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Japan’s Outcaste Abolition: The Struggle for National Inclusion and the Making of the Modern State
“Scholars have long discussed Japan’s transition from the Tokugawa socio-political system to the Meiji state. Yet, until now, an in-depth examination of effect of this transition on those on the margins of society—here the various outcaste communities in the Tokugawa Era—has been missing. McCormack’s work provides a needed addition to the study of Japan’s modernizing project.
Rejecting the simplistic notion of a direct trajectory between outcaste groups in the Tokugawa Era and the Meiji category of New Commoners, McCormack provides a compelling picture of the complexity of this change. This work highlights the role of politics (both domestic and international), the use of moral suasion campaigns, the role of geography, and, perhaps most interestingly, the manner in which some areas and people became ‘new commoners’, while others in similar social positions did not. He frames his book into two broad sections: pre-emancipation and post-emancipation.
McCormack begins his discussion not with the 1871 Emancipation Edict, which eliminated outcaste status groups, but rather with a richly complex argument demonstrating the fluidity of outcaste status groups during the late Tokugawa period. Tracing the idea of kegare (pollution) from the Heian period through late Tokugawa, the author vividly demonstrates that being labeled as polluted was far from strict or permanent. Prior to the Tokugawa period, he notes, many who were involved in removing pollution were held in high regard (i.e. leather workers in early Tokugawa). Yet, over time, these actions came to be considered as negative, though the nature of the actions themselves did not change. Even well into the Tokugawa period, those who were involved in leatherwork (kawata) were, in fact, highly esteemed (p. 37). ”
tags:newjournalarticles
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Aging and Dependency in an Independent Indian Nation: Migrant Families, Workers and Social Experts (1940–60)
“This article explores several strands of ideas and tropes about age and aging that were articulated by a new and entrepreneurial rank of social experts in India. These social experts, attempted to explain the rapid changes transforming a newly independent nation. The knowledge and narratives generated by these Indian social experts and administrators will be explored in this work at specific historical conjunctures, beginning with the 1940’s when labor experts expressed anxieties about labor unrest, productivity and the breakdown of workers families; after Indian independence in the late 1940’s-1950’s amongst efforts to map, survey and regulate refugees and finally, by tracing discussions amongst Indian psychiatrists and social workers regarding the psychosocial pressures of climate and environment that were affecting various age groups in India in the 1950–60’s.This work suggests that unlike in welfare debates in the west in the 1940–50’s where aging began to be viewed as a social question and distinct social problem by itself, in India it was confounded with the lack of family, changing generational roles rather than as a distinct chronological stage and problem. Some of the key questions that inform this article are: How and why did age and aging begin to be viewed as risks that were associated with the failures of family life? How did age centered identities become more visible and begin to represent critical interests relating to productivity and socio-political control in these decades, and finally, how did social elites project these ideas and arguments? “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Prisoners Writing Home: The Functions of Their Letters c. 1680–1800
“This article examines the contents of a previously neglected source: the letters that English criminals wrote from prison c.1680–1800. These letters provide us with new insights into the experience of punishment away from the scaffold, and they give us a view of the importance of literacy as a means of communication for many ordinary men and women. Family, friendship and community ties were often strengthened by imprisonment, but could also be challenged. Many writers used letters to obtain practical support while in prison, but they also found writing was a means to reflect upon what they held to be most important. Sentiment and deeply held beliefs were expressed in their letters home.”
tags:newjournalarticles
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Capitalism’s Captives: The Maritime United States Slave Trade, 1807–1850
“The maritime interstate trade in bondspersons illustrates the contours of United States capitalism of the early nineteenth century as it developed between 1807 and midcentury. The saltwater trade between the Chesapeake and New Orleans comprised four stages corresponding to larger economic developments. An incidental slave trade rose in the context of the US ban on imported slaves, embargoes, and the growth of domestic commerce. An essential trade followed, growing in the post-War of 1812 transatlantic market for agricultural staples. It was carried on aboard vessels plying the so-called cotton triangle and also ships carrying regionally-specific goods and commodities between domestic ports. The 1830s witnessed a vertical trade exemplified by one slaving firm that responded to the swift expansion of credit and surging demand. Following the panic of 1837, market fragmentation led to a mechanical trade, which was also dependent on robust exports of slave-produced crops. Financial technologies propelled that development, and the maritime slave trade was nearly seamlessly integrated into the broader coastal trade. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Mutawalladeen and Malaria: African Slavery in Arabian Wadis
“In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a curious but little-known agricultural system based on imported African slaves thrived in the Northern and Central Arabian Peninsula. Born of a unique set of biological, environmental, cultural, and economic conditions, this slave system employed African labor mainly in the date palm plantations of the wadis, or floodwater channels, of the Hijaz and Najd regions of Arabia. This paper will seek to expand our knowledge of this neglected agricultural system by synthesizing traditional documentary sources employed by historians with new findings from the medical sciences, especially studies of genetic adaptations to malaria. Overall, this study will suggest that wadi slavery in Arabia, like slavery in the 16th-19th century Atlantic world, had a strong biological basis. As in the Atlantic world, African slaves, who frequently possessed genetic and acquired immunity to malaria, were used as proxy farmers to exploit landscapes that were unhealthy to the ruling elites. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Racial Inequality in Brazil and the United States, 1990-2010
“This essay compares statistical indicators of black/white racial inequality in Brazil and the United States from 1990 to 2010. Those indicators include racial differences in fertility, life expectancy, infant mortality, regional distribution, educational enrollment and achievement, labor force distribution, income and earnings, and poverty. From 1994 to 2010, Brazilians elected a series of presidential administrations committed to reducing the country’s very high levels of class and regional inequality. The programs enacted by those governments did reduce poverty and inequality and enabled some 30 million Brazilians to move from the poor and working class into a greatly expanded middle class. The article finds that policies intended to combat class inequality worked to reduce racial inequality as well. On most indicators, Brazil made greater progress in lowering racial disparities during those twenty years than did the United States. By 2010 the United States was still the more racially egalitarian country, in statistical terms; but Brazil’s experiments in social democracy and in class- and race-based affirmative action are producing outcomes that merit close attention from citizens and policymakers interested in reducing class and racial inequality in the United States. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Every Day the War Continues in My Body: Examining the Marked Body in Postconflict Northern Uganda
“Human bodies have assumed centre stage in modern warfare, and few armed conflicts epitomize this more than the war in northern Uganda, where both rebel groups and government forces violated bodily integrity and altered human tissue to communicate messages, humiliate the enemy and their support base, and dominate both people and territory. The injuries and disabilities inflicted during wartime continue to affect people long after the conflict has come to an end. People whose bodies were ‘marked’ continue to embody the war in everyday activities in terms of pain, disabilities and loss of mobility. In other words, the war continues in their bodies. Most marked bodies struggle to conform gender performances to expectations. Furthermore, a decline in the productivity of people with marked bodies and failure to reciprocate mutual beneficial interaction leads to ruptures within social capital networks, resulting in widespread stigmatization and discrimination. Yet, focus on the body seems to be largely missing in peace processes and transitional justice. In the aftermath of armed conflict, where so many bodies have been marked, disability mainstreaming should become a quintessential element in transitional justice. This goes beyond medical interventions, meaning that in all transitional justice thinking and practice, attention is paid to how marked bodies can be included, participate and benefit. To ensure inclusion of marked bodies and other victim groups, more micro-analysis is needed that distinguishes survivor groups in terms of their day-to-day survival concerns, challenges, experiences, needs and aspirations. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Redefining Empowerment Interventions of Migrants Experiencing Poverty: The Case of Antwerp, Belgium
“This qualitative research examines the strategies migrants experiencing poverty develop to access social rights and services. We conducted thirty-five in-depth interviews with Moroccan and Turkish migrants experiencing poverty in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. These interviews resulted in a typology of migrants in poverty based on the methods they use to empower themselves and influence their environment. The determining factors that influence these different strategies are directly linked to the accessibility of social work practices. Therefore, we evaluated local public and social work policies based on what motivates the different typologies of migrants experiencing poverty. Our findings confirm the importance of collaboration between organisations involved in empowerment interventions for migrants experiencing poverty on the local level and the need for reshaping local coalitions in social work practice. We consider the long-term success of integration courses for newcomers, especially the impact they have on the accessibility of social work practices. We also note serious weaknesses concerning language policies in social services, as well as the shame and denial of poverty by clients due to their migration background or the social pressure of their community. Finally, the role of civil society organisations in poverty eradication is questioned. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Local Reactions to Global Problems: Undocumented Immigrants and Social Work
“This study examines the tensions between the Global Statements of Ethical Principles of Social Work influenced by the Universal Declarations of Human Rights and related international conventions and the social work practices with undocumented immigrants in Sweden. The paper is based on a comprehensive study of working practices with undocumented immigrants in the framework of the Swedish social care system, where municipal social workers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) actors have been interviewed. The material was complemented by participant observations. The empirical results show how globalisation, migration and social problems of undocumented immigrants increasingly challenge the national basis of social work and create tensions between national laws and practices guiding the Swedish welfare services and the Global Statements of Ethical Principles of Social Work. The lack of adequate working methods and legal frames makes it possible for social workers and NGO actors to make informal alliances with other actors for the improvement of undocumented immigrants’ living conditions. It is argued that the national basis of social work should be reformed in order to include global conditions of local social problems and realise itself as a human rights profession. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Migration, Resilience and Social Work: Latin Americans in Tarragona
“Due to the increase of international migration and its implications for social intervention, social work has recently become interested in studying this phenomenon from a resilient perspective. The objectives are to identify the role played by the formal social care networks in the immigrants’ integration process and detect the main resilient factors that allowed them to cope with migratory adversities. A qualitative approach was used. Participants included Latin Americans living in Tarragona and social workers from the Tarragona social services. The techniques used were seventeen life stories, 110 questionnaires and two focus groups of Latin Americans and thirteen interviews with social workers. The main results show that the role played by the social welfare services in the integration process of the Latin Americans has been low. Intervention is mainly based on a risk perspective, over-institutionalised and without promoting the immigrants’ strengths sufficiently. Nevertheless, Latin American immigrants have cope relatively well with adversities involved in immigration, due to the interaction of protective factors such as social networks, previous contact with migration realities and a strong sense of meaning of life based on their migratory project, among others. This shows the need to incorporate a resilient perspective into interventions with immigrants in order to recover a pioneering style of social work. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Another Brick in the Wall: Carrier Sanctions and the Privatization of Immigration Control
“Under carrier sanction legislation, carrier personnel are obliged to control migrants’ documentation at the point of embarkation, and to deny boarding to undocumented migrants. In this respect, private carrier personnel become a first instance immigration control, having to deal not only with migrants, but also with asylum seekers who may be in need of international protection. In border control situations, the refoulement of refugees by state agents would violate the state’s non-refoulement obligation. Carrier sanctions pose two particular difficulties for the establishment of state responsibility: first, the potential rejection of asylum seekers at the point of embarkation is executed by non-state actors, whose conduct is only under certain circumstances attributable to the state. Second, while states’ obligations to protect human rights apply to persons under their jurisdiction, embarkation control takes place on the territory of another state and, therefore, is arguably outside the controlling state’s jurisdiction. After providing a brief history of the emergence of carrier sanctions under international law, this article finds that the conduct of carrier personnel – when acting in accordance with carrier sanction legislation – is attributable to the state. Moreover, prohibiting an asylum seeker to board a carrier practically denies the person the right to seek asylum, and may amount to a violation of the principle of non-refoulement. Finally, it is found that state jurisdiction is currently interpreted restrictively and does not include the rejection of asylum seekers on another state’s territory. However, it is argued that human rights bodies should enhance the scope of state jurisdiction in cases where states do abroad what they are prohibited from doing at home. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Caught in Limbo: How Alleged Perpetrators of International Crimes who Applied for Asylum in the Netherlands are Affected by a Fundamental System Error in International Law
“The Netherlands are internationally at the forefront of applying article 1F of the Refugee Convention. It has resulted in the existence of a group of hundreds of mainly Afghan and Iraqi asylum claimants who are excluded from refugee protection due to their alleged involvement in international crimes, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Although determining whether the exclusion clause applies is challenging in itself, this article demonstrates that developing a consistent post-exclusion policy appears to be even more complicated. A lack of harmonization in international law results in those excluded persons who cannot be prosecuted, or deported to their country of origin due to human rights concerns, being left in limbo. On the basis of interviews with twenty-four excluded asylum claimants in the Netherlands, this article presents a unique insight into the effects of this fundamental system error. It describes the economic, social, and health deprivation they face and discusses how the excluded persons themselves suggest solving the situation. The article also analyzes the (ad hoc) measures the Dutch government has taken in an attempt to resolve this issue and the informal strategies deployed by the excluded persons themselves. The authors conclude that only a profound adjustment of international law could bring a universal, coherent, and durable solution to the identified system error. Alternatively, it could be considered to reconcile various ad hoc solutions of existing post-exclusion measures. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective
“The study of world history continues to expand, not only through its own historiographical impetus but through the encounter of pre-existing fields of study in global context. Thus, in work unfolding in various arenas at present, one can see the interplay of world history and migration history, world history and maritime history, and world history and history of science.1 Donna Gabaccia’s contribution to this path of historiographic development focuses on linking distinctive fields of study rather than linking the local and the global, though she does both. Her project is the linkage of migration history and international history for a major trading nation, the United States. This is a small book—a think-piece rather than a major research project—but the insights that come from this study provide fuel for several substantial research projects. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes
“In this richly illustrated and conceptually challenging book, anthropologist Joanne Rappaport and art historian Tom Cummins confront a longstanding problem of Andean studies: how did native Andeans document their many versions of the colonial experience when so few adopted alphabetic literacy? Given that Andeans lacked Mesoamerican-style writing systems and rarely used representational images prior to the arrival of the Spanish, what traces of indigenous views of colonial life survive in largely Spanish-language manuscripts and published texts, religious paintings, line drawings, maps, town plans, buildings, drinking vessels, textiles, and other artifacts? More importantly, how do we interpret this dizzying ensemble of evidence? Beyond the Lettered City is part guide for the perplexed, part tour through examples of these challenging kinds of sources. The book is novel in another way in that much of the evidence comes from the Andes of the north (Colombia and Ecuador) rather than the old Inca core of the center and south (Peru and Bolivia). This helps explain the exclusion of khipus, which have been extensively studied by others.
It has been nearly thirty years since Ángel Rama coined the term “lettered city.” Like Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities,” the term took on a life of its own. La ciudad letrada elegantly combined two early modern Spanish obsessions: urbanism and writing, both handy “neo-Roman” instruments of colonialism, but as Rama pointed out, the grid plan and inscribed page were also means to local if not always subversive ends. Rama’s tension was basically creole/peninsular.”
tags:newjournalarticles
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National Insecurities: Immigrants and U.S. Deportation Policy Since 1882
“Dierdre Moloney has written a wide-ranging, informative, well-documented corrective for anyone who might still think of recent US immigration history as any sort of simple or happy tale. While the book aims generally to examine the historical origins of many contemporary immigration polices, its main focus is on how exclusion and deportation laws and policies have, as Moloney puts it, “served as a social filter.” What she means by this is that deportation in particular—much more than many historians and contemporary observers have realized—has long regulated US demography.
Considerable scholarly attention, across a wide range of disciplines, has recently begun to focus on this phenomenon, which has metastasized over the past two decades into an exceptionally radical and harsh social experiment. The government’s enforcement targets have not only been the undocumented, though millions of them have been removed through a wide variety of mechanisms. Many hundreds of thousands of non-citizens with legal immigration status have also been deported for an array of often quite minor criminal offenses, such as possession of drugs and petty larceny. Put bluntly, there has never before been an immigration enforcement system of the size, ferocity, and scope that has been built, ironically, in one of history’s most open and immigrant-friendly societies. ”
tags:newjournalarticles
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Archival representations of immigration and ethnicity in North American history: from the ethnicization of archives to the archivization of ethnicity – Springer
“This article traces the representations of ethnicity and immigration in mainstream American and Canadian archives since the 1950s. It identifies three main periods of evolution of these ethnic archives: the era prior to the civil rights movement, the 1960–1980s and the 1990s and beyond. Relying on an understanding of archival collections as social constructions anchored in specific historical contexts, the article considers the various political, economic, social and technological factors that affected ethnic archives over time, especially as they relate to changing scholarly and popular conceptions of ethnicity in North America. It pays particular attention to the impact of historical scholarship in fields related to immigration and ethnicity and of postmodernist archival theories that challenge the traditional view of archives as evidence of the past. It suggests that the relationship between ethnic archives and their historical context is dialectical: not only are they affected by the context in which they are developed and managed, but they also have an impact on that context as they favor certain conceptions of ethnicity and types of ethnic groups at the expense of others. Both curators and users of archival materials should therefore pay closer attention to the history of the processes that went into the construction of these archives to avoid falling victims to the illusion of ethnic authenticity.”
tags:newjournalarticles
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Personal documentation on a social network site: Facebook, a collection of moments from your life? – Springer
“Social networking on the Web has become very popular in recent years. Used by more than 950 million people worldwide, Facebook is one of the most popular of these services. One interesting aspect of Facebook is that users can converse through various formats, including wall posts, photographs, Web links, music, and video clips of stories and interests surrounding their daily lives. This phenomenon raises an important question for archivists in regard to personal history on the Web: What are the new ways that contemporary people document their life stories? This study looks at Facebook activities from the perspectives of personal documentation. Using an online survey, this study investigates how Facebook content presents users themselves and their everyday stories, whether they perceive their activities of using Facebook as personal documentation, and what factors influence such activities. The findings of this study show the current status of Facebook usage. Facebook content indeed indicates information of self-presentation and personal documentation of everyday lives of users. Attitudes about and activeness on Facebook are the major factors that influence self-presentation and personal documentation activities on Facebook. Generic external factors, such as personal archiving in general, do not show strong associations with personal documentation activities as factors. Based on this understanding, we discuss the roles of information professionals and cultural heritage institutions in dealing with a new type of personal record on the Web.”
tags:newjournalarticles
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Displaced Sudanese Voices on Education, Dignity, and Humanitarian Aid | Affolter | Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees
“Education is viewed by Sudanese refugees and internally displaced persons as a key prerequisite for social status, prestige, socio-economic survival, and therefore human dignity. Using Sudan as a case study, the article demonstrates that humanitarian aid—which claims to ensure the basic conditions for a life with dignity—often attributes less importance to education than to other sectors such as water, nutrition, and health. Utilizing anecdotal evidence from internally displaced persons in conflict-affected regions of Sudan, this article illustrates that the humanitarian aid agenda fails to adequately address what their target population most demands: education. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Displaced Girlhood: Gendered Dimensions of Coping and Social Change among Conflict- Affected South Sudanese Youth | Ensor | Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees
“As wartime inhabitants, female children have often been presented as paradigmatic non-agents, victims of a toxic mixture of violent circumstances and oppressive cultural practices. Child- and gender-sensitive approaches, on the other hand, have embraced a more balanced recognition of displaced girls’ active, if often constrained, efforts to cope with adverse circumstances. In South Sudan, a young country mired in unresolved conflict and forced displacement, girls must navigate multiple and complex challenges. Drawing on fieldwork conducted among South Sudanese refugees in Uganda and returnees in South Sudan, I examine ways in which gender shapes local realities of conflict, displacement, return, and reintegration, focusing on the often-overlooked experiences of girls and female youth. Study findings evidence displaced girls’ remarkable determination and resourcefulness as they struggle to overcome a persistently turbulent climate of social instability, deprivation, and conflict. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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Social Navigation and the Resettlement Experiences of Separated Children in Canada | Denov | Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees
“This article explores the implications of language and dis- course for the experiences of separated refugee children in Canada, and the ways in which anti-refugee and anti-child discourses shape the terrain of resettlement. The article begins by tracing the academic and popular discourses of refugee populations generally, and separated children specifically. Given the formulaic and rigid portrayals and representations, we introduce the concept of social navigation, which provides a useful framework to study the resettlement experiences of separated children. Following an overview of the study’s methodology, we explore the social navigation and resettlement experiences of seventeen youth. In particular, we highlight the creative, resourceful, and thoughtful ways in which the youth navigated the refugee determination system, experiences of discrimination and isolation, as well as separation and loss during the resettle- ment process. The article ultimately underscores the ways in which these children and youth strategically navigate resettlement, overcome challenges, and—despite significant ideological barriers and material obstacles—ensure their survival and well-being as individuals and as groups. “
tags:newjournalarticles
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