Toward an anthropology of women's liberation

Ruby Rohrlich‐Leavitt, ed. Women Cross‐Culturally: Change and Challenge. The Hague and London: Mouton Publishers. A volume in the World Anthropology Series, Sol Tax, general editor. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Co., 1975. xiv + 669 pp. Tables, figures, biographical notes, and indexes. $27.50.     

Five Factions,Two Parties: Caucus Membership in the House of Representatives, 1994–2002

This paper examines the extent of ideological cohesion and distinction of two Republican congressional factions (the conservative Republican Study Committee and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership) and three Democratic congressional caucuses (the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, the liberal Congressional Black Caucus, and the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus) in the House of Representatives from 1994 to 2002. Whereas much of the literature on congressional caucuses has focused on the reasons members join such groups and the policy and political orientations of those groups, this paper examines how much unity exists in the voting behavior of the members of Congress who join caucuses in comparison to their fellow partisans not in a faction. Although political parties are still a major unifying force for their respective party members, we do find that factional members are more ideologically cohesive than are nonfactional members. Joining a faction is not an insignificant activity for members. Factions allow like-minded colleagues to come together and vote on common issues, at times against direction of their party.     

Seven Children at One Birth

ANCIENT BALLADS. TRADITIONALLY SUNG IN NEW ENGLAND. Compiled and edited by HELEN HARKNESS FLANDERS. Vol. I. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. 80s. Reviewed by K. M. Briggs.

HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES, A SELECTION, Translated by W. L. KINGSLAND. The World's Classics, Oxford, Reviewed by K. M. Briggs.

ST JAMES IN SPAIN. By T. D. KENDRICK. Methuen, 1960. Pp. 223. 25s. Reviewed by E. O. James.

HUMANIORA. ESSAYS IN LITERATURE. FOLKLORE. BIBLIOGRAPHY Honouring Archer Taylor on his Seventieth Birthday. Edited WAYLAND D. HAND and GUSTAVE O. ARLT. J. J. Augustin, Locust Valley, N.Y., 1960. Pp. viii + 374. $10.00. Reviewed by H. J. Rose.

HIMMELSSTIER UND GLETSCHERLÖWE. Translated and edited by M. HERMANNS. 1955. Pp. 259, 2 maps, 1 photograph. DAS ELEFANTENSPIEL. Edited by L. KOHL-LARSEN. 1956. Pp. 233, 1 map, 1 photograph. STIMME DES WASSERBÜFFELS. Edited by H. NEVERMANN, 1956. Pp. 242. All Eisenach and Kassel (Röth Verlag). Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

THE PEOPLE ARE COMING SOON. Analyses of Clackamas Chinook Myths and Tales. By Melville Jacobs. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1960. Reviewed by C. A. Burland.

DEUTSCHES JAHRBUCH FÜR VOLKSKUNDE. Vol. v, Part ii. Berlin, 1959. Pp. (230)–548, plates ix–xx, 4 maps, 25 text illustrations. Reviewed by E. Ettlinger.

THE FOUNDLING AND THE WEREWOLF. A LITERARY-HISTORICAL STUDY OF GUILLAUME DE PALERNE. By CHARLES W. DUNN, Toronto University Press. Oxford University Press, London, 1960. 40s. Reviewed by Mary Williams.

THE LEGEND OF MERLIN. By A. O. JARMANN. University of Wales Press, 1960. Pp. 1–31. 3s. Reviewed by Mary Williams.

THE SCALLOP: studies of a shell and its influences on humankind by eight authors. Edited by IAN COX, C.B.E., M.A. Published in London by the Shell Transport and Trading Company, 1957. Reviewed by Barbara Aitken.

A HISTORY OP BANBURY. By WILLIAM POTTS. The Banbury Guardian Ltd., 1958. Reviewed by Christina Hole.     

Missionaries and Jews in Soho: ‘Strangers within Our Gates’

This article draws on historical evidence about everyday life and social practices in Soho to reconstruct the extent and mode of religious conflict in a neighbourhood which historians have traditionally viewed as an area of relative religious tolerance. It focuses on a weekly children's prayer meeting conducted by Methodist missionaries in the summer of 1900 at the epicentre of the Soho Jewish community. For the Jews the meeting was an intrusion but nonetheless epitomised the tacit negotiations that distilled into what Gerry Black calls an ‘absence of disharmony’ between Soho Jews and their neighbours. More generally, the encounter exemplifies British Jews' daily confrontations with the dense network of Christian practices and institutions of their adopted homeland. While historians have documented many episodes of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence in London, Jews' experience of daily life also involved a less visible, less dramatic and more chronic tension, one that the study of everyday practices brings into relief. At the same time, the prayer meeting is a reminder that members of national religious and philanthropic organisations like the Methodist mission were active participants in the daily lives of the districts where they were situated; their staffs could be held to neighbourhood rules of courtesy and mutual aid. Thus, the article maps the conflicts, negotiations and compromises between different ethnicities and religions that were played out in the spaces and routines of everyday life.     

Psychiatry and race during World War II

Although the American literature on "war neuroses" expanded during World War II, psychiatrists remained more interested in dramatic instances of "combat fatigue" than in the problems of soldiers who broke down far from the field of battle. This bias in the medical literature shaped both diagnosis and treatment. It had an especially powerful effect on African American soldiers who, in the "Jim Crow" army of World War II, were assigned in disproportionate numbers to service units. When military neuropsychiatrists did write about troubled young African Americans, many revealed a racial conservatism that was surprising given the liberal environmentalist paradigm of the day. (Here, a particularly useful source is the two-volume history of Neuropsychiatry in World War II, produced by the Medical Department of the U.S. Army.) The major challenge to such views came from the National Medical Association (NMA). Despite its many criticisms of military medicine, the NMA argued that African American soldiers and veterans needed more, not fewer, psychiatric services. NMA members also joined their white counterparts in the campaign to diminish the stigma of mental illness, especially among the families of soldiers returning home. We need more investigation of the subsequent history of race and psychiatry, especially within the Veterans Administration.     

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD: HOW CAN REGIONAL SCIENCE CONTRIBUTE TO THE STUDY OF NEIGHBORHOODS?*

ABSTRACT We argue in this paper that neighborhoods are highly relevant for the types of issues at the heart of regional science. First, residential and economic activity takes place in particular locations, and particular neighborhoods. Many attributes of those neighborhood environments matter for this activity, from the physical amenities, to the quality of the public and private services received. Second, those neighborhoods vary in their placement in the larger region and this broader arrangement of neighborhoods is particularly important for location choices, commuting behavior and travel patterns. Third, sorting across these neighborhoods by race and income may well matter for educational and labor market outcomes, important components of a region's overall economic activity. For each of these areas we suggest a series of unanswered questions that would benefit from more attention. Focused on neighborhood characteristics themselves, there are important gaps in our understanding of how neighborhoods change – the causes and the consequences. In terms of the overall pattern of neighborhoods and resulting commuting patterns, this connects directly to current concerns about environmental sustainability and there is much need for research relevant to policy makers. And in terms of segregation and sorting across neighborhoods, work is needed on better spatial measures. In addition, housing market causes and consequences for local economic activity are under researched. We expand on each of these, finishing with some suggestions on how newly available data, with improved spatial identifiers, may enable regional scientists to answer some of these research questions.