It can come as no surprise that the ethnic makeup of the American population is rapidly changing. That there are political repercussions from these changes is also self-evident. How the changes can, must, and should alter our very understanding of democracy, though, may not be obvious. Political theorist John Burke addresses these issues by offering a “mestizo” theory of democracy and tracing its implications for public policy. The challenge before the United States in the coming century, Burke posits, will be to articulate a politics that neither renders cultures utterly autonomous from each other nor culminates in their homogeneous assimilation. Fortuitously or ironically, the way to do this comes from the very culture that is now necessitating the change. Mestizo is a term from the Mexican socio-political experience. It means “mixture” and implies a particular kind of mixture that has resulted in a blend of indigenous, African, and Spanish genes and cultures in Latin America. This mixture is not a “melting pot” experience, where all eventually become assimilated; rather, it is a mixture in which the influences of the different cultures remain identifiable but not static. They all evolve through interaction with the others, and the resulting larger culture also evolves as the parts do. Mestizaje (the collective noun form) is thus process more than condition. John Burke analyzes both American democratic theory and multiculturalism within political theology to develop a model for cultivating a democratic political community that can deal constructively with its cultural diversity. He applies this new model to a number of important policy issues: official language(s), voting and participation, equal employment opportunity, housing, and free trade. He then presents an intensive case study, based on a parish “multicultural committee” and choir in which he has been a participant, to show how the “engaged dialogue” of mestizaje might work and what pitfalls await it. Burke concludes that in the United States we are becoming mestizo whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. By embracing the communitarian but non-assimilationist stance of intentional mestizaje, we can forge a future together that will be not only greater than the sum of its parts but also freer and more just than its past.

This book analyzes how national and international dancers contributed to developing Mexico's cultural politics and notions of the nation at different historical moments. It emphasizes how dancers and other moving bodies resisted and reproduced racial and social hierarchies stemming from colonial Mexico (1521-1821). Relying on extensive archival research, choreography as an analytical methodology, and theories of race, dance, and performance studies, author Jose Reynoso examines how dance and other forms of embodiment participated in Mexico's formation after the Mexican War of Independence (1821-1876), the Porfirian dictatorship (1876-1911), and postrevolutionary Mexico (1919-1940). In so doing, the book analyzes how underlying colonial logics continued to influence relationships amongst dancers, other artists, government officials, critics, and audiences of different backgrounds as they refashioned their racial, social, cultural, and national identities. The book proposes and develops two main concepts that explore these mutually formative interactions among such diverse people: embodied mestizo modernisms and transnational nationalisms. 'Embodied mestizo modernisms' refers to combinations of indigenous, folkloric, ballet, and modern dance practices in works choreographed by national and international dancers with different racial and social backgrounds. The book contends that these mestizo modernist dance practices challenged assumptions about racial neutrality with which whiteness historically established its ostensible supremacy in constructing Mexico's 'transnational nationalisms'. This argument holds that notions of the nation-state and national identities are not produced exclusively by a nation's natives but also by historical transnational forces and (dancing) bodies whose influences shape local politics, economic interests, and artistic practices.

The political history of Thailand since the overthrow of absolute monarchy in 1932 has conventionally been interpreted as a long series of popular struggles for representative democracy and against military authoritarian rule. Yoshinori Nishizaki argues that this history can be better understood as one of struggles by elite political families for and against "dynastic democracy". Drawing extensively on Thai-language primary sources, including assets documents and cremation volumes for deceased politicians and their kin, Nishizaki traces the intricate blood and marriage connections among Thailand's political families. Dynastic Democracy fleshes out a widely acknowledged yet heretofore empirically unsubstantiated facet of Thai political history--that in Thai politics, family matters.

This volume presents political phenomenology as a new specialty in western philosophical and political thought that is post-classical, post-Machiavellian, and post-behavioral. It draws on history and sets the agenda for future explorations of political issues. It discloses crossroads between ethics and politics and explores border-crossing issues. All the essays in this volume challenge existing ideas of politics significantly. As such they open new ways for further explorations BY future generations of phenomenologists and non-phenomenologists alike. Moreover, the comprehensive chronological bibliography is unprecedented and provides not only an excellent picture of what phenomenologists have already done but also a guide for the future.

Offering fresh and exciting approaches to solving global problems, this book creatively views challenging social issues through the lens of racial and ethnic psychology. As the demographic makeup of the American population continues to evolve, understanding and addressing the psychological needs of ethnic minorities in the United States becomes more important to the overall health and well-being of society. This three-volume set is the first publication to explicitly tackle social issues from the perspective of racial and ethnic psychology. It uniquely presents racial and ethnic psychological perspectives on topics such as media, criminal justice, racism, climate change, gender bias, and health and mental health disparities. Volume one introduces readers to the basic scientific concepts of racial and ethnic minority psychology and then examines the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. It also addresses how race and ethnicity affect communication styles, leadership styles, and media. The second volume discusses the experiences of individuals within racial and ethnic minorities, including overt racism, covert racism, and colonialism, and addresses how ethnic minority psychology plays a role in our educational system, poverty, global climate change, and sustainability. The third volume covers ethics in health and research, considers the causes of health and mental health disparities, and identifies diversity initiatives that can improve the health and well-being of all citizens, not just racial and ethnic minority citizens.

Crossroads! Intersections physical and/or metaphorical demand processes of consideration, determination, decision and commitment. Stasis is no longer an option where convergence is poised before the unknown. Where categories such as gender, culture, ethnicity, socio-economic status, philosophy and religion clash, the multivariate process can reach such complexity that literary, sociological and psychological tools can have differing interpretations. Real-life intersections range from the mundane (choosing among food items on a menu according to taste preferences) to survival-determinants (evaluating the efficacy of various medical procedures). But such intersections are at the two ends of a very long continuum that takes in issues of form/function, and traditional vs.modern. For example, Home may be defined both as a physical place and/or a mental construct. In more esoteric contexts, artists chiefly known for visual production, representing their ideas with color and form, not infrequently cross media to paint with words. Philosophy, religion, art and literature cross paths via symbols and other visual and linguistic constructs. Writers deal with how and where their own or their characters multiple identities intersect. The Hispanic world is an extraordinarily vivid place to explore these crossroads. This collection of essays addresses a multitude of crossroads in numerous Hispanic contexts across the intersections of time & space/tradition & modernity. The contexts are wide-ranging; e.g., the visual, architectural: how Spains age-old oenological tradition meets modern technology, how the vestiges of long-term dictatorship lurk in the spaces of Spains democracy; and how space/architecture, and art/poetry cross in Latin America. Painters Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlos productions cross the visual to the written; and magical realism products of the twentieth century Latin American artistic movement defy nature, science, time and space.

Scholarship on the role of religion in American public life has taken on a new urgency in the increasingly contentious wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. This volume brings together an impressive group of scholars to build on past work and broaden the scope of this crucial inquiry in two respects: by exploring aspects of the religion-politics nexus in the United States that have been neglected in the past, and by examining traditional questions concerning the religious tincture of American political discourse in provocative new ways. Essays include examinations of religious rhetoric in American political and cultural discourse after September 11th, the impact of religious ideas on environmental ethics, religion and American law beyond the First Amendment, religious responses to questions of gay and lesbian rights, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and issues of free speech and public space in Utah, and the role of religious institutions and ideas on the political priorities of African-American and Latino communities. In addition, Religion, Politics, and American Identity includes introductory and concluding essays by leading scholars in the field of religion and politics that assess present and future directions for study.

Sovereign Acts explores how artists, activists, and audiences performed and interpreted sovereignty struggles in the Panama Canal Zone, from the Canal Zone’s inception in 1903 to its dissolution in 1999. In popular entertainments and patriotic pageants, opera concerts and national theatre, white U.S. citizens, West Indian laborers, and Panamanian artists and activists used performance as a way to assert their right to the Canal Zone and challenge the Zone’s sovereignty, laying claim to the Zone’s physical space and imagined terrain. By demonstrating the place of performance in the U.S. Empire’s legal landscape, Katherine A. Zien transforms our understanding of U.S. imperialism and its aftermath in the Panama Canal Zone and the larger U.S.-Caribbean world.

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Hwa Yol Jung explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. The essays in this volume examine diverse issues, encompassing globalization, cosmopolitanism, public philosophy, political ecology, ecocriticism, ethics of encounter, and aesthetics of caring. They examine the philosophical traditions of phenomenology of Hursserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger; the dialogism of Mikhail Bakhtin; the philosophy of mestizaje literature; and Asian philosophical traditions. This rich comparative and cross-cultural investigation of philosophy and political theory demonstrates the importance of cultural and cross-cultural understanding in our reading of philosophical texts, exploring how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm and political theory. This volume honors the scholarship and philosophy of Hwa Yol Jung, who has been a pioneer in the field of comparative political theory, cross-cultural philosophy, and interdisciplinary scholarship. In one of his earliest publications, The Crisis of Political Understanding (1979), Jung described the urgency and necessity of breakthrough in political thinking as a crisis, and he followed up on this issue for his half century of scholarship by introducing Asian philosophy and political thought to Western scholarship, demonstrating the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical thinking. In his most recent publications, Jung refers to this possibility as 'transversality' or 'trans(uni)versality,' a concept which should replace the outmoded Eurocentric universality of modernist philosophy. Jung expounds that in 'transversality,' 'differences are negotiated and compromised rather than effaced and absorbed into sameness.' This volume is a testimony to the very possibility of transversality in our scholarship and thinking.