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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Seeing Race As We Are: Avoiding, Arguing, Aspiring, Michael A. Cowan Jun 2023

Seeing Race As We Are: Avoiding, Arguing, Aspiring, Michael A. Cowan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Racial conflict in the United States pushes people to positions of argument or avoidance, more or less intensely and for varying lengths of time, depending on external events like the murder of George Floyd. Neither stance produces the conversations required to seek common ground and compromise around racial issues. Argument alone deepens divisions and avoidance leaves them to metastasize in the social body. In an attempt to go beneath these two positions, this article first explains the role and form of interpretation in all conflict and dispute resolution and how it is shaped. Then it examines the concepts and strategies …


The Youth Inferno: Two-Way Working On Ancestral Lands, Pamela Nathan Oct 2022

The Youth Inferno: Two-Way Working On Ancestral Lands, Pamela Nathan

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this article I present some of the work of Creating a Safe and Supportive Environment (CASSE) in Central Australia, Northern Territory, with the youth in the justice system, referring to our dual cultural and therapeutic program Shields for Living, Tools for Life. Psychoanalytic concepts and tools that have informed the work and transformed the trauma landscape are detailed. The work is at the epicenter of anger, concern, and politics in Central Australia and this epicenter has been named the “youth crisis.” It is a journey of feeling the heat, of being on a rollercoaster ride in a landscape of …


The White Supremacist Penetration Of Western Security Forces: The Wider Implications, Kumar Ramakrishna Nov 2021

The White Supremacist Penetration Of Western Security Forces: The Wider Implications, Kumar Ramakrishna

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article argues that recent instances of white supremacist penetration of Western security forces should not be regarded as isolated issues. They are related to the worrying wider phenomenon of the gradual societal and political mainstreaming of white supremacist ideas in Western countries. Drawing on the German and US cases as examples, the article unpacks the argument by first examining the core theories of white supremacism: the “great replacement” and “white genocide.” It then explores how these theories have been weaponized, before proceeding to analyze the structure and modalities of the white supremacist threat. The article then considers the wider …


An Introduction To Right-Wing Extremism In India, Mohammed Sinan Siyech Nov 2021

An Introduction To Right-Wing Extremism In India, Mohammed Sinan Siyech

New England Journal of Public Policy

Right-wing extremism has had a long history in India with the current atmosphere heavily tilted in favor of right-wing extremists. This article explores the history of the right wing in the nation and various factors that strengthened different actors within this spectrum of politics in India. Relying on secondary sources, it notes that the Indian caste system has played a role in bolstering the Hindu majoritarian identity that is currently dominant in India apart from various other factors, such as the incompetency of other political parties (including left-wing parties). Drawing on several examples, it argues that the unwillingness of the …


Communicative Justice And Reconciliation In Canada, Alice Neeson Nov 2019

Communicative Justice And Reconciliation In Canada, Alice Neeson

New England Journal of Public Policy

Communicative justice co-exists with other dimensions of justice and emphasizes the importance of fair communicative practices, particularly after periods of direct or structural violence. While intercultural dialogue is often assumed to be a positive, or even necessary, part of reconciliation processes, there are questions to be asked about the ethicality of dialogue when one voice has been silenced, misrepresented, and ignored for decades. This article draws on twelve months of ethnographic research with reconciliation activists and organizations in Canada and considers the potential for communicative flows to help compensate for structural inequalities during processes of reconciliation.


Language, Indigenous Peoples, And The Right To Self-Determination, Noelle Higgins, Gerard Maguire Nov 2019

Language, Indigenous Peoples, And The Right To Self-Determination, Noelle Higgins, Gerard Maguire

New England Journal of Public Policy

Language has always played a significant role in the colonization of peoples as an instrument of subjugation and homogenization. It has been used to control nondominant groups, including Indigenous peoples, often leading to their exclusion or assimilation. Many Indigenous groups, however, use language as a tool to connect the members of their community, to assert their group identity, and to preserve their culture. Thus, language has been used both as a means of oppression and as a mobilizer of Indigenous groups in their struggles for national recognition. Recognizing the significance of language in the identity and culture of Indigenous peoples, …


Raising Indigenous Women’S Voices For Equal Rights And Self-Determination, Grazia Redolfi, Nikoletta Pikramenou, Rosario Grimà Algora Nov 2019

Raising Indigenous Women’S Voices For Equal Rights And Self-Determination, Grazia Redolfi, Nikoletta Pikramenou, Rosario Grimà Algora

New England Journal of Public Policy

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that the right to self-determination for Indigenous peoples involves their having the right to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. The implementation of this right is linked to the ability and freedom to participate in any decision making that relates to their development. Current laws and practices are considered “unfair to women,” because they sustain traditional and customary patriarchal attitudes that marginalize Indigenous women and exclude them from decision-making tables and leadership roles. Despite the many challenges Indigenous women face in …


Contextualizing Approaches To Indigenous Peoples’ Experiences Of Intractable Conflict, Michele A. Sam May 2019

Contextualizing Approaches To Indigenous Peoples’ Experiences Of Intractable Conflict, Michele A. Sam

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article contextualizes intractable conflict within the lived experiences and worldviews of an Indigenous person, imbued with academic and scholarly research. The text illustrates how intractable conflict is experienced within the “developed world,” resulting in both freedom and fragmentation. Whether intractable conflict stems from colonial and postcolonial development and influences current Indigenous Peoples’ self-development efforts in Canada, specifically, and possibly across British colonies in general seems to be a new inquiry. The author relates her intergenerational experiences of contact, unpacking research and development in its many forms alongside the characteristics of intractable conflict and related federal Indian and social policy. …


Resolving Conflict Between Canada’S Indigenous Peoples And The Crown Through Modern Treaties: Yukon Case History, Kirk Cameron May 2019

Resolving Conflict Between Canada’S Indigenous Peoples And The Crown Through Modern Treaties: Yukon Case History, Kirk Cameron

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article presents an example of how modern treaties with Yukon First Nations have created a foundation for co-relational involvement in the direction and control of land and resource management throughout Canada’s subnational region of Yukon, approximately 470,000 square kilometers in size. The modern treaties with eleven of the fourteen Yukon First Nations create assessment and management structures where appointment to these bodies are nominations not only from the territorial and federal governments but from the Yukon First Nations. The rights captured in the treaties are protected under Canada’s supreme law, the Constitution Act, 1982. The treaty relationship has effectively …


Desperate Choices: Why Black Women Join The U.S. Military At Higher Rates Than Men And All Other Racial And Ethnic Groups, Julia Melin Feb 2016

Desperate Choices: Why Black Women Join The U.S. Military At Higher Rates Than Men And All Other Racial And Ethnic Groups, Julia Melin

New England Journal of Public Policy

The enlistment of black women in the U.S. military has been a persistent and growing demographic trend over the past three decades. Black women now constitute nearly one-third of all women in the U.S. military. At around 30 percent, this number is twice their representation in the civilian population and higher than that of men or women of any other racial or ethnic group. This article analyzes the changing economic, social, and political landscape in the United States to identify what has motivated this cohort to enlist at such high rates. Based on this analysis, a case can be made …


Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner, Shaun O'Connell Feb 2016

Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel about the leader of a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831, was highly praised after its publication in 1967. Then African American essayists in William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond took issue with the novel and rejected Styron’s asserted right to reimagine Nat Turner’s life and to assume his voice, claiming their rights of racial heritage and historical accuracy to castigate Styron for his offensive presumption. That distant argument of unshared assumptions and crossed purposes between high-minded and hypersensitive artists and intellectuals of another day may throw refracted …


South African Solidarity With Palestinians: Motivations, Strategies, And Impact, Rajini Srikanth Jun 2015

South African Solidarity With Palestinians: Motivations, Strategies, And Impact, Rajini Srikanth

New England Journal of Public Policy

South African support for Palestine received a compelling articulation in 1990 by the late President Nelson Mandela. This article examines a more recent grassroots activism by South Africans for Palestinian self-determination. It discusses the historical legacy of anti-apartheid resistance as well as current economic and political realities within South Africa that have led to the emergence of a robust popular movement for Palestinian rights since 2005. Both South African civil society organizations and the ANC-led government have responded to the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against the state of Israel. The …


Black Women In Durham Politics, 1950-1996: From Grassroots To Electoral Politics, Grace Walton Mar 2000

Black Women In Durham Politics, 1950-1996: From Grassroots To Electoral Politics, Grace Walton

New England Journal of Public Policy

Based on the author's senior thesis in African-American history; this article about black women by a black woman was conceived to educate Americans about a different kind of history. It illustrates the silent political struggles of black women in Durham, North Carolina, and their gradual acceptance into American politics from 1950 to 1996. The oral history design demonstrates that black women's political activity underwent a transformation from grassroots politics to full electoral participation, which brought them to the forefront of Durham politics. Through both types of political activity, the unique political consciousness of black women continues to have a great …


Election Monitoring In Oromia: What Are The Conditions For Democracy?, Frederick C. Gamst Sep 1998

Election Monitoring In Oromia: What Are The Conditions For Democracy?, Frederick C. Gamst

New England Journal of Public Policy

Professor Gamst, a member of the Joint International Observer group (JIOG), reports the problems he monitored during the 1992 electoral campaign and voting activities in the strife-ridden region of Oromia in Ethiopia. His analyses illuminate the background institutional barriers and the politically competitive reasons for the failure of the elections. Gamst discusses the nature of the multitudinous Oromo people and the consequences of any election victory by them for the destiny of Ethiopia. He also describes the sometimes violent aftermaths of the failed election of 1992 and its follow-up election of 1994, in which the Oromo were again denied reasonable …


Cambodian Political Succession In Lowell, Massachusetts, Jeffrey Gerson Mar 1998

Cambodian Political Succession In Lowell, Massachusetts, Jeffrey Gerson

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article asks, What factors have in the past affected and will continue to affect the degree of Cambodians' participation and representation in Lowell politics? Gerson argues that five key factors, three internal — coming to terms with the legacy of mistrust resulting from the holocaust wrought by Pol Pot's murderous regime; lacking a tradition of democratic participation in their home country; and generational differences between those who regard themselves as Cambodian and the American-born — and two external — Lowell's two-tiered political system and the response of the city's elected officials to the influx of Southeast Asians that began …


Teaching African-American Children: The Legacy Of Slavery, Harold Horton Jun 1994

Teaching African-American Children: The Legacy Of Slavery, Harold Horton

New England Journal of Public Policy

The pathetic state of urban public school education offered to African-American children stems from slavery, when it was against the law to educate slaves, who were regarded as chattel. This article traces the history of the blighting of their minds by stripping those slaves of their African culture, and its effect on African-American children, as well as other children of color, today. Horton offers suggestions for coping with the problems of modern schools as related to respecting and teaching these children, pointing out that the system is the problem, not the children.