Anthropology Commons^™

Chernobyl Stories And Anthropological Shock In Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

The Budapest Chernobyl Day commemoration generated a creative outpouring of stories about parental responsibilities, scientific knowledge, environmental risks, and public participation. I examine the stories and performances elicited by the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1996. In these “Chernobyl stories,” activists criticized scientific and state paternalism while engaging in alternative practices of citizenship. The decade between the catastrophic explosion and its commemoration coincides with the development of the Hungarian environmental movement and the transformation from state socialism. Chernobyl Day 1996 consequently became an opportunity for activists to reflect upon how the meaning of citizenship and public …

Chernobyl Stories And Anthropological Shock In Hungary, Krista Harper

Krista M. Harper

The Budapest Chernobyl Day commemoration generated a creative outpouring of stories about parental responsibilities, scientific knowledge, environmental risks, and public participation. I examine the stories and performances elicited by the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1996. In these “Chernobyl stories,” activists criticized scientific and state paternalism while engaging in alternative practices of citizenship. The decade between the catastrophic explosion and its commemoration coincides with the development of the Hungarian environmental movement and the transformation from state socialism. Chernobyl Day 1996 consequently became an opportunity for activists to reflect upon how the meaning of citizenship and public …

The Return Of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives On Immigration And Its Sequels In France, Germany, And The United States, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

This article argues that the massive differentialist turn of the last third of the twentieth century may have reached its peak, and that one can discern signs of a modest “return of assimilation”. The article presents evidence of this from the domain of public discourse in France, public policy in Germany, and scholarly research in the US. Yet what has “returned” is not the old, analytically discredited and politically disreputable “assimilationist” understanding of assimilation, but a more analytically complex and normatively defensible understanding. The article concludes by specifying the ways in which the concept of assimilation has been transformed.

Profiling Racial Profiles: Challenges From Political Discourse, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes problems in evaluating the validity and appropriateness of racial profiles based on reactance with political discourse on such profiles.

Universal Human Rights And Cultural Diversity, Hilde Hey

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities, edited by Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000. 259pp.

The debate as to whether human rights should be considered universal or culturally relative has come a long way. In 1947, when the Commission on Human Rights considered proposals for formulating a declaration on basic human rights, the American Anthropological Association submitted a statement expressing concern about the universality of the proposed declaration. The association’s main argument was that ideas about rights and wrongs and good and evil that exist in one society are incompatible with the ideas …

Rights Of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Status Of The Family, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Is the family subject to principles of justice? In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the "basic institutions of society" to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the family, and in particular its impact on fair equal opportunity (the first part of the the Difference …

The Deconstruction Of Refugees And The Reconstruction Of History, Peter W. Van Arsdale

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft, by Nevzat Soguk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Borderlines Series, No. 11) 1999. 328 pp.

I would characterize Nevzat Soguk as either a neo-liberal operating in the guise of a postmodern deconstructionist, or a post-modern deconstructionist operating in the guise of a neoliberal. This is not a trivial distinction, nor an attempt to play semantic games, but my attempt to classify a brilliant theorist (known for his work in political science) whose book has a great deal of merit—but whose writing at times seems aimed more at discursive analysis …