Sovereign immunity and international organization: The case of DeLuca v. the United Nations

Conclusion DeLuca v. the United Nations has brought many unanswered questions to the American and international public regarding the immunity of the United Nations and the consequences such a policy has had on that organization over the last fifty years. By diplomatic tradition, immunity has been very important to the United Nations in maintaining its freedom of action, as called for in Articles 104 and 105 of the United Nations Charter. Through immunity, the United Nations has escaped the fate of the former League of Nations and has become an organization which has contributed tremendously to the solving of the world's many political, economic and social problems.Yet, immunity has also cloaked and protected the United Nations from its own internal administrative weaknesses and abuses. Accountability has become harder to obtain from the UN bureaucracy due to this immunity. Simultaneously, for the American legal system, immunity has become somewhat analogous to the previous difficulties of piercing the corporate veil, namely attempting to redress the wrongs by preserving the legal rights of individuals through the effective use of the judicial system.Should the world continue to grant immunity to actions which can be classified as suspect or being with improper motive or bad faith by the United Nations or any other international organization? Will the United Nations ultimately be above the law? Only future actions by the UN General Assembly, national legislatures such as the United States Congress or cases likeDeLuca v. the United Nations will determine the final answer.     

Women in the Czech Republic: Feminism, Czech Style

Many years after the Velvet Revolution, feminism remains close to a dirty word in the Czech Republic, even among women who share the views of Western feminists. Surprisingly, this may in part hark back to the negative views of bourgeois feminism propounded by the Communists. Equally surprising is the very high proportion of women who are employed, almost all of them full-time, although they continue to do the lion's share of homemaking. This strategy enables Czech women to have a high sense of personal efficacy and independence. This paper emphasizes the historical roots of women's position in Czech society, and the importance of the cultural and social context for the emergence of what we term Feminism, Czech Style.     

In Hoc Signo Vinces: Religious Symbolism in the Balkan Wars 1991–1995

Symbols—as important and very persuasive elements of contemporary national and political mythologies and their iconography—are particulary exposed during critical periods of certain nations' history. Although the role and influences of religious organizations and hierarchies before and during the last wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were quite different, all belligerent sides also employed religious symbols in their nationalistic/political mobilizations and military efforts. The ambition of this paper is to show the spectrum of (mis)uses of religious symbolism in these wars: Orthodox on Serbian side, Roman Catholic on Croatian, and Muslim on Bosniak' side. Comparative and sociohistorical analytical approaches can to some degree elucidate how traditional religious symbols were renewed and the new traditionalized during that time; how they were nationalized and politicized which elements of the religious heritage were most often applied; and how these symbols were exploited in military actions and politics of ethnic/religious cleansing.     

Back to Basics: Human Rights and Power Politics in the New Moral Realism

The end of the Cold War offered unprecedented opportunities for human rights diplomacy, but was also the triumphant moment of neoliberal globalism. For four decades the realist suppression of idealism had been justified in terms of Cold War exigencies. Now, once again, liberal basics were expelled in the name of a specious realism. Less doctrinaire realists, however, are starting to integrate human rights and power politics in accord with Joseph Nye's concept of soft power. To sacrifice this moral realism on the altar of neoliberalism would be, in soft power terms, to lose the world by conquering it.     

Economic Reform and Social Change in China: Past, Present, and Future of the Economic State

China's socioeconomic crisis before 1978 and its success over the past two decades can be viewed as a zigzag process of politicization and depoliticization of the economic state. By summarizing the Chinese experience, this article shows the importance of a specific pattern of general public policy (GPP) in determining the nature of a policy system. China's economic and serialized reforms since 1978 are reviewed in order to illuminate the current situation and future direction of the nation. The changes have undermined the economic state by creating a trend of de-economicization in the Chinese government. If economic reform and social change are to continue smoothly, another transfer of state emphasis to more balanced development is required.     

Nostalgia for America's village past: Staged symbolic communities

Conclusion Staged Symbolic Communities have become important cultural forms in contemporary America. Assimulacrums of community, they offer a vision of the organic community with which few contemporary communities can compete. They offer an outlet from the work organization of mass bureaucratic society enabling the tourist visitor to feel both relaxed and in control.Visitors to SSCs take away more than souvenirs and decorating ideas. They also carry lessons regarding identity, history, and community. The Williamsburg effect involves more than paint colors and the attractive presentation of historic villages. It is now the leading architectural model for new communities, the colonial town replacing suburban sprawl (Mohney and Easterling 1989). We have yet to see whether this model will indeed prove the radicalism of tradition (Calhoun 1983), resulting in the restoration of community structure and affective ties, or whether the step backward suggested by SSCs is simply and only that.This paper was first presented at the 1990 SSSI Stone Symposium, St. Petersburg, FL. I should like to thank David Bouchier for helpful comments on an earlier version.     

The Conservative–Reformist Conflict Over Women's Rights in Iran

The struggle over women's rights has been one of the main battlegrounds between the forces of modernity and tradition in Iranian politics and society. With the emergence of a Reformist movement in 1997 this struggle entered a new phase in the Islamic Republic. It became part of the part of a broader conflict over two differing notions of Islam. One is an absolutist and legalistic Islam, premised on the notion of duty, tolerating no dissent and making little concession to popular will and contemporary realities. The other is a pluralistic and tolerant Islam that promotes democratic values and human rights—including women's rights.     

How Is a History of the Sociology of Religion Possible?: Reflections on Roberto Cipriani's Sociology of Religion

The effort to write a history of the sociology of religion requires a delineation of the field. In turn, this requires a discrimination among the key ideas determining that field, including the notions of religion, sociology, the sacred, and a host of others. This is a prerequisite for sorting the various contributors and contributions to this field as well as determining the value of any such history to the future advance of the study of human consciousness and conduct, including religion. Cipriani's book is reviewed, and its strengths and weaknesses assayed, in light of these concerns. Several lacunae in the book are identified, such as the absence of any treatment of non-Western writers and its failure to substantially engage the work of women, including Jane Ellen Harrison's pioneering sociology of religion.     

A New Paradigm for the Labor Movement: New Federalism's Unintended Consequences

In this article I review the history of New Federalism; examine the impact of the new economy on local economies and on the demand for development strategies that give workers the skills necessary for a rapidly changing service economy; and describe the new unionism that emerged at the time of John Sweeney's election to the presidency of the AFL-CIO. I explain why the New Deal view of the labor movement, which holds that the preeminent requirement for labor's success is a strong pro-labor national regime, is no longer valid, and I offer an alternative paradigm.     

Iran's Tortuous Path Toward “Islamic Liberalism”

This article provides an overview of the intellectual and sociopolitical roots of Iran's tortuous path toward Islamic liberalism and reform. It analyzes the shift in the ideological orientation of a major faction within the political elite from a radical to a relatively moderate and liberal interpretation of Islam. The authors trace the roots of this ideological shift to a series of political developments since the triumph of the Islamic revolution in 1979, including various failures of the revolutionary regime to fulfill its populist and egalitarian promises; a considerable erosion in the legitimacy of the ruling clerics; the successful (though largely silent) resistance of the youth and women against the culturally restrictive policies of the Islamic Republic; the rise of a distinctly anti-fundamentalist, liberal-reformist interpretation of Islam by a number of Iranian theologians and religious intellectuals; and the precipitous decline in the popularity of revolutionary ideas in the 1990s. In spite of the increasing appeal of liberal-democratic ideas of individual freedom, pluralism, and political tolerance in the new reform movement and the overwhelming endorsement of these ideas in four recent national elections, including two presidential polls, the authors argue that the movement has had but a limited and, for the most part symbolic, influence on Iran's objective, and still repressive, political conditions.     

Consumerism as a Civilizing Process: Israel and Judaism in the Second Age of Modernity

Modern post-emancipatory Jews have long been associated with cosmopolitanism, mostly as a bad thing. They've been anathematized as rootless cosmopolitans so often that cosmopolitan, used as a noun, is in some circles an anti-Semitic code word. During the heroic moments of Zionism, as with other liberation movements, this cosmopolitan strand of Judaism was de-emphasized in favor of conceptions that emphasized separateness and self-consciousness. There exists a side of Jewish identity that Zionism consciously suppressed, namely its urban, pleasure-loving, shopping-oriented cosmopolitanism. This exists also in social theory: Consumerism and modernism are joined at the hip because consumption is an indispensable part of the civilizing process. The process of consumption, of expressing our identity through tastes and possessions, changes the entire field of interaction. It makes possible new kinds of social identity. And it makes possible new forms of social integration, based on individuation and sympathy.     

Palestinian and Israeli Cooperation in Environmental Work During the “Peace Era”

This article presents a report summarizing a pilot study conducted by the Israeli-Palestinian research team of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME). Sixteen Israeli and twelve Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that were engaged in cooperative work were analyzed to measure the degree of their effectiveness in their societies, and obstacles encountered in their cooperative work. In addition, this report presents these NGOs' interpretation of the causes of environmental damage and its connection to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. NGOs data were collected from field interviews, their publications, and web sites. Results showed that while the Israeli and Palestinian NGOs agreed that joint work is needed to address ecological problems, they differed in their reasons for working together. This difference also appeared in their interpretation of the sources of environmental deterioration, relationship of the political conflict to the state of the environment, and the effect of the peace process on solving ecological problems. At the end, it was concluded that environmental narratives of both sides differ greatly, and that the establishment of a culture of peace is a protracted process.     

The Chinese before the courts: Ethnoracial construction and marginalization

Conclusion Justice Field's decision inHo Ah Kow v. Nunan, like the Supreme Court's decision seven years later inYick Wo v. Hopkins,⁴⁵ stands out in the otherwise dreary history of Chinese litigants seeking equitable justice in the courts of the United States.⁴⁶ Although the addition of person to the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment provided the basis for a great many Chinese aliens to seek redress for the violation of their personal and property rights,⁴⁷ the denial of citizenship, affirmed inAh Yup and remaining in force until 1943, stood as a bar to their integration into the American political community and civil society. Until 1943, when the right to naturalization was granted to Chinese aliens as part of a gesture to America's Kuomintang ally in the war against Japan, immigrant Chinese were officially marginalized in America's invidious hierarchy of races. They all too often were made to bear the burden of a juridical interpretation that had originated in the joint and separate employment of a conjectural ethnohistory, a dubious and contradictory ethnology, and, with rare and occasional exception, the judiciary's failure to discover and evaluate the real intent of the classificatory schemas that had begun to stigmatize them when they were first designated as generic Indians or as equally generic blacks. Like blacks, Chinese had been tarred with what Justice Harlan insisted wasthe badge of slavery: race discrimination. But, unlike blacks, Chinese had not been emancipated in 1865.⁴⁸     

Engineer of the Psyche: Myrdal's Freudian Liberalism in An American Dilemma

This essay seeks the political argument in An American Dilemma through a close reading of the chapters where Myrdal, in his social engineering effort, combined a rudimentary psychoanalytic view of racism with a strong normative support of an Americanist interpretation of Liberalism, expressed through the notion of the American Creed. Central issues are the construction of the self in Myrdal's text, and its relation to a real and imagined social order. The ambiguity of the status of the Creed as both liberal norm and imperative reality for the psychoanalytic perspective will be critically discussed.     

From Politics to Economics at the Thai–Cambodian Border: Plus Ça Change...

This paper looks at border relations between Thais and Cambodians over the last thirty years, in the context of the developing Thai polity and economy. It considers the salience of both ethnicity and nationality in shaping Thai interactions with Khmers. It suggests that as the threat of violent regional conflict diminished, the shared border came to represent important economic opportunities for both Thais and Cambodians. However, rhetorics of national interest and regional development notwithstanding, the beneficiaries of this transnational trade are neither nation nor state, but specific interest groups working through the structures of government and military on both sides of the border.     

Sprachpolitik: Some Socio-Political Effects of English in Germany

Language is a major component of identification for individuals and nations, and linguistic difference has manifested itself as an enduring political issue. This continues in the age of globalization when the presence of a powerful global force, the English language, now less attached to a particular national entity, is viewed as intrusive among language groups that are, including in the most economically and technologically advanced countries. Some groups and individuals within Germany's postindustrial civil society are conducting an ardent defence of German against the encroachment of English. The German state, meanwhile, is pressured to support the national language while adapting, like the private economy, to new imperatives that tend to magnify the presence of English.     

“We are the world” and its counterparts: Popular song as constitutional discourse

Conclusion I have attempted to show what kinds of insights can accrue from taking a constitutional approach to the analysis of popular culture, and a cultural approach to the analysis of the wording and interpretation of constitutions. The result is a more cultured appreciation of the work of constitutional interpretation, and a heightened awareness of how a constitution, which is primarily a mode for the production of legislation, can also be said to inform production in other domains as well.One very significant respect in which the present analysis differs from other analyses of popular culture is that rather than analyzing the texts as unconscious articulations of class conflict and domination, in Jon Cook's words, I have examined them for their legality. The advantage of this approach is that it does seem to have allowed for a finer reading of the texts than class analysis would permit, because constitutions differ in ways that class structures do not and thus provide a finer grid. In short, constitutions deserve far more consideration than they have received in cultural studies, just as constitutional studies could do with a lot more culture.The comparison of cultures requires not that we reduce them to platitudinous similarity but that we situate them apart as equally significant, integrated systems of differences.Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the Canadian Ethnological Society Conference, Laval University, May 1987, and the Faculty of Law, Cornell University, October 1988. I wish to thank both audiences for their many helpful comments, as well as G. B. Baker and D. H. Turner for having taught me how to think abut law and culture respectively.     

Race, Caste, or Class? The Bunche–Myrdal Dispute Over An American Dilemma

Few observers doubt that Gunnar Myrdal and Ralph J. Bunche had sharp methodological disagreements and differing approaches to tactics for ending the Negro problem. Myrdal has been criticized as a statist liberal and utopian moralist by recent cultural historians defending progressive nationalism (multiculturalism), while Bunche has been characterized as a vulgar Marxist, and, with Myrdal, a denigrator of black culture. Inspection of An American Dilemma in contrast with Bunche's research memoranda suggests that Myrdal represented himself as a Burkean conservative, while Bunche's analyses transmit the radical puritan libertarian tradition, but without rejecting social democratic remedies en route to working-class control of industry. Their shared emphasis on class-based remedies to end poverty and powerlessness, however, renders them similarly unassimilable in a period where the progressive left has generally embraced racial or ethnic identity, not class power, as the source of individual emancipation, mental health, and economic betterment.     

State Support in the Market: Women and Tourism Employment in Post-Socialist Bulgaria

In many former Eastern Bloc countries, economic transition has been responsible for drastic declines the social and economic well-being for both men and women. In general, however, women have tended to experience relatively greater losses since 1989. Through a detailed case study of women's employment in the tourism sector of post-Communist Bulgaria, this chapter will argue that state support for certain economic sectors can help improve the relative economic welfare of women. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this study finds that state support for viable economic sectors with relatively high wages that employ a critical mass of women can help to ease the difficult transition from centrally-planned to free-market economies.     

Education for Modernity: The Impact of American Social Science on Alva and Gunnar Myrdal and the “Swedish Model” of School Reform

This paper directs itself to the impact of American social science on the writings of Alva and Gunnar Myrdal on the role of education and social science in modern industrial democracy. After a brief sketch of the Myrdals' role in the development of Swedish welfare reforms and of their intellectual contacts in the United States during the 1930's, the paper outlines four theoretical dilemmas of modernity to the solution of which education and social research was seen to contribute: the relationships between facts and values, the individual and the collective, child rearing and social change, and theory and practice. The paper concludes by tracing the articulation of these themes in the Social Democratic Party school reform proposals of 1948.