Catherine Krull

Images of Prostitution

Abstract The prostitute is a cultural icon in North America and is often romanticized in the mass media and the public imagination. The prostitute and her participation in the sex trade, however, have been subject to a number of claimsmaking campaigns, each of which attempt to define both prostitution and its practitioners in specific, often contradictory, ways. To investigate these images and themes, articles from major Canadian newspapers representing five urban centers are examined to elucidate the most prevalent themes associated with the sex trade. Four themes prevail: nuisance, child abuse, violence, and non-Western prostitution. Examples of each theme are presented and implications of such images are discussed.

Where have all the children gone? Quebec's fertility decline: 1941-1991

The province of Quebec, historically known for its unusually high reproductive levels, has in the past few decades experienced a spectacular fertility decline. This more or less abrupt decline in fertility has corresponded with the socioeconomic transformation of this French-speaking province into a modern society. This paper presents a path analysis of period structural factors on fertility change in Quebec from 1941 to 1991. The results are interpreted in the context of Quebec’s family policies and assess whether government can or should attempt to increase fertility levels in Quebec.

From Building Barriers to Bridges: Cuban Ties Across the Straits

The Cuban situation reveals how long-lasting late-adolescent formed views, grounded in lived experiences, often prove to be, and how they may maintain meaning even after people emigrate. Those experiences may be differently interpreted depending on social class as well as age. Building on the work of Mannheim, a historically grounded generational frame of analysis helps explain why Cubans initially divided deeply over the revolution, with many of those who opposed it uprooting. It also helps explain why the first émigrés who fled the revolution continued to oppose the social transformation of their homeland, even as they assimilated in their adopted country. They continued being committed to ideas formed in their pre-immigration past. The historically grounded generational frame of analysis also helps explain why the Cuba-born who experienced the Special Period viewed life differently, whether they remained in Cuba or emigrated.

Foreword/Avant-propos

This special issue of the journal, edited by Amitava Chowdhury, deals with knowledge transfer, product exchange, and human networks in the circum-Caribbean and shows that globalization is not a phenomenon restricted to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Also, as the contributors to this issue demonstrate clearly, despite its recent neoliberal guise or its older expressions, globalization is an integral part of the multiple dimensions of the history and present state of the Caribbean: its economic, gendered, political, racial, social, and trans-national facets. In this context, as the articles and forum in this issue demonstrate, development has been and is crucial to the globalization process in the Caribbean; or, as Dr Chowdhury asserts in his “Introduction”, “development is a symptom of and concomitant to globalism in some form or another” (Chowdhury 2013). Especially with the Caribbean, an integral part of the Global South, the essential point is that, in its colonial and post-colonial existence, it is impossible to ignore development. As the contributions of Dr Chowdhury and his colleagues demonstrate with care, precision, and lucidity, development, post-development, and the debates surrounding them as general issues are fraught with controversy; and with specific respect to the Caribbean, doubly so. But in their exegeses, they provide new insight into the circum-Caribbean and knowledge transfer, product exchange, and human networks. They do so from an historical perspective, thematically considering the issues of technology, poverty, health and medicine, citizenship and immigration, family, welfare, and a collective social and political future; they have a multi-layered framework from “the microcosms of Caribbean history, society, and politics to the macrocosms of Atlantic and global realities” (Chowdhury 2013). The value of this special issue, respecting both globalization and development, is central to the ongoing debate about both concepts. In terms of the Caribbean, it adds significantly to our knowledge about how and why that important region and its unique societies have evolved and continue to evolve.

Looking back and moving forward: reflections on Latin American and Caribbean studies

Catherine: How is it that you came to be doing what it is that you’re doing? And why Cuba? Louis: My interest in Cuba originated during adolescence, growing up in New York. Cuba was a presence in the lives of many folks of the Upper West Side, in what was mostly a Puerto Rican and Dominican community. Cuba was part of the neighborhood ambiance, so that news of the triumph of the revolution in January 1959 and the arrival of Fidel to Havana was broadcast live on New York television and eagerly watched in the neighborhood. For the next 24 months the chutzpah of the Cuban leadership created space for a Cuban voice. And the voice of Fidel Castro was quite astonishing, particularly for youngsters of my generation of Latin American origins growing up in New York. The early months and years of the revolution were riveting, and a generation came of age and came to see the world through the issues that the Cuban revolution was addressing, including social justice and self-determination. Many of us came to an awareness of the Third World within the First World by way of Cuba. For us, the island seemed far away, but it was the center of a universe that was beginning to take early form in those days. C: Thinking beyond 1959, were there any pivotal moments in terms of the events taking place within Cuba or Latin America that affected the direction of your work? L: In terms of my own work, I was coming of age and developing an awareness of the world at large during the 1960s, a world in which Cuba loomed so large. The question “why revolution in Cuba?” seemed to compelling. I was intrigued with the early years of the revolution, a faraway drama that seemed so filled with daring promise. Supportive teachers in high school and amenable professors in college encouraged my early research forays into the subject of Cuba: term papers, book reports, things of that type. Much of this came together in graduate school, at the

The Press, Public Opinion, Arms Limitation, and Government Policy in Britain, 1932-34: Some Preliminary Observations

One of the least understood issues concerning interwar Britain is the connection between public opinion and the development and implementation of foreign and defence policy. And what is true generally of these crucial elements of interwar British statecraft is doubly so for perhaps their most nettled subset: disarmament. Public opinion polling did not begin in Britain till 1937; yet in 1932-34, when Britain played a leading role in the League of Nations-sponsored World Disarmament Conference, government ministers and their civil service and armed forces advisors sought to produce policy for this conference that would balance between limiting the national armoury and protecting national and Imperial security. Their reading of public opinion was crucial; but so, too, was the reading that the opposition parties and extra-parliamentary interest groups did and the subsequent pressures that they brought to bear on the government. This article offers some preliminary observations on the efficacy of using the national press as a means both of assessing public attitudes and of connecting the public debate over disarmament policy with policymaking within the British government.