Peace Corps Fantasies

Peace Corps Fantasies PDF

Author: Molly Geidel

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1452945268

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To tens of thousands of volunteers in its first decade, the Peace Corps was “the toughest job you’ll ever love.” In the United States’ popular imagination to this day, it is a symbol of selfless altruism and the most successful program of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. But in her provocative new cultural history of the 1960s Peace Corps, Molly Geidel argues that the agency’s representative development ventures also legitimated the violent exercise of American power around the world and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. In the 1960s, the practice of development work, embodied by iconic Peace Corps volunteers, allowed U.S. policy makers to manage global inequality while assuaging their own gendered anxieties about postwar affluence. Geidel traces how modernization theorists used the Peace Corps to craft the archetype of the heroic development worker: a ruggedly masculine figure who would inspire individuals and communities to abandon traditional lifestyles and seek integration into the global capitalist system. Drawing on original archival and ethnographic research, Geidel analyzes how Peace Corps volunteers struggled to apply these ideals. The book focuses on the case of Bolivia, where indigenous nationalist movements dramatically expelled the Peace Corps in 1971. She also shows how Peace Corps development ideology shaped domestic and transnational social protest, including U.S. civil rights, black nationalist, and antiwar movements.

Global humanitarianism and media culture

Global humanitarianism and media culture PDF

Author: Michael Lawrence

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2019-01-21

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1526117304

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This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This collection interrogates the representation of humanitarian crisis, catastrophe and care. Contributors explore the refraction of humanitarian intervention from the mid-twentieth century to the present across a diverse range of media forms, including screen media (film, television and online video), newspapers, memoirs, music festivals and social media platforms (notably Facebook, YouTube and Flickr). Examining the historical, cultural and political contexts that have shaped the mediation of humanitarian relationships since the middle of the twentieth century, the book reveals significant synergies between the humanitarian enterprise – the endeavour to alleviate the suffering of particular groups – and its media representations, particularly in their modes of addressing and appealing to specific publics.

The Peace Corps in South America

The Peace Corps in South America PDF

Author: Fernando Purcell

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-08-23

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 3030248089

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In the 1960s, twenty-thousand young Americans landed in South America to serve as Peace Corps volunteers. The program was hailed by President John F. Kennedy and by volunteers themselves as an exceptional initiative to end global poverty. In practice, it was another front for fighting the Cold War and promoting American interests in the Global South. This book examines how this ideological project played out on the ground as volunteers encountered a range of local actors and agencies engaged in anti-poverty efforts of their own. As they negotiated the complexities of community intervention, these volunteers faced conflicts and frustrations, struggled to adapt, and gradually transformed the Peace Corps of the 1960s into a truly global, decentralized institution. Drawing on letters, diaries, reports, and newsletters created by volunteers themselves, Fernando Purcell shows how their experiences offer an invaluable perspective on local manifestations of the global Cold War.

An Open Secret

An Open Secret PDF

Author: Natalie L. Kimball

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2020-06-12

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 0813590752

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Many women throughout the world face the challenge of confronting an unexpected or an unwanted pregnancy, yet these experiences are often shrouded in silence. An Open Secret draws on personal interviews and medical records to uncover the history of women’s experiences with unwanted pregnancy and abortion in the South American country of Bolivia. This Andean nation is home to a diverse population of indigenous and mixed-race individuals who practice a range of medical traditions. Centering on the cities of La Paz and El Alto, the book explores how women decided whether to continue or terminate their pregnancies and the medical practices to which women recurred in their search for reproductive health care between the early 1950s and 2010. It demonstrates that, far from constituting private events with little impact on the public sphere, women’s intimate experiences with pregnancy contributed to changing policies and services in reproductive health in Bolivia.

Sixty Years of Service in Africa

Sixty Years of Service in Africa PDF

Author: Julius A. Amin

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-06

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1000982068

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Based on previously unused primary sources obtained from both sides of the Atlantic, this study provides a more fundamental, consistent, and balanced source-based assessment of the role of the U.S. Peace Corps across its entire existence in Africa. The study sheds light on a new and intriguing historical perspective of the Peace Corps’ meaning and significance. Though the main trust is Cameroon, the study offers a window to understanding Peace Corps performance in all of Africa, and the larger global community. It examines Volunteers’ service in countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, and Guinea, showing how the agency transitioned from a Cold War agency to the Post-Cold War era, while asking important questions about the continuous relevance of Peace Corps in Africa. In addressing the topic, the book goes beyond the Peace Corps and delves into America’s "Achilles heels," which was the culture of anti-black racism, showing how it impacted U.S. foreign policy in the post-World War II era. The book interrogates modernization theories showing how those ideas shaped the creation of the Peace Corps, but ultimately contributed to the agency’s problems. The book questions the Peace Corps’ effectiveness as a development organization and much more. Yet for all the agency’s problems, the Peace Corps served as a rite of passage for returned Volunteers to make everlasting contributions to American life and society. This book contributes to modern African and American studies, and to diplomatic history.

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