Mutual Aid Societies Research Articles

1920년대 잡지 ≪광명(光明)≫의 발간과 한중연대

This study is intended to bring to light the reality of the solidarity between Korea and China that progressed centering around the publication of Gwangmyeong in the early 1920s. This is a task to reveal the history of publishing Gwangmyeong in solidarity between Korea and China. It is also to settle the controversial issues over the principal agent and characteristics of publishing Gwangmyeong. Thus, this study is to contribute to understanding not only Gwangmyeong but also the joint memory of Korea and China including magazines of solidarity between Korea and China which were published in China in the first half of the 20th century. No.1 of Gwangmyeong Volume 1 was first published in Guangzhou, China on December 1 of 1921, led by Umin Lee. He was one of those who established Sino-Korean Mutual Aid Society. The host to publish Gwangmyeong was Gwang myeongwolbosa. Gwangmyeong was the mouthpiece of Gwangmyeongwolbosa. Gwangmyeong was characterized by solidarity between Korea and China. In other words, Gwangmyeong was a magazine of solidarity between Korea and China. The importance of Gwangmyeong lies in the fact that it is the only magazine of solidarity between Korea and China in the 1920s that has been handed down. In addition, Gwangmyeong has rarity value as a joint memory of Korea and China.

German Charity and Mutual Aid Societies in St. Petersburg (late 18th ‒ early 20th centuries)

The study of charity in the Russian Empire has an extensive historiography. The specifics of its implementation in various ethnic groups are often beyond the scope of the study. The purpose of this research is to identify German charitable organizations that have become the elements of the civil society that has been formed in the capital. New forms of unification of citizens and colonists became one of the manifestations of modernization, which was later adopted by other groups of metropolitan residents. The basis of this research is made up of various types of published and archival sources, some of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. German charitable organizations have existed in St. Petersburg since the 1770s. Initially, they arose at parish churches and had religious orientation. Since the 1860s, German artisans and colonists initiated creation of funeral registers, which have been widely distributed throughout Russia since the 1880s. Being independent of the state, charitable organizations and mutual aid societies became an important indicator of the modernization of Russian society in the 19th and early 20th century. The article is intended for specialists and anyone interested in the social history and history of Russian Germans.

Healing Black Futures: Black Youth Organizing to Redefine Destiny

ABSTRACT Black youth throughout American history have resisted racism and the social injustice it produces. Strategies have historically included rebellion, advocacy, and social protest as well as the construction of mutual aid societies. Black youth have been central to the development of Black counter-institutions preserving their heritage and collective strengths. While contemporary organizing frameworks recognize the need personal and “collective-self” care to sustain social action, there is little research on the meaning of ancestral historical resistance or the cultural and spiritual mechanisms Black youth incorporate. In this article, findings from interviews with 20 Black youth organizing in New York City will be presented; highlighting what they described as discovering their calling and channeling liberation for a healed Black future. Implications for Black youth-led community organizing in the context of historical trauma and systemic violence through social action will be explored. The study is situated in literatures examining organizing among Black youth in the context of historical trauma.

Management of alcohol use disorder in patients with chronic liver disease.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) rates have risen dramatically in the United States, resulting in increasing rates of alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD), but many patients struggle to access alcohol use treatment. AUD treatment improves outcomes, including mortality, and represents the most urgent means by which care can be improved for those with liver disease (including ALD and others) and AUD. AUD care for those with liver disease involves 3 steps: detecting alcohol use, diagnosing AUD, and directing patients to alcohol treatment. Detecting alcohol use can involve questioning during the clinical interview, the use of standardized alcohol use surveys, and alcohol biomarkers. Identifying and diagnosing AUD are interview-based processes that should ideally be performed by a trained addiction professional, but nonaddiction clinicians can use surveys to determine the severity of hazardous drinking. Referral to formal AUD treatment should be made, especially where more severe AUD is suspected or identified. Therapeutic modalities are numerous and include different forms of one-on-one psychotherapy, such as motivational enhancement therapy or cognitive behavior therapy, group therapy, community mutual aid societies (such as Alcoholics Anonymous), inpatient addiction treatment, and relapse prevention medications. Finally, integrated care approaches that build strong relationships between addiction professionals and hepatologists or medical providers caring for those with liver disease are crucial to improving care for this population.

In the Shadow of the Spanish Fantasy Heritage

This article presents an overlooked chapter in San Gabriel’s history as it examines the Mexican experience in the historic mission city during the early twentieth century. In the 1910s, enterprising Anglo-American commercial and civic leaders romanticized the city’s Spanish heritage, especially in the area around old Mission San Gabriel, hoping to draw tourists to the newly incorporated city. Simultaneously, the arrival of Mexican immigrants to San Gabriel sparked concern among local leaders who, ironically, viewed the growing Mexican population as a threat to the city’s Spanish fantasy heritage. This article reveals how San Gabriel’s Mexican community harnessed civic leaders’ merchandizing of the city’s history, subverting the Spanish fantasy narrative to celebrate their Mexican history and presence in a city seemingly determined to deny both. It uses Spanish-language accounts, church records, and contemporary local histories to reveal a Mexican community asserting pride in its culture and history. In the process, it illustrates the interplay between San Gabriel’s Mexican community and the Roman Catholic parish at Mission San Gabriel, and the ways in which Mexican radicalism and grassroots mutualistas (mutual-aid societies) shaped the colonia (Mexican neighborhood).

For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938 by Sonia Hernández

Reviewed by: For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938 by Sonia Hernández Gabriela González For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938. By Sonia Hernández. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. Pp. 256. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Sonia Hernández's masterful study examines labor activism and explains the conditions that inspired workers to see anarcho-syndicalism as a path toward justice. By centering the stories and contributions of activist leaders such as Caritina Piña Montalvo, the book highlights the gendered nature of anarchism in the Mexican borderlands during the early twentieth century. Identifying Piña as "transnational labor broker" (2), Hernández takes the reader on a journey into the world that shaped the lives and ideologies of Mexicana anarchists such as organizing pioneers Luz Mendoza, Isaura Galvan, Reinalda González Parra, and later Piña. These women connected the dots of worker struggles in their own back yards with the challenges of workers around the world to claim and defend their human rights. Operating from the Gulf of Mexico region and invested in the local dynamics of the Tampico-Villa Cecilia area of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Piña nevertheless formed an integral part of a global nexus that found her writing in defense of workers in faraway places, such as Mexicana textile workers on strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. She did this in her capacity as secretary of correspondence of the Comité Internacional Pro-Presos Sociales, an organization dedicated to helping political prisoners. Anarchist ideas found fertile ground in a Gulf of Mexico region whose export orientation tethered it to a global economy heavily invested in oil production. Thus, the region served as a magnet for a diverse array of migrants from Mexico and around the world who were attracted to economic opportunities but also to the principle of reciprocity associated [End Page 591] with mutual aid societies. Industrialization's success hinged on the working masses, and with them came ideas and prospects for labor organizing. But as the Gastonia intervention reveals, for Mexicana activists, "the anarchist ideal of a nationless world" (3) nurtured their sense of solidarity with all workers, whether in Tamaulipas, the United States, or elsewhere. Thus, from their home communities, Piña and other activists, through an impressive anarchist print culture and correspondence, felt resonance and connection with Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), Industrial Workers of the World, and Casa del Obrero Mundial labor organizers many miles away. One of the most compelling elements of this book is its focus on transnational feminism or femenismo transfronterizo, centering theorist Gloria Anzaldùa's intersectional framework engaging race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality and "promoting worker unity free from state control." Hernández adds geography to the mix, reminding us that while it is critical to understand how Mexicana activists took part in a transnational workers liberation project, they also shaped local histories. These local histories stretch into the Texas-Tamaulipas border area from where early Magonista ideas existed in tandem with a developing anarcho-feminist agenda that promoted equality of the sexes. Because the women of the PLM and other radical organizations did not exist in a sexist-free world, the rhetoric of gender equity in anarcho-syndicalist circles created opportunities for women activists to challenge the sexism that inhabited even progressive organizations. Part of the brilliance of this book is how it demonstrates Caritina Piña's anarcho-feminism even as it highlights her use of maternalism to advance an agenda for labor rights. In this context, motherhood, a concept used by the Mexican state in its national unity narrative, does double duty as the anarchist driver for a call to action focused on the need for women to participate in the labor struggle. Within the context of this revolutionary motherhood, women activists could claim equality with men as they who reproduce the fighters, the defenders of families and communities. Ultimately, Piña's political usage of motherhood is described by Hernández as anarcho-maternalism, for it "directly challenged the state as the primary guarantor of women's rights" centering instead women themselves as the...

The Rise and Spread of the Hong Men Chee Kung Tong in the Cantonese Pacific and Beyond

Using sources in English, Spanish, and Chinese from across the Pacific Rim, this article uses a global scale to examine the Cantonese sworn brotherhood known as the Chee Kung Tong. Whereas in 1860 the organization was largely limited to the West Coast of North America, by the early twentieth century it spread to six continents and throughout the Pacific Rim. The article argues that the Chee Kung Tong, far from being simply a criminal organization or an apolitical mutual aid society, attracted members throughout the Cantonese diaspora, and that a focus on networks like the Chee Kung Tong allows us to examine diasporic history in new and revealing ways.

Why Rara Burns Judas during Lent: Rethinking the Origins of Catholic Elements in Haitian Culture from an Afro-Iberian Perspective

AbstractUntil the 1980s, Catholic elements in Haitian culture tended to be interpreted exclusively in connection to the forced conversion of the enslaved population under French rule. This changed following John Thornton's groundbreaking research into the development of Christianity in early modern Africa—Kongo in particular—and the awareness that a significant number of enslaved Africans already identified as Christian before their arrival in Saint-Domingue. This article's goal is to go beyond Thornton's research by showing that we can acquire a better understanding of Catholic elements in Haitian culture if we start our analysis in late medieval Iberia. To illustrate this, the article focuses on one of Haiti's most enigmatic cultural traditions, known as Chariopié, Lwalwadi, or, most commonly, Rara. Although this performance has received abundant scholarly interest, questions relating to the origin of its Catholic elements have remained largely unanswered. This is regrettable considering that Rara parades follow the liturgical calendar of Lent and intensify in frequency during Holy Week. Moreover, a key element of Rara consists of the destruction of an effigy of Judas Iscariot, in accordance with the Biblical account of the Easter story. Using a comparative analysis, this article presents a number of remarkable parallels between Rara and late medieval Iberian Lent traditions. To explain these parallels, it claims that enslaved Africans who were familiar with Iberian practices prior to their arrival in the Caribbean established, by their own initiative, a network of mutual aid and burial societies modeled on Afro-Iberian Catholic brotherhoods.

The Ritual Solidarity of Masked Processions in Calabar, Cameroon, and Cuba

The Ritual Solidarity of Masked Processions in Calabar, Cameroon, and Cuba

The Ékpè-Abakuá Continuum

Building on nearly three decades of research in Cameroon, Cuba and Nigeria, Miller articulates an active Diaspora heritage between West Africa’s Ékpè ‘leopard’ society for community justice and the Cuban Abakuá mutual-aid society. After describing a collective research methodology engaged with initiates of both groups, he articulates an overarching narrative of this trans-Atlantic civilization. Through an examination of the literature about them, he identifies historical biases towards these institutions that hinder a contemporary dialogue with State representatives in each location.

“What Blood Unites, the Sea Shall Not Divide”: Bohemian Day at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893

“What Blood Unites, the Sea Shall Not Divide”: Bohemian Day at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893

La Paz's Colonial Specters: Urbanization, Migration, and Indigenous Political Participation, 1900–52

La Paz's Colonial Specters: Urbanization, Migration, and Indigenous Political Participation, 1900–52

4. Enterrés dans Paris occupé. Les tombes des Juifs dans les cimetières parisiens (1941-1944)

While it is not commonly known, Jews were able to participate in the social conventions surrounding funeral traditions during the Occupation. In her diary, Hélène Berr describes the funeral she attended in broad daylight at Montparnasse Cemetery in 1943. This article discusses which burial methods were available to Jewish people during their persecution in Paris. Are their grave sites still visible in the city’s cemeteries? Do those that remain show evidence of the government’s persecution? Do they indicate that the deceased passed away during the Occupation? What do the graves of the Jewish people who died during this time have to tell us?In Paris, regardless of whether they died “naturally,” i.e. from disease or starvation, or in internment camps, Jews could be: 1) laid to rest by their family in a personal tomb, 2) buried for free by the national community in trench graves, 3) interred by the association representing French Jews within the General Union of Jews in France (UGIF). A common characteristic of the remaining grave sites of Jews who died in the Drancy internment camp is the total absence of any mention of the persecution they faced in France during the Occupation. No inscriptions or any other form of evidence describes their tragic fate. Indeed, their tombstones do not mention the Drancy camp or their status as a prisoner at the time of their death.This article also explores one of UGIF’s unique strategies for burying the dead, namely the use of collective vaults owned by Jewish mutual aid societies. This strategy represented a commonality between two distinct types of Jewish populations, namely French Israelites, who made up the majority of UGIF’s leadership, and immigrant Jews, most of whom came from Eastern Europe. Their funeral traditions differed, as did their preferred places of burial in Paris at the time. Members of the first group were buried in Montparnasse and Montmartre, while members of the second group were buried in the Bagneux and Pantin cemeteries. And yet, during the government-led persecution of Jews and the collaborationist regime, these two groups adopted similar funeral rites by requisitioning vaults owned by Jewish mutual aid societies. The purpose of these organizations was to voluntarily unite Jews from Eastern European cities or their descendants. These individuals agreed to offer mutual aid to all members upon their death through the purchase of a collective and permanent tomb where the remains of all contributors and their families could be interred. In the 19th and 20th centuries, these organizations set up an ingenious system in France that made it possible to evade the French regulations that prohibited this type of collective vault. At the time, only family vaults were allowed.By creating its “burial” service using the funds and vaults of this type of organization, called “La Terre Promise,” UGIF also absorbed the assets of all Jewish associations in France, which had been dissolved after its creation in November 1941. From that point on, UGIF had control over the empty spaces in these collective vaults, which it decided to allocate to interned Jews who had died in the Drancy camp and had no pre-existing vaults.A paradox ensued. Jews who died as a result of the anti-Semitic movement in France, but who had not contributed to or joined these kinds of organizations, were nevertheless buried in these vaults, even though they did not have any ties with them. If descendants of the deceased are around today, what do they know? Victims were able to be re-buried by their loved ones in similar vaults after the war. After several years spent renewing the plot the UGIF purchased for his daughter, who died at the age of 4 as an internee in the Drancy camp, a Polish father who had returned from deportation finally had her body exhumed and re-buried in Bagneux in the collective vault of his village’s mutual aid society, before going into permanent exile in the United States himself. However, the direct descendants, who were cousins of the little girl, did not know she had died on French soil, nor that her current grave, an imposing collective monument, is located less than 600 feet from their family vault in the same cemetery.This example shows how the Jewish graves in Parisian cemeteries (because no Jewish cemeteries exist in France today) are the site of a fragmented remembrance that is separate from the persecution Jews suffered in occupied France.

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s Socio-Cultural Connections and Professional Self-Realisation in Lithuania

In 1907–1909, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis worked with seven national societies active in Lithuania: Lithuanian Art Society, Amateur Music and Theatre Society “Vilniaus Kanklės”, Lithuanian Association “Rūta” in Vilnius, Music and Theatre Society “Daina” in Kaunas, Lithuanian Scientific Society, Lithuanian Mutual Aid Society of Vilnius, and Charitable Society for Pupils and Students “Žiburėlis”. He was a member of the formerthree organizations. The Lithuanian Art Society was the main platform for Čiurlionis’s professional and social self-realisation. He served as its vice-chair and from September 1907 to September 1909 stood in for its chair, Antanas Žmuidzinavičius. He organised the Second Lithuanian Art Exhibition. On Čiurlionis initiative, the music section was established at the Society. Together with his colleagues, he organized a competition for Lithuanian composers; he also envisaged a periodical of music, art, and literature.The article discusses the question of the affiliation with the Lithuanian Vilnius Choir led by Čiurlionis. The research has revealed that Čiurlionis conducted a united choir consisting of the singers from the Lithuanian Mutual Aid Society of Vilnius and “Vilniaus Kanklės”. His participation in two soirees organised by “Žiburėlis”, quite favourable reviews of his artworks written by the liberals, and the principled criticism by the conservative cleric Aleksandras Dambrauskas (nom de plume Adomas Jakštas) demonstrate that Čiurlionis found it easier to work with democratic left-wing cultural figures. In June of 1909, Čiurlionis’s concert and the design of the curtain on the premises of the Lithuanian Association “Rūta” were associated with Andrius Domaševičius and Kipras Petrauskas. In his letter, Čiurlionis called himself “progressive.” It was uncharacteristic to indicate one’s party affiliation; in Čiurlionis’s case, it meant to be of liberal orientation. However, it was precisely because of his “leftist” views that the Educational Society “Aušra” deemed his membership unreliable. On July 11, 1909, Čiurlionis was nominated to the commission to collect songs for the Lithuanian Scientific Society. Unfortunately, the illness that manifested itself in December of 1909 prevented the composer from carrying out the work.

Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas

Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas

To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society

Benjamin Bryce's To Belong in Buenos Aires offers an impressively researched and compelling account of German migrants' and their descendants' efforts to carve out an ethnic space within the Argentine nation. The book's primary focus is the institutions—mutual aid societies, schools, and churches—that German porteños established and nourished between 1880 and 1930, which Bryce situates in various local, national, and transnational processes. Bryce argues convincingly that the diverse notions of German ethnic identity that emanated from these institutions represented, at their core, attempts to assert belonging within Argentina, not attempts at cultural isolation or separatism. The successes of these identitary projects complicated the pretensions of Argentine political and intellectual elites to forge a homogenous nation based primarily on the country's Iberian roots. They also confounded attempts by successive civic, religious, and political entities in Europe to foment certain specific kinds of Germanness in the Americas. In this way, Germans in Buenos Aires helped to form a de facto pluralist society in Argentina.The book is organized thematically by type of institution: social welfare (chapter 1), educational (chapters 2–4), and ecclesiastical (chapters 5–6). This structure emphasizes the multifarious meanings and purposes of engagement with so-called ethnic institutions. Attending a bilingual German-Spanish school could be as much an attempt to emphasize ethnic difference or cultural maintenance as it was about ensuring that the Argentine-born children of immigrants had every advantage possible to thrive as Argentines. Hiring a Catholic priest to give sermons in German could be as much about encouraging insertion into broader Catholic porteño society as about maintaining a separate German confessional community. Welcoming financial support from Prussian institutions did not prevent German porteños from spending that money to further their Argentine goals. While the book's structure makes it somewhat harder to grasp the general development of German institutions and identities in Buenos Aires over time, it greatly facilitates comparisons across and between ethnic groups in Argentina and elsewhere. For example, any researcher interested in the interplay between religious, ethnic, and national identities will easily find many helpful points of comparison with the German Argentine case.Methodologically, Bryce breaks out of traditional dichotomies used to map a group's trajectory from arrival in a new host country to becoming part of the local social fabric. Rather than rely on sliding scales of assimilation (linguistic, economic, political, confessional, etc.) to a national norm, he effectively demonstrates that claiming difference in one area can, in reality, be an assertion of belonging in another. The book is also careful to resist the exceptionalist narratives common among immigrant groups and too often reproduced within the historiography. To do this, Bryce consistently contextualizes his findings not just within the relatively scant historiography on Germans in Argentina but also within the cases of other migrant ethnic communities in Argentina and the Americas, as well as the growing body of work on Germans abroad (Auslandsdeutsche). This makes To Belong in Buenos Aires a prime example of the novel insights offered by the “New Ethnic Studies” in Latin America, demonstrating how ethnic identities can reveal much about broader cultural, political, and societal contexts within a nation. It is even more impressive that Bryce also engages robustly with contemporary debates in German historiography, showing the importance and limitations of transnational connections in the period.What remains less clear is how non-German Argentines (including other migrant groups and their descendants) understood, engaged with, represented, and shaped German identities in Argentina in this period. For example, Bryce justifiably holds that more porteños of German heritage were “indifferent about Weimar politics” than held strong positions either way, but that does not mean that others did not associate German ethnic populations with the upheavals of the 1910s and 1920s (p. 9). Similarly, while Bryce rightly points out that within the German communities the notions of whiteness or racialized identity were far less important than that of an ethnic Germanness, German migrants were undoubtedly imagined in racialized ways by other Argentines, both elite and nonelite.To Belong in Buenos Aires is a much welcome addition to the fields of migration and ethnic studies in Latin America, particularly in relation to the state's important role in shaping the contours of community identities and institutions. It also promises to make large contributions to Argentine and German historiographies and the histories of education and religion in the region.

Rethinking the Historical Development of Caribbean Performance Culture from an Afro-Iberian Perspective

Abstract This article advocates for a new perspective on Caribbean performance traditions by adopting an Afro-Iberian perspective. It argues that we are able to acquire a better understanding of the historical development of some of the most enigmatic Caribbean performances, including Jankunu, by taking into consideration that many of those who built the foundations of Afro-Caribbean culture had already adopted cultural and religious elements rooted in Iberian traditions before their arrival in the Americas. A comparative analysis demonstrates a series of parallels between early witness accounts of Jankunu and Iberian calenda traditions. In order to explain this, the article points to Iberian dominance in the early-modern Atlantic and, in particular, Portuguese influences in Africa. It highlights the importance of confraternities and argues that it was in the context of African variants of these mutual-aid and burial societies that elements rooted in Iberian traditions entered Afro-Caribbean culture.

Женское движение в России в 1907–1914 гг.

The article examines the women's movement in Russia in 1907–1914. The author studies, what is the women's movement; its causes (discrimination and legal inequality of women in all spheres of life); women's issue (a whole complex of problems related to the unequal position of women in society, economy and family) and the problem of emancipation (liberation) of women. The article also considers the impact of the First Russian Revolution of 1905–1907 on the women's movement, features of the women's movement in 1907–1914 (the stage of formation of a mass women's movement with an extensive infrastructure, integrating various social strata of women). The author shows that the number and diversity of women's organizations continued to increase, which contributed to the formation of a broad social base of the women's movement; presents the classification of women's associations by spheres of activity, by ideological orientation: conservative, liberal (including feminist) and socialist. The article demonstrates the main activities of the women's movement: the struggle for education, for access to professional work, charity, the struggle for civil and political rights, including electoral rights and mentions women's parties, organizations, such as Russian Women's Mutual Charitable Society, Women's Progressive Party, Women's Equality Union, Workers' Mutual Aid Society and three All-Russian women's congresses. It shows participation of various segments of the population in the women's movement. The author analyzes government policy on the women's issue and concludes about the results and significance of the women's movement.

Revolutionary Masculinity and Racial Inequality: Gendering War and Politics in Cuba

Revolutionary Masculinity and Racial Inequality: Gendering War and Politics in Cuba

White-collar workers in Milan: c. 1880–1915

ABSTRACT The article examines the milieu of white-collar workers and their structures of association through a case study of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Milan. The city had the largest number of private white-collar workers in Italy, as well as numerous state employees, and was also a centre for the organization of socialist worker trade unionism. White-collar workers, however, chose to create their own general associations (separately from Milan trade unionism) that included all the non-manual worker sectors. The goal was to form an interest group to exert its influence within the city. The points of contact between white-collar workers were above all cultural and to do with their social aspirations; their associations were successful only in these fields, with the creation of mutual aid societies, purchasing cooperatives and cooperatives for the construction of houses. The unifying feature of white-collar workers was the desire to achieve respectable status in terms of both lifestyle and consumption. Urban associationism gradually dwindled away before the First World War as public employees chose to take their place in national unions, while private employees, scattered among numerous employers in a highly fragmented state, were disoriented and unable to come up with an autonomous and effective form of organization.