Regional Power Structure Research Articles

Reformers to Radicals: The Appalachian Volunteers and the War on Poverty (review)

Reviewed by: Reformers to Radicals: The Appalachian Volunteers and the War on Poverty Jinny Turman-Deal Reformers to Radicals: The Appalachian Volunteers and the War on Poverty. By Thomas Kiffmeyer. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. Pp. 284.) Thomas Kiffmeyer's work provides a critical analysis of the antipoverty group Appalachian Volunteers (AV) that operated in central Appalachia during President Johnson's War on Poverty. By relying extensively on the AV papers housed at Berea College, he chronicles the group's quick transition from conservative brainchild of the Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM) to radical and independent agency focused on confronting regional power structures. While this shift was initially examined in David Whisnant's 1980 work Modernizing the Mountaineer, Kiffmeyer contends that the process was much more complex than what Whisnant described. Reformers to Radicals thus complicates the AV's story by demonstrating that the group's radical transition was fostered by a series of external and internal events that altered both its membership and the volunteers' ideology. This book is structured chronologically, and Kiffmeyer breaks down the AV program into four phases. The first phase, which began with the group's advent in 1964, fulfilled the Council of the Southern Mountains' goal of having Appalachians assisting other Appalachians. Native college students recruited from regional institutions ran projects such as school restoration, summer enrichment programs, and book drives. Kiffmeyer maintains that this emphasis on education as an antipoverty measure reflected liberal values and a belief in the culture of poverty on the part of the AV, the CSM, and government leaders. However, as the War on Poverty and the AV program expanded and more volunteers were brought into Appalachia from outside the region, their perspective changed. This expansion marked the second phase, and it was during this period that the introduction of outsiders exposed vast differences in "class, culture, and urban and rural values" between the volunteers and the natives. The third phase was defined by the Volunteers' move toward "issue organizing" (10). As the poverty workers challenged local business owners, politicians, powerful coal companies, and the elite-dominated Community Action Programs and welfare boards, their efforts were countered with charges of communism by local and state governments. Such charges, coupled with internal divisions over the Vietnam War draft, served to weaken and eventually destroy the AV. As the non-native volunteers were forced out, the AV moved into their fourth phase, which saw a return to the initial model of natives helping natives. The AV program ended in 1970. [End Page 121] Kiffmeyer is not particularly sympathetic to the AV, and rightfully so. He finds fault with a number of issues including their early focus on the poor rather than on the root causes of poverty, their inability to clearly define and convey the concepts of "community development" and "community action," and the paternalism that never dissipated despite the Volunteers' turn toward radicalism (14). These criticisms are significant and link Kiffmeyer's work with an entire body of scholarship that offers similar critiques of other historic efforts to "uplift" mountaineers. Still, he leaves one wondering if there are any small success stories that could have been added to enrich his analysis, even in terms of the native interns' personal empowerment or decreased school-dropout rates. This small question aside, Reformers to Radicals provides a valuable contribution to Appalachian and American historiography. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding modern Appalachia's struggle with indigence or the War on Poverty's inability to provide solid and lasting solutions for such a persistent and pervasive problem. [End Page 122] Jinny Turman-Deal West Virginia University Copyright © 2009 West Virginia University Press

Rebuilding the System of Justice in Afghanistan: A Preliminary Assessment

This preliminary evaluation describes the role of international assistance in the reconstruction of the Afghan judicial system. It focuses on how international policy has both sought to develop and impose externally designed central administrative models and legal codes and also to pragmatically adapt to existing, highly decentralized, practices shaped by the Islamic tradition. The research conducted suggests that international policy in this area has done little to reinforce the central administrative control of the centre. First, regional power structures have been pragmatically accepted, as highlighted in the bypassing of a transitional justice phase, in an attempt to maintain a fragile political stability. Second, the fragmented nature of the Afghan justice system has been reinforced by the lack of coordination between the relevant international actors, which have generated a bundle of projects in the area, each advancing independently.

Health sector decentralization and divergences with the medical society in Mexico

To evaluate the medical society's perception and actions in the context of health sector decentralization in the states of Guanajuato and Sonora, Mexico. Qualitative research techniques were applied. Thirty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with medical college members of both public and private institutions, and collegiate and union representatives of both states studied. Members of medical society in both states acknowledged that decentralization implied in insecurity due to the lack of clarity of health sector regulations. As a result of actions of the medical college in both states there was a growing politicization of medical college members, elaboration of proposals to increase their control over the medical labor market and their participation in the regional political power structure. This research supports the existing re-articulation of the medical society at a regional level preserving its status as a respected group. In contrast to studies conducted in the United States and Mexico medical authorities have pressed on the regulations in order to preserve their privileged status within the existing contention.

The Development of Scottish Border Lordship, 1332–58

Abstract This article examines the effect of sustained warfare on the political society of southern Scotland. Using contemporary sources it discusses the disintegration of existing structures of lordship in the thirteen‐thirties and the exercise of effective leadership by minor landowners and their followers. This process is considered in the context of similar changes in the regional power structures elsewhere in the British Isles. The new limitations placed on royal authority in the Scottish Marches continued beyond the period of major war and culminated in the formalization of personal and military lordship with the creation of the earldom of Douglas in 1358.

War without winners: Afghanistan's uncertain transition after the Cold War

The situation created by Soviet intervention in Afghanistan attracted scholarly attention worldwide. But though much was written on Afghanistan, little effort was made to understand the domestic roots of the confrontation, nor was any effort made to explain the linkage between internal strife and external invasion. In this first work of its kind Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais analyses all the factors that led to the Afghan tragedy. He examines the nature of the Afghan state and society, the dynamics of the regional and global power structure, the externalization of the civil strife and the resultant fragmentation of political power, thereby adding a fresh perspective to the debate on the politics and security of Afghanistan.

Reforming Peasant Production in Africa: Power and Technological Change in Two Nigerian Villages

Differential access to state-allocated incentives, based on socio-economic inequalities in rural society, is commonly assumed to be a key determinant of change in rural Africa. This article argues that, given the spatial diversity of Africa's rural political economies, analysis of the politics of rural change needs to be premised on an appreciation of the multiplicity of social relations through which rural power structures are configured. Data from a field study of a World Bank assisted agricultural development project in Lafia, Nigeria, are used to illustrate the manner in which spatial and inter-community variations in responses to commercialization, cultural divisions and the reorganization of political relations during the colonial era combine to sustain regional power structures which are defined by such differences. A comparative analysis of two village communities at opposite ends of the regional spectrum of commercialization is employed to demonstrate how such power structures provide a framework within which the political conditions of access operate to the advantage of both dominant socio-economic strata and members of particular cultural communities.

Pakistan in the Regional and Global Power Structure

Research Article| April 01 1991 Pakistan in the Regional and Global Power Structure Rasul B. Rais Rasul B. Rais Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Asian Survey (1991) 31 (4): 378–392. https://doi.org/10.2307/2645391 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Rasul B. Rais; Pakistan in the Regional and Global Power Structure. Asian Survey 1 April 1991; 31 (4): 378–392. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2645391 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1991 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Pakistan in the Regional and Global Power Structure

Research Article| April 01 1991 Pakistan in the Regional and Global Power Structure Rasul B. Rais Rasul B. Rais Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Asian Survey (1991) 31 (4): 378–392. https://doi.org/10.2307/2645391 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Rasul B. Rais; Pakistan in the Regional and Global Power Structure. Asian Survey 1 April 1991; 31 (4): 378–392. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2645391 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1991 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Peasant Movements in Chiapas

of the most vulnerable stratum of the population, it is also true that other phenomena have combined to make expansion of peasant demands almost uncontrollable. This expansion is springing up all over Chiapas in the most diverse forms: petitions to the occupation of municipal buildings; the with? drawal of livestock from the estates by workers; the disruption of transport. Whether they use weapons or not, whether they are respectful of the law or not, whether they are denouncing or negotiating, Chiapan peasants have broken a long tradition of docility in which each uprising for at least a century was in support of the conservative policy of the state and the landowners who held them in subjection. The peasants of Chiapas demanded their Agrarian Reform half a century late in a climate of extreme mistrust which originated in the existence of cacique models of control, which provoked the peasants to constantly question the regional power structures. It is the purpose of this paper to focus on the issues of identity, regional diversity and the limited impact of land reform in Chiapas as contributing to the inoperability of programmes of development, which are generally poorly planned and regionally and socially unbalanced, maintaining the anachronistic socio-economic structure. THE REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY

The Role of the Military in the Formation of Revolutionary Committees 1967–68

When, at a moment of high tide in the Cultural Revolution, the first Revolutionary Committee was established in the Manchurian province of Heilungkiang on 31 January 1967, a new type of leadership organ appeared on the Chinese scene, indicating drastic changes in the regional power structure. At the beginning, these Revolutionary Committees were supposed to act as “temporary supreme organs of power” (Lin-shih tsui-kao ch'üan-li chi-kou), in which capacity they combined the local and regional leadership of party, administration, economy and mass organizations. During the four weeks preceding the formation of the Heilungkiang Committee, violent activity by newly formed Maoist organizations in a number of Chinese provinces and cities had been answered by wide-spread popular resistance, which was in many cases instigated by the local and regional Party leadership. Facing this resistance, Mao Tse-tung, in a personal mandate to his First Deputy and presumptive successor, Lin Piao, on 17 or 18 January 1967 ordered the military to intervene in the power-struggle between Maoists and anti-Maoists. The immediate attitudinal response of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), however, was not wholly convincing. Nevertheless, this call for the military to support the faltering Maoist counterattack against “revisionist” oppositional forces marks the beginning of a definite rise in military influence on the political process in Communist China.