Media,Religion, and Politics in Nicaragua: How an Independent Press Threatened the Catholic Church

Nicaragua's La Prensa newspaper stopped publishing a weekly Catholic "Sunday Reading" page in May 2001, replacing it with a more diverse "Religion and Faith" page. A storm of protest followed, with some religious leaders saying the church was being censored. Even Violeta Chamorro, a co-owner of La Prensa and a former Nicaraguan president, denounced the action. Although this was a simple journalistic decision to better serve the readers, the move also carried substantial political implications. La Prensa and the Catholic Church had long been aligned with the powerful economic elite and shared similar histories. Both, for example, had internal battles over whether to support the socialist Sandinista revolution, and both were struggling to hold onto their clients—readers and church members. This power struggle between an independent press and the Catholic Church illustrates their respective efforts to remain relevant to Nicaraguans. This study demonstrates that both acted rationally in support of their own best interests.     

State Welfare and the Development of Voluntary Action: The Case of Ireland,North and South

This paper considers the development of voluntary action in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on research conducted during 2002–2003 at the Centre for Voluntary Action Studies at the University of Ulster and funded by the Royal Irish Academy, it is argued that the way that voluntary and community organizations developed in Ireland’s two jurisdictions after the partition of the island in 1922 illuminates debates on the role of states in structuring the civic space in which voluntary action occurs. It illustrates, in particular, the interaction of state policy drivers with the cultural and ideological forces that shape voluntary action. Analysis lends support to the view that state action, together with cultural trends and social capital resources, is the crucial determinant of how the voluntary sector develops in a jurisdiction.     

The History and Consequences of the Sexual-Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church

The sexual-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church was first publicized in 1985 in Louisiana and continues to capture headlines and the imagination of the public across the country. This article reviews the history of the contemporary scandal and delineates a paradigm of abuse and cover-up common in cases of sexual abuse by a priest. While the sexual victimization of minors by priests and vowed religious men has been wrenching for the many decent clerics and for Catholics everywhere, the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy live daily with its aftermath. In this article, the experiences of one young man sexually abused by a priest when he was a boy are presented and the sequelae of such abuse are discussed.     

Narrative Structures and the Catholic Church Closings in Detroit

We distinguish narrative structures as master frames from stories as actual telling of events, and show how they operated in the case of the Catholic church closings in Detroit in the late 1980s. Narrative structures drawn from Detroit industrial history and from reform in the Catholic church were imposed on the actual events constituting the closing process, and powerfully defined the terms of public discussion and debate about the meaning of the closings.     

Hiding behind the cloth:child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church

The existence of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has shocked many. In this article, the authors review the history of child sexual abuse in the church, the recent events that brought this tragedy into societal consciousness, and the efforts by the church to conceal the abuse. Two sources of empirical literature, the general psychological writing on priest sex abuse and the psychoanalytic literature, on child sexual abuse are compared. Both sources of literature seek explanation for priests' child sexual abuse within the structure and culture of the church rather than viewing the priest as a "typical" sex predator. The authors argue that, in fact, the guilty priests are child predators who differ little from other child predators.     

Prostitution and the Politics of HIV Prevention in Cambodia: A Historical Case Study

Cambodia received international attention in the early 1990s when it emerged from civil war with the highest HIV rate in Asia, in which up to 60% of sex workers were infected. A massive influx of financial, human, and material resources ensued, and debates over “best practices” for HIV prevention were played out. Over time, the politics of AIDS shifted, mirroring changes in the politics of the largest player in global health, the United States. This sparked acrimonious polarization within international health policy, with direct implications for the lives of sex workers. This article traces those debates over sex work and HIV, highlighting the example of one brothel district in Cambodia where Medecins Sans Frontieres provided services to over 300 migrant Vietnamese sex workers. Using literature and program documentation from the time, this article highlights how countries such as Cambodia can become vulnerable to manipulation and used to serve wider political agendas.     

The State,Unauthorized Mexican Migration,and Vulnerability in the Workplace

For the last 20 years, migration scholars have generated a number of important empirical insights about the ways in which the state, through the enactment of immigration policies, creates workplace vulnerabilities such as discrimination, harassment, wage theft, workplace raids, and the threat of deportation. Recent studies of illegality also examine the role of the state but do so in a way that explores what legal status means and how it is experienced in everyday lives of migrants marked as “illegal” by the state. This article reviews recent research that shows that the state operates in a gray zone of enforcement that puts migrants in ambiguous social spaces and heightens their vulnerability at work. However, research also finds that migrants find ways to exert their agency in challenging work environments.     

The Politics of Seasonal Labour Migration in Switzerland,France and Spain

This article analyses the effects of the politics of seasonal foreign worker admissions on migrant legality in the context of the post‐1945 and the post‐1990 seasonal foreign worker policy in Switzerland, France and Spain respectively. It seeks historical evidence attesting to the ability of seasonal admissions to restrict workers to their non‐resident status. It presents implications for circular migration, the dernier cri in European migration policy aimed to strike a compromise between a perceived post‐crisis demand for the admission of foreign workers and the reluctance to make them prospective citizens.

Policy Implications

• Migration policy stakeholders have shaped foreign worker admissions according to their interests.
• Under some conditions, low‐skilled seasonal foreign worker admissions have contributed to irregular migration, either through workers' overstays or through parallel irregular entries
• There are both differences and similarities between the seasonal admissions advocated under the post‐2007 circular migration schemes, and those of the 1950s–1960s, as well as those of 1990s to early 2000s. The similarities could, under some conditions, trigger the repetition of some of the unexpected outcomes revealed by historical seasonal foreign worker admissions under the post 2007 schemes.

     

State Building,State Autonomy and the Identity of Society: The Case of the Israeli State*

Abstract Into the conventional framework of the state civil-society relationship, which usually includes the state's autonomy and the state's strength, this paper adds a dimension - the identity of the collectivity. The collective identity is from one side the common 'symbolic space’ for both the state and the actors of the civil society, and from the other side the ‘battlefield’ between the state, the society and the different components of the civil society. These tensions stem in a great measure from the emphasis of some aspects over others (for example the primordial vs. civic ingredients) of the collective identity. These interpretations have far reaching implications on the rules-of-the-game in the state and on the state-society relationship. Its identity is central to the determination of the various societal boundaries of the collectivity. This approach is exemplified through analysis of the building of the Israeli state and its transformation from a community to a nation-state, and again from a nation-state to a community state, in a perspective of about 75 years. The article fundamentally challenges the conventional presentation and analysis of the social and political history of Israel.