A Man and a Perpetuum Mobile? Assigned Hermaphrodite Andreas Bruce's Memoirs

This article presents the memoirs of Andreas Bruce, a Swedish man that was assigned female sex at birth and later re-assigned sex as a male hermaphrodite. His memoirs, written by the end of the nineteenth century, are unique. They exhibit a rare example of what life could be like for gender transgressors during the nineteenth century. According to the memoirs, Bruce's transition and legal gender recognition was the source of some attention, but once he had gained a certificate of hermaphroditism and a male first name, his masculinity seldom seems to have been contested. Bruce navigates between describing himself as an ordinary man and describing his life story as unique.     

DAUGHTER DISCRIMINATION AND FUTURE SEX RATIO AT BIRTH IN INDIA

This paper examines recent trends in sex ratio at birth in all the major states of India, based on three rounds of the National Family Health Survey. It finds evidence of an increase in the ratio, particularly at the second-order birth among women having a first daughter in many states in the northwestern region of the country. Also, there are signs of daughter aversion emerging in Odisha, an eastern state. Based on parity progression ratios and the trend in sex selection, an attempt is made to estimate the peak of sex ratio at birth in India. With moderate intensification in sex selection in the northwestern region, sex ratio at birth is expected to reach a peak of 117–119 males per 100 females around the period 2021–2026. If, in addition, sex selection spreads further in the southeastern region, the sex ratio at birth in India could even increase to a level of 124.     

SMOKING AND HEALTH IN INDONESIA

Indonesia is one of the top five tobacco-consuming countries in the world (Ng et al. 2006). Most Indonesians consider cigarette-smoking socially acceptable (Aditama 2002). This study seeks to determine the extent to which the three theoretical debates identified by Pampel and Rogers (2004) are applicable in Indonesia. The empirical work of this study will be based on the 2000 Indonesian Family and Life Survey (2000 IFLS). The main conclusion from the regression analyses is that the effect of smoking on health is similar across all the socio-economic characteristics at the individual, household and community levels. Overall, multivariate analyses suggest that an additive relationship between socio-economic status and health, and the health impact of smoking in Indonesia, reflect neither the forces of the Blaxter nor social vulnerability hypotheses. The analyses of 2000 IFLS also suggest that marriage has beneficial effects on health and smoking-related morbidity.     

MARRIAGE SQUEEZE IN CHINA'S FUTURE

The preference for sons in China and discrimination against girls have resulted in a male marriage squeeze. This paper develops two new indices of the sex ratio among potential first marriage partners by normalising first marriage frequencies and by eliminating the tempo effect in first marriage. Using two newly developed indices and two existing ones, the authors predict China's marriage squeeze for the period 2000–2100. The authors find that the new indices produce almost the same results as the existing ones when measuring the sex ratios of marriageable males to females. For the years 2015 to 2050, the sex ratio of potential males to females is over 1.15, and then fluctuates around 1.1 after 2060. From 2015 to 2045, China will face an annual surplus of one million males. However, if the high sex ratio at birth cannot be controlled, the male marriage squeeze will be much more severe.     

Socio-cultural aspects of the high masculinity ratio in India

The paper aims to explicate those factors accountable for the continuing imbalance in the sex ratio and its further masculinization over the whole of the 20th century. Here it is contended that the traditional practice of female infanticide and the current practice of female foeticide in the contemporary period, especially in the north-west and Hindi-speaking states, have significantly contributed to the high masculinity ratio in India. In addition, increasingly higher survival ratios of male children, particularly from the 1951 census onward, have been the prime reason for a declining proportion of females in the Indian population. As the Indian value system has been imbued with a relatively higher preference for sons, improvements in health facilities have benefited males more than females, giving rise to a highly imbalanced sex ratio in the country. This scenario, however, has steadily tended to alter in favour of greater balance in sex ratio.     

Men who ‘Marry Out’: unsettling masculinity,kinship, and nation through migration across the Taiwan Strait

Family reunification has become a widely recognized means to move across borders in the contemporary world. As a migration strategy, family reunification redefines the relationship of kinship to nation, diversifying the ‘national family’ and its gendered role expectations. This article uses cross-border marriages between Chinese and Taiwanese to interrogate how immigration affects the experiences of men who migrate through or in conjunction with marriage, integrating scales of family, citizenship, and nation in an analysis of migrant masculinity. Migrant husbands describe their disempowerment as male providers and citizens through the patrilineal and patrilocal kinship language of having ‘married out.’ The article examines the salience of this kinship model for immigrant husbands seeking to redefine their relationship to patrilineal gender privileges and secure citizenship status. How do men who migrate through marriage negotiate gendered kinship principles that may work to their benefit in their home country but undermine their status once they migrate? How does the experience of migrating as a kin-dependent threaten men’s self-image as family providers? By investigating these challenges to hegemonic masculinity, the article asks how migration reconfigures the gendered foundations of family formation by undermining kinship-based models of normative masculinity and creating a gender crisis for some migrant husbands.     

Urban pattern and land cover variation in the greater Toronto area

Recent epistemological shifts in environmental geography have created a space to consider the interactions between ecological and urban systems more seriously. While openness to thinking about urban ecosystems has increased in recent years, there remain fundamental gaps in our knowledge. For example, recent research has examined the impact of urban–rural gradients on ecological conditions, but major voids exist regarding the relationship between urban development patterns and land cover heterogeneity, particularly for new forms of urbanization. This article attempts to address some of these gaps by examining the relationship between urban pattern and land cover in the greater Toronto area (GTA). In particular, measures of urban pattern that reflect aspects of development density, grain and function, as well as socio-economic characteristics, are systematically analyzed in relation to land cover heterogeneity. The regression analysis shows that multiple components of urban development pattern and socio-economic conditions are correlated with vegetated land covers, while urban density variables are not related. These results indicate more detailed representations of urban pattern should be incorporated into future human–environmental interaction studies in cities.     

Social and political trust in Istanbul and Moscow: a comparative analysis of individual and neighbourhood effects

Aiming to bring local context into studies of social capital, our study uses samples of 4006 individuals in Istanbul and 3476 in Moscow using a comparable questionnaire. The stratification of each city's neighbourhoods on the basis of socio-economic characteristics provided the basis for the sampling. Using a multilevel modelling procedure, we show both that locality matters (neighbourhood effect proved significant) and that social capital may indeed be constituted in very particular ways in illiberal democracies such as Russia and Turkey. Social and political trust are frequently thought to contribute to social capital – that is, to provide social resources upon which individuals or groups may draw for their political efficacy. Trust in fellow citizens in Istanbul exhibits a positive relationship to associational activities (joining clubs etc.), while in Moscow social trust can be explained predominantly in terms of (lower) socio-economic status. At the same time, important similarities emerged between the two cases. For social trust, in both cities the 'cosmopolitanization thesis', which holds that those who associate more widely are also more trusting of fellow citizens, generally applied. Further, in both cities, residents with lower socio-economic status (though in Moscow this is complicated by education) and lower likelihoods of engagement in direct political action were more trustful of parliament . While this is the opposite of what we have been led to expect based on Western democratic polities, it is a reasonable outcome of illiberal democratic governance operating in these two cities.     

Parenting the Profligate Son: Masculinity, Gentility and Juvenile Delinquency in England, 1791–1814

This case study of fatherhood in early nineteenth-century England examines the conflict between a wealthy East India Company merchant and his increasingly wayward adolescent son, who was transported to Australia in 1814. It argues that fatherhood was often necessarily a reactionary process, that did not conform to a static, historically specific model of ideal or dysfunctional fatherhood. It also traces the origins of much of the disagreement to conflicting ideals of masculinity between father and son, which were exacerbated by their rise in wealth and social status. Since both aspired to the elite status of gentleman, the article demonstrates that competing and compatible ideals can co-exist within different generations of the same family. Thus a study of male family experience suggests that hegemonic masculinity is subject to short-term shifts of emphasis on those values adopted by men of different ages and social status.     

Investigating perceptions of antisocial behaviour and neighbourhood ethnic heterogeneity in the British Crime Survey

There is much concern in the UK about the effects on community cohesion of antisocial behaviour, but to date relatively little is known about the geography of such behaviour: for what sort of people, and in what sort of places, are high levels of antisocial behaviour a problem? What are the links, if any, between such behaviour and local socio-economic conditions, and how do such perceptions relate to local crime rates? Using data from the British Crime Survey and other secondary datasets, we develop and extend previous work that has investigated links between individual socio-economic characteristics, neighbourhood characteristics and individual perceptions of antisocial behaviour. A multilevel modelling approach is used to ensure that individual- and area-level effects are not conflated. Secondly we extend the substantive knowledge surrounding the relationship between neighbourhood ethnic heterogeneity and individual perceptions of antisocial behaviour. In so doing, we challenge recent contentions that heterogeneity is associated with declining social cohesion and trust. We conclude that at a small-area scale for England, the primary area-level determinants of high levels of antisocial behaviour lie in material circumstances, and that ethnic heterogeneity has no discernible effect on perceptions of antisocial behaviour.     

‘There's only so much money hot dog sales can bring in’: The intersection of green school grounds and socio-economic status

In the interest of enhancing children's environments, many school grounds around the world are being ‘greened’ as asphalt and manicured grass are replaced with a diversity of elements and spaces, such as trees, shrubs, gardens, art, and gathering areas. Despite a growing body of research from a number of disciplines that is exploring the potential of these spaces, very little is known about how issues of socio-economic status (SES) influence school ground greening initiatives. In this paper, I explore what (if any) relationship exists between school ground greening and SES in a Canadian school board where approximately 20% of more than 500 schools have begun the greening process. A mixed methods approach was used: (1) 149 questionnaires were completed by administrators, teachers, and parents associated with 45 school ground greening initiatives; and (2) 21 follow-up interviews were conducted with administrators, teachers and parents at five greening projects across a range of SESs. Three significant, and arguably troubling, patterns emerged as a function of socio-economic status of the school community. Participants associated with schools across a range of SESs had different: (1) perceptions as to the importance/adequacy of green school grounds; (2) access to adult support; and (3) access to funding. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Specialization and social inequality in Bronze Age SE Arabia: analyzing the development of production strategies and economic networks using agent-based modeling

This paper investigates the role of specialized production strategies in the development of socio-economic inequalities in Bronze Age south-eastern (SE) Arabia, and particularly, the ways in which a localized, internal exchange economy may have produced stress and instability in the SE Arabian socio-economic system. While archaeological research has established that the communities of SE Arabia participated in a widespread Bronze Age exchange system that included areas of the ancient Near East, South Asia, and Central Asia, it is unclear to what degree this interaction fostered the broad-scale socio-economic changes seen in the Early Bronze Age of SE Arabia. Here we present the results of an agent-based model that suggest the nature of the internal exchange economy in SE Arabia itself may have precipitated the social conditions necessary for change by allowing individuals to profit disproportionately. We thus emphasize the importance of local production strategies in generating socio-economic change, in addition to the well-established economic and cultural contacts with the wider Bronze Age world.     

Female Demographic Disadvantage in India 1981–1991: Sex Selective Abortions and Female Infanticide

Using evidence from a number of sources (including the 1981 and 1991 censuses of India, prior research, and NGO reports), this article examines whether bias against girl children persists during periods of development and fertility decline, whether prenatal sex selection has spread in India as elsewhere in Asia, and whether female vs. male child mortality risks have changed. The authors present estimated period sex ratios at birth (SRBs) calculated by reverse survival methods along with reported sex ratios among infants aged 0 and 1, as well as sex ratios of child mortality probabilities (q5), from the two censuses. The findings show an increase in ‘masculine’ SRBs and persistent (or even worsening) female mortality disadvantage, despite overall mortality decline, due to selective neglect and the spread of female infanticide practices in some areas. Research and reports indicate the increasing use of prenatal sex selection in some regions. In India, preference for sons appears to be undiminished by socio-economic development, which interacts with cultural sources of male bias. The increased masculinity of period SRBs in some areas, together with persistent excess female child mortality and female infanticide, creates a ‘double jeopardy’ for girl children. Legislation curbing prenatal sex determination and policy measures addressing societal female devaluation have had little impact, suggesting that female demographic disadvantage is unlikely to improve in the near future.     

The unexpected rise of cohabitation in the Philippines: evidence of socioeconomic disadvantage or a second demographic transition?

Cohabitation has increased rapidly in the Philippines, quadrupling in prevalence from 6 per cent in 1993 to 24 per cent in 2013 among young adult women. This increase is dramatic and exceptional given the slow change in other family behaviours, such as low divorce rates and continued high fertility, and the persistent influence of the Catholic Church. While cohabitation is often framed as evidence of ideational change and liberalisation, its continued uptake over time may be associated with socio-economic conditions. Using the 2013 national demographic and health surveys, we apply a discrete-time competing risks model to examine the relationship between socio-economic status and cohabitation, using education as proxy for resources and opportunities available to women. Our findings demonstrate that lower levels of education are significantly associated with a higher risk of cohabitation, which suggests rising cohabitation in the Philippines is more linked to socio-economic disadvantage than the devaluing of marriage among educated elites.     

Agricultural variation and human fertility in antebellum Pennsylvania

Focus in this discussion is on research designed to examine human fertility variation in 59 Pennsylvania counties in 1850 and 1860. The research goes beyond previous historical studies in examining the relationship between land quality and fertility and in separating the possible impacts of settlement from the availability of land for agricultural purposes. The measure of human fertility used in the analysis was the child-woman ratio, defined as the number of children aged 0-4/1000 white women aged 15-49. In 1850 the child-woman ratio ranged from 488-889. The child-woman ratio fell slightly between 1850 and 1860, and county level variation was reduced. Yet, Pennsylvania counties varied substantially in fertility levels during this period. The range between the highest and lowest fertility countries was over 400 children in 1850 and almost 350 in 1860. The set of agricultural variables displayed expected differences at the 2 time periods. The excess demand for farmsites increased between 1850 and 1860, while the variation in demand decreased by over one-half, reflecting additional settlement within all acres of the state. The settlement ratio increased over the decade; the sex ratio declined, most likely in response to outmigration westward. The agricultural variables were all negatively related to the child-woman ratio and were statistically significant, except for the labor/acre variable. The strongest correlation in 1850 was between the excess demand for farmsites and fertility. This coefficient indicated that the greater the excess demand for farmsites, the lower the child-woman ratio. This relationship was attentuated somewhat for 1860, yet it continued to be negative and statistically significant. The socioeconomic and demographic variables were all related to fertility in the expected direction, but only 5 of the 7 correlations were statistically significant in 1850 and 6 in 1860. The settlement ratio, sex ratio, percent urban, distance to urban place, and the measure of female age composition were all significantly related to fertility in 1850 and 1860. The study results support the growing body of research which has identified agricultural opportunity as a significant factor in fertility in rural areas of 19th century America. The findings also suggest that the importance of agricultural opportunity extended beyond the frontier period.     

Population Change and Regional Development in China: Insights Based on the 2000 Census

The People's Republic of China conducted its fifth population census in November 2000. This paper draws from that census and recent data to examine national and regional demographic changes in China over the past two decades. Nationally, the impact of fertility decline on rates of population growth, age composition, and household size is investigated. Regional population trends include the rising population share of the eastern region as a result of population growth due to migration and in response to the widening economic gap between coastal and interior China. Demographic differentials between the eastern region and the rest of China (i.e., in proportion of working-age population, household size, sex ratio, and levels of urbanization and educational attainment) suggest that migration is playing an increasingly important role in shaping regional population distribution and that the acceleration of uneven regional development poses a major challenge to policy makers. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, J61, O15. 4 figures, 5 tables, 52 references.     

Masculinities in Asia: A Review Essay

Abstract:

Masculinity as an analytical concept has received limited attention in historical and cultural studies of Asia, and particularly of South and Southeast Asia. Only a small number of works produced in South and Southeast Asian studies address the historical construction and evolution of masculinities in the regions and even fewer offer in-depth inquiries into the extent to which historical forms of masculinity governed social relations. The specific dynamics of the relationship between ideologies and the ways that manhood is interpreted, experienced and performed in daily life in the past and in present times remain underexplored. This essay reviews three recent publications that demonstrate that masculinity has been crucial to ideologies and techniques of rule in colonial, national and globalised contexts and, as such, needs to be placed at the centre of analyses of empire, nation and globalisation. It directs attention to promising areas for future comparative research on masculinities in Asia.     

Marriage and the family in a Maltese parish: St. Mary's (Qrendi) in the eighteenth century

This article addresses the Maltese traditional family, taking St. Mary's (Qrendi) as a test case. It results that couples married in their early twenties, while a high proportion of men and women never married at all. Marriage was not popular so that one-fifth of all marriages were remarriages. Very few widows remarried and it was only for some economic reason that they sought another man. There is no evidence though that a high rate of celibacy resulted in flagrant promiscuity even if there is evidence that the Qrendin were not so particular about their sex life. No birth control was practiced within marriage and children followed one another regularly. This brings into relief the parents' unconcern for their offspring's future as well as the inferior status of women because husbands made their wives several offspring. Relations between the spouses were poor so that dissatisfied couples went their own ways.     

Giving Masculinity a History: Some Contributions from the Historiography of Colonial India

Contemporary historiography, especially in North American, European and Australian history, now includes a fairly respectable body of literature on men and masculinity. While this literature has produced important contributions to the usefulness of gender as a category of historical analysis, there has also been some wariness within feminist scholarship on the grounds that the issue of the gendered organisation may be evaded. Reflecting on the question ‘what is involved in writing a history of masculinity?’, this article considers the potential contribution that the historiography of colonial India offers to the study of masculinity