Assessing women's understandings of health in rural Papua New Guinea: implications for health policy and practice

In Papua New Guinea (PNG), women's health is addressed by applying biomedical solutions which often ignore the complexity of women's histories, cultural contexts and lived experiences. The objective of this study was to examine adult and older women's perceptions of health and well-being to identify priority areas for public service interventions. Rapid ethnographic assessment was conducted in the Wosera district, a rural area of PNG from mid-2005 to early 2006, to examine the health concerns of women. Twenty-seven adult women and 10 older women participated in the study. Health was not limited to one aspect of a woman's life, such as their biology or maternal roles; it was also connected with the social, cultural and spiritual dimensions of women's daily existence. Participants also identified access to money and supportive interpersonal relationships as significant for good health. A disconnect was found to exist between women's understandings of good health and socio-political health policies in PNG, something likely to be repeated in health service delivery to different cultural groups across the Asia Pacific region. Health and development practitioners in PNG must become responsive to the complexity of women's social relationships and to issues relating to the context of women's empowerment in their programmes.

Investigating customer racial discrimination in the secondary baseball card market

A growing body of literature in a variety of disciplines has appeared over the last 20 years examining customer racial bias in the secondary sports card market; however, consensus on the matter has yet to emerge. In this article, we explore the more subtle ways that a player's race/ethnicity may affect the value of his sports card including a player's skin tone (light- to dark-skinned). Data were obtained for 383 black, Latino, and white baseball players who had received at least one vote for induction into Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame including their career performance statistics, rookie card price, card availability, Hall of Fame status, and skin tone. Findings indicate that card availability is the primary determinant of card value while a player's skin tone has no direct effect. Subsequent analysis demonstrates that a player's race (white/non-white) rather than skin tone did have an effect as it interacts with Hall of Fame status to influence his rookie card price.

Responding to the second ghetto: Chicago's Joe Smith and Sin Corner

World War Two and its aftermath transformed Chicago's African American community. The Great Migration entered a second and more intense phase as black migrants flooded into Northern cities. This massive relocation of Southern blacks resulted in the expansion and reformulation of Chicago's ghettoes on both the West and South Sides of the city. The question of a response to this Second Ghetto from African Americans themselves presents itself. White politicians, cultural elites and businessmen still controlled the city and could impose their will on its neighborhoods simply redrawing ghetto boundaries to reflect the new realities of the postwar era. The strange case of Joe Smith and Sin Corner sheds some light on black agency in the 1950s. The African American middle class had resources it commanded to try and protect itself from racial injustice. These resources, however, were based on class privileges not enjoyed by most in the African American community.

"The herald of prosperity": tracing the boll weevil myth in Alabama

As scholars and singers have pointed out in monographs and folk songs, the cotton boll weevil was a devastating force on southern farming and rural life. No symbol is more indicative of this destruction than Enterprise, Alabama's boll weevil monument. This essay examines not how the cotton pest destroyed the region's staple crop, but how women and men across race and class lines understood the beetle's threat and used it to their advantage. The statue, like the countless blues and folk songs about the pest, was a cultural statement that shaped the understanding of the bug itself and its supposed transformation of southern agriculture. By examining the local conditions that gave rise to dramatic, albeit short-lived, crop diversification, and in turn the monument's erection, this essay uncovers the ways in which the boll weevil myth was as important a force on southern life as the long-snouted beetle itself.

Widows' land security in the era of HIV/AIDS: panel survey evidence from Zambia

In areas of Africa hard hit by HIV/AIDS, there are growing concerns that many women lose access to land after the death of their husbands. However, there remains a dearth of quantitative evidence on the proportion of widows who lose access to their deceased husband's land, whether they lose all or part of that land, and whether there are factors specific to the widow, her family, or the broader community that influence her ability to maintain rights to land. This study examines these issues using average treatment effects models with propensity score matching applied to a nationally representative panel data of 5,342 rural households surveyed in 2001 and 2004. Results are highly variable, with roughly a third of households incurring the death of a male household head controlling less than 50% of the land they had prior to their husband's death, while over a quarter actually controlled as much or even more land than while their husbands were alive. Widows who were in relatively wealthy households prior to their husband's death lose proportionately more land than widows in households that were relatively poor. Older widows and widows related to the local headman enjoy greater land security. Women in matrilineal inheritance areas were no less likely to lose land than women in patrilineal areas.

Religion and suicide acceptability: a cross-national analysis

Four perspectives (moral community thesis, religious integration, religious commitment, and social networks) guide the selection of variables in this study. Data are from the combined World Values/European Values Surveys for 2000 (50,547 individuals nested in 56 nations). The results of a multivariate hierarchical linear model support all four perspectives. Persons residing in nations with relatively high levels of religiosity, who are affiliated with one of four major faiths, are religiously committed, and are engaged with a religious network are found to be lower in suicide acceptability. The religious integration perspective, in particular, is empirically supported; affiliation with Islam is associated with low suicide acceptability. The findings provide strong support for an integrated model and demonstrate the usefulness of the moral community thesis in understanding suicide acceptability.

Confessions of a Wannabe (American Folklore Society Presidential Invited Plenary Address, October 2009)

This paper is a written rendering of a plenary address delivered at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society. Drawing on materials from his forthcoming book Confessions of a Wannabe, the author provides a personal account of the deeply emotional sense of responsibility, obligation, and reciprocity involved in long-term ethnographic research among Native American communities, particularly the Omaha and Pawnee tribes of Nebraska. The author details the ways in which personal relations with the people and communities he has observed have shaped his personal and professional life, and he calls into question the ideal of purportedly neutral or distanced ethnography. Details are provided of the author's experiences in converting his farm into an appropriate reburial site for repatriated Pawnee remains recovered under the aegis of the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection Act (NAGPRA).

Diaspora, faith, and science: building a Mouride hospital in Senegal

This article examines a development initiative spearheaded by the members of a transnational diaspora – the creation of a medical hospital in the holy city of Touba in central Senegal. Although the construction of the hospital is decidedly a philanthropic project, Hôpital Matlaboul Fawzaini is better understood as part of the larger place-making project of the Muridiyya and the pursuit of symbolic capital by a particular Mouride "dahira". The "dahira's" project illuminates important processes of forging global connections and transnational localities, and underscores the importance of understanding the complex motivations behind diaspora development. The hospital's history reveals the delicate negotiations between state actors and diaspora organizations, and the complexities of public–private partnerships for development. In a reversal of state withdrawal in the neo-liberal era, a diaspora association was able to wrest new financial commitments from the state by completing a large infrastructure project. Despite this success, we argue that these kinds of projects, which are by nature uneven and sporadic, reflect particular historical conjunctures and do not offer a panacea for the failure of state-led development.

The other woman and her child: extra-marital affairs and illegitimacy in twentieth-century Britain

This article investigates the numbers of 'other women' and their children up until the 1960s in Britain. It analyses 'irregular and illicit unions' in the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (now One Parent Families/Gingerbread), and explores evidence on these unions in the debates over the passage of the Divorce Acts of 1923 and 1937 as well as the Legitimacy Acts of 1926 and 1959. It suggests that the prevalence of illicit unions throughout the twentieth century and before allows us to question contemporary concerns about our supposed 'divorcing society' and the decline of family life in modern Britain.

Unmarried motherhood in twentieth-century England

This article explores the experiences of unmarried mothers who kept and tried to raise their children between World War One and the end of the twentieth century. It argues that there has not been a simple progression from their experiencing social stigma and ostracism to more enlightened attitudes since the 1970s. Rather there is a great deal that has hitherto been unknown about what the evidence suggests were very diverse experiences and attitudes throughout the period. A major change since the 1970s has been from pervasive secrecy about unmarried motherhood, cohabitation, adultery and similar 'irregular' practices, especially among the middle classes, to greater openness. The article uses a variety of sources, including the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (founded in 1918, now One Parent Families), oral histories, contemporary interviews and official and unofficial investigations.

"But burn - no": the rest of the crowd in three civil disorders in 1960s Chicago

Examining the internal dynamics of three civil disturbances on the West Side of Chicago during the late 1960s, this article describes the presence of numerous people who were not participating in the upheaval. It pays particular attention to “counterrioters,” civilian residents of the neighborhoods and members of local organizations, who tried to persuade those engaging in violence to stop. Local dissent from the tactic of violence suggests that historians should describe these events using the neutral language of social science rather than the politically loaded labels of “riot” or “rebellion.” The article argues that American historians of urban disorders should use the methods of European scholars of the crowd to study the actions of participants in order to ascertain their political content, rather than relying on an examination of their motives.

The role of the Toronto Girls' Home, 1863-1910

It has been suggested that the role of Ontario children's homes, who had for half a century been helping disadvantaged children, changed significantly and immediately under the 'Children's Protection Act of 1893'. However, the records of the girls admitted to Toronto Girls' Home from 1863 to 1910 suggest that this was not the case, for this home at least. For most of their history, their core clientele was the children of poor respectable parents dealing with a crisis or who could not both work and care for their children. Thus, although prior to 1893 they did also care for a significant number of neglected children, and after 1893 fewer such children were admitted, the Home continued for more than 20 years to help families as they always had, providing a form of family support for which the child protection system was not designed.

Textiles as social texts: syphilis, material culture and gender in golden age Spain

Whereas traditional social and health histories have viewed the garments of early modern patients accessing hospital care as evidence of their poverty, this article reinterprets the meaning of patient clothing in the context of a venereal disease hospital in Toledo, Spain, in the seventeenth century. Patients carefully selected what they wore as they entered the hospital to produce certain effects on local audiences. Thus, these choices can be understood as body scripts meant to be read in certain ways rather than mere reflections of actual social status. In a context of gendered and social pressures associated with women's sexuality, female syphilitic patients wore garments meant to emphasize respectability and thereby avoid a loss of reputation.

Queering Taiwan: in search of nationalism's other

This article deals with the formation of Taiwan’s homosexual cultural politics in the 1990s, the impact and implications of which are yet to be examined within the larger context of Taiwan’s cultural and political development and ethnic relationships. It is argued that the rise of this cultural politics is both a reflection and a source of a growing sense of identity crisis on the island. By examining the configurations of “queer” in various discursive domains, this interdisciplinary study seeks to delineate the cross-referencing ideological network of this cultural movement and its entanglement with the complexity of Taiwan’s nationalism. At the same time, to the extent that this movement tends to present itself as a radical politics from a privileged epistemological and cultural standpoint, this claimed radicalism is also scrutinized for its problematics and ironies.

The illicit consumption of military uniforms in Britain, 1914–1918

Focusing on the British home front during the First World War, this article explores civilians’ motives for acquiring and wearing military garments and accoutrements to which they were not entitled. It suggests that uniforms could be donned either to avoid the attentions of recruiting sergeants, or to perpetrate criminal deceptions. That said, individuals did not always wear illicit uniforms in order to ‘disguise’ their civilian identity. Rather, many men claimed a sense of entitlement to such items, either on the basis of previous war service, or, more often, on the basis of their contributions to the war effort on the home front. The acquisition of military items could also reflect men's roles as consumers: for many civilians, acquiring and wearing the newly glamorous uniforms was a consumer choice that could also open the door to further leisure and consumer opportunities. Overall, illicitly wearing military items undermined the uniform's link with service and sacrifice on the battle fronts: it allowed individuals to assume the appearance of combatants or to assert their patriotic identities without actually exposing themselves to military duties or dangers. It also reflected (some) men's continued perception of themselves as consumers, keen, even in wartime, to adopt what they saw as the most desirable sartorial option.

¿Qué es racismo?: awareness of racism and discrimination in Ecuador

In the national consciousness, Ecuador is a mestizo nation. However, it is also an ethnically diverse nation with sizable minorities of indigenous and Afrodescended peoples. In national surveys, there is also a considerable minority who self-identify as blanco (white). Although there is strong evidence of continuing discrimination and prejudice toward both indigenous and Afro-descended peoples, there is little public discussion or political action addressing such issues. The emergence of a powerful and resilient indigenous movement in the late 1980s gained international interest and acclaim in the 1990s, in part because of the peaceful mobilization efforts and effective bargaining tactics of the movement. However, indigenous leaders usually have not engaged in a discourse of racismo and/or discriminación. There has been much less social movement solidarity and activism among Afro-Ecuadorians, but their leaders commonly employ a discourse of racismo and discriminación. In August and September 2004, a survey of more than eight thousand adult Ecuadorians was conducted in regard to racism and related topics. In this research, we use several measures from this survey that focus on awareness of and sensitivity to issues of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Self-identification of respondents enables us to contrast the responses of whites, mestizos, Indians, and Afro-Ecuadorians to the measures. Other independent variables of interest are level of education, the region in which the respondent resides, and whether the respondent lives in an urban or rural area. Regression results show differences among the ethnic groups in levels of awareness of racism, but more powerful predictors are level of education and rural residence.

Children abandoned and taken back: children, women, and families in dire straits in Lyon in the nineteenth century

Abandoning a child was no rare deed in European towns in the nineteenth century, mostly among single women in underprivileged environments. On the other hand, taking this same child back was more unusual. By analyzing the registers of the Lyon hospitals, it is possible to determine the percentage of children taken back by their mothers, how this was actually achieved, and to examine the family status of the mothers at the time of both events. Both of these acts -- abandoning a child and then taking it back -- can be put back in their context in these women's lives, for instance, by looking into the length of time separating the two procedures. To finish with, it appears that the 'Hospices civils de Lyon' encouraged mothers to take the children back and generally had a conciliatory attitude toward them, supposedly in the children's interest.

Reclaiming respectability? The class-cultural dynamics of crime, community and governance in inner-city Dublin

This paper critically examines developments in Irish urban governance through an ethnographic account of one community's historical memory and contemporary structure. During an era of rapid economic growth, the Irish state has courted previously excluded communities, offering them greater "inclusion" as "partners" in responding to urban decay and crime. The micro-governance structures this creates, however, become sites of contest between competing community factions and class-cultural imperatives. Tensions emerge between aspirational community leaders championing the aesthetics (if not the values) of "respectability" and residual residents who are presented as "rough". The paper demonstrates that nuances of class-cultural identity dictate the character of partnership governance at the community level with particular implications for local regeneration and crime control agendas.

Constructing citizenship? Women, welfare and refugees in France, 1939-1940

Women were central to the provision of welfare services in France during the refugee crises of the late 1930s. By building on the services created during the First World War, women, as either volunteers or professionals, actively cared for refugees and others during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the phoney war (September 1939-May 1940) and the German invasion of 1940. French women's involvement with refugee aid enabled them to develop a sense of autonomous civil and political activism, especially—although not exclusively—in their work with the French Red Cross. In addition, the history of welfare activities for refugees illuminates how ordinary people dealt with the extraordinary circumstances of war, invasion and the forced movement of populations.

Is child labor harmful? The impact of working earlier in life on adult earnings

This paper explores the question: is working as a child harmful to an individual in terms of adult outcomes in earnings? Although this is an extremely important question, little is known about the effect of child labor on adult outcomes. Estimations of an instrumental variables earnings model on data from Brazil show that child labor has a large negative impact on adult earnings for male children even when controlling for schooling and that the negative impact of starting to work as a child reverses at around ages 12–14.