen as a scientific method of dealing with a multiplicity of social problems, from psychosis in the asylums to the ordinary problems of child rearing. Second, because many porteños saw psychoanalysis as science, they embraced it as a tool of modernization. But while psychoanalysis was embraced for its modernity, Plotkin notes that the conservative approach taken by its practitioners, especially when questions of family and sexuality were concerned, facilitated its acceptance by middle-class society.Plotkin also maps the role of the popular press in circulating psychoanalytic ideas. The weekly news publication, Primera Plana, for example, propagated psychoanalysis within a broader project of endorsing cultural and economic modernization. The 1962 article “Are we all neurotic?” exemplified the reach and importance of a psychoanalytic framework. Echoing early concerns over degeneration and immigration, the article noted that “neurosis was ‘the disease of the moment,’ the price to be paid for the modernization the magazine promoted” (p. 121).Politics is never far from the center of Plotkin’s narrative, especially after the fall of Perón. The author examines, for example, how both laypersons and professionals employed psychoanalytic paradigms to interpret the increasingly bizarre and unsettling course of Argentine politics in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1970s, the polarization of Argentine society was exercising a pernicious influence on psychoanalysis. Prewar consensus was a distant memory and psychoanalytic groups began to splinter, as membership divided over both professional and political issues. Meanwhile, the marriage of psychoanalysis to marxist theory led to a growing critique of both traditional psychiatry and political repression and economic injustice. As state terrorism came into full force with the coup of 1976, however, psychoanalysis provided a relatively safe retreat into the private realm, as the public sphere became increasingly dangerous and unpredictable.This book is essential to an understanding of Argentina’s middle-class urban culture and history as well as how politics affected the professional and personal lives of everyday Argentines. Although psychoanalysis came to Argentina from abroad, it has developed as a unique part of the national culture, myth, and consciousness. For this reason, coupled with Plotkin’s unique approach and thorough examination of archival and living sources, the book deserves a wide audience, including Argentine specialists, and intellectual and medical historians.

"Being down": challenging violence in urban schools

This book looks at the lives of young people and the violence that is a daily part of their world in an urban high school. Being Down studies school violence comprehensively - linking school ethnography, policy analysis, and urban studies and encompassing city politics, racism, policing, and systemic and economic injustices in it's all-too-real portrait of youth violence in American society. Rich with dialogue, this timely volume considers school violence in its many forms, including gun and weapon usage, assault and harassment, bullying, fighting, suicide, and hate crimes. In addition to youth violence, the book examines federal policies and court cases that have shaped judicial and punitive responses to violence. Chapters cover: Zero tolerance policy; School discipline; Urban policing; Community and school relations; Segregation and school inequities; Alternative schools; Boot Camps

Contemporary Catholic and Protestant Irish America: Social Identities, Forgiveness, and Attitudes Toward The Troubles

The intractability of ethnic conflicts is due in part to their selective focus on the past. Images of the past are used to legitimate the present social order, but such order presupposes shared memories, and as memories diverge, a society's members share neither experiences nor assumptions. (1) In addition, many of those memories are of past violence and humiliations, which have not been acknowledged or atoned for by the aggressors or their descendants, resulting in continuing pain, fear, and hatred in the victimized people. (2) It is not surprising that interventions seeking lasting peace in ethnic conflicts often involve a revisiting of the history of each side and an acceptance of responsibility for past actions of one's own community. Today this recovering of politically violent pasts can be observed in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (3) and in Guatemala's Recovery of the Historic Memory Project. (4) In addition to accountability for past actions, some also are calling for corporate forgiveness of political violence as an ultimate step in reconciliation; (5) and such interventions are being at least tentatively explored for Northern Ireland. (6) Political violence in Ireland/Northern Ireland has a history centuries old, and selective remembering of that history perpetuates current sectarian attitudes and conflict. (7) Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants as distinct ethnic groups selectively remember, construct, interpret, and commemorate their shared history, resulting in distinct ethnic or social memories. (8) In Lyons's Social Identity Process Theory, these social memories serve to demonstrate each community's continuity, collective self-esteem, distinctiveness, efficacy, and cohesion. (9) Northern Ireland's political violence certainly is not on the scale of the horrific aggression observed in settings such as South Africa or Guatemala. On the other hand, Northern Ireland is inhabited by only about 1.7 million people, distributed among close-knit urban neighborhoods and rural communities. (10) Consequently, the thirty years of current conflict have touched the entire country. (11) Currently, Northern Ireland is experiencing a formal cessation of armed conflict between the major paramilitary organizations and security forces, although violence between the two communities still erupts, and tension provides a constant backdrop. However, it does not necessarily follow that a cessation in armed conflict results in a cessation of sectarian attitudes. (12) More than any other European nation, Ireland (North and South) has been characterized by emigration during the past three centuries. (13) Today in the United States alone, more than 40 million Americans claim some Irish descent. (14) The vast size of this immigrant population alone provides an impetus for a contemporary examination of its relationship with and attitudes toward Northern Ireland's political violence. Historically, Irish-American influence in Northern Ireland has been dominated by those with nationalist political agendas and a primary focus on constitutional politics. Lobbyists working at grass-roots level and political leaders in Washington, D.C., maintained pressure on Britain's policy in Ireland even before the enactment of partition in 1920. Utilizing a different strategy focused on economic injustice, Irish Americans established the McBride Principles in 1984 to counter Catholic economic disadvantage in Northern Ireland, with particular focus on discrimination in employment. (15) More militant Irish Americans, who support republican agendas, have raised millions of dollars for Irish republican causes, supplied the Irish Republican Army with weaponry, and aided its men on the run or those incarcerated. (16) The 1990s saw a presidential administration involved in the Northern Ireland conflict on an unprecedented scale. (17) Though there is substantial historical literature on Irish America, surprisingly few social and behavioral studies have been carried out. …

Envisioning a "Network of Tribal Coalitions": Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead

Leslie Marmon Silko's second novel, Almanac of the Dead, attempts to overcome the limitations of the American Indian Movement by presenting readers with the model of "tribal internationalists," individuals who work with international alliances to reclaim their Indigenous land.1 In Almanac Silko suggests that cross-cultural spiritual coalitions made up of "tribal internationalists" would provide a more powerful means of combating the social, political, and economic injustice faced by American Indians (and many oppressed peoples around the world) than secular politics based on ethnicity and race alone. In a 1976 interview with Per Seyersted, given toward the end of the American Indian Movement's heyday, Silko critiques the secular organization for being "too similar to other American political groups."2 Silko implies that although some positive changes resulted from the American Indian Movement, it failed to bring about the total amelioration of injustice because it mimicked the oversimplifications and divisions of secular identity politics. She states, "I feel it is more effective to write a story... than to rant and rave. I think it is more effective in reaching people."3 For Silko novels and stories offer a more effective way to enact social change because they are capable of "reaching people" on a profound emotional level and connect them "through time—back to a time before this person was born."4 Almanac attempts to succeed where the American Indian Movement failed by overcoming the divisiveness and limitations of secular politics with the expansiveness of coalition politics that connects individuals "through time" and space to each other, living and long dead. Silko sees this connection as one of the "spirit," connecting living readers to the spirits of dead ancestors and the spirits of the earth and natural world.5 Silko believes that these cross-national spiritual connections have the power to resist injustice in the Americas more effectively than secular political and nationalist movements. It is not surprising that this aspect of Silko's fiction has drawn powerful critiques from scholars. In Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays, [End Page 623] Elizabeth Cook-Lynn states that Silko, like other successful contemporary American Indian writers Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, James Welch, and N. Scott Momaday, "may have moved away from nationalist concerns in order to gain the interest of mainstream readers."6 Cook-Lynn suggests that to ignore American Indian nationalist concerns regarding tribal sovereignty is irresponsible because literature can act as a basis for political action. Although Cook-Lynn includes Silko in her list of irresponsible American Indian writers because of her earlier works, she praises Almanac of the Dead for its "nationalist's approach to historical events."7 She argues that the novel ultimately "fails in this nationalist approach," however, because Silko's focus on "pan-Indian" connections "might seem unworkable or even offensive to those nation-states that insist upon the accuracy of their own specific histories."8 She explains Silko's "offense" as perhaps a product of the Laguna Pueblo tribe Silko was raised in because Laguna's nation status is secured under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, unlike most American Indian sovereignty claims based on tribally specific treaties. In a similar attempt to explain Silko's "misjudgment" in focusing on cross-cultural connections, Arnold Krupat argues that rather than presenting a nationalist or Indigenous position, Silko's status as a "mixed-blood" leads her to explore "post-Indian" cosmopolitanism.9 His reference to Silko's mixed racial heritage hearkens back to Paula Gunn Allen's famous critique of Ceremony as being a novel "about a half-breed," written as a "plea for inclusion by a writer who felt excluded and compelled to depict the potential importance of breeds to Laguna survival."10 The word "breed"—alerting readers to Silko's mixed American Indian/white heritage—is used by Allen to attempt to explain why Silko's first novel presented...

Women across Cultures: A Global Perspective

Women Across Cultures examines contemporary women's issues and empowerment from a global perspective. Gender inequality is examined as a historical, sociocultural phenomenon within the context of interlocking systems of inequality such as racism, colonialism, and economic injustice. A strong emphasis is given to the variety of approaches and actions women take to promote gender equality and to influence women's progress. The influence of intersectional and contextual factors on women's issues, activism, and movements are a key focus. Instructors and students can now access their course content through the Connect digital learning platform by purchasing either standalone Connect access or a bundle of print and Connect access. McGraw-Hill Connect(r) is a subscription-based learning service accessible online through your personal computer or tablet. Choose this option if your instructor will require Connect to be used in the course. Your subscription to Connect includes the following: SmartBook(r) - an adaptive digital version of the course textbook that personalizes your reading experience based on how well you are learning the content. Access to your instructor s homework assignments, quizzes, syllabus, notes, reminders, and other important files for the course. Progress dashboards that quickly show how you are performing on your assignments and tips for improvement. The option to purchase (for a small fee) a print version of the book. This binder-ready, loose-leaf version includes free shipping. Complete system requirements to use Connect can be found here: http: //www.mheducation.com/highered/platforms/connect/training-support-students.html

For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

The youngest of twenty children of sharecroppers in rural Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer witnessed throughout her childhood the white cruelty, political exclusion, and relentless economic exploitation that defined black existence in the Delta. In this intimate biography, Chana Kai Lee documents Hamer's lifelong crusade to empower the poor through collective action, her rise to national prominence as a civil rights activist, and the personal costs of her ongoing struggle to win a political voice and economic self-sufficiency for blacks in the segregated South. Lee traces Hamer's early work as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in rural Mississippi, documenting the partial blindness she suffered after being arrested and beaten by local officials for leading a group of blacks to register for the vote. Hamer's dramatic appearance at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, where she led a group from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in a bid to unseat the all-white Mississippi delegation, brought both Hamer and the virtual powerlessness of black Mississippians to the nation's attention; but the convention also marked her first debilitating encounter with the middle class of the national civil rights movement. Despite her national visibility, Hamer remained a militant grassroots leader who never stopped working for the betterment of her own community in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Among many local initiatives, she established the Freedom Farm Corporation, a revolutionary cooperative venture aimed at facilitating economic self-sufficiency for the rural poor. Lee renders Hamer's acute political instincts, her rhetorical prowess, and her skill in retooling her past to serve strategic political purposes, as well as her deep frustration with a society that was willing to hold her up as an example of individual heroism but resisted her efforts at collective transformation. Offering a complex understanding of how racism, sexism, violence, and economic injustice intersected to spur the civil rights movement and to shape, and sometimes restrict, the role of women and poor people within it, Lee illuminates the abiding links between political activism and economic transformation. The definitive biography of one of the most important civil rights activists of the twentieth century, For Freedom's Sake documents Fannie Lou Hamer's lifelong crusade to empower the poor through collective action, her rise to national prominence as a civil rights activist, and the personal costs of her ongoing struggle to win a political voice and economic self-sufficiency for blacks in the segregated South.

Reading education action zones

This paper explores the conceptualizations of social justice embedded in the education action zones (EAZ) policy which has recently been implemented in England. Drawing on distinctions developed from Nancy Fraser's work, it argues that zone populations suffer three forms of social injustice ? economic injustice, cultural injustice and associational injustice. Documentary analysis of the discourse surrounding the policy and of a sample of EAZ applications reveals that while the initiative may be based on a more complex understanding of social injustice than many preceding policies, this understanding remains inadequate. Economic injustices are recognized, but cultural and associational injustices are inadequately acknowledged. In addition, there is a mismatch between the remedies proposed in the bids and the problems they are designed to address. Although there are some redistributive and associational measures, these are likely to be superficial. For the most part, it is cultural remedies that are proposed ? but the nature of the cultural ‘problem’ to be dealt with is either unacknowledged or misrepresented. The paper concludes by arguing that while policy pronouncements and zone applications do not determine practice, it is difficult to see how some of these injustices can be tackled if they are not acknowledged or tackled at a discursive level.

The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics

The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics

MISSION AS AN INVITATION FOR LIFE

1. Harare Fears and Hopes The first statement I would like to make is that Eighth Assembly of World Council of Churches in Zimbabwe, Harare, helped us to put an end to many of our fears. What were concerns that made us await assembly in fear and trembling? I shall just mention but a few. Would recollection of past years be present to this assembly: Amsterdam (1948), Evanston (1954) and so on? Could we keep alive memory of those that preceded us in ecumenical journey? The 50th anniversary of WCC moves us to share things that we have heard and known that our ancestors have told us. We will not hide from their children; we will tell coming generation glorious deeds of Lord and his might, and wonders that God has done... (Psalm 78:3-4) Besides, could we gather experiences of Faith and Order meeting held in Santiago de Compostela? Would continental demands of whole Gospel and Cultures study process be incorporated in agenda? What challenges coming from case studies of Theology of Life will go into mission practice of new millennium? Will Ecumenical Decade of Church in Solidarity with Women end abruptly, without any consequences for life of our churches? Will assembly be able to bring a true ecumenical commitment concerning unity? Or will our divisions instead continue to spread prejudices, regrets and unjustifiable judgements, which open gulfs of separation between us? 2. Living Water On my way to Harare I kept reflecting on all this. The Festival of Decade surprised us as an ointment of certitudes and future projects for action. The Festival was full of colors and waters springing from fountains and jars, like life-giving waters described in Ezekiel 47. For Festival we used as a symbol. It is presented in text from Ezekiel - as origin of life, where of temple (47:1), which represents fusion of and sacred, becomes a river which carries fecundity wherever it reaches. The power of water (47:8) overcomes infertility of foul waters, bringing life to them (47:9). The theme of Harare assembly Turn to God, Rejoice in Hope is closely associated with image of God as living water: They have forsaken me, a of living and they have hewn out for themselves cisterns, cracked cisterns that can hold no water. (Jer. 2:13) As we turn to God, this stream of living will flow out. It will triumphantly as an outburst of plant, animal and human life. This will mean a victory over anything that is hostile to life: foul salty waters will be fresh and clean, barren ground will become a wonderful land of fruit trees, and all diseases will be cured. As New Testament states, streams of living flow out from within Jesus to give life to anyone who is thirsty and needs it. (John 7:37-39) Those who respond to his call and seal it with their baptism, receive life by virtue of Spirit. Is it not marvellous? There is an association between air, wind, spirit and water... The text about and spirit in Ezekiel reminds us of dialogue of Jesus with Nicodemus (John 3:1-15) which refers to need of being born over again, that is, need for a new birth. The passage refers not to resurrection but to new birth. And this new birth takes place in bosom of fertilized by Spirit. Water symbolizes mother's womb that has been fertilized by Spirit. It is out of and Spirit that new life springs: new creature is born. In Harare, taking sides with spring of living water, we condemned violence in all its forms, we advocated the equality of Christian disciples, we denounced economic injustices, and we held one another's hands - white hands with black hands and marginalized indigenous hands - against racism. …