Academic literature on the topic 'History of struggles'

Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole<br>This dissertation examines the religious environment in nineteenth-century Massachusetts created by church disestablishment and a theological schism. Congregationalists, bound to God and to one another with a sacred covenant, were the traditional beneficiaries of the state's constitutional requirement that towns raise tax revenue for "the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality." The nation's last church establishment system was not removed until a statewide referendum in 1833, but, in practice, it had eroded earlier as Congregational churches encountered internal and external religious dissent. The mechanics of the establishment system had often been used by residents, including those liberal church members who eventually adopted the name Unitarians, to obstruct orthodox Congregationalists from operating more than 100 local churches in Massachusetts. These changes compelled Congregationalists to voluntarily support their churches prior to formal disestablishment, effectively ending the establishment system town-by-town and removing those churches from the center of town life. The lived religious experiences dramatically changed. Laymen took advantage of Congregationalism's inherently decentralized structure and gained control of their local churches. They sought to maintain the purity of their individual covenants by expelling absent members and those espousing theological heresies. In the process, local ministers were marginalized and dismissed with increasing frequency. Tensions arose between many in the clergy elite, who advocated for denominational consistency, and the laymen, who defended the autonomy of their local church. The story of antebellum Congregationalism in Massachusetts, rather than being part of an emerging national denominationalism, was actually one of an inward turn, a type of atomization of the religious denomination. The uncoordinated actions on the local level helped prompt the first national gathering of Congregationalists in more than two centuries, but suggestions for the adoption of explicitly "Congregational" elements by local churches were rejected by the laity. Congregationalism emerged from the Civil War with these antebellum changes made permanent and entrenched as a parochial, laity-driven denomination<br>Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014<br>Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences<br>Discipline: History

This study is concerned with the development of the tenants' movement and housing struggles in post-War Glasgow. It seeks to locate the changes relating to housing struggles in the context of wider social and economic changes within the `locality'. Glasgow's public sector tenants' movement has been in existence for over 60 years and there is a wealth of undocumented housing struggles that have played an important part in the history of working class life in the city. The analysis taken in this dissertation seeks to conceptualise these housing struggles in a framework based around the concept of social reproduction. It is with a class analysis of relations of reproduction, as opposed to consumption cleavages, that we can understand housing struggles at a local level.

This thesis examines the changes to the portrayal of minority ethnic groups in Chinese history textbooks since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It finds that ideological shifts in Beijing have led to minority ethnic groups being portrayed in changing and even contradictory ways in school textbooks. In the history textbooks of the 1950s, the Chinese nation was largely defined as a Han nation-state, and other ethnic groups were generally represented as non-Chinese who had historically been ‘threats’ or ‘enemies’ of the Han/Chinese. It was not until the reform era from the late 1970s that a more inclusive and multi-ethnic conception of the Chinese nationhood was adopted, with ‘minority’ ethnic groups incorporated into the Chinese historical narrative and portrayed more positively. However, as the Communist Party took an increasingly nationalist turn from the 1990s, simultaneously downplaying messages of socialist internationalism, Han ethno-centrism became more apparent once again in textbook narratives, with minority ethnic groups correspondingly marginalised. This thesis also finds that, although non-Han groups were portrayed very differently in history textbooks to match shifting political ideologies, what remained unchanged throughout PRC history was the representation of the backwardness of the non-Han in relation to the Han who were always portrayed as advanced. Based on this examination, this thesis argues that while history education has always been used by the Communist Party to inculcate a highly state-centred vision of national identity, underlying conceptions of the Chinese nationhood have been rather fluid, and there has been no consistent progress towards a more inclusive notion of ‘Chineseness’. Instead, different visions have co-existed and competed, reflecting tensions inherent in the project of constructing modern national consciousness: China has struggled (and is still struggling) to stretch the short, tight skin of the nation over the gigantic body of its empire.

Since coffee was first introduced to Indonesia by Dutch merchants in the late seventeenth century, power relationships have shifted as a result of coffee trade between Indonesia and the Netherlands. In this thesis I analyse changes and recurrent themes in the struggles around coffee, structured around three main narratives spanning over 300 years: colonialism, Indonesian independence, and Fairtrade. The time-frames are chosen on the basis of significant development in the socio-economic and socio-political environment in the Indonesian coffee industry. The first narrative depicts the link between the Max Havelaar novel and the Max Havelaar Foundation, which sets the scene for bridging past and present in the triangular drama between coffee, colonialism and the Dutch-Indonesian relationship. In the second narrative, I will look at the history of relationships between Indonesia and the Netherlands, from the perspective of coffee. The inclusion of the lens of a feature or commodity, like coffee, provides a new approach to the Dutch-Indonesian history. The third narrative entails a discussion on the coffee supply chain, its environmental impact, and the price volatility that characterises the global coffee market. Additionally, the rise of sustainability certifications in the coffee sector are discussed, in relation to its impact on the Indonesian coffee industry. Finally, the three narratives come together in a final discussion, in which I reflect on the history of power struggles that arose from coffee trade between Indonesia and the Netherlands. The chapter links past and present by revealing similarities in the contest for power during colonial times and modern times in the Indonesian coffee industry.