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Political Organization (political + organization)
Selected AbstractsNAFTA-ization: Regionalization and Domestic Political Adjustment in the North American Economic AreaJCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 1 2009MARK ASPINWALL Europeanization is an example of initial bargains between states leading to ongoing political adjustment within the states. In this article I apply the concept to NAFTA and look at two of its member states, finding that despite the low level of institutionalization, NAFTA has set in motion new forms of political organization and behaviour, and new demands for political action. This is especially marked in Mexico, and in certain sectors. It is also clearly visible in the changing patterns of cross-border bureaucratic communication. The main conclusions are that: (1) even in a lightly institutionalized regional trade agreement, the institutional, legal and civil society capacity of less-developed members is strengthened; (2) despite the absence of a formal process of policy or institutional development and the lack of legislative instruments, NAFTA has begun a hidden process of domestic adjustment in technical and specialized areas; and (3) like the EU, pressures to expand and strengthen NAFTA have emerged as a result of the initial agreement as well as extraneous factors. These conclusions may offer lessons to the study and practice of regional organizations elsewhere. [source] Lay-Religious Associations, Urban Identities, and Urban Space in Eighteenth-Century MilanJOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2004David Garrioch Religious life was integral to the social and political organization of eighteenth-century Milan. The composition and character of lay-religious activities reflect not only official hierarchies within the city but also unofficial bonds and identities, such as those of neighbourhood. They reveal the multiple identities of neighbourhood, parish, trade and family, but equally the tensions between collective forms of piety and the new religious values and aesthetic adopted by the Milanese elites during the late Enlightenment. [source] Settlement Dynamics and Social Organization in Eastern Iberia during the Iron Age (Eighth,Second Centuries BC)OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 3 2003Ignacio Grau Mira Summary. This paper explores the formation of urban societies in the eastern Iberian Peninsula. From the Early Iberian Iron Age onwards it is possible to trace the emergence of a hierarchical settlement pattern in which larger settlements carried out the most important functions of control and exploitation of the resources in this territory, extending their authority over several small farming villages. This settlement pattern is associated with the complex socio-economic structures and political organization of Iberian aristocracies. In this paper we will focus on the development of the Iberians' active role in exchanging goods with oriental traders; it is this contact which subsequently produces social change in the Iron Age period. [source] Genetic continuity after the collapse of the Wari empire: Mitochondrial DNA profiles from Wari and post-Wari populations in the ancient AndesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Brian M. Kemp Abstract The Wari empire flourished in the central, highland Peruvian Andes from AD 600,1000, and although the events that led to its demise are unknown, archaeological evidence indicates that Wari control waned at the end of the first millennium. Here, we test the hypothesis that, despite the major shift in social and political organization at the fall of the Wari empire, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) composition of populations from the Ayacucho Basin, the former imperial heartland of the empire, remained essentially unchanged. Results show that mtDNA haplogroup frequencies among the Wari and post-Wari groups differ, but the difference is not statistically significant (,2 = 5.886, df = 3, P = 0.1172). This is the first study in the Andes to use haplotypic data to evaluate the observed genetic distance between two temporally distinct prehispanic populations (FST = 0.029) against modeled expectations of four possible evolutionary scenarios. None of these simulations allowed the rejection of continuity. In total, at both the haplogroup and haplotype levels these data do not allow us to reject the hypothesis that post-Wari individuals sampled in this study are the maternal descendants of those sampled from the Wari era site of Conchopata. However, genetic homogeneity in the mitochondrial gene pool, as seen in the late prehispanic southern Andes, may also characterize our study region. But, prior to this research, this was unknown. If our new data show mtDNA homogeneity, then this could limit the detection of female migration if, in fact, it occurred. Nonetheless, the novel mtDNA data presented here currently do not support the hypothesis that there was an influx of genetically distinct females into the former Wari heartland after the Wari collapse. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 22, Number 5.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 5 2006October 200 Front and back cover caption, volume 22 issue 5 Front cover Kayapo men of Brazilian Amazonia dance at a meeting of all Kayapo villages held in March 2006 with the aim of forging a united movement against the encroachment of agribusiness and large-scale development projects into the Xingú river valley. Up to the time of this meeting the widely dispersed Kayapo communities had never joined together as a single political organization under a common leadership. That they were able to do so at this meeting owed much to their ability to draw upon their shared tradition of collective ritual dance performances, which serve as the principal means of reproducing the social and political structures of their separate villages. At the meeting, held at the Kayapo village of Piaraçu on the Xingú, members of rival communities with mutually suspicious leaders joined in dances such as this one, drawn from the ritual for war, that expressed their solidarity in opposition to the common external threat. For the general audience, periodic interludes of dancing also provided a dramatic way of showing solidarity with one another and jointly expressing support for the orators, who were mostly leaders of the different communities. The meeting closed with a new ritual created for the occasion that began with a collective dance and culminated in a rite symbolizing the new level of common chiefly authority and leadership, encompassing Kayapo society as a whole, that had been created at the meeting. Back cover COMPETITIVE HUMANITARIANISM The back cover of this issue shows a detail from a map of ,Humanitarian actors involved in tsunami-related activities in Sri Lanka'. This excerpt lists but a few dozen of the many hundreds of agencies competing to provide relief in the wake of the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in December 2004. In most disasters, a major problem facing relief agencies is a lack of resources. In the case of the 2004 tsunami, however, agencies were forced into competition with each other for effective distribution of an embarrassment of riches. Yet this distribution had to be in line with international standards, and needed to meet the requirements of those who had donated to the various appeals in other parts of the world and had specific ideas of what constituted relief. The result was an over-concentration on the visible and the photogenic rather than the arguably more important work of rebuilding institutions and social networks. As well as needing to meet international standards, relief agencies were subject to the bureaucratic requirements that they should expend their resources in an accountable fashion. Their slow reaction opened the way for a plethora of small and inexperienced organizations (and individuals) to enter the relief business. The aid they dispensed was often poorly directed and technically inferior, but the visibility of their operations prompted an easy criticism of the more ponderous activities of the larger relief organisations. While ready availability of resources marked out the tsunami relief effort from most other disasters, what seems to characterize aid operations in the wake of such disasters is a high degree of competition between relief agencies, and a continual call for a greater degree of co-ordination between relief organizations. Yet competitive pressures mean that co-ordination is unlikely to be attainable over more than the short term. From an anthropological point of view the following paradox is worthy of study: while philanthropy can be seen as the antithesis of self-interest, philanthropic organisations are inherently part of a self-interested, market-orientated social order. What starts out as a ,free gift' from the public of Europe, Asia or elsewhere ends up as a commodity in the marketplace of competitive humanitarianism. [source] Associational links with home among Zimbabweans in the UK: reflections on long-distance nationalismsGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 2 2009JOANN MCGREGOR Abstract In this article, I provide an overview of the character of associations formed in Britain by Zimbabweans in the context of the mass exodus that gathered pace from the late 1990s. I discuss the politicization of the Zimbabwe diaspora, which infuses many aspects of associational life beyond specifically political organizations, and also emphasize the importance of Zimbabwean church fellowships. I offer an historical explanation for the strength of nationalism expressed in the diaspora and the absence of ,translocal' associations characteristic of other African diaspora groups, such as hometown associations, and explore reasons why burial societies, which have been centrally important for Zimbabwean migrants in other periods and contexts, are less prevalent in Britain. I build my argument on an historical discussion of continuities and changes in the associational forms characteristic of labour migrancy and urbanization within the southern African region. I emphasize the legacies of a strong segregationist settler state, the mobilizations and international solidarities of the protracted struggle for independence, the Christianization of elite African culture in Zimbabwe's cities, and the international politics of the recent multifaceted crisis. My discussion of the associational expression of ,long distance nationalisms' is based on interviews conducted in 2004,5, participation in diaspora meetings and events, and reading of diaspora media and websites. In the article I aim to highlight the specific social histories of association and the political context of diaspora formation, which are essential for understanding the nature of institutions connecting with home, and ideas about home itself. [source] Moral Reasoning Effects on Political ParticipationPOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2000Peter Muhlberger In this study, respondents who agreed to participate in a computer-administered interview were presented with information and questions about public interest groups, followed by the Defining Issues Test of moral reasoning (DIT). Respondents with high DIT scores stressed morally central over morally peripheral considerations in deciding whether to participate in public interest groups. Less sophisticated reasoners showed the opposite pattern. Morally central considerations also had a much greater impact on the probability that sophisticated respondents would attempt to participate in public interest groups after completing the interview. The analysis included controls for potential confounding variables such as cognitive ability, education, prior political participation, and gender. The findings imply motivational differences between advantaged and disadvantaged population groups. Such differences may help to account for the differing strategies and successes of political organizations mobilizing these groups. [source] The Marriage of Politics and MarketingPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2001Jennifer Lees-Marshment Research into major party behaviour in Britain from a political marketing perspective finds that political marketing is broad in scope and offers fresh analytical tools to explain how political organizations behave. It is nevertheless a marriage between political science and marketing. It borrows the core marketing concepts of product, sales and market-orientation, and techniques such as market intelligence, and adapts them to suit traditional tenets of political science to produce an integrated theoretical framework. A party that takes a product-orientation argues for what it stands for and believes in. A Sales-Orientated party focuses on selling its argument and product to voters. A Market-Orientated party designs its behaviour to provide voter satisfaction. Exploring these three orientations demonstrates that political marketing can be applied to a wide range of behaviour and suggests its potential to be applied to several areas of political studies. [source] Toronto's gay village (1969,1982): plotting the politics of gay identityTHE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 1 2006Catherine Jean Nash Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, a loose association of gay social spaces consolidated into what is now known as the ,gay village' in the Church and Wellesley street areas in downtown Toronto. Scholars argue that, while these residential and commercial districts evolved prior to the formation of organized gay political organizations, they suggest that the emergence of these districts as political and commercial districts was a direct result of deliberate local gay activism. I argue here that contrary to this literature and for much of its history, the gay movement was largely opposed to the existence of specifically gay-identified spaces, particularly those operated by both heterosexual and homosexual businesspersons. Toronto's gay activists, using different ideological frameworks, struggled to constitute a homosexual identity that stood mainly in opposition to the so-called ,ghetto gay' and to construct alternative spaces that were seen as more appropriate to the formation of a properly politicized homosexual identity. Nevertheless, by the early 1980s, as the gay village continued to thrive and as the players in gay movement politics changed, the gay ghetto became the gay village and was celebrated as a location of political strength and social necessity. This article explores that material and symbolic transformation. Entre les années 60 en retard et le début des années 80, une association lâche des espaces sociaux gais consolidés dans ce qui est maintenant connu comme ,village gai ,dans l'église et la région de rues de Wellesley dedans Toronto du centre. Les disciples discutent cela tandis que ces résidentiel et commercial les zones ont évolué avant la formation de politique gai organisé des organismes, ils proposent que l'apparition de ces zones comme politique et les zones commerciales étaient un résultat direct d'activisme gai local délibéré. J'argue du fait ici que contraire à cette littérature et pour beaucoup de son histoire, le mouvement gai a été en grande partie opposéà l'existence spécifiquement de gai les espaces identifiés, en particulier ceux ont fonctionné par le hétérosexuel et hommes d'affaires homosexuels. Les activistes gais de Toronto, en utilisant idéologique différent cadres, luttés pour constituer homosexuel d'identité tenu principalement dedans opposition au prétendu ,ghetto gai ,et aux espaces d'alternative de construction cela ont été vus comme plus appropriéà la formation de l'correctement politisée identité homosexuelle. Néanmoins, par le début des années 80, comme village gai suite pour prospérer et pendant que les joueurs dans la politique gaie de mouvement changeaient, le ghetto gai est devenu le village gai et a été célébré comme endroit de politique force et nécessité sociale. Ces article explore ce matériel et symbolique transformation. [source] |