In Constitutive Visions, Christa Olson presents the rhetorical history of republican Ecuador as punctuated by repeated arguments over national identity. Those arguments—as they advanced theories of citizenship, popular sovereignty, and republican modernity—struggled to reconcile the presence of Ecuador’s large indigenous population with the dominance of a white-mestizo minority. Even as indigenous people were excluded from civic life, images of them proliferated in speeches, periodicals, and artworks during Ecuador’s long process of nation formation. Tracing how that contradiction illuminates the textures of national-identity formation, Constitutive Visions places petitions from indigenous laborers alongside oil paintings, overlays woodblock illustrations with legislative debates, and analyzes Ecuador’s nineteen constitutions in light of landscape painting. Taken together, these juxtapositions make sense of the contradictions that sustained and unsettled the postcolonial nation-state.

Revisiting divisions of labour is a reflection on the making of a modern sociological classic text and its enduring influence on the discipline and beyond. Ray Pahl's 1984 book is distinctive in the sustained impact it has had on how sociologists think about, research and report on the changing nature of work and domestic life. In this timely revisiting of a landmark project, excerpts from the original are interspersed with contributions from leading researchers reflecting on the book and its effects in the ensuing three decades. The book will be of interest to researchers, students and lecturers in sociology and related disciplines.

One of the most powerful nationalist ideas in modern Europe is the assertion that there is a link between people and their landscape. Focusing on the heart of German romanticism, the Rhineland, Thomas Lekan examines nature protection activities from Wilhelmine Germany through the end of the Nazi era to illuminate the relationship between environmental reform and the cultural construction of national identity. In the late nineteenth century, anxieties about national character infused ecological concerns about industrialization, spurring landscape preservationists to protect the natural environment. In the Rhineland's scenic rivers, forests, and natural landmarks, they saw Germany as a timeless and organic nation rather than a recently patchworked political construct. Landscape preservation also served conservative social ends during a period of rapid modernization, as outdoor pursuits were promoted to redirect class-conscious factory workers and unruly youth from "crass materialism" to the German homeland. Lekan's examination of Nazi environmental policy challenges recent work on the "green" Nazis by showing that the Third Reich systematically subordinated environmental concerns to war mobilization and racial hygiene. This book is an original contribution not only to studies of national identity in modern Germany but also to the growing field of European environmental history. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Nature's Homelands: The Origins of Landscape Preservation, 1885-1914 2. The Militarization of Nature and Heimat, 1914-1923 3. The Landscape of Modernity in theWeimar Era 4. From Landscape to Lebensraum: Race and Environment under Nazism 5. Constructing Nature in the Third Reich Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Sources Acknowledgments Index Writing squarely within the idiom of the 'invented tradition' and the 'imagined nation,' Thomas Lekan argues that in the wake of belated unification and at a time of rapid industrialization, the German landscape came to be seen as a touchstone of national identity. He questions the idea that those engaged in landscape preservation were simply 'antimodern,' and he challenges both scholars who have seen a straightforward continuity from pre-1933 preservationist sentiment to Nazism and those who have made exaggerated claims for the Third Reich as the progenitor of modern green politics. This is a welcome contribution to the literature on local and national identity, joining works by Celia Applegate and Alon Confino, and on the environmental history of modern Germany. Both scholarly and original, Imagining the Nation in Nature is an impressive achievement. --David Blackbourn, Harvard University This important and timely book contributes to our understanding of German identity as well as to modern concepts of environmentalism and nature. Lekan's valuable contribution elucidates the modern, technocratic, and therapeutic vision of preservation that linked Weimar and the Third Reich. His analysis of Nazi bio-nature is significant and thought-provoking. --Alon Confino, University of Virginia

In Constitutive Visions, Christa Olson presents the rhetorical history of republican Ecuador as punctuated by repeated arguments over national identity. Those arguments—as they advanced theories of citizenship, popular sovereignty, and republican modernity—struggled to reconcile the presence of Ecuador’s large indigenous population with the dominance of a white-mestizo minority. Even as indigenous people were excluded from civic life, images of them proliferated in speeches, periodicals, and artworks during Ecuador’s long process of nation formation. Tracing how that contradiction illuminates the textures of national-identity formation, Constitutive Visions places petitions from indigenous laborers alongside oil paintings, overlays woodblock illustrations with legislative debates, and analyzes Ecuador’s nineteen constitutions in light of landscape painting. Taken together, these juxtapositions make sense of the contradictions that sustained and unsettled the postcolonial nation-state.

Today the atmosphere cracks with excitement and the anticipation of dynamic challenges as we transition from one government to another. We must take drastic actions to recovery because we cannot afford to elect leaders that are political Svengali who will cozen their way to the top to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. Liberia is at the crossroad and in the state of shock because of all the happenings in the country; the time for change has come to take us to the foundation of recovery, molding the minds of young Liberians. Thus, the keys to national recovery are set to catapult the nation into a new era. A nation cannot be built on falsehood considering our relationship to Yahweh. It should be built on trust. For instance, the leprosy of Naaman was inflicted on Gehazi for his falsehood and covetousness. In this life-changing material, Zack Roberts reveals the secrets and truth concerning national recovery. Zack empties his heart into this book with one major mission. Through the lessons outlined in this book directed by Yahweh, the transformation of our nation will take place when our minds are renewed and every Liberian become a catalyst for the transformation we seek. We cannot bring about change if we are not changed. There is a grave need for someone who will stand as a symbol of hope for the new Liberia. He also shares this life-changing truth about how to turn our present circumstances around and experience recovery for the nation. There is a need for a new leadership that will serve as the benchmark of what we hoped for, someone who will as serve a standard by which others may be measured or judged. Said leadership will serve as a test to check the standard others. It will have to become the model to accelerate the process and progress of transformation without being consumed by the institutionalized system of corruption. As Liberians, we must be ready for the inevitable changes taking place in our nation. Zack shows us that we must change our perception of ourselves. We have been victimized by past leaders, but we must not remain victims. We must change our attitudes and our past approaches and must be willing to embrace the new Liberia. Keys to National Recovery points out that recovery will not just come from our social and political systems, but rather, it will come from a desire and a willingness that is deep within us. The emphasis of this book is on national recovery, and it is a must read for those who are determined to recover from eroding lifestyles and past losses.