Gang Wars of Central America: What Anthropologists Have to Say

Deborah T. Levenson, Adiós Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index, 200 pp.; hardcover $84.95, paperback $23.95. Kevin Lewis O'Neill, Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 304 pp.; hardcover $85, paperback $29.95, ebook $29.95. Elana Zilberg, Space of Detention: The Making of a Transnational Gang Crisis Between Los Angeles and San Salvador. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Notes, bibliography, index, 360 pp.; hardcover $99.95, paperback $27.95, ebook $13.99.     

新冷战,怎么办?

新冷战与其"原型"存在本质区别."新时代"的主要内容是试图维护既得利益或是收复失地的西方展开反攻,力图阻止刚刚开始的对世界的重新分割.这一正在展开的对抗,其实质正是为了遏制对老西方不利的历史进程.俄用自己的行动和姿态"助长"了新冷战的开端.既然冷战即将揭幕,只能遵从其逻辑.但在面对种种挑拨离间时,俄应当时刻想着更长远的事情、更可怕的未来.     

What Have We Done Wrong? The Responsibilities of the Rich

This paper surveys hostile reactions to claims that the 11 September attacks were understandable in terms of the actions of the west towards poor parts of the world and the rich countries' own public commitments to democracy and affluence at home. The paper argues that domestic resentment is likely to continue to foment because concerted institution-building commensurate with the rich countries' material capacities has been neglected. Much responsibility for the global discontent can be attributed to policies advocated by the west and imposed on both rich and poor countries alike by policy-elites within the rich countries. Intellectuals have a role in re-activating the sorts of high-minded state-building and policymaking capacities that preoccupied them in the immediate post-1945 period.     

"We Have A Consensus": Explaining Political Support for Market Reforms in Latin America

By the 1990s, to the astonishment of many ob0servers, most Latin American countries had reformed their systems of national economic governance along market lines. Many analysts of this shift have assumed that it circumvented normal political processes, presuming that such reforms could not be popular. Explanations emphasizing economic crisis, external assistance, and politically insulated executives illustrate this approach. Through a qualitative investigation of the reform process in the region's four most industrialized countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, this study argues, to the contrary, that reforming governments found or created both elite and mass political support for their policies.     

Not bad stuff. Robert E. Park als literarischer Held

Robert Ezra Park, der „Kopf“ der Chicago School of Sociology, hat seine Laufbahn bekanntlich als Reporter und Redakteur begonnen, sich an literarischen Werken versucht und sich literarischer Werke als Quelle bedient. Weniger bekannt ist, dass er selber zur Figur einer literarischen Darstellung geworden ist. In „Organized Crimes“ (1984), einem Roman von Nicholas von Hoffman, spielt Robert Park eine tragende Rolle als Soziologieprofessor. Der Artikel geht der Frage nach, woher der Autor seine detaillierten Kenntnisse hat, die bis hin zu Parks Vorliebe für Anzüge aus schwarz-grünem Plaid („…attributed around the department to an allegedly gamey youth spent as an newspaper reporter“) reichen. Die Story des Romans und die Biografie des Autors führen uns auf die Spur. Saul Alinsky, radikaler Community-Organizer in Chicago und Mentor von Nicholas von Hoffman, hatte Ende der 1920er Jahre am Chicagoer Department studiert. „Organized Crimes“ kann also durchaus auch als eine Quelle für die Geschichte des Departments zur Hochzeit der Chicago School gelesen werden.     

“We Have Wines of All Kinds: Red,White, and Green”: Romanian Reactions to the Hungarian Uprising in 1956*

Drawing on memoirs, archival documents, and recent scholarship, this article examines the reverberations of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 in three Romanian cities, Bucharest, Cluj‐Napoca, and Timi?oara. Before the collapse of communism in Romania in 1989, a stereotype prevailed that, in contrast to the youth in Hungary, as well as in Poland and Czechoslovakia, Romanian students were too “cowardly” to voice their opinion of the events of the 1950s, including the Hungarian revolt. After the communist regime's collapse, Romanian scholars working with new archival documents debunked this conception, claiming that a student protest “movement” and widespread “demonstrations” (manifestarile) did indeed occur throughout Romania. The truth lies somewhere in‐between. Romanian university students were neither too “timid” to speak their minds about the need for reforms, nor tightly united in a movement with a central leadership and specific agenda.     

'It's Labour, But Not as we Know it.' Media Lesson-drawing and the Disciplining of Social Democracy: A Case Study

A qualitative content analysis of New Zealand newspapers from 1997 to 2002 shows how the overwhelmingly conservative print media in that country used a highly partial version of Tony Blair's New Labour to try to help set parameters for its New Zealand counterpart and point it in what it saw as the right direction. Globalisation rests on the flow of ideas as well as the flow of trade: it has an important ideational component that the media—internationally owned though often parochially focused—helps construct by drawing lessons from abroad. The thrust of the coverage analysed was to transnationalise a business-friendly common sense concerning the proper—indeed the inevitable—response of a modern social democratic party to a globalised political economy. Whether this actually affected the behaviour of the New Zealand variant of social democracy, however, is a moot point. Finally, in keeping with Lijphart's seminal discussion of the purpose of case studies, this one generates the following hypothesis: that the print media in one country will interpret the domestic politics of other countries (other than those which are geographically closest or economically crucial) in such a way as to try to influence the outcome of political and policy debates at home.