Author: Keelung Hong Anthropologists have long sought to extricate their work from the policies and agendas of those who dominateand often oppresstheir native subjects. Looking through Taiwan is an uncompromising look at a troubling chapter in American anthropology that reveals what happens when anthropologists fail to make fundamental ethnic and political distinctions in their work. Keelung Hong and Stephen O. Murray examine how Taiwanese realities have been representedand misrepresentedin American social science literature, especially anthropology, in the postWorld War II period. They trace anthropologists complicity in the domination of a Taiwanese majority by a Chinese minority and in its obfuscation of social realities.At the base of these distortions, the authors argue, were the mutual interests of the Republic of Chinas military government and American social scientists in mischaracterizing Taiwan as representative of traditional Chinese culture. American anthropologists, eager to study China but denied access by its communist government, turned instead to fieldwork on the Republic of Chinas society, which they incorrectly and disingenuously interpreted to reflect traditional Chinese society on the mainland. Anthropologists overlooked the cultural and historical differences between the island and the mainland and effectively legitimized the Peoples Republic of Chinas claim on Taiwan. Looking through Taiwan is a powerful critique of American anthropology and a valuable reminder of the political and ethical implications of social science research and writing.

Author: Jon Elster Notions of justice and fairness are central to the American belief that the pursuit of a healthy and productive life is the right of all citizens. Yet in the real world there are seldom sufficient resources to meet the needs of everyone, and institutions are routinely forced to make difficult decisions regarding who will be favored and who will not. Local Justice in America is an insightful look into how selections are made in four critical areas: college admissions, kidney transplants, employee layoffs, and legalized immigration.This volume's case studies survey the history and modern rationale behind seemingly enigmatic allocation systems, chronicling the political and ethical debates, occasional scandals, and judicial battles that have shaped them. Though these selection processes differ significantly, each reflects a bitter struggle between opposingand equally intenseprinciples of local justice. For example, are admissions officers who use special points to foster student diversity less fair than those who rely exclusively on scholastic achievement? How did the system of personal discretion among doctors selecting transplant patients come to be viewed by the public as more inequitable than compassionate? Does the use of seniority as a gauge in layoffs violate equal opportunity laws or provide employers with their only objective and neutral criterion? How have partisan interest groups repeatedly shifted immigration quotas between the extremes of xenophobia and altruism?In framing chapters, editor JonElster draws upon these studies to speculate on the unique nature of the American value system. Arguing that race matters deeply in all considerations of local justice, he discusses how our society's assessment of neediness balances on the often uneasy compromises between the desire to reward deserving individuals and the call to strengthen opportunities for disadvantaged groups. Well informed and stimulating, Local Justice in America speaks directly to policy debates in the fields of health, education, work, and immigration, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the fundamental social issues that affect our daily welfare.

Author: Richard G. Frank and Sherry A. Glied foreword by Rosalynn Carter The past half-century has been marked by major changes in the treatment of mental illness: important advances in understanding mental illnesses, increases in spending on mental health care and support of people with mental illnesses, and the availability of new medications that are easier for the patient to tolerate. Although these changes have made things better for those who have mental illness, they are not quite enough. In Better But Not Well, Richard G. Frank and Sherry A. Glied examine the well-being of people with mental illness in the United States over the past fifty years, addressing issues such as economics, treatment, standards of living, rights, and stigma. Marshaling a range of new empirical evidence, they first argue that people with mental illnesssevere and persistent disorders as well as less serious mental health conditionsare faring better today than in the past. Improvements have come about for unheralded and unexpected reasons. Rather than being a result of more effective mental health treatments, progress has come from the growth of private health insurance and of mainstream social programssuch as Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, housing vouchers, and food stampsand the development of new treatments that are easier for patients to tolerate and for physicians to manage. The authors remind us that, despite the progress that has been made, this disadvantaged group remains worse off than most others in society. The mainstreaming of persons with mental illness has left a policy void, where governmental institutions responsible for meeting the needs of mental health patients lack resources and programmatic authority. To fill this void, Frank and Glied suggest that institutional resources be applied systematically and routinely to examine and address how federal and state programs affect the well-being of people with mental illness.

Author: C. Herbert Gilliland Today the twenty-gun sloop USS Constellation is a floating museum in Baltimore Harbor; in 1859 it was an emblem of the global power of the American sailing navy. When young William E. Leonard boarded the Constellation as a seaman for what proved to be a twenty-month voyage to the African coast, he began to compose a remarkable journal. Sailing from Boston, the Constellation, flagship of the U.S. African Squadron, was charged with the interception and capture of slave-trading vessels illegally en route from Africa to the Americas. During the Constellations deployment, the squadron captured a record number of these ships, liberating their human cargo and holding the captains and crews for criminal prosecution. At the same time, tensions at home and in the squadron increased as the American Civil War approached and erupted in April 1861. Leonard recorded not only historic events but also fascinating details about his daily life as one of the nearly 400-member crew. He saw himself as not just a diarist, but a reporter, making special efforts to seek out and record information about individual crewmen, shipboard practices, recreation and daily routinefrom deck swabbing and standing watch to courts martial and dramatic performances by the Constellation Dramatic Society. This good-humored gaze into the lives and fortunes of so many men stationed aboard a distinguished American warship makes Gillilands edition of Willie Leonards journal a significant work of maritime history.