Fabian Drixler’s Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950 tells the story of a society reversing deeply held worldviews. Drixler, a professor of Japanese history at Yale University, describes the book as “a cultural history of infanticide and a demographic history of fertility change wrapped into one.”
This fascinating interview on the historical practice of infanticide with Yale’s The MacMillan Report may change the way you think about family planning and the cultural meaning of responsible parenthood. In a wide-ranging discussion, Drixler talks about what drove him to research a difficult subject like infanticide, his research methodology and challenges in gathering population data, and the importance of demography as a tool for understanding the past.
Three years ago, David and Janet Carle, authors of the new book Traveling the 38th Parallel, embarked on the trip of a lifetime. The former state park rangers from Mono Lake, California journeyed around the world along the 38th parallel in search of water-related environmental and cultural intersections.
We’ve followed their adventures before here on the UC Press blog, and as the book’s publication date nears, we give you this recent dispatch from the authors on a subject that ultimately became a key chapter in the book:
An internal state audit of the 4 Rivers project (reported on January 19, 2013, at Donga.com), by the Board of Audit and Inspection, found that “16 dams that were the key parts of the restoration project had problems in durability and safety. The report also claimed that ‘unreasonable management’ caused fears over deterioration of water quality. [...] The findings suggest that the government rushed to complete the project before President Lee left office, causing breaches in quality control and exposing sign of shoddy construction.” The government disputed the findings, but scheduled its own audit.
Read on for more about the audit’s findings and to see the Carles’ controversial post about the project from 2010.
Visit David and Janet Carles’ blog Parallel Universe to learn about the dedicated individuals working to protect the fragile places along the water line, and to see more images, news, and reviews related to the book.
Legendary environmental leader and publisher David Brower (the subject of an exhibit at Doe Library at UC Berkeley until March 31) worked as an editor at UC Press 70 years ago and met his future wife, Anne, on the job. In the current issue of the Cal alumni magazine, their son Kenneth Brower shares this story of how his parents met:
My parents met in 1941 as editors at the University of California Press. To my mother’s annoyance, the press manager assigned my father a desk in her small office. The new hire—a mountain climber, tall, unpolished—irritated her not just by his personality and his invasion of her space, but by his salary. Gender equality was not yet a blip on the radar. (Radar itself, coined just the year before, was not yet a blip on the radar.) My mother had seniority, yet from his first day my father, with his Y chromosome, drew a paycheck nearly equal to hers.
In time she relented. Their conversations grew warmer. My father found he could make her laugh.
It happened one week that Anne Hus, my mother, was struggling with a dull manuscript overloaded with footnotes. David Brower, my father, waited until she was away at lunch and then typed up a page himself and slipped it in. His insert began in the author’s stuffy style, then slowly morphed into parody and finally into ridiculousness, complete with nonsensical footnotes. My mother, pencil in hand, was halfway through the page when she realized her manuscript had been hijacked. The look on her face, and then her laughter—it was a small triumph my father would never forget. There were complications to the stunt, unfortunately: When the author asked for the manuscript back to make some changes, my mother forgot to remove the apocryphal page. The author was not amused.
But it all worked out in the end. As nearly as I can figure, I owe my existence to a slow day at UC Press and a bunch of counterfeit footnotes.
UC Santa Cruz recently interviewed Eric Porter, Professor of History and American Studies, and Lewis Watts, professor of Art, about their new book, New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition. Using both visual evidence and the written word, Watts and Porter pay homage to the city, its region, and its residents, by mapping recent and often contradictory social and cultural transformations, and seeking to counter inadequate and often pejorative accounts of the people and place that give New Orleans its soul.
Porter describes the ambitions of the work, noting that ”New Orleans Suite is not merely a book about Katrina … Through Lewis’s photographs and my written sections, we consider how the storm was both a transformative force and a vehicle that enabled longstanding processes to come into view.”
Are you ready for more uncensored Mark Twain? The eagerly-anticipated Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2, will be published in October. Volume 2 delves deeper into Mark Twain’s life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds. Filled with his characteristic blend of humor and ire, the narrative ranges effortlessly across the contemporary scene. He shares his views on writing and speaking, his preoccupation with money, and his contempt for the politics and politicians of his day.
And if you can’t wait until October, check out our free app for iPhone and iPad, a treasure trove of rarely seen images of Samuel Clemens and his family, plus audio excerpts from both Volumes 1 and 2 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain. Get a glimpse into the wide-ranging and candid narrative of the life that Mark Twain embargoed until 100 years after his death.
What is it like for a convicted murderer who has spent decades behind bars to suddenly find himself released into a world he barely recognizes? What is it like to start over from nothing? To answer these questions Sabine Heinlein followed the everyday lives and emotional struggles of Angel Ramos and his friends Bruce and Adam—three men convicted of some of society’s most heinous crimes—as they return to the free world.
In the latest episode of the UC Press Podcast, Heinlein discusses how she chose Bruce, Angel, and Adam as subjects, the social function of facilities like the Castle (the halfway house profiled in the book), and the three men’s unexpected strategies for coping with life on the outside.
While young women today benefit from unprecedented education and opportunity compared to previous generations, many have trouble navigating personal and sexual relationships, Leslie C. Bell argues in her new book, Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom. Drawing from her years of experience as a researcher and a psychotherapist, Bell takes us directly into the lives of young women who struggle to negotiate the complexities of sexual desire and pleasure, and to make sense of their historically unique but contradictory constellation of opportunities and challenges.
In the latest episode of the UC Press Podcast, Bell discusses the legacy of the sexual revolution and the need for honest conversation between women in their twenties and their predecessors. In a wide-ranging discussion, she addresses methodological issues like the representation of queer women in her study, the benefits of a small sample size, and what sets her findings apart from those discovered in a survey.
Roger N. Lancaster, professor of anthropology and cultural studies at George Mason University and author of Sex Panic and the Punitive State, recently penned an op-ed for the New York Times on how restrictions for sex offenders should be determined and the implications of creating policies in direct response to traumatic events. Read his take below:
Panic Does Not Make for Good Policy
by Roger N. Lancaster
FEBRUARY 20, 2013
Sexual violence, like other forms of violence, is traumatic and devastating. The question is not whether the state has an interest in preventing such harm, but whether current laws are appropriate and effective.
The U.S. legal landscape was reshaped by federal laws passed in the mid-1990s, in response to heinous but statistically unusual crimes involving stranger abduction, rape and murder. The Wetterling Act required convicted sex offenders to register with local authorities, and Megan’s Law required law enforcement to notify neighbors about the presence of a sex offender in their community. As a result, all states now post searchable online lists of at least some categories of registered sex offenders. The U.S. Department of Justice links all the states’ registries in a single searchable site, available to neighbors, employers, landlords and the public at large.
Just laws are supposed to deter crime, apply proportionate punishment and rehabilitate offenders. U.S. sex offender laws fail on all three counts.
These public lists do include some violent repeat offenders, which was the original aim of the laws. But the registries have grown rapidly — to nearly three-quarters of a million registrants at latest count. Culpability and harm vary greatly in the offenses for which people are registered. Some states require exhibitionists and “peeping Toms” to register. By best estimates, a large majority is registered for conviction on first offenses involving neither violence nor coercion (or even, in some cases, physical contact). Many registrants would not be classified as criminal under European laws, which set lower ages of consent than do American laws. Registrants even include minors who had consensual sex with their high school sweethearts, or who traded self-taken sexually explicit photos with their peers (“sexting”). [...] Read the full article at the New York Times.
The real life events behind No, the Chilean film nominated for the Academy Awards Best Foreign Language film, are even more compelling than what appears on screen. In 1988 General Augusto Pinochet held a one-man presidential plebiscite seeking to extend his rule for another eight years. It was not the first time his regime had held a referendum. In 1978, following a United Nations resolution condemning human rights violations in Chile voters were asked to cast “yes” or “no” ballots in support of Pinochet “in the face of international aggression against Chile.” The official results of the vote, held without an electoral registry, showed 75 percent in favor of the regime. In September of 1980 the regime held another plebiscite to ratify its new, authoritarian constitution and to extend Pinochet’s rule for another eight years. Once again, the vote was held without an electoral registry and the results showed 67 percent in favor.
According to the terms of this new constitution, a third plebiscite would be held in 1988 in which voters would be asked to cast “yes” or “no” ballots for a presidential candidate nominated by the regime. If the “yes” vote won, this candidate would rule for another eight years; if the “no” won, an open presidential election would be held a year later. But this time voters would be registered, political parties would be officially recognized and polls monitored by party representatives as well as international observers. And in a move which regime officials probably regretted, both “yes” and “no” campaigns would be given 15 minutes of television time every evening for four weeks prior to the vote.
Patricio Bañados
Given the irregularities surrounding the regime’s two previous plebiscites, it was not easy for the “no” campaign to convince Chileans that this referendum would be clean and that the voting would be secret. The “no” broadcasts used all the tricks of modern advertising and an unrelenting cheerfulness to get its message across: Chile, la alegria ya viene. Chile, happiness is on its way.
The film shows how campaigners were under surveillance—and the reality was more menacing. Patricio Bañados, the television and radio personality who hosted the “no” broadcasts, told me in an interview that he had received death threats—some via anonymous phone calls, and at least one delivered indirectly by a cab driver inquiring if he’d ever thought about how he’d like to die. Behind the scenes there were indications that Pinochet might suspend the plebscite and launch a repressive crackdown if the results showed he was losing. American ambassador Harry Barnes sent a cable to Washington (PDF) warning that
“Pinochet’s plan is simple: A) if the “yes” is winning, fine; B) if the race is very close, rely on fraud and coercion ; C) if the “no” is likely to win clearly then use violence and terror to stop the process. To help prepare the atmosphere the CNI [the regime’s secret police] will have the job of provoking adequate violence before and on October 5. Since we know that Pinochet’s closest advisors now realize he is likely to lose, we believe the third option is the one most likely to be put into effect with substantial loss of life.”
On the night of the plebiscite regime officials released some very partial returns showing Pinochet ahead, with a fraction of the vote counted. Then, ominously, there were no more announcements. At midnight the commanders of Chile’s navy, national police and air force entered the presidential palace for a meeting with Pinochet, and Air Force commander General Fernando Matthei decided it was time “to pull out the detonators.” He approached a group of Chilean journalists and told them the “no” vote had clearly won. At their meeting Pinochet tried to get Matthei and the other commanders to sign a document giving him enhanced powers, including more control over the navy, air force and police—but they refused.
And so began Chile’s democratic transition. The following year elections were held, with a new civilian president and congress taking office.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Leslie C. Bell, author of the new book, Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom, has an article up at Psychology Today about the ambivalence many young women feel toward committing to relationships in their twenties. From the attitudes on the HBO series Girls to those found in her own research, Bell assesses the challenging landscape these women face and offers advice on how to acknowledge the full range of their desires. Read the article below:
The New Taboo
by Leslie C. Bell, Ph.D., LCSW
Twenty-something women are so over Valentine’s Day … right? If we are to believe popular portrayals of twenty-somethings, they’re checking hook apps rather than their mailboxes for Valentine cards. If so, my research suggests that the turn to casual sex, for young women at least, is not because they’re masters of their own destiny but because they face a new taboo. It’s not about sex or money or power. This taboo curtails the traditional province of women: relationships.
Take Hannah, the protagonist of HBO’s Girls and the current arbiter of all things twenty-something. She worried that loving a man, as opposed to having a friend with benefits, would compromise her art. When her casual sex partner expressed his interest in committing, she jumped ship. But like many of the women I interviewed, Hannah’s is not a free choice. Instead it’s one constrained by the mandate to invest in experience, but not in relationships.
To get at real desires and how they are constrained by societal taboos, the key is to get below the surface. In conducting multiple interviews with the same women, as I did in my book on sexual freedom and twenty-something women, I did not find wholehearted endorsement of casual sex over love. Instead I found intense ambivalence, mixed feelings, and sometimes shame for desiring (heterosexual) love. Time and again, I heard a sentiment, expressed by one of my interviewees: “Why do I, a young and highly educated woman in the twenty-first century, value relationships with men so highly?” This ambitious young woman expressed what many others whom I interviewed also conveyed: to value a relationship is to betray oneself, one’s education, and achievement.
Katie, a 25-year-old woman I spoke with as part of my research, confided shortly in our conversations that she worried that her single-minded pursuit of a graduate degree might limit her ability to meet a man with whom she could build a life. This realization—that she might want to prioritize a relationship over a career—felt shocking to Katie, and she did not admit to it easily. In fact, she felt deeply ashamed by such thoughts, worried that they signaled weakness and dependence, qualities she did not admire. To put such a high premium on relationships was frightening to Katie. She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women. [...]
Fabian Drixler’s Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950 tells the story of a society reversing deeply held worldviews. Drixler, a professor of Japanese history at Yale University, describes the book as “a cultural history of infanticide and a demographic history of fertility change wrapped into one.”
