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Political Centre (political + centre)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	75%

Selected Abstracts

The Increasing Political Power of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel: From Passive Citizenship to Active Citizenship

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 1 2003
Tamar Horowitz
The immigrants in Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) followed a different pattern of political growth than other immigrant groups. Their increased power began on the national level and moved down to the local level, rather than from the periphery toward the centre , the pattern followed by the Oriental Jewish immigrants. We can trace three stages in the development of their political power. The first stage was during the 1992 elections when the immigrants attempted to organize their own list. Though they failed, the results of the election strengthened them because they were given credit for the left's victory, giving them a sense of political effectiveness. The second stage came during the 1996 elections. It was a defining moment for the former Soviet immigrants' political power. In this stage external factors and internal factors reinforced each other. The change in the electoral system made it possible for the immigrants to vote for their community on the one hand and for a national figure on the other, thus resolving their identity dilemma. The local elections in 1998 marked the third stage in their political strength. They found the immigrant community better organized, with an improved understanding of its local interests, the capacity to put forward a strong local leadership, and a stronger link between the immigrant political centre and the local level. [source]

The Future of the ,Radical Centre' in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2003
Jocelyn A. J. Evans
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement has provided a new political dispensation in Northern Ireland. Through the management of the competing aims of unionism and nationalism, the Agreement hopes to promote cross-community consensus and forge a new, moderate centre. However, the segmental autonomy evident under the consociationalism of the Agreement poses questions of the existing political centre in Northern Ireland. Traditionally, the centre, as represented by the Alliance Party, has rejected unionism and nationalism, believing either to be ideologies to be overcome, rather than accommodated. Under the post-Agreement political arrangements, Alliance has already been obliged to bolster pro-Agreement unionism, through the temporary tactical redesignation of three of its Assembly members as Unionist and through tacit support for selected unionist election candidates. Using the first ever membership survey of the existing centre party in Northern Ireland, this article examines whether its vision of a radical third tradition is sustainable in a polity in which unionist and nationalist politics are legitimised. [source]

Power, Knowledge and ,What Works' in Probation

THE HOWARD JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Issue 3 2001
Gwen Robinson
This article examines the implications of the quest for knowledge of ,what works' in the context of probation, both at the level of professional practice and the broader level of the power base of the service as a whole. It is argued that the pursuit of knowledge of ,what works' in probation practice has had interesting and paradoxical implications for the probation service and its personnel, being associated with increasing credibility, whilst also exposing the service to a number of risks. The article concludes that the paradox of ,what works' has been magnified by its appropriation by the political centre in the form of the Effective Practice Initiative and, more recently, the ,what works' programme. [source]

Front and Back Covers, Volume 23, Number 1.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 1 2007
February 200
Front and back cover caption, volume 23 issue 1 Front cover A Dutch participant in the reality television series Groeten uit de rimboe, in which Dutch and Belgian families immerse themselves in the daily life of the world's ,most primitive tribes'. Some time afterwards, their hosts pay a return visit to experience life in Europe, screened on television in the sequel Groeten terug. The two series have been subject to heated debate in the Dutch media, having been both lauded as unpretentious entertainment and condemned as unethical ,popular anthropology'. The attention of Myrna Eindhoven, Laurens Bakker and Gerard Persoon was first drawn to the series when a family was sent to Mentawai, where all three have done fieldwork. While they themselves are critical of the unashamed focus on entertainment, they became intrigued by the reactions of other anthropologists to the series. Here they connect this case from the Netherlands to the ongoing debate on ,popular anthropology' in ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, triggered by the UK series Tribe. Dutch anthropologists have mostly dismissed the series as ,not anthropology', criticizing it as exploitative and as ethnocentric. But do anthropologists have the authority to define ,popular anthropology'? How do we come to terms with blatant commercialization of our fieldwork sites, and their conversion into exotic locations for popular entertainment? Back cover NATION-BUILDING IN EAST TIMOR East Timor celebrates its Independence Day on 20 May each year. The day forms the backdrop for the largest annual encounter between the political centre and the periphery. In this photo, an elder (katuas) member of Fretilin, the largest political party, blends traditional and modern at the Independence Day celebrations in the capital, Dili, in 2005. As an exemplar of the United Nations' capacity for ,nation-building', the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste (or ,East Timor' as it is more popularly known) developed into something of a ,poster boy' for the United Nations from the day it became a sovereign nation on 20 May 2002. But in April 2006, some months after the last remaining UN staff had left, violence in the streets of the capital began to undermine social and political stability, resulting in the overthrow of prime minister Mari Alkatiri. Under the more engaged leadership of his successor, José Ramos-Horta, the threat of unrest has abated to some extent. Nevertheless, the country faces an array of serious problems , political, social and economic. In his article in this issue, David Hicks draws on his anthropological fieldwork to highlight the widening gap between the ,centre' and the ,periphery'. Hicks argues that the former embodies the institutions and quasi-Western values professed by the national leaders in Dili, while the latter centres around the traditional, largely indigenous values of the country's local communities, who comprise the overwhelming majority of the population. Although already latent before the United Nations left, this widening divergence in values is eroding the political integrity of the first nation-state to become a member of the United Nations in the 21st century, and if it continues to grow, will call into question the ability of the United Nations to ,manufacture' nation-states. Anthropology has an important role to play in highlighting and analysing the implications of grassroots discrepancies between local populations and political elites. More than this, it has a role to play in confronting the international community with the ethical and other consequences of its increasingly regular interventions in third countries. [source]