scholarly journals Epistemic Disobedience and Decolonial Healing in Norma Elía Cantú’s Canícula

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Poks

Abstract Using the U.S.-Mexican border as the place of enunciation, Cantú’s autoethnobiographical novel insists on the materiality of the border, especially for those living on its southern side, while simultaneously deconstructing it as artificial - a line splitting families and assigning nationalities on an arbitrary basis. Being a collage of photographs from the time the writer was growing up in southern Texas and the cuentos inspired by these visuals, Cantú’s Canícula documents how border crossings and re-crossings become symptomatic of living in a liminal space and how they destabilize the concept of nationality as bi-national families must learn to live with ambiguity. On the one hand, there is the undeniable materiality of the border, with its pain, fear, deportations, and other discriminatory practices; on the other, there is a growing border community of resistance cultivating the memory that they are not immigrants, that they lived in Texas before the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty. The paper examines the community’s strategies of survival in the contested cultural and social space and advances the thesis that, giving her community an awareness of its homogeneity and reclaiming its place within the larger socio-political context, Cantú becomes an agent of empowerment and change. She helps decolonize knowledge and being.

2012 ◽  
pp. 81-103
Author(s):  
Guia Gilardoni

The article presents considerations regarding the usefulness of social capital in studying integration paths, and it examines research data on the integration of the new generations in Italy, analysing a sample of 17,225 preadolescents (aged 11 to 14), of whom 13,301 were Italians, 2,921 foreigners and 1,003 children of mixed parentage. Data has been collected by a questionnaire translated and adapted from the one used by Portes and Rumbaut in the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) of 1992 in the United States. They are used to present the Italian situation in light of segmented assimilation theory. One first result is the underachievement of Latinos. Given this finding, an effort is made to consider various factors which contribute to shaping the socio-existential circumstances of this specific group. The second main result is that children of mixed couples were those most disposed to form intercultural relations. When distinguishing between those with an Italian father and a foreign mother and those, vice versa, with an Italian mother and a foreign father, forcefully evident is the central role played by the mother in the transmission of cultural elements and in the construction of a sense of belonging and identity. Third, focusing on social capital at family level and within the peer group, it has been revealed a greater cross-cultural propensity among the new generations than among previous ones: Italian preadolescents growing up in a multi-ethnic society are more open to, and willing to accept, the challenge of cultural diversity than are their parents. More in general, the new generations contribute to creating a more inclusive social space in which membership of social circles becomes more transversal with respect to cultural and ethnic origins.


Author(s):  
Edward G. Goetz

This chapter describes the tension between integration and community development from the 1940s through the end of the 1960s. It describes the conflict within the African-American community between efforts to achieve integration on the one hand and building power and capacity within the community on the other. It describes the emergence and evolution of the fair housing movement in the U.S. Finally, the ways in which this conflict played out during the civil rights and Black Power eras is highlighted.


Author(s):  
Trinh T. Minh-ha

This chapter discusses the problem of an exit strategy during the final days of the George W. Bush administration and how these issues echo the U.S. policy on Vietnam of many years before. It goes further, however, to analyze how the Obama administration approached future conflict in its initial years. On the one hand, the Bush administration's official storyline had revived the familiar paranoia of having victory turned over to the enemies. On the other, the exit strategy for withdrawal also raised widespread doubt about what was achievable in Iraq and Afghanistan and what the comprehensive results of the Iraq War turned out to be. The classic double bind thus wrote itself into every discussion of the “post-Iraq” era of U.S. foreign policy.


Author(s):  
William B. Meyer

One of the earliest historians of the Civil War saw it as a fundamental clash between the peoples of different latitudes. Climate had made the antebellum North and South distinct societies and natural enemies, John W. Draper argued, the one democratic and individualist, the other aristocratic and oligarchical. If such were the case, the future of the reunited states was hardly a bright one. But Draper saw no natural barriers to national unity that wise policy could not surmount. The restlessness and transience of American life that many deplored instead merited, in his view, every assistance possible. In particular, he wrote, Americans needed to be encouraged to move as freely across climatic zones as they already did within them. The tendency of North and South to congeal into hostile types of civilization could be frustrated, but only by an incessant mingling of people. Sectional discord was inevitable only if the natural law that "emigrants move on parallels of latitude" were left free to take its course. These patterns of emigration were left free, for the most part, but without the renewed strife that Draper feared. After the war as before it, few settlers relocating to new homes moved far to the north or south of their points of origin. As late as 1895, Henry Gannett, chief geographer to the U.S. Census, could still describe internal migration as "mainly conducted westward along parallels of latitude." More often as time went on, it was supposed that race and not merely habit underlay the pattern, that climatic preferences were innate, different stocks of people staying in the latitudes of their forbears by the compulsion of biology. Thus, it was supposed, Anglo-Saxons preferred cooler lands than Americans of Mediterranean ancestry, while those of African descent preferred warmer climates than either. Over time, though, latitude loosened its grip and exceptions to the rule multiplied. As the share of the population in farming declined, so did the strongest reason for migrants to stay within familiar climates. Even by the time Gannett wrote, the tendency that he described, though still apparent, was weaker than it had been at mid-century. It weakened because a preference for familiar climates was not a fixed human trait but one shaped by experience and wants, and capable of changing as these variables changed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 08040
Author(s):  
Vladimir Tereshchenko

The relevance of studying the process of child’s growing up is due to a number of contradictions; on the one hand, children’s space of activities is changing, he/she develops in paradoxical, contradictory conditions, on the other hand, growing children do not show an active desire to grow up, sometimes imitate disharmonious forms of behaviour. The purpose of the study is, firstly, to describe the range of domestic and foreign works related to both childhood and adulthood on the background of changing socio-cultural practices, secondly, to isolate the existing manifestations of the problems, identifying the main contradictions caused by changes in the process of growing up, and thirdly, to attempt to develop conceptual provisions of psychological and pedagogical analysis of growing up in modern educational organization. We consider the growing up of a modern child in the educational environment as a process of constant changes in the structure of his/her subjective and objective characteristics, including the formation of child’s image of adulthood in ontogenesis, its development and implementation, as well as the reflection of development of adulthood by children in the psychological and pedagogical space by the participants of educational process (parents, teachers).


2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lefteris Tsoulfidis

The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, to present a growth account of the evolution of the value composition of capital and in so doing to deal with some of the issues raised by Zarembka’s (2015) contribution. And on the other hand, to review some crucial relations between the variables that relate to the movement of the rate of profit and the current predicament.


2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oded Haklai

Theorists of contentious politics have been divided over the influence on agency behaviour of ideational or cultural factors on the one hand, and rational strategic calculations of opportunities on the other. Based on an Israeli nonparliamentary opposition movement to the peace process, this study presents an integrative approach in which ideational variables are elevated to the level of independent motivating forces in which the objectives of the movement are embedded. Argumentation at the strategic level provides the movement with opportunities for increasing its support basis beyond the natural constituency with which it shares ideology and, ultimately, for mobilizing protest. The case illustrates how a political context that limits activity actually mobilizes contention, while a context of more open opportunity can demobilize protest activity.


Author(s):  
Ki Hee Kim

There have been serious trade disputes between the U.S. and Japan since the mid-1970s. The source of trade dispute is that the U.S. has had large trade deficits which have been caused mostly by large American imports from Japan, especially in the early 1980s when the dollar was appreciating. Since the 1980s, many disputes have arisen due at least in part, to U.S. allegations that Japanese markets are closed to imports because of restrictive practices such as exclusive dealings between domestic manufacturers and distributors. It is further alleged that the practices are tolerated and even encouraged by the Japanese government. It has long been said that the U.S. and Japan should manage their trade friction wisely, so not to embitter the overall relationship between the two countries. This is based upon recognition of the importance of the Japan-U.S. relationships on the one hand, and of the possibility of serious trade friction on the other. This precept is effective because there always remain countries that may not be able to handle it to mutual satisfaction. This paper will analyze trade disputes, tensions, and related issues between the two economic powers to reduce trade conflicts and to improve overall trade relations. Another purpose is to suggest common grounds to minimize trade conflicts between two countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 05002
Author(s):  
Marina Yurievna Kovaleva

The purpose of the study is to trace the development of the theme of happiness in relation to the development of the protagonist in the novel “Jane Eyre” by the English Victorian writer Charlotte Brontè. It is discovered that the pursuit of happiness becomes an internal impetus driving the plot of the novel, ensuring the development of the protagonist’s image and promoting such leitmotifs as creativity, love, freedom, naturalness, and fight for one’s life. Particular emphasis is placed on the search for individual components of the internal and external life that comprise the plotline of the protagonist’s pursuit of personal happiness. At the same time, it is noted that the heroine’s ideas of happiness, while essentially remaining unchanged, obtain different undertones at various stages of growing up. It is also noted that the protagonist’s ideas of happiness sharply differ from some other characters’ ideas of happiness (for example, Helen Burns). It is argued that the protagonist in Charlotte Brontè’s novel is led along the arduous journey to happiness by her natural tenacity and the model of the responsible and naturally creative behavior based on the feeling of love which is formed in the protagonist – with the development of her character – already in her childhood. The academic prerequisites for the study are numerous works on the image of the protagonist, the features of psychologism and realism in Charlotte Brontè’s work, on the one hand, and the increased interest in the problem of happiness in academia, on the other hand. The study of the image of childhood and the place that the pursuit of happiness holds in it carried out by the authors in a previous work is also an important prerequisite for this study. The novelty of this work consists in analyzing the content features of the theme of happiness in Charlotte Brontè’s famous novel.


2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-256
Author(s):  
K. A. Beyoghlow

The central theme of this book is that U.S. strategy in the Middle East is fundamentally flawed but not irreparable. This may be the result of the inherent mismatch between strategy and policy and, more significantly, between America's prin- ciples and interests. In particular, the author argues that the U.S. approach toward Islam is "beset with ambiguities and tensions" (p. 3). Furthermore, he stresses that there is a somewhat dangerous growing gap between the American people and their representatives in Congress, on the one hand, and presidential administrations, on the other, when it comes to dealing with "islamists" (those who espouse greater religious activism in politics). The former lean toward a confrontational attitude that is fed by cultural differences, stereotyping, and negative images of Muslims, whereas the latter strive to accommodate or tolerate a majority of mod- erate or pro-West Islamic forces and states.


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