Warriors without spears: Africans in the South African War, 1899–1902

Black People in the South African War 1899–1902, by Peter Warwick. Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1983. Pp. xiv & 224: maps, tables.     

Jewish epitaphs from Białystok, 1892–1902: embracing the spirit of Dubnow

In the early twentieth century, Polish historian Mejer Ba?aban delivered a most telling condemnation of Jewish epitaphs as “blatantly baroque,” “overloaded with epithets” and difficult to understand. In the late nineteenth century, the maskil Simon Dubnow had delivered a plea to the maskilim (intellectuals) and mithnagdim (traditionalists) of his day to engage in documenting and writing the woefully lacking past history of Yiddish civilisation as a means to unite past history with emerging nationalistic inclinations. Dubnow specified gathering epitaphs as part of this documentation. Despite Dubnow's plea it is Ba?aban's condemnation that has held sway in American and English-speaking European academies and which has not yet been fully reversed in the scholarship of the century since then. In the spirit of Dubnow, the current paper examines the first decade of extant epitaphs from Bagnowka Beth Olam in Bia?ystok, Poland, dating from 1892 to 1902, as an example by which we can move towards establishing the potential that Jewish epitaphs hold as another evidentiary source corroborating or enriching Jewish history. In this first decade of epitaphs from Bagnowka Beth Olam, we will encounter the world of the mithnagdim amidst which the minority of the maskilim are in evidence. Place names bring remembrance of the cities, towns and shtetlekh from which Jews migrated to Bia?ystok. Surnames evoke remembrance of founding families that would continue to build Jewish Bia?ystok in the coming decades. Unexpected historical and biographical details remind the reader of the professions and businesses in which Bia?ystoker Jews engaged and life's circumstances that prompted charitable responses. Subtle words or a unique phrase, intentionally or unintentionally incorporated into the epitaphs, are telling of the realities of the harshness of everyday life at the turn of the twentieth century and telling of what is significant to both individual and collective memory. One singular epitaph serves as a portent of the violence that would soon descend upon Bia?ystok. Through these representative examples we are offered a microcosm of Jewish Bia?ystok from 1892 to 1902, and a glimpse of the changing trends to be revealed in the next five decades as written upon the matzevoth of Bagnowka Beth Olam.     

A Western Niger province or constitutional safeguards: The search for an effective remedy to the fears of the Igbo west of the Niger, 1941–54

One of the problems of nation building in Nigeria is the role and respect to be accorded to the different ethnic groups to make them function as integral parts of a natural society. The main issues revolve around the fear of ethnic domination. This article argues against the popular view which attributes the genesis of minority problems in Nigeria to the adoption of the Federal system of government and the subsequent regionalization of the sources of power. It illuminates the forces that generated the minority consciousness of the Western Igbo and discusses the changing demands between 1941 and 1954. It highlights the connection between the separatist goal of the Western Igbo and the Movements for the Creation of Mid‐West and Anioma States which suggests that some of the key issues in majority/minority relationship in Nigeria may have been in existence earlier than presumed.

The general arguments on the merits and demerits of the Western Niger Province express the main attraction of the territorial approach to ethnic minority problems in a period the existing literature has described as crisis‐free. Finally, the article highlights the obstacles to the proposed Anioma state and recommends equitable distribution of resources and further research in the field of minority studies to resolve the Minority Question in Nigeria.     

The network of global migration 1990–2013: Using ERGMs to test theories of migration between countries

For the period 1990–2013, 202 countries are analysed as nodes linked by in- or out-migration of substantial shares of the sending country’s population. The resulting network shows regional, but also “cultural” clustering. Variants of ERGMs are used to determine geographic, demographic, economic, religious, linguistic as well as historical factors of migration between countries. Results are in line with gravity models, theories of global inequality, hegemonic languages and religious homophily, even though not all effects are fully consistent across all models. Moreover, former colonies show higher out-degree and there are strong network-structural effects indicating a hierarchy in attractiveness between countries for unobserved reasons.     

Policing gender mobilities: interrogating the ‘feminisation of migration’ to Europe

This article proposes a gendered critique of the European Neighbourhood Policy, a framework that, amongst other things, aims to facilitate the mobility of migrants to the EU from the bordering countries. We highlight the ambivalences of European gender and migration regimes, and we take issue with the celebration of the ‘feminisation of migration’. The former fails to offer opportunities to women to safely embark on autonomous migratory projects, the latter contributes to reproduce traditional gender biases in the countries of origin as well as of destination. We conclude by suggesting that the EU critique to emigration countries for failing to tackle women’s discrimination is less than persuasive when assessed vis-á-vis with the curtailment on women’s independent mobility across European borders.     

The interrupted chain: traditional receiver countries,migration regimes,and the East European Jewish diaspora, 1918–39

This article focuses primarily on countries that had been, prior to 1914, among the most favored destinations for East European Jewish migrants: chiefly the United States, Canada, Palestine, Brazil and Argentina. In the inter-war years, these ceased to be the only ports of final entry for Jewish migrants. However, despite restrictive migration regimes and unfavorable economic conditions, traditional receiver countries continued to absorb the largest share of such migrants (the U. S. and Palestine, between them, accounting for over 800,000). Jewish migration to countries other than the United States peaked around 1933; was just about equal to the U. S.-bound migrant stream by 1938; and fell off in 1939–1940. The Jewish case raises several theoretical and methodological issues, including the definition of migrant motivation as well as the framing of immigration policy as products of mixed factors – both political and economic.     

Selectivity,adaptation, or disruption? A comparison of alternative hypotheses on the effects of migration on fertility: the case of Brazil

This study, based on Brazilian data from 1976, compared the fertility of migrants and stayers at both origin and destination areas. Observed patterns of fertility differentials were then analyzed in terms of 4 hypotheses of fertility behavior focused on processes of socialization, adaptation, selectivity, and disruption. In the study sample, 31% of migrants moved from rural to urban areas, 45% of moves were between urban areas, and 20% of moves were between rural areas. Among rural-to-urban migrants, only 1/3 moved from traditional to modern regions. To uncover the main patterns of migrant and stayer fertility differentials in the study population, the major flows of migrants by origin and destination were disaggregated by recency of migration, education, and age. The overall conclusions were as follows: 1) rural-urban migration flows need to be disaggregated into various modern/traditional cross-classifications (e.g., modern-rural, traditional-urban, frontier-urban) and greater emphasis needs to be placed on rural-urban, urban-urban, and rural-rural flows; 2) no robust quantitative measures of migrant-stayer fertility differentials held across migrant groups, implying that migrants differing in terms of age, education, origin, and destination are likely to behave in significantly variable fashion with regard to stayer standards of fertility behavior; 3) migrant groups with overall lower fertility levels, such as the young and better educated, are less likely to experience significant fertility reduction to bridge the origin/destination fertility gap; 4) rural-to-rural migrants do not appear to experience any lasting fertility reduction even when they move to areas with lower overall fertility rates; 5) urban-to-rural migrants tend to bridge a larger fraction of the uphill fertility gap than rural-to-urban migrants; and 6) there was evidence of partial adaptation for most migrant categories once disruption effects disappear and evidence consistent with the socialization hypothesis (no fertility reduction for at least 1 generation) was apparent for migrants originating in the least developed parts of Brazil, the frontier region, and the traditional-rural region.     

Erratum to: Poland: A New Model of Government–Nonprofit Relations for the East?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Psychology Takes to the Airways: American Radio Psychology Between the Wars, 1926–1939

Modern American culture has seen a proliferation of radio and television personalities associated with talk therapy and advice-giving within the last 20 years (Epstein Psychology Today 34:5 2001). The origin of radio psychology, however, is the late 1920’s, when radio began to air many promoters of psychology in the context of “public service” programming. Among these individuals were Louis Monash, Arthur Payne, and, perhaps most importantly, Joseph Jastrow. Traditionally-trained psychologists used the new medium of radio in the service of education and adjustment. This article surveys radio psychology, its personalities, and topics in the inter-war period and proposes the significant social support role that radio psychology played during the Great Depression, much as modern talk radio does today (Ricks 1984).     

Has the Time Come to Reevaluate Evaluation? or,Who Will Be Accountable for Accountability?

Evaluation with Power: A New Approach to Organizational Effectiveness, Empowerment, and Excellence, by Sandra Trice Gray and Associates. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998. 178 pp., $28.95 cloth (vinyl). Measuring the Performance of Human Services Programs, by Lawrence L. Martin and Peter M. Kettner. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996. 138 pp., $44.50 cloth, $21.95 paper. Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy, by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. 256 pp., $22.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. Outcomes Measurement in the Human Services: Cross-Cutting Issues and Methods, edited by Edward J. Mullen and Jennifer L. Magnabosco. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Social Workers, 1997. 337 pp., $29.55 for members of the National Association of Social Workers, $36.95 for nonmembers, paper. The Best of Intentions: The Triumphs and Failures of the Great Society Under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, by Irwin Unger. New York: Doubleday, 1996. Out of print.