Virtual Library

This article explores conditions under which global norms change. I use a case study in which the original interpretation of an international agreement on intellectual property rights was modified to address demands for improved access to affordable AIDS drugs. Conventional theories that focus on international negotiations cannot fully account for the events in this case. Drawing on the theory of recursivity and insights from the literature on diffusion, I suggest that shifts in global norms occur through reactive diffusion of policies across states. Experiences accumulated in this ongoing process of reinvention eventually lead to a new, globally accepted reinterpretation of the original obligation.

The Olympic Games are increasingly used by non-governmental organizations to demand transnational forms of accountability from public authorities. This article assesses the effectiveness of transnational public opinion surrounding the Beijing 2008 Olympics, when the pressure of Western public opinion was exerted upon the government of the world's most populous non-Western nation to improve its human rights record. Utilizing the concepts of ‘imagined global community’ and ‘transnational public sphere’, it finds that the Olympic Games had helped to call into existence a transnational public that ran up against the obstacle posed by the incomplete formation of supra-national forms of governance. The International Olympic Committee, a non-governmental organization, was a weak substitute. Because of the strong desire of Chinese people to take part in transnational deliberations, the article concludes with optimism about the potential of transnational public spheres that include Chinese people to develop toward more effective forms of transnational governance. But the IOC must strengthen the voice of its non-Western members, and Western interlocutors, including the media, must accept their share of the responsibility for creating the conditions for egalitarian dialogue.

The aim of this paper is to explore some contradictory implications of nationalist projects in post-colonial societies. It examines the extent to which elements of national identity and cultural difference are articulated as forms of control over women and which infringe upon their rights as enfranchised citizens. Despite the extensive literature on nationalism, there are relatively few systematic attempts to analyze women's integration into nationalist projects. The little there is conveys seemingly contradictory messages. Like Jayawardena, those who link the rise of feminist movements to anti-colonial and nationalist struggles note its coincidence with a move towards secularism and a broader concern with social reform. Nationalist aspirations for popular sovereignty stimulate an extension of citizenship rights, clearly benefitting women. Since the emergence of women as citizens is also predicated upon the transformation of institutions and customs that keep them bound to the particularistic traditions of their ethnic and religious communities, the modern state is assumed to intervene as a homogenizing agent which acts as a possible resource for more progressive gender politics. In contrast, others expose state interventions as a sham by drawing attention to the entirely instrumental agenda of nationalist policies that mobilize women when they are needed in the labour force or even at the front, only to return them to domesticity or to subordinate roles in the public sphere when the national emergency is over. The apparent convergence between the interests of men and the definition of national priorities leads some feminists to suggest that the state itself is a direct expression of men's interests.

Celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary in February 2009, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has been the leading and best-known African American civil rights organization in the United States. It has played a major, and at times decisive, role in most of the important developments in the twentieth century civil rights struggle. Drawing on original and previously unpublished scholarship from leading researchers in the United States, Britain, and Europe, this important collection of sixteen original essays offers new and invaluable insights into the work and achievements of the association. The first part of the book offers challenging reappraisals of two of the NAACP's best-known national spokespersons, Walter White and Roy Wilkins. Other essays analyze the association's cultural initiatives and the key role played by its public-relations campaigns in the mid 1950s to counter segregationist propaganda and win over the hearts and minds of American public opinion in the wake of the NAACP's landmark legal victory in Brown v. Board of Education. Others provide thought-provoking accounts of the association's complex and difficult relationship with Martin Luther King, the post-World War II Civil Rights movement, and Black Power radicals of the 1960s. The second part of the collection focuses on the work of the NAACP at state, city, and local levels, examining its grassroots organization throughout the nation from Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit in the North, to California in the West, as well as states across the South including Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. Providing detailed and fascinating information on hitherto little explored aspects of the association's work, these studies complement the previous essays by demonstrating the impact national initiatives had on local activists and analyzing the often-strained relations between the NAACP national office in New York and its regional branches.

Policies that expand the rights of marginalized groups provide an additional level of structural integration, but these changes do not always come with broad social acceptance or recognition. What happens when a legally marginalized group attains increased rights but not full political or social inclusion? In particular, what are the mental health implications of these transitions for impacted groups? We bring together theories of liminal legality and stress process to offer a framework for understanding how expansions in the legal rights of a highly politicized and vulnerable social group can be initially beneficial, but can attenuate due to renewed or new stress events, chronic stressors, and anticipatory stressors. We use the case of Latina/o immigrant youth who transitioned from undocumented legal status to temporarily protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Analyses of representative California statewide survey data from 2007 to 2018, combined with surveys and in-depth interviews with DACA recipients, suggest that without full social and structural inclusion, legal transitions that expand rights will produce short-term psychological benefits that do not hold up over time.

Contrary to current tendencies, the founders of sociology as a discipline regarded the sociology of law as an integral part of social theory. Law and its historical variations were treated by them as a constitutive component of social life. This can be demonstrated especially with regard to Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. It also provides an opportunity to highlight the differences between these authors, not only in methodological but also in substantive terms. In the essay it is shown how both authors treated law in comparative and developmental perspectives and varied in assessing the role of penal law and human rights in the course of history. Connections to the current theoretical debate in Germany are also drawn.

While usually seen in positive terms, transnational mobilization can sometimes hurt movements as well as help them. An examination of the transnational network of organizations supporting civil rights demands in Northern Ireland between 1967 and 1972 suggests that international involvement, not only can exacerbate problems encountered by domestic coalitions, but can also introduce additional obstacles to the effective pursuit of social change. Using a wide range of sources, four types of impediments to positive issue network dynamics are conceptualized and illustrated—structural, organizational, cultural, and ideological. Structurally, the civil rights network brought together groups outside of Northern Ireland that, otherwise, would not have attempted to cooperate because of diametrically opposed positions on domestic issues. In terms of organization, spatial variations in Irish Diaspora and New Left protest limited sustained network activity to a few societies. Weak ties between organizations located in different societies reduced the likelihood of cooperation. Competition for resources led to the formation of rival transnational blocs within the issue network. Cross-societal differences in cultural norms and group identities led to clashes. Interactions across borders exported and amplified ideological tensions already existing on the domestic-level. The findings suggest that political process assumptions regarding the effects of the presence of external allies require qualification.

The Arab Spring is still unfolding, as is the direction of change, and outcomes may be different for violent and nonviolent uprisings. This article focuses on three early cases of the Arab Spring – Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco – to discuss causes and likely outcomes, gender dynamics, prospects for genuine democratization, and the connection between feminist movements and democratization. A comparative and international perspective highlights similarities and differences across the Arab cases and between the Arab Spring and other ‘democracy waves’.

This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics in the context of the Greater Caribbean - the landscapes lying between Surinam and the Chesapeake - in the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers. Because yellow fever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking some populations more severely than others. In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to prevent them.

Providing vivid examples of how sociologists are using sociological tools to make a positive impact on our society, this one-of-a-kind book helps students better understand how their study of sociology can be put to good use in today’s world. Each of the 14 chapters, closely aligned with key topics in sociology courses, is filled with stories from practicing sociologists that help students better understand how their sociology studies can be applied and provides answers to the question, “…but what can I do with a sociology degree?” Discussion questions and suggested additional readings and resources at the end of each chapter give students the opportunity to delve further into the topics covered and carry out full and nuanced discussions, grounded in the “real world” work of public sociologists.