The Sexual Body of the Young Jew as an Arena of Ideological Struggle, 1821–1948

This article analyzes professional discourse on masturbation to illustrate how child sexuality serves as a site for symbolic ideological struggles. Sex instruction manuals written in central Europe in the nineteenth century Palestine and Israel in the twentieth century are the basis for broader discussions on religious and scientific discourse on child and adolescent sexuality within the Jewish communities. By tracing the development of new forms of expert knowledge, we show how expert discourse on masturbation gradually transformed it from a symbolic moral evil into a medical disease and a psychological problem, before declaring it a legitimized behavior.     

镇江沿江亲水生态文明建设刍议

区域竞争中,城市吸引力和竞争力的提高离不开其文化底蕴的提升。镇江的文明建设不仅要融入沿江开发、长三角区域发展的大潮流,更要有自身的地域特色。从旅游、城建、人力资源、城市精神、地产品牌等方面打造镇江沿江亲水生态文明,不仅符合镇江区域文化的精神内涵,更是科学发展观的根本要求。     

Household Assets,the Role of Government Assistance,and Depression Among Low-Income Families in Shanghai

As China’s economy is rapidly changing from a planned to a capitalist economy, many families find themselves financially struggling. In some cases, conflicting values and attitudes may contribute to mental health challenges such as depression that would lead to further feelings of helplessness and immobilization. Using a random sample of 1006 low-income households from Pudong District of Shanghai, China, this study aims to examine the relationships between household assets, beliefs about government as the primary way to improve economic circumstances and self-reported depressive symptoms. In addition, this study investigates the mediation effects of beliefs that government is the best change agent for improved life circumstances on the relationship between household assets and depression. We found those who indicated that government was the main means for attaining a better life had significantly higher depression levels whereas higher numbers of household assets were associated with lower depression levels. We also found that viewing government as the most important change agent only partially mediated the relationship between household assets and depression (p?<?.001). Findings from this study support anti-poverty policies and social work related practice initiatives aimed at assisting low income families in China, in particular the need to address psychological as well as economic needs.

     

Doing Difference/Doing Power: Negotiations of Race and Gender in a Mentoring Program

This study is an empirical exploration of how people negotiate structural inequality and interpersonal power relations through the interactive accomplishment of difference. The author presents data on a mentoring program in which college women were paired with middle school girls across race, class, and age differences. The data show white mentors' status and authority depended less on the program's structure and more on the middle school girls' interactional maneuvers to make race difference particularly salient in the mentoring relationships and, more important, to establish a set of meanings for racial difference that made African American higher in status than white. Bridging research and theory on “doing difference” and status relations, the author argues that the accomplishment of difference alone is not the main mechanism by which structural inequalities are produced in everyday life. Instead, the accomplishment of difference is reflective, productive, and sometimes divergent of structural inequalities when, within interaction, people (1) accomplish difference in a way that raises the salience of that difference for defining the situation and (2) establish meanings that define that difference as a status hierarchy.     

Using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) to Predict Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties on Positive and Negative Affect Among Adolescents in Disadvantaged Communities

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used to predict the positive and negative affects of emotional and behavioral difficulties among adolescent boys and girls aged between 14 and 21 years living in disadvantaged communities. A total of 316 adolescents—181 boys and 135 girls—living in the Seri Pantai and Pantai Ria Public Housing Projects in Kuala Lumpur were invited to complete the questionnaire. The results showed that conduct and peer problems were the most prevalent emotional and behavioral difficulties experienced by these adolescents. As expected, the emotional symptoms were more common among the girls than the boys. A further analysis showed that emotional symptoms, peer problems, and low prosocial behavior were predictors of the negative affect of emotional and behavioral difficulties while negative emotional symptoms and high hyperactivity were predictors of a positive affect. The findings suggested that three subscales of SDQ are required to produce a negative affect, and two subscales of SDQ for a positive affect.     

Book reviews

’Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction’: Slavery in Richmond, Virginia, 1782–1865. Midori Takagi. Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia. 1999. xi, 187 pp. $37.50 (cloth). ISBN 0–8139–1834–0.

Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest. Barbara J. Heath. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. 1999. x, 81 pp. $12.50 (paper). ISBN 0–8139–1867–7.

Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and ‘Race’ in New England, 1780–1860. Joannk Pope Melish. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1998. xvii, 296 pp. £26.50 (cloth). ISBN 0–8014–3413–0.

American Slaves in Victorian England: Abolitionist Politics in Popular Literature and Culture. Audrey A. Fisch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000. x, 139pp. £35.00/$59.95. (cloth). ISBN 0–521–66026–2.

Slaves and Slaveholders in Bermuda, 1618–1782. Virginia Bernhard. Columbia. Missouri: University of Missouri Press. 1999. xviii, 316pp. £29.95. ISBN 0–8262–1227–1.

Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society. Hilary McD. Becklks. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers; Princeton: Marcus Weiner Publishers; Oxford: James Currey Publishers. 1999. xxv, 211 pp. £15.95 (paper). ISBN: 976–8123–78–8.

Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833–1874. Christopher Schmidt‐Nowara. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1999. xiii, 239 pp. $50.00(cloth). ISBN 0–8229–4089–2; $22.95 (paper), ISBN 0–8229–5690 X.

Shaping the Discourse on Space: Charity and Its Wards in Nineteenth‐Century San Juan, Puerto Rico. Teresita MartíNez‐Vergne. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1999. xv, 235 pp. $32.50 (cloth). ISBN 0–292–75220–2; $17.95 (paper). ISBN 0–292–75221–0.

The Colonial Caribbean in Transition: Essays on Postemancipation Social and Cultural History. Edited by Bridget Brereton and Kevin Yelvington. Kingston and Gainesville: The Press, University of the West Indies and the University Press of Florida. 1999. xxiii, 319 pp. $49.95 (cloth) ISBN 0–8130–1696–7; $30.00 (paper) ISBN 976–640–030‐X.     

The reproduction of reproduction: theorizing reproductive (im)mobilities

ABSTRACT

Through a reading of the articles gathered in this special issue, this commentary seeks to assess how critical research on reproductive processes, spatialities, temporalities, and assemblages can push mobilities theory towards rethinking the politics of (im)mobilities, which can also give us a new lens on the reproduction of reproduction. It begins with questions of scale, and the power relations involved in the heterogeneous mobile embodiments and bodily entanglements of reproduction, including mobilities involved in fertility, assisted conception, surrogacy, abortion, egg freezing, or traveling to give birth. It then draws on process theories and relational ontologies within mobilities theory to think about multiple kinds of becoming as crucial to temporal processes of reproduction, involving both molar and molecular politics. Lastly, it elucidates the kinopolitics of reproduction and broadens the field of critical mobility studies to better take into account the material assemblages and affective entanglements of reproductive politics.