‘He Likes Women More Than He Likes Drink and That Is Quite Unusual’: Working-Class Social Clubs,Male Culture,and Heterosocial Relations in the United States, 1920s–1930s

Throughout the early twentieth century working-class men spent much of their leisure time in their basement hangouts, known as social clubs. Social clubs usually formed out of the associational life of young working-class men and remained attached to a larger male culture. But they were also used for dances and other heterosocial interaction. This essay examines the organisation of these clubs and how members used them to negotiate homosocial and heterosocial leisure. In particular, it explores the struggles between men and women over the use of club space and how those struggles affected their relationships and male culture.     

Sites of Assimilation into Urban Life: Rural Migrants' Clubs in Haifa under the Mandate, 1939–48

Culture clubs and social associations were a common social setting in Palestinian towns and in some large villages during the Mandate period. Drawing on a micro-historical approach, this article focuses on four organisations established in Haifa by rural migrants. These organisations are examined as sites of assimilation in the city and they are used as a vantage point from which to observe the daily life experience of their members. The findings suggest that clubs and associations were not only a setting for sports and cultural activities, social gathering or charity. They were an arena for public activity where rural migrants negotiated their position in urban society and participated in developing Palestinian culture.     

Colonising Italians: Italian Imperialism and Agricultural ‘Colonies’ in Australia, 1881–1914

The historiography of Australian imperialism before the First World War has often neglected a context wider than the relationship with Great Britain. Yet this era also implicated non-British governments and their emigrants. Despite their small numbers, Italian settlers are significant for highlighting Italy's empire-building and Australia's struggles for national and imperial unity. Italy's foreign policies after 1901 opened commercial opportunities across its diasporic networks, which included subsidising agricultural ‘colonies’ in Australia. The contemporary discourses of sectarianism and racism voiced before Federation articulated political and popular resistance against Italian immigrants. The rhetoric shifted after Federation as state governments examined the issue of land tenure for closer settlements (small agricultural farms), appealing to an argument about serving unemployed Australians before approving foreign settler schemes. The history leading up to two Italian projects in Western Australia and Queensland in 1907 allows reflections on Italy's diaspora colonisation and Australian responses to foreign imperialism.     

A Note on the Use and Misuse of the Racial Diversity Index

This note concerns the use of the Blau index of racial and ethnic diversity in the social sciences and in policy analysis. The diversity index, by design, captures the heterogeneity of the population group being studied, typically according to the racial and ethnic categories of the U.S. Census but does not account for the relative size of specific racial groups. Thus, with the most commonly used diversity index, the implicit assumption is that for the purposes of the analysis a population that is 80 percent white and 20 percent Asian is identical to a population that is 80 percent black and 20 percent Hispanic. Examples are given from studies of voting behavior, organizational performance, and the provision of public goods and services to show that the diversity index is often used in ways that are inappropriate given the context of the study.     

Learning to love the republic: Jacobin propaganda and the peasantry of the Haute‐Garonne

The political societies, or Jacobin clubs, formed during the first years of the French Revolution undertook as one of their many projects the political and civic education of the peasantry. The political society of Toulouse, the large republican administrative centre of the south‐western department of the Haute‐Garonne, was particularly active in this mission. By 1790, society members had embarked upon a campaign of written propaganda, using both educational tracts and revolutionary almanacs. However, this initial method was of only limited effectiveness, due to the prejudices of urban society members with regard to the peasants, the widespread illiteracy and non‐comprehension of French in the countryside, and the difficulty of distributing written material to isolated villages at the end of the eighteenth century. The Jacobins of Toulouse attempted to conquer these obstacles through the composition of tracts in the local patois, the use of peasant‐oriented newspapers delivered to local, literate intermediaries, and finally, the sending of their own members into the countryside as political missionaries, armed with leaflets and a copy of the constitution. By the time political clubs were made illegal in 1795, the influence of Jacobin sociability had greatly facilitated a precocious political acculturation of rural communities, prefiguring their more complete politicisation during the course of the nineteenth century.     

Hidden segregation? The limits of geographically based affirmative action

Recent legal and political decisions in the US have sharply limited the use of racial affirmative action, particularly in university admissions. In response, a number of states have turned to geographic diversity as a proxy for racial diversity. Under such plans, top ranking students in each high school are guaranteed admission to elite state universities. Using a formal model, a comprehensive data set on Texas high school students, and admissions figures from Texas A&M University, the article demonstrates that under such plans, racial diversity at the university level is dependent on racial segregation at the high school level. Indeed, without narrowing the gap between white and minority measures of achievement, the proportion of minorities admitted to university can only be increased by raising the level of segregation. The analysis suggests two conclusions: first, that despite the effort to use geographic criteria to achieve racial diversity, there may simply be no adequate proxy for racial identity other than racial identity. Second, such plans hide the political and social activities that maintain racial segregation, and treat segregation as a natural and inevitable condition that does not violate principles of legal equality.     

非公有制企业党组织引入公推直选的有益探索

非公有制企业党组织引入公推直选任职模式,对于实现党员权利与义务的有机统一、对上负责与对下负责的有机统一以及党内民主与人民民主的有机统一具有重要意义。但在实际推行中,公推直选在制度层面上与具体运作过程中仍存在一些问题,文章对此进行了研究与探讨。     

Gender and Post‐war Relief: Support for War‐Widowed Mothers in Occupied Japan (1945–52)

This article analyses the gender implications that emerged through welfare support for the war‐bereaved in post‐Asia‐Pacific War Japan. It follows the foundation, activities and dissolution of the Federation of Bereaved War Victims, the first support group for the war‐bereaved that initially began as an organisation for military widows. After its dissolution, members of the Federation went on to create two separate groups – the Victims’ Federation and Widows’ Federation – whose members, scope and objectives presented stark gendered divisions. By examining this divide, and by analysing the earlier histories of the organisations, this article explores the relationships among gender, military, death and bereavement, and post‐war relief. The article pays particular attention to the tensions and negotiations among various interest groups, including military widows, women widowed from other causes, feminist activists, male lawmakers, bereaved fathers and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. I place the dissolution of the Federation in its social and political contexts and analyse its relationship to the contemporaneous discussions on female citizenship. In particular, I focus on two areas mobilised by Japanese feminist activists since the early twentieth century: suffrage and motherhood. The short history of the Federation provides a means to examine the reconfiguration of the connection between gender and citizenship during the demilitarisation and democratisation processes that occurred in occupied Japan.     

Drama societies in the French Revolution: from Jacobin enthusiasts to royalist amateurs

During the French Revolution the network of Jacobin clubs wasto an extent mirrored by the existence of drama societies. Encouragedby the militants who took part in them and by the governmentof the Year II, they knew how to stage patriotic theatre. Theycompeted with the professional companies and reproduced theirregulations concerning morality and charity, the individualsanctions on unmotivated artists and control over repertoryby the municipalities. These formal measures were not necessarilya proof of quality, but members of their audiences were indulgentsince they were used to amateur theatre and because they approvedof the ideas being represented. Nevertheless, drama societieswere the victims of political purges and, in the Year IV, thesetheatres of propaganda were taken over by moderates and royalists,a development which led to their closure by the Directory.     

From laissez-faire to supranational planning: the economic debate within Federal Union (1938–1945)

This article focuses on the early years of Federal Union (FU), the leading British federalist association created in 1938. It sets out to demonstrate that FU members heavily disagreed about the economic powers of the future Federation and that these divisions weakened the appeal of the federalist cause. Archival evidence suggests the organisation shifted from economic neutrality, favoured by allegiance to nineteenth-century liberalism, which emphasized the benefits of free trade while keeping a minimum of centralized force in order to prevent interstate rivalries from boiling over into war, to a radical advocacy of supranational planning, aimed at enforcing social rights and welfare entitlements granted to all the citizens of the member-states. This swing to the Left had several implications, including abandoning the prospect of an Anglo-American union, developing a more sympathetic attitude towards the Soviet system, and breaking ties with influential members of the British establishment who had initially lent support to FU, such as Lionel Curtis and William Beveridge. By pointing at the tension between the models of ‘Federation Pure and Simple’ and ‘Federation Plus’, this article also highlights the supple and muddled nature of federalism as an ideology.     

British-Israelists and the “State of Israeli” in the Twentieth Century

British-Israelism was a significant movement in British culture in the twentieth century. At its high-point in the mid-twentieth century, card-carrying members of the British-Israel World Federation numbered in the tens of thousands. Several members of the royal family — including King George VI — publicly declared their adherence to British-Israelist doctrine. They have shared this belief with lawmakers and generals, poets and television personalities. British-Israelists believe that the descendants of the biblical polity of Israel are the Anglo-Saxon people of Britain. As such, the British occupation of Jerusalem in 1917 was seen by British Israelists as an event of incomparable prophetic significance. This article explores the ways in which British-Israelists responded to the changing status of Palestine over the course of the short twentieth century. Drawing on the insights of Zygmunt Bauman and of Andrew Crome, I contend that British-Israelism — at times philo-Semitic, at times anti-Semitic — is fundamentally allosemitic in its attitude towards Israel and the Jews. As such, to paraphrase Crome, British-Israelists can “never interact with Israel on its own terms.”     

"文革"时期妇联组织演变的历史考察

"文化大革命"爆发后,在改造"旧国家机器"的运动指向下,各级妇联遭受了组织冲击,妇联组织的存废也作为一个问题而提出;受夺权风暴和全面动乱的影响,至1968年革委会新体制建立前后,全国妇联实行了"军管",地方各级妇联亦陷入解体状态;妇女组织体系的摧毁和革委会体制的缺陷,使妇女工作弱化,同时也彰显了妇联组织的重要性;随着1970年后中央在妇联组织存废问题上的态度由模糊不定转为明确的整顿健全,妇联自下而上地完成了从基层至省级的组织重建,但由于在一系列理论与实际问题上难以澄清是非,全国妇联的组织重建未能完成.     

Revitalizing Federalism: A Brownsonian Prescription for Preserving National Unity Amidst Growing Diversity

Abstract

Historically, the United States has achieved a relatively high degree of political stability. The reason: the Federal Constitution provides a complex architecture that checks and divides political power and compels compromise. In A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty, Richard Reinsch and Peter Augustine Lawler recommend the work of Orestes Augustus Brownson, a Civil War era theorist, to properly interpret the genius of this unique American constitutional order. In The American Republic (1865), Brownson emphasized that America’s written constitution is rooted in its unwritten constitution; the habits, customs, and sentiments of the people. The Founders’ federal division of authority between the nation’s general government and the particular governments of the states simultaneously recognized Americans’ national unity and genuine diversity. Today, that diversity—racial, religious, ethnic—is even more granular. In accommodating that diversity, a revitalized federalism would return greater power to the people of the states over domestic policies. This would not only regenerate democratic decision-making, but would also help to reduce the political polarization by allowing policy outcomes suitable to diverse communities.     

Five Factions,Two Parties: Caucus Membership in the House of Representatives, 1994–2002

This paper examines the extent of ideological cohesion and distinction of two Republican congressional factions (the conservative Republican Study Committee and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership) and three Democratic congressional caucuses (the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, the liberal Congressional Black Caucus, and the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus) in the House of Representatives from 1994 to 2002. Whereas much of the literature on congressional caucuses has focused on the reasons members join such groups and the policy and political orientations of those groups, this paper examines how much unity exists in the voting behavior of the members of Congress who join caucuses in comparison to their fellow partisans not in a faction. Although political parties are still a major unifying force for their respective party members, we do find that factional members are more ideologically cohesive than are nonfactional members. Joining a faction is not an insignificant activity for members. Factions allow like-minded colleagues to come together and vote on common issues, at times against direction of their party.     

‘Writing’ Black Womanhood in the Early Cuban Republic, 1904–16

This article explores the intersection of race, class and womanhood during the early years of the Cuban Republic. It focuses on the writings of elite women who published in the black press between 1904 and 1916. While legal reforms and the expansion of the educational system facilitated new gender expectations, racial ideologies positioned upper‐class white women as the standard of ideal womanhood. I argue that elite women of African descent employed modernising gender norms in order to counter anti‐black racism and to affirm their identification with upper‐class whites. In particular, they published articles that promoted the dominant values regarding marriage, education and public comportment. They disparaged unmarried unions and the practice of African cultural traditions among the labouring poor. Elite black women's writings drew from the model of the enlightened caretaker also to engage broader debates regarding feminism and black civic unity. Yet their emphasis on ideals that promoted white superiority helped reinforce the anti‐black tenets of Cuban citizenship they hoped to undermine. By analysing elite black women's articles, poetry and letters, the article demonstrates the importance of understanding how women of African descent forged an intellectual trajectory, and thus contributes to the historiography of gendered racial ideologies in Latin America and the Caribbean.     

Aristocratic families and social stability in eleventh-century Provence

For many aristocratic families in southern France and Catalonia, the eleventh century was a period marked by a series of challenges to their estates, and therefore to their economic and social well-being. Studies on this subject have shown that these families responded by turning inward, relying upon the strengths and sacrifices of each of its members, and by adopting an aggressively defensive posture towards the rest of society. While this tightening of links among family members often resulted in conflicts with other groups and individuals in society, it had other less obvious results — it gave individual relatives the authority to speak for, and assume responsibility for, the actions of one another. If this new family unity was often disruptive to society, in other ways it had an important stabilizing influence in society.     

Governmentality,Diaspora Assemblages and the Ongoing Challenge of “Development”

Abstract: Drawing on governmentality debates, I argue that skilled members of the Jamaican diaspora are becoming important actors in an ongoing development strategy to extend the rationality of the market into everyday social relations and institutions. Diaspora members are imagined by states and development institutions to be ideal development partners because of their access to potentially lucrative business, knowledge and capital networks, and their desire to direct them towards socially transformative ends. But, as I shall demonstrate, efforts to incorporate skilled émigrés into national development plans raise important questions about the entanglements between diaspora strategies, state power and enduring local patterns of uneven development. Rather than a space of social transformation, diaspora can also function as a space of stasis that reproduces rather than transforms such patterns. By examining Jamaica's emerging diaspora strategy, I examine not only the governmental role that diaspora groups are increasingly beginning to play, but also their potential to support or disrupt the class, gender and racial asymmetries that have historically governed flows of wealth, opportunity and power across the island.     

Psychiatry and race during World War II

Although the American literature on "war neuroses" expanded during World War II, psychiatrists remained more interested in dramatic instances of "combat fatigue" than in the problems of soldiers who broke down far from the field of battle. This bias in the medical literature shaped both diagnosis and treatment. It had an especially powerful effect on African American soldiers who, in the "Jim Crow" army of World War II, were assigned in disproportionate numbers to service units. When military neuropsychiatrists did write about troubled young African Americans, many revealed a racial conservatism that was surprising given the liberal environmentalist paradigm of the day. (Here, a particularly useful source is the two-volume history of Neuropsychiatry in World War II, produced by the Medical Department of the U.S. Army.) The major challenge to such views came from the National Medical Association (NMA). Despite its many criticisms of military medicine, the NMA argued that African American soldiers and veterans needed more, not fewer, psychiatric services. NMA members also joined their white counterparts in the campaign to diminish the stigma of mental illness, especially among the families of soldiers returning home. We need more investigation of the subsequent history of race and psychiatry, especially within the Veterans Administration.     

White environmental subjectivity and the politics of belonging

In a society dominated by a colorblind approach to racial difference, racial categories are often viewed as unchanging and constructed in a time past. This article examines the making of racial categories and subjectivities in everyday perceptions and portrayals of place and belonging related to environmentalism. It examines the ways in which middle-class white people, who engage regularly with Latino immigrants, simultaneously construct the racial category of ‘white’ and affirm their own belonging in Boulder, Colorado through an exclusionary discourse of environmentalism. In Boulder, immigrants and non-immigrant Latinos are often portrayed as unaware of environmentalism, not interested in environmentalism, and/or too busy or poor to participate in environmentalism. In interviews, white residents of the city reproduce discourses of privilege and exclusion through environmental discourses and reinforce their own white environmental subjectivity as the norm. The insider/outsider division established through environmental discourse in Boulder is a specific example of how exclusion is enforced through the racialization of ‘natural’ spaces and environmental activities and how environmentalism itself is an important articulation of difference.