Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War

Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War. By Joy Damousi (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp.274. AU$145.00 (cloth).     

Rethinking Race, Gender and Citizenship: Black West Indian Women in Costa Rica, c. 1920–1940

This article brings Afro‐Caribbean women to the fore of a discussion of Costa Rican citizenship. It explores the relationship between ideologies of gender, imageries of black womanhood, and the dialectic of citizenship and exclusion. It examines how the efforts of the black elite to achieve citizenship through assimilation generated inter‐class tension which centred on ideas of female morality. It explores the absence of political platforms for poor black women excluded by such strategies and argues that while Costa Rican feminists succeeded in challenging the ideological system of gender they failed to challenge issues of race and class.     

Divided we Fall: Division Within the National Partisans of Vidzeme and Latgale,Fall 1945

Heinrihs Strods has shown that Latvia's national partisans were defeated primarily because of the overwhelming military odds they faced, but he added a secondary cause–the lack of unity in their ranks. This article explores the causes of such disunity and suggests that Björn Felder is right to see a blurring of ideological divisions as the Second World War came to an end; however, even at the height of summer 1945 there were some signs of tension, and as the likelihood of foreign intervention waned, fundamental tactical disagreements developed, disagreements which reflected different political pasts and differing visions of Latvia's future.     

Difficult Partners: Indo‐Australian Relations at the Height of the Cold War, 1949–1964

This article aims to make a long overdue re‐examination of Indo‐Australian relations in the early Cold War years. By drawing on available secondary sources, it reassesses the existing literature on Australian engagement with Asia. In so doing, it seeks to understand the reasons why the Menzies government found it so difficult to forge a close partnership with India. Canberra's rather frosty relations with New Delhi during the Menzies‐Nehru years had little to do with Menzies' alleged condescension towards the Asians or his personal antipathy towards Nehru. Rather, it had to do with the two leaders' different readings of Cold War politics as well as their responses to the structural changes taking place at the international level following the end of the Second World War.     

Francesco Crispi and Italy's Pursuit of War against France, 1887–9

This paper will examine the problems of nation-building in Italy in later nineteenth century Italy, focusing principally on the ideas and policies of the man who dominated the country in the 1880s and 1890s, Francesco Crispi. It will be my contention that Crispi and many of his political contemporaries on both the left and the right were strongly conscious of the mobilising and nationalising potential of "the other", and to an extent manipulated and deliberately exaggerated threats posed both by internal enemies — principally the Catholics and the socialists — and external enemies — above all France. Crispi's attitude to France and the French was complex and highly ambivalent, and I will suggest — using as evidence his speeches, writings, and political actions, above all when prime minister in 1887–91 — that there was an element of disingenuousness in his repeated claims that France was bent on destroying Italy. What Crispi was trying to do was to create a climate of tension that would not only bring the population together, but might also lead on to a war, in alliance with Germany — a war that would finally cement the country's "moral unity".     

New Labour, Gender Mainstreaming and the Women and Equality Unit

New Labour's approach to gender mainstreaming is perhaps best exemplified through the work of the Women and Equality Unit (WEU). In this article we chart the development of the Unit and varied initiatives in which it has been involved and provide a preliminary assessment of the Unit's work. We start with a discussion of Labour's approach to mainstreaming. This provides a context for a profile of the work of the Women's Unit (WU) between 1997 and 2001 and its successor the WEU, between 2001 and 2002. We consider the work of the Units in relation to the government's reforms to the policy-making process, focusing upon location, issue territory and connectivity. Using these three criteria our appraisal of the work of the WEU draws attention to three issues: firstly, the institutional uncertainty surrounding the status of the Unit; secondly, the degree to which the remit of the Unit has been unlike that of other cross-cutting units in addressing a broad gender agenda rather than specific policy areas, but that this is now shifting with the increasing focus on economic issues; and thirdly, the extent to which the Unit is reliant on non-feminist actors within the decision-making elite to help pursue its aims. We will suggest that the Unit may have made a small, but significant, contribution to the development of gender mainstreaming processes. Its contribution has been greatest where gender equality policies coincide with government priorities. Its contribution to the process of mainstreaming gendered perspectives into all policy-making is much harder to discern.     

The Strained Alliance: Peking,Pyongyang, Moscow and thePolitics of the Korean Civil War

Abstract

The burden of many conventional interpretations of the Korean War is that the conflict represented a test of strength between the Soviet and American Cold War antagonists which helped establish the ground rules for limited war in the nuclear age. The great virtue of Simmons' book is that it confronts us with the obvious but hitherto elusive truth that the Korean Civil War (as it is correctly called here) originated in Korean political issues. Simmons paints Korean features onto the Soviet-American Cold War mask. His book's second significant contribution is in its probing beneath the surface unity of the communist camp in the early 1950s to suggest that serious conflicts of interest arose between Moscow, Peking and Pyongyang in the course of the war.     

Gender,Politics and the State: What Do Middle Eastern Women Want?

The essays that follow are drawn from invited presentations of the Conference Group on the Middle East, which meets annually in conjunction with the American Political Science Association. The essays published here were presented in San Francisco, August 29-September 1, 1996, on one of three panels dealing with gender, politics and the state. Thanks to the continuing generosity of the Ford Foundation, five scholars from the Middle East were able to participate. The contributors would like to thank Farhad Kazemi, Deborah Gerner and Jean Lecafor their excellent comments at the panels. Louis J. Cantori, who has shepherded the Conference Group since its creation by a group of University of Chicago graduates more than a decade ago, deserves special thanks for his tireless commitment.     

Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization,by Alan M. Wachman

Abstract

How does the national identity problem affect the process of democratization? Is consensus on national identity a prerequisite for democratization? Alan Wachman writes about the most intractable problem in Taiwan and its implications for understanding democratization in general. He contends that previous studies suggesting the importance of a consensus on national identity for building a democratic system are inapplicable to Taiwan. From 1991 to 1993 Wachman interviewed prominent political figures and scholars of various backgrounds in Taiwan regarding five general questions: (I) Is it possible to distinguish between Chinese culture and Taiwanese culture? What are the sources of cultural identity for Taiwanese and Mainlanders? (2) How should we regard China in the present era? Is it a culture, a people, or a place? (3) To what degree is democracy compatible with Chinese culture? (4) How should the matter of Taiwan's political status be resolved? Is democracy a means or an end? (5) To what degree does the inability to resolve the matter of national identity impede the development of democracy in Taiwan?     

抗日战争时期日本强掳劳工民间诉讼的困境与突破

2007年4月27日,日本最高法院做出＂根据中日联合声明中国国民的请求权已经被放弃＂的判决,使得二战受难者在日民间战争赔偿诉讼陷入僵局。此种境遇下＂和解＂成为战后遗留问题工作者寻求突破的无奈选择。安野和解正是在此背景下达成。虽然和解取得了如企业承认强掳劳工的历史事实、表示谢罪、经济赔偿等一些成果,但受日本政府态度的影响,和解只能存在于受难者与企业间,就必然使得和解带有不彻底性,这也恰恰成为和解饱受争议的根源。彻底解决这一问题的方法在于以诉讼推动战争赔偿立法,以实现日本政府与企业两个层面上承认强掳华工法律责任基础上的全面解决,诉讼的根本目标及意义也在于此。