Village Among Nations

Village Among Nations PDF

Author: Royden Loewen

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2013-12-06

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1442666730

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Between the 1920s and the 1940s, 10,000 traditionalist Mennonites emigrated from western Canada to isolated rural sections of Northern Mexico and the Paraguayan Chaco; over the course of the twentieth century, they became increasingly scattered through secondary migrations to East Paraguay, British Honduras, Bolivia, and elsewhere in Latin America. Despite this dispersion, these Canadian-descendant Mennonites, who now number around 250,000, developed a rich transnational culture over the years, resisting allegiance to any one nation and cultivating a strong sense of common peoplehood based on a history of migration, nonviolence, and distinct language and dress. Village among Nations recuperates a missing chapter of Canadian history: the story of these Mennonites who emigrated from Canada for cultural reasons, but then in later generations “returned” in large numbers for economic and social security. Royden Loewen analyzes a wide variety of texts, by men and women – letters, memoirs, reflections on family debates on land settlement, exchanges with curious outsiders, and deliberations on issues of citizenship. They relate the untold experience of this uniquely transnational, ethno-religious community.

The Nation in the Village

The Nation in the Village PDF

Author: Keely Stauter-Halsted

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 1501702238

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How do peasants come to think of themselves as members of a nation? The widely accepted argument is that national sentiment originates among intellectuals or urban middle classes, then "trickles down" to the working class and peasants. Keely Stauter-Halsted argues that such models overlook the independent contribution of peasant societies. She explores the complex case of the Polish peasants of Austrian Galicia, from the 1848 emancipation of the serfs to the eve of the First World War. In the years immediately after emancipation, Polish-speaking peasants were more apt to identify with the Austrian Emperor and the Catholic Church than with their Polish lords or the middle classes of the Galician capital, Cracow. Yet by the end of the century, Polish-speaking peasants would cheer, "Long live Poland" and celebrate the centennial of the peasant-fueled insurrection in defense of Polish independence. The explanation for this shift, Stauter-Halsted says, is the symbiosis that developed between peasant elites and upper-class reformers. She reconstructs this difficult, halting process, paying particular attention to public life and conflicts within the rural communities themselves. The author's approach is at once comparative and interdisciplinary, drawing from literature on national identity formation in Latin America, China, and Western Europe. The Nation in the Village combines anthropology, sociology, and literary criticism with economic, social, cultural, and political history.

A Village with My Name

A Village with My Name PDF

Author: Scott Tong

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-11-17

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 022633905X

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An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Beyond the Next Village

Beyond the Next Village PDF

Author: Mary Anne Mercer

Publisher: She Writes Press

Published: 2022-05-02

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1647423449

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Beyond the Next Village is Mary Anne Mercer’s memoir of discovery, growth, and awakening in 1978 Nepal, which was then a mysterious country to most of the world. After arriving in Nepal, Mercer, an American nurse, spent a year traveling on foot—often in flip-flops—with a Nepali health team, providing immunizations and clinical care in each village they visited. Communicating in a newly acquired language, she was often called upon to provide the only modern medicine available to the people she and her team were serving. Over time, she learned to recognize and respect the prominence of their cultural beliefs about health and illness. Encounters with life-threatening conditions such as severe malnutrition and ectopic pregnancy gave her an enlightening view of both the limitations and power of modern health care; immersed in villagers’ lives and those of her own team, she realized she was living in not just another country, but another time. This unique story of the joys and perils of one woman’s journey in the shadow of the Himalayas, Beyond the Next Village opens a window into a world where the spirits were as real as the trees, the birds, or the rain—and healing could be as much magic as medicine.

Whose Global Village?

Whose Global Village? PDF

Author: Ramesh Srinivasan

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1479856088

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Technology has shrunk the physical world into a "global village," where we all seem to be connected in an online community worldwide. Yet while we think of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as accessible to all, in reality, these are commercial entities developed primarily by and for the Western world. Considering how new technologies increasingly shape labor, economics, and politics, these tools often reinforce the inequalities of globalization, rarely reflecting the perspectives of those at the bottom of the digital divide. This book asks us to reconsider "whose global village" we are shaping with the digital technology revolution today. Sharing stories of collaboration with Native Americans in California and New Mexico, revolutionaries in Egypt, communities in rural India, and others across the world, Ramesh Srinivasan urges us to reimagine what the Internet, mobile phones, or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspectives of diverse cultures. Such collaboration can pave the way for a people-first approach toward designing and working with new technology worldwide that embraces the realities of communities too often relegated to the margins

Village of Secrets

Village of Secrets PDF

Author: Caroline Moorehead

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2014-10-28

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0062202499

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“Le Chambon has long been mythologized in France for the actions of its inhabitants. . . . But, as this riveting history shows, the story is more complex. . . . If the picture Moorhead paints is messier than the myth, this only serves to enhance the heroism of the main actors.”— The New Yorker From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Train in Winter comes the absorbing story of a French village that helped save thousands hunted by the Gestapo during World War II—told in full for the first time. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village of scattered houses high in the mountains of the Ardèche, one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Eastern France. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of this tiny mountain village and its parishes saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, freemasons, communists, OSS and SOE agents, and Jews. Many of those they protected were orphaned children and babies whose parents had been deported to concentration camps. With unprecedented access to newly opened archives in France, Britain, and Germany, and interviews with some of the villagers from the period who are still alive, Caroline Moorehead paints an inspiring portrait of courage and determination: of what was accomplished when a small group of people banded together to oppose their Nazi occupiers. A thrilling and atmospheric tale of silence and complicity, Village of Secrets reveals how every one of the inhabitants of Chambon remained silent in a country infamous for collaboration. Yet it is also a story about mythmaking, and the fallibility of memory. A major contribution to WWII history, illustrated with black-and-white photos, Village of Secrets sets the record straight about the events in Chambon, and pays tribute to a group of heroic individuals, most of them women, for whom saving others became more important than their own lives.

If the World Were a Village

If the World Were a Village PDF

Author: David J. Smith

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9780713668803

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This is the new paperback edition of a beautiful and unique book, which explains facts about the world's population in a simple and fascinating way. Instead of unimaginable billions, it presents the whole world as a village of just 100 people. We soon find out that 22 speak a Chinese dialect and that 17 cannot read or write. We also discover the people's religions, their education, their standard of living, and much much more… This book provokes thought and elicits questions. It cannot fail to inspire children's interest in world geography, citizenship and different customs and cultures, whether they read it at home or at school.

The Idealist

The Idealist PDF

Author: Nina Munk

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2013-09-10

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0385537743

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Bloomberg • Forbes • The Spectator Recipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie Award A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end global poverty "The poor you will always have with you," to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey Sachs—celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential bestseller The End of Poverty—disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development." In 2006, Sachs launched the Millennium Villages Project, a daring five-year experiment designed to test his theories in Africa. The first Millennium village was in Sauri, a remote cluster of farming communities in western Kenya. The initial results were encouraging. With his first taste of success, and backed by one hundred twenty million dollars from George Soros and other likeminded donors, Sachs rolled out a dozen model villages in ten sub-Saharan countries. Once his approach was validated it would be scaled up across the entire continent. At least that was the idea. For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Millennium Villages Project, accompanying Sachs on his official trips to Africa and listening in on conversations with heads-of-state, humanitarian organizations, rival economists, and development experts. She has immersed herself in the lives of people in two Millennium villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers, and witnessing their struggle to survive, Munk came to understand the real-life issues that challenge Sachs's formula for ending global poverty. THE IDEALIST is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the reality of human life.

If the World Were a Village

If the World Were a Village PDF

Author: David J. Smith

Publisher: Kids Can Press Ltd

Published: 2020-03-03

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 155337732X

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This bestseller is newly revised with updated statistics, new activities and completely new material on food security, energy and health. By shrinking the planet down to a village of just 100 people, children will discover how to grow up global and establish their own place in the world village.

Table of Nations

Table of Nations PDF

Author: Ken Helsley

Publisher: Xulon Press

Published: 2008-04

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1604779888

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In this second installment of The Witness Chronicles series, Dr. Josef and his researchers continue to unlock the mysterious origins of the cache of ancient tablets and artifacts found in the caves of Mount Ebal in Israel. The latest translation transcripts reveal the writer of the Biblical Table of Nations found in the Genesis, chapters Ten and Eleven, to be none other than Nobal, the son of Shem and Grandson of Noah, who was selected for this mission at the Summit on Ararat. Meanwhile, the sudden disappearance of millions of people from around the world continues to baffle scientist and evade every scientific explanation possible until a mysterious figure shows up in the office of the Secretary General of the UN and reveals to him the nature of the disappearances. But the explanation is so unbelievable, the Secretary General dares not reveal the truth to the world without weeks of preparation to ready them for this shocking news. Ken Helsley lives in Austin, Texas. He has two sons and one granddaughter. He is a veteran of the United States Navy and has spent most of the last 20 years in the Human Resources and Organizational Consulting field. Ken has an insatiable desire to know God and lean everything he can about the Father of all Creation. He has an incredible storehouse of research about the book of Genesis and has studied Biblical history exhaustively for over twenty years. Ken currently divides his time between his passion for writing about biblical characters and events and running his own business.