La alcaldía indígena en Guatemala

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[éd.:] Nathalie Clayer et Erdal Kaynar

"En suivant certains des silllons creuses par Francois Georgeon, les etudes ici reunies se repartissent en quatre groupes. Les premieres s'inscrivent dans le registre de l'histoire politique et ideologique des dernieres decennies de l'epoque ottomane. Elles touchent a la politisation et a la question des provinces de l'Empire. Elles touchent aussi au vocabulaire politique et aux nouvelles temporalites introduites par la revolution jeune-turque dans la reflexion de certains intellectuels. Les secondes sont des contributions a l'histoire intellectuelle. Une place importante est faite dans cette partie a la presse et a l'imprime, tandis qu'une derniere contribution reprend la question des intellectuels voyageurs. La troisieme partie est consacree a l'histoire sociale. Y sont abordees des themes divers tels que: la construction et la fluidite des identifications, les fetes, l'alimentation, et les evolutions sociales a l'echelle urbaine, comme a l'echelle individuelle.^ Enfin, la quatrieme et derniere partie rassemble d'un cote des etudes sur la Turquie kemaliste et, de l'autre, des essais sur le passage "des Ottomans aux Turcs" (pour reprendre le titre d'un volume d'articles de Francois Georgeon), et sur la construction des savoirs dans ce domaine. Following in Francois Georgeon's footsteps, this volume is divided in four parts. The first group of studies concerns the political and ideological history of the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. These studies tackle the issue of politicization, the question of the provinces of the Empire, political vocabulary and new timescales brought by the Young Turc Revolution in the thought of some intellectuals. The second group includes contributions on intellectual history. Important themes in this part are printed publishing and the press, while the last contribution takes up the issue of intellectual travelers. The third group is devoted to social history.^ Studies address identity development and fluidity, celebrations, food, and social developments on an urban or individual scale. The fourth and last part brings together both studies on Kemalist Turkey and essays on the switch from Ottomans to Turks (to quote a title of one of Francois Georgeon's volumes) and on knowledge construction in this field"--provided by publisher.

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Guenter Lewy

From a height of almost 100,000 members during the Depression, when politicians, workers, and intellectuals were drawn into its orbit, the American Communist Party has descended into irrelevance and isolation, failing even to run a presidential candidate in 1988. Indeed, as Guenter Lewy writes in this critical account of American Communism, despite decades of feverish activity and ferocious discipline, it was a cause doomed to fail from the very beginning. In The Cause that Failed, Lewy offers an incisive narrative of the American Communist Party from the days of John Reed to the advent of glasnost. He traces its origins and development, underscoring how its devotion to Moscow and inflexible Marxist ideology isolated it from the American scene--in fact, most of its first members were Eastern European immigrants. During the left wing tide of the Depression the Communist Party reached the peak of its influence, as it joined labor unions and progressive organizations in a "Popular Front." But Lewy reveals the deceptive, antidemocratic, self-defeating tactics the Communists pursued even then, as they manipulated front organizations, seized control of political parties, peace groups, and labor unions, and enforced political conformity among members and sympathizers. He follows the Party through its inexorable decline in the succeeding decades, up to its current position as one of the last Stalinist parties left in a world of glasnost and perestroika. Lewy also provides a sharply critical discussion of the encounter between Communism and liberal and mainstream America. He examines such groups as the ACLU and SANE, arguing that the years when these organizations were tolerant toward Communists were also the times when they neglected their original purpose in favor of partisan causes. He shows how Communists have manipulated well-meaning citizens in the peace movement and in Wallace's 1948 Progressive Party presidential campaign. One of the great ills Americans suffer, he writes, is an overreaction to McCarthyism--an atmosphere of anti-anticommunism--which blinds them to the wrongs wrought by international Communism and makes them ignore the deceptive role played by the American Communist Party, which even today still keeps eighty percent of its membership secret. The Cause that Failed presents an intensively researched and trenchantly argued historical analysis of Communism in America. Guenter Lewy's provocative account provides a new understanding of Communism's machinations in U.S. politics, and how Americans from across the political spectrum have responded to its challenge.

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Harold J. Laski

Beginning with the new worlds of the Renaissance and the Reformation, this book traces the growth of liberal doctrine through the advent of the French Revolution. It shows the relationship of liberalism to the emerging economic system of capitalism, and the impact of this relationship upon science, philosophy, and literature. Laski explains how the same causes which produced the socially active aspect of liberalism also inspired the growth of socialism. The contributions of men like Machiavelli, Locke, and Voltaire, the influence of the voyages of discovery, and the effect of the Puritan Rebellion are among the special topics discussed. The Rise of European Liberalism is a historical survey of the development of liberal thought, from its earliest whispers in early Protestantism to its significance in the "Red Decade" of the 1930s. Laski argues that liberalism as a philosophy came into existence with the rise of capitalism and thus functions primarily as an ideological defense of private property in a business civilization. Hence, liberalism's progressive side is doomed to defeat because, throughout its history, the bourgeois nature of the ideology has always prevailed. In the new introduction, John Stanley traces the history and influences of Laski's thought and provides a detailed analysis of Laski's work. The essay provides a coherent study in itself of why Laski is better remembered than widely read. The Rise of European Liberalism is a classic text that deserves rediscovery for historians, philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists of the present day.

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Sohrab Ahmari and Nasser Weddady

"During the Arab Spring, the world saw a long-suppressed group in the Middle East--young people--assert itself and demand its rights. But youthful dissent did not appear overnight; for decades it has been simmering beneath the surface in countries from Saudi Arabia to Yemen, from Iran to Egypt. In Arab Spring Dreams, a number of young Middle Easterners describe their experiences with the region's laws and cultural mores, including the crime of holding hands before marriage, discrimination and harassment over religious beliefs, and young women fighting for the right to complete their educations. They also discuss how previous uprisings, particularly the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, might be channeled to effect change in their own countries. Beautifully written and profoundly moving, these stories present a decisive call for change at a crucial point in the evolution of the Middle East"--