The making of modern South Africa

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Jeffrey L. Pasley

Argues that, despite its passivity and lack of active campaigning, the election of 1796 set the stage for all of American politics to follow.

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Richard A. Wilson

"The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to deal with the human rights violations of apartheid during the years 1960-1994. However, as Wilson shows, the TRC's restorative justice approach to healing the nation did not always serve the needs of communities at a local level. Based on extended anthropological fieldwork, this book illustrates the impact of the TRC in urban African communities in the Johannesburg area. While a religious constituency largely embraced the Commission's religious-redemptive language of reconciliation, Wilson argues that the TRC had little effect on popular ideas of justice as retribution. This provocative study deepens our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa and the use of human rights discourse. It ends on a call for more cautious and realistic expectations about what human rights institutions can achieve in democratizing countries."--Jacket.

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Edward M. Harris

Filling a major gap in scholarship, this is the first full-length study of the Athenian politician Aeschines. Along with Isocrates, Aeschines was one of the most prominent Athenian politicians who advocated friendly ties with the Macedonian king Philip II. Though overshadowed by his famous rival Demosthenes, Aeschines played a key role in the decisive events that marked the rise of Macedonian power in Greece and formed the transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period. Three long speeches by Aeschines, all delivered in court battles with his opponent Demosthenes, have been preserved and provide us with valuable information about Athenian politics during a major turning point in Greek history. This study of Aeschines' political career examines the reliability of court speeches as historical evidence and shows how they help reveal how democratic institutions actually functioned in Athens when faced with the rise of Macedonian power.

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Carol Flake

New Orleans, home of the great American blowout bash - Mardi Gras - is the exotic city on the Bayou that thumbs its nose at the conservative spirit of the rest of the South. And Mardi Gras, that wild, uninhibited, frenzied festival of multiculturalism, music, sex, and the outer limits of debauchery, is the city's annual and legendary celebration of itself. But what really lies behind the masks and myths of a "pagan" festival older than baseball but less purely American than any other celebration? Despite all the glamour and popularity of Mardi Gras, few people know the real New Orleans - a city that is still socially stratified, racially divided, constrained by secrets. A city whose shocking double life was tragically exposed when national headlines publicized a proposal to desegregate the krewes, the quasi-cabalistic organizations that control the carnival and much of the town. Carol Flake returned to New Orleans, after more than a decade away, to chronicle a season of Carnival, to write about the paradox of an enduring rite in a crumbling city. Following the participants as they prepared for the parades and balls that make up the gala season, she found herself on a journey into a unique form of culture where ordinary standards of taste and behavior simply don't apply. She moved from subculture to subculture, from white uptown parlors and high society enclaves to French Quarter retreats, black jazz bars, and gay drag shows. She joined an all-women krewe for a float ride down Canal Street and dressed as a dancing girl in the satirical parade of the Krewe de Vieux. She visited the secret dens of elite traditional clubs and attended the open meetings of an embattled city council . Carnival, for all its rituals and disguises, mirrors New Orleans society, with its peculiar social hierarchies, its pockets of strange tradition, its madcap diversity, its partiality to drama and spectacle. The controversy surrounding Carnival is a war over the heart and soul of the city, over the dwindling base of power and money. New Orleans has succumbed to the same troubles that are tearing apart other American cities. In revealing the political, social, and cultural realities behind the grand illusions, Carol Flake has also discovered the common threads that just might bring the city back together. An intimate, surprising, sometimes shocking portrait of a great American city and a timely look at a unique part of the New South, New Orleans is destined to become a classic.