I think she doth protest too much: A reply to tiefer

In the November 1991 issue of The Journal of Sex Research, Tiefer (1991) provides a critique of a recent article of mine about sexual science (Abramson, 1990). The present paper is a brief reply to Tiefer. This paper notes the contribution that Tiefer makes about methodological diversity. Additionally, this paper suggests alternative viewpoints about the personal nature of Tiefer's critique, the necessity for polarizing sexual science and feminist perspectives, and the definition of rigorous. In the conclusion, sexual science is briefly restated.     

"I Feel Happy that I Can be Useful to Others": Preliminary Study of East African Women and Their Remittance Behavior

Individuals and their families often migrate for various reasons (e.g., economic wellbeing, civic unrest, medical reasons). Yet often times economic strain can cause families to migrate at different times. This separation within the family units has created the development of transnational family interactions where immigrant families remain emotionally and financially connected across international borders. Remittances, the back and forth exchange of goods and resources between people in the host nation and their counterparts in the country of origin, can often play a vital role in these interactions. Black African immigrants, Black people from the continent of Africa, are one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the US and also one of the highest financial remitters. Women are consistent remitters, yet little is known about the financial contributions of women from this continent to their families in their countries of origin. The current study looked at a segment of this population by exploring the remittance experiences of seven immigrant women from the East African countries of Rwanda and Kenya. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted and our thematic analysis revealed five themes: (1) Women felt their families made financial sacrifices for them, (2) Women took on family financial responsibilities, (3) Women felt their families in the country of origin had skewed financial expectations of them, (4) Women felt guilty about their limited finances and inability to send more to their families, and lastly (5) Women invested or had plans to invest in their country of origin.     

Bridging the divide in urban sustainability: from human exemptionalism to the new ecological paradigm

This paper reviews the main bodies of contemporary urban sustainability theory. From this analysis, two underpinning paradigms of urban sustainability are identified: (1) The ‘Human Exemptionalism Paradigm’ (HEP), which emphasizes the ability of humans to overcome environmental problems—see Urban Sociology, Urban Ecology, Urban Geography, Urban Psychology and Political Economy; and (2) The ‘New Ecological Paradigm’ (NEP), which emphasizes the criticality of ecological limits to human progress—see Urban Metabolism, Energy/Emergy Analysis and Ecological Footprinting. Each of these approaches is critically reviewed, highlighting their main assumptions, theoretical and practical foci. It is argued in the paper that if the related issues of urban sustainability and development are to be progressed, there needs to be: (1) a greater maturation of the NEP approaches, which are ‘relative newcomers’ to the area of urban theory; and (2) greater integration and dialogue between the HEP and NEP approaches to urban sustainability than has hitherto been the case.

An ecological perspective on family policy: A conceptual and philosophical framework

This article develops a conceptual framework that places family policy within an ecological perspective. The ecological perspective is particularly useful in providing a means both to understand why diversity exists among families and to analyze how human-created rules disparately affect the environments faced by families within and across different societies. Examples are provided of how family policy is conceptualized by organizations and groups that are concerned with family issues, and these examples are critiqued from the ecological perspective. Finally, the article suggests that the values on which an ecological perspective of family policy are grounded can serve as a beginning point to develop a philosophical basis for the development of family policy. Her research interests include family policy and research at the national and international levels. She received her Ph.D. in Social Work and Economics from the University of Michigan.     

Engendering a Therapeutic Ethos: Modernity, Masculinity & Nervousness

This article considers discourses of nervousness as an important historical dimension of the therapeutic turn. By tracing an emerging therapeutic sensibility through Australian medical literature and the popular print media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it provides an Antipodean perspective on the discursive and cultural terrain receptive to Freudian ideas and psychology, which were central to the ascendancy of a psychotherapeutic ethos. Through a particular focus on concerns about nervous men, the article explores how perceived problems of nervousness destabilized masculine ideals and helped engender a greater concern with personal distress, factors significant for the florescence of therapeutic culture.     

Teaching the history of women in sociology: Or Dorothy Swaine Thomas,wasn’t she the woman married to William I.?

One characteristic of feminist scholarship is the attention paid to the lost history of women in a wide variety of arenas. This interest stems from the insight that history is a social construction. As such, it is likely influenced by sexist assumptions. This train of thought led to the author’s interest in the possibility that sexism had biased both the opportunities for women in the past and the way the history of sociology had been conceived. This article describes an effort to explore these questions in an undergraduate research seminar. The article describes a variety of means the author used to unveil these problems with her students, and to engage them in asking new questions, reading standard sociological materials in critical ways, and working toward the creation of a less biased understanding of the history of sociology. The reactions of the students and professor, and the products of this course are specified. This course is one of many examples of the way feminist questions and perspectives have the potential for transforming sociology. Shulamit Reinharz is an associate professor of society at Brandies University and the author ofOn Becoming a Social Scientist (Transaction 1984). Her recent articles in feminist sociology focus on such areas as the meaning of miscarriage, the integration of gerontological and feminist theory, an analysis of the ideology of socialist Zionist feminist, Manya Wilbushewitz Shohat, and an overview of the work of Mirra Komarovsky.