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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions
Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State
Industrial Farm for Women is the history of how, over a span of two
decades, the state of Kansas detained over 5,000 women for no other
crime than having a venereal disease. In 1917, the Kansas
legislature passed Chapter 205, a law that gave the state Board of
Health broad powers to quarantine people for disease. State
authorities quickly began enforcing Chapter 205 to control the
spread of venereal disease among soldiers preparing to fight in
World War I. Though Chapter 205 was officially gender-neutral, it
was primarily enforced against women; this gendered enforcement
became even more dramatic as Chapter 205 transitioned from a
wartime emergency measure to a peacetime public health strategy.
Women were quarantined alongside regular female prisoners at the
Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women (the Farm). Women detained
under Chapter 205 constituted 71 percent of the total inmate
population between 1918 and 1942. Their confinement at the Farm was
indefinite, with doctors and superintendents deciding when they
were physically and morally cured enough to reenter society; in
practice, women detained under Chapter 205 spent an average of four
months at the Farm. While at the Farm, inmates received treatment
for their diseases and were subjected to a plan of moral reform
that focused on the value of hard work and the inculcation of
middle-class norms for proper feminine behavior. Nicole Perry's
research reveals fresh insights into histories of women, sexuality,
and programs of public health and social control. Underlying each
of these are the prevailing ideas and practices of respectability,
in some cases culturally encoded, in others legislated, enforced,
and institutionalized. Perry recovers the voices of the different
groups of women involved with the Farm: the activist women who
lobbied to create the Farm, the professional women who worked
there, and the incarcerated women whose bodies came under the
control of the state. Policing Sex in the Sunflower State offers an
incisive and timely critique of a failed public health policy that
was based on perceptions of gender, race, class, and respectability
rather than a reasoned response to the social problem at hand.
Don't just see the sights-get to know the people. Never conquered
by foreigners, this proud and ancient land has been shaped by
Buddhism, the monarchy, and the military. Today it is a
manufacturing powerhouse and a tourist paradise that welcomes more
than 30 million visitors a year. Yet despite the veneer of Western
modernity, the country and its people remain an enigma for many
visitors. Culture Smart! Thailand describes how the Thai people
view the world and themselves. It examines the impact of religious
beliefs and history on their lives, as well as recent social and
political developments. With a wealth of tips on communicating, on
socializing, and on navigating the unfamiliar situations that you
are likely to encounter, this guide will help you to get the very
best out of your time in the Land of Smiles. Have a richer and more
meaningful experience abroad through a better understanding of the
local culture. Chapters on history, values, attitudes, and
traditions will help you to better understand your hosts, while
tips on etiquette and communicating will help you to navigate
unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.
This groundbreaking comparative study rediscovers the socialists of
Russia's borderlands, upending conventional interpretations of
working-class politics and the Russian Revolution. Researched in
eight languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy challenges
long-held assumptions by scholars and activists about the dynamics
of revolutionary change.
What do exotic area rugs, handcrafted steel-string guitars, and
fiddling have in common today? Many contemporary tradition bearers
embrace complexity in form and content. They construct objects and
performances that draw on the past and evoke nostalgia effectively
but also reward close attention. In Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling:
Intensification and the Rich Modern Lives of Traditional Arts,
author Chris Goertzen argues that this entails three types of
change that can be grouped under an umbrella term: intensification.
First, traditional creativity can be intensified through
virtuosity, through doing hard things extra fluently. Second,
performances can be intensified through addition, by packing
increased amounts of traditional materials into the conventionally
sized packages. Third, in intensification through selection,
artistic impact can grow even if amount of information recedes by
emphasizing compelling ideas-e.g., crafting a red and black viper
poised to strike rather than a pretty duck decoy featuring more
colors and contours. Rugs handwoven in southern Mexico,
luthier-made guitars, and southern US fiddle styles experience
parallel changes, all absorbing just enough of the complex flavors,
dynamics, and rhythms of modern life to translate inherited
folklore into traditions that can be widely celebrated today. New
mosaics of details and skeins of nuances don't transform craft into
esoteric fine art, but rather enlist the twists and turns and
endless variety of the contemporary world therapeutically, helping
transform our daily chaos into parades of negotiable jigsaw
puzzles. Intensification helps make crafts and traditional
performances more accessible and understandable and thus more
effective, bringing past and present closer together, helping folk
arts continue to perform their magic today.
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