Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has instituted wide-ranging family planning regulations and economic reforms. Simultaneously, the state has promoted a discourse encouraging citizens to elevate the “quality” of the population by investing more resources in fewer children. These large-scale changes have contributed to an increasing gender skew among infants due to sex-selective abortion as well as the abandonment of countless mostly female and/or disabled children. This paper seeks to understand how the government-promoted discourse of “population quality”, in conjunction with population regulations and rural economic reforms, has begun inadvertently to value and marginalize different groups at the very beginning of life. The larger goal of this paper is to use the gender skew in children to understand how recent large-scale Chinese social changes are valuing and devaluing certain groups based on sex—a process I argue is a new form of gender discrimination rather than a continuation of previous “traditions.” In this paper I contend that the skewed sex ratio at birth in China is the unintended consequence of an extensive governmental system and social structure that privileges male interests. This research uses the situation of marginalized female children to illuminate the pervasive and broadening—yet often overlooked—gender, class and cultural divides in contemporary Chinese society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The history of urban renewal in American cities is also a legacy of "racial removal" of racial and ethnic minorities. Los Angeles Chinatown was twice subjected to clearance during the era of Chinese immigrant exclusion. Despite these challenges, the ethnic entrepreneurs and leaders of Chinatown created new Chinatowns, and periodically reached out to local business leaders and booster organizations to market Chinatown for urban tourism. Since the arrival of the "global era" in the 1960s and the liberalization of U.S. immigrant and trade laws, Los Angeles Chinatown has encountered new opportunities for growth and redevelopment. The renewal of Chinatown has been associated with the efforts of community-based artists, historians, and activists in undertakings such as ethnic heritage museums, public arts projects, cultural festivals, and preservation of landmarks and cultural sites. Chinatown is a site where the “ethnic enclave” economy increasingly intersects with the growing “creative economy” in sectors such as tourism, entertainment, and the arts. There are costs as well as benefits associated with the growth of tourism, the arts economy, and gentrification in Los Angeles Chinatown

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: In the latter quarter of the twentieth century the United States saw a significant increase in the number of its citizens incarcerated in prisons and jails. It is now the world’s leader in incarceration. By 2006 the rate of incarceration had increased to 751 inmates per 100,000 persons in the population, which was well ahead of the second place Russia, where the rate was 628 per 100,000 persons. Between 1880 and 1970, the state and federal prison population grew at a fairly consistent and negligible rate, reflecting little more than the growth in the general population. However, a real growth spurt occurred after 1970.
The incarceration rates were increasing dramatically at the same time that crime was decreasing. Two developments in criminal justice appear to be associated with the increased incarceration rates: (1) the so-called “war on drugs”; and (2) mandatory long-term sentencing.
African Americans were a large segment of this rapid increase in prisoners.
This rapid increase in the proportion of black prisoners occurred without an attendant rise in the commission of crimes and was disproportionate to the relative commission of crimes by blacks. It suggests a comparison to the situation in the South in the late nineteenth century. This review examines race and criminal justice in the United States in general and in Tennessee in particular during the late nineteenth, early twentieth, and late twentieth centuries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper discusses some normative questions concerning child labor, especially in relation to policies of liberal democratic governments. We will not only discuss actual policies but also dig one level deeper: We will focus on the political theory of liberalism. This detour via political theory is necessary because our discussion includes fundamental issues such as differential conceptions on childhood, the distinction between child work and child labor, and socioeconomic causes for child labor. We enquire into the history of child labor in the Western world, to come to a better understanding of these fundamental issues. In combining notions of political theory with the historical process of labor law, we hope to arrive at conclusions that stay clear of the shortcomings of each discipline alone.
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Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Abstract
Globalization has sharply reduced economic and cultural barriers between nations. Public goods have become increasingly global in character. Governance, largely in the hands of nation states, confronts a discrepancy between global markets and parochial states that contributes to under-provision of global public goods, which, in turn, lessens the benefits of globalization. While globalization has provided unprecedented opportunities for those countries that have successfully integrated into the world economy, it has also exacerbated global market failures, such as financial instability, weapons trafficking, and environmental degradation. Most of these failures require cross-national institutional cooperation to address them. While IGOs and NGOs can play a coordinating and catalytic role in governance, raising awareness of these issues, action by national state authority is fundamentally required to secure needed global public goods, either unilaterally or through multilateral cooperation.
The dominant position of the United States creates both opportunities and challenges in this situation. As a hegemonic power, the United States is in a position to provide leadership in a pursuit of common goods, but it has also repeatedly demonstrated ambivalence, indifference or even hostility to cooperation with other nations. The Bush administration has pushed this unilateralist streak to unprecedented extremes, failing to secure its own stated goals efficiently as a result.
We illustrate our argument regarding global public goods through case studies of genetically modified products, labor and environmental issues, and international investment flows.