Political Roots Research Articles

My pipes say I am powerful: belonging and class as constructed through our sewers

This review examines the social and political roots and ongoing implications of centralized, waterborne sewerage. This system has served as a marker of class, a signal of wealth and political power, and a mechanism of social reform. As sewerage networks ballooned in the mid‐19th century throughout Europe and North America in response to a growing public health movement, their use and attendant hygiene practices served to intertwine physical and moral hygiene. The new infrastructure prioritized a felt distance between the user and their excreta, particularly signaled by the absence of odor, access to privacy, and the disassociation of users from any part of the management process beyond the flush of the toilet. Furthermore, the resource intensive system advertised affluence, and emphasized emerging notions of the networked urban space, which had the potential to tame and control Nature. This infrastructure model and its social and political underpinnings were exported to many cities under colonial influence throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, and were used to justify class differentiation and racialized agendas. Differential sewerage access in municipal centers of the Global South today continues to serve as a marker of class distinction, and many modern scholars explore how lack of sewerage renders the urban poor politically invisible. Ultimately, consideration of the social and political legacy of the linear sewerage system may offer new ways forward in addressing urban sanitation crises faced across the globe today, including problems posed by aging, unsustainable, and insufficient infrastructure. WIREs Water 2016, 3:63–73. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1108This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water

The political roots of racial tracking in American criminal justice

The race problem in the American criminal justice system persists because we enable it. The tendency of liberals to point a finger at law enforcement, racial conservatives, the War on Drugs, is misguided. Black as well as white voters, Democrat as much as Republican lawmakers, President Obama as much as Reagan, both Congress and the Supreme Court alike; all are implicated. We all are 'The Man'. Whether the problem is defined in terms of blacks' overrepresentation in prisons or in terms of the disproportional use of deadly police force against blacks, not enough of us demand that something be done. The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice is the story of how the race problem in criminal justice is continually enabled in the national crime policy process, and why.

Shakespeare and Ecocriticism Reconsidered

AbstractOrganized around a set of principles rather than a unified theoretical approach, ecocriticism considers the relationship between humans and nonhumans, especially as expressed in texts. Despite calls from some for ecocritics to rally around a unified theory, ecocritics have embraced the inclusivity that such broad definition has allowed. Thus, practitioners have come to ecocriticism with a range of interests. Such interests vary from an earlier focus on how the human/nonhuman relationship was fractured (and its recuperation in nature writing in particular) to a later emphasis on how it is always‐already interconnected. Along the way, and especially in light of concerns about our current environmental crises, many ecocritics have cited a political dimension to the field, bringing concerns of the past and present together and examining intersections between such things as environmental degradation, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and speciesism. Early modern ecocriticism, especially in Shakespeare studies, has become a steadily growing field over the past decade. But early modern ecocritics' focus on the “nonhuman” tends to be more focused than that category might suggest, ranging from (nonhuman) animals, to plants, to minerals – challenging the distinction between animate and inanimate as well as asking us to rethink the integrity (let alone the exceptionalism) of the category of the human. This essay reviews the state of the field of Shakespeare and ecocriticism and offers a pathway for its future development, especially to suggest that it retains its political roots and focus on the implications of the material interactions between humans and nonhumans related to gender, race, and class.

Parenting Support as Policy Field: An Analytic Framework

This article develops an analytic framework for parenting support, treating it as both a form of social policy and a measure that intervenes more broadly in politics and society. It is suggested that, as a form of social policy, parenting support can be examined through analytical categories that are classic to social policy, such as: the nature of the offer or ‘good’ to parents, the modality of provision, conditions of access and operation, the policy setting and linkages to other policies, the unfolding of the policy over time and historical roots, philosophical underpinnings and dominant professional influences. In a second layer, the social and political roots and orientations of parenting support have to be investigated. When one does this by, for example, identifying the main actors involved in parenting support and the rationales and claims made for parenting support as a policy response, it becomes obvious that parenting support can be either a benign project of support or part of a more controlling educative or retraining exercise.

New Perspectives on Criminal (In)Justice and Incarceration

The Punitive Turn: New Approaches to Race and Incarceration, edited by Deborah McDowell, Claudrena Harold, and Juan Battle, utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to examine the complex historical, socioeconomic, and political roots of the American carceral state; the racial and gender dynamics embedded within the criminal justice and penal systems; and the collateral damage and exorbitant costs associated with mass incarceration. Emerging from a two-day symposium at the University of Virginia in 2009, this edited volume, which is divided into four sections, features essays that collectively focus on the varying contours of imprisonment and what the contributors view as the unraveling of American democracy. Moreover, The Punitive Turn, in an effort to explore mass incarceration and the disproportionate numbers of African Americans trapped in the criminal justice system, probes the historical dimensions of the 21st century carceral state. The contributors provide provocative and comprehensive analyses of the intersections between race and gender and imprisonment, shedding light on the often hidden world and experiences of the over two million men and women who are currently living behind bars. Presenting fresh perspectives and instructive discourses on mass imprisonment, the chapters add to the existing subfields of critical race theory, legal and sociological studies, and African American and women’s histories. Chronicling the complex historical roots of modern-day incarceration, part one, “Punishment in Historical Perspective,” delineates the origins of the modernday carceral state by focusing on African Americans’ incarceration from the end

Understanding participatory governance arrangements in urban politics: idealist and cynical perspectives on the politics of citizen dialogues in Göteborg, Sweden

The purpose of this article is to deepen the understanding of the spread of participatory governance arrangements (PGAs) in urban politics. While PGAs tend to be viewed from a democratization angle, several studies interpret them as part of other logics, such as public management ideals and neoliberal governmentality. By analyzing the policy content, political roots and motives behind the politics of ‘citizen dialogue’ in the city of Göteborg, Sweden, this article provides empirical insight and elaborates on how the turn toward participatory governance can be understood both from an idealist and a cynical perspective.

An analysis of Jordan's 2013 policy regarding Iraqi refugees

The Iraqi refugee population in Jordan has become a sustained humanitarian emergency, and Jordan must take new action to respond. The inability of Jordan to address the needs of Iraqi refugees causes not only the suffering of those refugees, but also that of the larger native populations, as needy Iraqis depend upon Jordan's already strained resources. In addition, non-governmental organizations cannot keep up with Iraqi refugee needs due to funding restrictions. Moreover, the UNHCR and other aid agencies may not be suited to performing the task of addressing the Iraqi refugee crisis as a majority of this response relates to humanitarian aid, not addressing the political roots of the problem. There are also fundamental statistical issues relating to Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Numerical discrepancies and political connections make it difficult to determine whether the currently purported number of 450,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan is accurate. The clear benefits Jordan receives from aid might give rise to suspicions of inflated reported numbers of Iraqi refugees. Also, reports make contrary claims about the average social level of Iraqi refugees, making it difficult to determine what type of aid is needed. Jordan should alter internal policy regarding Iraqi refugees to initiate a political solution for the crisis. It must also carry out up-to-date surveys of the numbers and needs of Iraqi refugees to address the significant gaps in current data, and additionally should push for increased social integration of Iraqis within society.

Schooling Jim Crow: the fight for Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School and the roots of black protest politics

In 1919 the NAACP organized a voting bloc powerful enough to compel the city of Atlanta to budget $1.5 million for the construction of schools for black students. This victory would have been remarkable in any era, but in the context of the Jim Crow South it was revolutionary. Schooling Jim Crow tells the story of this little-known campaign, which happened less than thirteen years after the Atlanta race riot of 1906 and just weeks before a wave of anti-black violence swept the nation in the summer after the end of World War I. Despite the constant threat of violence, Atlanta's black voters were able to force the city to build five black grammar schools and Booker T. Washington High School, the city's first publicly funded black high school. Schooling Jim Crow reveals how they did it and why it matters. In this pathbreaking book, Jay Driskell explores the changes in black political consciousness that made the NAACP's grassroots campaign possible at a time when most black southerners could not vote, let alone demand schools. He reveals how black Atlantans transformed a reactionary politics of respectability into a militant force for change. Contributing to this militancy were understandings of class and gender transformed by decades of racially segregated urban development, the 1906 Atlanta race riot, Georgia's disfranchisement campaign of 1908, and the upheavals of World War I. On this cultural foundation, black Atlantans built a new urban black politics that would become the model for the NAACP's political strategy well into the twentieth century.

THE TOLERANT POPULISTS AND THE LEGACY OF WALTER NUGENT

AbstractPublished in 1963 and with a second edition in 2013, Walter Nugent's The Tolerant Populists challenged and overturned an interpretation of the American Populist movement, largely associated with Richard Hofstadter's The Age of Reform, which portrayed the People's Party as backward looking, reactionary, irrational, antisemitic, and nativist. The Tolerant Populists demonstrated the Populist movement to be forward looking in its advocacy of statist economic reforms later adopted by progressives. In addition to this particular intervention in the literature, The Tolerant Populists, as it marked a turn in the 1960s to writing history from the bottom up, also more generally shaped the historiography of Populism by emphasizing the local social, cultural, and political roots of the movement; the movement's appeal to marginalized Americans in the 1890s; and the reasonableness of its policy measures to ease economic suffering. Moreover, the new edition critiques the continued use in popular media of lower-case “populism” to describe modern anti-statist movements that bear no resemblance to the movement of the 1890s. Finally, Walter Nugent forwarded the historiographical emphases in The Tolerant Populists to influence, in his later scholarship, the wider history of monetary policy, American demographic and social history, immigration, the American West, and American empire building.

Conventional Wisdom and the Next Unknown

Conventional Wisdom and the Next Unknown

Famine politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union

During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union. This book analyzes the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, the book systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. This analysis examines the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.

Le fratellanze comuniste italiane nella Francia degli anni trenta: dall'internazionalismo al regionalismo?

During the 1930s, Italian communists founded various regional organizations in France with the aim of winning the masses of immigrants in the country, taking them away from the control of the fascist consulates. Regionalism represented an element of absolute innovation for the communists who, until then, had remained anchored in internationalism. The decision to form the brotherhoods was a reaction to the fascist penetration among immigrants and represented the result of a deep ideological revision by the Pci. This essay describes the events of the numerous brotherhoods and tries to identify the cultural and political roots of their success in some regional communities. According to the author, communist regionalism did not restrain the integration of immigrants in French society, but represented a form of mobilization that favored the entry of some of them in the public arena.

Yugoslavia’s Hidden History: Partisan-Ustashi Collaboration in the World War II (1941−1945)

The aim of this article is to give a significant contribution to both Balkan and South Slavic historiography in clarification of the question of direct and indirect military-political cooperation between the Partisans of Corporal and Marshal Josip Broz Tito and the Ustashi leader (Poglavnik) Ante Pavelic on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia during the World War II (1941−1945) and to highlight the ideological and political roots and objectives of this cooperation. The article is mainly based on the primary archival documents housed in Belgrade, but never used by the official state’s Titoist historiography, and on the testimonies of participants in historical events from the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (the so-called Chetniks) who were after 1945 in exile.

The Political Roots of Measurism in Religious Argumentation: Vox Populi Vox Dei in the Pitts Street Chapel Lectures of 1858

The Political Roots of Measurism in Religious Argumentation: Vox Populi Vox Dei in the Pitts Street Chapel Lectures of 1858

The Clash of Two Security Conceptions on the Plateau: Issues, Problems and Prognoses

The conception of security in post World War II era was anchored on the protection and preservation of the state’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and the regime in power. This trend however changed at the end of Cold War to the protection and preservation of the national, who now became the primary unit of analysis and who is meant to live under socio-economic and political conditions that seek to guarantee the twin values of freedom from fear and freedom from want. This paper, in examining contemporary challenges to peace and security in Plateau State, argues that the intractable and internecine conflict dynamics reflects a constant clash between the traditional and human conceptions of security. The clash is made possible by Nigeria’s historical experiences in colonial and military dictatorships, which sustained the deployment of military hardware in state responsiveness to every conflict situations. In interpreting these scenarios, the paper deployed classical historical, analytical and comparative research methods in concluding that the zero-sum and militarist-driven approach may fail to address the historical, political, and socio-economic roots of conflict on the Plateau.

Damon J. Phillips: Shaping Jazz: Cities, Labels, and the Global Emergence of an Art Form

Administrative Science Quarterly 59 (4)NP57–NP59 O The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/ journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0001839214543268 asq.sagepub.com Damon J. Phillips: Shaping Jazz: Cities, Labels, and the Global Emergence of an Art Form. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. 217 pp. $35.00 / £24.95, cloth. This fascinating historical analysis of the dynamics of the early jazz industry should be of great interest to organizational theorists, cultural sociologists, and social-network analysts. Phillips studied jazz recordings made between 1917, when recorded jazz began, and 1933, a low point in the production of jazz recordings—the year before swing jazz was introduced and reinvigorated the market. This was an important era in the market for jazz: nine out of the ten most frequently recorded jazz tunes were first recorded during this period. Phillips’ study is both historically sensitive and geographically broad. Unlike many previous studies in the ‘‘production of culture’’ perspective, which tend to focus on a single region, this analysis covers a vast geographic territory, from New Orleans to New York, Saint Louis to Stockholm and Sydney, Chicago to Calcutta. Phillips’ theory about the dynamics of the recorded jazz industry is based on four assumptions: (1) tunes that are recorded frequently, such as ‘‘Stardust’’ and ‘‘Summertime,’’ constitute the core of the market for jazz; (2) the develop- ment of the market for jazz is path-dependent, meaning that actors and activi- ties at any point in time are shaped by actors and activities at earlier points in time; (3) the market for jazz is also driven by exemplars like Charlie Parker, whom listeners and purchasers of records invoke when they think of the genre, rather than by typical representatives of the genre; and (4) the boundaries and meaning of jazz are dynamic, meaning that they shift over time, which is a clear and direct consequence of the first three assumptions. These assumptions may seem simple, but in combination, they allow Phillips to develop a complex, compelling picture of how the market for recorded jazz evolved across the globe. One of the most enjoyable things about this book is that it demonstrates the importance and historically contingent nature of social categories. There were many different styles of jazz, produced by a wide variety of combinations of instruments and voice, by ensembles that varied greatly in size and racial com- position. Phillips shows that the prevalence, appeal, and legitimacy of these many different jazz styles shifted over time and varied among types of produc- ing organizations at any point in time and over time for any particular type of producing organization. Other people who study product and organizational categories would do well to emulate his concern for concrete phenomena— activities in the market for cultural products—and steer away from trying to develop a theory of categories disconnected from all cultural, economic, and political roots. His sensitivity to time and place are critical to the insights he Downloaded from asq.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIB on July 26, 2016

Looking beyond ethnicity: the negotiation of Chinese Muslim identity in Penang, Malaysia

The conflation of ethnic and religious identities, particularly that of Malay and Muslim, has long historical and political roots in Malaysia. Being one of the most safeguarded identity marks in Malaysia, Islam has become part of the core of Malay ethnicity and plays a prominent role in ethnic politics. Muslim converts from ethnic minorities, such as the Chinese and Indians, are therefore faced with social expectation and pressure to ‘become Malay’. This paper discusses the difficulty and improbability of Chinese Muslim identity in the previous literature and the recent development that enables the decoupling of religious and ethnic identities. By looking beyond ethnicity, the most salient social divider in Malaysia, and looking into other possibilities, such as religious identity, this paper aims to paint a picture of social relations and identification that is more complex yet flexible amongst the Chinese Muslim converts in Penang.

From Politics to Academics: Political Activism and the Emergence of Science and Technology Studies in South Korea

Science and technology studies (STS) is now a mature field in many countries, and it is important to understand its historical and political roots in a wide variety of national contexts. The present contribution to such a vast project links a number of South Korean activist groups involved in a critical reflection upon science and technology in the 1970s and the 1980s to the academic developments of the STS field in the 1990s. A focus on the activist roots of South Korea's STS counterbalances more institutional and less politicized histories of the field; it also enlightens the specificity of critical approaches to science in the context of an emerging power that was a military dictatorship. The authors describe how a group of students and professors, most of whom had been trained as scientists and engineers, created a discussion circle to foster a critical and political discourse on science. They then trace the emergence of the new field through the dissemination of texts and their reception. The academic aspects of Korean STS are then compared, over three periods, with similar currents in Europe and the United States. The conclusion shows that the critique of science that emerged in South Korea took a form substantially different from critiques elsewhere, linking this difference to political and institutional causes.

The Political Roots of Health Insurance Benefit Mandates

As of 2011, the average US state had 37 health insurance benefit mandates, laws requiring health insurance plans to cover a specific treatment, condition, provider, or person. This number is a massive increase from less than one mandate per state in 1965, and the topic takes on a new significance now, when the federal government is considering many new mandates as part of the essential health benefits required by the Affordable Care Act. A large body of literature has attempted to evaluate the effect of mandates on health, health insurance, and the labor market. However, previous papers did not consider the political processes behind the passage of mandates. In fact, when they estimate the laws' effect, almost all papers on the subject assume that mandates are passed at random. We use fixed effects estimation to determine why some states pass more mandates than others. We find that the political strength of health care providers is the strongest determinant of mandates. Our paper opens the way to estimating the causal effect of mandates on health insurance and the labor market using an instrumental variables strategy that incorporates political information about why mandates get passed.

Education Reform Sparks Teacher Protest in Mexico

The tumult in Mexican education has deep roots in politics and tradition, but it is latter-day global competition and international measures of student performance that are driving reform efforts.