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In This Issue
| This issue contains three articles and an AHR Forum. The articles are about the politics of faith in Colonial Mexico, nationalism in West Africa, and the utility of material culture as a source for historians. The Forum brings four scholars together to assess the nature of the "Constitutional Revolution of 1937." In addition, the issue includes our usual array of book and film reviews. |
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Articles | |
| William B. Taylor gives an account of rural devotion in late colonial Mexico. It revolves around a loss later remembered by rural devotees in ways that made the place of a miracle of a self-restoring crucifix more important than the relic itself. More broadly, it is about the politics of faith and the importance of place expressed in the direction and redirection of an official story. Based on several unusually well-documented episodes of dispute and religious practice, the article takes on the difficult issue of how cultural practices are reenacted and appropriated—what Michel de Certeau called "the secondary production hidden in the process of utilization." It attempts to reach beyond the ideas of center-periphery and a hierarchy of shrines; to address elusive questions of religion and the negotiation of colonial circumstances by Indian villagers; and to contribute to the ongoing interest of Latin Americanists in South Asian scholarship on colonial and postcolonial experiences. |
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| Elizabeth Schmidt examines the post-World War II nationalist movement in Guinea, French West Africa, drawing conclusions with broad ramifications for the non-Western world. The Guinean case demonstrates that anticolonial nationalisms' embrace of heterogeneous populations belonged to a progressive political tradition of "inclusive nationalism." Western-educated elites often led these nationalist movements, but they did not initiate them. Rather, elites found support among popular groups already engaged in movements against the state by identifying issues that had mass appeal and including them in the nationalist agenda. Indeed, elites and nonelites alike shaped the ideas, objectives, strategies, and methods of the nationalist movements. While elites contributed European ideas and models of nationalism, the nonliterate majority brought elements of indigenous culture to the movement. This case study in nationalist mobilization shows us how people were mobilized. While some indigenous cultural practices and images were co-opted by elites, the people themselves brought others to the movement. The Guinean case thus provides a new framework for understanding the dynamics of anticolonial nationalism in many parts of the world. |
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| Laura Auslander argues for the utility of material culture as a source for historians in both their research and pedagogical practices. Her argument is based on phenomenological, psychoanalytic, and psychological theories, which together demonstrate the importance of objects in people's communicative and expressive practices. But how people use objects differs from their use of language, images, music, or other expressive forms, and thus the study of material culture calls for specific approaches and methodologies. If historians wish to grasp the human past in all its complexity and richness, however, they will have to include the examination of material culture and other nonlinguistic sources. After a theoretical introduction, the article briefly sketches both the ways in which historians may productively borrow from other disciplines' expertise in the analysis of material culture and history's particular analytical contribution to that task. It concludes with two examples, one from the French Revolution and the other from the post-WWII period, to illustrate the power of this approach. |
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AHR Forum | |
| The Forum examines from different perspectives the shift in the orientation of the Supreme Court in 1937, in what has been called a "constitutional revolution." Alan Brinkley introduces the Forum by providing a context for the three longer pieces that follow. He summarizes the scholarly debate reflected in these essays—Ma debate between those who believe that changes in constitutional jurisprudence have been primarily a product of political and social pressures on the judiciary, and those who conclude that such changes are primarily the result of internal doctrinal changes within the judicial world itself. Brinkley argues that this scholarly debate reflects a real political struggle that has run through much of American history between those who believe that the courts should reflect the will of the people (and the legislatures) and those who hold that they should respect the judiciary's own traditions and standards. Laura Kalman continues the discussion by exploring the two sides of the debate as outlined by Brinkley. In particular, she asks whether the "constitutional revolution" of 1937 reflected the Court's capitulation to political pressures, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Court-packing plan, or whether it was the end result of doctrinal changes within the law that began well before 1937. She turns to the historiography of the recent debate over the Court's behavior, paying particular attention to how disciplinary affiliations have affected the explanations of historians, law professors, and political scientists. She maintains that instead of framing the question as one between "law and politics," we should recognize their interrelationship, at least in the context of "1937." William E. Leuchtenburg offers a comment on Kalman\'s analysis, and in the process restates his own view that a constitutional "revolution" did indeed take place in 1937. He disputes the assertion that earlier decisions were more decisive, that the dramatic changes in the 1930s were the final stage in a slowly evolving paradigm shift. By scrutinizing dissenting opinions, the attitudes of contemporary legal scholars, several lesser-known rulings of the era, and such external forces as the 1936 election and Roosevelt's Court-packing attempt, he affirms that the greatest change in jurisprudence in the twentieth century came not gradually but abruptly. The Forum concludes with a contribution by G. Edward White, who argues that this debate goes well beyond the historiography of the New Deal period. It raises questions about what causal variables best explain decisions of the Supreme Court, especially those that revise earlier decisions. White describes the current debate between "internalist" and "externalist" constitutional historians of the New Deal and explores the historiographical implications of this controversy. |
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| This Forum was commissioned by Michael Grossberg, a legal historian, whose tenure as Editor of the AHR ended on July 31. It is a fitting farewell tribute to Mike and to all that he brought to this journal during his ten years in the Editor's chair. In the light of the prominence of the Supreme Court in current affairs, the timing of these articles might seem purely fortuitous—but Mike would insist that he planned it that way. |
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