Uprooting Otherness

Uprooting Otherness
Author: Charles E. Clark
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2000
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781575910307

"This book demonstrates how the State attempted to impose literacy on illiterate portions of its population, and how various segments of the population reacted to the subsequent campaign."--BOOK JACKET.

Libraries - Traditions and Innovations

Libraries - Traditions and Innovations
Author: Melanie A. Kimball
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2017-05-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110450844

Many consider libraries to be immutable institutions, deeply entrenched in the past, full of dusty tomes and musty staff. In truth, libraries are and historically have been sites of innovation and disruption. Originally presented at the Library History Seminar XII: Libraries: Traditions and Innovations, this collection of essays offers examples of the enduring and evolving aspects of libraries and librarianship. Whether belonging to a Caliph in 10th-century Spain, built for 19th-century mechanics, or intended for the segregated Southern United States, libraries serve as both a reflection and a contestation of their context. These essays illustrate that libraries are places of turmoil, where real social and cultural controversies are explored and resolved, where invention takes place, and where identities are challenged and defined, reinforcing tradition and commanding innovation.

Russia in Revolution

Russia in Revolution
Author: S. A. Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2017-01-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191054046

The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Historian S. A. Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s, when Stalin simultaneously unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society. Drawing on recent archivally-based scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on the various groups that made up society: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationalities, the army, women and the family, young people, and the Church. In doing so, it provides a fresh way into the big, perennial questions about the Revolution and its consequences: why did the attempt by the tsarist government to implement political reform after the 1905 Revolution fail; why did the First World War bring about the collapse of the tsarist system; why did the attempt to create a democratic system after the February Revolution of 1917 not get off the ground; why did the Bolsheviks succeed in seizing and holding on to power; why did they come out victorious from a punishing civil war; why did the New Economic Policy they introduced in 1921 fail; and why did Stalin come out on top in the power struggle inside the Bolshevik party after Lenin's death in 1924. A final chapter then reflects on the larger significance of 1917 for the history of the twentieth century -- and, for all its terrible flaws, what the promise of the Revolution might mean for us today.

The Charisma of World Revolution

The Charisma of World Revolution
Author: Gleb J. Albert
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2022-12-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 900452777X

What impact did the idea of world revolution and international solidarity have on the Bolshevik rank and file and on early Soviet society at large? This book offers a first social history of early Soviet internationalism based on contemporary sources.

Monarchies and the Great War

Monarchies and the Great War
Author: Matthew Glencross
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018-10-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 331989515X

This volume challenges the traditional view that the First World War represents a pivotal turning point in the long history of monarchy, suggesting the picture is significantly more complex. Using a comparative approach, it explores the diverse roles played by monarchs during the Great War, and how these met the expectations of the monarchic institution in different states at a time of such crisis. Its contributors not only explore less familiar narratives, including the experiences of monarchs in Belgium and Italy, as well as the Austro-Hungarian, Japanese and Ottoman Empires, but also cast fresh light on more familiar accounts. In doing so, this book moves away from the conventional view that monarchy showed itself irrelevant in the Great War, by drawing on new approaches to diplomatic and international history - ones informed by cultural contextualization for instance - while grounding the research behind each chapter in a wide range of contemporary sources The chapters provide an innovative revisiting of the actual role of monarchy at this crucial period in European (indeed, global) history, and are framed by a substantial introductory chapter where the key factors explaining the survival or collapse of dynasties, and of the individuals occupying these thrones, are considered in a wide-ranging set of reflections that highlight the extent of common experiences as well as the differences.

A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism

A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism
Author: Silvio Pons
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 960
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 140083452X

An encyclopedic guide to 20th-century communism around the world The first book of its kind to appear since the end of the Cold War, this indispensable reference provides encyclopedic coverage of communism and its impact throughout the world in the 20th century. With the opening of archives in former communist states, scholars have found new material that has expanded and sometimes altered the understanding of communism as an ideological and political force. A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism brings this scholarship to students, teachers, and scholars in related fields. In more than 400 concise entries, the book explains what communism was, the forms it took, and the enormous role it played in world history from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond. Examines the political, intellectual, and social influences of communism around the globe Features contributions from an international team of 160 scholars Includes more than 400 entries on major topics, such as: Figures: Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Gorbachev Events: Cold War, Prague Spring, Cultural Revolution, Sandinista Revolution Ideas and concepts: Marxism-Leninism, cult of personality, labor Organizations and movements: KGB, Comintern, Gulag, Khmer Rouge Related topics: totalitarianism, nationalism, antifascism, anticommunism, McCarthyism Guides readers to further research through bibliographies, cross-references, and an index

Domestic Service in the Soviet Union

Domestic Service in the Soviet Union
Author: Alissa Klots
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1009467204

This innovative study is the first to explore the evolution and ideological contradictions of domestic service in the Soviet Union.

The Body Soviet

The Body Soviet
Author: Tricia Starks
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2009-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0299229637

In 1918 the People's Commissariat of Public Health began a quest to protect the health of all Soviet citizens, but health became more than a political platform or a tactical decision. The Soviets defined and categorized the world by interpreting political orthodoxy and citizenship in terms of hygiene. The assumed political, social, and cultural benefits of a regulated, healthy lifestyle informed the construction of Soviet institutions and identity. Cleanliness developed into a political statement that extended from domestic maintenance to leisure choices and revealed gender, ethnic, and class prejudices. Dirt denoted the past and poor politics; health and cleanliness signified mental acuity, political orthodoxy, and modernity. Health, though essential to the revolutionary vision and crucial to Soviet plans for utopia, has been neglected by traditional histories caught up in Cold War debates. The Body Soviet recovers this significant aspect of Soviet thought by providing a cross-disciplinary, comparative history of Soviet health programs that draws upon rich sources of health care propaganda, including posters, plays, museum displays, films, and mock trials. The analysis of propaganda makes The Body Soviet more than an institutional history; it is also an insightful critique of the ideologies of the body fabricated by health organizations. "A masterpiece that will thoroughly fascinate and delight readers. Starks's understanding of propaganda and hygiene in the early Soviet state is second to none. She tells the stories of Soviet efforts in this field with tremendous insight and ingenuity, providing a rich picture of Soviet life as it was actually lived."— Elizabeth Wood, author of From Baba to Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia

The People's Professors of Cuba

The People's Professors of Cuba
Author: Kate Moody
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1498557708

The People's Professors: How Cuba Achieved Education for All describes how Cuba managed, in spite of scarce resources, to successfully educate its entire population after the revolution in 1959. It details how illiterate peasants learned to read and write, how the nation’s vision of education was developed, how the national school system was doubled in size, thousands of teachers were educated, and now—how Cuba is entering the realm of digital media and the internet. The people of Cuba can read and write better than the citizens of most countries, including the United States. Moreover, Cubans excel on international measures of math, science, the arts, and healthcare. This book considers Cuba’s schools as well as its integrated systems such as healthcare and community mental health, and makes a case for the principles that education is a human right, and that teaching is the responsibility of everyone.

The Light of Knowledge

The Light of Knowledge
Author: Francis Cody
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0801469023

Since the early 1990s hundreds of thousands of Tamil villagers in southern India have participated in literacy lessons, science demonstrations, and other events designed to transform them into active citizens with access to state power. These efforts to spread enlightenment among the oppressed are part of a movement known as the Arivoli Iyakkam (the Enlightenment Movement), considered to be among the most successful mass literacy movements in recent history. In The Light of Knowledge, Francis Cody’s ethnography of the Arivoli Iyakkam highlights the paradoxes inherent in such movements that seek to emancipate people through literacy when literacy is a power-laden social practice in its own right. The Light of Knowledge is set primarily in the rural district of Pudukkottai in Tamil Nadu, and it is about activism among laboring women from marginalized castes who have been particularly active as learners and volunteers in the movement. In their endeavors to remake the Tamil countryside through literacy activism, workers in the movement found that their own understanding of the politics of writing and Enlightenment was often transformed as they encountered vastly different notions of language and imaginations of social order. Indeed, while activists of the movement successfully mobilized large numbers of rural women, they did so through logics that often pushed against the very Enlightenment rationality they hoped to foster. Offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at an increasingly important area of social and political activism, The Light of Knowledge brings tools of linguistic anthropology to engage with critical social theories of the postcolonial state.