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Good Neighbour Diplomacy and Somoza’s Rise to Power, 1934–1935

ANDREW CRAWLEY

in Somoza and Roosevelt: Good Neighbour Diplomacy in Nicaragua, 1933-1945

This chapter discusses Anastasio Somoza's rise to power as an end-result of Washington's good neighbour diplomacy. It tells of the circumstances that facilitated Somoza's rise to power and the idea ... More

This chapter discusses Anastasio Somoza's rise to power as an end-result of Washington's good neighbour diplomacy. It tells of the circumstances that facilitated Somoza's rise to power and the idea that the Somoza regime was an American-created and American-sponsored institution from the outset, that it was the planned culmination of a US design for Nicaragua, has tended to furnish much of its own momentum. In revolutionary Nicaragua, that version of events became accepted history. The chapter presents that Somoza's rise was not the result of machinations on the part of the Roosevelt administration and how he used the Guardia to his advantage. On the contrary, it was in large part a result of their absence. The chapter also determines that the Roosevelt administration cannot be held ultimately liable and solely accountable for his presidency and subsequent excesses without an unrealistically austere interpretation of the chain of causality.Less

Backlash

Mark J. Joe

in Political Determinants of Corporate Governance: Political Context, Corporate Impact

For some polities, productive arrangements generate a political backlash that can destroy the wealth produced in economic systems. When economic-based political turmoil is unlikely, American law and ... More

For some polities, productive arrangements generate a political backlash that can destroy the wealth produced in economic systems. When economic-based political turmoil is unlikely, American law and the economics implicit perspective of analysing the productive efficiency of an institution need not be modified. However, in some nations, turmoil had to be avoided. Their choice of corporate structure was one way of achieving social peace. The hard part in accounting for backlash is that while it is real, it is amorphous. One cannot readily measure it and model it with supply and demand curves. It is a matter of judgment calls.Less

Introduction: Boder's Happy Idea

Alan Rosen

in The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder

The introductory chapter establishes a postwar context for Boder's interview project, examines misconceptions about testimony during this period, raises the issue of America's response to the ... More

The introductory chapter establishes a postwar context for Boder's interview project, examines misconceptions about testimony during this period, raises the issue of America's response to the Holocaust in relation to Boder's achievement, and discusses how the evolution of recording technology influences assessment of Holocaust testimony. Through a literary classic, it reflects on the risks of asking questions. This in turn leads into a discussion of David Boder's interview questions and, with four examples of interviews with Holocaust survivors, the perplexity that they rightly engendered. Boder was one of a number of postwar interviewers of displaced persons, and, after sketching the DPs' circumstances, the chapter provides an overview of these other early postwar testimony projects. These projects have been overlooked or given short shrift. The few scholars who addressed this early period have contributed some helpful terms but also wrongly classified all early testimony as “immediately after the war,” a characterization that does not accurately reflect Boder's work or perspective. Boder received support from American institutions in a manner that challenges the view of American postwar indifference toward the Holocaust. His wire recorder interviews draw attention to the way that the history of technology has shaped the history of Holocaust testimony.Less

Leadership

Ronald M. Peters and Cindy Simon Rosenthal

in Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics

This chapter addresses the most important issue of the current study: the capacity of American political institutions to provide the leadership the country requires. There is ample evidence to ... More

This chapter addresses the most important issue of the current study: the capacity of American political institutions to provide the leadership the country requires. There is ample evidence to suggest that the country faces a crisis of confidence in its leadership. The chapter considers the question of whether the speakership is able to provide the leadership the country so desperately requires. Toward this end, the chapter first assesses Speaker Pelosi from the perspective of congressional leadership theory, comparing her conduct as Speaker to that of her recent predecessors. It then situates the speakership in the theories of New American Politics, explaining the constraints this era imposes on the office. It argues that Pelosi’s low public approval ratings are a reflection of the era in which she serves. It concludes with a consideration of the factors that have shaped Pelosi’s speakership, and the lessons they offer future Speakers.Less

No Peculiar Strictness Is Observed: Slavery and Innovation

Wendy Gonaver

in The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880

This chapter examines the life and writings of Superintendent John M Galt, and argues that the experience of heading an asylum in the United States South and the example of slaves hiring out prompted ... More

This chapter examines the life and writings of Superintendent John M Galt, and argues that the experience of heading an asylum in the United States South and the example of slaves hiring out prompted institutional innovation. Galt was the only American Superintendent to publicly endorse total non-restraint, reject racial segregation, and promote the cottage system of outpatient care. By showing that slavery provided the impetus for cost-saving initiatives that also maximized patients’ rights, this chapter connects the history of psychiatry with recent scholarship on slavery and modernity. Shunned by his peers in the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, Galt tried to establish a transnational network with superintendents in Brazil and Russia, two societies that were also shaped by systems of coercive labor.Less

Property - Owning Plutocracy: Inequality and American Localism

Stephen Macedo

in Justice and the American Metropolis

This chapter discusses that American local institutions are deeply flawed. Competition among local homeowners, school districts, and communities creates a race to the top for some, while leaving many ... More

This chapter discusses that American local institutions are deeply flawed. Competition among local homeowners, school districts, and communities creates a race to the top for some, while leaving many behind. The interconnection of local funding and control of schools, home ownership, and power of local communities to zone to exclude the poor provides enormous positional advantages to those who can afford to live where the best schools are. It also creates perverse inegalitarian incentives into the motivational structures of ordinary citizens, who function as property owners, parents, and citizens. Local institutions in the American metropolis shape citizen’s identities, interests, and motivations in ways that make them “stakeholders in inequality”.Less

So Different: The Asylum and the Civil War

Wendy Gonaver

in The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880

This chapter looks at the transformation of asylum care that was initiated by the Civil War. At the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, the biggest change came after the suicide of Superintendent John M. Galt ... More

This chapter looks at the transformation of asylum care that was initiated by the Civil War. At the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, the biggest change came after the suicide of Superintendent John M. Galt during Union occupation of Eastern Virginia. Ultimately, Galt’s death created opportunities for his professional rivals in the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane to end his experiments with outpatient care and to insist upon the creation of segregated institutions for black and white patients. In the interim, the asylum was run by a series of Union doctors and civilians with the aid of former staff, including enslaved attendants. Operating during wartime was especially difficult for enslaved staff because their legal status was in limbo, and they were liable to seizure by raiding Confederates. Wartime shortages further compounded these challenges.Less

All Hail the Alma Mater: Writing College Histories in the U.S.

Joel T. Rosenthal

in History of Universities: Volume XXVII/2

This chapter surveys college and university histories written over the last two centuries about American institutions. College histories illustrate proof of the loyalty and pride generated by ... More

This chapter surveys college and university histories written over the last two centuries about American institutions. College histories illustrate proof of the loyalty and pride generated by different kinds of American institutions of higher education, attesting the importance of creating and defining the social, political, and economic profile of the nation. This chapter also stresses that institutions of higher learning became an early component of the social and cultural setting of British colonial life in North America. By the time of the Revolution, nine colleges had been established and became the first wave, or the forerunners, of what soon was to become a great tide of college founding.Less

Fleeing the Nest

in Restless Nation: Starting Over in America

The world of American restlessness, escape, and movement is a world defined by men. The goals of individual material success and deep inner searching, as well as the means of detachment and flight, ... More

The world of American restlessness, escape, and movement is a world defined by men. The goals of individual material success and deep inner searching, as well as the means of detachment and flight, are those of the men who have dominated American institutions and ideas throughout its history. In addition to being written out of history, women were in fact relatively absent from many of the key places and times when American character was being defined and set into symbols. It is young men, not women, who flock to boomtowns and frontiers. The influence of respectable women, as opposed to prostitutes, would have made boomtowns less violent, brutal, and unhealthy. It's no accident that women's reform movements (like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union) have regularly attacked gambling, drinking, and prostitution, the three big boomtown vices.Less

Introduction: Vicarious Voices

Jake Johnson

in Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America

This chapter suggests that American communities have used the theater to claim a stake in national identity by “sounding” American. The root of this practice is the phenomenon of speaking on behalf ... More

This chapter suggests that American communities have used the theater to claim a stake in national identity by “sounding” American. The root of this practice is the phenomenon of speaking on behalf of another person, a vocal performance style that, among other things, is the foundation of American democratic principles. This vicarious voice is exemplified in two iconic American institutions born from Jacksonian ideology--musical theater (via blackface minstrelsy) and Mormonism. This chapter argues that examining the two together creates an important case study for how a unified American sound motivates and permeates the practice of belonging in America. Such a provocation also makes the case for the importance of studying musical theater outside of Broadway and offer this as an example of how significant a role musical theater plays in the lives of people all over the world for reasons that have little to do with the economic, entertainment, or consumerist purposes of Times Square.Less

Reforming Orphans: Progressive Reformers and Staff in the Development of Child Care Organizations

Jessie B. Ramey

in Child Care in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages

This chapter considers how the Home for Colored Children (HCC) recorded a version of its founding story that traces the genesis of the institution to a state law. Several succeeding versions of this ... More

This chapter considers how the Home for Colored Children (HCC) recorded a version of its founding story that traces the genesis of the institution to a state law. Several succeeding versions of this tale cite the role of legislation in prompting the formation of a new institution for African Americans, suggesting that the state acted as a progressive agent, forcing changes in the handling of all dependent children. While this version of HCC's founding story is not entirely accurate, it contains an essential truth: progressive reform ideas were starting to circulate in this period and had real impact on the development of child care institutions. The story locates the impetus for change outside of the orphanage founders themselves, placing it instead on progressives working through the government to enact new state laws regulating child welfare.Less

The Evolution of Corporate Species

Fabio Landini and Ugo Pagano

in Corporate Governance in Contention

The evolution of biological species is influenced by two types of complementarities. One is related to the synergies among and within organisms, while the other is the outcome of conflicts among ... More

The evolution of biological species is influenced by two types of complementarities. One is related to the synergies among and within organisms, while the other is the outcome of conflicts among different species and among members of the same species. In both conflictual and synergic complementarities, the traits selected in one domain affect the traits selected in the other domain. However, synergies and conflicts involve different mechanisms and interact with each other to generate complex co-evolutionary dynamics. Socio-economic systems are characterized by similar complementarities. Whereas technology and property rights exhibit synergic complementarities, workers’ and capitalists’ organizations display conflictual complementarities. The evolution of different species of capitalism can be better understood in terms of both types of complementarities and by their interactions. The comparative history of the American and the European economies is used to illustrate how models of capitalism can diverge, building different types of institutional complementarities over time.Less

Anthropology and the Educational Encounter: Archival Logics and Gendered “Backlash” in Qatar’s Education City

Neha Vora

in Beyond Exception: New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula

This chapter focuses on the author's experiences teaching, researching, and moving between different spaces in Education City, Doha, as it developed and changed during the period of the author's ... More

This chapter focuses on the author's experiences teaching, researching, and moving between different spaces in Education City, Doha, as it developed and changed during the period of the author's fieldwork. It looks at how Qatar Foundation responded to criticisms, primarily from segments of the citizenry that felt left out of knowledge economy development, through the development of Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU). HBKU's formation reconfigured space within the Education City compound and changed the author's everyday mobility within it, as it did her students' and colleagues'. The chapter explores these changes in order to consider how anthropological categories of difference and the university's approach to incorporating oppositional politics migrated along with American institutions, disciplinary formations, and faculty and administrators. While many of these changes, such as moves to segregate formerly coeducational spaces, may have appeared to Western academics as a backlash that fit into their exceptionalizing ideas of Qatari culture and gender norms, or failure of liberalism in illiberal space, oppositional logics were not always pegged to conservative religiosity but rather part of critiques of broader imperial practices within certain, and not all, parts of the country.Less

Present

Barbara Kellerman

in Professionalizing Leadership

By the 1980s the leadership industry had gone from incipient to entering a period of rapid growth that has not slowed. In fact, it still accelerates beyond anyone’s early imaginings. Chapter 2 is an ... More

By the 1980s the leadership industry had gone from incipient to entering a period of rapid growth that has not slowed. In fact, it still accelerates beyond anyone’s early imaginings. Chapter 2 is an overview of where we are now. It addresses questions such as these: How is leadership taught in the first quarter of the twenty-first century? Who are the leadership students? Who are the leadership teachers? Where is leadership being taught? What are the leadership pedagogies? What, in consequence of our investment, is the track record of leadership education, training, and development? Some ostensibly learn how to lead in college. Others ostensibly learn how to lead in graduate and professional schools, especially business schools. Still others ostensibly learn how to lead in large corporations or in government agencies. And there are those who learn to lead in the military, about which there is more later in the book.Less

Introduction

David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow

in The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement

Beginning with a review of the first Women’s March, this Introduction details the sudden and strong emergence of a movement in resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump (the Resistance movement). ... More

Beginning with a review of the first Women’s March, this Introduction details the sudden and strong emergence of a movement in resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump (the Resistance movement). It identifies the new movement as posing three distinct challenges: to scholars of social movements; to the American Left; and to the stability and resilience of American institutions. This Introduction identifies antecedents and foundations of the Trump Resistance, including the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, and immigrants’ rights movements. It situates the Resistance in a historical context. It also places the Resistance in a broader context of protest politics in America.Less

The Future of Conscription: Some Comparative Reflections

James Sheehan

in The Modern American Military

This chapter provides a historical and comparative perspective on contemporary American military institutions. It focuses on the origins, evolution, and eventual disappearance of conscription in ... More

This chapter provides a historical and comparative perspective on contemporary American military institutions. It focuses on the origins, evolution, and eventual disappearance of conscription in Western Europe. By the 1970s, Europeans had developed civilian states in which the military’s traditional role steadily diminished; the formal abolition of conscription after 1989 was the final step in a long, largely silent revolution. A brief survey of military institutions outside Europe suggests why mass conscript armies will remain politically, culturally, and militarily significant in many parts of the world. Seen in a global context, the American experience appears to combine aspects of Western European civilian states with the willingness and ability to project military power.Less

Dr. Anna B. Ott, Local Doctress

Kim E. Nielsen

in Money, Marriage, and Madness: The Life of Anna Ott

In 1856, by establishing herself as physician, marrying George Ott and then moving to Madison, Wisconsin, the newly renamed Mrs. Dr. Anna B. Ott transformed herself. Instead of a local doctor’s wife, ... More

In 1856, by establishing herself as physician, marrying George Ott and then moving to Madison, Wisconsin, the newly renamed Mrs. Dr. Anna B. Ott transformed herself. Instead of a local doctor’s wife, instead of an impugned divorcee, Anna became a successful physician and property owner. Very quickly, however, the Ott marriage became very violent and Anna twice attempted to divorce George. This chapter places Ott’s early career in the context of women’s property laws, understandings of marital violence, the growing power of and challenges to institutions for the insane, and the activism of suffragists and women such as Elizabeth Packard.Less