Search results

B. Steiner takes up a general problem in the theory of history: how does one explain historical change? What are the theoretical, non-time-bound conditions under which we can speak of a break, a transformation, or a revolution? He uses selected examples to illustrate how contemporaries and historians have sought to understand historical change through deliberate reflection on unintended consequences. Benjamin Steiner,Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

In the history of the modern state, Africa has been continually depicted in sharp contrast to Europe and its ostensibly special developmental path. However, Benjamin Steiner shows how the formation of nation states in Europe depended on European involvement in the larger Atlantic world, and writes a history of knowledge and encounter between France and parts of Africa during the time of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Benjamin Steiner, Universität Frankfurt

In the history of the modern state, Africa has been continually depicted in sharp contrast to Europe and its ostensibly special developmental path. However, Benjamin Steiner shows how the formation of nation states in Europe depended on European involvement in the larger Atlantic world, and writes a history of knowledge and encounter between France and parts of Africa during the time of Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Disposable Heroes illuminates challenges facing many African American veterans. Rather than finding military service to be a path to upward mobility, these veterans fight just to survive. Drawing on in-depth interviews with veterans of Vietnam and recent wars, as well as national survey data, the book shows the ways America fails black veterans today

In this paper, I analyze elite discourse in the context of the increasing role played by large-scale corporate platforms in federal immigration enforcement in the US Specifically, I focus on Amazon Web Services' (AWS) alliance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Incorporating Marx's (2016) "fallacy of explicit agendas" as a heuristic for contextualizing recent employee challenges to company CEO Jeff Bezos, I show how the fallacy serves to conceal far more about the AWS alliance with ICE, an organization with a long track record of deeply troubling practices. The secrecy that is fostered by such discourse also obscures the growing dependency of government entities on large-scale technologies of marginalizing surveillance that threaten civil liberties and rights of refugees and immigrants.

By highlighting the real world experiences of cause lawyers who work on behalf of HIV-infected prisoners (e.g., 'activist prisoner lawyering'), this article reports on the often-difficult negotiations over roles (litigator v. activist) that such actors face. The article investigates through the stories of activist prison lawyers, in the words of one such respondent, how 'different approaches need to be taken in different settings.' For activist prison lawyers, when a client's life literally hangs in the balance litigation may be the only option. In other instances, using a case to bring public awareness to broader movement objectives may be chosen as a proper course of action. The article elucidates how such negotiations often entail the dilemma of balancing broader goals of the prisoner rights movement with the immediate, indeed sometimes life and death, circumstances facing the individuals and communities they represent. The article concludes with a call for future work on cause lawyers and social movements in other contexts to problematize law as a static, dichotomous variable that either does or does not bring desired institutional or societal change. Viewing law as a dichotomous variable masks the politically significant effects litigation may have for influencing both institutional arrangements and social consciousness over time. Furthermore, the dichotomous conception of law as a catalyst/not a catalyst for social change also glosses over the importance of the meso-level of analysis. By paying attention to the demands of a specific legal context, the immediate circumstances of a specific situation, and the way the former and the latter may be inextricably linked, future studies can make important and nuanced contributions to our understanding of the complex relationship between law, and social change. [Copyright 2006 Elsevier Ltd.]