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GENDERMAPS

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM, FEMINISM, AND SEXOSOPHICAL HISTORY

An arrogant and convoluted attempt to demolish and recreate gender studies. Medical psychologist Money (Johns Hopkins School of Medicine) proposes to ``investigate manhood and womanhood in conflict,'' both privately as couples and politically as members of organizations, by exploring each individual's ``gendermap,'' or the ``developmental representation or template synchronously in the mind and brain depicting the details of one's gender identity/role.'' Money analyzes the relationship between sex and gender and the (in his mind negative) consequences of the two terms being separated by social constructionists to mean entirely different things (sex referring to the biological and gender to the social). However, his reunion of the two terms is buried beneath technical language and even more new terms and definitions. His attempt to weave nature and nurture rather than isolate themas much contemporary analysis doesleaves a static picture of just how gendermaps are formed and transformed. In addition, his causality is questionable and his evidence weakened by careless references to proposed characteristics of gendermaps. For example, Money repeats numerous times that men are aroused visually and women tactilely without conceding this could be due to learned behaviors rather than to biological determinism. Further, his evidence too frequently relies on observations of nonhuman primates. Money's countless typologies invariably end in overdramatic examples of what happens when various components of gendermapping go awry, such as when the ``me'' and ``thee'' gendermaps displace each other and result in ``full-blown transsexualism.'' In fact, his discussion of gendermaps is little more than an extended glossary and list of complexes that arise out of dysfunctional partnerships or ``mismatched gendermaps.'' Rather than engaging current debate about sex and gender, Money unsuccessfully tries to circumvent it, dismissing most feminist contributions in the process.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-8264-0852-4

Page Count: 168

Publisher: Continuum

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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