Where the World Ended: Re‐Unification and Identity in the German Borderland

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136468/1/ae.2000.27.2.545.pd

An anthropologist under surveillance in Ceauşescu’s Romania

U.S. anthropologists working in Romania in the 1970s and 1980s were under surveillance by the Romanian Securitate, as they probably were in other communist countries as well. This article is based on the author’s Securitate file, which a law passed in 1999 made available to anyone whom the Securitate had followed. It discusses similarities between the work of ethnographers and that of the Securitate, the question whether villagers believed that she was really a spy and the effects of the surveillance on the author’s own work and on the villagers she studied

Who knows who we are? Questioning DNA analysis in disaster victim identification

The use of DNA analysis as a mode of identification of disaster victims has become increasingly predominant to other, traditional, methods of identification in recent years. Scientific advances of the technological processes, high-profile use in identification efforts across the globe (such as after 9/11 or in the Asian Tsunami of 2004), and its inclusion in popular media, have led to its popular adoption as one of the primary modes of identification in disaster scenarios, and to the expectation of its use in all cases by the lay public and media. It is increasingly argued to be integral to post-disaster management. However, depending on the circumstances, location, and type of disaster, this technology may not be appropriate, and its use may instead conflict with socio-political and cultural norms and structures of power. Using examples primarily from Cambodia and Iraq this article will explore what these conflicts may be, and in doing so, question the expanding assumption that DNA analysis is a universally appropriate intervention in disaster victim identification. It will argue instead that its use may be a result of a desire for the political and social capital that this highly prestigious technological intervention offers rather than a solely humanitarian intervention on behalf of survivors and the dead

Older Adults Without Close Kin in the United States

Objectives: We document the size and characteristics of the population of older adults without close kin in the contemporary United States. Methods: Using the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the prevalence of lacking different types and combinations of living kin, examine how kinless-ness is changing across birth cohorts, and provide estimates of kinless-ness for sociodemographic and health groups. Results: In 1998–2010, 6.6% of U.S. adults aged 55 and above lacked a living spouse and biological children and 1% lacked a partner/spouse, any children, biological siblings, and biological parents. Kinless-ness, defined both ways, is becoming more common among adults in their 50s and 60s for more recent birth cohorts. Lacking close kin is more prevalent among women than men, native born than immigrants, never-married, those living alone, college-educated women, those with low levels of wealth, and those in poor health. Discussion: Kinless-ness should be of interest to policy makers because it is more common among those with social, economic and health risks; those who live alone, with low levels of wealth, and disability. Aging research should address the implications of kinless-ness for public health, social isolation, and the demand for institutional care

Projections of White and Black Older Adults without Living Kin in the United States, 2015-2060

Close kin provide many important functions as adults age, affecting health, financial well-being, and happiness. Those without kin report higher rates of loneliness and experience elevated risks of chronic illness and nursing facility placement. Historical racial differences and recent shifts in core demographic rates suggest that white and black older adults in the United States may have unequal availability of close kin and that this gap in availability will widen in the coming decades. Whereas prior work explores the changing composition and size of the childless population or those without spouses, here we consider the kinless population of older adults with no living close family members and how this burden is changing for different race and sex groups. Using demographic microsimulation and the United States Census Bureau’s recent national projections of core demographic rates by race, we examine two definitions of kinlessness: those without a partner or living children, and those without a partner, children, siblings, or parents. Our results suggest dramatic growth in the size of the kinless population as well as increasing racial disparities in percentages kinless. These conclusions are driven by declines in marriage and are robust to different assumptions about the future trajectory of divorce rates or growth in nonmarital partnerships. Our findings draw attention to the potential expansion of older adult loneliness, which is increasingly considered a threat to population health, and the unequal burden kinlessness may place on black Americans

THREE ESSAYS ON INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION

There is a broad contemporary interest in innovation, how ideas interconnect (or fail to), and how they relate to organizational structures and research funding. Those interested in enhancing innovation have initiated policies, formal and informal, to quicken its pace, ranging from dramatic increases in federal funding to calls and moves to reshape longstanding organizational features of research universities and professional associations. In this dissertation, I examine some of these policies and their outcomes using tools from text analysis and network science. I first look at whether the doubling of the National Institute of Health’s budget between 1998 and 2003 enabled a scientific revolution. I then explore the prevalence of interdisciplinarity in dissertation committees and whether dissertations with interdisciplinary committee members tend to examine more novel topics. After this, I explore the prevalence and nature of interdisciplinary research collaborations among contemporary core demographers. I conclude by reflecting on how these chapters shed light on the production, organization, and advancement of knowledge.Doctor of Philosoph

Social Networks and Transnational Social Fields: A Review of Quantitative and Mixed-Methods Approaches

Ashton Verdery acknowledges assistance provided by the Population Research Institute, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24-HD041025), and the Institute for CyberScience at Penn State University.Scholars of transnationalism have argued that migrants create transnational social fields or spaces that connect their place of origin to destination areas. Despite the centrality that social networks have in the definition of these concepts, quantitative and mixed-methods social network research is rare in research on transnationalism. This situation, however, has changed over the last decade, and the transnational social networks of migrants have been studied with multiple methodologies. So far, this literature has not been systematically evaluated. With the aim of taking stock of this research, we classify the literature into four types of approaches (individual, household, dyad/small set, and community) and review their distinct contributions regarding the functioning of immigrants' transnational networks, as well as the relative strengths and limitations of each approach. On the basis of our analysis, we discuss pathways for future investigation