Hard Struggle Research Articles

The Impact of the Economic Embargo on Iraqi Families: Re-structuring of Tribes, Socio-Economic Classes and Households

The economic embargo imposed on Iraq since 2 August 1990 has had profound effects on Iraqi family life. This paper attempts to explore these effects, concentrating on the ways in which families are coping with the stifling pressures of the embargo. People have been compelled to resort to a variety of channels and strategies in their hard struggle for survival. Economic problems - including the ever-present threat of hunger - are the most prominent features in the embargo panorama. This paper also describes the decline of collective sentiments, a decline which the embargo has laid the ground for. The enormous difficulties of living have sapped peoples emotional reserves and have thereby weakened their social ties. Families either use whatever money they make to buy the bare necessities of life or stockpile it; they no longer devote any economic resources to the maintenance of social ties. The decline in sociability since the beginning of the embargo has affected and is affected by individual morale. Sometimes people have responded to the embargo as if it were a challenge, while at other times they vacillate between hope and despair. A third point covered by the paper is the effect of the embargo on socio-economic stratification. The withdrawal of wealth from the kinds of social activities which formerly required large expenditures - and which continually reconstructed social relations - has been accompanied by an increasing economic polarization between the poor and the wealthy. Old, respected urban families with centuries of prestige and family traditions have become impoverished and must devote all of their resources to the struggle for survival. At the same time, a few uneducated rural families enjoy unprecedented prosperity.. This coupling of elite family decline with the rapid rise of certain rural families is a phenomenal paradox that has been brought on by the embargo. The distorted and lopsided social mobility is perceived by many Iraqis as chaotic and disorienting.

Women in Australian policing: An historical overview

The entry of women into policing in Australia and the achievement of legal equality have been described by one policewoman as 'a long hard struggle'.' The marginalisation experienced by policewomen has also been reflected in historical studies. Most histories of police in Australia give little or no space to issues of female participation. More critical, sociologically-based studies have also tended to perpetuate the assumption that 'police' are 'men'. Leading writers on police like Chappell and Wilson commonly made statements such as: Australian police forces ... require more men. But more men will not by themselves solve all police problems. Quality of men is a more pressing problem than their numbers. Apart from one book-length historical study on South Australia, two short biographies, various short reports in magazines, newspapers and professional journals, and some theses and reports, there is a dearth of substantial published material on policewomen in Australia. This article is itself only an introduction. Further primary research is required to provide a detailed historical picture of the experience of policewomen. Most readily available material is from South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland — although there does appear to be a common experience for women police. There is a large British and American theoretical and sociological literature on policewomen relevant to the situation and a number of attitude studies have been done in Australia. Given the absence of historical material however, this paper leaves aside theory in order to provide a narrative account of women in policing. That experience can be divided into two distinct phases. In the first period from the Great War to the early 1970s, women won and consolidated a place in a restricted welfare-related role. Since then, formal equality has been achieved and some small steps have been made in the direction of affirmative action.

The Long, Hard Struggle: Effective Help for Autistic Children

The Long, Hard Struggle: Effective Help for Autistic Children

THE POLITICAL INTEREST

A good deal of recent work has been published on modem Scottish political history, but mostly in form of articles rather than wide-ranging books. Some welcome general text-books have appeared, but, in these, politics share company with economic, social and cultural developments. The almost simultaneous publication of two large books on successive periods of Scottish politics between Union and 1924 is therefore a notable event in Scottish historical studies, and another testimony to great advance these studies have made in last 20 years. The difference between two periods before and after 1832 is, politically speaking, a sharp one in Scotland, sharper than in England and Wales. Dr Sunter's book is concerned with important business ofmanaging a political interest in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Scottish electors before 1832 were so few that attempts to manage them were made very readily, while electors for their part were very conscious of political power they could exercise on patrons. Voters depended on patron for places and gifts, patron depended on voters for building and maintaining his interest, so patronage was an essential requisite of politician. Despite protests of reformers, patronage was ubiquitous grease in system before 1832 and for long afterwards. The first part of book is a thorough account ofpatronage and different channels through which it was exercised. Lucrative posts in India and remunerative government contracts were highly desired, and politician who could procure them possessed important levers of Ability to obtain customs and excise appointments was also politically valuable. Whether it was valuable to customs service is questionable, as patronage could result in appointment of unqualified persons to important posts and frustration of subordinates hoping for promotion, as well as removal ofofficials by members of a rival political interest. Military and naval patronage was another aspect of political influence, and Scottish politicians, it is said, were very successful in obtaining commissions for friends. In navy it could be a hard struggle to obtain commissions for friends of doubtful competence, but, even so, Earl St Vincent complained in 1801 that the list of lieutenants abounds with improper persons who have obtained promotions by influence. Political influence was also crucial in obtaining judicial, ecclesiastical and academic posts. In 1714 someone who was asked to stand as government candidate in a parliamentary election assented on condition that his brother was given a vacant chair of

Age in Second Language Acquisition

It is commonly held that young children pick up new languages naturally and with remarkable ease, while older learners generally have a long hard struggle to achieve even moderate fluency. The major purpose of this book is to carry out an examination of empirical studies in light of the various theoretical perspectives that have been brought to bear on the age issue. The analysis leads to a number of conclusions concerning the need for future research on specific aspects of L2 acquisition by older and younger learners. The study in Part 2 concentrates on some specific aspects of oral language proficiency as demonstrated in an interview setting to: (i) determine whether there are differences in L2 acquisition that can be associated with particular starting ages; (ii) and provide information of value to educators concerned with designing curriculae for such communicative L2 programs commencing at different age levels.

The Kind of Revolution We Need

Many of us realize how drastically the political and social climate has changed in the last five years. Most of the gains won by labor and the civil rights movement are being rolled back. Strikebreaking is the order of the day. The corporations are getting concessions from workers, and the unions are powerless to resist because today's capitalism no longer needs labor as it did in the past, before robots and before advanced methods of transportation and communication made it possible to export jobs overseas. Affirmative action has been all but abolished, welfare is being cut, cheap jobs are the only ones available. Women are under attack, anti-abortion groups dominate the news, sexism is on the rise, and homosexuals are being made the scapegoats because people are looking for easy answers to complex questions. Even social security is no longer secure. In fact, every gain that we have come to consider our god-given right but which was a result of hard struggle is being taken away. Yet we stand helpless and divided, more often than not blaming one another, while the counter-revolutionary forces exploit our differences to dehumanize us further by encouraging us to fight over crumbs.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Population growth and food supply margin in Pakistan

Population growth in Pakistan is alarming. The long and continuing shortage of foodgrains at intervals and increasing competition for land use have resulted in deterioration in yield per hectare, and low reproduction of livestock, although hard struggle is going on for self sufficiency. The margin in food supply has arrived even in those areas where the production has been abundant, and vulnerable to crop failure and other emergency causes. Provision against these dangers call for the maintenance of adequate national reserves, which can be brought into action at an early stage of the emergency. The area under agriculture can be increased through improved programmes of soil conservation and development of barani (rain fed areas) with cost-benefit consideration. Several million hectares of barani areas have fertile soils and are suitable for agricultural development. It has been estimated that 45 billion m3 of river water flows into the Arabian Sea. A part of the water sources is properly harnessed and could possibly change the economic conditions of the barani region. A number of regions are covered by hard texture of the soil, mechanization will have to be introduced in these areas to increase production much beyond the level of margin. Soil conservation measures have already been initiated and in some cases demonstrated to farmers, but the reclaimed virgin lands up to 1973 were very little, just 46.5 ha of virgin lands and 72 ha of cultivated area from the Soan and Potwar uplands. It is expected that 300,000 ha of cultivated area, 10,000 ha of gullied land will be reclaimed through soil conservation methods in the current Fifth Year Plan. Pakistan has great water potential. The remedy lies in wise judicious and scientific water management. Inadequate natural and artificial drainage systems are causing water-logging and salinity. An accelerated programme for recovering lost land is already in operation. Many land reforms were introduced from time to time, but the production result is not of great significance. Restrictions were imposed on consolidated holdings. The economic level of such holding above subsistence have not yet been taken into consideration. It is, therefore, necessary, to make a thorough analysis of agricultural problems, particularly with the foodgrain crops, with reference to population growth, the efforts should continue till the food supply occupies the supreme position by increasing production and reducing the rate of population growth by adopting socio-economic methods.

K vprašanju formiranja slovenske komorne glasbe: dileme nastanka nekega žanra

K vprašanju formiranja slovenske komorne glasbe: dileme nastanka nekega žanra

Two Views of the Knights of Labor Centennial Symposium, Chicago, May 1979

If THERE was a whipping boy for scholars attending the Chicago symposium it was surely Gerald N. Grob, author of the 1961 Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865-1900. Grob's argument is that for most of the nineteenth century, American labour was trapped by a Jeffersonian ideology that deluded workers into believing that they could escape industrial wage earner status and regain the spirit of indi vidual entrepreneurship by means of a host of reform schemes like agrarianism, greenbackism, and producers' cooperatives. The Knights of Labor was but the last manifestation of this recurrent delusion. According to Grob, only the leaders of the new American Federation of Labor saw that the true path lay in the direction of collective bargaining. After a hard struggle with the backward looking Knights, they set American labour firmly on that course. If Grob was explicitly excoriated, members of the symposium also levelled a good deal of implicit criticism at Gabriel Kolko for the very unflattering portrait of the late nineteenth-century working class contained in his recent Main Currents in Modern American History. His defenceless, polyglot work ers were going nowhere at all. Instead they were constantly buffetted by forces beyond their control, and these forces included most labour leaders. In place of Grob's individualism and Kolko's negativism, the fresh crop of historians offer something new. Clearly forsaking the institutional approach, they search behind the facade of the official Knights and find an authentic working-class culture. It is a culture forged out of the hard experiences of ordinary people in the Gilded Era, native and immigrant, black and white, alike. The strikes and organizations of the period are but a manifestation of this culture. Clearly the inspiration for such an approach is E.P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class, and his American interpreters, Herbert Gutman and David Montgomery, two of the leaders of the symposium, and, I believe, the mentors of several of those who contributed papers. In general their argument would run something like this. By the mid-1880s, a time of unemployment and cutbacks in wages, the depredations of a rising industrial capitalism had become alarmingly felt by communities of workers the length and breadth of the land. It was felt, not just in economic terms, but in

The Royal Hunt and the Puritans, 1604–1605

‘As one that honoureth and loveth his most excellent Majesty with all my heart’, wrote Archbishop Hutton to Cecil from Bishop-thorpe in December 1604, ‘I wish less wasting of the Trasure of the Realm, and more Moderation in the lawful exercise of Hunting; both that poor Men's Corn may be less spoiled, and other his Majesty's subjects more spared.’ At the time James I was again in the field, as he had been for much of 1604, complementing his natural propensity for settling the principles of a policy and leaving its working out to his ministers with an addiction to strenuous exercise for his health's sake. He had already allowed delay among his more reluctant bishops in carrying through the series of concessions granted to the puritan clergy at the Hampton Court conference; and as the expiry of the period of grace before the full enforcement of the new canons drew nearer, he made it clear that he did not expect to be troubled with whatever detailed problems might arise. They were his bishops’ responsibility. In Bancroft he seemed to have found the primate he need to succeed Whitgift. Not only would Bancroft enhance the prospects of stability within the state by bringing a sense of discipline and order to the Church, but he had the energy and determination to take charge of ecclesiastical administration for months at a time. For these reasons above all the Calvinist James had overcome his reservations about Bancroft's views on iure divino episcopacy. As the guiding hand in convocation behind the revised and more fully explained canons, Bancroft was undoubtedly best fitted, by experience as well as temperament, to take charge of the efforts to enforce them. By the time he died late in 1610, after a hard struggle to ‘reconstruct’ the English Church, only a minority of its dioceses had not lost clergy through deprivation from their livings, mostly for inconformity and most of them in the southern province; countless others had been suspended. So closely has Bancroft been associated with the efforts to obtain obedience to the new canons, especially to the articles in canon 36 referring to the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty Nine Articles, that debate about his impact on the Church, both in the parliamentary skirmishing at the time and among commentators since, has commonly used as a measure the number of clergy he is supposed to have dispossessed, whether the 300 his puritan critics claimed, the 60 or so he himself once asserted and which R. G. Usher subsequently endorsed, or the 80 to 90 finally established by S. B. Babbage. The case for or against him has always tended to be built on numbers rather than on any assessment of the degree of responsibility he had for what happened. James, although clearly not open to direct attack in parliament, has in any case seemed a peripheral figure, expressing anger and alarm when signs of opposition to conformity came his way, but in no sense providing continuous direction of his bishops’ efforts. Before he departed once more for the countryside in mid-November, he had settled with Bancroft the manner in which the new canons were to be introduced, quietly permitting additional time beyond the deadline at the end of November for all but the most notoriously inconformable clergy in the hope of edging the rest fairly quickly towards full conformity and, where appropriate, subscription to the new terms ‘willingly and ex animo’.

Running A Plant By Proletarian Revolutionary Spirit

The Kirin Municipal Oil and Grease Plant is rated fairly good in Kirin Province in learning from the Tach'ing Oilfield, the national pacesetter in industry. Spurred on by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the workers and staff there have conscientiously studied works by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and Chairman Mao's works, deepened their criticism of Liu Shao-ch'i and Lin Piao's revisionist line and consciously opposed influence and corrosion by bourgeois ideology. The revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and hard struggle has been brought into play and the workers and staff's socialist enthusiasm has soared to an unprecedented height. Both revolution and production have advanced in big strides.

China's Changing Educational System

The Chinese have claimed that their educational system, like their whole way of life, remains in a state of change and experiment, as the Cultural Revolution has demonstrated. Yet the University of Toronto's tour of the People's Republic of China throughout June 1972 found that several new and firm principles of education were becoming established there. During the Cultural Revolution, begun in 1966, regular classes stopped. Workers' propaganda teams for spreading Mao Tse-Tung's thoughts were stationed in the colleges, and students travelled all over the country to share in criticism and debate and to exchange revolutionary experiences. Undergraduate classes finally resumed at the universities in the autumn of 1970, but as late as 1972 graduate programs had not recommenced, though hopefully would reopen soon. Mao Tse-Tung, at one time himself a professional teacher and in 1920-21 president of a Hunnan normal school, once stated that the main problem of educational revolution lies with teachers, as the ideology of teachers strongly influences students. Since most of the present university faculty members graduated before the Cultural Revolution, they were sent during this revolution to cadre schools to live in the countryside in order to be reeducated by the workers, peasants, and soldiers there; and similar schools still operate throughout China. Since a cadre (gan bu in Chinese) is any government functionary engaged in mental or administrative work, this category includes all teachers from every level of education. In 1972 the student body at the cadre schools reportedly came voluntarily, mostly from positions as leading members of the basic units of their work, either chairmen or vice-chairmen of revolutionary committees. Such schools, therefore, appear to ensure that least the leaders in China become exemplars of self-reliance and selflessness. One such school, the May 7 Cadre School of the Eastern District of Peking, is a typical complex of houses and farmland built by the students themselves on what was originally barren sandfield. Here workers from the local commune not only come to lecture but also accept students as temporary residents in their nearby village so these students can learn from them firsthand. Manual labor ranks as an important factor in ideological remolding and in development of self-reliance and the spirit of hard struggle. In addition, much of the school's time is devoted to the works of Chairman Mao, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The local revolutionary committee determines the length of one's stay at the cadre school. By means of a written self-appraisal, the student must consequently report to that committee his progress. One woman reported orally to our visiting party that she had found middle school teaching tiring

On Scientific Farming

This article sums up the experience in scientific farming. It stresses that in order to carry out scientific farming it is imperative to educate the peasants with socialist ideas, carry forward the revolutionary spirit of hard struggle and self-reliance, seriously carry out to the letter the eight-word constitution for agriculture as formulated by Chairman Mao, devote strenuous efforts to fully arousing the masses, and conduct experiments in everything. The article uses revolutionary dialectics to explain problems, and the language used is vivid and alive.

Persist in Running Schools with Diligence and Frugality to Serve Proletarian Politics

This article introduces a rural primary school which advances in the orientation pointed out in the "May 7 Directive." This school adheres to the policy of self-reliance and hard struggle and runs itself with diligence and frugality. It persists in taking study as its main task and learning other things at the same time and has the poor and lower-middle peasants take part in its management. Citing living facts, the article shows educational revolution definitely can succeed if Chairman Mao's "May 7 Directive" is put into practice.

Raise Cotton Production to a Higher Level Through Self-Reliance and Hard Struggle

Abstract (NCNA, March 6). Under the guidance of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, China's cotton output is excellent. Especially since the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, cotton output has increased markedly and broken the records year after year. The National Conference on Cotton Production recently convened in Peking by the State Council summed up and exchanged the advanced experiences gained during the sharp increases in cotton output and the high yields of both cotton and food grains in cotton-producing areas. The conference called on the poor and lower-middle peasants, other commune members, and revolutionary cadres in the cotton-producing areas to model themselves after the nationally known Tachai Production Brigade by self-reliance and hard work. Everyone was urged to seriously and thoroughly implement Chairman Mao's principle of"taking food grains as the key link to ensure all-round development," to go all out and advance

The Farther One Goes on the Great Road of the "May 7 Directive," The Vaster it Becomes

Our great leader, Chairman Mao, has pointed out: "Education must serve proletarian politics and must be united with productive labor." The revolutionary committee of the First Middle School, with the assistance of a school-based workers' propaganda team, correctly and thoroughly carried out Chairman Mao's policy for proletarian educational revolution. By initiating revolutionary criticism in depth, by unswervingly taking the road of the "May 7 Directive," and by self-reliance and hard struggle, they have a base within the school for the study of industry and agriculture. At the same time, they have linked factory and school, and brigade and school, and have initiated organized, planned activities for studying industry and agriculture, thus achieving the three-in-one combination of teaching, productive labor, and scientific research, and completely changing the "three separations" situation of former schools. Having been reeducated by the workers and the poor and lower-middle peasants, and having been steeled to hardship in the Three Great Revolutionary Movements, the spiritual countenance of most of the teachers and students has profoundly changed, and their world view has been rapidly transformed. The whole school presents an appearance as lively and as fresh as early morning air.

De Krimpende Horizon Van De Hollandse Kooplieden: Hollands Welvaren In Het Caribisch Zeegebied (1780-1830)

Summary This study, entitled 'The Narrowing Horizon of Dutch Traders', deals mainly with the development of Dutch Welfare in the Caribbean Area in the period 1780-1830. On the analogy of Means's definition of 'The Spanish Main' the term Caribbean Area here comprises the West-Indian islands and the coastal regions of Venezuela and Central America. In the Introduction some of the most important themes concerning the age of colonisation in America are indicated in brief. Thus attention is paid to the discussion in late-medieval Spain (1492 -1552) about legitimate colonisation and to the critical attitude of 18c England and France towards the colonies in the American world. In the 16th century the West-European nations -in particular the Low Countries -had come to the conviction that the superstitious and tyrannical Spanish Crown was prematurely exhausting the native population and was exploiting the riches of South America purely for its own benefit. The black legend, in which Las Casas appeared. as chief witness for the prosecution, is an expression of this West European sense of superiority with regard to Spain. Moreover in this introduction mercantilism is described as a political and economical programme of great traders and government officials, testifying to their fighting spirit. The hazards of sailing, the defectiveness of international transfer of payment and the competition of neighbouring states made world-commerce a hard struggle. Thanks to their strategic talent European traders knew how to use the American precious metal as a medium of exchange for Asiatic spices, silk and tea. In the 18th century the European sugar-plantations in West Indian islands became very prosperous. For the mercantilists slavetrade, the sugar-plantations in the islands and the trading-posts in North America, which supplied wood and corn, formed the basis of ensured prosperity. In the 18th century England and France succeeded in pushing the Dutch Republic into the background as the confident mediator between nations. In 1780 the Dutch Republic saw itself confronted with the decline of its prosperity, both in Europe and in the West Indies. The North American carriers won for themselves an important key-position as the 'Dutchmen of America'. The North American independence brought about among other things by the English opposition against the natural coalition of French sugar and the commercial energy of the continental colonists -meant a serious interference with the monopolistic relationship between the motherland and 'His Majesty's most opulent sources' in the West Indies (Bryan Edwards). After 1780 the quick growth of the cotton industry led to the rise of the class of self-confident manufacturers. The political economists Adam Smith and Tucker dissociated themselves from the complex policy of the mercantilists. New consuming markets, open to English trade, would make possible a rational exchange of goods. Thus in 1820, with Latin America in mind, Alexander Baring could claim freedom of trade as the birthright of all Britons. In the first part of this study a description is given of these changes with regard to the Caribbean Area...... Zie: Summary

John Ireland 1879–1962

John Ireland, one of our most distinguished Grand Old Men of music, died on 12 June, at the age of 82. His contemporaries were Vaughan Williams, Bax, Gordon Jacob, the neglected Cyril Scott, and Havergal Brian, whose Gothic Symphony was given its première here recently, some forty years after it was written! England is not an easy country to be born into as a composer, and Ireland had a hard struggle to support himself. He went to the Royal College of Music on a scholarship at the age of 14, and kept himself alive by playing at Smoking Concerts (he was a fine pianist), teaching and coaching.

Helmholtz and the nature of geometrical axioms: a segment in the history of mathematics

It was a hard struggle for mankind to free himself from the notion that geometry had anything to do with the real world.

Post-War Astronomy

DR. R. O. REDMAN has put forward a number of interestics predictic as about the future of astronomy (Observatory, 66, 828 ; October 1945). It is suggested that astronomy will have a hard struggle to survive except in so far as it is required for time service, for navigation and surveying ; or except for the part of solar physics which has an immediate bearing on terrestrial affairs. It is admitted that a very strong utilitarian case cannot be made out for modern astronomy and, in spite of apparent exceptions, much stronger arguments for astronomy can be made on aesthetic grounds. Civilized man should have as much appreciation of astronomical discovery as he has of architecture, music, the drama, or even of pure mathematics or philosophy. Good popularization of astronomy, as indeed of any science, is a difficult task, and it is suggested that professional astronomers should consider it their duty to devote a certain amount of time to explaining the aims and achievements of astronomy to the general public, or even to fellow men of science, who are sometimes very ignorant of the subject.