Epidemiologists explain pellagra: gender,race, and political economy in the work of Edgar Sydenstricker

Between 1900 and 1940, at least 100,000 individuals in the southern United States died of pellagra, a dietary deficiency disease. Although half of these pellagra victims were African-American and more than two-thirds were women, contemporary observers paid little attention to these gender and racial differences in their analyses of disease. This article reviews the classic epidemiological studies of Joseph Goldberger and Edgar Sydenstricker, who argued that pellagra was deeply rooted in the political economy of cotton monoculture in the South. The methods that Sydenstricker brought to epidemiology from early work on political economy obscured the role of gender inequalities in pellagra, and his focus on economic underdevelopment led him to ignore the prominent role of African-Americans as pellagra's principal victims. Research methods and traditions, no less than more overt ideologies, played a role in maintaining the subordinate social position of women and African-Americans in the southern United States.     

Now More than Ever: Terrorism,Asymmetric Warfare,and the Just War Tradition

Abstract

For more than fifteen hundred years, the just war tradition has provided guidance about when wars should and should not be fought. It has also incorporated standards for how wars should be fought. The tradition rejects the claim that all use of force is evil, suggesting instead that in some circumstances the failure to use force is wrong. War is never desirable, but sometimes it is both right and necessary. The just war tradition helps us understand when this is true. The tradition developed to help control conventional warfare, but it is no less applicable to the terrorism and asymmetrical warfare prevalent in contemporary conflicts. In a world where American military power is unmatched, any opponent's best option is some form of asymmetric warfare. Such warfare is frustrating to conventional forces and tempts them to respond with an "all's fair in war" approach that is both morally wrong and militarily counterproductive. Neither pacifism nor "realism" deals adequately with the challenges of twenty-first century warfare. Only the just war tradition provides clear guidance about when and how it is right to go to war and places this in the context of establishing a peace based on justice and equity.     

Why protect civilians? Innocence,immunity and enmity in war

The issue of civilians in war has risen to new heights in international political consciousness in recent years. The principle of civilian protection has been at once the justification for war and the main guide to the conduct of such wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan ands most recently in Iraq. The so-called new wars of the 1990s have seen a consistent pattern of massive civilian atrocity and the new policies of massive global terrorism are similarly intent on civilian attack. It remains to be seen how well those pursuing the war against terror will hold to the civilian ethic. In truth, the idea of the civilian is a deeply contested one and has more usually been rejected than embraced by those who pursue war, political violence and terror. The simple power of the idea itself and the humanitarian sentiment that accompanies it to produce the notion of 'innocent civilians' cannot be relied upon to make a reality of civilian protection. Instead, the case for civilian identity and civilian protection must be determinedly and continuously argued in war. This means recognizing the main sources of political, passionate and practical objection to the civilian idea and taking them on one by one as they arise. Repeatedly arguing the case for civilian rights must be at the very heart of political, military, humanitarian and religious endeavour. Arguments of prudence and self-interest must be made alongside much deeper and more difficult moral arguments about people's innocence, their identity and their relationship to war. Holding fast to the civilian ethic in the face of terror and war requires significant moral argument and moral leadership from politicians, military commanders and ordinary people alike.     

Response to Langdon Gilkey's Inaugural Address at the Niebuhr Society, 22 November 2003 in Atlanta

Abstract

After applauding Professor Gilkey for focusing attention on Reinhold Niebuhr's book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, I framed my response by setting forth seven salient elements of Niebuhr's political theory. After affirming Gilkey's portrayal of the differences between our contemporary situation and that which Niebuhr addressed in the 1930s, I focused on a third characteristic of Niebuhr's thought that Gilkey neglected to mention, namely, the impact of his thought on African-American activists in their struggle for racial justice in the United States. That impact mainly pertained to his perceptive analysis of power conflicts among social groups and especially the societal power of racism. Niebuhr's sensitivity to that problem was heightened during his ministry in Detroit and thereafter. Thus, Martin Luther King, Jr, his protégé, Jesse Jackson and many others came to view Niebuhr as a major source of inspiration for their struggle. But, in spite of Niebuhr's appreciation of Gandhi and his support of King's non-violent resistance approach, they disagreed about the moral value of pacifism. Most importantly, I join with another African-American scholar in pointing out Niebuhr's uncritical paternalistic assumptions about African Americans and their struggle.     

美国城市种族居住隔离与黑人贫困化

对于美国黑人聚居区环境的产生和发展,居住隔离起到了直接的作用。居住隔离使美国大多数黑人处于从属地位,处于主流社会的边缘,并使黑人贫困持久化,进而加速了黑人经济地位的下降,使许多美国黑人陷入贫困的隔离居住环境不能自拔。     

Explaining the Congo Wars

Abstract

From 1996 to 2003, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the scene of two major regional wars. The second Congo war (1998–2003) was an especially complex formation of wars within wars, characterised by repeatedly changing alliances between various actors, both internal and external, and by the spread of ethnic conflicts across national borders. However, the recent troubled history of the DRC has often been understood from either a national or an international perspective. The terms of this debate centred on whether the continental wars were linked either to the weak or collapsing state of Zaire/Congo or outside interferences by neighbouring states. The two studies reviewed in this essay both suggest ways of addressing this dichotomy between the internal and external dimensions of the conflicts. By analysing the multitude of conflicts from a regional perspective, both authors can aptly illuminate the linkages and interdependencies among local and national conflicts that became inextricably intertwined and developed into regional and continental conflicts. Thus, this review argues that both comprehensive works on the multiplicity of recent crises in the Great Lakes region significantly contribute to an understanding of the causes and evolution of the Congolese wars.     

A Family Affair: The Dundas Family of Arniston and the Military Survey of Scotland (1747–1755)

ABSTRACT

This paper is the result of extensive investigation of the archives of the Dundas family of Arniston, Midlothian. It uncovers significant roles played in the organization of David Watson and William Roy's Military Survey of Scotland (1747–1755) by successive generations of the Dundases and suggests that the introduction of Watson, an established military engineer, to the young civilian Roy, was facilitated by that family. The Dundases' patronage of the Military Survey encourages us to understand the project as a private-public partnership and supports contentions that Enlightenment mapping resulted from complex social networks straddling military and civilian life.     

Out of Balance: Evaluating American Strategy in Vietnam, 1968–72

Abstract

This paper examines the ineffective implementation of American military strategy in the Vietnam War’s final years. While the Nixon administration conceived a comprehensive strategic concept aimed at winding down the war in South Vietnam, civilian and military leaders struggled to realize, in an effectual manner, Nixon’s wide-ranging political objectives. American officials in Saigon and Washington found it near impossible to balance the competing strategic imperatives of combat operations, diplomatic negotiations, Vietnamization, and the withdrawal of US forces from South-east Asia. This inability to reconcile imbalances within the American strategic framework helps explain more fully the outcome of US political and military efforts in South Vietnam.     

二战与美国黑人民权运动的兴起

美国黑人民权运动是非洲裔美国人为争取政治、经济和社会的平等权利而发动的一场声势浩大的群众性社会运动。这场社会运动的发生绝不是偶然的,而第二次世界大战的爆发则起到了十分关键的刺激和推动作用。二战使美国黑人有机会更加深刻地认识到美国所宣扬的民主信条同其在国内极力维护的种族主义实践之间的强烈反差,并进一步激发r他们的种族意识、政治参与热情和寻求变革的勇气。向华盛顿进军运动则为美国黑人展示自己的力量与锻炼自已的意志提供了历史舞台。这场没有发生的示威运动大大地增强了黑人的斗争信心。这些因素为美国黑人民权运动的发生做好了最后的思想和组织准备。     

‘Shirkers’, ‘Scrimjacks’ and ‘Scrimshanks’?: British Civilian Masculinity and Reserved Occupations, 1914–45

In both World Wars, the state retained men with essential skills on the home front. Despite needing to mobilise industry and labour in order to supply the military and to maintain key services such as healthcare and food provision, those men who remained in civilian roles were susceptible to accusations of cowardice and being derided as shirkers evading their patriotic duty. While the manliness of the ‘soldier hero’ was secure, the civilian man was susceptible to having his masculinity called into question. This article utilises a range of sources including parliamentary debates, cartoons, Mass Observation records, written testimony and oral histories to examine the policies that were implemented affecting civilian male workers deployed in essential jobs in both wars and the perceptions of men to their reserved status. While there were haphazard attempts to raise an ‘industrial army’ in the First World War, by 1939, a more systematic approach had been implemented with a Schedule of Reserved Occupations drawn up retaining key men in their work. While men on the Second World War home front were potentially diminished by the ‘soldier hero’ and the female war worker, they defined and defended their contributions to the national war effort in written and oral sources in gendered terms, making reference to job security, valued skills, significant earning power, the auxiliary position of female dilutees, positive cultural representations and the added dangers from aerial bombing.     

The militarisation of aerial theatre: air displays and airmindedness in Britain and Australia between the world wars

ABSTRACT

Aerial theatre, the use of aviation spectacle to project images of future warfare, national power and technological prowess, was a key method for creating an airminded public in the early twentieth century. The most significant and influential form of aerial theatre in interwar Britain was the Royal Air Force Display at Hendon, in which military aircraft put on impressive flying performances before large crowds, including an elaborate set-piece acting out a battle scenario with an imaginary enemy. Hendon was emulated by other air displays in Britain and in Australia, even civilian ones. Indeed, the inability of the much smaller Royal Australian Air Force to regularly project spectacle on the scale of Hendon across a much larger nation created a gap which civilian aviation organisations then tried to fill. Hendon thus helped to propagate a militarised civilian aerial theatre, and hence airmindedness, in both Britain and Australia.     

Betwixt and Between: Trauma,Survival and the Aboriginal Troopers of the Queensland Native Mounted Police

ABSTRACT

Much has been written about the history of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, mostly focussing on its development, its white officers, how much the Colonial Government genuinely knew about the actions of the Force, and how many people were killed during the frontier wars. Far less attention has been given to the Aboriginal men of the force, the nature of their recruitment, and the long-term traumatic impacts on Aboriginal peoples’ and communities’ psyches rather than broadscale changes to Aboriginal culture per se. This article examines the historical and ongoing psychological impacts of dispossession and frontier violence on Aboriginal people. Specifically, we argue that massacres, frontier violence, displacement, and the ultimate dispossession of land and destruction of traditional cultural practices resulted in both individual and collective inter-generational trauma for Aboriginal peoples. We posit that, despite the Australian frontier wars taking place over a century ago, their impacts continue to reverberate today in a range of different ways, many of which are as yet only partially understood.     

Raise your voices! Civilian protest in civil wars

Under what conditions do protests occur in civil wars? Evidence from case studies suggests that protests can indeed play an important role in contexts of civil wars, with civilians using respective tactics both against the state and rebels. We argue that localities experiencing armed clashes are likely to see protest events in the same month. Civilians conduct protests due to battle-related changes in the local opportunity structures and grievances related to losses experienced through collateral damage. Using spatially disaggregated data on protest and battle events in African civil wars, we find support for our hypothesis that battles trigger civilian protests. This effect is robust to the inclusion of a comprehensive list of confounding variables and alternative model specifications, including the use of different temporal and spatial units. Our findings highlight the role of the civilian population and the spatial relationship between war events and protests in civil wars.     

How Pre-modern State Rulers Used Marriage to Reduce the Risk of Losing at War: A Comparison of Eight States

Approaching warfare in pre-modern states from the perspective of risk reduction, we see that royal marriage was one strategy rulers used to reduce the probability that they would lose a war. Judicious marriage exchanges intensified and prolonged patron-client relations between rulers or between rulers and societal elites. Clientelism could affect the size and composition of their armies. The more warriors and troops one could field, the greater the chance of not losing a war (Otterbein 2004; LeBlanc 2006). Examination of eight pre-modern states suggests that their rulers used the same patterns of wife exchange even though most states developed independently. Marriage secured long-term patron-client relationships, which they used to support their military efforts. When rulers married their kin or married them to rulers outside the system (“foreigners”), they did not gain military support. Analysis of these marriage-military patterns reveals several characteristics of pre-modern states. First, marriage alliances helped rulers form networks of support that helped them win wars. Therefore, marriage—and by extension, royal women—is a key component to the study of warfare and a critical mechanism of network formation, as Blanton et al. (1996) write. Second, alliances were based on a different organizing principle from Levi-Strauss’ tribal societies, for rulers selected main wives (for themselves or their kin) based on relative rank rather than particular kinship ties. Third, marriage alliance reveals an important difference between alliance and patron-client relationships, a distinction that is often blurred in the archaeological literature.     

How the mosquito (man) liberated Cuba

Disease is a more efficient killer of armies than man, but military historians tend not to dwell on this fact, for fear of relegating human volition to a secondary role in the outcome of wars. Thus, studies of the Cuban War of Independence from 1895 to 1898 tell of thrilling machete charges and awe-inspiring battleships, but pay insufficient attention to the insects and microbes that really killed the Spanish army and prepared the ground for the liberation of Cuba. This essay argues that the mosquito and yellow fever did most of the work of freeing Cuba from Spanish military occupation. It also tells how the theory of a Cuban physician, Carlos Finlay, helped to liberate the island from yellow fever following the American occupation in 1898. In this way the essay unites two sundered histories that belong together, and then goes on to explain why the medical community ignored Finlay for almost 20 years, just time enough to allow Cubans to found a new nation.     

Reinhold Niebuhr: Public and Private

Abstract

Little has been written in recent Christian ethics regarding the moral basis of the voluntary military service of Christian individuals. This article identifies some sources of that lack of discussion. Furthermore, it explores the moral basis of voluntary military service, especially in the modern United States' military. This is critical because service in the US military is not, in many respects, simply equivalent to generic military service. This is due to the unique and historically unprecedented military superiority of the United States in the world—its ‘sole remaining superpower’ status. This status places unique political responsibility and obligations on the military forces of the United States in the twenty-first century global community. The article attempts to articulate a moral argument in support of the voluntary military service of thoughtful Christian individuals in the US military in this geopolitical environment.     

Gallantry on the Shankill road: the British ‘soldier-hero’ and state-media relations in Northern Ireland, 1969-1979

ABSTRACT

The study of the British ‘soldier-hero’ as a political and cultural icon after 1945 has been largely confined to literature concerned with the memory of historical figures. Rarely have scholars considered how post-war military deployments not only created contemporary soldier-heroes, but also transformed their place within politics and society as the moral interrogation of these wars threatened to encroach upon the prestige of these icons. This article examines how the soldier-hero interacted with one of Britain’s most contentious deployments, Northern Ireland, and how politicians sought to control narratives surrounding this figure to avoid public relations controversy in unusual political conditions.     

The Inside Story of China's High-Tech Industry: Making Silicon Valley in Beijing. Yu Zhou

Two noted political geographers examine the results of surveys in the "de facto" states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia conducted in 2010. They assess the migration intentions of their residents, the likely destinations and motivations for planned departures, as well as the dramatic population decline due to emigration and expulsion of Georgian residents after wars in the early 1990s. Discussed are economic dislocations, the breakaway republics' uncertain geographical status, as well as improvements in security and economic conditions due to Russian military guarantees and massive economic aid that followed the 2008 wars with Georgia. The authors utilize key predictors derived from hypotheses about the push and pull forces affecting the decision to migrate (socio-demographic, war experiences, and attitudes about the "de facto" state prospects) to develop explanatory models of migration for each territory before deriving a pooled set of explanations. Both surveys suggest the likelihood that the majority of potential migrants have already left. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F220, F510, I300, J110, O150. 1 figure, 7 tables, 59 references.     

‘It’s a different time. It’s a different era. It’s a different place’: the Legacy of Vietnam and Contemporary Memoirs of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

This article examines censorship of US journalists in World Wars I and II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War, and from war to war, trends in types of censored information. This article also answers whether any censorship has avoided bloodshed or been legitimate, and concludes by examining how, in any future US wars, the government or military could most legitimately ensure safe reporting.     

‘Fighters without guns’: humanitarianism and military action in the aftermath of the Second World War

Abstract

This paper makes a contribution to the debate about the interplay between military action and humanitarian aid. It takes on the case study of post-World War Two Europe and in particular the activity carried out by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which offers a useful key for highlighting the entanglements between relief and reconstruction projects. It is from this perspective that the interaction between humanitarianism and military undertakings also acquires a special meaning, which recalls both the development of the international aid regime and the post-war history of Western countries. The matter will be addressed from two points of view. First to be analysed is the set of agreements stipulated by UNRRA and military authorities, for the zones under Allied administration after the liberation, but also with respect to specific areas of intervention, like the Displaced Persons Operations. The terms of the official agreements allow the delineation of the tasks actually assigned to the agency by the United Nations and the role of control and protection reserved for military organizations. Based on the formal agreements, it is already possible to reconstruct a vision of relief understood as the result of the inextricably linked action of military and humanitarian actors. Next, the interplay between different interpretations of activities to help civilians affected by the war will be examined. This section will focus on the personnel deployed by UNRRA, on their origins, and on duties they are called on to fulfil. People with extensive experience in the welfare sector were a substantial part of the personnel, but a significant number of UNRRA employees came from military ranks. This essay, therefore, has a twofold objective. It analyses the normative and institutional frame that shaped relief work in Liberated Europe. At the same time, it aims to uncover competition and cooperation between military and humanitarian actors in the field. The aim is to highlight how the co-construction of the aid operations between military and civilian personnel that occurred during the second post-war period followed a series of complex, nonlinear paths that conditioned the development of the humanitarian regime from within.