Unfinished Revolution Research Articles

An Unfinished Revolution: Edna Buckman Kearns and the Struggle for Women’s Rights

An Unfinished Revolution: Edna Buckman Kearns and the Struggle for Women’s Rights

The Unfinished Revolution?

The future reconstruction of Ukrainian cities from wartime devastation will require an extensive discussion on strategies and concepts of preservation of cultural heritage – including the heritage of the Modern Movement. It should involve not only the technical aspects but political and historical issues as well. The history of the Palace of Culture of the Railway Workers in Kharkiv (architect Alexander I. Dmitirev, 1927-1932) provokes a number of questions on the essence of Ukrainian pre-war Modernism and Constructivism, the idea of the Sovietisation of the theater against the Great Theatre Reform movement or the role of Workers’ Clubs and Palaces as social condensers. Thus, its analysis cannot by limited to the form and content of the edifice itself, but should be perceived in the broader context of similar projects (for example the Kharkiv Opera House) and views on architecture in the 1920s and 1930s.The Palace of Culture in Kharkiv can be considered as an example of “architecture in transition” where evolving trends in art as well as a dynamic socio-political situation left their marks and created a multi-layered palimpsest. Dmitriev’s design included the Constructivist spirit as well as conservative monumentality. It seems to become a legacy of a revolution (in architecture, theater and society) which has never been really completed.

On the 50 th anniversary of the Portuguese Revolution of April 25 1974

In 2024, the Portuguese people, and with them the entire democratic and progressive world, celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ‘Carnation Revolution’, the first and to date only social revolution in western Europe after the second world war. In its rising phase between 1974 and 1976, the Portuguese revolution implemented profound antimonopoly, anti-imperialist and even anti-capitalist transformations that radically changed the country’s economic structures and the living conditions of the Portuguese people. Its central goal was to achieve liberation from fascist rule and an end to colonial wars. This it achieved. But it was also an ‘unfinished revolution’ in terms of its wider goals of social transformation. The Portuguese revolution left deep imprints of achievements, experiences and values. These remain the basis of the Portuguese Communist Party’s current programme for an advanced democracy, a programme that the party proposes to the Portuguese people and that is an integral part of the socialist Portugal of the future.

Reading Irish Solidarity with Palestine through Ireland’s “Unfinished Revolution”

Irish solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation is well documented. The shared experience of resisting state-sponsored colonial violence has helped to embed this transnational solidarity, especially among grassroots activists. Yet despite these similarities, there are critical differences between the two struggles that require careful consideration. In this essay, the author foregrounds the bonds of connection between Ireland and Palestine while arguing for the need to avoid platforming unnuanced, romantic, and mystical sentiments in light of Ireland’s “unfinished revolution” and the Irish government’s largely conservative approach to Palestinian liberation. He concludes that Ireland is far from an exemplar of postcoloniality and stresses that it is the activist community in Ireland that has been leading the call for full Palestinian liberation.

Unfinished revolutions: The post‐Soviet crisis of governance in Ukraine

AbstractNone of the three revolutions in Ukraine's modern history as an independent state has been able to both solve the problem of political representation and undertake the task of building sustainable democratic institutions. Ukraine's scores from the Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) between 2000 and 2019 show the ups and downs of state capacity and democratic accountability and illustrate not only how the revolutions remain unfinished but also how the country seems to be unable to consistently advance state formation. Ukraine has yet to find a stable developmental path. Accordingly, BGI scores show that Ukrainian politics and society continue to have difficulty advancing towards a corridor of good governance, where state capacity and accountability reinforce each other and enhance public goods provision. Instead, Ukraine is alternating between authoritarian and democratic development patterns. However, the Russian invasion that began on 24 February 2022 has contributed to uniting and consolidating Ukrainian society and politics and could considerably push the nation‐building process forward.

Finishing the “unfinished revolution”?: College‐educated mothers' resistance to intensive mothering

AbstractIntensive mothering, a classed and gendered practice optimally performed by stay‐at‐home mothers, is a dominant parenting ideology, particularly in developed societies with wide disparities in wealth. Ironically, in these societies, women tend to be well educated and have good employment prospects that are expected to free them from domestic obligations. Facing competing expectations shaped by the institutions of work and the family, how do college‐educated mothers consider ending or limiting their participation in the workforce or holding jobs while resolving the moral dilemma of being both a worker and a mother? We compared 33 college‐educated Hong Kong mothers engaged in different professions and constructed typologies that describe how intersecting ideologies of mothering and work shape work‐family arrangements. We paid special attention to mothers with strong commitment to their work, but with different ideologies about mothering. Some espouse the ideology of intensive mothering. Their belief in gender essentialism proved exhausting for them, both at work and at home. While away from home, these mothers supervised domestic helpers from their workplaces. Other women value their professions as emblematic of their identity as the perfect mother—an integrated form of mothering, thus feeling no guilt for delegating childcare responsibilities. We argue that given the entrenched gender inequality in workplaces and men's slow progress in doing their share of domestic work, the emergence of integrated mothering both rhetorically and in practice reflects women's striving to bring the “unfinished revolution” closer to the finish line.

Rediscovering Reconstruction in the Urban South: Achievements and New Opportunities

In the decades following Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution, which synthesized revisions to the Lost Cause narrative of Dunning school, scholars have expanded the scope of Reconstruction studies and debated its emancipatory potential. Among these new avenues of inquiry, Southern cities have undergone a quiet renaissance as settings for studying the period’s larger themes, particularly the South’s economic recovery and the African American struggle for freedom and equality. However, these achievements have come without close engagement with the work of urbanists who theorize the city as an autonomous force in human history. By making cities subjects, as opposed to settings, historians can gain new insights into how the process of Reconstruction unfolded in the postwar South. This essay begins by exploring the different worlds of urban and Civil War era historiography. It then considers how historians of Reconstruction have studied cities and how they can move the field forward by considering the city as an agent of change.

Realism and Reconstruction: A Comparative Perspective

Realism and Reconstruction: A Comparative Perspective

The Indochinese Communist Party's Unfinished Revolution of 1945 and the Origins of Vietnam's 30-Year Civil War

Abstract This article examines the genesis and outcomes of the so-called August Revolution undertaken by the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in 1945. Drawing on Vietnamese archival materials and ICP resolutions, instructions, and assessments, the article shows that the revolution did not culminate in ICP dominance of Vietnamese politics and that Chinese Nationalist occupation authorities in northern Vietnam were neither cordial nor obliging toward the government established by Ho Chi Minh after he declared Vietnam's independence on 2 September 1945. The so-called bourgeois revolution Ho and the ICP instigated that summer faced insurmountable challenges, including domestic fracturing and contestation, that precluded its swift completion. The August Revolution that inspired Ho's declaration of independence marked the beginning of a bloody internal struggle for power in Vietnam, not its culmination.

Duterte's “War on Drugs” Rhetoric

Duterte's “War on Drugs” Rhetoric

An Unfinished Revolution: Edna Buckman Kearns and the Struggle for Women’s Rights by Marguerite Kearns

An Unfinished Revolution: Edna Buckman Kearns and the Struggle for Women’s Rights by Marguerite Kearns

“Corrective Intervention” versus “Unfinished Revolution”: Transitions byReformaand the Military in Turkey and Greece

AbstractThe article compares the failed self-transformation attempt in 1973 in Greece and the actual transition that occurred in 1983 in Turkey. These two cases of regime-initiated transitions to democracy with differing outcomes beg the question: If the 1973 transition in Greece led to a crippled democracy controlled by the military (as in Turkey 10 years later), why was it brought to an abrupt end by the very group that it was supposed to benefit—i.e. the military themselves? The author seeks to answer this question by comparing the position of the Turkish and Greek military in their respective power structures, which produced different regimes (hierarchical in Turkey vs. non-hierarchical in Greece). Moreover, in both cases, the transitions were not perceived as equally benefitting the military—hence the different outcomes, i.e. the failure of the Greek transition and the problematic democracy in Turkey.

DESIGUALDADE E EDUCAÇÃO: MAIS UMA REVOLUÇÃO INACABADA?

The article aims to revisit the relationship between inequality and education, a theme that accompanies education in modern societies. Despite access to data on inequality in society and education, as well as many analyzes of the origins and trends that provoke real social apartheids one has the impression that the metaphor of the labyrinth, common in Latin American literature, applies to education. The article is divided in two parts. The first seeks to situate the theme of inequality as a problem of education and for education, with a brief reference to classic works and the identification of some pedagogical places that can serve to perpetuate inequality or resist it. The second part, based on thoughts from the beginning of the second half of the last century, revolves around the question of whether we are facing yet another unfinished revolution in Latin America. Two themes are discussed: updating the notion of awareness and the pedagogical nuances of concepts such as liberation, social exclusion and (de) coloniality. In the conclusion, Paulo Freire’s centrality is emphasized to understand the relationship between inequality and education, and to create untested feasibilities in education and through education to promote a less unequal and more just society. Keywords: Inequality. Democracy. Awareness. Liberation. (De)coloniality.

Unfinished Revolution: An Overview of Three Decades of LGBT Activism in China

Unfinished Revolution: An Overview of Three Decades of LGBT Activism in China

Europe’s Forgotten Unfinished Revolution: Peasant Power, Social Mobilization, and Communism in the Southern Italian Countryside, 1943–45

Abstract Between 1943 and 1945, groups of peasants took over dozens of villages and small towns in southern Italy and proclaimed the birth of independent republics. During their brief existence—sometimes just a few days—the peasant republics implemented revolutionary measures, including the redistribution of land and the establishment of people’s courts. This article draws attention to these forgotten episodes and suggests that they can best be understood by adopting an anthropological perspective and viewing social mobilization through an experiential lens. It draws on court documents and personal accounts to examine the quasi-revolutionary experiences of the southern Italian peasantry. Revolutions in general can be seen as social dramas and political rites of passage in which the successive phases of rupture, liminality, and reaggregation are the distinct stages of a total process that generates a transformation. This approach makes it possible to disentangle the conceptualization of revolutions from structures as well as from ideology, culture, and agency; to comprehend revolutions that unfold unscripted or without the decisive leadership of a vanguard whose ideas and expectations pre-exist the revolution and therefore teleologically determine its development; and to initiate comparative analysis in regard to symbolism, morphology, and the dynamics of social action.

The unfinished revolution of ‘dissident’ Irish republicans: divergent views in a fragmented base

ABSTRACT In April 2019, a so-called ‘dissident’ republican New IRA gun-man killed journalist Lyra McKee, whilst firing at police during a riot in Derry in the North of Ireland. The New and Continuity IRAs remain wedded to an armed campaign for Irish sovereignty, drawing legitimacy from partition and the ongoing British ‘presence’ in Northern Ireland – and rejecting the significance of altered conditions within the state. Conversely, independent ‘dissident’ republicans, formerly in the Provisional IRA, criticise the ongoing campaign by the groups as futile. This article examines key areas of debate within the ‘dissident’/radical republican base, on armed actions at present – drawing on unpublished qualitative interviews with independents, the RSF Movement, and Saoradh,– the organisation believed to be the political wing of the New IRA. This article assesses the nature of the campaign waged by the Continuity and New IRAs and examines whether it represents a continuation of the Provisional IRA campaign, or a new departure.

Contributors

Contributors

Civility’s Unfinished Revolution: Comments on John Keane, “Hopes for Civil Society,” Global Perspectives (2020)

Keane offers a conception of civil society more nuanced and more attractive than leading contenders. But Keane’s conception also leaves certain questions for reexamination. Keane says little about what role his vision of civil society allows for governments. Many may struggle to share Keane’s optimism about the role of digital technology in helping to realize this vision. And one might also question how well the attitude of political hope that Keane urges ultimately serves us.

U.S. Race Relations and Buried Literary Remains

At the end of Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, historian Eric Foner concludes that failures of the postbellum period were a “disaster” for African Americans, and indeed f...

Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution, by David Austin

Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution, by David Austin