Gender and Household Economic Strategies in Rural Appalachia

In recent decades, many Appalachian households have experienced declining incomes due to the loss of traditional male jobs in the mining and manufacturing sectors. One response to this decline has been an increase in female employment in formal sector activities. Another response is homework, or the home-based production of goods and services for sale in the formal and informal sectors. In rural Appalachia, where formal jobs are often unavailable or inadequate to support a household, many women are engaging in homework as an economic strategy. Consequently, economic restructuring cannot be fully understood without analyzing household strategies and gender relations. This paper examines the intersection of gender, households, and economic restructuring as it relates to women's homework and employment shifts in rural Appalachia. Research for this paper entailed qualitative interviews with 50 West Virginia women who are engaged in the home-based production of goods and services. The study analyzes the variety of homework activities done by rural women, their contribution to household incomes, and the effect of these activities on gender relations and divisions of labor in the home. The research forwarded in this study advances a conceptual understanding of household economic strategies and has some practical applications for women and economic development in underdeveloped regions .     

Monitoring fluid chemistry in iron oxide–copper–gold‐related metasomatic processes,eastern Mt Isa Block,Australia

Most researchers in the Proterozoic eastern Mt Isa Block, NW Queensland, Australia, favour magmatic fluid and salt sources for sodic‐(calcic) alteration and iron oxide–copper–gold mineralization. Here we compare spatial, mineralogic and stable isotope data from regional alteration assemblages with magmatic and magmatic‐hydrothermal interface rocks in order to track chemical and isotopic variations in fluid composition away from inferred fluid sources. Tightly clustered δ¹⁸O values for magnetite, quartz, feldspar and actinolite for igneous‐hosted samples reflect high temperature equilibration in the magmatic‐hydrothermal environment. In contrast, these minerals record predominantly higher δ¹⁸O values in regional alteration and Cu–Au mineralization. This dichotomy reflects partial equilibration with isotopically heavier wallrocks and slightly lower temperatures. Increases in Si concentrations of metasomatic amphiboles relative to igneous amphiboles in part reflect cooling of metasomatic fluids away from igneous rocks. Variations in X_Mg for metasomatic amphiboles indicate local wallrock controls on amphibole chemistry, while variations in X_Cl/X_OH ratios for amphiboles (at constant X_Mg) indicate variable aH₂O/aHCl ratios for metasomatic fluids. Biotite geochemistry also reflects cooling and both increases and decreases in aH₂O/aHCl for fluids away from plutonic rocks. Decreased aH₂O/aHCl ratios for metasomatic fluids reflect in part scavenging of chlorine out of meta‐evaporite sequences, although this process requires already saline fluids. Local increases in aH₂O/aHCl ratios, as well as local decreases in δ¹⁸O values for some minerals (most notably haematite and epithermal‐textured quartz), may indicate ingress of low salinity, low δ¹⁸O fluids of possible meteoric origin late in the hydrothermal history of the region. Taken together, our observations are most consistent with predominantly magmatic sources for metasomatic fluids in the eastern Mt Isa Block, but record chemical and isotopic variations along fluid flow paths that may be important in explaining some of the diversity in alteration and mineralization styles in the district.     

Financial Deregulation in Japan

This article examines the process of financial deregulation in Japan and asks: what are the prospects for future reform of Japan's financial sector? In the past, reform of Japan's financial sector has been slow and incremental as various vested interests, including political interests, negotiated specific compromise outcomes rather than sweeping changes. This article argues that, in spite of recently announced reforms, change will continue to be gradual and piecemeal because the institutional structures which in the past worked against any rapid response to pressures for change are still in place.     

ALL THIS HAPPENED,MORE OR LESS: WHAT A NOVELIST MADE OF THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN1

Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse‐Five (1969) was a popular and critical success when it first appeared, and has had a notable impact on popular perceptions of “the bombing of Dresden,” although it has been criticized by historians because of its inaccuracy. This article analyzes the novel's quirky, comic style and its generic mixture of science fiction and testimony, showing how Vonnegut consistently used ingenuous understatement as a way of imaginatively engaging his readers with the horrors of war. The article argues that the text's aesthetics are closer to those of graphic novels than of realist narratives and that, accordingly, we can understand its cultural impact only by approaching it as a highly artificial linguistic performance with present‐day appeal and contemporary relevance, and not merely by measuring the degree to which it gives a full and accurate mimesis of past events. The article uses the case of Vonnegut to advance a more general argument that builds on recent work in cultural memory studies: in order to understand the role that literature plays in shaping our understanding of history, it needs to be analyzed in its own terms and not as a mere derivative of historiography according to a “one model fits all” approach. Furthermore, we need to shift the emphasis from products to processes by considering both artistic and historiographical practices as agents in the ongoing circulation across different cultural domains of stories about the past. Theoretical reflection should account for the fact that historiography and the various arts play distinct roles in this cultural dynamics, and while they compete with one another, they also converge, bounce off one another, influence one another, and continuously beg to be different.     

Collecting,Collections, and Practice in the Anthropologies of Health and Disease

Anthropologists studying health and disease collect data ranging from human remains to peoples’ lived experiences. Each of the books reviewed here reveals the social processes that shape how disease phenomena are observed, assessed, classified, and interpreted, both by the individuals who experience them and the researchers who study them. The classic anthropological themes of collection, exchange, circulation, social relations, and reciprocity resonate throughout. Theoretical and methodological differences aside, anthropologists remain united by a commitment to holistic and integrative approaches and the shared goal of providing historically and socially contextualized, nuanced understandings of the human condition.