Featured Image: Erich Fromm. By Müller-May / Rainer Funk / CC BY-SA 3.0 (DE)
By Rene Wadlow.
I believe that the One World which is emerging can come into existence only if a New Man comes into being – a man who has emerged from the archaic ties of blood and soil, and who feels himself to be a citizen of the world whose loyalty is to the human race and to life, rather than to any exclusive part of it, a man who loves his country because he loves mankind, and whose views are not warped by tribal loyalties. Eric Fromm Beyond the Chains of Illusion.
Eric Fromm (1900-1980), the psychoanalyst was concerned with the relation between personality and society. His life was marked by the socio-political events of the century he faced, especially those of Germany, his birthplace.
Erich Fromm was born into an orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main. The families of both his mother and father had rabbis and Talmudic scholars, and so he grew up in a household; where the significance of religious texts was an important part of life. While Fromm later took a great distance from Orthodox Jewish thought; he continued a critical appreciation of Judaism.
He was interested in the prophets of the Old Testament, but especially by the hope of the coming of a Messianic Age – a powerful theme in popular Judaism. The coming of the Messiah would establish a better world; in which there would be higher spiritual standards but also a new organization of society. The Messianic ideal is one in which the spiritual and the political cannot be separated from one another. (1)
Sociology and Psychology.
He was 14 when the First World War started and 18 when the German State disintegrated – too young to fight but old enough to know what was going on and to be impressed by mass behavior. Thus; he was concerned from the start of his university studies with the link between sociology and psychology as related ways of understanding how people act in a collective way.
He had two intellectual influences in his studies: Sigmund Freud whose approach was the basis of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and Karl Marx; a strong influence in the Frankfurt School. Erich Fromm chose a psychoanalyst path as a profession, learning and, as was required in the Freudian tradition; spending five years in analysis. Fromm, however; increasingly took his distance from Freudian orthodoxy; believing that society beyond family relations had an impact on the personality.
However; he also broke one of the fundamental rules of Freudian analysis in not overcoming the transfer of identification with his analyst. He married the woman who was his analyst. The marriage broke after four years perhaps proving the validity of Freud’s theories on transfers and counter-transfers.
The Buddha.
Therefore, Erich Fromm’s reputation and his main books rest on his concern with the relation of individual psychology and social forces – the relation between Freud and Marx. However; probably the most fundamental thinker; who structured his approach was the Buddha; whom he discovered around the age of 26. It is not Buddhism as a faith that interested him – Buddhism being the tradition built on some of the insights of the Buddha. Rather it was the basic quest of the Buddha that interested him: what is suffering? Can suffering be reduced or overcome? If so, how?
Erich Fromm saw suffering in the lives of the Germans among whom he worked in the late 1920s; individual suffering as well as socio-economic suffering. For Erich Fromm, there must be a link between the condition of the individual and the social milieu; a link not fully explained by either Freud or Marx.
The Art of Loving.
Erich Fromm had enough political awareness to leave Germany for the United States just as Hitler was coming to power in 1933. From 1934; he was teaching in leading US universities. In 1949 he took up a post as professor at the National Autonomous University in Mexico but often lectured at US universities as well.
Erich Fromm’s work is largely structured around the theme of suffering and how it can be reduced. There is individual suffering. It can be reduced by compassion and love. One of his best-known books is The Art of Loving. Love is an art, a “discipline”, and he sets out exercises largely drawn from the Zen tradition to develop compassion toward oneself and all living beings.
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.
There is also social suffering which can be reduced by placing an emphasis not on greater production and greater consumption but on being more; an idea that he develops in To Have or To Be. Fromm was also aware of social suffering and violence on a large scale and the difficulties of creating a society of compassionate and loving persons. His late reflections on the difficulties of creating The Sane Society (the title of a mid-1950s book) is The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. We still face the same issues of individual and social suffering and the relation between the two. Erich Fromm’s thinking makes a real contribution as we continue to search.
Note.
(1) See his You Shall Be As Gods for a vision of the Jewish scriptures as being a history of liberation.
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Featured Image: Romain Rolland on the balcony of his home (162, Boulevard de Montparnasse, Paris), 1914. View to the south-south-east. The building at the center belongs to the church of the monastary of the Sisters of Visitation (68 bis, Avenue Denfert-Rocherau), and the cupola at the far right is the observatory of Paris. By Agence de presse Meurisse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
One of the major voices of the spirit of Citizens of the World is Romain Rolland (1866-1944). He is the symbol of those who would not let war destroy the cultural bridges between peoples, especially during the 1914-1918 World War.
Romain Rolland came from a French family with many generations in the legal profession. However, from his secondary school days on, his interest was in music, painting, history, and literature. Early he was drawn to German music, especially Wagner and Beethoven. Later he wrote an important biography of both Beethoven and Handel. He did his university studies at the prestigous Ecole Normale Superieure, a specialized higher education school which trains university professors. He was in the same class as Paul Claudel who became a diplomat and well-known poet.
At university he became interested in Russian literature and started a correspondence with Leo Tolstoy whose ideas he admired. After his studies, he received a scholarship to study in Rome in order to write his doctoral thesis on the history of opera. He also collected information for later articles on Italian painting.
On his return to Paris, he started teaching on the history of art and the history of music at the Sorbonne, the leading French university. He wrote a number of plays dealing with the French Revolution and began his collaboration with Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine , a literary journal edited by Charles Péguy, a poet and writer who increasingly wrote on political subjects.
In 1903, Rolland began publishing in Les Cahiers what became his major novel
Jean-Christophewhich came out first in sections over a 10-year period and led to his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. In his novel, Jean-Christophe is a young German intellectual, a friend of young French intellectuals. The novel has as its leitmotif that friendship can overcome political divisions such as those created by the 1871 German-French war and the annexation by Germany of Alsace and Lorraine.
Guns of August.
Romain Rolland had often spent his summer vacations in Switzerland, beginning when he was a boy with his parents. Thus, he was spending the summer of 1914 in Switzerland when the “guns of August” marked the start of the First World War. Because of his age, 48, and his fragile health, Rolland was exempt from French military service. He stayed on in Switzerland to work with a Red Cross-related International Agency of Prisoners of War in Geneva.
However, later, his enemies claimed that he was anti-patriotic and had left France for the safety of Switzerland. As he was already well known as a writer and intellectual, he was interviewed and asked to write articles for the leading Geneva newspaper, Le Journal de Genève as well as for the newly created intellectual journal Demain (Tomorrow). He brought these articles together in a book Au Dessus de la Mélée (Above the Battle) though later he thought that “Au-dessus de la haine” (Above hate) would have been the better title.
Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi.
As a result of the war, Rolland decided to stay on in Switzerland and bought a house at Villneuve, the opposite end of the lake from Geneva. The house was in the park of a well-known hotel where the many visitors to Rolland could stay. He lived at Villeneuve for 26 years until 1938 when nostalgic for the area of his boyhood, he bought a house in central France and moved in shortly before the start of the Second World War.
It was from Villeneuve that Rolland turned his attention toward India and the contribution that Indian thought could make to a Europe destroyed by its divisions and hates. Thus Rolland turned to the two living Indian thinkers whose contribution he thought crucial: first Rabindranath Tagore and then Mahatma Gandhi.
He also wrote books on two related Indian religious thinkers: Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. As Rolland never learned to speak or read English, he had to count on his sister Madeleine who lived in his household much of the time. There is little original in his portraits of Ramakrishna (1929) and Vivekananda (1930) but because of Rolland’s fame, the biographies were widely read and so introduced the two to a wider French-reading public, well beyond the narrow circle of specialists on Indian philosophy.
Hermann Hesse and Hermann Keyserling.
In Rabindranath Tagore, Rolland found a common cultural bridge-builder as well as a fellow Nobel Prize for Literature holder. Both Tagore and Rolland saw literature, music and painting as instruments of broad world cooperation and avenues of understanding. In his letters to and discussions with Tagore, Rolland stressed the possibilities for cultural inter-penetration, advising against the imposition of either civilization on the other. Rolland was interested in spiritual and cultural revitalization following the lines of his friend Hermann Hesse and Count Hermann Keyserling. Rolland hoped to introduce Indian thought into the European framework intellectually and morally drained by the 1914-1918 War. Rolland used his influence to promote the translation and publishing of Indian writers in Europe.
Gandhian nonviolence symbolized a universal hope.
However, it is as the popularizer and exponent of Gandhi’s thought that Rolland played a crucial role for nonviolent action. Gandhi was the embodiment of many of Rolland’s positions: a non-Leninist opposition to imperialism and a concern for movements of national independence. For Rolland, Gandhian nonviolence symbolized a universal hope and a political alternative to the pervasiveness of force in the West. Nonviolence would give to the demoralized pacifists; who had been unable to prevent World War I a vigorous faith and an experimental tactic for social change.
Romain Rolland asserted that the real enemy in the nonviolent struggle was personal weakness and the lack of faith − not the presence of entrenched and violent enemies.
“We do not fight violence so mush as weakness. The road to peace is through self-sacrifice.”
As with the Ramakrishna and Vivekananda biographies, Rolland had to depend on his sister’s translations to write his 1923 biography of Gandhi based largely on Gandhi’s writings about South Africa, Gandhi’s articles in Young India as well as Tagore’s letters to Rolland which often mentioned Gandhi. Rolland’s short biography sold well, some 100,000 copies the first year followed by translations into Russian, German and English.
On a more personal level, one English reader of Rolland’s biography was Madeleine Slade who asked Rolland to write to Gandhi so she could join Gandhi’s ashram. Rolland did, and Slade, renamed Mira by Gandhi, became a close disciple and served as intermediary between Rolland and Gandhi until the 1939 start of the Second World War when correspondence between India and France became impossible. Rolland’s fragile health prevented him from traveling to India and the only face to face meeting was in 1931 when Gandhi, from negotiations in London went to Villeneuve to meet Rolland.
In his autobiographic Discovery of India Jawaharlal Nehru wrote:
“In recent years that great European and typical product of the best European culture, Romain Rolland, made a more synthetic and very friendly approach to the basic foundations of Indian thought: for him East and West represented different phases of the human soul.”
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Featured Image: Esperanto World Congress, Vienna 1924. Prominent group of participants, from left to right: Lidia Zamenhof, Edmond Privat, Klara Zamenhof (1924). By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
17 August is the birth anniversary of Edmond Privat in 1889 − a leading world citizen of the first wave of world citizen action closely associated with the League of Nations. It was natural for Privat, a citizen of Geneva, to be drawn to the efforts of the League of Nations. He served from 1923 to 1927 as the vice-delegate for Iran. In the early League days, many States did not have a permanent representative to the League and so named an “intellectual personality” to represent the country.
The Interpreter and Orator.
Privat also worked at different times at the League as an interpreter from English to French. In those days, there was no simultanious interpretation but only consequtive interpretation. The interpreter, standing near the speaker had to convey some of the same drama in his voice. Privat was an experienced orator, one of the first to make regular radio broadcasts and so was much appreciated as an interpreter. At the time, the League Secretariat staff was small, and there was a good deal of interaction among the staff and the government delegates. Thus Privat, already a political journalist, could follow closely world events and the League efforts.
Privat served as an interpreter for Fridtjof Nansen, whose work for World War I refugees and relief to Russia after the Revolution, marked Privat who developed a life-long concern for refugees and relief from hunger.
Romain Rolland and Gandhi.
Privat was a close friend of Romain Rolland who lived during the 1920s and 1930s at Villeneuve near Geneva. Romain Rolland was one of the first in Europe to write about the philosophy-in-acts of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi had gone to London in 1931 for a government roundtable on the future of India. Romain Rolland invited Gandhi to Villeneuve and asked Privat to translate for him and to organize two public talks for Gandhi. Privat was much impressed with Gandhi, and Privat and his wife left shortly afterwards for India to report on Gandhi’s efforts, resulting in a book Aux Indes Avec Gandhi.
Through Rolland and Gandhi, Privat became interested in Indian philosophy and shared Gandhi’s views that there was an inner light that was a common core of all the world’s religions.
As Privat wrote :
“The Inner Light opens us to the sense of the universal and the eternal. The Inner Light can recognize no frontier and can exclude no one. The Inner Light can make no distinctions of race, color or social condition. Love can not be bound by passports or visas. The Inner Light is seen not in words but in attitudes and acts.”
Esperanto Congress.
Privat had a life-long passion to promote the universal. He looked for ways to build bridges among peoples and had learned Esperanto from childhood. As a secondary school student, he attended the first universal Esperanto congress in France in 1905. He then took on the task to organize the next Esperanto congress in Geneva in 1906. Privat had a talent as an organizer and virtually to the end of his life in 1962, he was organizing conferences, creating committees as well as writing articles.
During the First World War, he was sent as a war correspondent to Poland where he met Ludoviko Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Later Privat wrote a biography in Esperanto Vivo de Zamenhof, translated into many languages. From his observations in Poland, he became a champion for the liberation of Poland from Russian influence. In 1918, Privat published L’Europe et l’Odyssée de la Pologne aux XIX siecle.
World Wars.
Privat’s observations of the First World War and its consequences confirmed his earlier conviction that war was evil and the result of narrow nationalism. To overcome war, there was a need for a cosmopolitan – world spirit. People needed to think of themselves as citizens of the world. He saw the League of Nations as a first step toward a federation of the world. After the Second World War, he worked actively for a stronger United Nations and the creation of a “Second Chamber” to which people would be elected rather than being appointed by governments as is the case for the UN General Assembly. He published Trois experiences federalistes (USA, Suisse, S.D.N.) on federalism as an approach to a stronger world structure.
Privat’s vision of the unity of the world included a strong emphasis on the equality between women in men − this in a country where, at the time, women could not vote or hold public office.
Today, much of the cosmopolitan-world citizen emphasis is on understanding the forces leading to world integration. Not all “globalization” works for the benefit of all people. Nevertheless, trends are to ever grater interaction among the representatives of governments, transnational corporations, and non-governmental organizations – social movements. There is less emphasis on a common language of communication such as Esperanto. It is likely that English plays the role that some hoped that Esperanto would become, although Esperanto still has its chanpions. Privat is an important symbol of those who worked between the two World Wars for new positive attitudes and strong inter-governmental structures that would create a climate of peace. The tasks still face us today.
Featured Image: Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Nuremberg. Ferencz was a civilian employee with the OCCWC, thus the picture showing him in civilian clothes. The Einsatzgruppen Trial (or „United…
Featured Image: Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), Professor of Anthropology. By Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) whose birth anniversary…
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Featured Image: Professor Louis B. Sohn in his office at Harvard University Law School, as it appears in the book Harvard Law School 1965. By Murray Tarr, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
By Dr. Rene Wadlow.
Professor Louis B. Sohn was a great international legal scholar whose teachings continue to contribute to the development of world law. Louis B. Sohn whose birth anniversary we note on 1 March was born in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1914. Lwów was a strategic point in east-west trade, industry, and history. Possession of the city had shifted from Poland to Austria in 1772, to Poland in 1919, to the U.S.S.R. just after Sohn escaped in 1939, to Poland again after 1945, and finally since 1991 to Ukraine.
Young Sohn received diplomacy and law degrees from John Casimir University in 1935. He continued research in the library, but as a Jew, his movements were restricted. Later, both his parents, Isaak and Fredericka, who were medical doctors, perished in the Holocaust. A Harvard professor saw one of Sohn’s papers and invited him to study in America. Sohn caught the last boat out of Poland two weeks before the Nazi invasion. These formative experiences contributed to his hatred of war and racism and to his determination to extend the rule of law from within States to relations among States.
Sociological Jurisprudence.
At Harvard, Sohn learned that the professor who had invited him died. But the dean helped the young, multilingual Pole, found him a room and a job in the cafeteria. Soon Sohn began to work with Prof. Manley O. Hudson, a former American judge on the World Court, even though the U.S.A. was not officially a member. Harvard Law was then much under the influence of former dean Roscoe Pound, whose “sociological jurisprudence” emphasized adapting the law to new social circumstances. Sohn applied this doctrine to the customary and treaty law among States in the current age.
Sohn earned his LL.M master’s degree at Harvard in 1940. He accompanied Judge Hudson to the San Francisco conference on the United Nations Organization, where they worked on the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which is part of the U.N. Charter. Sohn began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1947, publishing case books first on “World Law” (1950) and then on “United Nations Law” (1956). He won his S.J.D. doctorate in law and succeeded Hudson as Bemis Professor of International Law in 1961. He taught there for twenty years. He then accepted an offer from former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk to teach at the University of Georgia Law School, where Sohn became a Woodruff professor.
Sohn was a close consultant to the negotiations for the Third Law of the Sea Convention, which was signed in 1982, and he proposed its elaborate provisions for binding arbitration of complex maritime disputes. It was during the decade-long negotiations on the Law of the Sea that I worked with Sohn as I was an NGO observer for the World Citizens, and he was an official member of the U.S. delegation.
Today, with the conflicting claims over the South China Sea as well as other delimitation conflicts as well as fisheries, pollution, and deep-sea mining issues, I appreciate the vision of Sohn on creating an institution for arbitration for the Law of the Sea.
“An authoritative and generally binding methods of establishing procedures are needed, and only an international body with sufficient trust might be able to do it”. He explained.
Sohn was troubled by the guarded avoidance of international law by national policymakers toward the end of the violent 20th century. He died in 2006 near Washington, D.C., at age 92. Our continuing efforts to develop world law for a fast-changing world society owe much to the knowledge and vision of Louis Sohn.
Featured Image: Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Nuremberg. Ferencz was a civilian employee with the OCCWC, thus the picture showing him in civilian clothes. The Einsatzgruppen Trial (or „United…
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Featured Image: Quincy Wright, Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, from the 1940 MacMurray College Yearbook, where he was one of the speakers on “The Essential Elements of a Durable Peace” at the MacMurray Institute. By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Contemporary movements that stressed the need for world citizenship started on the eve of World War II when the spirit of aggressive nationalism was at its height in the policies of Germany, Italy and Japan. There was a need to develop balance by stressing the unity of humanity and the interdependence of the world. These concepts of world citizenship were articulated by a leading professor of international law, Quincy Wright (1890-1970) of the University of Chicago who felt that States must shape their domestic laws and foreign policies in such a way as to be compatible with the tenets of international law.
A Study of War
Quincy Wright spent most of his teaching life at the University of Chicago. He was active in debates among international relations specialists on the place of law – and thus of universal norms – in the conduct of States. In 1942 he published his massive A Study of Warwhich combined a philosophical-legal approach with a more statistical-quantitative one. He was very concerned with the quality of university teaching on war and peace. His 1955 The Study of International Relations remains an outstanding multi-disciplinary approach to the study of world politics. (1)
World Citizens Association
He served as a bridge between professors of international relations and the growing ranks of peace researchers and the world citizens movement. Quincy Wright was a leader of a first World Citizens Association founded in 1939 serving as its Secretary with Anita McCormick Blaine as Chairman. (2)
Unfortunately, the strength of the nationalist tide was too great, and a balance by stressing world unity could not be created in time. The Second World War broke out in Europe shortly after the creation of the World Citizens Association. Japanese nationalism had already brought violence to China, but too few people reacted. Japanese nationalism continued in an unbalanced way, leading to the attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor, which provoked U.S. entry into the war.
“In the modern world, the security and prosperity of all individuals and all groups are closely bound together. The preservation of civilization depends upon the ability of national states and diverse peoples to live together happily and successfully in this rapidly shrinking world. Since all individuals today suffer or benefit by conditions the World over, every man has interests and responsibilities as a world citizen.”
Second World War and The Cold War.
Even though the Allies won the Second World War, the start of the Cold War presented many of the same issues as had been present in 1939. In his 1949 address as President of the American Political Science Association, Wright posted a dark picture.
“While inventions in the fields of communications and transport and interdependence in commerce and security make for one world, the actual sentiments of people have been moving toward more exclusive loyalty to their nations, more insistence that their governments exercise totalitarian control over law, defense, economy, and even opinion. Materially the world community steadily becomes more integrated, but morally each nation gains in solidarity and the split in the world community becomes wider. Under these conditions, people await with a blind fatalism the approach of war. Disaster seems as inevitable as in a Greek tragedy.”
What have world citizens to propose?
Wright sets out three steps which remain the framework for world citizen action today. As a first step, world citizens must provide a process of systematic observation: what new political conflicts are likely to develop? What methods are likely to be used? What goals are likely to be striven for? In short, what is the nature of current tensions, struggles and conflicts?
System of world law
The second essential step is to provide proposals for negotiated resolutions to these struggles and conflicts within the framework of a system of world law.
“What arrangements will assure that world politics operates with reasonable respect for human personality, for civilization, for justice, for welfare – all values which most men will recognize? How do we work so that the political struggles going on in the world will utilize only methods consistent with human dignity and human progress? World citizens are willing to take one step at a time anticipating that if one step in the right direction is taken, it will be easier to win sufficient consent for the next steps.”
The third step which Wright proposed was longer term but essential: education for world citizenship. If men must be world citizens as well as national citizens, what picture of the world can command some of their loyalties however diverse their cultures, economies and government?
“The primary function of education – developing in the individual attitudes appropriate to the values of the society in which he is to live – and, in progressive societies of adapting those values to changing conditions – all citizens need to feel themselves citizens of the world.”
Today,
the Association of World Citizens is proud to build on the steps outlined by
Quincy Wright. We face the challenges of
our time as he faced the challenges of his time.
Notes:
1) See Quincy Wright. The Study of International
Relations (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955)
See also
Quincy Wright. The World Community (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1949)
2) For biographies of Anita Blaine, see! Gilbert A.
Harrison. A Timeless Affair. The Life of Anita McCormick Blaine (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1979) and
Jacqueline Castledine. Cold War Progressives.
Women’s Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2012)
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Featured Image: Stanley Bruce chairing the League of Nations Council in 1936. Joachim von Ribbentrop is addressing the council. By Commonwealth of Australia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Rene Wadlow.
28 April 1919 can be considered as the birth of the League of Nations. The creation of the League had been on the agenda of the Peace Conference at Versailles, just outside of Paris, from its start in January 1919.
The U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was the chief champion of the League. The creation of such an organization was discussed from the start in January, along with discussions as to where the headquarters of the League would be set. On 28 April, there was a unanimous decision to create a League of Nations and at the same time Geneva was chosen for its headquarters.
The First decade of the League’s life.
Some of the later failings of the League were visible from the start. Defeated Germany and revolutionary USSR were not invited to join, and the U.S. Senate turned down the invitation. Nevertheless, the first decade of the League’s life saw a good deal in international cooperation, especially in the fields of labor conditions, health, social welfare, intellectual cooperation, and agriculture – all areas that would later be continued and developed within the U.N. system.
The first decade saw the settlement of a number of conflicts that could have led to war. There was a wide-spread feeling that a new era in international relations had been born. However, the 1930s began with the conflicts which led to the end of the League.
Mukden Incident.
On 18 September 1931 Japan accused China of blowing up a Manchurian railway line over which Japan had treaty rights. This “Mukden Incident” as it became known was followed by the Japanese seizure of the city of Mukden and the invasion of Manchuria. Military occupation of the region followed, and on 18 February 1932 Japan established the puppet state of Manchukin.
Further hostilities between Japan and China were a real possibility. The League tried to mediate the conflict under the leadership of Salvador De Madariaga, the Ambassador of Republican Spain to the League. In practice, none of the Western governments wanted to get involved in Asian conflicts, especially not at a time when they were facing an economic depression.
Non-govermental organization cooperation.
Non-govermental organization cooperation with the League of Nations was not as structured as it would be by the U.N. Charter. There were a few peace groups in Geneva which did interact informally with the League delegations – the Women’s International League for Peace and Fredom, the International Peace Bureau, and the British Quakers were active but were unable to speak directly in League meetings. They could only send written appeals to the League secretariat and contact informally certain delegations.
In reaction to the Japan-China tensions, Dr Maude Revden, a former suffragist, one of England’s first women pastors, influenced by Mahatma Gandhi whom she had visited in India proposed “shock troops of peace” who would volunteer to place themselves between the Japanese and Chinese combatants. The proposal for the interposition of an unarmed body of civilians of both sexes between the opposing armies was proposed to the Secretary General of the League of Nations, Sir Eric Drummond.
Drummond replied that it was not in his constitutional power to bring the proposal before the League’s Assembly. Only government could bring agenda items to the Assembly. Nevertheless, he released the letter to the many journalists then in Geneva as the Assembly was in session. The letter was widely reported.
An unarmed shock troop of the League never developed, and China and much of Asia became the scene of a Japanese-led war.
The United Nations by World Citizens.
The idea of an unarmed interposition force was again presented this time to the United Nations by world citizens shortly after the U.N.’s creation at the time of the 1947-48 creation of the State of Israel and the resulting armed conflict. The proposal was presented by Henry Usborn a British MP, active in the world federalist and world citizen movement. Usborn was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha (a soul force) and proposed that a volunteer corps of some 10,000 unarmed people hold a two kilometre-wide demilitarized zone between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Somewhat later, in 1960, Salvador De Madariaga, who had ceased being the Spanish Ambassador to the League when General Franco came to power, created in 1938 the World Citizens Association from his exile in England.
The Gandhian Indian Socialist.
He developed a proposal with the Gandhian Indian Socialist Party leader Jayapeakash Narayan for a U.N. Peace Guards, an unarmed international peace force that would be an alternative to the armed U.N. forces. (1) De Maderiaga and Narayan held that a body of regular Peace Guards intervening with no weapons whatever, between two forces in combat or about to fight might have considerable effect. The Peace Guards would be authorized by the U.N. Member States to intervene in any conflict of any nature when asked by one of the parties or by the Secretary General.
Dag Hammarskjold who was having enough problems with armed U.N. troops in the former Belgium Congo and understanding the realpolitik of the U.N. did not act on the proposal. Thus for the moment, there are only armed U.N. troops drawn from national armies and able to act only on a resolution of the Security Council.
1) A good portrait of Jayaprakash Narayan, a world citizen, is set out in Bimal Prasad. Gandhi, Nehru and J.P. Studies in Leadership (Delhi, Chamakya Publications, 1985)
Narayan was also one of the Indian leaders met by the student world federalist leaders in their 1949 stay in India. See Clare and Harris Wofford, Jr. India Afire (New York: John Day Company, 1951).
Featured Image: Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Nuremberg. Ferencz was a civilian employee with the OCCWC, thus the picture showing him in civilian clothes. The Einsatzgruppen Trial (or „United…
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Abstract – This article proposes a framework on how to teach the New Globalism so that students can gain a better understanding of the world beyond the confines of the United States.
I began teaching my course on globalization during the mid-1990s with enthusiasm believing that my students would consider new and provocative material. In addition, I held the belief that I was presenting them with a different way to view the international system. I had hoped that students would become more curious about the world beyond the confines of the United States. Soon I realized that my students were not any more interested about global affairs than before taking course.
The primary reason for the unfortunate outcome was the way I taught the subject matter. The course consisted of a constellation of disconnected topics ranging from historical to social to economic and political .My students’ and my own dissatisfaction led me to reconsider the course during the next few years; but the end product continued to be insufficient. Only when I read Manuel Castells‘ (2005) article on “Global Governance and Global Politics“; I came to the conclusion that I had discovered an appropriate framework to effectively and systematically teach such a challenging course to mostly non-majors.
It is a challenging course because of the definitional problems associated with the term globalization and because of the inexhaustible number of topics that could be examined in such a course. In redesigning the course I considered three questions:
1. What definition and course-title best reflect the global changes?.
2. Where does one begin when teaching a course on globalization?.
3. What should the course examine?.
What definition and course-title best reflect the global changes?
Jan Aart Scholte (2000) in a wonderful book titled Globalization: a critical introduction addresses the definitional problem. Scholte states that globalization is often defined as internationalization, liberalization, universalization, and westernization.
Globalization as internationalization “refers to increases of interaction and interdependence between people in different countries.”
Globalization as liberalization refers to the reduction of “regulatory barriers to transfers of resources between countries.”
Globalization as universalization describes a condition in which “more people and cultural phenomena than ever have in recent history spread to all habitable corners of the planet.”
Globalization as westernization is associated with the process of homogenization, as all the world becomes western, modern and, more particularly, American.”
However, Scholte says, all these definitions are deficient because they do not present anything new. Much included in these definitions developed at earlier times during the 500-year history of the modern state-system. Scholte himself defines globalization as deterritorialization, or what he refers to as the growth of supraterritorial relations between people. Even though, he notes, territory remains important, many of the relations between people are supraterritorial (pp. 44-46).
More specifically, Scholte says that globalization:
“refers to a far-reaching change in the nature of social space. The proliferation and spread of supraterritorial… connections brings an end to what could be called territorialism, that is, a situation where social geography is entirely territorial. Although, as already stressed, territory still matters very much in our globalizing world, it no longer constitutes the whole of our geography” ( p. 46).
Scholte’s definition better reflects the global changes and I encourage my students to think of his definition as our guide during the semester. The most fitting title for such a course is the New Globalism because as Jurgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson (2003), Daniel Cohen (2007) and numerous other scholars argue, globalization is not a new phenomenon. The current state of affairs is nothing more than a new and different phase/act of globalization; one of the significant differences between other phases and the current phase of globalization is the role of the media and, a related component, the speed of communication.
Where does one begin when teaching the course?.
Before I begin discussing the New Globalism I must provide my students with the appropriate context. Obviously, the global changes create many opportunities as well as perils. Among the opportunities, some would argue, is higher technology, greater interactions between peoples, and rising incomes. The one significant difficulty I choose to focus on is the challenge that the global changes present to the state. To successfully discuss this challenge I refer back to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which signified the beginning of the modern state-system.
“Statehood meant that the world was divided into territorial parcels, each of which was ruled by a separate government. This modern state was centralized, formally organized public authority apparatus that enjoyed a legal (and mostly effective) monopoly over the means of violence in the area of its jurisdiction. The Westphalian State was moreover sovereign, that is, it exercised comprehensive, supreme, unqualified, and exclusive control over its designated territorial domain. Comprehensive rule meant that, in principle, sovereign state had jurisdiction over all affairs in the country. Supreme rule meant that, recognizing no superior authority, the sovereign state had the final say in respect to its territory. Unqualified rule meant that, although Westphalian times witnessed occasional debates about possible duties of humanitarian intervention, on the whole the state’s right of total jurisdiction was treated as sacrosanct by other states. Finally, exclusive rule meant that sovereign states did not share competences in regard to their respective domestic jurisdictions. There was no ‘joint sovereignty’ among states; ‘pooled sovereignty’ was a contradiction in terms” (pp. 20-21).
The course also devotes attention to various kinds of sovereignty. According to Stephen Krasner (2006) there are four different kinds of sovereignty:
“domestic sovereignty, referring to the organization of public authority within a state and to the level of effective control exercised by those holding authority; interdependence sovereignty, referring to the control over transborder flows; international legal sovereignty, referring to the mutual recognition of states; and Westphalian sovereignty, referring to the maintenance of borders and territory – meaning, the exclusion of external authority structures from domestic authority configurations” (p. 660).
Moreover, Christopher Rudolph (2005) discusses societal sovereignty. He says a growing awareness of sovereignty’s societal dimensions and an that “[w]hat appears to be happening as the trading state grand strategy has emerged as the dominant program among advanced industrial democracies is that the contemporary approaches to defending territorial sovereignty have exhibited increasing desire for stability in this emerging domain” (p. 13).
The Treaty of Westphalia contained “an early official statement of the core principles that came to dominate world affairs during the subsequent three [or more] hundred years. The Westphalian system was states-system. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as states increasingly took the form of nation-states, people came to refer to international as well interstate relations and frequently described the Westphalian order as the international system” (Baylis and Smith, p. 19). “The Westphalian system was a framework of governance. That is, it provided a general way to formulate, implement, monitor and enforce social rules” (Baylis and Smith, p. 20). The Westphalian Order remained dominant for the next 350 years. The Westphalian Order is threatened by the global transformation.
Today, there are too many actors in the international system that compete with the state or challenge the state, i.e., terrorist groups, NGOs, etc. State sovereignty is compromised more than ever before. States, of course, are not withering away. They recognize the challenges confronting them and attempt to manage them. The desire to promote democracy around the world is an effort by the state, at least the industrial democratic state, to preserve itself.
What should the course examine?.
The course examines the multidimensional changes occurring across the globe: technological, economic, cultural, and institutional/political. Of the four elements, because of my own interests, the focus is placed on the economic and institutional/political changes. I especially, but not exclusively, emphasize the multidimensional changes since the mid-1970s. Beginning in the 1970s the significant technological innovations were accompanied by dramatic institutional/political developments with the democratization of Portugal, Greece, and Spain.
Samuel Huntington (1992), in his book The Third Wave: Democratization In The Late Twentieth Century, presents three waves of democratization.
The first wave began in 1828 with the extension of suffrage in the United States. It ended in the 1920s with the rise of fascism in Europe. This wave was lengthy but not deep. After the early 1920s there was what Huntington calls a reverse wave with the establishment of non-democratic governments in countries that had become democratic after World War I, i.e., Italy and Germany.
The second wave was brief; it began in 1945 and ended in the early 1960s. The early 1960s were followed once again be a reverse wave when dictators rose to power in many countries including Latin American countries.
The third wave began in 1974 in Portugal with the fall of the dictatorship and the rise of democracy. The Portuguese example was quickly followed by Greece and Spain. The third wave substantially differs from the previous two; it is more extensive and deeper. It is more extensive, because today there are more democratic countries than ever before, and it is deeper, because the majority of people in democratic countries consider democracy as the “only game in town.”
At this juncture the course focuses on the wisdom of spreading democracy and more important on who should lead the effort of doing so. Should it be the international community or the United States? The works of a number of authors are discussed to provide some understanding of the complexity of these issues.
Robert Cooper (2000) argues that democracy causes both integration and disintegration. For example, he points out that “[d]emocracy, …, is thus a source, perhaps the source, of disintegration” (31) and the break up of the former Soviet Union is cited as an example. He also notes, however, that shared democratic values much contributed to European integration and the rise of the European Union.
“Europe today is paradoxically a place of both political integration and political disintegration. Larger-scale and smaller-scale political units are becoming more prominent and taking on more functions. The ‘traditional’ nation-state finds itself caught in the middle-challenged, as it were, from above and below” (p. 43).
Adam Daniel Rotfeld (2000) focuses on the role of the international community in promoting democracy. He states that “[a]s the post-Cold War world order continues to take shape, we are left wondering whether globalization or fragmentation will prevail. In reality, of course, the choice is not that stark, and both phenomena will continue to exist-and perhaps to thrive-in parallel. States will not wither away but will adapt in various ways to each of these two tendencies. Multinational security structures will have an increasing impact, directly and indirectly, on the internal transformations of state. International institutions will keep trying to stave off, de-escalate, and resolve the conflicts that inevitably accompany the formation of new national entities. We can expect the impact of international organizations and security structures to grow. The forces of stability and the forces of fragmentation will continue to clash, but we can hope that the emergence of a new multilateral security system will help to balance and mitigate the resulting tensions” (p. 95).
Robert Kagan (2000) advocates a different approach regarding the promotion of democracy and how to secure the international system. For him, what is most important is the foreign policies of great powers and especially the foreign policy of the United States, which is the only superpower. In Kagan’s view “[t]he task of America is to preserve and extend the present democratic era as far into the future as possible, in the full knowledge that democracy is not inevitable but requires the ongoing attention of individuals and nations wishing to sustain it. As it happens, the present era offers an especially favorable opportunity to advance democratic principles successfully and in relative safety. It would be a timeless human tragedy if the United States failed to seize it” (p. 112).
According to Manuel Castells (2005), democratic states are faced with four distinct crises: crisis of efficiency, crisis of legitimacy, crisis of identity, and crisis of equity.
Crisis of efficiency means that “problems cannot be adequately managed, i.e., major environmental issues, regulation of financial markets.”
Crisis of legitimacy means that “political representation is increasingly distant, with greater distance between citizens and their representatives. The crisis of legitimacy is exasperated by the practice of media politics of scandal as the privileged mechanisms to access power. Image making substitutes for issue debating, partly due to the fact that major issues can no longer be decided in the national space.”
Crisis of identity means that “as people see their nation and their culture increasingly disjointed from the mechanisms of political decision making in a global, multinational network, their claim of autonomy takes the form of resistance identity politics as opposed to their political identity as citizens.”
Crisis of equity means “[t]he process of market-led globalization often increases inequality between countries, and between social groups within countries, because of its ability to induce faster economic growth in some areas while bypassing others” (p. 10).
An additional work used to illuminate the discussion about democracy and democratization is Robert Putnam’s (1995) article titled “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” He uses bowling and belonging to bowling leagues as a metaphor to describe the lack of civic engagement. A few decades ago, he says, people belonged to bowling leagues and often as groups they went to bowling allies. While there, not only they bowled but they also talked about their schools and their community. Now, even though as many people go bowling as in the past, they go bowling alone. Going bowling alone does not encourage civic engagement.
Despite the difficulties confronting democracies in advanced industrial societies, many people and especially the young, Russell Dalton (2004) states, do not want less democracy, they want more.The multidimensional crises do not inhibit the states from adapting to the global changes. As Manuel Castells (2005) argues, they adapt to the changes in many different ways including the following:
a. By associating with each other and forming diverse networks of states: EU, NAFTA, and APEC are some examples. b. By building an increasingly dense network of international institutions such as the UN, NATO, IMF, and WTO. c. By decentralizing power and resources through devolution of power to regional governments, to local governments, and to NGOs that extend the decision making process in the civil society.
At this point of the course, once again, Manuel Castells (2005) provides some wonderful ideas about different paths toward the reconstruction of democratic governance. Paths such as:
a. Private/public partnerships.
b. Development of a global civil society.
c. Emergence of the global movement for global justice.
d. Redefinition of the role of international institutions.
e. Attempts to build new international institutions.
The course ends with me asking the students if a better world is possible and they are asked to read International Forum on Globalization (2004) to consider the possibilities of a “better world.”
References:
Baylis, John and Steve Smith, ed. 2001. The Globalization of World Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Castells, Manuel. 2005. “Global Governance and Global Politics.” PS: Political Science and Politics XXXVIII.1: 9-16.
Cohen, Daniel. 2007. Globalization and Its Enemies, trans. Jessica B. Baker. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Cooper, Robert. 2000. “Integration and Disintegration.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 28-40.
Dalton, Russell. 2004. Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies. New York: Oxford University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1992. The Third Wave: Democratization In The Late Twentieth Century. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
International Forum on Globalization. 2004. “A Better World Is Possible!.” In The Globalization Reader, ed. Frank J. Lechner and John Boli. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 438-448.
Kagan, Robert. 2000. “The Centrality of the United States.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 97-113.
Krasner, Stephen. 2006. “Problematic Sovereignty.” In Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations, ed. Phil Williams, Donald M. Goldstein, and Jay M. Shafritz. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth, 660-666.
Osterhammel, Jurgen and Niels P. Petersson. 2003. Globalization: A Short History, trans. Dona Geyer. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, Robert. 1995. “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6.1: 65-78.
Rotfeld, Adam Daniel. 2000. “The Role of the International Community.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rudolph, Christopher. 2005. “Sovereignty and Territorial Borders in a Global Age.” International Studies Review 7: 1-20.
Schmitter, Philippe C. 2000. “Democracy, the EU, and the Question of Scale.” In Globalization, Power, and Democracy, ed. Marc F. Plattner and Aleksander Smolar. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 43-56.
Scholte, Jan Aart. 2000. Globalization: A Critical Introduction. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
A list of the rest of the works considered to teach the course:
Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2007. In Defense of Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press.
Castells, Manuel. 1999. The Rise of the Network Society. Vol. 1. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
———-. 1999. End of Millenium. Vol. 3. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Etzioni, Amitai. 2004. From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.
Ferguson, Yale and Richard Mansbach. 2004. Remapping Global Politics: History’s Revenge and Future Shock. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gill, Stephen. 1996. “Globalization, Democratization, and the Politics of Indifference.” In Globalization: Critical Reflections, ed. James H. Mittelman. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 205-228.
Gills, Barry K., ed. Globalization in Crisis. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.
Held, David. 2004. Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Rosenau, James. 2006. “Governance in Fragmegrative Space.” In Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations, ed. Phil Williams, Donald M. Goldstein, and Jay M. Shafritz. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth, 571-580.
Scholte, Jan Aart. 2001. “Globalization and the states-system.” In Globalization of World Politics, ed. John Baylis and Steve Smith, 20-23. New York: Oxford University Press.
Professor George Kaloudis, Department of History, Law and Political Science, Rivier College, Nashua, NH, 03060, USA.
Featured Image: Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Nuremberg. Ferencz was a civilian employee with the OCCWC, thus the picture showing him in civilian clothes. The Einsatzgruppen Trial (or „United…
Featured Image: Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), Professor of Anthropology. By Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) whose birth anniversary…
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The Education currently there is growing attention both in scholarly; and popular writing with the process of globalization. Globalization is an empirical process of world integration driven by a variety of economic, cultural, political, and ideological forces as seen in such areas as market expansion; a global production pattern as well as cultural homogenisation.
However; In the fields of economics, politics, technology, environment and health; we see greater collaboration and interdependence. Now international conferences; common trade agreements and multinational projects are striving to find solutions to long-standing difficulties; and to promote development in areas, where the problems have become too great to be resolved by a single State.
Nevertheless; we are learning, out of necessity, that competition has its limits. To give one example, many of the issues in trade negotiations; which go on in Geneva are about labour standards, environmental policies and human rights (such as products fabricated by child labour).
These are all deeply domestic matters; which have now become part of international affairs. Has education been changing as quickly as the world economy?. How are we preparing children to meet the demands of the world society?.
What role are schools playing in the formation of active world citizens able to make real contributions to the creation of a more peaceful society?
Education is uniquely placed to help deal with the major problems facing the world society: violent conflict, poverty, the destruction of the natural environment, and other fundamental issues touching human beings everywhere.
Education provides information; skills and helps to shape values and attitudes. Yet many children fall outside formal education. Some 113 million school-age children are out of school; and some 875 million adults are illiterate.
This is evidence of the fact that the size; and complexity of education for all are too great for governments alone to address; even with the best of intentions and effort.
Education is not limited to the formal school system.
It is true that education is not limited to the formal school system. There are many agents of education: family, media, peers, and associations of all sorts. Nevertheless, schools play a central role, and people expect schools to be leaders in the educational process.
Unfortunately; there are times when schools are left alone as the only conscious instrument of education. Therefore; teachers need to analyse; how other agents of society contribute to the educational process or; more negatively, may hinder the educational process or promote destructive attitudes and values.
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.
Education has two related aims.
One is to help the student to function in society, be it the local, the national, and the world society.
The other aim is to help in the fullest development of the individual’s physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual capacities. There are three related ways to help prepare students for a fast-changing world in which people, ideas, goods and services increasingly cross State frontiers. These ways are related to:
Skills.
Content.
Values and Attitudes.
There is a need to teach those skills needed to be able to function effectively in the world: skills of goal setting, analysis, problem solving, research, communication, and conflict-resolution skills. We need to place more emphasis on communication skills in our schools; with an emphasis on personal expression through language and the arts.
Opportunities Needs.
Children need opportunities to acquire skills in writing, speech, drama, music, painting; and other arts in order to find their own voices and expressions.
The second area of importance concerns the content of education; with an emphasis on modern history and geography, ecology, economics, civics, and the history of science and technology.
There is also a need to organize a curriculum through the use of broad themes such as interdependence, change, complexity, culture and conflict.
A Global Society.
The third area concerns values and attitudes needed for living in a global society: self-confidence in one’s own capacity, concern and interest in others; an openness to the cultural contributions of other societies.
There needs to be a willingness to live with complexity; to refuse easy answers or to shift blame to others. In practice; a good teacher makes a personalized combination of all these elements.
One must be realistic in evaluating the difficulties of restructuring educational systems; to make them future oriented and open to the world.
We all know the heavy structures of educational systems; and the pressures to conform to the status quo. We must not underestimate the narrow nationalistic pressures; on the teaching of social issues nor the political influences on content and methods.
In order to understand the limits and the possibilities of change; teachers must be prepared to carry out research on the local community. They must be able to analyse their specific communities.
It is always dangerous to make wide generalizations on the role of the family, the media, of religion as if it were always the same in all parts of the country; or the same in all social classes and milieu.
Thus; teachers should be able, with some sociological training; to carry out studies on the formation of attitudes; values and skills of their students by looking at the respective role of the family, the content of the media, and student participation in associations.
Such studies can be carried out in a cooperative way, among several teachers so as to be able to go to greater depth.
Teachers could look for information to help answer such questions as:
“Are any groups excluded from participating in the community?”
“How can possible marginalisation be counteracted?”
“How can one study environmental and ecological issues locally?”
“What is the significance of different role models such as peers, parents, and educators?”
“In what ways can non-formal and informal learning environments be furthered?”
In conclusion; there are more and more teachers; who realise the direction of current world trends. Migration puts other cultures on one’s door step. We all need to be encouraged by the advances being made. We can help one another so that we may develop the culture of peace and active world citizenship together.
Featured Image: Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz at the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Nuremberg. Ferencz was a civilian employee with the OCCWC, thus the picture showing him in civilian clothes. The Einsatzgruppen Trial (or „United…
Featured Image: Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), Professor of Anthropology. By Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) whose birth anniversary…
Featured Image: Arnold Toynbee. By Atyyahesir, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) was a historian, a philosopher of history, and an advisor on the wider Middle…
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