http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ljs2k/daruma.gif Work in Progress

 

gFeminism as the New Natalism: 21st Century Prescriptions for Addressing Low Fertility,h is the latest product in my on-going work examining how Japan and other nations are dealing with the challenge of fertility rates falling to extremely low levels.  I presented this paper at the Social Trends Institutefs Conference on Whither the Child? Causes, Consequences, & Solutions to Low Fertility in Barcelona, March 11-13, 2010, and this paper is being edited for inclusion in Bradley Wilcox, ed., Whither the Child: The Causes, Consequences, and Responses to Low Fertility.

 

Abstract: When marriage and fertility rates first began falling in Europe and Japan, feminists applauded this evidence that women were finally taking advantage of new freedoms afforded by the relaxation of social norms that had pressed earlier generations of women into the roles of wife and mother.  As fertility rates reached record lows in Germany, Southern Europe and Japan, however, feminists in these societies soon joined the conversation about why birth rates had fallen so low and eventually began to articulate a feminist explanation for the trend and a prescription for addressing the problem.  This paper traces the emergence of gfeminism as the new natalismh and evaluates the studies and arguments that are the basis for these claims that fertility will only recover when societies that have defined marriage and motherhood in traditional ways open up to embrace diverse types of families and work-family balance.  It then examines the uneven efforts to put these prescriptions into practice in low-fertility societies, with a particular focus on recent family policy changes in Japan, Germany, and Italy.

International Cooperation Despite Domestic Conflict: Japanese Politics and the San Francisco Treaties, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in New Orleans, March 24-27, 2002.

Abstract: Alliance theory based on unitary rational actor assumptions predicts that states worried about entrapment or abandonment are likely to hesitate before committing to an alliance.  Moreover, two-level game theory predicts that states with divided domestic politics are likely to find it difficult to strike international bargains.  If these theories are correct, polities torn between factions worried, between them, about both abandonment and entrapment should have particular difficulty sustaining support for a security alliance.  This paper challenges these arguments by presenting a two-level model of alliance politics that shows how cooperation can be sustained under these adverse conditions.  The model is then illustrated through an analysis of how Japanese domestic politics shaped the terms of U.S.-Japan security cooperation in the 1950s.

 

 


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