International Women's Year

International Women's Year

Author: Jocelyn Olcott

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0190649984

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Amid the geopolitical and social turmoil of the 1970s, the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women's Year. The capstone event, a two-week conference in Mexico City, was dubbed by organizers and journalists as "the greatest consciousness-raising event in history." The event drew an all-star cast of characters, including Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, Iranian Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, and US feminist Betty Friedan, as well as a motley array of policymakers, activists, and journalists. International Women's Year, the first book to examine this critical moment in feminist history, starts by exploring how organizers juggled geopolitical rivalries and material constraints amid global political and economic instability. The story then dives into the action in Mexico City, including conflicts over issues ranging from abortion to Zionism. The United Nations provided indispensable infrastructure and support for this encounter, even as it came under fire for its own discriminatory practices. While participants expressed dismay at levels of discord and conflict, Jocelyn Olcott explores how these combative, unanticipated encounters generated the most enduring legacies, including women's networks across the global south, greater attention to the intersectionalities of marginalization, and the arrival of women's micro-credit on the development scene. This watershed moment in transnational feminism, colorfully narrated in International Women's Year, launched a new generation of activist networks that spanned continents, ideologies, and generations.


Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Author: Martha Brill Olcott

Publisher: Carnegie Endowment

Published: 2010-09

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0870032992

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At the outset of independence 18 years ago, Kazakhstan's leaders promised that the country's rich natural resources, with oil and gas reserves among the largest in the world, would soon bring economic prosperity. It appeared that democracy was beginning to take hold in this newly independent state. Nearly two decades later, Kazakhstan has achieved the World Bank's ranking of a "middle economic country," but its economy is straining from the global economic crisis. The country's political system still needs fundamental reform before Kazakhstan can be considered a democracy. Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise examines the development of this ethnically diverse and strategically vital nation, which seeks to play an influential role on the international stage. Praise for the previous edition of Kazakhstan: "This detailed but accessible work will be the definitive work on the newly independent state of Kazakhstan."— Choice "[Olcott]... knows more about Kazakhstan than anyone else in the West."— New York Review of Books "Not only shares the lucid insights and depth of a seasoned observer, it greatly enriches the literature on post-Soviet transitions." —Foreign Affairs


Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Author: Jocelyn H. Olcott

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2006-01-17

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0822387352

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Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico is an empirically rich history of women’s political organizing during a critical stage of regime consolidation. Rebutting the image of Mexican women as conservative and antirevolutionary, Jocelyn Olcott shows women activists challenging prevailing beliefs about the masculine foundations of citizenship. Piecing together material from national and regional archives, popular journalism, and oral histories, Olcott examines how women inhabited the conventionally manly role of citizen by weaving together its quotidian and formal traditions, drawing strategies from local political struggles and competing gender ideologies. Olcott demonstrates an extraordinary grasp of the complexity of postrevolutionary Mexican politics, exploring the goals and outcomes of women’s organizing in Mexico City and the port city of Acapulco as well as in three rural locations: the southeastern state of Yucatán, the central state of Michoacán, and the northern region of the Comarca Lagunera. Combining the strengths of national and regional approaches, this comparative perspective sets in relief the specificities of citizenship as a lived experience.


Newfane and Olcott

Newfane and Olcott

Author: Avis A. Townsend

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738537221

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Newfane and Olcott are adjoining communities in western New York where residents relish the past and look toward a prosperous future. Some say they can hear the music of the big bands playing along the shoreline of Lake Ontario from the foundation of the long-demolished Olcott Beach Hotel. Others swear they can see the ghost of Malinda standing by the upstairs window of the beautiful Van Horn Mansion, guarding the grounds where her body was lost for one hundred fifty years.


Mr. Olcott's Skies: An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession

Mr. Olcott's Skies: An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession

Author: Thomas Watson

Publisher: Thomas Watson

Published: 2012-03-20

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1497714788

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A passion for star-gazing often starts in a modest way, with a small telescope. For some, that modest beginning becomes a theme that resonates through a lifetime. Mr. Olcott’s Skies is the story of one such beginning, and of how a small telescope and an old book set the author on a long and often indirect road to the stars. It’s the tale of a journey that has only just begun, and of the discovery that you really do need to look back the way you’ve come, to understand where you are.


Central Asia's Second Chance

Central Asia's Second Chance

Author: Martha Brill Olcott

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2010-03-01

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 0870032879

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A leading authority on Central Asia offers a sweeping review of the region's path from independence to the post-9/11 world. The first decade of Central Asian independence was disappointing for those who envisioned a straightforward transition from Soviet republics to independent states with market economies and democratic political systems. Leaders excused political failures by pointing to security risks, including the presence of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The situation changed dramatically after 9/11, when the camps were largely destroyed and the United States introduced a military presence. More importantly the international community engaged with these states to give them a "second chance" to address social and economic problems. But neither the aid-givers nor the recipients were willing to approach problems in new ways. Now, terrorists groups are once again making their presence felt and some states may be becoming global security risks. This book explores how the region squandered its second chance and what might happen next.