Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Grenoble, Leonore A. and Whaley, Lindsay J. (eds) Endangered Languages: Current Issues and Future Prospects van Dijk, Theun A (ed.) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Volume 1: Discourse as Structure and Process. Volume 2: Discourse as Social Interaction Flowerdew, John The Final Years of British Hong Kong: The Discourse of Colonial Withdrawal gumperz, john j. and Levinson, Stephen C. (edds) Rethinking Linguistic Relativity Wodak, Ruth The Disorders of Discourse Clyne, Michael Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning Bakker, Peter A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Me´tis Ewers, Traute The Origin of American Black English: Be-Forms in the Hoodoo Texts Stevenson, Patraick The German Speaking World: A Practical Introduction to Sociolinguistic Issues Travers, Max The Reality of Law: Working and Talking in a Firm of Criminal Lawyers Gudykunst, William B., Ting-Toomey, Stella and Nishida, Tsukasa (eds) Communication in Personal Relationships Across Cultures     

Gender differences in the use of high-variance strategies in tournament competition

We report on a series of experiments in which participants first completed a simple game of chance and then competed in a tournament based on a multiple cue probability learning task. The results show that men made riskier choices in the simple game of chance, but women adopted the high-variance strategy more frequently in the tournament. However, after controlling for differences in forecasting skill, we find no significant differences in the rates at which men and women adopted a high-variance strategy. Although altering the difficulty of the forecasting task produces differences in the rate at which participants selected the high-variance strategy, it did not produce a significant difference in the rate at which men and women selected the strategy. Thus, this paper suggests that although women are more risk-averse than men, women are no less likely to adopt a high-variance strategy in a tournament competition.     

The Gender Politics of Human Waste and Human‐as‐Waste: Indonesian Migrant Workers and Elderly Care in Japan

Significant decline in mortality and fertility rates has led to a rapid aging population in many parts of the globe. Coupled with a decrease in caring for one's senior parents at home, this condition creates a crisis in elderly care. Most studies on elderly care in Japan, the country with the highest percentage of senior people in the world, employ theoretical approaches rooted in the fields of aging and migration studies. This article offers a new perspective by not only focusing on the voices of the Indonesian women migrant care workers in Japan by way of in‐depth interviews, but also intersecting feminist and waste studies in its analysis. This different theoretical approach allows this article to argue that the politics of disposability in the ‘global care chains’ is a gendered and ‘affective’ phenomenon. Drawing from Jaggar's ‘emotional hegemony’ and Saraswati's ‘affective structure’, this article shows that emotions matter in constructing the disposability of these migrant workers and elderly people, particularly within the capitalist currents that drive the gendered supply chains.     

Understanding the Influence of Traditional Cultural Values on Indonesian Parenting

The aim of this conceptual article is to consider the available literature regarding associations between cultural values and parenting in Indonesian society. Research focusing on parenting in the Indonesian context is limited, although there are extensive studies regarding parenting and its implications for child development in Western cultures. Indonesia is one of the most heavily populated and culturally diverse countries in the world, with more than 200 ethnicities represented. Because cultural values are likely to influence Indonesian parenting and, therefore, child development, there is a need to understand the ways in which Indonesian traditional cultural values influence parenting style. In this article the small amount of literature regarding parenting specifically in Indonesian culture is overviewed. The key outcome of this article is to highlight the need to better understand how cultural values influence parenting in Indonesia and, in turn, how these influence child outcomes, particularly under conditions of some cultural change. Recommendations for future research regarding associations between Indonesian cultural values and parenting are provided to stimulate more empirical attention to this area to support Indonesia’s adaptation to the modern global environment.     

Putting Ecstasy to Work: Pleasure,Prostitution, and Inequality in the Indonesian Borderlands

This article takes the drug Ecstasy as a commodity located at the center rather than at the margins of social processes, a technology that allows for the temporary engagement with pleasure and displacement of inequality in the context of nightlife and prostitution. It addresses these issues by focusing ethnographic attention on how Indonesian female prostitutes and their Singaporean male clients use Ecstasy in a disco on the Indonesian island of Batam, an export-processing zone located at the border to Singapore. By paying close attention to consumption practices, the article uses Ecstasy as a starting point for illuminating intersections of social mobility and inequality in the context of contemporary forms of transnational capitalism.     

Institutionalized corruption in Indonesian irrigation: An analysis of the upeti system

This article analyzes the internal logic of the upeti system in Indonesian irrigation and brings to light how corruption rules are shaped through complex socio‐political relationships reflected in the organizational culture of the irrigation agency. Based on 100 interviews with water sector professionals the article highlights: (1) the importance of social relations in shaping institutionalized corruption, (2) how the upeti system justifies corruption practices as the prevailing social norm, and (3) the need for structural change to eradicate corruption. Illustrating how corruption rules are embedded in project management procedures, with projects highly dependent on donor funding, the article highlights the importance of the issue for international agencies and the need to be more politically grounded in promoting their development agenda.     

Constructing the nation: Ethnicity,race, modernity and citizenship in early Indonesian thought

This article examines the ways in which some early twentieth-century Indonesian thinkers conceptualised the state they had so recently imagined, and particularly how they attacked the vast problem of accommodating ethnic difference within the framework of that new state. Notwithstanding the highly promising beginnings of Indonesian self-appreciation in the early twentieth century and an extraordinarily successful cooptation and, as necessary, subjugation of local and regional expressions of ethnicity to the notion of a united Indonesia, there developed at the same time the new and strange concept of an ‘Indonesian race’. That concept represented a regressive reluctance to dispense completely with pre-modern notions of culture and belonging, and created a damaging feature of the understanding of Indonesian citizenship that endures to this day.     

Gender in Social Work Education and Practice in India

Social work as a profession is committed to the creation of an equal and just society. Social work pedagogy combines an analysis of psychosocial, economic and political contexts and methods of active intervention and administration of social welfare. Gender sensitization and awareness is an integral component of social work education and training in India. Through conscious efforts students are enabled to imbibe the concept of gender, to look at women not only as individual entities but also in relation to men, and the way relations between the two are socially constructed. This paper examines the integration of a gender perspective in social work education and practice and explores how this may play a part in enabling students to ‘unlearn’ their gender stereotypes imbibed during socialization. The paper draws on case study examples of some projects in India.     

Dialogic landscapes: Toward a nuanced understanding of globalization in urban Indonesian signage

This article shows that a perspective rooted in Bakhtin's dialogism between the fixed centripetal and fluid centrifugal forces of language and culture is useful in achieving a nuanced understanding of globalization in general and semiotic landscapes in Indonesia in particular. Drawing on data from Indonesia, this article shows dialogic interconnections between fixed and fluid notions of languages and cultures through a multimodal and indexical analysis of governmental and commercial signage in the urban center of Semarang, the provincial capital of Central Java. The analysis highlights the nuanced localizing and globalizing strategies in signage and how dialogicity helps shape the semiotic landscape.     

Legal discourse and the cultural intelligiblity of gendered meanings1

This paper considers the methodological challenges that ‘post-modern’ approaches to gender ( Cameron 2005 ) pose for the field of language and gender. If we assume that gender cannot be ‘read off’ the identities of speakers, but rather is a social process by which individuals come to make cultural sense, then how do we best investigate this process? As Stokoe (2005) and Stokoe and Smithson (2002) have argued, it is problematic within such frameworks to conduct research that pre-categorizes individuals as women and men, since it is individuals' constitution as women or men that should be the issue under investigation. Indeed, for Butler (1990: 145), to understand ‘identity as a practice … is to understand culturally intelligible subjects as the resulting effects of a rule-bound discourse’ (emphasis in original). This suggests that we attend to cultural norms of intelligibility (i.e. the ‘rule-bound discourse’) and their effects. Following Blommaert (2005) and Woolard (forthcoming) , in this paper I investigate a speech event, a courtroom trial dealing with sexual assault, where understandings of social identities and categories (i.e. ‘norms of intelligibility’) are not only evident in the local talk of speakers and hearers, but also in the recontextualizations of this local talk by powerful institutional representatives (i.e. judges). By examining such recontextualizations of courtroom talk, gender is not ‘read off’ the identities of individuals (i.e. courtroom participants) but rather investigated as it appears in the cultural sense-making frameworks of judges. Moreover, given that judges are the ultimate interpreters of the linguistic representations of courtroom talk, this paper also demonstrates some of the social consequences associated with the performance of culturally intelligible and unintelligible gendered identities.     

Gender Differences in Income Sources of the Elderly in Peninsular Malaysia

Objectives of this study were to identify and compare the sources and amounts of income received by elderly males and females. Specifically, this study examined gender differences in income receipt for a sample of 1,841 residents of Peninsular Malaysia who were aged 55–75. Significant differences were found in the source and amount of income of elderly males and females. Although the majority of elderly of both genders received income from their children, there were profound gender differences in the receipt of work-related and investment-related income.     

Gender bias in the classroom: A network study on self and peer ability attribution

Stereotypes can contribute to the gender gap in STEM by shaping people’s expectations on their own and others’ performance. When gender is salient, expectations on task performance might reflect gender constructs even when information on individual abilities is available. We tested this hypothesis in a network study on students from ten high school classes in Milan, Italy. We asked the students to choose the four best candidates from their classmates for three hypothetical inter-class competitions in reading, math, and science. Results showed that females were more likely to be nominated for the reading competition but less likely for science. We did not find any statistically significant results for the math competition. We also found that female students were less likely to nominate themselves for any competition, regardless of the subject, even controlling for their own performance and self-concept.     

Adat in Indonesian Land Law: A Promise for the Future or a Dead End?

At present the contestation of the Indonesian state’s dispossessory policies regarding land and other natural resources is dominated by a discourse based on adat. This situation is reminiscent of the colonial period, when invoking adat was a relatively effective means of protecting Indonesians from losing their land to plantation companies supported by the Netherlands–Indies government. However, adat lost its traction when Indonesia became independent and the new state started to vigorously pursue nation building and economic expansion. Only after the end of the New Order in 1998 did civil society groups revive the adat defence against dispossession. This article analyses current debates and developments concerning the place of adat in national land law and its potential for protecting communities against dispossession of their land by the Indonesian state. We argue that the promotion of adat has produced few concrete results and that it is unlikely to be more successful for this purpose in the future. Given Indonesia’s current social and political realities, any land rights strategy for protecting people against dispossession that is based on indigeneity is problematic, and alternative approaches are needed.     

Placing Gender in Social Work: The Local and National Dimensions of Gender Relations

This paper argues that as well as being sensitive to wider discourses of gender relations, social workers need to consider the ways in which gender is localised. It is argued that to some extent gender practices vary according to local culture, that gendered identities are often localised and that social workers tend to construct their clients according to images of local men and women. These images tend to be stereotypical but some do also reflect dominant local gendered practices. The paper draws on data from qualitative interviews with social workers and probation officers, as well as the experience of teaching social work students, to illustrate these arguments. Whilst it is argued that the localising of gender is of general relevance, the data come from Wales alone. The author's conclusion is that (amongst other things) anti‐oppressive practice involves recognising the important influence of local stereotypes and challenging them, whilst also acknowledging that gendered practices do vary from place to place.     

The Variable Nature of the Gender Gap in Political Knowledge

ABSTRACT

Previous research demonstrates that long-standing gender gaps in political knowledge are often a function of measurement artifacts. This article examines two potential measurement issues – question content and format – to determine whether gender differences in knowledge are sensitive to decisions we make when choosing and constructing knowledge measures. Using an original survey from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we demonstrate that, while expected gender differences exist when we ask traditional knowledge questions, these gender gaps are ameliorated when we employ items that measure knowledge about women in politics. We also examine gendered response patterns regarding “don’t know” responses, which can deflate women’s knowledge levels. Finally, we examine the determinants of political knowledge for women and men, and uncover an important role for political interest in shaping women’s knowledge levels. These results suggest that scholars should take steps to create political knowledge measures that can most accurately gauge the political capacities of women and men.     

Gender Differences in Self-Reported Reasons for Homelessness

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the ways in which the perceived pathways into homelessness are socially structured. We do this by examining the relative frequency of 11 different reasons homeless males and females cite for being homeless. Males were more likely to cite the following as their main reasons for homelessness: loss of a job, discharge from an institution, mental health problems, and alcohol or drug problems. Women were more likely to cite the following as their main reason for homelessness: eviction, interpersonal conflict, and someone no longer able or willing to help. Self-reported reasons for being homeless are also related to age, marital status, race, and being a veteran. As expected, they are also linked to receptiveness to treatment. Gender differences in reasons for homelessness may require different approaches to building helping relationships with homeless men and women.     

社会性别视域下高校美女文化现象解析

高校美女文化面临着泛化的倾向。造成这种现象的深层次原因与市场经济中女性地位的衰落直接相关。而高校社会性别教育的缺失削弱了女性的独立意识,大众文化的勃兴则强化着社会性别的刻板印象。高校美女文化的泛滥弱化了女大学生独立意识的形成,造成社会资源的浪费．也加剧了社会文化中男女不平等的局面,促使女性向传统价值观回归。为了重塑高校社会性别平等文化,应该使社会性别意识纳入政府决策主流,推动社会性别平等教育进入高等教学体系并实现学科建设主流化,培养大众传媒的社会性别意识。     

Gender and Infrastructure in the World Bank

This article conducts a critical analysis of the World Bank's current infrastructure strategy from a feminist perspective, arguing that failures to define gender and set meaningful targets and indicators have meant that gender has not been integrated into the implementation of infrastructure projects. It sets out three limitations to the Bank's approach to gender and infrastructure: lack of awareness of gender in the four sectors that comprise infrastructure; the Bank's narrow approach to gender equality and women's empowerment; and the failure of the Bank to mainstream gender in its current infrastructure strategy.     

Peer Relationships and Indonesian Muslim Adolescents' Religiosity and Religious Coping: Selection and Influence

The religious similarity of adolescents and their friends can arise from selection or influence. Prior studies were limited because of confounds that arose from the ethnic and religious heterogeneity of the samples and the use of cross-sectional designs. SIENA was used in this two-year longitudinal study of 825 Indonesian Muslim high school students (445 girls; mean age = 16.5 years) to assess peer selection and influence as these pertained to religiosity and religious coping. The analyses yielded significant influence but not selection effects for both religiosity and religious coping. This study is an important methodological advance over prior research and although limited by correlational data, nevertheless, provides evidence that adolescents influence their peers' religiousness.     

Gender differences in perceptions of aftercare supports and services

Youth depart residential care with many continued risk factors, unique needs, and challenges as they reintegrate into the home, school, and community settings. Currently, there is limited research on needs and best practices in aftercare services and supports for youth departing from residential settings and even less is known about how these differ by gender. While preliminary studies have explored perceptions of need during reintegration and aftercare by youth and caregivers, little is known about how these may differ by gender or if perceptions change over time after experiencing the initial transition period. One way to address this knowledge gap is to identify how prepared males and females feel for reintegration in critical life domains, their beliefs about aftercare, and preferences regarding potential services or supports to aide in the reintegration at discharge. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore if males and females differ on preparedness for reintegration across critical life domains, beliefs about aftercare, and preferences regarding potential services or supports to aide in the reintegration at departure from a residential treatment facility (N = 132). Overall, very few differences were found between males and females at departure. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.