From Baby Farms to Baby M

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviana A. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Technical Innovation ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Children In Foster Care ◽  
Poor Women ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter considers the impact of children's changing economic and sentimental value on turn-of-the-twentieth-century baby markets, including profound transformations in the sale and exchange value of “priceless” children in foster care and adoption. Why is it that today's infertile parents eagerly offer thousands of dollars to obtain a baby, but in the late nineteenth century unwanted babies found no buyers? The chapter traces the late-twentieth-century emergence of a controversial surrogacy market. It argues that the socially and morally problematic nature of the surrogacy baby market is not primarily that sacred items are “placed in a contract and sealed by money,” nor even that surrogacy is rigged against poor women. More significantly, surrogacy unequivocally reveals our discriminatory valuation of children. Babies are made on “special order” because children already available on the adoption market are not “good” enough—too old, too sick, or of the wrong skin color. In this respect, surrogacy is only a technical innovation. In fact, it is just the latest stage of a very special adoption market that began in the 1920s.

A Window to Internal and External Change in Banking

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Organizational Challenges ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Self Service ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Proper Consideration

Chapter 1 (‘A Window to Internal and External Change in Banking’) provides a wide-arch view of the themes in the book. It highlights how in spite of being deeply embedded in our culture as an object of everyday life, the interaction with ATMs is largely inconsequential for most people. This chapter also forwards a case to study the ATM to better understand the possibilities for technological change to bring about a cashless economy. Another argument put forward is that the ATM is essential to appreciate the technological and organizational challenges that gave rise to self-service banking. As a result, the case is made that business histories of the late twentieth century will be incomplete without proper consideration to the impact of computer technology on the different aspects of business organizations.

The Book as Waste: Henry Mayhew and the Fall of Paper Recycling

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Price
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Wood Pulp ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pulp Paper ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter suggests that two phenomena that usually get explained in terms of the rise of electronic media in the late twentieth century—the dematerialization of the text and the disembodiment of the reader—have more to do with two much earlier developments. One is legal: the 1861 repeal of the taxes previously imposed on all paper except that used for printing bibles. The other is technological: the rise first of wood-pulp paper in the late nineteenth century and then of plastics in the twentieth. The chapter then looks at Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861–62), the loose, baggy ethnography of the urban underclass that swelled out of a messy series of media. Mayhew's “cyclopaedia of the industry, the want, and the vice of the great Metropolis” so encyclopedically catalogs the uses to which used paper can be turned.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Gavin Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Reflexive Function ◽  
And Function ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

For the purposes of this book, science fiction is defined broadly in the terms advanced by Darko Suvin, with a focus on the genre from the late nineteenth century onwards. Psychology is conceived as the modern Western discipline, running from the origins of experimental psychology in the late nineteenth century to the ascendance of neuroscience as a disciplinary rival in the late twentieth century. Five different functions for psychological discourses in science fiction are proposed. The didactic-futurological function educates the non-specialist through extrapolation of psychological technologies, teaching within the context of futurological forecasting. The utopian function anchors in historical possibility the imagining of a currently non-existent society, whether utopian or dystopian. The cognitive-estranging function defamiliarizes and denaturalizes social reality by extrapolating current social tendencies and/or construct unsettling fictional analogues of the reader’s world. The metafictional function self-consciously thematizes within narrative fiction the psychological origins, nature, and function of science fiction as a genre. The reflexive function addresses the construction of individuals and groups who have reflexively adopted the ‘truth’ of psychological knowledge.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 222-234
Author(s):  
Stuart Aveyard ◽  
Paul Corthorn ◽  
Sean O’Connell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Consumer Credit ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
European Consumer ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The long-term perspective taken by The Politics of Consumer Credit in the UK affords fresh evidence on a number of significant historical debates. It indicates that Britain’s departure from pathways followed in other European consumer credit markets was not simply a by-product of neo-liberalism’s influence on late-twentieth-century governments. It has also allowed us to offer important contributions on questions such as the impact of political ideologies over policymaking, the validity of a right–left framework for analysing politics, the extent to which a post-war consensus existed (and was broken after 1979), and the question of how adept British political parties were in exploiting the emergence of a more affluent electorate....

Globalization as a ‘determinant of the determinants of health’

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-46
Author(s):  
Ronald Labonté ◽  
Arne Ruckert
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Health ◽  
Health Financing ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Causal Pathways ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

International health, a concern with the high burden of preventable disease in poorer countries, is long-standing. In late nineteenth century sanitary reforms and early twentieth century philanthropic financing to control infectious diseases in the Americas, this concern also foreshadows more contemporary debates over global health financing and the ‘health securitization’ of wealthier nations against diseases spreading from poorer ones. By the late twentieth century, however, there was a shift in discourse from ‘international’ to ‘global’ health underpinned by the growing awareness that there are inherently global reasons for why some countries are wealthier and healthier, while others remain poorer and sicker. Two different frameworks are used to unpack these causal pathways, in which globalization processes are regarded as meta-determinants of health inequities within and between nations. Although researchers argue that globalization processes have been good for health, others are much less sanguine on this claim.

scholarly journals At your Cervix Madam: a Socio-Historical Study of Cervical Cancer from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Late Twentieth Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Pamela Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cervical Cancer ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

<p>This thesis is a socio-historical study of cervical cancer from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. It explores the ways in which discourses have constituted knowledge, social practices and subjectivities in relation to cervical cancer. It also explores the ways in which power has operated on the bodies of New Zealand women. In doing so it criticises orthodox histories of medicine, problematises the knowledge claims of medicine and argues for a sociological account of medical knowledge. In this thesis discourses on cervical cancer have been subjected to a feminist-Foucauldian analysis which reveals their historical specificity and their social location. The gendered bodies of women are placed at the centre of this analysis. This thesis challenges constructionist accounts of medicine which do not pay sufficient attention to the role of gender relations in the construction of bodies. This thesis also develops against feminist theorists a view of women as actively constituting their bodies by responding to and challenging medical discourses whilst at the same time being shaped by these discourses. In this study, cervical cancer is subjected to a sociological analysis which problematises its existence as an unalloyed biological phenomenon. It is argued that women's bodies have been the contested sites for knowledge/power and that the cervix and its diseases have been constituted as variable medical artifacts throughout specific historical periods from the 1890s to the 1990s. The study also shows however, the ways in which women have been active participants in the disciplining of their bodies. In this thesis, the medical profession, state actors and feminists are shown to interact in an interweave of power. In doing so the socially negotiated status of medical knowledge of cervical cancer is revealed.</p>

scholarly journals Late Print Culture’s Social Media Revolution: Authorship, Collaboration and Copy Machines

Authorship ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Eichhorn
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Widespread Availability ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Print Cultures ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
The Web

This article examines the impact of copy machines on late twentieth-century print cultures. Specifically, this article makes a case for “dry copying,” the method of print reproduction perfected by Xerox in the late 1950s, as a unique medium rather than a weak imitation of other printing methods. Following the claim that the widespread availability of copy machines in the late twentieth century represented the arrival of a new medium, this article further examines how understandings of authorship, established with print culture, came undone in the era of the copy machine. Finally, this paper makes a case for understanding copy machines as a form of “social media” that opened up opportunities for writers, readers and publishers to create, share, exchange and comment on texts and images in communities and networks of their own making in the decades preceding the development of the web.

The LGBTQ Press in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland

2020 ◽  
pp. 483-501
Author(s):  
Alison Oram ◽  
Justin Bengry
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
Local Alternative ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Gay Liberation Movement ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter examines the development of the ‘gay’ press in Britain and Ireland from the late nineteenth century. Early periodicals that directly addressed gender fluidity and same-sex love were privately circulated; caution and secrecy lasted well into the 1960s. Yet at the same time considerable queer content appeared in some mainstream publications, such as fashion, film and physique magazines in the pre-decriminalisation period. More recognisably lesbian and gay publications from the 1960s sought to achieve political and cultural change and to foster social contacts for lesbians and gay men. The Gay Liberation Movement marked a wealth of short- and longer-lived magazines, newspapers and periodicals, while feminism invigorated lesbian activism and publications. Differentiation in content characterises the gay press in the late twentieth century, from glossy arts magazines to political campaign news to specialist pornography. From the 1980s there was a discernible shift towards lifestyle magazines. Regional gay and lesbian magazines also appear in this period, often overlapping with the local alternative press, although censorship and persecution continued alongside the success of the LGBT press. The chapter further identifies the specific development of LGBTQ publications in Scotland and Ireland.

Theories of Terrestrial Mass Extinction by Extraterrestrial Objects

1998 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven D'Hondt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Proximate Cause ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Proximate Causes ◽  
Biological Extinction ◽  
Luis Alvarez ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Theories of mass extinction by extraterrestrial objects have been intermittently proposed by European and North American scientists for at least 250 years. Until the late twentieth century, such theories usually treated biological extinction as a single aspect of global cataclysm. Proposed ultimate causes of mass extinction have included the passage of planetesimals close to Earth, impacts of comets or asteroids, and transient increases in cosmic radiation. These theories have consistently extrapolated from astronomical observations to suggest that extraterrestrial objects had affected Earth at some time in the past. However, until the late twentieth century, none of these theories proposed definitive tests of temporal coincidences between mass extinctions and and the terrestrial effects of extraterrestrial objects. Harold Urey's (1973) cometary impact hypothesis was the first to propose such a test. The impact-extinction theory of Luis Alvarez and his colleagues (1980) was the first to provide direct evidence of such a coincidence. Such tests were probably not possible before the middle of the twentieth century. The failure of earlier theories to generate sustained scientific interest can be most simply attributed to their lack of such evidence. Theories of extraterrestrially caused mass extinction have almost always combined hypotheses of ultimate and proximate causes of extinction. The stability of these combinations has varied greatly from category to category and age to age. In general, these combinations evolved much more rapidly when they were presented and discussed in mainstream scientific literature. Despite their ubiquity, hypotheses of proximate causes have served a limited role in the reception of these theories. Scientific critics of these theories have consistently required hypotheses of proximate causes to appear plausible. However, the recent history of impact theories indicates that an ultimate cause of mass extinction may be widely accepted without definitive proof of the proximate cause of extinction.

The early Cambrian experiment in reef-building by metazoans

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 107-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Rowland ◽  
Melissa Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Cambrian ◽  
Middle Ordovician ◽  
Calcareous Sponges ◽  
Reef Environments ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Neoproterozoic ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

A consortium dominated by archaeocyaths and calcified microorganisms (calcimicrobes) constructed the first metazoan reefs during an eleven-million-year interval of the Early Cambrian. However, archaeocyaths were not the first metazoan reef dwellers; the weakly calcified organismNamacalathus, and the more heavily biomineralized organismNamapoikia, occupied microbial reef environments during the late Neoproterozoic, but they were not involved in reef construction. Throughout the late nineteenth century, and during most of the twentieth century, the biological affinities of archaeocyaths were unsettled, which caused paleobiologists to avoid including them in analyses of the Cambrian fauna. However, in the late twentieth century the discovery of living, aspiculate sponges led to a consensus among archaeocyathan workers that these fossils represent an extinct class of aspiculate, calcareous sponges. The majority of archaeocyathan-calcimicrobial reefs are relatively small, lenticular mounds, typically about a meter thick and a few meters in diameter, but the archaeocyathan-calcimicrobial consortium also constructed massive, ecologically zoned, wave-resistant, framework reefs. The Great Siberian Cambrian Reef Complex is 200-300 km wide and stretches for 1500 km across northern Siberia. A consensus has not yet been found among Cambrian reef workers concerning photosymbiosis, which is such an important aspect of the ecology of modern coralgal reefs. Two extinction events hit during the Early Cambrian, the second of which is associated with a eustatic sea-level drop. The attendant marine regression eliminated reefs, and the archaeocyathan-calcimicrobial reef community disappeared. While the disappearance of reefs at this time is perfectly understandable, it is nevertheless surprising that the metazoan-calcimicrobe reef-building consortium was not able to recover within a few million years. Approximately forty million years passed æ from the end of the Early Cambrian to the beginning of the Middle Ordovician æ before metazoans finally returned to reef-building. We present seven hypotheses to explain this metazoan-reef-free window. The testing of these hypotheses will, in part, be the challenge of the next phase of research on Early Cambrian reefs.

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