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Volume XV (2004)
FOREWORD
This issue of the ITWSJ&R deals with topics concerning the
displacement of people in Guatemala, the writing of the African novelist
Ahmadou Kourouma, and the problems associated with majoritarianism.
Jo Ann DiGeorgio-Lutz and
Aaron Hale’s essay, "Internal Displacement in Guatemala," is an
investigation that attempts to fill the gap in the literature concerning
the analysis of internal displacement in post-civil war Guatemalan
society. It is based on fieldwork in several marginalized communities
within Guatemala City, environs that were inhabited by numbers of
conflict induced internally displaced persons (IDPs). It was generally
thought that the end of the civil war in December 1966 also brought an
end to internal displacement within the country. However, displacement
did not cease following the peace; rather, it continues at a different
level and for a variety of reasons. In examining the post conflict
return and resettlement of indigenous Maya who were displaced, DiGeorgio-Lutz
and Hale conclude that the relationship between the label IDP and how an
individual’s self-identity is a troubling one that suggests that
Guatemala’s internal displacement problem has not been resolved by the
1994 Accord on Resettlement, and the subsequent 1996 peace agreement.
They end with the thought that a long lasting peace in that Central
American country will not be achieved until the issue of internal
displacement is settled for all its citizens.
In "History, Political
Discourse, and Narrative Strategies in the African Novel: Ahmadou
Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé," Paschal B. Kyiiripuo Kyoore
focuses on Ahmadou Kourouma’s novel Allah n’est pas oblige and
shows that this novel fits the definition of a "historical novel"
because Kourouma uses authentic historical names, places, and events as
the raw material for his fictional creation. Kourouma makes use of
historical "causality" in the same way that a historian does in
compiling a historical work. However, the author of Allah n’est pas
oblige evokes historical personalities in order to lampoon them, and
to criticize dictatorship and those responsible for the civil wars in
Liberia and Sierra Leone. Kyoore makes it clear that Kourouma uses a
variety of narrative devices to speak against injustice on behalf of the
voiceless.
Peter Emerson’s
contribution, "Majoritarianism, A Cause of Conflict: The Rights and
Wrongs of Self-Determination," sets the stage by briefly laying out the
tragic history of recent attempts to implement a majoritarian
interpretation of the right of self-determination. He makes a strong
case against the West’s obsession with majority rule as the only
legitimate form of democracy, and concludes that many situations of
decision making are best served by some sort of a multi-option
preference vote. The suggestion is that recent history might have been
different if majoritarianism was replaced with a procedure that
displayed a greater multiplicity.
The Book Review section
concludes this issue with 11 book reviews. Rory J. Conces reviews Azar
Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir of Books (Random
House, 2004); Thomas C. Buchanan reviews Selwyn H.H. Carrington’s The
Sugar Industry and Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1775–1810
(University Press of Florida, 2002); David T. Jervis reviews Gliomee
Hermann’s The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (University of
Virginia Press, 2003) and Fran Lisa Buntman’s Robben Island and
Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid (Cambridge University Press, 2004);
Ali Kamali reviews Peter L. Berger and Samuel P. Huntington’s Many
Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World (Oxford
University Press, 2002); Moshe Gershovich reviews David Schenker’s
Dancing with Saddam: The Strategic Tango of Jordanian-Iraqi Relations
(Lexington Books and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
2003); A.B. Assensoh and Y.M. Alex-Assensoh review Joseph C. Dorsey’s
Slave Traffic in the Age of Abolition: Puerto Rico, West Africa, and
non-Hispanic Caribbeans, 1815–1859 (University Press of Florida,
2003); Joseph K. Adjaye reviews Verene A. Shepherd’s
Slavery Without Sugar: Diversity in
Caribbean Economy and Society Since the 17th Century
(University Press of Florida, 2002);
Richard R. Super reviews The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics,
edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, and Pamela Marie Smarkaloff (Duke
University Press, 2003); Dale Stover reviews Religious Fundamentalism
in the Contemporary World: Critical Social and Political Issues
(Lexington Books, 2004), edited by Santosh C. Saha; and David Carey, Jr.
reviews Sherry Johnson’s The Social Transformation of
Eighteenth-Century Cuba (University Press of Florida, 2001).
Volume XIV |
