Book Assignment Part 5 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Book Assignment Part 5 - Essay Example Actors on a historical stage do not just exist; they act, and they act out of the conditions of their character and circumstances. Human life is biographical as well as biological, and it is clear that memory has sense from both of these perspectives. Following Martnez (1994), Wilson and Donnan state that: "transnationalism is the process whereby borderlanders are influenced by, and sometimes share the values, ideas, customs and traditions of, their counterparts across the boundary line" (Wilson and Donnan 1999, p. 5). Unlike the stage actor, whose assumed identity is not taken seriously to represent the self within, the spy must convince skeptical and suspicious others of the reality of an assumed identity, when that assumed identity is in fact false. Thus, the spy poses an interesting case for a psychology of self and identity, especially when the possibilities of double agents or counterspies are considered. In contrast to other borders, the uniqueness of the U.S.-Mexican border is explained by historical relations between the nations and political struggle. The war between the United States and Mexico (1846-48) ended with the defeat of Mexico and its resultant loss of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. For the first time the Spanish Americans realized that the "Colossus of the North" was a threat to them. Although Mexico has had to accept the loss of half the territory it claimed, that loss is still a source of bitterness. In South America after the wars of independence there were no developments of international importance comparable to those in Mexico. Though for some purposes and in some contexts the 'native' population was treated as homogeneous, there was in colonialism, an ideology and practice of classification' which usually divided that population into further, hierarchically ordered and stereotyped, categories. Sometimes these were very broad: Spaniards in Mexico referred to the 'wild' Indians. This kind of transformation often emerged through an 'ethnic dialectic'. In the colonial classification of indigenous populations there was a dialectical relationship between existing ethnic categories, often those of the locally dominant group with which the colonizers first established contact, or with which they had their most enduring relationship, and the categories of the colonizers' own language and culture. They did not impose or operate solely with a preformed system of classification, nor did they adopt existing systems wholesale. In the shaping and reshaping of indigenous ethnic and cultural pluralism there was a complex i nterplay between colonizers' systems of classification and those of the colonized (which in any case were not timeless or unchanging). The transformation of ethnic space involved various forms of social and political incorporation. "The exploration of Mexican and Mexican-American political values and actions at the border is an early example of ethnicity as a factor which gives character to the borderlands, binds communities to each other across the borderline" (Wilson and Donnan Wilson and Donnan 1999, p. 54) . The relations between the U.S. and Mexico were based on unique cultural values and traditions shaped by both cultures. The historical and sociological process we have

Political Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Political Terrorism - Essay Example To answer this question let us look at the definition of terrorism. Political terrorism is a mode of warfare and has a different meaning for different people and in this is the conundrum in defining political terrorism. For the developed world the Libyan-supported attacks on the airports at Rome and Vienna in 1985 were acts of political terrorism by Libya and the revolutionary elements using armed struggle to promote their aims at securing freedom. From the perspective of Libya, however it was the retaliatory attack by the powerful United States of America in 1986 that was an act of political terrorism, for it was purely with the objective of putting fear into Libya and the insurgent groups that violence would be met with violence. Thus searching for a universally accepted definition of political terrorism is futile exercise and there would be better reward in trying to understand what political terrorism means (Merari, 2007). There are three basic elements that go into providing an understanding of political terrorism. The first is that the destructive violence seen in mode of warfare of political violent is unlike the conventional open combat and is essentially in used by stealth. The second basic element is the principal targets of this violence is political and even when the targets are not political, the message attempted to be communicated through the violence is political. The final basic element in political terrorism is that it is used by insurgent groups against the state or as recourse by the state. Thus the main players in political terrorism are insurgent groups acting against the state or the state by itself (Ronczkowski, 2004). Terror as a weapon has a long history and is not a development of the twentieth century. However, the nature of terrorism that society faces today is far different from the earlier experiences and as a coherent philosophy is rooted in