Revolutionary Family Research Articles

Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh's courageous sacrifice in the Indian nationalist movement

Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh is considered one of the most influential young revolutionaries of the Indian nationalist movement. His courageous sacrifice for the Indian nationalist movement is remembered as Martyrs’ Day on 23 March. On this day, on 23 March 1931, Bhagat Singh Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were hanged. To liberate the country of India, these brave sons had kissed the noose with a smile. That is why this day is called Martyr’s Day. At that time Bhagat Singh was only 23 years old. At the young age of 23, he along with his comrades sacrificed their lives for the motherland, due to which Bhagat Singh became a favorite of the youth during the freedom struggle. This famous slogan of “Inquilab Zindabad” had expressed the voice of patriotism in every vein of the heart, mind and body of the Indian youth. Bhagat Singh was born on 27 September 1907 at 09.00 am in Banga village, District – Lyallpur. His father’s name was Sardar Kishan Singh Sandhu and mother’s name was Vidyavati Kaur. At the time of his birth, his father Kishan Singh and some family members were in jail. His uncle Ajit Singh was always in front of him as a motivating force and role model. His father Sardar Kishan Singh, who worked all his life for the independence of the country, was his source of inspiration. Inspired by the revolutionary family, the spirit of courage, sacrifice and patriotism developed in Bhagat Singh. In his early days, Bhagat Singh supported Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement. But later, due to Gandhiji canceling the non-cooperation movement, some anger arose among them. But like the entire nation, he respected Gandhiji. Bhagat Singh was only 12 years old at the time of Jallianwala Bagh massacre. This massacre filled Bhagat Singh’s mind with anger against the British. At the same time, Bhagat Singh was so disturbed by the hanging of four revolutionaries and the imprisonment of 16 other revolutionaries in the Kakori incident that he merged his party Navjawan Bharat Sabha with the Hindustan Republican Association and gave it a new name, Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. “Today the desire for sarfaroshi is in our hearts, let us see how much strength the killer has in his arms” These are the words of those revolutionaries whose story of courage, sacrifice and bravery is remembered across the country. The country always pays tribute to his martyrdom.

Topological polarons in halide perovskites.

Halide perovskites emerged as a revolutionary family of high-quality semiconductors for solar energy harvesting and energy-efficient lighting. There is mounting evidence that the exceptional optoelectronic properties of these materials could stem from unconventional electron-phonon couplings, and it has been suggested that the formation of polarons and self-trapped excitons could be key to understanding such properties. By performing first-principles simulations across the length scales, here we show that halide perovskites harbor a uniquely rich variety of polaronic species, including small polarons, large polarons, and charge density waves, and we explain a variety of experimental observations. We find that these emergent quasiparticles support topologically nontrivial phonon fields with quantized topological charge, making them nonmagnetic analog of the helical Bloch points found in magnetic skyrmion lattices.

High Entropy Oxides Modulate Atomic-Level Interactions for High-Performance Aqueous Zinc-Ion Batteries.

The strong electrostatic interaction between high-charge-density zinc ions (112 C mm-3 ) and the fixed crystallinity of traditional oxide cathodes with delayed charge compensation hinders the development of high-performance aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs). Herein, to intrinsically promote electron transfer efficiency and improve lattice tolerance, a revolutionary family of high-entropy oxides (HEOs) materials with multipath electron transfer and remarkable structural stability as cathodes for AZIBs is proposed. Benefiting from the unique "cock-tail" effect, the interaction of diverse type metal-atoms in HEOs achieves essentially broadened d-band and lower degeneracy than monometallic oxides, which contribute to convenient electron transfer and one of the best rate-performances (136.2 mAh g-1 at 10.0 A g-1 ) in AZIBs. In addition, the intense lattice strain field of HEOs is highly tolerant to the electrostatic repulsion of high-charge-density Zn2+ , leading totheoutstanding cycling stability in AZIBs. Moreover, the super selectability of elements in HEOs exhibits significant potential for AZIBs.

“No Podía Permanecer Indiferente”: A Fragmented Mexican Revolutionary Family Intervenes in the Costa Rican Civil War (1948)

ABSTRACT This article examines the interventions of different official and non-official actors of Mexican origin in the Costa Rican civil war in 1948. The article demonstrates that during the early Cold War years, Mexico’s international relations with Central America were conducted by multiple actors, part of different transnational networks, in part due to the ruptures surrounding the pacts of what was known as the Mexican revolutionary family. This article reconstructs the different historical trajectories, interests, agendas, and actions of these actors, shedding light on a topic often neglected by Mexican foreign policy historiography. Taking up recent debates over Mexico’s stance during the Latin American Cold War, this article contributes to filling the gap in the early Cold War Mexican foreign policy towards the region, stressing nuances over the existence of a non-intervention, homogeneous foreign policy that prioritized the relationship with the United States.

The erosion of corporatist voting and party fragmentation in Chiapas: Pluralism, or political decomposition?

AbstractUnlike studies that view democratization merely as free and fair competitive multiparty elections, this case study provides a subnational, socioterritorial analysis of the demise of single‐party rule in Chiapas, one of the last strongholds of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, revealing the contradictory and erratic processes of local politics in Mexico. Democratization requires not only regular alternation in office but also the development of representative institutions and of solid political parties that are able to constrain the executive branch. In Chiapas, electoral democratization occurred very late, with significant geographic variation, as the result of a convulsive process of political decomposition that included the indigenous Zapatista rebellion. Yet, corporatist structures and illiberal practices resisted, reproduced, and accommodated to electoral pluralism. The gradual erosion of the local “Revolutionary Family” spurred the fragmentation, and then the collapse, of the incipient party system, instead of fostering democratic governance with genuine checks and balances.

Internationalizing the Revolutionary Family

Abstract This article argues that Cuban ideas about gender, sexuality, and the family shaped Cuban internationalist collaboration with Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. It demonstrates that collaboration sprang from a gendered political discourse, and in turn the dynamics of gendered relationships between Cubans and Nicaraguans affected the internationalist campaigns. First, the essay argues that state discourse expanded the idea of the New Man to include volunteering abroad, and cast female participants as moral agents of internationalism. Second, it analyzes the idea of revolutionary love and how it related to internationalism. Then, the article demonstrates how internationalism created transnational relationships. Finally, it examines the experiences of Nicaraguan students who went to boarding schools on the Isla de la Juventud. Throughout, the article centers the notion of family and shows how internationalist mobility created space for personal experiences, love within revolution, and new family dynamics.

Ann S. Blum (1950–2015)

Ann S. Blum (1950–2015)

Uncertain lives: Insights into the role of job precariousness in union formation in Italy

1.IntroductionAlthough presented as the remedy for economic problems and unemployment since the 1990s, the diffusion of new forms of flexible and temporary work contracts has transformed labor market entry and exit conditions, leading to an increasing precariousness of employment careers. Growing uncertainty has become an intrinsic characteristic of contemporary 'globalized' societies, caused by deregulation, internationalization, and delocalization (e.g., Blossfeld and Hofmeister 2006; Blossfeld, Mills, and Bernardi 2006). From the beginning of the 1990s up to 2012, the share of temporary employment rose from 10% to 16% in the Euro area (Caroli and Godard 2013; OECD 2002). Today a growing number of people - the emerging class of 'precariat' (Standing 2011) - are faced with uncertainty, moving in and out of jobs that may give little meaning to their lives.Uncertainty has spread into the partnership and parenthood domains of young adults' lives as well (e.g., Blossfeld et al. 2005; Kreyenfeld, Andersson, and Pailhe 2012; Mills and Blossfeld 2013). Among other things, economic uncertainty may affect union formation practices. American research generally supports the view that poor economic prospects for men and women are associated with a delay in marriage, and may favor cohabitation. The European literature is more limited in this respect, although some examples can be found especially in the context of the comparative project proposed by Blossfeld and colleagues; Blossfeld et al. 2005). This paper contributes to the European literature on the topic by providing insights into the influence of job precariousness on the decision of women and men to enter either cohabitation or marriage in Italy. The Italian setting typifies a unique case study. In the country, unmarried cohabitation is far less common than elsewhere in Europe and does not yet represent an integral part of family life (Rosina and Fraboni 2004). The prolonged absence of the legal recognition of civil unions4 combined with familial and social pressure to marry further contribute to leaving little room for cohabitation (Vignoli and Salvini 2014). Nonetheless, contemporary Italy faces an increasing breakdown of marriage, the diversity of union patterns is growing, and a slow but continuous process of secularization is at play (Pirani and Vignoli 2016; Sansonetti 2009). Thus, the focus on the Italian setting is important for eliciting the role of economic uncertainty in driving union formation practices when a society is undergoing secularization and revolutionary family changes.This paper adopts a mixed-method approach. The qualitative analysis - conducted with focus group techniques - provides an in-depth understanding into the mechanisms of how job precariousness may affect individual perceptions and beliefs on union formation. Then, using quantitative analysis - conducted through event-history techniques - we test how strong these mechanisms are in the general population. We continue by presenting our theoretical considerations, describing the Italian context, and deriving our research hypotheses. This is followed by a presentation of the analytical strategy, and a description of results. A concluding discussion closes the paper.2.Employment uncertainty and union formation2.1Main perspectives...The link between employment uncertainty and family formation practices is multifaceted. At first glance, and in line with the globalization and labor market deregulation perspective (Blossfeld et al. 2005; Blossfeld and Hofmeister 2006; Blossfeld, Mills, and Bernardi 2006; Mills and Blossfeld 2013), it is relatively straightforward to suppose that marriage, a resource-intensive and long-term commitment, will be postponed when people face employment uncertainty. According to the uncertainty hypothesis developed by Oppenheimer (1988), especially men's unstable careers, as indicated by low-status jobs, non-employment, and irregular and temporary employment, embody uncertainty. …

Cutting Cárdenas: Revising the Revolutionary Family in 1980s Mexico

In 1987 the historical telenovela Senda de gloria (Path of Glory) debuted to the delight of audiences and illustrated a fundamental link between telenovelas and national identity. The series, a coproduction between Televisa, Mexico’s largest media conglomerate, and the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS), weaves the melodramatic tale of the Alvarez family into the backdrop of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, specifically from the 1917 constitution to Lazaro Cardenas’s nationalization of oil in 1938. This article employs the discourse of the “revolutionary family” to understand both the plot and the production of Senda de gloria , as well as the political context of 1980s Mexico. Furthermore, the article explores IMSS as part of the revolutionary family and its involvement in the production of relatively costly telenovelas. Senda demonstrates how Mexican heroes and villains were recast in the neoliberal turn after 1988, and in this political and economic transition, the very history that the PRI employed to legitimize its power instead discredited the party and underscored its illegitimacy.

Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship: The Performances of Blood by Cecilia Sosa

Reviewed by: Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship: The Performances of Blood by Cecilia Sosa David William Foster Sosa, Cecilia. Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship: The Performances of Blood. London: Tamesis, 2014. 190pp. ISBN 978-18-5566-279-7. Sosa’s monograph is an admirable example of the best of current Hispanic studies scholarship. Eschewing traditional approaches based on author, period, genre, movement, yet emphasizing the internal coherence of specific national literatures, a healthy array of studies focuses on complex theoretical issues to deepen the sociohistorical importance of significant examples of cultural production and legitimate critical approaches that go far beyond superficial plot summaries and classifications. What is most salutary is the way in which such postulations underscore the ongoing productivity of cultural studies and how Hispanic studies programs, for at least the past thirty years, have far outstripped other so-called foreign language programs in achieving the intellectual level customarily associated with English programs. Sosa’s study is predicated on a still rather underdeveloped proposition of queer studies: that we are not only talking about queering sexuality but about a queer de-construction of all cultural categories. It is reasonable that queer studies focus preponderantly on matters of sexuality, since our society is obsessed with legislating and policing sexuality, reserving usually the deepest forms of opprobrium for alleged sexual transgressions. But as Sosa points out, queer theory is not just about sex, but about all forms of social construction, and one notes, for example, that disability studies have become a very productive field of critical inquiry precisely because of how queer theory enables an understanding of the social construction of bodily ableness (which in turn, certainly, includes the sexual). Sosa puts all of this to very productive use in questioning the overarching principle (often more implied than specifically articulated) in the ideologies of memory, redemocratization, and social justice that have prevailed in Argentina since the return to constitutional democracy in 1983 after the 1976–83 neofascist military dictatorship that the legitimacy of public voice belongs preeminently, if not exclusively, to those who are joined by blood to the victims. This trope is particularly evident in the iconic status of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, who since 1977 have clamored for the return of their disappeared children. The consanguinity extends in both directions to the iconicity of the grandmothers on the one hand (those left to care for the children left behind by, typically, the forced disappearance of parents) and to the iconicity of the H.I.J.O.S. movement (the children who are the survivors of the forced disappearance of parents, including those known to have been stolen by the military and who only discover this fact about themselves years later). By questioning this specific detail of family, Sosa undermines the cluster of ideologies the cultureme {family} possesses in Argentina, both for the Judeo-Christian right and for the left, for whom, despite strategic redefinitions of family (e.g., the revolutionary family) the high valuation of traditional concepts of family has been an effective tool in extending demands for justice, since an eloquent appeal to family (e.g., in the case of the stolen children) is likely to prevail. Sosa goes on to make use of the deconstruction of the culturemes of family in order to both bring forth new meanings [End Page 226] for recognized texts and to show how those culturemes have been deployed or manipulated in order for official institutions – mostly notably the Executive Branch since 2003, under Néstor Kirchner and then his wife and subsequently widow, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – to maintain official discourses over the disappeared and social justice for them in a way that has been unique for the countries of the original authoritarian/neofascist Operación Cóndor military-dictatorship alliance. Chapters deal with narratives with reference to the Mothers and expanded definitions of the relationships between victims and their families and allies; with black humor (humor approached from psychoanalytic concepts of compensatory coping) over the children of the disappeared; questioning regarding the cult of the disappeared, a cult that has meant the endorsement of a society...

From the Revolutionary Family to the Materialistic Family: Keywords for a Contemporary Social History of China

This article uses the method of focusing on certain critical keywords and ideas that achieved dominance in Chinese daily life after 1949 in order to track significant changes in conceptions of Chinese marriage and family. I hold that the model for Chinese marriage and family in the last 60 years has been shifting from kinship-dependent relations to a materialist orientation. This era is divided into two periods: the first stage begins from 1949, the year when the new China was born, and concludes in 1976, when the Cultural Revolution came to an end; and the second stage begins from the 1980s, when China embarked on a new open policy towards the outside world, and continues into the present. During the first stage, kinship-dependent relations were destroyed by a series of political movements and came to be replaced by a certain model of revolutionary relationships. Over the course of the second stage, ‘a materialistic orientation’ has come to characterise familial relations, and finds further reinforcement from the wider society and economy.

Maximino Ávila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Historians focusing on the state of Puebla in the postrevolutionary period face fairly daunting challenges. The three decades after 1920 were uncommonly tumultuous, and governors routinely covered their tracks by destroying their official documents. Yet another pitfall threatens the historian who focuses on Maximino Ávila Camacho, a man so renowned for brutality and corruption that one is tempted to treat him as an anomaly, the sort of character who invites the cliché “larger than life.” Anomalies are by definition unrepresentative and presumably have little to teach us about the time and place of which they were a part.Alejandro Quintana rises to these challenges by utilizing a creative variety of sources and refusing to portray Maximino as an anomaly. Without denying that he was more colorful, ambitious, and talented than most of his contemporaries, Quintana presents us with a politician who, he argues, was fairly typical of his milieu. Quintana is clearly less interested in the scandalous details of Maximino’s life than in the political culture in which he operated. Few politicians were more ambitious than Maximino or more willing to use the tools at hand — wanton violence, media manipulation, exploitation of existing rivalries, cultivation of useful clients, and massive graft — to gain and keep power. Prior to becoming governor of Puebla in 1937, Maximino had spent years honing his skills, learning how to use his military positions for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment, with a seemingly instinctive feel for how much improbity higher-ups would tolerate in the interest of securing the loyalty of subordinates. He also revealed a flare for electoral fraud and malfeasance, most spectacularly when he allegedly ordered the massacre of 60 followers of opposition candidate José Vasconcelos in 1930.Maximino’s political skills came in handy after the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) was created in 1929. The PNR was designed to channel and contain the ambitions of revolutionary generals like Maximino, preventing them from challenging the political dominance of the “revolutionary family.” To this end, the state tolerated or even encouraged party officials to engage in various forms of impropriety. The PNR institutionalized a game that Maximino had already mastered, making him the very model of what Quintana calls “a new breed of caudillo” — a leader with a near pitch-perfect sense of how to be at once self-serving freelancer and loyal company man.Maximino used all his skills to dominate the notoriously fractious state of Puebla. His methods included co-opting or destroying his enemies, pitting factions of organized workers and agrarians against one another, controlling the media, placing relatives in key posts, using state resources to enrich himself and to buy the compliance of elites — all the while remaining scrupulously loyal to the PNR. Lázaro Cárdenas, who is generally thought to represent the antithesis of Maximino’s far-right authoritarianism, maintained a thoroughly cordial relationship with the governor. This, Quintana argues persuasively, is because Maximino’s methods were effective, and Cárdenas often privileged stability over social justice.In what is perhaps the most fascinating section of the book, Quintana argues that Maximino’s overpowering ambition to wield national power caused him to forget how the game was played. He was so enraged when his younger brother Manuel — Mexico’s president from 1940 to 1946 — refused to appoint him Secretary of Communications and Public Works (SCOP) that he engineered an armed takeover of that ministry. SCOP offered ample opportunities for graft, and Maximino was unrestrained in availing himself of those opportunities. He hoped and expected to be named the PNR’s official candidate for president in 1946, but Manuel and other party officials were leery of his volatile temperament and loath to create a dynasty. (Interestingly, his proclivity for corruption was not an issue; the official candidate, Maximino’s sworn enemy Miguel Alemán, more than held his own in that area.) When Maximino realized that he would not get the nod, he took the dangerous step of backing a rival candidate, something that might have proved interesting had Maximino not been felled by a heart attack at the same time.The book has some minor shortcomings. While Quintana has excellent reason to avoid peppering his narrative with lurid anecdotes, I must confess that I would have welcomed a few more such anecdotes, which might have livened up the book without necessarily undercutting its central argument. The book’s worst flaw is that it appears not to have been proofread. It contains numerous typos and a few glaring errors. For example, Quintana has “de la Huerta” mounting a coup in 1913 (p. 33), and he conflates Bernardo Reyes and Félix Díaz to create a hybrid, “Bernardo Díaz” (p. 35).Those shortcomings by no means prevent this book from being an important contribution to the literature on the formation of Mexico’s postrevolutionary state.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Men, Women and an Integrated History of the Russian Revolutionary Movement

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Men, Women and an Integrated History of the Russian Revolutionary Movement

Film Adaptation as Political Orthodoxy and Its Dilemmas: The Case of Xia Yan in the 1950s and 1960s

Xia Yan (1900–95), a very important leftist filmmaker in the 1930s, preferred film adaptation after 1949. This paper, by reading several of Xia Yan’s films written in the 1950s and 1960s against their literary sources, explores the changes he made to the sources and the strategies he used. It also outlines the different positions he took and the cultural history glimpsed through the films and Xia Yan’s role in them. This paper then analyzes how Xia Yan acted as a conformist vanguard repeating and re-enforcing the official ideology, as is shown in his adaptations of The New Year’s Sacrifice and Revolutionary Family. He was an ambivalent critic in the adaptation of The Lin Family Shop with its petite-bourgeois protagonist and its perhaps unintentional deconstruction of the official version of history. While, he reserved his humanistic concerns incognito for Hong Kong in the adaptation of Between Smiles and Tears.

Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution

Jürgen Buchenau’s Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution provides a much-needed analysis of the little-understood life of Mexican strongman Plutarco Elías Calles. No monograph to date has placed Calles so squarely at the center of postrevolutionary Mexican analysis. Calles rose from a life of poverty in rural Sonora to become Mexico’s president in 1924 and a principal architect of Mexico’s single-party system that held power until 2000. While Buchenau argues that Calles was Mexico’s first “authoritarian populist” and was instrumental to the consolidation of the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 20), he also revises previous scholarship that emphasized Calles’s supreme power. In addition, he refreshingly complicates and humanizes his subject within the broader context of Mexico’s revolution. The author’s methodology not only interrogates Calles’s political acumen, it also revises how many Mexican historians have come to understand the era known as the Maximato.This book is not a traditional biography. Rather, the author eloquently integrates how Calles’s personal experiences, coupled with the tumultuous social and ideological transformations during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (1876 – 1910), shaped his political ideology. Buchenau skillfully unravels the complex political relationships that emerged from the revolution and the postrevolutionary consolidation in which Calles played a vital role. While Calles was a troubled and rebellious youth born outside Mexico City, he graduated from the Primera Escuela Muncipal and later passed the teacher’s exam. Calles’s positivist education and the influence of the científicos (those who believed that only educated men should make political decisions) informed his authoritarian populism as well as his fierce anticlericalism.Early adulthood brought many changes for the future political leader. Calles’s stint as a schoolteacher, although influential in his life, lasted only a short time and was followed by his involvement in several unsuccessful business ventures. However, the onset of the Mexican Revolution created new opportunities. He opened a small store in Agua Prieta, located on the border of the United States, which became a vital strategic location for trafficking arms. Calles used his advantageous business position to advance his political ambitions. Buchenau’s analysis of the revolutionary years underscores Calles’s political astuteness while also demonstrating how Calles benefited from alliances and relationships with other prominent revolutionary figures. This section illustrates clearly the importance of patronage and clientelism in Mexican society.Although there is much in this book for newcomers to Mexican history, specialists in the region will also benefit. Buchenau culls rich archival sources including the state archive in Sonora and the Plutarco Elías Calles Archive, which enables him to uncover the intricacies of Calles’s relationship with Álvaro Obregón and Adolfo de la Huerta. This is perhaps the most enriching section of the book. Here Buchenau explores the minutiae of their relationships, the power of the “Sonoran Triangle,” and the immense effect Obregón’s assassination in 1928 had on Calles and the future of the Mexican Revolution. Many historians have focused on the authoritarianism and vehement anticlericalism of the Calles years, which led to the bloody Cristero Rebellion (1926 – 29) and the birth of the Maximato in 1928. Between 1928 and 1934, Calles strategically positioned himself as the leader of the “revolutionary family” that began with Francisco Madero. He worked behind the scenes to manipulate heads of state; this activity reached its apex in 1932 with the resignation of President Ortiz Rubio. Yet Buchenau is careful to point out that other factors, such as the economic ramifications of the Depression and Mexico’s relationship with the United States, had far-reaching effects that Calles was not able to control, even at the height of his influence. The author skillfully balances Calles’s political power and the realities of postrevolutionary Mexican society with his personal weaknesses. Calles’s poor health, self-destructive behavior, and occasional political miscalculations, coupled with the changing nature of Mexican politics, gradually eroded his influence. In the end, Calles’s attempt to manipulate President Lázaro Cárdenas after the election of 1934 backfired and led to his exile in 1936.Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution is chronologically organized, clearly written, and easily accessible to an undergraduate audience. The book, however, would have benefited from a clearer definition of “authoritarian populism” and how this applies to Calles, as opposed, for example, to Juan Perón in Argentina. In addition, the author mentions Calles’s marriages and several children yet he does not integrate a gendered analysis. How did machismo inform Calles’s ideas and actions and how did it influence the structuring of postrevolutionary society? Despite these minor omissions, the book is a welcome addition to the newly emerging scholarship on Mexico’s postrevolutionary period.

The weight of history, a broad sense of the possible: Economic history, development studies, political economy and Bill Freund

The weight of history, a broad sense of the possible: Economic history, development studies, political economy and Bill Freund

Revolutionary family life and the Self Respect movement in Tamil south India, 1926–49

During the second quarter of the 20th century, the Self Respect movement (cuyamariyatai iyakkam) introduced a programme of non-Brahmin uplift in Tamil south India that consisted of a radical critique of social, political and economic relations. By following the coverage of family and marriage in the Self Respect popular press (the weekly newspaper Kudi Arasu in particular), and through interviews with Self Respecters who lived through the period 1926–49, this article attempts to sketch out how and why the family was interpolated both as an object of criticism and as a site of struggle. That is to say, Self Respect was not only a set of arguments, but also a set of practical strategies for transforming everyday and ritual life into revolutionary propaganda through choice of dress, names, home décor and domestic ritual, as well as through attending public meetings and reading newspapers. In particular, ‘modern, Self Respecting Tamil couples’ were projected as a resolution to what the Self Respect movement high-lighted as the social, political and economic problems perpetuated by the traditional joint family. Yet, over the course of the 20th century in the Tamil south, marriage and family proved to be unstable vehicles for the revolutionary transformation of socio-political domains.

Power and Politics in University Governance: Organization and Change at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (review)

Reviewed by: Power and Politics in University Governance: Organization and Change at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Robert A. Rhoads and Nathan Durdella Power and Politics in University Governance: Organization and Change at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México by Imanol Ordorika. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003. 274 p. The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) is known throughout Mexico as la máxima casa de estudios (the nation's university), primarily because of the preeminent role that it plays in supporting the country's scientific and cultural systems. With an enrollment of more than 250,000 students, UNAM is the largest and most important university in the country; indeed, estimates suggest that UNAM accounts for as much as 50 percent of the nation's university research. Further evidence of the importance of UNAM is the fact that the university houses the National Library and the National Botanical Garden, runs the country's seismological system, and manages institutions comparable in scope to the Smithsonian and the National Observatory in the United States. Because of the prominent role that UNAM plays within the broader society, governance and control of the university has been a source of intense conflict over the years, and at times has led to numerous student strikes and closings of the university's main campus in Mexico City. Given the cultural and political significance of UNAM, a recent work by Imanol Ordorika warrants serious attention. In his book, Power and Politics in University Governance: Organization and [End Page 234] Change at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ordorika takes a critical look at the last 100 years of Mexican political history and its intersection with governance and politics at UNAM. Ordorika constructs a political theory of conflict within higher education by integrating theories of the state, education, and politics. His goal is to develop a "conceptual frame [that] builds a bridge between the university and its societal context" (p. 6). Accordingly, he draws upon numerous critical, neo-Marxist, and conflict theorists, including Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and C. Wright Mills and presents a "hegemonic model of politics and governance in higher education" (p. 31). To more fully comprehend the complexity of the state's relationship to UNAM, Ordorika begins by looking at the historical development of Mexico and the role of authoritarianism after the Revolution of 1910. He identifies three critical periods in Mexican history that serve as defining points in the development of UNAM: emergence (1917–1944), consolidation (1944–1968), and crisis (1968 to present). Emergence is described as a period following the Revolution in which "the revolutionary elite" sought to situate power and control within central authorities, while limiting the power and influence of democratic electoral processes. Consolidation follows the creation of the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM) in which the contest for power was successfully limited to a small inner circle affiliated with the PRM and known as the "revolutionary family." The third period describes major challenges to Mexican authoritarianism, beginning with the student movement of 1968. As Ordorika notes, "The [student] movement itself and the violent response by the government initiated a long crisis of the political system. The phase of crisis has evolved in the midst of vast social and political conflicts up to this day" (p. 40). A contemporary example of the crisis of authoritarianism is the July 2000 election in which the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), formerly the PRM, lost the presidential election to Vicente Fox and the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN). In relating these broad national periods to UNAM, Ordorika notes several key developments. First, UNAM was officially founded within the context of the emergence of authoritarianism following the Revolution, and thus the university's early years were framed by direct subordination to the federal government. However, federal authoritarianism often was met by subaltern forces and movements, as students sought to advance more democratic policies and practices. Thus, a second key development in the historic trajectory of UNAM was the 1929 student movement, which opposed new evaluation procedures and sought student participation in the University Council. Ultimately, Mexican President Emilio Portes Gil responded to the students' demands by...

Hot Oil and Gas Wells Can Be Stimulated Without Acids

Summary A revolutionary family of treating fluids designed for the stimulation of critical, hot, or exotic oil and gas wells has been developed through application of detailed chemical and engineering studies.1–3 Formulations based on the hydroxethylaminocarboxylic acid (HACA) family of chelating agents have now been used to successfully increase production of oil and gas from wells in a variety of different formations. Included in the field test matrixes were new and producing wells drilled into carbonates and sandstone formations. The temperatures of the wells treated ranged from 230 to 370°F (110 to 187°C) bottomhole static temperature (BHST). Because these formulations do not contain high concentrations of corrosive mineral or organic acids (the formulations are less acidic than carbonated beverages), very low corrosion rates of the tubulars can be achieved by application of small amounts of special, inexpensive corrosion inhibitors. The mild fluids also are highly retarded so that high-temperature carbonates can be stimulated and sensitive sandstone formations are not damaged. The fluids have reduced health, safety, and environmental (HSE) footprints because: They are much less toxic to mammals as well as to aquatic organisms than mineral acids or organic acids such as hydrochloric (HCl), hydrofluoric (HF), or formic acid. The fluids are returned to the surface at pH values between 5 and 7, and they frequently can be added to normal well production fluids without neutralization. Because of much lower corrosion rates for corrosion resistant alloys (CRAs), lowered concentrations of Ni and Cr will be in the well returns compared with conventional acids that also may contain antimony (as a corrosion inhibitor).

The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family: The Tuckers of Virginia, 1752-1830

In 1814, John Randolph of Roanoke brooded over his family's decline since the American Revolution. once-sumptuous world of the Virginia gentry was vanishing, its kinship ties crumbling along with its mansions. Looking back in an effort to grasp the changes around him, Randolph fixated on his stepfather and one-time guardian, the jurist St. George Tucker. Although Tucker had fought during the Revolution, he grasped the significant changes the war had brought to the Old Dominion. Thus he sold his plantations and urged his children to pursue careers in learned professions. Tucker's stepson John Randolph bitterly disagreed, precipitating a painful break between the two men.Drawing upon an extraordinary archive of manuscript materials, Phillip Hamilton illustrates how two generations of a colorful and influential family adapted to social upheaval. He finds that the Tuckers eventually rejected wider family connections and turned instead to nuclear kin. They also abandoned the liberal principles and enlightened rationalism of the Revolution for a romanticism girded by deep social conservatism. The Making and Unmaking of a Revolutionary Family reveals the complex process by which the world of Washington and Jefferson evolved into the antebellum society of Edmund Ruffin and Thomas Dew.