Beach Haven

Bibliography
​Lee, Harper. 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Harper Perennial.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
This is a well-known classic of American literature. I saw the movie starring Gregory Peck a long time ago with only scant memory of it. I knew it to be about a trial in the south, specifically Alabama. The trial was about an innocent black man, Tom Robinson, accused of rape. Despite evidence to the contrary, he is convicted, sent to prison, and eventually killed while attempting to escape.

Reading the book, I was surprised. I imagined most of the work to be mostly about the trial and interactions of the adults. In fact, most of the first half does neither of these things. Harper Lee introduces all the characters through the eyes of three children. Jeremy ‘Jem’ Finch, Gene Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, and Dill. Jem and Scout are the children of Atticus Finch, a widower. Dill is a friend who stays in Maycomb, their town, over the summer, living with an aunt. They interact with every sort of person throughout the book.

The story contains themes of racism, class distinction, and societal notions of honor. Every character uses the N-word. It is simply the vernacular of the time in 1930s Alabama. Atticus is central to all the goings on and is quickest to excuse what is, or seems to be, bad behavior of others. In many ways this is a coming-of-age story for the children. Their experiences and interactions with each other and the adults teach them about adult issues and attitudes. Social norms are in question throughout the work.

Atticus is not the only adult with more modern sentiment about race and class relations, but his allies are but few as he acts as legal counsel for the accused, Robinson. He and the children are threatened, and near the end of the book are attacked by Bob Ewell. He is the father of the girl who accused Robinson of rape and of beating her. In reality, the girl threw herself at Tom, the father saw it and beat his daughter.

It goes without saying that Lee is masterful in her style in capturing the nature and dialog of the characters. The circumstances and attitude ring true for the time and location. Her storytelling brings the reader into the world of her creation, yet one that feels like they could be actual events. The version I read is the 50th anniversary edition. 
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Bibliography
Steinbeck, John. 1937. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin Books.
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Review by Michael Beach
 
The copy I have of this novella is modern, as in it’s a fresh copy. I’m not sure if novella is the correct term, but it’s bigger than a short story and smaller than a novel. I had heard the title in the past, but without knowing the nature of the story. It is set during the great depression. Two migrant ranch workers leave one town after having had ‘trouble’ there. George Milton and Lennie Small travel together to a new ranch in a new town for work. George is the 'smart’ one, Lennie is mentally challenged and physically large. Lennie is attracted to weak things such as mice and rabbits, but inevitably kills them by petting them to death. He apparently had some similar issues with a human girl in the last town they worked in, not killing her, but doing something inappropriate that got them ousted.

Now on the new ranch they run into issues with an overbearing coworker, Curley, who is the boss’ son, and his wife who flirts with all the workers. Lennie is given a puppy which, as with other small creatures, he eventually kills through being too rough with it. Curley and Lennie eventually get into a fight and Curley is hurt badly. Nothing really comes of it as he started the whole thing, but from that point on he looks for every chance to get George and Lennie into some kind of trouble. Eventually, Curley’s wife approaches Lennie when he is alone in the barn. When she learns of the death of Lennie's puppy, she flirts and invites him to stroke her hair. When she realizes how strong and rough Lennie is she starts to scream. He tries to quiet her but ends up killing her in the process. George and Lennie have to escape the mob bent on lynching Lennie. George attempts to distract the hunting of Lennie by participating in the search party. He knows where to find Lennie as they had preplanned a meeting place. George shoots and kills Lennie to spare him the torment of the mob.

There are all sorts of undertones to the story. One of the workers is black and there are tensions between him and the other workers. There is tension between the owner, the boss, his son, and the son’s wife when it comes to their interactions with each other, but in particular with the workers. Steinbeck captures the despair many felt during the depression, as well as the rough language used among the ranch hands. Readers should be prepared for that. His masterful writing style makes the way character inner-stresses display themselves in character interaction very believable. He captures what must have been a common fate among many who suffered the ills of the great depression.

Bibliography
​Tallbear, Kim. 2013. Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Kim Tallbear is one of my favorite authors related to my studies in science, technology, and society (STS). The title of this work is self-explanatory, but the topics she covered are varied, and certainly explores ideas new to me.

One of overarching themes relates to how human test material such as blood samples have been used in the past in ways not agreed to by the subjects. Often banks of samples and data are sold to companies that develop treatments or further databases that yield not only medical findings, but revenues that come with them.

Tallbear also looks at the accuracy of DNA testing to find one’s ancestry. Such services have become popular in the private sector. There are many reasons to hold such findings suspect, and Tallbear reviews some of the technical issues. In terms of Native Americans, many of the issues are more social than technical. For example, there are specific government benefits for people who can document a native ancestry. Likewise, there is risk to those who claim native heritage when DNA tests don’t support their claim. Another difficulty the author has with native DNA testing is how many people claim specific tribal affiliation based on results. In reality, tribes intermingled so much through economic and warfare activity that it is difficult at best to narrow DNA categories in this way.

The problematic aspects Tallbear raises about DNA testing can be more generalized in two area as she does. The first happens when science and business are tied to each other. She points to the example of the genographic project (mapping the human gene structure) and ‘the business of research and representation’. Others have broached how science represents ‘facts’. Ian Hacking looks at the same issues from a philosophical perspective. He refers to the issues as ‘representing and intervening’. Likewise, Sheila Jasanoff created an entire framework that includes the idea of ‘controlling narratives’.

Tallbear finishes with a look at governance. Who can decide what’s appropriate use and language? Once collected, who owns human genetic tissue? She shares other complicating questions that are still unanswered. Even with modernized legal documents about what sort of rights research subjects cede when they sign a specific document, court cases continue. For example, if a company purchases data or samples from an academic study, then creates large revenues from that resource, are donors entitled to some of it? What part does race play in subject selection? How do scientists define a specific narrow population? How much isolation is required, or intermixing is acceptable, to make the samples be representative of a specific population? As the reader might imagine, such questions can continue. These are ethical concerns for scientists, and often cause ‘native’ people to be unwilling to trust them.
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Bibliography
​Green, Venus. 2001. Race on the Line: Gender, Race, and Technology in the Bell System, 1880-1980. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Venus Green chronicles telephone operator employment over a century. In the early days of telephony, ‘Ma Bell’ specifically defined telephone operators as female and have a voice and demeanor that was ‘white lady’. That persona was defined by white men who were in charge of the organization. It was less about who the person was than about her mother-like persona with a white-sounding accent. A certain education was also expected since they were often tasked with answering customer questions.

Over time, white women began to move into other roles such as administrative jobs. As a result, Bell downgraded the description of operators, in part to avoid unionization. As this transition was happening, self-dialing was introduced to larger communities which caused automation to replace the human operators. The quicker this automation trend proliferated, the lower salaries became for remaining operators. By the end of the period in the book title, all human operator employment stopped.

The obvious themes were about sexist views of job requirements. Men were managers and engineers. Women were operators. The assumption was that engineering required more physical and intellectual capacity. As more valued administrative jobs opened up to women, the second theme was about race and how the jobs identified as lower on the hierarchy then became associated with women of color. Eventually, even these lower-tiered jobs disappear when they were replaced with automation. The trend seems obvious as described in this book, and during the time period covered, white male dominated management would not have seen this as an issue as American society would today.
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Bibliography
Woodward, C. Vann. 1974. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. 3rd. London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
Although the idea of so-called Jim Crow laws is associated with a narrow time period in the southern states of the US, in fact, ideas of segregation of the races (particularly black and white) were (and maybe still are) around for much longer. Woodward makes some interesting arguments by separating segregation from slavery, racial violence, and geographic location.

Early on in the book, Woodward describes ‘southern history in stochastic terms. “These breaks in the course of Southern history go by the names of slavery and secession, independence and defeat, emancipation and reconstruction, redemption and reunion” (Woodward 1974, 3-4). He shares interesting examples of time such as reconstruction when people of both races interacted together in the south in pretty much every public setting. Once Jim Crow laws began to be enacted mandating so-called ‘separate but equal’ facilities, white attitudes toward black people changed. He acknowledges that violence was present all along. For example, lynchings were not uncommon prior to Jim Crow enactment, and continued throughout.

Another perspective Woodward shares is that during the 1960s when many laws were causing Jim Crow to be officially demolished and mandatory desegregation took place, violence rose in both races. Once Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, there was a rise in black nationalist movements that ironically encouraged segregation again, though this time it was advocated more from African Americans, and less from whites.

The geographic question is one other area Woodward explores. He shares examples of times when integration was actually practiced more openly in the South, and although northern laws did not demand it, there was effective segregation in the North through discriminatory practices and attitudes that had no legal check. Finally, Woodward notes how there still are examples of economic segregation today. Though not codified, in practicality economic disparity has a similar effect as legally sanctioned segregation.

Given this edition was published in 1974, I wonder how Woodward would see things today. For example, the concern in some inner-city neighborhoods over the fallout of ‘gentrification’ may be increasing segregation again through economic strata. Working in downtown Washington DC for nearly ten years at this point, I have witnessed gentrification firsthand. The difference in predomination by one race as opposed to another in terms of population is notable. In places the ‘line’ is as direct as one city block of modern luxury apartments next to another of mostly aging row houses.

Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa. 2018. The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Among many threads, Mavhunga makes a point around ‘thingamication’. He shares examples throughout the book on colonial (and later) white perspective on African people as objects of study, control, labor, and information.

One striking example was the use of fences in building corridors through tsetse infested areas. Local labor was used alongside a thing called a bulldozer to clear forest where the land was too steep for the machine. They were also used to put in fencing, then funneled through those fences and ‘de-flying’ stations while moving along the fenced paths (182). The roads themselves were also a product of African labor, mostly built to allow for traffic between white-owned farms as well as for Africans to get from their homes to work in mines or on farms. These same Africans were able to move through traditional paths in ways that avoided infested areas during infested times before the belief that roads and fences were necessary.

Another particularly difficult approach from the perspective of Mavhunga was government creation of villages as a prophylactic. This effort removed people from their ancestral homes to gather them in new communities in between white-owned farms. Clearing and building up these small towns forced elimination of tsetse habitat (as well as habitat for nature in general), lowering the threat to sparse white-owned farms. The towns became a form of human shield. This approach lead to overcrowding of people in the buffer zones, and over burdening of the soils around the new towns (153). Mavhunga gives examples of eventual movement patterns adopted by officials that were not all that different than those previously employed by locals, but instead of preventative movement efforts these were about damage control (161).
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I’ll share one more human-as-object example. When authorities added chemical efforts to ‘mechanized phytocides’ (141) Africans again became a tool for the effort. While pilots sprayed less effectually from the thing called an airplane, African workers called ‘spray boys’ were given backpack pneumatic sprayers to go directly into the infestation. This put them as risk both from the fly and from the chemical poisons. Mavhunga offers a great deal of insight over several chapters about which chemicals were used during various periods and the effect on the fly, the plants, the environment, wildlife, and humans who both applied the poison and lived on the affected land. Decision makers only backed off aggressive use of chemicals when whites in the area began to complain after the shift from organic to synthetic pesticides (152).

Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Vernacular

Among the threads in Tilley’s work is the idea of a linkage of vernacular with goals. In many instances, officials at the Colonial Office and scientists in the various studies documented similar goals. For example, all were trying to understand how to make the best use of soils in agriculture. Depending on the era, they also often agreed on concepts of ecology.

Tilley shares examples of divergent goals as well. In areas of ecology, forestry, anthropology, etc., the scientists were interested in local farming approaches. Colonial officials were sometimes more interested in helping white settlers to succeed in creating cash crops. Native agriculture differed from area to area just as soils differed. Burning, then planting in particular ways, allowing portions of land to lay fallow, all looked like randomness to European farmers who approached farming essentially the same way regardless of environment. Indigenous farms in Rhodesia, for example, remained sustainable. White farms in the same area were initially fruitful, but by year three or four tended to fail as soils became depleted (p. 158). Practices of clearing and tilling by Europeans also led to damaging ground erosion. Homer Shanz referred to such farming approaches as “the tyranny of the plow” (p. 136). He sought to guard against “dogmas that hinder successful agricultural development”.

There was a definite tension within the various studies described with regard to considering local conditions as opposed to scaling up to regional or continental approaches. The larger scale proponents looked to standardization. Localization proponents looked to unique factors in a given area. As movement in the scientific community discussed merits of using ecology as a potential way to connect various fields of science, consideration of factor interrelationships seemed ever more complex, even locally.

Similar to the debate over local vs standard farming approaches, attempts to control trypanosomiasis, or sleeping disease, spread by the tsetse fly were cast in similar language. William Ormsby-Gore noted, “No one form of attack upon the tsetse fly is universally practicable” (p. 177). Note the language of war used around to the time of both world wars.

Just as dogmas noted by Shanz clouded European colonialism in farming, similar language around the people of Africa shaped perspectives toward native populations. Tilley tells us how the language of eugenics and demography “had important effects on conduct and legislation of colonial administrations” (p. 258). She shows a number of examples of scientists and administrators who believed Europeans could learn more from locals about farming techniques. She also gives examples of language in which indigenes are seen as ‘backward’ or somehow 'less'.

​Vernaculars differed throughout the work. Whether the language was political, administrative, scientific, that of the local farmer, or of workers in faraway laboratories, language, perspective, and actions are clearly intertwined.

​BLACK INVENTORS IN THE AGE OF SEGREGATION
By Rayvon Fouché
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 225 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
In this work the author shares the personal stories of three specific African American inventors in attempt to call into question several myths often perpetuated about black technologists. The ideas are how a patent equals financial success, people of color invent purely to uplift the race, or that Black-patented objects are the first of their kind. Fouché approaches these myths by building a narrative about each of three inventors that contradict one or more of them. The inventors are Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson.
 
This approach by Fouché goes a long way to dispel the inventor-as-hero narrative which has been put in question by other writers about other inventors without the race angle included. In this work race is certainly part of the narrative, but not exclusively the narrative, making the complexity of both the inventors and others they interact with more nuanced, and enlightening. Fouché approaches this historical and sociological work in this way in order to show three different people with three different personalities, cultures and motivations. In other words, they are each a unique person and not some sort of imagined icon.
 
The work would appeal to those with interest in technology, sociology, racial studies, and history. Fouché connects with readers through clear language, personal stories of the three inventors, depicting and dispelling ideas commonly held in both the African American and majority communities. The strength of the work comes through the individual lives depicted, and how these men fit into larger societies. They are juxtaposed to other prominent Black leaders that they were at odds with. Their histories do show how they were at times helped by race, and at times hamstrung. Perhaps a deeper look at societal trends that inspired the inventor-as-hero myth, and in particular the black-inventor-as-hero myth may have add more insight into Fouché’s main argument. One could argue, given the documented experiences, how the effects of these inventors’ efforts perpetuated these beliefs at least at some level, and were not just debunking.