The Making of “La Gran Familia Mexicana”: Eugenics,Gender, and Sexuality in Mexico

This article examines the impact of Mexican eugenics on different programs relating to the family throughout the post-Revolutionary period. It deals with how Mexican elites thought about the family and how these discussions delimited who should be part of or exist under the banner of “la gran familia mexicana”. I discuss how eugenicists' debates regarding motherhood, puericulture, class, and different preventive health measures were intended to keep “undesirables”—or the people who, in their view, should not be part of “la gran familia mexicana”—at bay. I argue that science was used as a tool for implementing different eugenic plans that would make ideas of mestizaje and “rational mixing” into the modern Mexican nation. I argue that according to the Mexican Society of Eugenics (MSE), it was through the regulation of individual families and the acceptance of eugenic precept of self-management and rational reproduction that the creation of the national family was to be crafted. Thus, the “gran familia mexicana” would become the organizing principle for both the individual and broader national dynamics in Mexico.     

‘My Judaic Pride Sang’: Eduard Bagritskii and the Making of Soviet Jewish Identity

Maxim D. Shrayer, Russian Poet/Soviet Jew. The Legacy of Eduard Bagritskii. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. XV + 163pp. Notes. Index. Illustrations. ISBN 0–7425–0780–7     

The Pride of Bai Ethnic Women—Yang Yanjun, Executive Vice Mayor of Dali

ALONG with its long history, Dali in Yunnan Province boasts strong local folk customs and magnificent natural beauty. With spring temperatures year-round, it is among the first batch of historical and cultural cities and landscapes in China listed by the State Council. It was also listed as a state-level natural preservation area in 1993.     

Adolescent Residents Negotiate the Construction of Social Problems in a Low-Income Community: Making Claims on the “City of Sadness”

The social constructionist approach to research on social issues provides a conceptual means in understanding how specific problems are generated and handled by institutional claims-makers, including the state and mass media. In neighborhood research, the voice of adolescent residents is seldom heard, let alone the value of their claims in relation to the state's construction. This article endeavors to address this in several steps: by outlining the specific developmental trajectory of low-income community in Hong Kong; by examining the dominant state discourse on the nature and “solution” of community problems; and by analyzing the voice of adolescent residents. Empirically, 54 Chinese adolescents (aged 12 to 17 years) were recruited to participate in eight focus groups to express how they saw community conditions. Furthermore, a random sample of 22 parents of the participants was surveyed as comparison. Finally, the article suggests that adolescents' constructions provide significant opportunities developing more critically informed, “bottom-up” agendas for community revitalization.     

Collaborative Frame Construction in Social Movement Campaigns: Bisphenol-A (BPA) and Scientist–Activist Mobilization

Previous research has explored the definitional features of the processes of scientific expert activism but has been less clear regarding the dynamics of this scientific activism. This paper addresses these gaps in understanding by using an exploration of the state-based efforts and mobilizations to regulate the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) to identify and analyze the dynamics of interactions between scientists and activists as they collaborate in pursuit of movement objectives. Drawing primarily from interview data and participant observation, I explore how scientific experts—through collaboration and work with activists—impact the processes of movement framing, and how, in turn, the collaborative dissemination of these frames may contribute to movement goals. I argue that the relationships and coordination that developed between BPA scientists and activists resulted in a collaboratively crafted set of frames that were both scientifically rigorous and highly resonant to a public audience.     

Making Yiddish modern: The creation of a Yiddish‐Language establishment in the Soviet Union

Truth and Half Truth. V.I. Kozlov, Natsionalnosti SSSR. Etnodemografichesky obzor (The Nationalities of the USSR —An Ethno‐Demographic Survey), 2nd ed., Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1982, 303 pp.

An Unconventional History of Poland. Norman Davies, God's Playground. A History of Poland. In two volumes. Volume I: The Origins to 1795; Volume II: 1795 to the Present. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Vol. I, xviii + 605pp. Illus. Maps. Diagrams. Chronology. Index. £27.50; Vol. II, xxvii + 725pp. Illus. Maps. Diagrams. Chronology. Index. £27.50.

Prelude to Catastrophe. Nathaniel Katzburg. Hungary and the Jews. Policy and Legislation 1920–1943. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1981. 299 pp. Bibl. Index. (Publications of the Institute of Holocaust Research). N.p.     

Sexual Intimacy Constructions of Heterosexual Couples Living in a Low-Income, “Colored,” Farmworker Community in South Africa

This study has been motivated by the scarcity of research that adopts an unproblematic focus on sexuality in South African Black and Colored low-income communities. We explored the sexual intimacy constructions of 15 Colored married/cohabiting couples who live in a low-income, historical South African farmworker community. Using a social constructionist thematic analysis method, we identified four themes: (a) metaphoric and indirect sexual language; (b) the use of a romantic discourse to talk about sexual experiences; (c) male-centered sexual relationships; and (d) lack of privacy brings both restriction and pleasure. We consider how these themes may be linked to the participants’ community context and colonial and apartheid history. Finally, we emphasize the need for research that also explores positive sex functions and experiences rather than focuses narrowly on problematic sexual behavior.     

The horizons of technological control: automated surveillance in the New York subway

Surveillance technologies may be capable of monitoring a domain, but they need a sufficiently orderly domain to monitor. This article examines the secretive effort to institute artificial-intelligence-based ‘smart surveillance’ in the New York subway, using object- and pattern-recognition algorithms to identify dangerous activities in video feeds, such as a person abandoning a package. By considering the necessary preconditions for computer vision systems to recognize patterns and objects, I show how smart surveillance was challenged by the lack of visual and social uniformities necessary for smart surveillance systems to make its fine-toothed distinctions. In spite of vast resources and involvement of a major military contractor, the project was eventually deemed a failure. Although problems in computer vision are being incrementally solved, those improvements do not yet add up to a holistic technology capable of parsing the real-world ambiguity of open-ended settings which do not meet the assumptions of the detection algorithms. In the absence of technologies that can handle the actual mess, the world itself must cooperate, but it often does not. The article demonstrates the importance of looking beyond the claims of technical efficacy in the study of security and surveillance to discover how technologies of inspection and control actually work, as a means to cut through the heavy rhetorical packaging in which they are sold to their publics.     

Dairy Livestock Interventions for Food Security in Uganda: What are the Implications for Women's Empowerment?*

Women are increasingly the target of agricultural development programs aimed at reducing poverty and food insecurity, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Some feminist scholars argue that such efforts are driven more by concerns about the efficient use of resources than the rights of women and do little to transform gendered power relations. We examine how development interventions that target women affect household well-being, especially food insecurity, empower women, and transform gendered power relations. Our study uses the case of the Gates Foundation funded East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) program in Uganda. Our methods include the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index survey and in-depth interviews of women farmers and key informants, within the EADD program. We argue that the livestock sector provides critical insights into women's empowerment because livestock are not “socially neutral” in their gendered effects. Our study found that: (1) ownership of dairy cows enhanced important dimensions of women's empowerment and gender equity that benefited women and households; (2) women's labor responsibilities for dairy cows disempowered some women by increasing their time poverty and; (3) ownership of dairy cows provided a means for women to disrupt entrenched social norms related to gender roles within the household and agriculture.     

“Smuggled Refugees”: The Social Construction of North Korean Migration

In this paper, I demonstrate the identity transformation of North Korean women in interaction with state and non-state actors and domestic and regional structures, which I formulate for the purposes of this paper. From a state-centric social constructivist perspective in politics and international relations, I examine how the identities and interests of North Korean women are constituted and reconstituted in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the People's Republic of China and five South-East Asian countries along their migration routes before they reach the Republic of Korea – the so-called “Seoul Train in the Underground Railway”. Back in their country of origin, North Korean women are socially constructed as Confucian communist mothers. In China, the most frequently depicted images of North Korean women are trafficked wives. By paying for smugglers to cross borders to neighbouring South-East Asian countries, North Korean women finally become the agents of their own destiny, refugees in waiting to be transferred to South Korea.     

Accounts of False Memory Syndrome: Parents, “Retractors,” and the Role of Institutions in Account Making

There have been two traditions of research under the concept of accounts. One tradition, the social interactionist, has focused on the interactional use of accounts by individuals to neutralize negative evaluations of questionable acts or their consequences and restore social equilibrium. The second tradition, the social psychological, has focused on the autobiographical and explanatory use of accounts to create and organize meaning for troubling or stressful life events. In both traditions, scholars have been almost exclusively concerned with the individual-level functions of accounts. Analyzing the institutional origins of false memory syndrome and the retractor account episodes in which it is used, I argue for the expansion of accounts research to include the role of institutions and collective actors in the production of new account frameworks. Further, I argue that the conceptualizations of accounts in the two traditions of research can be effectively combined in a way that is sociologically stronger than either alone.     

The Solidary Relationship’s Consequences for the Ebb and Flow of Activism: Collaborative Evidence from Life-History Interviews and Social Media Event Analysis,

Acting in solidarity with deprived others has become a central topic in social movement research. The explanations of solidarity activism or political altruism are few. However, social movement researchers have claimed that solidarity with out-of-group others is a by-product of in-group interaction. In contrast, we argue that out-group interaction with the deprived other and the formation of a solidary relationship is central to the ebb and flow of solidarity activism. We investigate the Danish refugee solidarity movement and show that the meeting with the deprived other 1) brings about an interaction order which makes an ethical demand on the activists to care for the other both within the bounds of the situations and in the future; 2) enacts and amplifies activists’ values and beliefs because the deprived other becomes an exemplar of the injustice and the need to help the broader group of people in the same fragile situation. We develop and test this theory drawing on 42 life-history interviews and a social media dataset containing a panel of 87,455 activists participating in refugee solidarity groups.     

First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester,Massachusetts, 1862–1900

This article situates the 1850–1851 cholera epidemic in the British colony of Jamaica within prevalent debates about the moral condition of Jamaicans of African descent, the economic crises of the 1840s and 1850s, and ultimately the effectiveness of emancipation. Through close readings of Scottish physician Gavin Milroy's reports, juxtaposed against correspondence between colonial officials and local public health authorities, this article argues that the cholera epidemic not only provided another venue to air critiques of Jamaica's transition from slavery to freedom, but also revealed as essential one particular solution – sanitary reform – to two major issues: cholera and the island's economic decline.