Social Research articles from March 2003

Social Research archives from March 2003

Editor's introduction.(Editorial)
March 22, 2003... At a time in our own history, when those responsible for governing this country have divided the world into those who are with us and those who are not, into friend or foe, the stage has been all too perfectly set for a virulent campaign of...

The symbolism of black and white babies in the myth of parental impression.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2003... AN ANCIENT and enduring cross-cultural mythology explores what the texts generally perceive as a paradox: the birth of white offspring to black parents, or black offspring to white parents. This mythology in the Hebrew Bible is limited to...

The predicament of Facial knowledge: government studies of the Freedmen during the U.S. Civil War.
March 22, 2003... THE nation is suddenly called to preside at the birth of a race. Such a crisis--'a nation born in a day'--devolves upon rulers and people grave responsibilities" (BEL, 1862: 1). These dramatic lines, proclaiming another "primal scene" in...

The dalit in India.(caste and social class )
March 22, 2003... Dalit: The Word and the Sentiment I search for God, whom should I hear? I made stone temples, carved God out of stone But priests are like stone, They imprison God. Whom shall I hear? We were born Untouchables Because of our...

The Roma: between a myth and the future *.
March 22, 2003... Who are the Roma? An Identity in the making. UNTIL the early 1990s, few people knew the meaning of the term "Roma," but almost everybody had opinions about the "Gypsies." In the last years, however, the term "Roma," which is the...

"Men" who would be kings: celibacy, emasculation, and the re-production of hijras in contemporary Indian politics *.(gender identity, social stigma, and political corruption)
March 22, 2003... IT was a hot summer afternoon in the south Indian city of Secunderabad, where I did my fieldwork among hijras, better known as India's "third sex" (Nanda, 1999) or "eunuch-transvestites" (Vyas and Shingala, 1987). I was sitting near the...

The birth of the pariah: Jews, Christian dualism, and social science *.
March 22, 2003... WE SHOULD be surprised to discover Jews embraced by the word "pariah." A term plucked from the caste systems of the Asian subcontinent, its application to a Western and Near Eastern minority might seem to imply that all oppressed are oppressed...

An ultimate pariah? Jewish social attitudes toward Jewish lepers in Medieval Western Europe *.
March 22, 2003... Preface In his essay "The Politics of Culture: Ethnicity and Nationalism," Anthony D. Smith makes the following remark: "But, in fact, many ethnie, usually of the demotic ('vertical') variety, have survived for long periods under foreign...

Burakumin at the end of history.(history of social class in Japan)
March 22, 2003... Prologue DURING the seventeenth century, Japan's social order took shape in the form of a hereditary four-status order of--in descending socioethical rank--warrior-rulers (samurai), peasants, artisans, and merchants. There were...

Are Kurds a pariah minority? *.
March 22, 2003... KURDS invariably greet visitors to "Kurdistan" with a cup of sweet tea and the complaint that they are "the largest people without a nation." They are right. Approximately 24 million Kurds are spread across Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iran, and the...