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3 books match the query '1960 - 1980'

cover of A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980

A Discontented Diaspora

Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980

Jeffrey Lesser

Duke University Press, 2007

In A Discontented Diaspora, Jeffrey Lesser investigates broad questions of ethnicity, the nature of diasporic identity, and Brazilian culture. He does so by exploring particular experiences of young Japanese Brazilians who came of age in São Paulo during the 1960s and 1970s, an intensely authoritarian period of military rule. The most populous city in Brazil, São Paulo was also the world’s largest “Japanese” city outside of Japan by 1960. Believing that their own regional identity should be the national one, residents of São Paulo constantly discussed the relationship between Brazilianness and Japaneseness. As second-generation Nikkei (Brazilians of Japanese descent) moved from the agricultural countryside of their immigrant parents into various urban professions, they became the “best Brazilians” in terms of their ability to modernize the country and the “worst Brazilians” because they were believed to be the least likely to fulfill the cultural dream of whitening. Lesser analyzes how Nikkei both resisted and conformed to others’ perceptions of their identity as they struggled to define and claim their own ethnicity within São Paulo during the military dictatorship.

Lesser draws on a wide range of sources, including films, oral histories, wanted posters, advertisements, newspapers, photographs, police reports, government records, and diplomatic correspondence. He focuses on two particular cultural arenas—erotic cinema and political militancy—which highlight the ways that Japanese Brazilians imagined themselves to be Brazilian. As he explains, young Nikkei were sure that their participation in these two realms would be recognized for its Brazilianness. They were mistaken. Whether joining banned political movements, training as guerrilla fighters, or acting in erotic films, the subjects of A Discontented Diaspora militantly asserted their Brazilianness only to find that doing so reinforced their minority status.

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cover of Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980

Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980

By Eric J. Hooglund

University of Texas Press, 1982

Carried out by the government of the shah between 1962 and 1971, the Iranian land reform was one of the most ambitious such undertakings in modern Middle Eastern history. Yet, beneath apparent statistical success, the actual accomplishments of the program, in terms of positive benefits for the peasantry, were negligible. Later, the resulting widespread discontent of thousands of Iranian villagers would contribute to the shah's downfall.

In the first major study of the effects of this widely publicized program, Eric Hooglund's analysis demonstrates that the primary motives behind the land reform were political. Attempting to supplant the near-absolute authority of the landlord class over the countryside, the central government hoped to extend its own authority throughout rural Iran. While the Pahlavi government accomplished this goal, its failure to implement effective structural reform proved to be a long-term liability.

Hooglund, who conducted field research in rural Iran throughout the 1970s and who witnessed the unfolding of the revolution from a small village, provides a careful description of the development of the land reform and of its effects on the main groups involved: landlords, peasants, local officials, merchants, and brokers. He shows how the continuing poverty in the countryside forced the migration of thousands of peasants to the cities, resulting in serious shortages of agricultural workers and an oversupply of unskilled urban labor. When the shah's government was faced with mass opposition in the cities in 1978, not only did a disillusioned rural population fail to support the regime, but thousands of villagers participated in the protests that hastened the collapse of the monarchy.

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cover of Seeking a New Majority: The Republican Party and American Politics, 1960-1980

Seeking a New Majority

The Republican Party and American Politics, 1960-1980

Robert Mason

Vanderbilt University Press, 2013

The rise of the Republican Party from its mid-twentieth-century minority status between 1960 and 1980 had a profound impact on American politics that is still being felt in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The GOP would move to the right in its pursuit of electoral ascendancy, but considerable debate within the party surrounded this shift and its success was far from certain. Ultimately, however, this development would culminate in the transformational election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980.


Seeking a New Majority assembles an international group of scholars to move beyond the ideas and activities of party leaders who have hitherto received the bulk of historical attention. It illuminates how the Republican Party expanded its regional base, especially in the South, appealed to new constituencies ranging from blue-collar workers to Christian fundamentalists, and enhanced the political appeal of conservatism. It also examines how Republicans engaged in a remarkable organizational and intellectual mobilization to challenge Democratic Party dominance--in search of a new majority.
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