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"At the port of Yokohama in 1907, Okina Kyūin boarded the steamship Kaga Maru, bound for America. His vivid articles and stories established him as an essential voice among Japanese immigrants. This book examines Okina's life on the American West Coast in the context of U.S.-Japanese diplomatic relations between 1868 and 1924"--

In his article 'Whither Plastics?—Petrochemicals, plastics and sustainability in a garbage-riddled world' , Michael Jefferson [1] discusses a number of recent issues around plastics, including plastics' dependence on fossil fuels, its contribution to ocean waste, and its possible impact on human health. Despite these multiple ways in which plastics are framed as (potentially) problematic, the author is clear in his recommendations: the most important form of action is behavioural change. While we strongly welcome social science research into plastics, we have a number of issues with the study in question which we deem significant enough for us to write this response. At the heart of our concern is the paper's handling of extant research. There are three aspects to our critique: (1) conflations and misrepresentations of the data presented; (2) disregard of academic social science research on plastics; (3) the resultant promotion of over-simplistic solutions to a complex set of problems.

The contemporary world continues to suffer from a number of social problems that are global in scope but impact the Global South disproportionately. While broad and coordinated policy responses to overcome these problems exist, such policies are not shaped solely by the political will to address the problems. On the contrary, their content largely depends on how societies in general and the social problems in particular are routinely explained and conceptualized. We refer to these as explanatory tendencies or paradigms of explanation. As complex problems always have multiple root causes with long causal chains, explanations of these causes necessarily involve some assumptions about relevant causalities. Typically, the main choice in explaining international politics relates to the extent to which social phenomena should be explained by domestic institutions, decisions and events. Social science in general has been noted to have a bias toward a "nationalist" approach to explanation [Beck, 2007; Brenner, 1999; Gore, 1993; Pogge, 2002]. This means treating the state as the primary and even sufficient object of analysis, so that problems are explained by the malfunctioning institutions and misinformed policies of states. Such explanatory biases become naturalized in everyday politics and social analysis [Amin, 2004]. While this has been widely discussed as an epistemological issue, the interplay between international organizations and explanatory tendencies has received less attention. The present article addresses this gap. We argue that explanatory tendencies and biases should not be treated exclusively as an epistemological matter. They need to be accompanied by an analysis of the role of international organizations as both influenced by an explanatory tendency and upholding it. Paradigms of explanation are reflected in the priorities and relative powers of international organizations, as their very structure can reflect particular explanatory tendencies. As an example, we will use the ascent and descent of the United Nations work on the power of multinational enterprises. ; Peer reviewed

Much thought has been put into developing rationales for the process-tracing method, but proponents of this narrative method have been agnostic about the criterial demands for 'writing up' a case study. This article addresses that lack through a double reading. First, I show that 'good' process-tracing prose mirrors a narrative voice found in Victorian fiction, most notably in George Eliot's Middlemarch. Then, in the second reading, I critique this narrative approach through a close reading of Middlemarch. In doing so, I explain how this style attempts (and ultimately fails) to mask its own pre-theoretical political commitments. For process-tracing to seem effective, its practitioners must turn a blind eye to the theoretical consequences of narrative style and must remain silent on the instability inherent in their prose.

At the turn of the millennium, narrative works by Latin American women writers have represented madness within contexts of sociopolitical strife and gender inequality. This book explores contemporary Latin American realities through madness narratives by prominent women authors, including Cristina Peri Rossi (Uruguay), Lya Luft (Brazil), Diamela Eltit (Chile), Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico), Laura Restrepo (Colombia) and Irene Vilar (Puerto Rico). Close reading of these works reveals a pattern of literary techniques--a ""poetics of madness""--employed by the writers to represent conditions tha

Review of four books on women of color and reproductive justice: Jennifer Nelson, WOMEN OF COLOR AND THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS MOVEMENT; Jael Sillimen, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, & Elena R. Gutierrez, UNDIVIDED RIGHTS: WOMEN OF COLOR ORGANIZE FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE; Dorothy Roberts, KILLING THE BLACK BODY: RACE, REPRODUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIBERTY.

Angela Willey (2016), Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology. Durham: Duke University Press. 216 pp., 9 illustrations. $89.95 (Cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8223-6140-4; $23.95 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-0-8223-6159-6.

From the Rice Thresher Archive, a collection of newspaper articles published in the student newspaper for Rice University. Genre: News