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American parents of children adopted from China frequently consume Chinese cultural objects for display in their homes. While they defend this consumption and display as an effort to validate their children's ethno-cultural origins, parents also reveal that it signifies and solidifies their own identifications with Chinese culture. As part of a larger research project examining China adoptive parents' evolving 'Chinese' identities, this paper asks: Which parents exhibit their family's 'Chineseness' in this way, and why? Through semi-structured in-depth interviews with ninety-one Americans in the China adoption process, I focus on the emergent and personal meanings that parents give to Chinese cultural objects; demonstrating how these meanings both structure parents' consumption and yield a display differential. In doing so, I reveal that White European-parents and mothers are most likely to engage in this consumption and display; thereby, amending the three types of ethno-cultural identity consumption represented in the literature. Specifically, I expose the central role of race in ethno-cultural identity consumption; specify that the collective category of reference for ethno-cultural identity consumption is not always an ethnic category; and illustrate the ways in which global ethno-cultural identity consumption both appeals to and satisfies distinctly local constructs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of children from China by American families represents a fertile case study for an expanding sociological literature on boundaries: it brings to life many of our most salient borders while it highlights their very permeability. This paper represents one aspect of a larger research project on parents' efforts to bridge perceived ethno-cultural boundaries within the China adoptive family. Through participant observation and interviews, I examine parents' interpretations of and participation in Chinese cultural events organized by and for China adoptive families. These events are rich sites for social research on boundaries because they: 1) appear to assume permeable ethno-cultural borders; and 2) bring previously incoherent individuals together as a bounded group. Drawing on classic and contemporary theories of ethnic identification and collective identity, I reveal how parents activate existing symbolic boundaries and create new symbolic boundaries in their efforts to construct community. In particular, I demonstrate how previously incoherent parents cohere as a bounded community by actively distinguishing themselves from 'authentic' Chinese/Chinese American referents and the "imagined community" of biological families. Likewise, I reveal how the community's boundaries and cultural events both mask and alienate a growing percentage of the China adoption contingent: African-American and Asian-American China adopters, as well as families with adopted Chinese sons. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the empirical and political debates surrounding boys' academic experiences in America, Ireland, and England. It unearths the ways in which boys' problems in school have been blamed on feminism, and how race and class are ignored in both debates. Additionally, this article addresses same-sex mentoring as a remedial, gender-based strategy for the 'problem' of boys in schools. We offer a critique of the mentoring of boys, highlighting the ways in which it 'others' boys of marginalized race and class status and legitimizes hegemonic masculinity. This article concludes with an analysis of the potential of mentoring in the work with boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty years, international adoption has become an increasingly popular way to build a family in the United States: while American citizens adopted fewer than 20,000 foreign children in the period between 1948 and 1962, they adopted more than 20,000 foreign children in 2006 alone (Selman 2000). Reflecting on the early years of the phenomenon, Briggs (2003) situates American international adoption within a nationalistic discourse that privileged (White) Western family constructions and post-war liberal interventionism. Similarly, in her analysis of more contemporary patterns in American international adoption, Dorow (2006) describes how the phenomenon shores up the American nation state by engaging myths of national exceptionalism, benevolence, and open borders. Using original data culled from semi-structured in-depth interviews with more than ninety Americans involved or interested in an adoption from China (herein referred to as "American China adoptive parents"), this paper aims to globalize our understanding of international adoption. Engaging cosmopolitanism, it focuses not on the way international adoption constructs the American nation but on the opportunity it provides many rooted Americans to act and feel beyond the nation. In doing so, this paper adds to the argument that, in today's global era, cosmopolitanism complements nationalism. It also adds empirical weight to the literature on "actually existing cosmopolitanisms" (Malcomson 1998). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adoption and markets exist in tense relationship. From cases of baby selling and bribery to characterizations of adopted children as "hip accessories," adoptive family construction is often likened or linked to markets. As a result, adoption provides a potential lens into what Dorow (2002) describes as the false dichotomy between care and consumption; revealing how discourses/practices of care and consumption are both informed by and reliant on each other. Significantly, research indicates that consumption is one way most contemporary families convey care and connection. In fact, shopping - for food, clothes, and gifts - is now understood as a significant means by which mothers actively (per)form family and their maternal roles. Thus, consumption must also be recognized and understood as a tool that adoptive parents, particularly adoptive mothers, use to affirm their oft-contested families and statuses. This paper will synthesize the literature on adoption/markets and (maternal) family-building/consumption to best understand the tensions of and tool that is adoptive mothers' consumption. To further this synthesis, it will draw on original data gathered via in-depth interviews with more than ninety Americans interested or involved in an adoption from China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]