Negotiating the Boundaries of Race, Caste, and Mibun

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Geiger
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Labor Migrants ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
Job Opportunities ◽  
Meiji Era ◽  
Cultural Taboos ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Japanese Immigration

Cultural attitudes rooted in the Tokugawa-era status system (mibunsei) provided an interpretive framework for the race-based hostility Meiji-era Japanese encountered in the United States and Canada, informing the discursive strategies of Meiji diplomats who sought to refute the claims of anti-Japanese exclusionists by distinguishing Japanese labor migrants from themselves, aiding in the reproduction of Japanese as an excludable category when anti-Japanese elements turned their arguments against all Japanese. Concerns about social hierarchy and the significance of historical status categories (mibun), including cultural taboos associated with outcaste status, also mediated the responses of Meiji immigrants to conditions they encountered on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, including white racism and job opportunities. Japanese immigrant negotiations of race and identity in the North American West can be fully understood only by also considering mibun, in addition to more the familiar paradigms of race, class, and gender, in analyzing Meiji-era Japanese immigration history.

Academic Success of “Tiger Cubs”

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 698-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsiang-Yi Wu ◽  
Franki Y. H. Kung ◽  
Hsueh-Chih Chen ◽  
Young-Hoon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Academic Performance ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Growth ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Latent Growth ◽  
The North ◽  
Curve Model ◽  
And Gender

Studies in the United States have shown that self-control can predict academic performance beyond intelligence quotient (IQ), which also explains why girls (vs. boys) tend to have higher grades. However, empirical evidence is scarce; moreover, little is known about whether these effects generalize to other cultures. To address these limitations, we conducted a 2-year longitudinal study in Asia and examined the effects of self-control, IQ, and gender on students’ academic achievement over time. Specifically, we first measured 195 Taiwanese seventh grades’ self-control and IQ, and then traced their overall grades over four school semesters. Latent growth curve model analyses suggest that IQ predicted students’ initial academic performance more strongly than self-control; however, self-control—but not IQ—predicted students’ academic growth across the four time points and explained girls’ higher grades. Overall, the findings support the argument that self-control has unique long-term benefits academically and provide initial evidence outside of the North American context.

White Face, Black Voice: Race, Gender, and Region in the Music of the Boswell Sisters

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURIE STRAS
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
White Face ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Boundaries

The New Orleans hot jazz vocal trio the Boswell Sisters was one of the leading ensembles of the 1930s. Enormously popular with audiences, the Boswells were also recognized by colleagues and peers to be among the finest singers, instrumentalists, and arrangers of their day. Many jazz historians remember them as the first successful white singers who truly “sounded black,” yet they rarely interrogate what “sounding black” meant for the Boswells, not only in technical or musical terms but also as an expression of the cultural attitudes and ideologies that shape stylistic judgments. The Boswells' audience understood vocal blackness as a cultural trope, though that understanding was simultaneously filtered through minstrelsy's legacy and challenged by the new entertainment media. Moreover, the sisters' southern femininity had the capacity to further contexualize and “color” both their musical output and its reception. This essay examines what it meant for a white voice to sound black in the United States during the early 1930s, and charts how the Boswells permeated the cultural, racial, and gender boundaries implicit in both blackness and southernness as they developed their collective musical voice.

Alternative Wests

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-17
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Isenberg ◽  
Thomas Richards
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
American West ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Caribbean

The mid-nineteenth century territorial growth of the United States was complex and contradictory. Not only did Mexico, Britain, and Native Americans contest U.S. territorial objectives; so, too, did many within the United States and in some cases American western settlers themselves. The notion of manifest destiny reflects few of these complexities. The authors argue that manifest destiny was a partisan idea that emerged in a context of division and uncertainty intended to overawe opponents of expansion. Only in the early twentieth century, as the United States had consolidated its hold on the North American West and was extending its power into the Caribbean and Pacific, did historians begin to describe manifest destiny as something that it never was in the nineteenth century: a consensus. To a significant extent, historians continue to rely on the idea to explain U.S. expansion. The authors argue for returning a sense of context and contingency to the understanding of mid-nineteenth-century U.S. expansion.

The Priest and the Prophetess

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
The North ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Coastal Cities ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Shortly after a slave revolt in the North Province of the French colony of Saint-Domingue sparked the Haitian Revolution in August 1791, a free black immigrant coffee farmer and gender-bending religious visionary named Romaine-la-Prophétesse launched a separate insurgency on behalf of his own beleaguered people. Leading thousands of free colored insurgents and the slaves they liberated in the colony’s West Province, Romaine achieved something that no other rebel leader ever did in the colonial history of the Americas: conquering not one, but two coastal cities: Jacmel and Léogâne. His political adviser was a French Catholic priest named Abbé Ouvière, who brokered the treaty that formally tendered to Romaine rule over the latter city. What was the nature of their relationship? In what ways was each man instrumental in broader revolutionary events in the colony? This book answers these and related questions, deepening our understanding of the function of religion in the Haitian Revolution, along with those of race, science, and medicine, in the broader revolutionary Atlantic world, the latter topics impelled by the second half of the priest’s remarkable life as a scientist and physician in the United States, as Dr. Felix Pascalis. That Abbé Ouvière and Dr. Pascalis were one and the same person has heretofore been lost on scholars, and that Romaine-la-Prophétesse, though ultimately betrayed by the priest, would be judged by him as worthy of honor from his “tyrannized nation,” accentuate the historical significance of each man and the major contributions of this book.

Interracial Sex, Marriage, and the Nation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ting Yi Lui
Keyword(s):  
Family Formation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
North American Continent ◽  
The North ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Interracial Sex ◽  
And Gender

This article traces the long history of legal regulations around interracial sex and marriage as tied to important changes in the territorial consolidation and political formation of the American nation and its polity. These regulations stabilized ambiguous racial categories and gender roles as well as patriarchy and heteronormativity. The article begins in the colonial era to survey the range of local practices of interracial sex, marriage, and family formation that took place across different imperial contexts across the North American continent and moves into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the United States spanned the continent and pursued its own imperial ambitions globally. In addition, the article chronicles histories of resistance and mixed-race family formation that both challenged and worked within the limits of the law.

Tracking Skilled Diasporas

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Nduka Otiono
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Brain Drain ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Labor Migrants ◽  
The North ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework

This essay examines the trajectories of skilled labor migrants within a global South-North migration matrix using an interdisciplinary framework. Focusing on Nigeria's huge brain drain phenomenon, the essay draws from the limited available data on the field, interpreting those data through theoretical perspectives from postcolonial studies, Marxism, cultural studies, and human geography. The study spotlights the example of the United States of America as a receptacle of skilled migrants and raises questions of social justice along the North-South divide. The research demonstrates that contrary to the dominant image promoted by some elements in the Western media of migrants as irritants or criminals who disturb well-cultivated, advanced World economies and social spaces, 1 those nations benefit highly from Africa's (and other migrant countries') labor diasporas, especially the highly skilled professionals.

South Asian Migration, Settlement, and Sociopolitical Incorporation on the North American West Coast

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 85-108
Author(s):  
Prema Kurien
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Asian ◽  
West Coast ◽  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
North American West ◽  
The North ◽  
Asian Migration

There are large South Asian settlements in the larger Vancouver region of British Columbia in Canada and in Northern and Central California (from Yuba City to Fresno) in the United States. While the early migration patterns of Sikhs and Hindus to these two areas were similar, they subsequently diverged and the South Asian settlements in the two regions now exhibit very different profiles. This resource paper summarizes and analyzes the literature on factors shaping the migration, settlement, and incorporation patterns of Asian immigrants in these two regions. I argue that the parallels in early South Asian migration patterns to the North American West Coast were due to similarities in the economic and social profile of these regions, Canadian and U.S. policies toward Asian immigrants, and easy movement between Canada and the United States. The divergence between the two regions took place over time largely as an outcome of changes in regional characteristics (e.g., the development of Silicon Valley), differences in the group characteristics and networks of Sikhs and Hindus, and an increasing divergence in Canadian and U.S. immigration regulations (e.g., differences in family reunification, refugee, and H1-B visa policies). The final section discusses how these settlement patterns have led to differences in the identity formation and sociopolitical incorporation of Sikhs and Hindus in the two regions.

scholarly journals Culture-Based Rejection of Taboo-Infringing Imports

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
William D. Brice ◽  
Edward Chu ◽  
Anastasiya Brice
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
State University ◽  
College Majors ◽  
Cultural Constructs ◽  
Cultural Taboos ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
The University

AbstractThis empirical study analyzes the cultural basis of the United States market response to imported Spanish products that seem to violate strongly-held cultural taboos. Survey responses were obtained from students in two contrasting majors, Art and Business, in two distinct cities and universities, i.e. Little Rock at the University of Arkansas, and Dominguez Hills at California State University. The study focused on a baby doll marketed to piggy-back on the new movement towards breastfeeding babies. Although accepted in its original European market, the United States media reports strong moral objections to this product among U. S. citizens. The toy was overwhelmingly rejected in some, but not all, population sub-groups. This study attempts to discern the cultural basis for product rejection by comparing responses between regions, college majors, genders and gender/major combinations. Differences in acceptance between groups are correlated with specific cultural constructs.

Vocation Education Quality from Demand Side’s Perspective: The Case of Transport Technology Universities in the North of Vietnam

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1089-1097
Author(s):  
Nguyen Quynh Hoa ◽  
◽  
Phung Chu Hoang ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Vocational Training ◽  
Vocational Education And Training ◽  
Quality Outcomes ◽  
The North ◽  
Job Opportunities ◽  
Management Capacity ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Training Quality ◽  
And Training

Quality outcomes from vocational education and training (VET) are fundamental to ensuring a skilled workforce and supporting a productive economy. The quality of vocational training from the demand’s perspective is defined as meeting the customer specification, needs or requirements. Using the method of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Multiple Regression Analysis to get the analytical results of 275 respondents as graduates of University of Transport and Communication, University of Transport Technology (the two universities training on transportation in the North of Vietnam), the results show that factors are measured by the observed variables in the study that ensure reliability and relevance. The descriptive statistics result of vocational training quality is 3.28, while all independent variables are at average level (between 3.1 to 3.48) with the highest value related to the quality of the teacher and the lowest are facilities and training programs and management capacity of university. However, the regression results show that the qualification of the teacher, material facilities and training program, management capacity and job opportunities at the training school do not affect the quality of the training while “Learners-NH” have a great positive effect and the labor market information has a negative effect on the training quality of the school significantly. Base on those data, some policy recommendations have been given out in order to improve the training quality of transport technology universities in the north of Vietnam in particular and the vocational training quality of Vietnam in general.

Mafias on the Move

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
At Will

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.

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