Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Watch a Video about Tessa Morris-Suzuki's To the Diamond Mountain

 

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and author of To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey through China and Korea and Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War (2007).

Listen to an Interview about Michael A. Rinella's Pharmakon

 

Michael A. Rinella holds a PhD in political science from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, SUNY. He is currently an instructor of political theory at Empire State College and is author of Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens.

Two Missing Toddlers, Two Different Media Responses

By Carole Moore

When a two-year-old Florida child named Caylee Anthony disappeared on July 15, 2008, the national press followed the case with relentless devotion. New stories chronicling the investigation into the toddler’s disappearance appeared every day, often based on tidbits gleaned from unnamed sources or Caylee’s family. When the little girl’s remains were discovered not far from her grandparents’ home, no one was surprised: Her mother, Casey, already resided in the local jail. The tragic case drew lots of attention, both from police and the media.

Law enforcement has grown to understand the importance of speed in working disappearances. Although they still have some catching up to do, new laws and a better understanding of these cases has led to better investigations. The police aren’t there yet – but they’re on the right track.

The media has a wide reach and most families of the missing have learned their value. They also use social media, set up websites and network to keep their family members’ names and images in front of the public. But when it comes to the press, there’s still a sense of general neglect and disinterest in the coverage awarded minorities.

Years ago, Lisa Murray’s sister vanished from her Arkansas home. The only hint to her fate can be traced to a ring found in a pawnshop. Jeffrey Lynn Smith, an aspiring gymnast who worked for former President Bill Clinton, has not been seen since Dec. 4, 1985. Although Lynn’s disappearance was reported to police, Murray says no one really exhibited any interest in the 16-year-old until recently. She believes it is because her sister is black.

Certainly almost everyone recognizes Caylee Anthony’s name – how many have the same reaction to Jada Justice? Jada, a two-year-old Indiana toddler, vanished in relative obscurity one year after Caylee Anthony. Although there was some media coverage, Jada’s case didn’t draw the dramatic national press that Caylee’s did. And when a woman finally admitted beating the little girl to death and hiding her body, only a few covered the case.

The woman who murdered Jada was sentenced to life in prison with barely a ripple in the national press. But a news search under Caylee Anthony’s name brings up a dozen recent hits.

The truth is that law enforcement, while not yet batting 1000, has progressed further in their handling of missing persons cases than the media. Until every missing person, regardless of race, social standing or age is sought and covered on the same level, there truly is no justice.

Carole Moore is a former police detective and the management columnist at Law Enforcement Technology. She is the author of The Last Place You’d Look: True Stories of Missing Persons and the People Who Search for Them, which will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in early 2011.

The Governor’s Race and Public Opinion in Alabama

By Cal Clark and Don-Terry Veal

The race for Governor in Alabama pits Republican Robert Bentley, M.D., against Democrat Ron Sparks. Both have significant but not high profile elected political experience, Bentley as a state legislator and Sparks as the state’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries. Both also were given little chance of winning the nomination. Bentley was seen as a minor candidate in a crowded Republican primary that had three major contenders. Yet, he surged at the end to finish second in the initial primary and handily won the ensuing run-off. Sparks initially trailed U.S. Representative Artur Davis, an African American, by a large margin in the Democratic primary, but Davis’s campaign foundered when he unsuccessfully tried to balance his liberal image against appeals to conservative voters and alienated the old Civil Rights leadership. The two candidates are appealing to their ideological and partisan bases. For example, Bentley advocates pro-business policies and is highly critical of the new national healthcare program, while Sparks proposes to expand gambling to augment state revenues, especially for education. Public opinion polls indicate that Bentley is ahead by a decisive margin of 20 percentage points or so. While it is not surprising that a Republican would be ahead in Alabama this year, the size of the margin is at least a little startling given the rancor in the Republican primary and the facts that Sparks won re-election as Agricultural Commissioner in 2006 with 59% of the vote and that gubernatorial elections in Alabama over the last two decades have generally been quite competitive.

The campaign is interesting in several respects concerning the basic findings in our new book on Public Opinion in Alabama. First, the orthodox strategies of the two candidates are at least a little inconstant with a central conclusion that Alabamians, despite their reputation for strong conservatism, hold a combination of conservative and liberal attitudes. For example, Alabamians want more government services in a variety of areas but are quite resistant to general tax increases and support both prayer and sex education in public schools. A similar situation, incidentally, exists at the national level. Ordinarily, this might suggest that ideologically polarized parties and political leaders are forcing citizens to choose between two alternatives that are both somewhat out of line with popular preferences. In this election year, though, there is a least some evidence that Alabama may be undergoing a “conservative shift.” Second, there are some strong advocates of governmental reform in Alabama, such as replacing the 1901 Constitution. They are opposed, however, by both political conservatives and by many who benefit from the old order. Our data show that a majority of Alabamans support reform but that not many have strong attitudes in either direction. Initially in 2010, reform supporters were seen as the leaders in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, but both the ultimate winners (Bentley and Sparks) are generally seen as comfortable with the status quo.

Cal Clark is professor of political science and the director of the MPA Program at Auburn University, Don-Terry Veal is director of Auburn University's Center for Governmental Services, and they both are co-authors of Public Opinion in Alabama: Looking Beyond the Stereotypes.

Playing Politics with Football: Postscript to the 2010 World Cup

By Christos Kassimeris

There is arguably no place for politics in sport, yet football is no ordinary game. When contemplating the intricate relationship between national pride and the performance of eleven men on a football pitch, some may not hesitate playing politics with football. The recent World Cup in South Africa ended with the national football team of Spain winning the precious trophy. Adding a different dimension to Spain’s remarkable success, however, was not so much the performance of its players as their ethnic background. Spaniards they all were, no doubt, but the staring XI on the day of the final comprised seven home-grown Catalans, six playing their football for FC Barcelona and one player coming from the ranks of their local rivals RCD Espanyol. Catalonia’s finest were not only present, but also secured the trophy for the winning goal came from a pair of Catalan legs. The composition of Spain’s football team deserves perhaps little attention when considered alone. What is certainly worth mentioning is that the day before the final more than a million Catalans demonstrated in Barcelona claiming for greater autonomy, expressing in their own way their opposition to the Spanish constitutional court declaring the day before that Catalonia would not be recognized as a nation. Had it been an independent state, Catalonia would be extremely successful in football. Equally political was the decision of President Nicolas Sarkozy to order an investigation into the appalling performance of the French national football team, as was that of President Goodluck Jonathan who suspended Nigeria’s football team from all international competitions for the very same reason. The decision of the two statesmen to intervene in football matters triggered an immediate response from FIFA President Joseph Blatter who condemned government interference in the running of the national football associations and even threatened to ban the two nations from international football. FIFA’s statutes leave no room for political interference, thus safeguarding football’s culture and overall appeal.

Indeed, football culture can be colorful, ritualistic and loud, given the socio-political qualities that characterize the game. It is no surprise, therefore, that every football competition somehow always reflects the host’s local traditions and customs. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa was no exception in that the extraordinary trumpets that are vuvuzelas became the focal point of the tournament. Made from a kudu horn, the use of vuvuzelas inside South Africa’s stadia was apparently obstructing communication between players and coaches, just as they seem to have irritated fans supporting non-African national teams and commentators alike. Yet vuvuzelas have long been used during football matches in South Africa and have become part of the local football culture, thus encouraging Joseph Blatter to disregard any claims for banning the noisy instrument. European football’s governing body, nevertheless, recently decided to ban vuvuzelas from UEFA competitions for they “would completely change the atmosphere, drowning supporter emotions and detracting from the experience of the game.” The risk of hooligans making use of vuvuzelas as a weapon was also noted, therefore, the health and safety of spectators was seriously taken into account, one would assume. If truth be told, the sheer loudness of vuvuzelas might have discouraged potential sponsors from contributing financially to competitions better known for generating billions of Euros.

Christos Kassimeris is assistant professor in political science at European University Cyprus in Nicosia, the editor of Anti-Racism in European Football: Fair Play for All and the author of European Football in Black and White: Tackling Racism in Football and the forthcoming Football Comes Home: Symbolic Identities in European Sport.

The Politics of Science Fiction TV

By Leslie Dale Feldman

The connection of science fiction to political themes may seem current (i.e., Lost) but it has antecedents in classic television of the 1950s and 1960s, including in the classic television show the Twilight Zone in which space aliens try to enslave people to use them as ingredients in soup and where the nuclear threat of the Cold War forced the people of Earth to board spaceships to other planets. The television series Lost began when the head of ABC wanted a story based on a combination of the movie Cast Away, The Lord of the Flies and Gilligan’s Island. Oddly enough, there was an ABC show in 1969 called The New People the first episode of which was written by Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone, about college students who were stranded on an island after a plane crash.

In my book, Spaceships and Politics: The Political Theory of Rod Serling, the political themes, ideas and motifs behind the classic show The Twilight Zone are highlighted and fantasy is mixed with politics. While Lost features characters with the names of political philosophers (i.e., Locke, Rousseau, Hume and Burke) Spaceships and Politics attempts to demonstrate the political ideas of such philosophers in the Twilight Zone, especially in the shows written by Rod Serling.

Another connection with Twilight Zone to Lost is Serling’s fascinaton with airplanes, which appear in several of the shows. Serling was trained as a paratrooper in WWII and several of the Twilight Zone shows deal with airplanes including an airplane that is used as a time machine (the Odyssey of Flight 33) a mysterious airplane that disappears (The Arrival) and an Air Force plane crash (King Nine will Not Return). In The Twilight Zone the plane is frequently used as a vehicle to take people to fantasy worlds where identity is in flux.

So, while sci-fi/fantasy mixed with political ideas may seem like a new idea (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica) this connection can be seen in such sci-fi and fantasy classics as Star Trek, Gulliver’s Travels, George Orwell’s 1984 and in the work of Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, and a Twilight Zone episode called I Sing the Body Electric—which is from the title of a poem by Walt Whitman about the industrial revolution--in which a man hires a nanny who is a robot) in addition to Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone which used science fiction to highlight political ideas such as dictatorship, freedom and war. So it’s not surprising Rod Serling has a connection to Lost considering they are both of the same genre.

Leslie Dale Feldman is professor of political science at Hofstra University and the author of Spaceships and Politics: The Political Theory of Rod Serling.

Civil Rights Photojournalist Named as FBI Spy

By Ivan Greenberg

The recent revelation by the Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis that prominent civil rights photojournalist Ernest C. Withers worked for the FBI as a paid informer should not come as a complete surprise. During the 1960s and early 1970s, the FBI spied widely on African-American leaders, organizations, and community life. Withers was one of at least several thousand African-Americans recruited to spy for the government and he circulated within the highest levels of black activism, reporting to the FBI as he also took some of the best pictures of key actors. Withers covered both civil rights and black power groups, getting close to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as the Invaders, a Black Panther-styled organization in Memphis.

There has been wide comment on the Withers case. Most civil rights leaders from the 1960s condemned him and felt betrayed. I would like to address several issues raised by Withers’ collaboration. First, the case offers further evidence of the FBI’s extraordinary animus toward the civil rights movement and efforts for racial justice. Under the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the section devoted to “black nationalist/hate” carried out some of the most disruptive acts executed in this period to impede social mobilization. There is little doubt that Withers provided information that aided these efforts. The declassified FBI files document he reported on both people and protest and his photographs helped the FBI identify new activists to investigate. He even acted as a spy during King’s funeral in Atlanta by providing intelligence on the on-going Memphis sanitation strike.

While Withers’ photography, which is collected in several books, is recognized as an important visual source for documenting the past, it seems pertinent to ask how his collaboration influenced his vision as a photographer. How was the focus of his lens shaped, if at all, by police employment? When the new Withers Museum opens next month, it will be possible for the public to study the photography and to consider its importance for political intelligence purposes.

The Withers case also raises the issue of state interference with an independent media. In 1976, the U.S. Senate Church Committee documented several ways the FBI tried to manipulate television, newspapers, and radio. While the number of known cases is not large, the Bureau planted false information on political subjects to “friendly” media contacts. In other instances, the FBI refused to cooperate with reporters critical of the Bureau or its Director and in select cases targeted them for hostile surveillance. Under J. Edgar Hoover, agents had posed falsely as reporters. The recruitment of working journalists, like Withers, provided another type of access, which the government exploited to pursue its own conservative political agenda.

Ivan Greenberg is the author of <em>The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil Liberties since 1965.

The Life and Times of Francis Cabot Lowell: 1775-1817

By Chaim M. Rosenberg

Despite the Declaration of Independence, the United States continued for many years to rely on manufactured goods from abroad. As a young merchant based in Boston, Francis Cabot Lowell imported silks from China, cotton textiles from India, and wines, sherry and brandy from Europe. Lowell and his associates built the imposing India Wharf and its warehouses to handle the expanding trade with the Orient. The French Revolution followed by wars at sea and on the Continent, as well as the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812 greatly disrupted international trade, making the United States hostage to conflicts abroad. Analyzing these events, Francis Cabot Lowell concluded that the United States needed to free itself of its dependence on foreign goods by becoming a manufacturing nation, using American entrepreneurship and finance, the power of its fast-flowing rivers, its own raw materials and the skills of its workforce.

During a trip to Great Britain from 1810 to 1812, Francis Cabot Lowell saw first-hand the tremendous changes brought about by the ingenious water-powered spinning and weaving machines. He resolved to bring the industrial revolution to America, starting with the manufacture of textiles using cotton grown in the American South. On his return to Boston he raised the capital, erected a dam, built a factory and designed the machinery to suit the conditions at home. By 1814 the Boston Manufacturing Company on the Charles River at Waltham started to turn out cotton fabrics as good and as cheap as imports. The Boston Manufacturing Company was efficient enough to withstand the dumping of British textiles on the American market at the end of the War of 1812.

Francis Cabot Lowell died in 1817 at age forty-two and did not live long enough to see his dream fulfilled. His associates expanded the manufacture of textiles to the powerful Merrimac River. The great industrial town of Lowell (named in honor of Francis Cabot Lowell) was based on the Waltham model. Lowell's factory system for cotton textiles was applied to shoes, metalware and all manner of manufactured goods. Within forty years New England moved from trade to domestic manufacture. By the close of the nineteenth century, the factory system had spread to the South and the West and America had become the manufacturing colossus of the world. Offering higher salaries, these efficient factories attracted millions of immigrants seeking a better life in America.

America began to shed its factories after World War II as its lead in textiles and footwear was rapidly eroded by low-wage factories abroad. By the close of the 20th century these once great American industries were moribund. The decay of America's industrial base has extended to automobiles, refrigerators, radios, television sets and even electronics. We have become a vast service economy and are again depended on China and other countries to make our clothes, shoes and other consumer goods. This transformation has resulted in a vast trade imbalance and massive borrowing, again undermining American self-reliance and security.

Francis Cabot Lowell showed two centuries ago that determination, innovation, a brilliant business plan and a dollop of luck could overcome opposition and transform the American economy from trade to domestic manufacture, from dependence to self-reliance. It is time again to follow Lowell's example to invent the machinery and employ new sources of power to manufacture goods at home, cheap in price and excellent in quality, and to restore America to industrial independence.

Chaim M. Rosenberg is author of The Life and Times of Francis Cabot Lowell, 1775-1817.