"Over the past few decades, 160 million women have vanished from East and South Asia — or, to be more accurate, they were never born at all. Throughout the region, the practice of sex selection — prenatal sex screening followed by selective termination of pregnancies — has yielded a generation packed with boys. From a normal level of 105 boys to 100 girls, the ratio has shifted to 120, 150, and, in some cases, nearly 200 boys born for every 100 girls. In some countries, like South Korea, ratios spiked and are now returning to normal. But sex selection is on the rise in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East." American journalist Mara Hvistendahl's new book: "
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men," examines and tries to predict the actual and potential effects of unequal sex ratios on men, women and the social economies of the affected regions, including the recent spike in sex trafficking and bride-buying across Asia.
More.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 10, 2011 -
65 comments
In the 1960's, 70's and 80's, urban decay and high crime rates caused retail chain supermarkets to
flee New York City.
(google books link) Korean immigrants filled the gap with corner grocery stores. For nearly two decades they were ubiquitous -- symbols of the group's ongoing quest to achieve the American Dream. But 30 years later,
Where Did The Korean Greengrocers Go? [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 18, 2011 -
19 comments
Remember the
Twixters? Now meet the
Yeppies: Young, Experimenting Perfection Seekers
1,2,3.
"Another survey, another invented tag for a group of young people. This survey was for eBay, carried out by Kate Fox, a social anthropologist at the Social Issues Research Centre. It argues that young people are now shopping around and experimenting to find, as she puts it, 'the perfect job, the ideal relationship and the most fulfilling lifestyle.'" - as
noted by
World Wide Words. [See also: this
Venn diagram.] Will researchers ever tire of all this name-calling, though? If they really want to RTFM about this particular generation, they should just watch
Wonderfalls.
posted by Lush
on Aug 19, 2005 -
18 comments
There are a number of
culture-specific disorders, such as
genital retraction or
the old hag's sleep paralysis.
These disorders are, maybe, too mixed up in "exotifying The Other" (as they say in the ivory tower), but maybe most interesting is the inclusion of anorexia. Some evidence seems support this idea -- after 3 yrs of TV in Fiji, a rise in eating disorders
was reported. Are these disorders
caused by culture? And/or are the people afflicted expressing an underlying problem in a culturally specific way?
posted by malphigian
on Jan 6, 2002 -
18 comments
