A rejoinder to S. K. Datta and J. B. Nugent

Extract

The question of old-age security as a motivation for fertility in less-developed rural areas can be put in clearer perspective by pausing to consider the changing roles of land and offspring under the influence of fundamental demographic upheaval. Under the pre-transition regime, one generation approximately replaced the preceding one, particularly once unused but usable land became scarce and the possibility of expanding farm operations became remote. Judging from the settlement patterns and the history of the Maharashtrian study area, such a circumstance probably obtained long before the secular drop in mortality began. During this period, a single son, typically, would survive to adulthood, gradually assuming control of the father's land (or the father's trade, among non-agriculturalists) and, if the father lived long enough, would eventually be a source of security in the father's old age. It is not inappropriate to mention that this generational cycle no doubt fostered a strong urge to leave the family land to a son, so that a sonless farmer would keenly feel a lack of fulfilment. In fact, responses to certain survey questions suggest that ancestral land and male progeny are still somehow connected, according to the way village men think, to their sense of immortality. It would be hard, consequently, to separate old-age security, the idea of ‘continuing a lineage’, and the sense of immortality conferred by owning land into distinct motives for conceiving children.     

A rejoinder to S. K. Datta and J. B. Nugent

Abstract Extract The question of old-age security as a motivation for fertility in less-developed rural areas can be put in clearer perspective by pausing to consider the changing roles of land and offspring under the influence of fundamental demographic upheaval. Under the pre-transition regime, one generation approximately replaced the preceding one, particularly once unused but usable land became scarce and the possibility of expanding farm operations became remote. Judging from the settlement patterns and the history of the Maharashtrian study area, such a circumstance probably obtained long before the secular drop in mortality began. During this period, a single son, typically, would survive to adulthood, gradually assuming control of the father's land (or the father's trade, among non-agriculturalists) and, if the father lived long enough, would eventually be a source of security in the father's old age. It is not inappropriate to mention that this generational cycle no doubt fostered a strong urge to leave the family land to a son, so that a sonless farmer would keenly feel a lack of fulfilment. In fact, responses to certain survey questions suggest that ancestral land and male progeny are still somehow connected, according to the way village men think, to their sense of immortality. It would be hard, consequently, to separate old-age security, the idea of 'continuing a lineage', and the sense of immortality conferred by owning land into distinct motives for conceiving children.     

Masculinity and desire in the works of J. R. Ackerley

Although homosexuality was still identified as a sign of effeminacy in the West at the beginning of the twentieth century, the work of George Chauncey suggests that working-class men in the West were able to maintain a masculine identity by playing the active, or insertive, role in sexual encounters. The experiences of one middle-class English homosexual, J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967), reveals that maintaining one's masculinity was more difficult for men of the middle class who desired same-sex contact. After a period in which his identity vacillated between the poles of male and female, he conceived a masculine homosexual identity by consciously rejecting effeminacy in himself and others, by dressing as a "normal" middle-class male, and, most importantly, by seeking relationships with younger, working-class men.     

Disciplining "Sextext": queers, fears, and communication studies

This essay is a critical interrogation of disciplinary responses to Tom Nakayama and Fred Corey's 1997 Text and Performance Quarterly essay, "Sextext." Disciplinary responses to the essay suggest strong resistance to queer theory as a "legitimate" intellectual and critical framework. By reading the responses to "Sextext" through the lens of queer theory, and by offering a political reading of conventional studies of sexual representation, this essay suggests how disciplinary boundaries in Communication Studies are policed to protect the production of "legitimate" scholarship. By revealing these practices, this essay provides further support for the central value of queer theory to the discipline of Communication Studies.