Social Justice Commons^™

Postcolonial Theory, John C. Hawley

English

Colonialism and its aftermath prompt a form of cultural studies that seeks to address questions of identity politics and justice that are the ongoing legacy of empires. Postcolonial theory has its origins in resistance movements, principally at the local, and frequently at nonmetropolitan, levels. Among its early thinkers, three seem of special importance: Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire, and Frantz Fanon. Antonio Gram sci ( 1891- 193 7) was a founder of the Communist Party in Italy. In his Prison Notebooks (1971 ), he wrote insightfully about the proletariat, designated by him as subalterns; his thoughts regarding the responsibilities of public …

Who Is The Real Target? Media Response To Controversial Investigative Reporting On Corporations, Chad Raphael, Lori Tokunaga, Christina Wai

Communication

In the past decade, corporate targets of American investigative reporting have deployed new legal and public relations counter‐attacks on journalists. Although corporations have largely directed their efforts at managing subsequent news coverage of these controversies, there has been no systematic study of how the rest of the media cover them. We examine elite print reaction to two investigative reports that were publicly challenged by their targets: ABC's 1992 Primetime Live report on Food Lion supermarkets and NBC's 1992 Dateline NBC story on General Motors' trucks. The case studies and content analyses of print coverage of these controversies suggest that greater …

The Sexual Abuse Crisis In The Roman Catholic Church: What Psychologists And Counselors Should Know, Thomas G. Plante, Courtney Daniels

Psychology

Recent events regarding child sexual abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston and elsewhere have yet again resulted in a tremendous amount of media attention and frenzy regarding this topic. During 2002 alone, approximately 300 American Catholic priests, including several bishops, were accused of child sexual abuse. Many were forced to resign their positions while others were prosecuted and went to prison. Curiously, there still exist many myths and misperceptions about priests who sexually abuse children and their victims. Since psychologists and other mental health professionals are likely to interact with many who have been impacted …

The Case For Cautious Optimism: California Environmental Propositions In The Late Twentieth Century, Marie Bolton, Nancy Unger

History

The efficacy of direct democracy throughout California's history continues to be a subject of intense debate, a state-wide phenomenon with an international audience. California boasts the world's fifth largest economy, and plays a leadership role in national, and sometimes even international, politics. British scholar Wyn Grant, studying the politics of air quality management in California, succinctly sums up the burning issue for environmentalists worldwide who are striving to understand the efficacy of California's activists' efforts: in "Direct Democracy in California: Example or Warning?" Grant concludes that although direct democracy has its merits, its history in California ultimately provides more of …

Clergy Sexual Abuse And The Catholic Church: What Do We Know And Where Do We Need To Go?, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Few recent topics have received the kind of media attention, heated debate, and discussion than the topic of sex-offending clergy, their victims, and supervisors. It is a story about too many bishops (and priests) behaving badly when they are purported to be the moral, religious, and ethical leaders of society. It is a remarkable story. However, it is a complex story that has had little scholarship and discourse driven by thoughtfulness, civility, and reason.

Bridging The Gender Gap In Computing: An Integrative Approach To Content Design For Girls, Kathleen-M. Lynn, Chad Raphael, Karin Olefsky, Christine M. Bachen

Communication

Although some observed differences in males' and females' attitudes toward and uses of computers appear to be narrowing, the gender gap remains widest in relation to programming and software design, which are still male preserves. In response, software and Web site designers have applied feminist theories to develop three distinct approaches to creating content for girls that might increase their interest in computers. These approaches involve appealing to girls' traditional “feminine” interests, nontraditional “masculine” interests, and gender-neutral interests. This study proposes that to bridge today's gender gap, prior approaches need to integrate appeals to girls' traditional and nontraditional interests, and …

The Victims: Did The Nazi T–4 Euthanasia Program Discriminate Among Victims In The Targeted Groups?, Nancy Unger

History

Nancy C. Unger and J. Michael Butler take up the question of the targeting of Jews for elimination in the Holocaust. Was this emphasis a special case or part of a broader spectrum of elimination policies designed to rid Germany of all groups designated as undesirable by Nazi ideology— including homosexuals, Gypsies, and the mentally ill?

Unger argues for the specificity of the targeting of the Jewish population for extermination by comparing it to the case of homosexuals. Homosexual men were incarcerated in the death camps, and many were killed in the course of the Holocaust, but, Unger argues, their …

The Picture At Menorah Journal: Making "Jewish Art", Andrea Pappas

Art and Art History

Menorah Journal, founded in 1915 to foster a “Jewish Renaissance,” published essays, poetry, fiction, and political commentary. Along with articles addressing Jewish life and history, it attended to Jewish visual culture, publishing numerous works of art as well as articles by artists and cultural critics. Over the course of the magazine’s existence, only art magazines carried more reproductions of artworks in their pages. Yet when discussing Menorah Journal’s commitment to art, scholars have invariably dealt with it cursorily and as if it was no more than an attractive embellishment to the magazine. Nonetheless, the illustrations appeared, month after month, year …

"I Went To Learn," Meanings Of The European Tour Of Senator Robert M. La Follette, 1923, Nancy Unger

History

In 1923, progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette, an astute observer of government, economics, and social conditions, toured Europe in preparation for his third-party presidential bid. This article examines that trip and its legacy, particularly in relation to Daniel T. Rodgers' 1998 book Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age.1

Evolving Tenure Rights And Agricultural Intensification In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Popular and official representations of the environment in Burkina Faso present soils as fragile and potentially subject to catastrophic collapse in fertility. In the cotton growing zone of southwestern Burkina Faso, researchers and policy makers attribute changes in land cover and land quality to population growth. This paper presents evidence questioning the dominant "population-degradation narrative" as applied to Burkina. We find that farmers are intensifying their production systems. While population has led to land scarcity, farmers are responding to both the resulting uncertainty in land rights and reductions in soil quality by intensifying the production process. Investments are used both …

Rethinking Media And Movements, Chad Raphael

Communication

Todd Gitlin’s work helped us to understand the tremendous barriers to left movements speaking freely through commercial media and the potentially destructive impacts of media imperatives on movements. Edward Morgan adds another warning: today’s organizers must overcome a media history of the 1960s that demonizes or trivializes the era’s struggles for justice. But must we also overcome some of our own thinking about how movements create change and their relationship to the media? Certainly, coverage of anti-Vietnam War organizing is one case study worth revisiting to recover an accurate past that can inform contemporary mobilizations. But there is also a …

The Two Worlds Of Belle La Follette, Nancy Unger

History

Case La Follette, it has been frequently noted, was deemed "my wisest and best counselor" by her husband, Wisconsin progressive great Roberi M. La Follette. She chose to fulfill that counselor's role in remarkable ways throughout their forty-three years of married life, perhaps most significantly by earning a law degree, yet never practicing law herself. This decision was one of many that allowed her to function as her husband's equal in the professional matters that affected him publicly, while reserving for herself a more private and personal role. Belle Case La FoUette's lifetime of decisions reflect her wish to fulfill …

A Proposed Psychological Assessment Protocol For Applicants To Religious Life In The Roman Catholic Church, Thomas G. Plante, Marcus T. Boccaccini

Psychology

This paper proposes a psychological assessment protocol for applicants to religious life in the Roman Catholic church. While most Catholic religious orders, seminaries, and dioceses require applicants to complete some type of psychological evaluation prior to entrance into seminary, there is no established standard or protocol suggested for conducting these evaluations. The current proposed assessment protocol provides those conducting or receiving these evaluations with a comprehensive foundation from which they can add or delete components to meet their specific needs. Furthermore, the utilization of a standard clergy assessment protocol creates the opportunity for the establishment of a national database useful …

Making Disciples Of All Nations, John C. Hawley

English

The whole problem is this: how to utter God in a practice of faith where I must decide what I wish to do with the woman or man I find in my path-make of him or her a human being with a right to life or a slave for life.-Jean-Marc Ela (139) Perhaps there is such a thing as seduction. Conversion. Perhaps cultures absorb one another. If it is true that the Franciscan padre forced the Eucharist down the Indian's throat, maybe she forgot to close her mouth. Maybe she swallowed the Franciscan priest. After all, the churches of Latin …

Niccolò Machiavelli—Adviser Of Princes, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

In Plato's Republic, Socrates argued that true artisans work not in their own interest but for the good of that upon which they practice their art. So the true ruler is one who works for the good of the city or the citizens, not the ruler's own self-interest.² Many would hold, with Leo Strauss, that Machiavelli contends the very opposite - that for him the true prince ruthlessly seeks self-interest and personal power.³ I think this is too simple a reading of Machiavelli.

I do not want to argue that Machiavelli is not a Machiavellian - that he …

We Wretched Of The Earth: The Search For A Language Of Justice, John C. Hawley

English

"In the beginning was the Word," writes John-God's revealing utterance that "was made flesh and lived among us." This incarnational character of the Word, this "living among us," has demanded of Christians in each age a reinterpretation of its original and ongoing meaning. If the protean nature of God's self-expression has seen a continuing "translation" in each age, though, it is becoming increasingly evident among church members that a similar task is also required in each ethnic milieu. The "us" among whom the Word lives is made up of many communities of discourse, and a logocentric theology like Christianity must …

Mongo Beti And Jean Marc Éla: Literary And Christian Liberation In Cameroon, John C. Hawley

English

In his fascinating study of contemporary African intellectuals and their struggle to set themselves apart from their European educations, K wame Anthony Appiah describes the intellectual ferment throughout the continent as producing "new, unpredictable fusions" because Africans "have the great advantage of having before [them] the European and American--and the Asian and Latin American--experiments with modernity to ponder as [they] make [their] choices" (134). Appiah uses the example of his own sister's wedding in Ghana to exemplify the hybridized role that religion continues to play in that self-definition. The ceremony followed the Methodist ritual; a Roman Catholic bishop offered the …

Aristotle, Kant, And The Ethics Of The Young Marx, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

I would like to argue that the young Marx's ethical views have been influenced not only by Hegel but even more so by Aristotle and Kant. Marx draws away from Hegel's concept of essence toward one more like Aristotle's, and he operates with a concept of universalization similar to that found in Kant's categorical imperative. At the same time, Marx's task is to reconcile these Aristotelian and Kantian elements.

Marx's main concern, however, is not simply to explain what morality is but to explain how it can be realized in the world. For us to understand his views we first …

Kant's Political Theory And Philosophy Of History, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Kant combined two traditional approaches in his political theory, reference to a utopian and ideal universal moral order in common with Plato, Thomas More, and Jean Jacques Rousseau and an analysis of the pursuit of individual self-interest leading to the establishment of laws that enable citizens to satisfy their interests, like Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Adam Smith. Kant focused on the international level, arguing that following the categorical imperative would arrange a society equitably while national commercial self-interest would lead to a league of nations to adjudicate international disputes. Kant was unique in providing both a theory of an …

Marx, Justice, And The Dialectic Method, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

An interesting controversy has recently been provoked by Allen Wood. He argues that capitalism, for Marx, "cannot be faulted as far as justice is concerned." For Marx, the concept of justice belonging to any society is rooted in, grows out of, and expresses that particular society's mode of production. Justice is not a standard by which human reason in the abstract measures actions or institutions--there is no eternal, unchanging norm of justice. Each social epoch gives rise to its own standard; each generally lives up to it; and each must be measured by this standard alone. Thus, in Wood's view, …

Responses To Charles Kingsley’S Attack On Political Economy., John C. Hawley

English

In 1850, Charles Kingsley lightheartedly told a friend that "The 'Christian Socialist' sells about 1500, and is spreading; but not having been yet cursed by any periodical, I fear it is doing no good."(l) Writing under the pseudonym 'Parson Lot," this young enthusiast did not have much longer to wait for that token of "success." Just two years later, in his defensive Who Are the Friends of Order? Kingsley acknowledged that the Christian Socialists were now besieged on all sides, and had "to hear Edinburgh Reviewers complaining of them for wishing to return to feudalism and medieval bigotry while Quarterly …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 25 Number 8, Spring 1983, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

2 - FIRST FRIEND by Robert Meyers. Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt talks about his special relationship with the President of the United States.

6 - A CONVERSATION WITH BROTHER ROGER by Patrick Samway, S.J. An interview with the founder of a remarkable ecumenical community that has become a source of inspiration for Christians everywhere.

11 - JESUIT CHAPLAINS IN WORLD WAR II by Donald F. Crosby, S.J. Chronicling the involvement of 273 Sons of Loyola who marched off as chaplains in World War II.

15 - PSYCHOLOGY AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE by Jerry Kroth. Can psychology provide us with an …