April 25.
Democracy
Movement in Nepal.
April 21:
Saudi
Arabia story in Inquirer.
Extra Credit Presentations:
Karla Blevins - Animal
Rights Movement
Kristy Loringer - Abortion issue
- pro-life strategies(?)
Bilal Zivali - Global Health
- Gates Foundation - needs to focus on the social
movement aspects of this
The Gates Foundation founded by Bill and Melinda Gates work with various world
governments, other NGOs, and activists like Bono to tackle such issues as world poverty,
global health equity and education. In 2005 Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Bono were
named "Persons of the Year" by the Time Magazine. The Gates Foundation is a social
movement organized by wealthy elites to help the less fortunate individuals around the
world. I will be examining the question why these wealthy individuals organized such a
group to tackle such issues.
Matthew Mushall - PIRG
- literature review not yet filed - See my article on
Ralph Nader,
the founder of PIRG.
Others that were suggested did not file Literature Review
assignment (as yet). Paulo Hernandez, Gay Rights in
Germany; Rhonda Lusby, Indigenous Australians; Emma
Samuels,
TBA; April Zelley, Latin American Movements [needs to be narrowed
down], Catherine DiSalvatore, Women's Movement (needs to be narrowed
down).
Movement Observations filed
in the Discussion List (carry extra attendance credit):
Lynette Davis, Move About Ciudad Juarez":
The film "Missing Young Women" was a really sad but interesting film. I didn't catch all of
it but what I did find out was shocking. In Ciudad Juarez, between 200-400 women were
killed. The city itself attracts many poor people looking for work, as it is a major money
making city. The city models itself after other very industrial capitalists cities and like
America makes millions off illegal drug trade. The movie gave testimonies of mothers of
victims along with pictures of the girls and the date they went missing. Most of the victims
were poor, thin, and had shoulder length hair. After the government tried to ignore the
pleas for justice, they eventually took action and captured an Egyptian man who
committed many murders and his followers called the "rebels" gang. What was sad about
the movie was by the time I left the session even with the capture of these criminals,
women were still missing and bodies were still being found with no explanation as to who
were killing hundreds of young women.
Colleen Trainor, PIRG event
This Saturday (March 4th) the NJPIRG Camden Chapter is hosting a shelter visit to the Liberty House
in Camden. We still need a couple volunteers. If anyone is interested please email me at
ctrainor@camden.rutgers.edu. Not only will you be helping young children but you can probably earn
extra credit by writing up a summary of what you did for class. Thank you.
Kimberly Rudolph - Frank Fulbrook on Drug
Legalization -
Stop the Drug War
Coalition
On Thursday, during the free period, I attended this speech in one of the conference
rooms. The speaker was someone named Frank Fulbrook who is a resident and activist in
Camden, and this is his agenda for fixing the crime rate in the city. The majority of the
meeting consisted of Mr. Fulbrook not so much describing his detailed plans on how to
revitalize Camden by legalizing all drugs, but was mostly used to plead his case on why
drugs should have never been outlawed in the first place.
He went into depth with how each drug became prohibited, by whom, under what
circumstances, etc, which most people who watch the History Channel would know. What
was different was his theory on why they were outlawed. He believes the criminalization
of drugs was based on the white man's fear of their white women being corrupted by the
effects of these drugs. His statement was these laws were created because of the "white
men in power feared white women would be seduced by non-white men under the
influence of mind-altering drugs.".
I had expected the meeting to be more of a political roundtable type of discussion of
a new agenda to clean up the crime in camden, then one man's conspiracy theory.
Nontheless, that was most of it, with a few people speaking up in the end about how
there was no long term plan in place after drugs had been decriminalized, and that
perhaps that wouldn't solve the problem entirely.
Robyn Dufrain Amnesty (see message 66).
April 19: Discussion of
Hate Crimes and
Hate Crime Legislation.
Outrage
at Funeral Protests.
April 18 6:30 Event
“Globalization
and the Current French Crisis”
A Roundtable Discussion with
Andrew Daily
Graduate Fellow, Rutgers Center
for Historical Analysis
Uri Eisenzweig Professor of French
and Comparative Literature,
Director of the Center for
European Studies
Joshua Humphreys Associate Fellow,
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis
Max Likin Associate Fellow,
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis
Tuesday, April 18, 2006, 6:30pm
The Rutgers Center for Historical
Analysis Seminar Room 88 College Avenue, Rutgers College New
Brunswick
April 13 - The eruption of social movements in Europe in recent
months has been a surprise. Jeremy Rifkin's book,
The
European
Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the
American Dream, has been reduced to $8.99 on amazon.com. Here is
his
argument summarized in a Publisher's Weekly review:
Why are so few Americans paying
attention to the dramatic changes taking place across the Atlantic,
Rifkin (The End of Work)
asks in his provocative and well-argued manifesto for the new European
Union. Famously, Americans "live to work" while Europeans "work to
live," and Rifkin demonstrates statistically and anecdotally that
Europe's humane approach to capitalism makes for a healthier,
better-educated populace. The U.S. lags behind in its unimaginative
approach to working hours, productivity and technology, Rifkin claims,
while Europe is leading the way into a new era while competing well in
terms of productivity. Rifkin traces the cultural roots of what he says
is America's lack of vision to its emphasis on individual autonomy and
the accumulation of wealth; Europe's dream is more rooted in
connectedness and quality of life. Americans may be risk takers, but
Rifkin is more admiring of risk-sensitive European realism, as well as
its secularism and social democracy. Exploring the history behind the
two continents' wildly differing sensibilities, Rifkin examines the
myth of the U.S. as "land of opportunity" and the two continents'
contrasting attitudes to foreign policy, peace keeping and foreign aid.
Rifkin's claims are not new, but he writes with striking clarity,
combining the insights of contemporary sociologists and economists with
up-to-the minute data and powerfully apt journalistic observations.
While he may appear to idealize Europe's new direction, Rifkin's
comparative study is scrupulously thorough and informative, and his
rigor will please all readers interested in the future of world
affairs. Video
with Rifkin.
What went wrong?
1. Dependence on immigrants for labor due to low birth rate
and unwillingness to take manual labor jobs.
2. Lack of a tradition of absorbing immigrants or desire to
absorb them.
3. Conflict between Islamic culture and Christian culture
(a difference with US immigration which is largely Hispanic Catholic
& other Christian).
4. Unwillingness to accept what is necessary to
adjust to the global economy?
Two cases:
The Dutch Model by Jane Kramer
(in WEBCT)
1. Dramatic conflict of cultures between Dutch and Moslem
immigrants
2. Europeans never thought of themselves as living in
immigration countries.
3. Murder of Theo Van Gogh was foretold on WEB sites, he was
deliberately provocative.
4. Dutch culture non-provoctive, Van Gogh was challenging
that culture and was appreciated for it
5. Dutch multicultural model, each "pillar" of society can
have its own realm, very different from the French etatiste model,
works for the Catholic and Protestant communities
6. Let the immigrants "rot in their own privacy"?
7. Sept 11 gave alienated Muslim youth a narrative, a way of
maintaining their self-esteem. Marxist rhetoric, attacking
capitalism, imperialism, plays the same role.
8. The gay rights movement is particularly offensive to many
Moslems, as is nude sun bathing.
9. Feminism offensive to traditional Moslem values, Moslem men
go home to find women, women stay home and have lots of children.
9. Potential immigrants now asked to view a video showing gay
rights marches, nuce sun bathers
10. Immigrants must pass an exam in Dutch.
11. Moslems view themselves as victims of discrimination and
xenophobia
Submission: Van Gogh's Movie: Video,
Submission
Working from a script written by
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, van Gogh created the 10-minute movie Submission. The movie deals with the topic of violence
against women in Islamic societies; telling the stories of four abused
Muslim women. The title itself, "Submission", is the translation of the
word "Islam" in english. In the film, the women's naked bodies are
veiled with semi-transparent shrouds as they kneel in prayer, telling
their stories as if they are speaking to Allah. Qur'anic verses unfavourable to women are
painted on their bodies in Arabic
. After the movie was released in 2004, both van Gogh and Hirsi Ali
received death
threats.
Van Gogh did not take these very seriously and refused any protection -
reportedly telling Hirsi Ali: "Who would want to kill the village
idiot?" The movie was perceived by the Islamic community as an
inaccurate perception of Islamic teachings (Wikipiedia). CBS
commentary. Transcript
of film.
We
Will Not be Thrown Away by Angelique Chrisafia. See
highlighted points in the article.
Comments
from a Moroccan French writer.
Movie, The
Laramie Project.
April 11 How the State and Social Movements use the
Media and how the Media shapes movements.
In densely populated communities, such as urban ghettos or college
campuses, movements may grow through direct interpersonal
contact. Social movements rely on the media to get their message
out to a broader public. When the government or powerful groups
are threatened or disturbed by a movement, they also react through the
media. Terrorist acts often seem to be designed to get media
publicity, and sometimes groups gruesome videos on the Internet to get
publicity. The chapters here discuss several historical
examples.
* The
Nuclear
Freeze was thought up by a young disarmament researcher, Randall
Forsberg, in 1980. It was a simple idea, instead of negotiating
disarmament, the US and the USSR should simply stop developing new
nuclear weapons and "freeze" their arsenals where they were. It
was extremely popular, and a resolution was introduced into Congress
and almost passed in 1982. It was very threatening to the
military-industrial complex. In response, President Ronald
Reagan, gave a nationally televised address announcing a Strategic
Defense Initiative.
Reagan
News Conference Video. This came to be known coloquially as
"Star Wars". It captured much of the rhetorical initiative
because it also promised to end the threat of nuclear war. It
became a debate about feasibility. It did not actually involve
much change in what the military was already doing. Reagan's
supporters now believe that the Star Wars initiative contributed to the
collapse of the Soviet Union by putting a difficult burden on the
Soviet economy.
* Farm Workers Movement - Jenkins and Perrow say that the
success of the movement under Cesar Chavez was due to a change in the
political environment - support from liberals, a successful boycot and
pressure on supermarkets not to carry "scab grapes". A previous
group, the NFLU, had failed to organize farm workers. They are
not covered by the NLRB, and there is a large supply of farm labor from
Mexico, so strikes are difficult and ineffective. Labor
legislation exempted agriculture on the grounds that agriculture is
especially vulnerable to strikes because crops rot if not picked.
The
UFW used dramatic protests, relying on support from clergy,
celebrities, etc. Marshall Ganz stresses how the union mobilized
this support, in part by maintaining a more democratic, movement-like
organizational structure that attracted volunteer enthusiasm. See
the table on page 299 in the book. They had Spanish slogans -
Viva La Causa, Huelga - and tapped into support for minority
rights.
UFW Video.
* The New Left. "The Whole World is
Watching" came from the
SDS
demonstrations during the Chicago democratic convention in 1968,
referred to by the left as a "police riot" but provoked by
demonstrators. The world was watching, but most viewers
sympathized with the police.
Gitlin claims that the media highlight deprecatory themes to frame
movement events:
1. Trivialization, focusing on dress,
language, style
2. Polarizing - balancing coverage with
counter-demonstrations
3. Emphasis on dissension
4. Disparagement of numbers at
demonstrations and of the movement's effectiveness
5. Emphasis on violence, communist
infiltration
6. Use of negative terminology, putting
terms in "quote marks"
The movement often played into this, especially certain
publicity-oriented leaders who thought that they could use the media in
this way:
Abbie
Hoffman Speech.
Photos.
Jerry
Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and Pigasus .
The terrorist movements we confront today make one nostalgic for the
days of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the New Left, although the
Vietnam War was deadly serious. Terrorists make use of the media,
indeed one might say that without the media to publicize the events it
would be very difficult to terrorize a population. The goal of
terrorism is to create fear in a vulnerable population, thus forcing a
strong enemy to give in to demands it could not be forced to concede to
by conventional means. This point is made in "The Media's Role in
Terrorism" by
Brigitte Nacos (in WEBCT).
Terrorists'
Visual Warfare Uses the Media as a Weapon. Gruesome
coverage is clearly intended to intimidate people, as in
videos of
beheadings [
these are
gruesome, use your own judgment about watching them] posted by
jihadist groups.
Mosaic
News from the Middle East.
Iraq
Invasion Media Coverage.
Terrorism and the
Media.
April 7 - Extra Credit Proposals Due. Karla Blevins is
doing a report on the Animal Rights Activists, looking at why it
emerged and why people support it.
Story
on pro-research activist. Matthew Mushall will do a
report on PIRG. Here are their proposals, just to show you what
is required.
They must be
submitted to WEBCT by tomorrow.:
April 6.
Articles in our reader:
Saul Alinsky,
"Rules for Radicals" was a sort of
handbook for activists in the 1970s. It focused on tactics that
relatively powerless groups can use, groups that have little going for
them except their nuisance value. The focus is on personifying
the "enemy," making it tangible and personal. The grew into a
"community organization" movement based on mobilizing activists in poor
neighborhoods. Concerned Citizens of North Camden who
created the
North
Camden Land Trust.
Tom Knoche is
a

local anarchist who has devoted his life to North
Camden. He wrote a book called
Common
Sense for Camden. These movements may also build national
campaigns when there is a single focus to tie them together, e.g, the
anti-WALMART movement.
Aldon Morris talks about the development of the
"sit-in" as a tactic, something which was considered highly radical and
disruptive at the time. More "responsible" leaders called for
lobbying, legal action, leafleting rather than being disruptive.
These actions often involved civil disobedience, disobeying laws but
doing so openly and taking the consequences. Sometimes the laws
would be overthrown by the courts.
Mary Bernstein discusses the importance of action in
developing the identity of gay and lesbian groups. Often this
conflicts with the short-term tactical goal of winning legislative or
political gains. It can give a feeling of empowerment and build
the strength of the group. Identity can also be used to critique
the dominant culture, to educate people. This depends on the
extent to which a movement has a strong organizational culture and/or
access to policy makers.
She discusses some useful analytical dimensions of
identity (page 237:
- identity for empowerment - Activists
draw on an existing identity or develop a new collective identity in
order to mobilize a constituency
- identity as a goal - activists may seek to
construct an identity, or to redefine a stigmatized identity, as an end
in itself
- identity as an (ideological or
educational) strategy - to shape the nature of the debate,
criticize biases, or educate the public
Some groups are inclusive (incorporating as many
people as possible), others are exclusive (limiting membership to those
with the clearest commitment). Inclusive groups may be better
able to change policies (instrumental), inclusive can better build
identity (expressive). This may not be in the inherent nature of
a movement, it may be a strategy. The strategy chosen may depend
on the receptiveness of the political environment. The inclusive
ones also may aim for a more revolutionary change, e.g, New Left
movements such as the RadicalLesbians, Furies, Gay Liberation
Front). They may also seek to impose their will through violence
and disruption. Youth are more likely to be expressive rather
than instrumental.
Mary Fainsod Katzenstein discussed "Discursive
Activism by Catholic Feminists". They have many conferences and
workshops and try to convince people. They find organizational
niches within Catholic institutions, such as in academic institutions,
lay organizations, liturgy groups, etc. Contemporary Catholic
feminism can be described through a narrative of conferences and
workshops.
Some essays by William Domhoff that address strategic and tactical
issues for progressive social movements in the US: William
Domhoff: "
A
Fresh Start for the Left" and "
Social
Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
These give insight into current debates, and provide a framework for
discussing some recent movements, including the urban riots in the 60s
and 70s, including in Camden, and the anti-WTO demonstrations. I
am assigning these as readings and we will discuss them in class today.
Video:
Christopher
Hitchens on Danish Cartoons.
April 4:
From Wikipedia:
Tactics is the collective name for methods of winning a small-scale
conflict, performing an optimization, etc. This applies
specifically to warfare, but also to economics,
trade, games and a
host of other fields such as negotiation.
Tactics and strategy are often confused:
- Tactics are the actual means used to gain a goal. The US
Department of Defense Dictionary of
Military Terms defines the tactical level as
the level of war at which battles and engagements are planned
and
executed to accomplish military objectives assigned to tactical units
or task forces. Activities at this level focus on the ordered
arrangement and maneuver of combat elements in relation to each other
and to the enemy to achieve combat objectives.
- Strategy is the overall plan.
An example of the difference:
- The overall goal is to win a war against another country.
- The strategy is to undermine the other nation's ability to wage
war by annihilating their military.
- The tactics (told to the combatants) are to do very specific
things in a specific place.
BLACKBURN, England
- Facing
protesters and pointed questions, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
said Friday that the Bush administration had made ``thousands'' of what
she called ``tactical mistakes'' in Iraq but ``it was the right
strategic decision'' to invade and topple Saddam Hussein.
Rice's comment on Iraq was in
response to a question from an audience of foreign-policy experts about
whether the United States had learned anything from the past three
years.
Rice said U.S. officials would be
``brain dead'' if they did not recognize when they had erred.
``I know we've made tactical errors,
thousands of them, I'm sure,'' Rice said. ``But when you look back in
history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic
decisions.''
Tactics are short-term and often
can be evaluated by relatively objective criteria. Strategies are
long-term may be judged only by "history," that is, after a lot of time
has passed. Iraq
War Winnable?
People often take refuge in the
expectation that
History will absolve them. Waiting for the judgment of history
allows us to act on enduring principles rather than expected
consequences, but only because we get no timely feedback on the
consequences of what we do. Thus we end up relying on deontological ethical theories
(sticking to principles no
matter what) rather than consequentialist
(getting good outcomes, maximizing
pleasure, minimizing pain). Neither of these theories is really
adequate because there are conflicting principles that seem convincing
and because we have imperfect knowledge of outcomes. The best we
can do is consider both carefully and make sure we listen to everyone,
a princple that Jurgen Habermas called discourse ethics.
Some historical examples:
- Spartacus
and the slave revolt under the Romans, 73-71 BC. Won remarkable
tactical victories, then missed the chance to leave Italy for Gaul and
remained for a final battle when he was killed. 6000 slaves
crucified on the road from Capua to Rome. His legend lived on,
inspiring groups such as the Spartacus League in Germany and Che
Guevara in South America
- Early Christianity can be viewed as a social movement.
Jesus returned to Jerusalem and was crucified, but in the long term
his movement has outlasted the Roman empire. On a national TV
interview, contemporary Quaker pacifist leader Chuck Fager used
this as a rationale for a pacifist refusal to fight in any way on
principle.
- The socialist or communist movement. movement.
1848 Communist Manifesto, Communist
International, pretty much died out by the end of the 19th century,
then won power in Russia thanks to brilliant tactical leadership by VI.
Lenin. All sorts of factions and tendencies (see Wikipedia
article). Became a dominant force in the 20th century.
Tactical error in confronting the Nazi movement in Germany.
Videos: Jeffrey
Lewis: Seattle Folk Festival 2005. Communism:
The Bright Future. Haran Yahya on the Bloody
History of Communism.
- Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution.
Video.
- Mao and the Chinese
Revolution. Cultural
Revolution. Democracy
Movement.
- Decline of Communism, Gorbachev. Fall of
Berlin wall.
.
March 30.
Basque
Spring.
Shiite-Sunni
split.
Greenpeace
International Amazon campaign.
Amnesty
International.
Charles
Taylor arrested.
Antiwar Protests.
Rules
of War.
March 28
Reviews of Four Days in September.
Current Social Movements Events:
Protests
Against Execution of a Moslem Apostate in Afghanistan.
Trudy
Rubin Column.
Peacemakers
Return Home.
Peacemaker Web
Site.
Basque cease fire.
French
Demonstrations Against Change in Employment Rules for Youth.
LA
Demonstration on Immigration.
Comments on the readings in Section VI
McCcarthy and Zald. This is "resource mobilization" theory - an
economic metaphor. Social movements are like companies, they
invest resources to get results. This is like the metaphor of
"political capital" in conventional politics, but political capital
cannot be moved around as flexibly as investment capital. This is
in contrast to the "traditional theory" that attributes the rise and
decline of movements to changes in the sense of grievance in the
effected population. This might be thought of as a "demand" vs
"supply" side analysis, to stick with the economic metaphor.
These two theories are actually complementary. Resource
mobilization emphasizes the ways in which leaders and activists
manipulate and mobilize the base.
Definitions:
SMS - social movement, a "set of opinions and beliefs in
population" calling for change. There are also
countermovements. We can measure this with survey data or focus
groups or by keeping our "pulse on the media". Entrepreneurs are
good at mobilizing this.
SMO - a social movement organization - complex or formal organization
which identifies with a movement
SMI - social movement industry, the whole collection of SMO's involved
with a particular movement
Sticking with this metaphor, we see that social movement organizations
are like businesses in some ways:
they are started by entrepreneurs, but tend to
become routinized over time
they tend to rely more and more on paid staff,
offering a service to members
the SMI comes to be dominated by a small number of
SMO's
there are boom and bust cycles
individuals pursue professional careers within
them
they may seek market niches, sharing the
overally constituency with other organizations
some are dependent on isolated constituents,
others work with established groups
Charles Tilly (mentioned in the introduction) prefers to use a
political metaphor, movements are like political parties except they do
not contest elections. Instead, they lobby for change and support
politicians who do run for office. They are vehicles groups use
to pursue their interests. The difference here is that is
stresses group interests over the entrepreneurial skills of the staff
(who might change issues or constituencies). This approach also
stresses interest over emotion which misses a difference between
movements and businesses or instrumental political parties.
Elisabeth Clemens looks at organizational "repertoires" which can
differ from the economic or the political. She wants to go beyond
traditional social science theories of Max Weber (bureaucratization)
and Roberto Michels (Iron Law of Oligarchy). This was a conscious
goal of the New Left generally and especially of the feminist movement
- to avoid hierarchy and bureaucratization and dependence on
charismatic or authoritarian leaders. This is done through
"participatory democracy" and affinity groups (the article by William
Finnegan). Early feminist organizations called themselves "clubs"
in many cases, more social than economic or political. They might
also use a religious metaphor. In both cases, participation is in
large part an end in itself - "consciousness raising" - or a means of
changing society one person at a time. One could also view a
social service or settlement house metaphor. There are social
movements such as Hamas that combine insurgent politics with charitable
activities. She also cites the example of liquor dealers forming
an organization modeled on a Masonic Lodge.
Could a student organization model itself on a
fraternity/sorority? Groups such as the Sierra Club offer trips
to the wilderness as well as lobbying - may be thought of as a travel
agency. Automobile Association?
Paul Wapner writes about transnational activism, primarily
environmental, but also mentioning human rights. Organizations
include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Friends of the
Earth, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Coalition for Environmentally Responsible
Economics, International Organization for Sustainable Agriculture,
Earth Island Institute, PIRG, Natural Resources Defense Council, World
Wildlife Fund, World Fund for Nature, Direct Action Network and many
others. We looked at the Global Social Forum, which is part of
the movement against Corporate Globalization discussed by Willima
Finnegan. Masses of activists show up whenever the World Trade
Organization is meeting. There are many conflicts within and
between these organizations.
March 23 - More of Four Days in
September.
MR-8
Movement.
Carlos
Marighella Minimanual
of the Urban Guerilla.

Photo at the right is of Carlos Marighella, author of the Minimanual of
the Urban Guerilla.
March 21 - Video -
Four
Days in September.
People who join
movements almost always say they do so because they care so much about
the issues. When we agree with people we are inclined to accept
that. When people join a movement with which we have strong
disagreements, we are inclined to look a deeper. Why do they care
so much, especially about issues that may not impact directly on their
interests, e.g., saving the whales? Why do some people care
desperately about protecting unborn life, even very early in pregnancy
when it is microscopic? Who do others feel strongly about
women's right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term?
Both of these are
ideological scripts,
incorporating the key elements we discussed on March 7. But why
do some choose one drama, some another? The emotions are often
similar, the choice of an ideology may depend on the person's broader
world view, one which they obtain from their religion or secular
philosophy. Kristin Luker writes about this in her book on
Abortion
and the Politics of Motherhood, from which we have a brief excerpt
focusing only on the the anti-abortion activists. However, we can
fill in the world view of the pro-abortion activists.
Pro-Life
|
Pro-Choice
|
Men and women are intrinsically
different.
|
Men and women are intrinsically
similar.
|
Women are best suited to raising
children and families.
|
Women and men should share child
raising.
|
Tenderness, caring and
self-sacrifice are female traits.
|
Tenderness, caring and
self-sacrifice should be male and female traits.
|
Sexual relations should be for
procreative purposes.
|
Sexual relations are an
expression of intimacy and affection, as well as physical desire.
|
Contraception is wrong because
it strips sexual experience of its meaning.
|
Contraception gives women
equality and the ability to plan their own lives.
|
Women should accept unplanned
pregnancies as God's will or as a natural part of being a woman.
|
Women should be able to control
pregnancy and decide whether to become mothers.
|
Pre-marital and extra-marital
sex are wrong because they deprive sexuality of its true meaning.
|
Pre-marital and extra-marital
sex are choices that mature people should be free to make.
|
Teen-age pregnancy can and
should be prevented by advocating abstinance. Those who sin
should be made to suffer the consequences.
|
Advocating abstinance is
ineffective, teens should be educated about a full range of choices.
|
The embryo is either a human
life, with full rights, or it is not - there is no middle ground.
It has a soul that must be protected.
|
The embryo, especially in early
pregnancy, lacks consciousness and full personhood.
|
Human nature needs to be
disciplined and controlled by traditional social institutions.
|
Social institutions should be
modified to meet human needs as conditions change.
|
The last point is more general than Laker discusses, at least in the
excerpt we have. It fits it into a more general
liberal-conservative
dimension that might predict attitudes on other issues, e.g, the
death penalty. Logically, you might think "pro-life" people
would oppose the death penalty, but perhaps not since it is imposed on
people who violated basic social norms, not on innocents. We test
some of these hypotheses with data from the survey research available
in the
Microcase
databases to which our department subscribes.
The data show that many people are ambivalent, not wanting to make
abortion freely available, but also not wanting to prohibit it
altogether. The activists at both extremes would like to
impose their views, but often have to settle for "half a loaf".
Policies have alternated back and forth over time.as we can see in this
timeline by Mark Pederson:
1588 First papal
canon by Pope Sixtus V imposed
ex-communication for all abortions.
1591 Pope
Gregory XIV modified the canon law to
except abortions of non-animated fetuses (less than 40 days) due in
part to the enormous numbers of ex-communication ‘exceptions' the Pope
had to do.
1821 Connecticut
was the first to illegalize
post-quickening abortion as a felony.
1828-50's the illegalization of
pre- and post-quickening abortion in NY
and continues in successive states.
1848
Anti-slavery sentiments inspires women's rights
movement: Seneca Falls Convention, Sufferagettes are born.
1859 American
Medical Association strongly denounces
abortion, as the "unwarrantable destruction of life."
1869 Pope Pius
IX rescinds the 1591 ‘animation'
exception. Induced abortion means ex-communication again.
1872
Slaughterhouse Cases (83US36). Equal Protection
also applies to negroes and others (but not women).
1873 Comstock
Act defines contraceptives as obscene
and illicit, making it a federal offense to disseminate birth control
through the mail or across state lines.
1883 Margaret
Sanger (Planned Parenthood founder)
born into poor large immigrant Irish Catholic family.
1905 Lochner v.
New York (198US45). The federal Equal
Protection clause overides state law.
1913 Sanger
publishes articles on birth control,
flees to Europe to avoid Comstock prosecution.
1914-1918 World War I
1916 Sanger
returns to U.S. and charges are
dropped. She opens first birth control clinic and is arrested.
1918 Crane
decision from Sanger's arrest, which
allows women to use birth control for ‘therapeutic' purposes.
1921 Equal
Rights Amendment (ERA) drafted by Alice
Paul, and introduced into Congress every year since.
1923 Women
finally get the right of sufferage (to
vote).
1923 Meyer v.
State of Nebraska (262US390).
Allowed private schooling in non-english language. Parents should
be able to raise their children as they see fit.
1925 Pierce v.
Society of Sisters, (268US510).
Allowed private schooling versus mandatory public schooling of
children. Parents should be able to raise their children as they
see fit.
1929 ACLU
defended Margaret Sanger's (Planned
Parenthood) right to ‘publically' discuss contraception.
1930's The Great
Depression (U.S.A.)
1939-1945 World War II
1960 Birth of
the "Pill", estrogen 100-175 mcg and
progestin 10 mcg developed by Dr. Pinkus/Planned Parenthood
1961 Poe v.
Ullman (367US497). Upheld a
Connecticut prohibition against contraception. Doctor arrested for
talking about and dispensing condoms.
1964 Civil
Rights Act, gave enforcement to women and
negroes' civil rights under the 14th Amendment.
1965 Griswold v.
Connecticut (381US470). Cannot
prohibit contraception. "Right of Privacy" was born and applied
as a marital right, to have or not have children.
1969 Man on the
moon. Pill reduced to 50 mcg
estrogen.
1971 United
States v. Vuitch (402US62). The
‘health exception' for abortion was not unconstitutionally vague as the
ProLifers argued. Some states allowed abortion under health
exceptions.
1972 ERA passes
the Senate, but it dies when not
enough States ratify.
1972 Eisenstadt
v. Baird (405US438). Allowed
un-married people to have the same rights to contraception as married
couples. Justice Brennan's oft quoted opinion says: "If the right
of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married
or single, to be free from unwarranted government intrusion into
matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to
bear or beget a child." Eisenstadt at pg. 453.
1973 Roe v. Wade
(410US113). Abortion allowed
across all states. During the first trimester, no restrictions
allowed. During the second trimester, only compelling
maternal-health-interests may restrict abortions. During the
third trimester only fetal-health-exception abortions allowed.
1973 Doe v.
Bolton (410US179). Third trimester
abortions okay under broad mental health exceptions.
1974 Low-dose
pill, 35 mcg estrogen/0.5-1.0 mcg
progestin available, what we use nowadays.
1976 Planned
Parenthood of Central Missouri v.
Danforth (428US52). Removed husband's consent for married women's
abortion.
1976 - Hyde amendment prohibited
the government for paying for abortions.
1980
Harris v. McRae (448US297). State does not
have to pay for abortions.
1986 Thornburg
v. American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists (476US747). Illegal to force state anti-choice
information upon woman to dissuade her from abortion.
1986 Bowers v.
Hardwick (478US186) Privacy of home no
protection against anti-sodomy law. Sodomy does not have a
procreation-related right.
1989 Webster v.
Reproductive Health Services
(492US490). Eliminated trimester framework of RvW. State
always has a compelling interest in fetal life throughout the
pregnancy. State can impose some regulations.
1990 Hodgson v.
Minnesota (497US417). Must
allow minors to obtain abortion with either parental consent or a
judicial by-pass. No absolute prohibitions.
1992 Planned
Parenthood v. Casey (505US833).
Future regulations could not impose an "Undue Burden". Wait-periods
were enforced instead of abortion on-demand. Kansas goes to 8-hr
waiting period.
1994 Congress
passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act making it much
more difficult for antiabortion activists to shut down clinics.
1997
Kansas goes to 24-hour waiting period and
requires pregnancy-continuation literature be dispensed.
2000 Carhart v.
Stenberg (530US914). Partial
Birth Abortion ban over-ruled, due to vagueness that would have
"chilled" provision of even regular abortions. Pictures of
D&X were used, but actual wording was vague.
2003 Lawrence v.
Texas (02-102) over-turns Bowers v.
Hardwick (1986) anti-sodomy case. Privacy rights in home override
state law against consentual homosexual activity.
2006 - South Dakota
passes law outlawing abortions in almost all circumstances, expecting a
court test.
Social movements have mobilized large demonstrations on both
sides, often focusing on specific issues such as late-term abortions,
"partial birth" abortions, requiring minors to get parental consent,
prohibiting "Plan B" contraception, prohibiting funding for abortins
through Medicaid, cutting funding for population control programs
abroad, etc.. The anti-abortionists have relied most on
demonstrations because they lost the legal battle in 1973. They
are hoping for a shift in the Supreme Court as more conservative
justices are confirmed.
There is an odd symmetry between the groups - both have broad
coalitions with single-issue and multi-issue groups, both have local
networks and engage in both street action and conventional
politics. The antiabortionists are strongly linked to the
Republican Party while the proabortionists are linked to the
DDemocrats.
Links:
NARAL
-
Prolife Action League.
March 9 -
An Imam
in America.
Between Hope and Fear on Theo Van Gogh.
Suicide bombing is a recent tactical development, but suicide ha been
used in different ways by activists in the past. Some opponents
of the Vietnam war set themselves on fire as a moral appeal.
There were Kamikaze bombers in the Japanese air force in
WWII. There have been military actions that are suicidal, or at
least where the chances or survival are minimal, going back to the
Zealots at the
Masada
in 73 C.E. Suicide bombing was invented, I believe, by the
Tamil
Tigers.in
July 5, 1987:
when they carried out their first suicide bombing, killing 40 troops at
the Nelliyady army camp in the north of the country. There is
some recent literature on suicide bombing, my take on it is in my essay
"Suicide Bombing as a Youth Movement" which is an assigned reading on
our WEBCT site. Review
of Pape's book.
The other reading to discuss today is "The Clash of Civilizations" by
Samuel Huntington, also on our WEBCT. I have selected a major
part of it. It was published in 1993 and was prescient in
anticipating the extent to which the world would move in the directin
he described. It can be paired with Francis Fukuyama's book The
End of History or his newer book America
at the Crossroads. We read a selection from that book called
After
Neoconservatism. Discussion of the Class of
Civilizations essay (on WEBCT).
Daniel Goldhagen on
Political Islam.
March 7 - Why do people join social
movements? Or drop out from them? Because of what they think and
feel, which is why Parts IV and V of our reader are very closely
related and I will treat them together. Social movements do not
usually offer a financial benefit to participants. They impose
costs at least of time and effort, sometimes risks of injury or
death. Sometimes people sacrifice their lives for
movements. The emotional dimension is very important, but
people tend to resist looking at emotional roots of their own behavior
or of the behavior of people they like. When we do not approve of
someone's behavior, when it angers us, we are much quicker to attribute
it to emotional problems. Eric Hoffer wrote a best selling book called
The
True Believer which argued that New Left radicals joined because
they felt personally inadequate and wanted to join something larger
than themselves. This book was intensely hated by the New Left
radicals because it seemed to cheapen their behavior. But
emotions are involved in everything we do. All behavior is
"overdetermined" as Freudians say, it meets both emotional and rational
needs, conscious and perhaps unconscious needs. We need to look
at these things in studying movements.
This is the topic of the article by James Jasper on "The Emotions of
Protest" in the reader. He makes several important points:
1. Emotions pervade all social life and cannot be dichotomized as
"rational" vs "irrational". 2. Emotions have a biological
dimension, but they are also cognitive and culturally constructed - we
learn to respond to certain cues. 3. There are transient
emotions - we feel angry or frightened or happy at one point in
time- but there are also lasting affects or sentiments or
attitudes. 4. "Much political activity involves reference
to or creation of positive and negative affects toward groups, policies
and activities." 5. Certain social movements aim at
changing the broader culture of their society, including the
acceptability and display of certain emotions, especially identity
movements such as civil rights, feminist, gay rights, that aim at
building pride in a stigmatized group. Some of the lasting
emotions often mobilized in social movements include
- Hatred, hostility, loathing - a "target of externalization" in
more Freudian terms
- Love - attachment to one's group, to the members of the movement,
to people within it
- Solidarity, loyalty - often this involves loyalty to a leader,
although Jasper does not discuss this so much
- Suspicion, paranoia
- Trust, Respect
There are also more transient or reactive emotions such an anger,
grief, outrage, shame, compassion, cynicism, defiance, enthusiasm,
envy, fear, joy, resignation (see page 159 in the book). These
are involved in all social life, but they are not so lasting or
structured around particular objects.
To build a movement, large numbers of people have to share the same
structured feelings. We often refer to these as "ideologies"
which are emotionally charged beliefs about the world. Kenneth
Boulding wrote that "An image of the world becomes an ideology if
it creates in the mind of the person holding it a role for himself
which he values highly... To create a role, however, an ideology
must create a drama. The first essential characteristic of an
ideology is then an interpretation of history sufficiently dramatic and
convincing so that the individual feels that he can identify with it
and which in turn can give the individual a role in the drama it
portrays." (Boulding,
The
Meaning of the Twentieth Century, pp 161-162).
Several elements tend to recur in these
ideological dramas. They are
also present in religious dramas.
good guys and bad guys - oppressors and
oppressed - victims and victimizers. These may be
defined by social class, race, ethnic group, gender, etc.
Utopia and Dystopia - heaven and hell -
Often the dystopia is described in great detail - everything that is
wrong with the current world - while the utopia is left vague. If
we can get rid of the bad guys that are causing the current dystopia,
everything will be peaches and cream...
Imminent crisis/ transformatin - analogous to
religious milleniarism, the coming of Christ or the Messiah or another
transformational figure. In social movements this may be economic
collapse, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, racial explosion,
etc. This may trigger revolutionary change leading to utopia.
A powerful leader/hero who rallies the forces of
good, progress, gives them strength. Clearly analogous to a
religious messiah, a revolutionary leader such as Lenin, Stalin,
Ayatollah Khomeini, varioius cult leaders.
A powerful text or doctrine that contains the key to
success.
Bio of
Ralph Nader, the founder of the
PIRG
movement active on our campus.
Most people, of course, do not start their own movements, they adhere
to visions advanced by someone else. This is
my own history.
Also in my
FBI
file. Also my friend
Albert
Szymanski whose life ended in suicide perhaps caused by
disillusionment.
Examples.
Ralph Nader
Spartacus.
Led a slave uprising in Italy in 73 to 71 BC.
Inspiration for the
Spartacus League
in Germany.
Karl
Marx and the Communist Manifesto.
Cover
Versions. Still has its
followers today.
Marx spent most of his life documenting the dystopia of capitalism,
especially in England. He avoided specifying what would replace
it, viewing this as utopian speculation. One of his followers,
August Bebel, filled this gap with a book called
Woman
and Socialism - apparently only women were so practical-minded they
needed specifics. It is especially utopian in its ideas about the
withering away of the state - crime will disappear so no police will be
needed. "Neither political nor common crimes will be known in the
future. Thieves will have disappeared, because private property
will have disappeared, and in the new society everyone will be able to
satisfy his wants easily and conveniently by work."
The utopian socialists were a competing group including Sir Thomas More
who wrote the original book Utopia, which was a portrait of an ideal
state based entirely on reason. He was a Catholic layman, lawyer
and writer but not involved in a social movement. Robert Owen
tried to implement this vision, founding a community called New Lanark
Mills in Scotland, and one called
New Harmony,
in Indiana.
A very influential utopia was the book
Looking
Backward published by Edward Bellamy in 1887. It was a work
of science fiction, portraying a man who traveled to the future to the
year 2000. He found a completely egalitarian society organized on
military lines with men working until they were 45, then
retiring. There was great stability, almost no need for new
legislation, because all ideals had been realized. There were
technical innovations such as wired music available in people's
homes.
By 1900 Looking Backward was the best selling book in US history,
second to Uncle Tom's Cabin. He inspired a Nationalist movement
which also advocated "socialism" and later was one of the inspirations
for National Socialsim in Germany, although his vision was gentle and
consensual, he thought socialist utopia would come because everyone
would agree that it was desirable, it would be completely voluntary.
One more utopian we can consider is a libertarian, believer in
capitalism, Ayn Rand, author of the novel
Atlas
Shrugged. She had a conflict with her chief disciple and
lover,
Nathaniel
Branden, who was much younger and married to a woman his own
age. She was also convinced that cigarettes were good for you
because they were produced by capitalist, free market corporations - a
view she never publicly retracted even though she quit smoking when she
came down with a fatal lung cancer.
Objective medicine web site.
What can we say about the motivations of these people when the thought
up these ideas and started the movements? They were young people
searching for meaning in their lives. Marx tried law, philosophy
and poetry in his quest for a meaningful career. He wrote a three
hundred page treatise on the philosophy of law before he found it to be
emplty. He felt that his poetry was worthless: "the real of
true poetry flashed open before me like a distant faery place, and all
m y creatins collapsed into nothing...I was for several days quite
unable to think. Like a lunatic I ran around in the
garden." He found the answer in Hegelian philosophy - the
struggle between thesis and antithesis leading to a more perfect
synthesis. It made him feel that he was part of history. It
was like a religious conversion and his father approved saying "your
philosophy satisfactorily agrees and harmonizes with your
conscience." He got his degree but couldn't get a teaching job,
went into journalism, moved to Paris when the newspaper was suppressed.
Bellamy wanted into the army, failed the physical. Did not
succeed
with other career ideas until he became a writer. Ayn Rand was a
refugee from Soviet Russia, became militantly anti-Soviet in part
because of how her family was oppressed.
Other cases. Jim Jones and the People's Temple.
Grading
formulas used to compute grades
in WEBCT (March 2):
Attendance = [Attend
Raw]/0.11 - Attend Raw is the
number of classes you attended, a maximum of 13.
Quizzes = ([Quiz
One]+[Quiz Two]+[Quiz Three: Latin American
Social Movements]+[Quiz Four: Part 2 of the Reader]+[Quiz Five:
Iranian Revolution, Muslim Rage and Feminism]+[Quiz Six: Readings
for Feb 21 and 23])/6
Predicted Grade =
[Attendance]*0.1+[Midterm]*0.6+[Quizzes]*0.3 |
Introduction
to Latin American Studies will be offered in the first summer
session and Spring 2007 - counts for the sociology and criminal justice
majors
|
February 28 - Key points to review for the midterm:
- From the Introduction to Part II - Theories
of the emergence of social movements.
- Social trends in the
twentieth century, especially Straus and Howe's model of
generational change. The active, civic minded "GI Generation" was
followed by the passive, adaptive "Silent Generation" which was
followed by the active, idealistic "Baby Boomers" and the passive,
reactive or "laid back" "Generation X." The youngest generation, born
since 1981, can now be called "Generation 9/11" because it is coming to
adulthood in a period dominated by the war on terrorism.
- Psychology of terrorism as portrayed in the video
Faces of the Enemy, and in my essay Terrorist
Beliefs and Terrorist Lives which discussed Jerrold Post's ideas
about the psychology of splitting and externalization and reviewed the
lives of Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski, Bommi Baumann, Velupillai
Prabhakaran, Abimael
Guzmán, and Osama BinLaden. Also, Nicholas Lehman's article on What
Terrorists Want.
- Latin American Social Movements. The reading and a
Powerpoint are available in WEBCT. We looked at three "frames" to
explain Latin American movements including Hispanic Culture and
Civilization, Global Captialist Expansion and the Growth of the
Parasitic state. We examined Nationalist, Labor, Rural, and "New"
Movements (including feminist, black, environmental and human
rights). We looked at the Global Social Forum and the populist
movement led by Hugo Chavez.
- More recently, we discussed the explosion of protest over the Danish cartoons, and had a visit by
members of the Muslim Student
Organization and discussed Bernard Lewis's
article on the Roots of Muslim Rage (in WEBCT) and Charles Kurzman's
article on The Iranian Revolution in the Social Movements Reader.
- We reviewed the history of the civil rights, feminist and gay
rights movements, drawing on Rhoda Blumberg, Jo Freeman, and John
D'Emilio's articles in the Social Movements reader. There is other
material on these topics in these notes and in powerpoints on our
WEBCT .
- We discussed the introduction to Part III of the Social Movements
Reader, examining theories of Who Joins
or Supports Movements.
- We examined some cultural changes in
post-industrial societies and the extent to which they apply to the
developing countries and especially the Arab countries as analyzed in
the Arab Social Development Reports.
Francus Fukuyama's essay on After
Neoconservatism argues for a more nuanced, moderate approach to
foreign policy rather than one which assumes that the United States can
impose modernization and democracy all around the world.
Feb 22 -
Furor
Over Cartoons Pits Muslim Against Muslim.
Milestones in the Gay Rights Movement
Late in the nineteenth
century, as large cities allowed for greater
anonymity, as wage labor apart from family became common, and as more
women were drawn out of the home, evidence of a new pattern of
homosexual expression surfaced. . . .
At first, these
individuals developed ways of meeting one another and institutions to
foster a sense of identity. . . . By 1915, one participant in this new
gay world was referring to it as “a community distinctly organized.”
For the most part hidden from view because of social hostility, an
urban gay subculture had come into existence by the 1920s and 1930s.
World War II served as a critical divide in the social history of
homosexuality. Large numbers of the young left families, small towns,
and closely knit ethnic neighborhoods to enter a sex-segregated
military or to migrate to larger cities for wartime employment. . . .
After the war, many of them made choices designed to support their
gay
identities. Pat Bond, a woman from Iowa who first met other lesbians
while in the military, decided to stay in San Francisco after her
discharge. [Donald] Vining remained in New York City rather than return
to his small hometown in New Jersey. They, along with countless others,
sustained a vibrant gay subculture that revolved around bars and
friendship networks. Many cities saw their first gay bars during the
1940s. . . .
This new visibility provoked latent cultural
prejudices....Firings from government jobs and purges from the military
intensified in the 1950s. President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an
executive order in 1953 barring gay men and lesbians from all federal
jobs. Many state and local governments and private corporations
followed suit. The FBI began a surveillance program against homosexuals.
The lead taken by the federal government encouraged local police
forces
to harass gay citizens. Vice officers regularly raided gay bars,
sometimes arresting dozens of men and women on a single night. …Under
these conditions, some gays began to organize politically. In November
1950 in Los Angeles, a small group of men led by Harry Hay and Chuck
Rowland met to form what would become the Mattachine Society. Mostly
male in membership, it was joined in 1955 by a lesbian organization in
San Francisco, the Daughters of Bilitis, founded by Del Martin and
Phyllis Lyon. In the 1950s these organizations remained small, but they
established chapters in several cities and published magazines that
were a beacon of hope to the readers.
In the 1960s, influenced
by the model of a militant black civil rights movement, the “homophile
movement,” as the participants dubbed it, became more visible.
Activists, such as Franklin Kameny and Barbara Gittings, picketed
government agencies in Washington to protest discriminatory employment
policies. In San Francisco, Martin, Lyon, and others targeted police
harassment. By 1969, perhaps fifty homophile organizations existed in
the United States, with memberships of a few thousand. [See
The
Tea Room Trade by Laud Humphries for an interesting sociological
study of this period - TGG]
Then, on
Friday evening, June 27, 1969, the police in New York City raided a
Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn.
Contrary to expectations,
the patrons fought back, provoking three nights of rioting in the area
accompanied by the appearance of “gay power” slogans on the buildings.
Almost overnight, a massive grassroots gay liberations movement was
born. Owing much to the radical protest of blacks, women, and college
students in the 1960s, gays challenged all forms of hostility and
punishment meted out by society. Choosing to “come out of the closet”
and publicly proclaim their identity, they ushered in a social change
movement that has grown substantially. By 1973, there were almost eight
hundred gay and lesbian organizations in the United States; by 1990,
the number was several thousand. By 1970, 5,000 gay men and lesbians
marched in New York City to commemorate the first anniversary of the
Stonewall Riots; in October 1987, over 600,000 marched in Washington,
to demand equality.
The changes were far-reaching. Over the next
two decades, half the states decriminalized homosexual behavior, and
police harassment was sharply contained. Many large cities included
sexual orientation in their civil rights statutes, as did Wisconsin and
Massachusetts, first among the states to do so....[In 1975] the Civil
Service Commission eliminated the ban on the employment of homosexuals
in most federal jobs. Many of the nation's religious denominations
engaged in spirited debates about the morality of homosexuality, and
some, like Unitarianism and Reformed Judaism, opened their doors to gay
and lesbian ministers and rabbis. The lesbian and gay world was no
longer an underground subculture but, in larger cities especially, a
well-organized community, with businesses, political clubs, social
service agencies, community centers, and religious congregations
bringing people together. In a number of places, openly gay candidates
ran for elective office and won.
These changes spawned
opposition. In 1977 the singer Anita Bryant led
a campaign to repeal a
gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida. Her success encouraged
others, and by the early 1980s, a well-organized conservative force had
materialized to target the gay rights movement. Politicians, such as
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and fundamentalist ministers,
such as Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Virginia, who formed Moral
Majority, Inc., joined forces to slow the progress of the gay
movement. [Living
in Jesusland].
The onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, although it intensified
the antigay rhetoric of the New Right, also stimulated further
organizing within the gay community. AIDS made political mobilization a
matter of life and death. With a large majority of the cases striking
male homosexuals, the gay community in short order created a host of
organizations, such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City, to
provide services and assistance to those infected. Local and national
gay civil rights groups also grew in size and number, as the community
sought to increase funding for research and education and to win
protection against discrimination. A personal and social tragedy of
immense proportions, AIDS paradoxically strengthened the political arm
of the gay movement.
Source: Excerpted by Infoplease from
The Reader's Companion to American History. Copyright ©
1991 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Gay Rights Links:
It's
Time to End the Gay Movement As We Know It.
Wikipedia.
Dynamics
of Sick Religion.
Protect Love.
Colorado for Family
Values.
GodHatesFags.com
How to "Vaccinate"
your Kids from Homosexuality.
Antia Bryant Wikipedia.
An unedited section of the
Associated
Press interview, taped April 7, with Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.
Words that couldn't be heard clearly on the tape are marked
(unintelligible).
SANTORUM: In this case, what we're talking about, basically, is priests
who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We're not
talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We're talking
about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the
world view sense is a a perfectly fine relationship as long as it's
consensual between people. If you view the world that way, and you say
that's fine, you would assume that you would see more of it.
AP: I mean, should we outlaw homosexuality?
SANTORUM: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem
with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would
consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships.
And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I
have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If
that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem
with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act
upon those orientations? So it's not the person, it's the person's
actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.
AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is
homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?
SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court
right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose.
Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our
society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the
right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to
bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest,
you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does
that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.
It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't
exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that
was created, it was created in Griswold -- Griswold was the
contraceptive case -- and abortion. And now we're just extending it
out. And the further you extend it out, the more you -- this freedom
actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my
individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society
because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy
families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's
sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable,
traditional family.
Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of
marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is
based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society.
And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society,
the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included
homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know,
man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.
And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —
AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog"
with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.
SANTORUM: And that's sort of where we are in today's world,
unfortunately. The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit
individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we
absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people
live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in
our society.
AP: Sorry, I just never expected to talk about that when I came over
here to interview you. Would a President Santorum eliminate a right to
privacy -- you don't agree with it?
SANTORUM: I've been very clear about that. The right to privacy is a
right that was created in a law that set forth a (ban on) rights to
limit individual passions. And I don't agree with that. So I would make
the argument that with President, or Senator or Congressman or whoever
Santorum, I would put it back to where it is, the democratic process.
If New York doesn't want sodomy laws, if the people of New York want
abortion, fine. I mean, I wouldn't agree with it, but that's their
right. But I don't agree with the Supreme Court coming in.
Feb 21 Introduction to Part III of
The Social Movements Reader: "
Who
Joins Movements?"
*
Crowds
- Charles Mackay's book
Extraordinary
Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Also Gustav
LeBon,
The
Crowd. Saw crowds as irrational because people's inhibitions
are lessened when surrounded by masses of others, they do things they
would not do individually such as riot, rape, lynch. However,
some people argue that there is a
Wisdom
in Crowds, but this evolves over time. This comes out of an
analysis of financial markets, the idea that the market arrives at the
true value even though individuals do not. In terms of social
movements, we do see spontaneous uprisings under certain circumstances
- when people are milling about in hot weather, when they are outraged
by some event, e.g., the
pueblazo's
in Latin America, the Russian Revolution of February, 1917. Race
riots in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, occasionally later -
sometimes ticked off by a particular event such the MLK assassination
or a power failure.
*
Networks
- People join movements when they are recruited individually,
when they know other people in the movement. Often networks
developed for one purpose can be used for another. This is
facilitated today because of email and the Internet. The Dean
campaign in the 2002 elections relied very heavily on Internet
recruitment. The early feminist movement relied on networks
developed in the antiwar movement, e.g., Freedom Summer in 1964.
In the essay on "
What
Terrorists Want,"
Nicholas Lehman
applies this analysis to
terrorist groups.
*
Frames
- Of course, not just anyone can be recruited to anything, the
issues have to be presented or "framed" in such a way that people are
motivated to join. See the definition of Framing and Frame
Alignment on page 52 in the book. James Aho's article on the
Christian Patriots is an example of how one group frames things.
Look on page 87 at his analysis of the "projective lenses" that they
use to perceive or "frame" the world.
*
Personality
Traits - people with certain kinds of personality traits
may choose to join a movemet, e.g., people who rely on externalization
and projection and are looking for targets. See my paper on "
Noam
Chomsky and the Political Psychology of Anti-Imperialism"
Most of the research on the political psychology of New Left activists
was by sympathizers and found them to be more liberated, less
authoritarian. But this is based on less valid measures.
*
Cultural
Trends - this approach looks at underlying trends in society
that lead people to change their values. Cotgrove and Duff look
at the environmental movement, which we will look at later, seeing it
as an example of post-materialist values as articulated by
Inglehart. On page 65, Inglehart gives an overview of the process
of change examied in his book on post-industrial societies.
He is applying this mostly to the United States and Western
Europe. But the same trend may be happening in the rest of the
world. This is a theme of the the article by Francis Fukuyama on
After
Neoconservatism. He makes an argument that post-modern values
predominate because they provide the kinds of scientific and material
benefits people want all around the world. However, they often
conflict with traditional value systems and political institutions,
especially religious ones.
This leads back to our discussion of the recent events in the middle
east. A recent
interview
with an Italian Parliamentarian combines many of these
threads. - Some other links of interest:
Daily
Illini Controversy.
Danish Caricatures article from Weekly Standard.
Libyan
Demonstration.
Gorodskiye Vesti
cartoon.
German
Cartoons.
Holocaust
denier sentenced to 3 years in jail in Austria.
Salman Rushdie
Satanic Verses.
-
Images
of Muhammad gone for good -
Censorship
of Grease in Fulton, Mo. -
Trudy
Rubin Columns - :
Cartoon Issue:
Cleric
said he did not want protests.
Letters
to the Editor.
Trudy
Rubin Column.
Audio
Conversation.
Muslims
Say Times Hypocritical NYT.
Startling
Lesson in Power of Imagery. -
Trudy
Rubin Columns - :
Feb 16 - The
theories
we have studied may help to
explain the origins of the Islamist movements in the Middle East, but
there is no one correct theory. The article by Charles
Kurzman looks at the
Iranian
revolution of 1979, which came as quite a surprise at the
time. The Shah of Iran looked very powerful. But he was
overthrown by a social movement, putting into power the regime that is
still in power. Why did it succeed? Kurzman stresses
political process and especially political perceptions, the perception
that the Shah was vulnerable because the opposition was very
strong. Random, idiosyncratic events such as the Shah being ill
with cancer may play a role. One could not have predicted this
based on an analysis of economic or social forces, these are background
factors that all the actors consider and manipulate. It can be
understood as a revolt of the poor against modernism, led primarily by
religious fundamentalists. It was also supported by the Communist
Party of Iran at the time, but after the group the left was
suppressed. There is still considerable modernist opposition
within the country, especially among youth.
The contemporary Islamist movements have been America's focus of
attention since 9/11, but they go back much further. A major
focus has been opposition to Israel, but this is only one issue.
The activists in this movement insist that their fundamental concerns
are religious. Sociologists often suspect that economic, class
and ethnic factors are behind the religious feelings, but the people
involved insist that religious concerns are fundamental.
. The article by Bernard Lewis was one of the first to address the
religious differences directly (since published in expanded form as a
book). The Muslim world does not accept the idea of the
separation of Church or Mosque and State, an idea that is new
historically. The Muslim religion says that God has enemies,
which differs from religions that see the Devil as one of God's
creatures performing mysterious tasks. The Koran is strictly
monotheistic, but it can be interpreted in different ways. The
more liberal or tolerant versions of Islam accept Jesus and Moses as
prophets of the same God. Mohammad was not God on Earth as
Christians say of Jesus, he was the greatest prophet of all time, but
still a man. He ran the state and the armed forces. The
fundamentalist Moslems polarize the world between Believers and
Unbelievers, some of them say that the religion calls for them to
exterminate all Unbelievers. There are extremists like this in
all religions, even the Hindu religion which we think of as associated
with Gandhi and pacifism. In 1992, Hindu mobs destroyed the
Babri
Mosque in India. There are
Jewish
extremists who want to force all Arabs out of Palestine and
who even
kill
innocent Arabs. There are also
Christian
terrorist groups such as the Lord's Resistance Army in
Uganda. The
Landover
Baptist Church is on an anti-Wicca campaign, or is this a parody?.
Religious extremism is present in all religions,
and is similar in its psychological profile: externalization and
polarization. As I said in our reading on Terrorist Beliefs and
Terrorist Lives:
While there is no one
personality type, it is
the impression that there is a disproportionate
representation among terrorists of individuals who are aggressive and
action-oriented and
place greater than normal reliance on the psychological mechanisms of
externalization and
splitting. There is suggestive data indicating that many terrorists
come from the margins
of society and have not been particularly successful in their personal,
educational and
vocational lives. The combination of the personal feelings of
inadequacy with the reliance
on the psychological mechanisms of externalization and splitting make
especially attractive
a group of like-minded individuals whose credo is "Its not us; its
them. They are the cause
of our problems."
Bernard
Lewis describes the Islamic case well,
but he may exaggerate the
extent to which the Islamists are different from other fundamentalist
extremists. His most important point is that the Islamic
world has suffered a long string of defeats, defeats at the hands of
the infidels. This is hard for them to accept. This is true
of the Arab countries as countries, even if you do not look at it from
a religious perspective. Here is a NY Times
article on the
Roots of
Muslim Rage:
which suggests that much of the anger is really against their own
governments. The governments channel this rage against convenient
"targets of externalization" as psychologists would say. The
Danes
seem perfect for this since they are weak, directing one's rage against
Israelis or Americans is more difficult. This has been addressed
in a very important set of
social
science studies done by Arabs under
the auspices of the United Nations, the
Arab Human
Development Reports.
Commentary on AHDR by Samir Rihani.
They cover problems caused by the Israeli occupation, but the thrust
their argument is to argue that what the Arab world needs is democracy,
education, human rights, women's liberation - in short,
modernization. This is basically George Bush's argument, as
expressed in his speech which I posted in WEBCT.
This leads into the contemporary debate.Robert Carle, "Demise of Dutch
Multiculturalism" in WEBCT.
Theo van Gogh, a filmmaker and great grandnephew of Vincent Van Gogh
was brutally murdered at 8:30 a.m. on November
3, 2004, in
Amsterdam. The assassin, Mohammad Bouyeri, was a Dutch Moslim of
Moroccan Ancestry. Van Gogh was bicycling to work, Mohammad shot
him several time, slit his throat and pinned a five-page letter to his
stomach. The letter called for holy war against infidels and
informed Member of Parliament Ayyan Hirsi Ali that she would be
"smashed against the hard diamond of Islam."
Holland has 1.5 million foreign residents, about 10% of the
population. The largest number of immigrants are from Morocco and
Turkey. The youth of Moroccan origin have the most difficulty
fitting into Dutch society, high crime rates. After the Van Gogh
incident, the Dutch are turning anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant parties
are growing.
European countries tend to be more secular than the United States and
have more difficulty assimilating immigrants, not having a history as
immigrant nations.. Pim Fortuyn was killed on May 6, 2002.
He was a gay political candidate who argued against immigrants because
they have not assimilated into Dutch society. He found the
Muslims to be a threat to Holland's gays and women. He was killed
by an animal rights activist who was distressed by his promise to life
restrictions on fur farming. His party got 17% of the vote and 26
Parliamentary seats on May 15, in response to the killing. In the
interpretation of Carle, "these Muslims long to dissolve the
dislocations of modern society into a religious certainty rooted in an
ethno-familiar culture.
Peter
Beinart in New Republic.
Feb 14 - Feminist and Gay Liberation
Movements.
The Parent
Trap.
We discussed a number of feminist authors. Mary Wollstonecraft,
author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, was a very early
philosophical defender of the rights of women as human beings.
This view was supported by the influential philosopher John Stuart Mill
in his books The Subjection of Women. Susan B. Anthony led the
fight for the women's suffrage (the right to vote) and wrote "An
Account of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony". Ida B. Wells, a black
activist, worked primarily in the labor and civil rights movement, and
edited a newspaper. Most of the activists in the women's movement
were well educated white women who has leisure time. Women's
liberation was greatly advanced by improvements in health care that cut
infant and child mortality rates, meaning that women did not have to
devote so much of their time to bearing and raising small
children. Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, was a
well educated activist in the labor movement who wrote an academic
study of highly educated women who were dissatisfied with careers as
homemakers, or what we call to day stay at home mom's. Valerie
Solanis was a frustrated author who shot artist Andy Warhol and wrote a
parody of the Communist Manifesto called the SCUM manifesto, for
Society to Cut UP Men. Kate Millet, author of Sexual Politics,
and Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, were radical feminists
who tried to make the feminist movement an anti-male movement.
Betty Friedan and the more mainstream factions in the movement opposed
this strongly, as did author Joan Didion and journalist Gloris Steinem
who started Ms Magazine. Phyllis Schlaffly, a conservative
activist who wrote A Choice, Not an Echo, mobilized the movement that
stopped the ratification of the Equal Rights Movement.
Feb 9 - Visit by members of the
Muslim
Student Organization.
The first speaker listed a number of
Myths
about Islam: Muslims Worship a Moon God; Muslims Don't
Believe in Jesus; Most Muslims are Arabs; Islam Oppresses
Women; Muslims are Violent, Terrorist Extremists; Islam is
Intolerant of Other Faiths; Islam promotes "Jihad" to kill
Unbelievers; The Quaran was Written by Muhammad and Copied from
Jewish and Christian Sources; Islamic Prayer is Ritualized
Without Emotional Meaning; The Crescent Moon is a Universal
Symbol of Islam. All of these statements are myths that the
speaker refuted. She was especially strong in defending the
practice of having women wear headscarfs to cover their hair so they
are not objects of male lust. Women are not liberated if men leer at
them, and in the past Christian and Jewish religious women also wore
veils, some still do. Most Muslims are peace loving, the
terrorist extremists are not representing the true Islam.
The speakers found the Danish cartoons offensive and believe that
freedom of speech should not be used to protect speech that is not
respectful of religious beliefs. They did not object to us
viewing them in class, however, understanding that it was difficult to
criticize something one has not seen.
|
Dismayed
Danes wrestle with their sense of self
Furor over cartoons challenges
nation’s image of tolerance, reason
The
Associated Press
Updated:
8:09 p.m. ET Feb. 6, 2006
COPENHAGEN,
Denmark - Its embassies are ablaze, its boycotted industries are losing
millions of dollars a day — and Denmark is reeling with dismay.
A
nation that prides itself on extensive humanitarian work, and usually
gets only cursory media attention, suddenly finds itself denounced as
evil. In the furor over publication of caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad, Danes are groping for ways to cool the anger and are
reassessing their self-image.
“Like
many other young people, I traveled the world with a Danish flag on my
rucksack. It opened doors because Denmark was known as a country that
respected others, helped other countries,” said Villy Soevndal, who
leads the opposition Socialist People’s Party.
“This
is scary,” Lea Steen, a 28-year-old student, of TV footage of shrieking
protesters throughout the Muslim world burning Danish flags and setting
the Danish embassies in Damascus and Beirut on fire. “We’ve seen it
with U.S. or Israeli flags before, but it suddenly got a lot closer to
our daily lives.”
Pocketbook
issues
The
effects are more than psychological for much of the business community.
The Denmark-based dairy group Arla Foods says a boycott of its goods in
some Islamic countries is costing it $1.6 million a day.
Overall,
Danish industry could lose $1.6 billion a year if the boycotts in place
or threatened in 20 Muslim countries hold firm, said Steen Bocian of
Danske Bank.
Arla
spokeswoman Astrid Gade Nielsen wondered whether the company can even
win back consumers. “That will be a huge task,” she said.
Denmark
is also examining its own attitudes.
The
country is proud of its freedom of speech laws. The last slander
conviction was in 1938, when a group of Danes were found guilty of
agitating against Jews.
Danes
also tend to regard their nation as a paragon of reason and liberalism,
pointing to the many immigrants it has accepted in recent decades, its
willingness to take part in peacekeeping but not combat, and the
presence of Danish aid workers in some of the world’s most wretched
places.
For
Muslims, a different reality
But
Muslims in Denmark — some 200,000 of the country’s 5.4 million people —
often see a much different image. They complain of being discriminated
against and being denied jobs because of their religion. Many were
distressed by statements by Queen Magrethe II in an official biography
last year.
There
is “something scary about such totalitarianism that is also part of
Islam,” the queen said. “Resistance must sometimes be shown, although
one risks getting a not-so-flattering label.”
The
remarks were widely interpreted as the queen’s expressing outright
opposition to Islam, although in Danish the statement implies argument
rather than full opposition. Nonetheless, the comments added to
tensions for Muslims in a country where the prevailing secularity,
liberal sexual mores and affection for beer are deeply at odds with
Islam.
Muslims
began to feel further oppressed when immigration laws were tightened in
2002, followed by restrictions on bringing in foreign-born spouses.
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s government won support for the
measure in Parliament with votes from an anti-immigration party.
About
15,000 Muslims — less than 10 percent of the Danish Islamic population
— are loyal to a group of outspoken Copenhagen imams who were key in
spreading complaints about the Muhammad drawings to Muslims in the
Middle East.
A
look inward, a raw nerve
The
rising tensions of the last month have made some Danes question the
extent to which xenophobia may lurk under the country’s cheerful
surface.
“I
don’t want to live in a country that in order to love itself must look
down on others,” writer Carsten Jensen said at a rally Sunday outside
the Copenhagen office of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that first
published the caricatures.
The
newspaper said it decided to solicit and print the drawings from
various cartoonists in September as a gesture against what it perceived
as a tendency to avoid criticizing Islam for fear of retaliation. A
year earlier, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam
by a Muslim radical because he made a film critical of Islam.
The
drawings touched a raw nerve, in part because Islamic law is
interpreted to forbid any depictions of the prophet.
The
newspaper has apologized for offending Muslims but not for the
publication itself, which it justifies as permissible under freedom of
expression laws.
That
position makes too fine a distinction for many Muslims. The government,
meanwhile, has said it cannot apologize on behalf of an independent
newspaper — words that have seemed only to stoke anger overseas.
©
2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistribute |
Feb 7. -
Abolitionist
Movement.
John
Woolman.
Woolman
House.
America
in the King Years. "
I Have a Dream Speech"
audio/video Video excerpts shown in class:
Eyes on the Prize
Chronology of Civil Rights Movement in our reader page 16, also in
WEBCT.
February 2 - We will discuss the impact of social movements on
current trends in Latin America and view part of a
video on
Hugo Chavez. Dorothy Stang and the
Environmental
Movement in Para.
Piqueteros
in Argentina, Slides Piqueteiros:
article in English.
January 31 - Our first class on Latin American Social
Movements. We will discuss the reading which is posted in WEBCT,
along with a powerpoint that will also be posted. We will view
part of a
video
on the World Social Forum of 2003. We will discuss
current
trends in the WSF. News on the
WSF in Caracas,
January 2006.
Forum
ends.
|
January 30, 2006
Chavez Backs Sheehan
Plan for Bush Protest
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:18 a.m. ET
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Cindy Sheehan, who gained
international
fame when she camped outside President Bush's ranch in an anti-war
protest, plans to pitch her tent again, Venezuela's president said
Sunday as he urged activists worldwide to help bring down ''the U.S.
empire.''
Hugo Chavez,
an arm around Sheehan's shoulders, told a group of activists that she
had told him ''she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr.
Danger's ranch'' in April.
In some of his strongest recent comments aimed at Washington,
Chavez
condemned the Bush administration and said his audience should work
toward ending U.S. dominance.
''Enough already with the
imperialist aggression!'' Chavez said,
listing countries from Panama to Iraq where the U.S. military has
intervened. ''Down with the U.S. empire! It must be said, in the entire
world: Down with the empire!''
Chavez said Sheehan had invited him to join her April protest
at
Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch. Sheehan, whose 24-year-old soldier son
Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, held a vigil outside Bush's ranch
during the president's vacation in August, attracting some 12,000 peace
activists and reinvigorating the national anti-war movement.
''Maybe I'll put up my tent also,'' Chavez said, to applause
from an
audience invited to his weekly broadcast on the final day of the World
Social Forum, an annual gathering of anti-war and anti-globalization
activists.
Chavez said his government would help protest the war in Iraq
by
supporting a drive to gather petitions and delivering them to the U.S.
Embassy in Caracas. Chavez, who before the war in Iraq had friendly
relations with Saddam Hussein, has
been a frequent and strident critic of the war.
Sheehan thanked Chavez for ''supporting life and peace.'' She
said
earlier that she was impressed by his sincerity when they met privately
on Saturday.
''He said, 'Why don't I run for president?''' she said. ''I
just laughed.''
Sheehan also noted that singer and activist Harry Belafonte
recently
called Bush ''the greatest terrorist in the world,'' and said, ''I
agree with him. George Bush is responsible for killing tens of
thousands of innocent people.''
Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., said Saturday that she
is strongly considering challenging Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of
California because the lawmaker will not support calls to immediately
bring the troops home.
Sheehan, 48, who was visiting Venezuela for the six-day forum,
said
running in the Democratic primary in June would help ''bring attention
to all the peace candidates in the country.'' She said she will decide
whether to run after talking with her three adult children in
California.
Feinstein's campaign manager, Kam Kuwata, said the senator did
not
support Bush and felt she had been misled by his administration. But
with troops committed, Feinstein believes immediate withdrawal is
unworkable, he said.
''Senator Feinstein's position is, 'Let's work toward quickly
turning over the defense of Iraq to Iraqis so that we can bring the
troops home as soon as possible,''' Kuwata said in an interview
Saturday.
Also joining
Chavez on Sunday was Elma Beatriz Rosado, the widow of
slain Puerto Rican nationalist Filiberto Ojeda Rios. Holding back tears
as she stood at Chavez's side, Rosado accused the United States of
killing her husband, a 72-year-old militant independence activist.
Rios was slain in a September FBI raid on a Puerto Rican
farmhouse
where he was living in hiding while being wanted for the 1983 robbery
of $7.2 million from a Wells Fargo armored truck depot in Connecticut
-- funds intended for the independence cause.
''They murdered him,'' Chavez said. ''Viva Filiberto!... Let's
follow his example.''
|
January 26 - We will begin with a substantial portion of the
video
Faces
of the Enemy by Sam Kean. This is described as: "A powerful
examination of "the enemy"—how we as individuals and nations
see our enemies, dehumanize them, and what

happens to "us" when we
portray ourselves as heroes and "them" as evil subhumans. Documentary
footage, interviews, political cartoons, and propaganda from many parts
of the world analyze the psychological roots of enmity, exploring the
universal images used in mass persuasion. The award-winning program
suggests that conflicts can be resolved by discarding symbolic images
of the enemy and meeting as human beings."
Some notes typed during the movie:
David Rice killed a family he thought
to be communist. Is his thinking different from ours?
externalization - he trained for a
welding job, got one job, lost it. This means something is wrong
with the country.
splitting - Polarizing between
"us" and "them", we are good, they are evil. They are responsible
for problems..
Plan to turn the world into a
one-world communist government. Picked
up specifics from Jack Moore and the Christian Patriots group.
Troops
on the Mexican border.
Is Jack Moore delusional also?
Delusions are based on reality, even paranoids have enemies.
Vladimir Posner, says that the world
will one day be communist, laws of
history as analyzed by Marx. Posner later abandoned these beliefs
as
the Soviet system collapsed.
Do we collect only as many enemies as
we need? Do we have a need for
enemies? Does this apply to Saddam Hussein, Osama bin
Laden? Did he
attack the WTC because we refused to acknowledge him as an important
enemy?
In a war, you dehumanizse the enemy - "they" are trying to kill
"me" - they are different from us, like a different species. In
Vietnam soldiers were trained to see the enemy as an abstraction.
Films from WWII about the Japanese - average solider 5 '
3", "he and his brother soldier are as much alike as prints from
the same negative".
Image of Jews as rats in Nazi propaganda film.
We will go on to discuss the leaders and movements in the reading on
Terrorist
Beliefs and Terrorists Lives.
Tamil
Eelam Home Page.
January 24. We will look at generational change, beginning with
the historical turning point of 2001, but also going back to changes
since the 1940s. The "
September 11,
2001: A Turning Point for America's Future?" covers a
lot of this. A
Powerpoint version of this paper that will be presented in class is
available here.
Other links.
1968
on Wikipedia.
1968:
a timeline of events.
Video
of 1968 in Paris.
Video
of Mexican Student Riots.
ABC coverage
of Democratic Convention.
Dan Rather
gets roughed up by security personnel.
January 19:
Because the book will not be available until mid-February, I am
distributing pages 3-14 in class. These will be covered on the
first quiz which will open tomorrow and close January 27. The key
point here is to understand the different
theories
about when movements
emerge and to be able to apply them to cases. These theories are
not necessarily mutually exclusive, nor are they the only theories that
might be advanced. Some theories include:
Worsening
Economic, Class or Group Conditions Theories - These are
the classic, older theories, especially based in Marxist theory.
They assume that movements emerge because conditions are worsening for
a specific group, e.g., workers, minorities, women. This is
sometimes true, but sometimes movements emerge when things are getting
better.
Frustrated
Expectations Theories - Movements emerge when things have
been getting better, then suddenly take a turn for the worse. Or
when things are getting better faster for one group than for another,
causing the group that is falling behind to feel frustrated.
Resource
Mobilization Theory - This focuses on Social Movement
Organizations and the way they marshal their resources, just as
corporations do in the market economy. The organizations maximize
their rational interest. Movements emerge when movement
organizations have had time and energy to mobilize resources.
Political Process
Theory - Social movements are a tactic used by political groups
that find conventional political tactics inadequate to meet their
goals. Movements may emerge when groups become frustrated with
the results of more conventional political activity. Or they may
believe that an opportunity is available because repression is less or
because the state is unstable.
Framing
Theory - Movements emerge when people learn to define and think
of problems in a certain way. This is often done through books or
speeches or other means of communication. Competing movements
seek to impose their "frame" on events. Movements emerge when a
large number of people become enthused about a new frame.
Collective
Identity Theory - Movements emerge when organizers are
able to politicize an existing group identity, or perhaps to create a
new identity. A group of people define themselves as entitled to
certain benefits and organize to obtain them.
Globalization
Theory - Movements emerge in response to trends in the global
economy that impact negatively on the interests of certain categories
of people.
Emotions of
Protest Theory - (on page 7, distributed separately).
Organizers mobilize movements by exploiting people's fears and
anxities, or by offering joys and excitements.