Monthly Archive for July, 2011

Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest

Published on July 29, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times

Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

The study, which used data collected by the Census Bureau, found that the median wealth of Hispanic households fell by 66 percent from 2005 to 2009. By contrast, the median wealth of whites fell by just 16 percent over the same period. African Americans saw their wealth drop by 53 percent. Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent.

The declines have led to the largest wealth disparities in the 25 years that the bureau has been collecting the data, according to the report.

Median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, double the already marked disparities that had prevailed in the decades before the recent recession, the study found.

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The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Natural Selection and Evolution, with a Key to Many Complicating Factors

Published on July 27, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Jeremy Yoder, Scientific American

June is Pride Month in the United States, and in communities across the country, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans are celebrating with carnivals, parades, and marches. Pride is a rebuke to the shame and marginalization many LGBT people face growing up, and a celebration of the freedoms we’ve won since the days when our sexual orientations were considered psychological diseases and grounds for  harrassment and arrest. It’s also a chance to acknowledge how far we still have to go, and to organize our efforts for a better future.

And, of course, it’s a great big party.

I’m looking forward to celebrating Pride for the first time in my new hometown of Minneapolis this weekend–but as an evolutionary biologist, I suspect I have a perspective on the life and history of sexual minorities that many of my fellow partiers don’t. In spite of the progress that LGBT folks have made, and seem likely to continue to make, towards legal equality, there’s a popular perception that we can never really achieve biological equality. This is because same-sex sexual activity is inherently not reproductive sex. To put it baldly, as the idea is usually expressed, natural selection should be against men who want to have sex with other men–because we aren’t interested in the kind of sex that makes babies. An oft-cited estimate from 1981 is that gay men have about 80 percent fewer children than straight men.

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The Plough and the Now: Deep-Seated Attitudes to Women have Roots in Ancient Agriculture

Published on July 25, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

From The Economist

Fernand Braudel, a renowned French historian, once described a remarkable transformation in the society of ancient Mesopotamia. Sometime before the end of the fifth millennium BC, he wrote, the fertile region between the Tigris and the Euphrates went from being one that worshipped “all-powerful mother goddesses” to one where it was “the male gods and priests who were predominant in Sumer and Babylon.” The cause of this move from matriarchy, Mr Braudel argued, was neither a change in law nor a wholesale reorganisation of politics. Rather, it was a fundamental change in the technology the Mesopotamians used to produce food: the adoption of the plough.

The plough was heavier than the tools formerly used by farmers. By demanding significantly more upper-body strength than hoes did, it gave men an advantage over women. According to Mr Braudel, women in ancient Mesopotamia had previously been in charge of the fields and gardens where cereals were grown. With the advent of the plough, however, farming became the work of men. A new paper* by Alberto Alesina and Nathan Nunn of Harvard University and Paola Giuliano of the University of California, Los Angeles, finds striking evidence that ancient agricultural techniques have very long-lasting effects.

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The Science of Sexism: Primate Behavior and the Culture of Sexual Coercion

Published on July 22, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

"Chimp Riveter" by Nathaniel Gold

From Eric Michael Johnson, Scientific American

Warning: content may be triggering for survivors of sexual assault/abuse.

Elizabeth Wilde’s mouth was stuffed with cloth and her hands were tied behind her back. Hogs rummaged in the yard outside as her master, John Lumbrozo, forced himself on her repeatedly and threatened her with death if she resisted. When the 22-year old indentured servant girl later showed signs of being pregnant, witnesses reported that this respected doctor of Charles County, Maryland gave her a chemical “Phisick” that induced abortion. On a hot day in June, 1663 Elizabeth Wilde gave birth to “a Clod of blood,” while her rapist stood over her and performed the delivery of her dead fetus.

“With the fetus and afterbirth in the chamber pot,” wrote historian Amanda Lea Miracle in her dissertation on the incident, “the doctor threw the contents into the street. And, as neighbors pointed out to her, a further indignity was that any roaming pig could devour it.”

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Power and Politeness between Native and Non-native Speakers

Published on July 21, 2011 in Book, Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Power and Politeness between Native and Non-native Speakers by Mustapha Taibi is now available as part of the On Diversity series.

This book presents the findings of an empirical study on face and power relationships between native and non-native speakers of English. Based on twenty audio-recorded conversations, the work provides valuable insight into communication between native and non-native speakers, especially as far as politeness and interactional dominance are concerned. The underlying hypothesis was that “nativity” would constitute a source of power and that this would be reflected in conversational practices such as politeness strategies and interactional dominance. The politeness strategies covered include attending to one’s interlocutor’s self-image and needs, complimenting, supportive responses and in-group solidarity. Signs of interactional power include topic control, talkativeness, interruption and questions, among others.

Mustapha Taibi is a senior lecturer in interpreting and translation at the University of Western Sydney. In addition to translation and interpreting, he has been lecturing on semantics, pragmatics and intercultural pragmatics. From 2002 to 2006 he taught English language and linguistics as well as community translation and interpreting at the University of Alcalá (Spain). His main research interests are community translation and interpreting and discourse analysis.

Europeans Against Multiculturalism

Published on July 19, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Chancellery in Berlin / The Prime Minister’s Office / Flickr(cc)

From John R. Bowen, Boston Review

One of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.

Despite the shared rhetoric, it is difficult to discern a common target for these criticisms. Cameron aimed at an overly tolerant attitude toward extremist Islam, Merkel at the slow pace of Turkish integration, and Sarkozy at Muslims who pray in the street.

But while it is hard to know what exactly the politicians of Europe mean when they talk about multiculturalism, one thing we do know is that the issues they raise—real or imagined—have complex historical roots that have little to do with ideologies of cultural difference. Blaming multiculturalism may be politically useful because of its populist appeal, but it is also politically dangerous because it attacks “an enemy within”: Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it misreads history. An intellectual corrective may help to diminish its malign impact.

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Feminism in the 21st century

Published on July 18, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Zoe Williams, guardian.co.uk

What is feminism? “Simply the belief that women should be as free as men . . . Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.”

Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman is firm, delightfully firm, on many things – heels (against), pubic waxing (against), abortion (for), the disadvantages of economising on sanitary products – and she is firm, she insists on, this simple definition of feminism. Feminism is just equality. Would a man be allowed to do it? Then so should you. Would a man feel bad about it? No? Then nor should you. Everything else – the pressure to be sisterly (“When did feminism become confused with Buddhism?”); the idea that we should be held to account, as feminists, for every possible ill that could befall the modern woman (“There’s a whole generation of people who’ve confused ‘feminism’ with ‘anything to do with women’”) – all of that is just hassle in disguise.

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Twelfth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities and Nations

Published on July 18, 2011 in Conference and Newsletter. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The 2012 Diversity Conference will  be held in Vancouver, British Columbia at the University of British Columbia from 11-13 June. For more information and important conference updates, please visit www.Diversity-Conference.com

Call for Papers

If you intend to present a paper at the conference, your participation begins with submission of a paper proposal. For information on proposals, presentation types, and other options, please click here. Once you are ready to submit your proposal, you can do so by going here. If your proposal is accepted, you will then need to register for the conference.

Registration

Those who submit paper proposals should register following the acceptance of the proposal.  Conference delegates who do not intend to present may register at any time. For registration options, or to register for the 2012 Diversity Conference, please follow this link.

Themes

* Theme 1: Dimensions of Diversity
* Theme 2: Governing Diversity — Community in a Globalising World
* Theme 3: Representing Diversity — Influences of Global Tourism and Media
* Theme 4: Learning Diversity — Education in a World of Difference
* Theme 5: Working Diversity — Managing the Culture of Diversity

For more information on our overall themes for the Diversity Conference, please click here.