Suchergebnisse

Beginning in the mid-1960s, Mexico encouraged the development of industrial assembly plants known as maquiladoras along its northern border and in selected areas of the interior. Although it began as a stopgap measure to employ men returning from the U.S. bracero worker program, the Border Industrialization Program soon became Mexico's principal development initiative for the border region. Since then, numerous scholars have evaluated the success of the plants by examining their impacts on the economy, the environment, and labor. This study adds to this research literature by assessing the impact of the maquiladora program from the perspective of the assembly line workers. It describes and analyzes the activities of a grassroots, participatory development effort to organize maquiladora workers for more than 20 years. Participatory approaches to development are defined and described in terms of the problems and challenges that animate this field of research. The findings demonstrate how participatory efforts at organizing constitute one of the few avenues available to workers to resist factory exploitation and improve their general well-being. The study confirms some of the shortcomings of participatory development theory, such as its conceptual ambiguity, significant time commitment, and general cumbersomeness, but it provides justifications for its continuance.

This survey of recent (post-1997) Western writing on the Stalin era focuses on the treatment of social & cultural issues by conventionally minded (empiricist) scholars, as well as those who employ postmodernist methodologies. Both schools are found to have major successes to their credit. The traditionalists were challenged first by revisionist social historians ('history from below') & later by protagonists of the 'cultural turn' who directed attention to identity formation, everyday life & symbolic communication. The innovators sometimes go beyond the limits of their evidence or confuse style with substance, but they have convinced most of their rivals that there was more disarray in government & popular disaffection than had previously been thought. Even so, the term 'totalitarianism,' if suitably redefined, can still be part of a serviceable analytical explanation, above all of political & juridical phenomena. Topics covered here include peasant revolts, gender relations, mass festivals, religious observance, academic life, science, & historiography. Adapted from the source document.

'In diesem Artikel werden relevante Ergebnisse der gegenwärtigen Flüchtlingsforschung als spezieller Teilbereich der Globalisierungs- und Migrationsforschung vorgestellt. Dabei werden zwei Schwerpunkte gesetzt: Zum einen wird die These vertreten, dass insbesondere die sozial- und kulturanthropologische Forschung das Klischee von Flüchtlingen als 'passive HilfsempfängerInnen' durchbrochen und auf die wesentliche Bedeutung eines Aktiv-Seins für Menschen während und nach der Flucht hingewiesen hat. Zum anderen werden frauenspezifische Fluchtgründe und die Anerkennung von frauenspezifischen Verfolgungsformen erläutert. Abschließend werden genderspezifische Aspekte mit Fallbeispielen aus empirischen Studien der beiden Autorinnen näher ausgeführt.' (Autorenreferat)

Der Autor untersucht die Entwicklung von Urbanisierung und Wohnsituation in Ghanas Hauptstadt Accra auf dem Hintergrund der Politik der Strukturanpassung der vergangenen Jahrzehnte. Auf der Basis von Zensusdaten aus dem Jahr 2000 stellt er für Accra eine Stadtentwicklung fest, die, aus der Verbindung lokaler und globaler Triebkräfte entstanden, als "quality residential sprawl with unicentric tendencies" (QRSUT) bezeichnet wird. Eine solche Entwicklung produziere für die Stadtplanung nicht nur in Accra, sondern auch in anderen afrikanischen Städten besondere Herausforderungen. (DÜI-Kör)

John Davidson is one of the most controversial poets of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. A precursor of modernism, he experimented with new aesthetic forms of representation, broke with many ethical taboos of his contemporaries, and merged political, evolutionary, racist and imperialist thought. Drawing on a wide range of poems and essays taken from the different stages of Davidson's career, this article contests conventional readings of his poetry and socio-philosophical convictions as a progressive development from a liberal, socially critical to a radical, materialist, atheist position. It sets out to demonstrate that the constituent elements of Davidson's Social Darwinist view of the world and philosophy of life, which he brings to the subjects of social class and imperialism, permeates his early writing as well as his later work written under the influence of Nietzsche.