Associations of people with disabilities in Italy: a short history

Voluntary associations of persons with disabilities have played an important role in bringing issues related to disability onto the national agenda in Italy in the absence of effective provision by the state or representation by other bodies, such as the political parties and trades unions. At the same time, the nature of Italy's welfare state – weak, clientelistic, particularistic – and its way of conceiving disability as a set of bodily deficits has also shaped the character of disabled persons' organisations in Italy and the ways in which they have framed their demands and policies. These organisations have tended either to represent fragmented subsets of people with disabilities or, more recently, to form large federations that, while they reflect a more comprehensive understanding of disability, have left some categories of people with disabilities feeling excluded or under-represented     

A history of the African people

Abstract

Colonialism entailed numerous changes in Swazi socio-economic configurations, including a growing recourse to waged employment. Yet little is known about the dynamics that drove indigenous Swazi women to work for wages. This article argues that colonial policy, by adversely impacting areas of production involving Swazi people, drove women to seek wage employment. Moreover, this was not a smooth process, but a contested issue. Swazi men, chiefs, the monarchy and colonial administrators all attempted to frustrate female participation in wage employment. In spite of such barriers, as oral interviews with mid-twentieth century working women show, women continued to take up wage employment, and eventually secured the implicit support of colonial administrators in the service of the colonial economy.     

America and the people truly without history

Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Community in Colonial Mexico. By RICHARD BOYER. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Pp. x, 341.

Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700. By SUSAN KELLOG. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Pp. xxxiii, 285.

To the Royal Crown Restored: The Journals of don Diego de Vargas, New Mexico, 1692–94. Edited by JOHN KESSEL, RICK HENDRICKSA and MEREDITH DODGE. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Pp. xv, 612.

The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico. By STEVE J. STERN. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Pp. xiii, 478.     

The Asaba massacre and the Nigerian civil war: reclaiming hidden history

This article explores the consequences of a massacre of civilians in Asaba, a town on the west bank of the river Niger, during the early stages of the Nigerian civil war. While ethnically Igbo, Asaba was not part of the Igbo-dominated Biafra, remaining part of the ethnically diverse midwest region. In the international memory of the war, the midwest action, which claimed several thousand lives, has been eclipsed by the catastrophic events east of the Niger, after the federal blockade of Biafra. This article sheds new light on the human cost of the war on civilian populations outside Biafra. Drawing on interviews with survivors and their descendants, we describe the killings, pillaging and rapes that followed the arrival of the federal troops, and trace the long-term impact and memory of the physical and human devastation in Asaba on family structure, gender roles, educational opportunities and social structure. We show how the official suppression of the massacres, coupled with Biafran awareness of the events, contributed to the subsequent course of the war, and we suggest that this suppression has left a legacy that perpetuates resentment and has kept ethnic tensions alive to this day.     

Progressive localism for an ethics of care: Local Area Co-ordination with people with learning disabilities

In the UK devolution to ‘new’ nations and localities is generating differences in the tone and substance of social care. In Scotland there is an apparent rejection of the ‘personalisation’ model dominant in England and other neoliberal welfare states; in its place, there is an emphasis on locally based co-produced care provision, involving local organisations, practitioners and individuals. The paper argues that this is an outcome of the open and deliberative nature of policy-making, and the further devolution of social care provision to local authorities in Scotland. Local scale networks and spaces of provision are generating a ‘progressive localism’, contesting the association between the local scale and financial austerity, drawing on a relational understanding of place. Non-commodified and locally-based provision expands the discourse of care from ‘caring for’ individuals to ‘caring about’ people and places, in what is termed an ‘ethics of care’. The paper uses the example of people with learning disabilities to examine a more broadly conceived ‘caring’ within local communities, offering possibilities for inclusion and belonging. The paper draws on interviews with key policy makers and place-based care practitioners, known as ‘Local Area Co-ordinators’.     

Exhibiting eugenics: response and resistance to a hidden history

Human Plants, Human Harvest: The Hidden History of California Eugenics is the first-ever exhibition on the history of eugenics in California. The disappearance of this history for half a century, and the consequent absence of a "collective menory", were the primary factors determining the exhibit's sttrcture and content. Responses to the exhibit confirmed that most visitors "never knew" about this history. The exhibit is described in some detail, with selected imagery from the exhibit reproduced. After the initial exhibition, responses of other museums and foundation officials revealed a continuing resistance to this history being publicly displayed, though the sources of resistance varied.     

揭开蒙面劫匪的面纱

蒙面歹徒闯入花花家的时候,花花还在梦魇中。很凑巧的是她也同时梦到了一伙蒙面歹徒的闯入。当真真切切地感受到架在脖间砍刀的冰凉,看到不满十岁的儿子被歹徒反扭住胳膊压在炕角,嘴被堵得严严实实,小脸憋得通红通红而奋力挣扎时,她无助地哭了,顺从地从炕边翻出黄昏时藏好的黄金手镯、耳环和戒指,还有140元的现金和儿子平时藏在口袋、夹在书本中的一大堆硬币……花花嫁到湟中县山沟儿村已有十几年了。自打儿子上学后,花花的丈夫不愿在家里闲待着,吆喝了村里几个年轻人出外打工,每年一打春就离开家,快过年的时候才揣着几大包的喜悦赶回家。没…     

论民本思想在中国历史上的作用

文章对自先秦以来,特别是在中国漫长的封建社会中民本思想的形成,以及这种思想对调节、缓和社会矛盾,同时产生的消极影响和局限性,都作了较全面的论述;并对后来的民主思想的产生和发展也进行了一定分析。     

Deaf people in Hitler's Europe: conducting oral history interviews with deaf Holocaust survivors

Deaf people living in Europe between 1933 and 1945 were mistreated, forcibly sterilized, incarcerated, and murdered by the Nazis. Their stories have been overlooked or underappreciated because of the complexities of communication and the difficulties historians face gaining access to those communities. This article describes the challenges faced by two United States historians when they interviewed deaf Holocaust survivors in Budapest, Hungary and during a conference, "Deaf People in Hitler's Europe," co-sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Gallaudet University. It also raises general questions of adapting methodologies to facilitate "oral" history interviews for deaf informants.     

Uncovering a Painful Past: Archaeology and the Holocaust

Abstract

Places connected to the Holocaust, and the physical evidence that lies within them, survive as reminders of the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. Both the treatment of these sites and attitudes towards them have varied considerably in the years since the Second World War. In recent years, a number of archaeological investigations have been instigated by curators at Holocaust sites in a direct attempt to enhance visitor experiences and education programmes. Archaeologists have initiated investigations at other forgotten and dilapidated sites in an attempt to raise awareness of these places. This paper will discuss two case study sites where archaeological investigations have been undertaken and where attempts have been made to inform conservation, heritage management, and education strategies. It will highlight the various challenges that may arise in the course of developing dissemination tools and discuss strategies that have been adopted to account for them. Specifically it will focus on how archaeologists can present novel means by which to locate, record, and re-present the physical evidence of the Holocaust and how they can tell the stories of difficult heritage sites even when traditional forms of memorialization/muzealization is not wanted or practical.     

International cooperation and the inclusion of persons with disabilities: the Italian system

Two key themes emerging from recent studies on disability are the shift in the conception of persons with disabilities, expressed in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), from objects to subjects of policies concerning them and the recognition of the close interconnections between disability and poverty. Both themes have clear implications for international development cooperation. It is essential that the high number of persons with disabilities in developing countries is recognised and that the programmes implemented by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including those in emergencies and disasters, are made fully inclusive of them. Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes are important in achieving inclusiveness and fulfilling the rights of persons with disabilities. Italian NGOs such as AIFO (Associazione Italiana Amici di Raoul Follereau) have played an important role in helping launch CBR, most notably in Mongolia. Two sets of research data published in 2008 have measured the impact of Italian action on disability in international development cooperation. The reports on the one hand reveal inadequate levels of funding in general, and funding by banks and private companies in particular, and insufficient involvement of disabled persons' organisations, but on the other suggest that Italy's domestic experience of advanced disability legislation can be productively applied in international contexts to include and empower persons with disabilities.     

Community and the geography of people with intellectual disability

In their localized forms it is often hard to tell exclusion from inclusion, due to the complex multidimensional nature of these processes. In this paper I argue that an analytical distinction between various types and elements of community is necessary in order to make sense of exclusion, and in order to develop appropriate strategies to facilitate inclusion for marginalized populations. This issue is discussed in the context of people with intellectual disabilities and the community-care movement in the State of Victoria, Australia. Community-care relies on a range of interpretations of the notion of community, and is implemented within a variety of actual communities, giving rise to different forms of exclusion and different strategies of inclusion.     

Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City: Uncovering Masculinist Agendas

The literature on the Western city as a site of "actually existing neoliberalism" has done much to expose the injustices wrought by new modes of urban governance. In particular, this literature has highlighted the increasing exclusion of minority groups from the spaces of the central city. To date, however, there has been little sustained exploration of the gendered dimensions of this process. In this paper I offer such a gendered reading, suggesting that neoliberal policy serves to recentre masculinity in the cityscape at the same time that it encourages capital accumulation. I demonstrate this by noting some of the forms of revenge currently being exacted on prostitute women in Western cities, reading such actions as symptomatic of urban policies that serve both capital and the phallus. In conclusion, I suggest that the conceptual framework of neoliberalism is useful for making sense of contemporary urban restructuring, but only if we recognise that the resulting city can be mapped along axes other than those fixated on capital and class.