Importing Western Childhoods into a Chinese State-Run Orphanage

Since the early 1990s the Chinese government has allowed foreign humanitarian non-governmental organizations to aid children residing in official state-run orphanages. As one aspect of a larger research project on child abandonment and forms of orphanage care in contemporary China, this article examines an innovative state-civil society partnership of a Western infant special care unit housed within a large official state-run institution. The “Tomorrow’s Children” special care unit, funded and managed by middle-class Western volunteers, uses First World medical practices and universalistic ideologies of children and childhood to care for the institution’s most severely ill and disabled children. This article utilizes ethnographic methods to discuss conflicts over children’s best interests that arise between Western volunteer employers and the local working-class and poor Chinese caregivers who are expected to implement the imported practices. I contend that disagreements over appropriate childcare hinge on cultural and class-based understandings of childhood and differential access to social and financial resources. This research grounds discussions of globalization in a detailed case study by exposing the tensions and negotiations that occur at the local level in processes of transnational exchange.     

Is there competition between breast-feeding and maternal employment?

Theory suggests that the decision to return to employment after childbirth and the decision to breast-feed may be jointly determined. We estimate models of simultaneous equations for two different aspects of the relationship between maternal employment and breast-feeding using 1993-1994 data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Infant Feeding Practices Study. We first explore the simultaneous duration of breast-feeding and work leave following childbirth. We find that the duration of leave from work significantly affects the duration of breast-feeding, but the effect of breast-feeding on work leave is insignificant. We also estimate models of the daily hours of work and breast-feedings at infant ages 3 months and 6 months postpartum. At both times, the intensity of work effort significantly affects the intensity of breast-feeding, but the reverse is generally not found. Competition clearly exists between work and breast-feeding for many women in our sample.     

When corporate actors take over the game: the corporatization of organic,recycling and breast cancer activism

Social change endeavors are increasingly shaped by corporate interests and, in some instances, large corporations take over ideas and practices initiated by social change advocates. We label this process ‘corporatization’ and argue that, while it is clearly a variant of co-optation, it has specific qualities that warrant a separate analytical framework. Using existing research to examine the cases of breast cancer activism, organic food, and recycling in the United States – all extreme examples of corporatization – we conceptualize corporatization as a subset of co-optation in which: (1) corporations come to dominate fields initiated by activists; (2) corporatized versions become widespread; and (3) alternative, ‘response,’ movements emerge to oppose corporatized versions. We posit that, in each case, ‘corporate takeover devices’ allowed corporate entities to ‘join the game’ and eventually come to dominate fields initiated by social movements.     

Effects of Mands on Instructional Control: A Laboratory Simulation

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The effects of two types of mands on participants’ adherence to instructions were examined across two groups using procedures based on Hackenberg and Joker...     

Using Dramaturgy to Better Understand Contemporary Western Tattoos

Spurred on by increasing participation rates, scholarship on tattoos in Western societies has increased noticeably in recent decades. Often focusing on members of the middle class, scholars have assumed that the increasing number of people with tattoos is evidence of mainstream acceptance. In the following article, I critically evaluate claims of tattoo's new mainstream status. Rather than being embraced by the mainstream and power elite, studies and legal proceedings show that tattoos and piercings are only tolerated to a certain degree. I suggest that applying Erving Goffman's dramaturgical approach to contemporary tattoos provides a more complete understanding of tattoo's cultural location. It also allows the focus of the discussion to move beyond the individual attributes and motivations of tattoo wearers and onto the social interactions surrounding them. Moreover, a dramaturgical analysis of tattoos shows the need to properly differentiate between tattoos that are always visible and those that can be concealed. I end by offering a conceptualization of visible tattoos for future sociological research.     

A Comparative Cancer Risk Evaluation of MTBE and Other Compounds (Including Naturally Occurring Compounds) in Drinking Water in New Hampshire

Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) was added to gasoline in New Hampshire (NH) between 1995 and 2006 to comply with the oxygenate requirements of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. Leaking tanks and spills released MTBE into groundwater, and as a result, MTBE has been detected in drinking water in NH. We conducted a comparative cancer risk assessment and a margin-of-safety (MOS) analysis for several constituents, including MTBE, detected in NH drinking water. Using standard risk assessment methods, we calculated cancer risks from exposure to 12 detected volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including MTBE, and to four naturally occurring compounds (i.e., arsenic, radium-226, radium-228, and radon-222) detected in NH public water supplies. We evaluated exposures to a hypothetical resident ingesting the water, dermally contacting the water while showering, and inhaling compounds volatilizing from water in the home. We then compared risk estimates for MTBE to those of the other 15 compounds. From our analysis, we concluded that the high-end cancer risk from exposure to MTBE in drinking water is lower than the risks from all the other VOCs evaluated and several thousand times lower than the risks from exposure to naturally occurring constituents, including arsenic, radium, and radon. We also conducted an MOS analysis in which we compared toxicological points of departure to the NH maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 13 µg/L. All of the MOSs were greater than or equal to 160,000, indicating a large margin of safety and demonstrating the health-protectiveness of the NH MCL for MTBE.     

On the Social Validity of Behavior-Analytic Communication: a Call for Research and Description of One Method

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - It has often been suggested that nonexperts find the communication of behavior analysts to be viscerally off-putting. We argue that this concern should be the...     

Race,SES, and Obesity Among Men

Over the last decade, obesity has increased significantly among men but few national studies have empirically examined racial and socioeconomic differences in obesity among men. In this paper, we utilized logistic regression to evaluate the potential associations that race and socioeconomic status may have with obesity among men in the National Survey of American Life: an in-person household survey of non-institutionalized U.S. blacks and whites who lived in communities where at least 10% of the community residents were black Americans. A greater proportion of black men were likely to be obese than white men, but no interaction among race, SES, and obesity was detected when potential confounding variables were included. There was not a relationship between SES and obesity for white men, but there was an apparent positive relationship between SES and obesity for black men that did not remain significant in adjusted models. No relationship was found between age and obesity among black men, though white men who were 55 and older were more likely than those 18–34 to be obese in confounder adjusted models. Among white men, no relationships were found between obesity and education, household income, or marital status. Black men in the lowest income category were less likely to be obese than those in the highest income category, in bivariate but not adjusted models. These findings suggest that the way racial, economic, stress and behavioral factors combine to affect obesity in black and white men may be different.