Lives on the border: language and culture in the lives of ethnic Russian women in Baltinava,Latvia

This study draws on ethnographic research conducted in a small village, Baltinava in Latvia, 2.5 kilometres from the border with Russia. The research examines how ethnic Russian women create a specific Latvian Russian identity by contrasting themselves from ethnic Latvians and Russians who live in Russia and identifying with both groups at the same time. To narrate their lives and to make them meaningful, real and/or perceived “attributes” are combined to draw boundaries between “us” and “them.” Thus, the same thing such as language can be used not only both to distinguish themselves from Russians in Russia or Latvians but also to form coherent identities and to emphasize similarities. This study suggests that ethnicities cannot be reduced to a list of set ethnic groups that are very often used in official government statistics. Ethnic identities have to be viewed as fluid and situational. Moreover, this study shows the dialectic nature of ethnicity. On the one hand, external political, historical and social processes create and recreate ethnic categories and definitions. Yet, on the other hand, the women in this study are active agents creating meaningful and symbolic ethnic boundaries.     

Some things cannot be separated: intersectionality in the lives of black women activists in Salvador,Brazil

This article critically examines gender within black movement organizations in Salvador, Bahia Brazil. Based upon interviews conducted with black activists in 1998 and subsequent conversations, the article discusses black women's experiences within anti-racist, black movement organizations. In discussions on formative racial experiences, female activists – more often than male activists – directly linked race and gender and maintained that ‘some things cannot be separated’. These women came into their political consciousness because of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender and more specifically because of their experiences and particular locations as black, primarily poor, females. Black female activists critique anti-racist social movements and male activists in particular when they do not address racism and sexism simultaneously     

Patterns of culture and democratization in Kuwait

Conventional wisdom asserts that Islam and tribalism dispose the countries of the Arab Middle East against democratization. Yet the local culture in the region resembles those in the ancient world where democracy was first established, and neither resembles the pattern of political development that occurred in Western Europe, today’s democratic paradigm. Kuwait, a city-state that has enjoyed a high level of collective wealth throughout the period following World War II, displays many of the attributes of the “positive liberty” that Isaiah Berlin, Hannah Arendt, and others see as characteristic of ancient democracies. Vigorous participation in a range of public spaces acts as a check on runaway state power. Kuwait’s record on “negative liberty” is poor, which is why it diverges from the western European model. Population growth and its effect on political development is eroding Kuwait’s qualities as a city-state and pushing it toward mass politics. It is not possible at this stage to predict with any confidence whether these new trends will result in further liberalization or a more authoritarian polity. Mary Ann Tétreault is a professor of political science at Iowa State University. She is the editor ofWomen and Revolution in Africa, Asia, and the New World (1994) and the author ofThe Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Economics of the New World Order (1995). She is presently working on a monograph on democratization in Kuwait and, with Robin Teske of James Madison University, is preparing an edited volume on power and social movements.     

联合国常任理事国的"急诊室"

联合国总部座落在美国纽约市曼哈顿岛一大道42街至48街之间.这块地原属于洛克非勒家族,"二战"后以年租一美元租给联合国使用.从此,这块土地便是国际领土.联合国大厦共40层,若上上下下走一遍,简直像走进迷宫里一般.倒不是楼内的结构复杂,而是联合国总部内各个机构的名称全部采用英文缩写,让人一时摸不清头脑.比如"欧洲经济委员会"的英文缩写为"ECE"等.     

Black lives and climate justice: courage and power in defending communities and Mother Earth

Abstract

This article shares examples of the leadership of Black communities and social movements in the struggle for climate justice, in four different parts of the world: resisting extraction and promoting community health in Nigeria; addressing extreme climate impacts and building people’s sovereignty in Haiti; confronting repression, defending territory and Mother Earth in Honduras; and cultivating community control and building a land-based movement in the US. Together, these examples have rich lessons to share around the importance of linking climate justice with racial justice; of combining strategies of resistance with those of creating alternative models; of maintaining focus on Black communities’ connections with land, territory and Mother Earth; of recognising and creating space for women’s leadership; and of intersectionality across geography and sector.     

Developing the representational role of elected members: Local involvement,local action in a Birmingham ward

This article focuses on the developing representational role of elected members in Birmingham as part of the wider modernisation agenda. It describes and analyses ‘Local Involvement, Local Action’, a local authority initiative to enhance democratic participation that was set up just prior to the publication of new political management arrangements. This initiative is typical of many local authority approaches, combining a desire to enhance the contribution of local citizens with a decentralisation programme to devolve decision making to the sub‐local level and begin to ‘join‐up’ the actions of a variety of local partners at neighbourhood level. The article highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the LILA initiative and identifies the wider potential and limits of such decentralisation initiatives to enhancing the representational role of elected members.     

Patterns and issues in health care collective bargaining

Unionization of health care facilities has grown significantly over the last twenty years. More than 20 percent of American hospitals have one or more union contracts and an equal percentage of the industry's labor force is represented for collective bargaining purposes. Union membership is concentrated in the Northeast, Upper Midwest and Pacific Coast and is to be found particularly among large metropolitan hospitals. Although many different unions are actively organizing in the health care industry four labor organizations predominate: American Federation of State, County, Municipal Workers; Service Employees International Union; National Union of Hospital and Health Care Workers - District 1199; and the American Nurses Association.

One of the obstacles to union growth for many years was the absence of Federal legal regulation of labor relations. In 1974 Congress amended the so-called Taft Hartley Act to cover private nonprofit hospitals, the largest component of the industry. Since 1974 the application of Federal labor law has resolved old problems that arose from the lack of a basis to handle recognition disputes but at the same time created new issues. Among these issues are such legal questions as the legitimacy of the ANA to act as a labor organization, the proper bargaining classification for registered nurses, and the proper role in labor relations for hired consultants.

The growth of unions in health care raised concern that collective bargaining would impose onerous new burdens on an industry already hard pressed financially. Research indicates, however, that the impact on hospital costs have not been great -- perhaps on the order of an increase of 10 percent over what would be the case in the absence of unions. The greatest effects seem to be in the area of fringe benefits, working conditions, and the provision for grievance machinery.

Special problems have arisen in conjunction with the unionization of registered nurses. This particular category of health care workers occupies a strategic position in the hospital's work force. After a slow start nurse bargaining activity has come rapidly particularly as nonnursing unions such as 1199, SEIU, and the American Federation of Teachers have forced the ANA to respond to their efforts to make inroads among nurses.

Union growth in the industry seems to have stabilized for the time being without the prospect for much change in the remaining years of the decade. Incidence of conflict has been relatively low compared to other industries and this also shows little likelihood of change. While some visible signs of conflict over representation rights still remain collective bargaining is moving rapidly into an era of mutual accommodation.