Academic literature on the topic 'Father-deserted families'

1. INTRODUCTION In New York City a decline in manufacturing has propelled social and economic changes that have transformed certain districts [1,2]. Unused building stock there has been the basis for adaptive reuse yielding new housing for families of varying compositions. The constant pressure of the need for affordable housing has resulted in the conversion of existing abandoned industrial structures, providing a green, environmentally friendly alternative to new construction [3,4,5]. Adaptive reuse provides an opportunity to bring a building up to current codes, to make the layout and building systems more appropriate and efficient, and to help revitalize neighborhoods. The nineteenth through the middle of the twentieth centuries were characterized by urban environments which provided manufacturing jobs and the municipal services and education that supported them [6]. American cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh became boom-towns as people followed employment opportunities and moved to these locations throughout this period [7,8,9]. In the decades after World War II, the creation of highways and freeways–including the interstate highway system that stretched east to west and north to south–led to suburbanization, exemplified by Long Island's mushrooming Levit-town and many more like it [5,10]. These were the Baby Boom years. The suburban sprawl ultimately resulted in the creation of mega cities like New York City. Families typically consisted of a father, mother, and at least two children [16]. This trend was supported by strong manufacturing industries and plentiful space that allowed much of the population to fulfill the American dream of home ownership [2,11]. As labor cost increased due to stricter labor laws, unions, increasing land cost, and higher taxes, many manufacturers began a search for less costly environments, moving first to locations in the less expensive suburbs and then to the South [4,8]. Eventually, American factories moved overseas to places such as China, other Asian countries, and South America. This became known as out sourcing manufacturing [6,7,12]. With the subsequent boom town collapse that began in the 1980s and continued through the new millennium, old U.S. industrial cities faced declining populations, and Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and their like were soon deserted by those who could no longer find employment there [14,40]. City populations decreased by as much as 50% and in some places even more steeply [13]. According to the U.S. Census (figure 1) [13,14], among American cities only New York City's and Los Angeles's populations have grown since the 1980s. Migration for employment opportunities became common and members per household, and households of one or two became not uncommon [15,16]. Typical housing no longer required a big space for shelter and a lawn or garden, and many people looked for smaller units [11,16]. Smaller working spaces made micro-scale businesses possible. New York City is an example of this change. Left with abandoned super block manufacturing buildings such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Brooklyn Army Terminal and retired infrastructure, New York City has looked for ways to repurpose these structures [10,17]. Super block, old manufacturing buildings and factories still stand, but in New York and elsewhere some have become mixed-use spaces. The goal of this paper is to examine how New York City served the public by providing working and living space through the conversion of existing super block buildings and creating new public spaces out of under-used or abandoned infrastructure. Comparative case studies are conducted focusing on the micro-scale movement and renewed use of old infrastructure. It considers a future model for sub-divided building spaces and repurposed structures providing shared, public venues as it analyzes this movement structurally and the changes it has wrought on local communities.

Abstract In Among Others, Jo Walton’s fairy story about a science-fiction fan, science fiction as a genre and archive serves as an adoptive parent for Morwenna Markova as much as the extended family who provide the more conventional parenting in the absence of the father who deserted her as an infant and the presence of the mother whose unacknowledged psychiatric condition prevented appropriate caregiving. Laden with allusions to science fictional texts of the nineteen-seventies and earlier, this epistolary novel defines and redefines both family and community, challenging the groups in which we live through the fairies who taught Mor about magic and the texts which offer speculations on alternative mores. This article argues that Mor’s approach to the magical world she inhabits is productively informed and futuristically oriented by her reading in science fiction. Among Others demonstrates a restorative power of agency in the formation of all social and familial groupings, engaging in what Donna J. Haraway has described as a transformation into a Chthulucene period which supports the continuation of kin-communities through a transformation of the outcast. In Among Others, the free play between fantasy and science fiction makes kin-formation an ordinary process thereby radically transforming the social possibilities for orphans and others.

Save for the elite planters at the top of the social hierarchy, Virginia society blended smoothly from top to bottom. There were no sharp wealth divisions between non-slave owners and those who owned two or three slaves. Nor were slaveholders with more than six slaves much distinguishable from one another until one reached the level where planters owned fifty or more. In this ascending society, lower and middling people provided services such as weaving and carpentry for those above them, linking them economically. Large planters like Jefferson were involved in hundreds of exchanges with lesser farmers each year. The top and bottom of society may not have corresponded with each other but they traded constantly. Because they performed services to make a living, small farmers were the integrating agents in Virginia society. This society came under stress during the Revolution. Farm families resisted the draft because the absence of a father or elder son disrupted the family economy. If drafted they often deserted. After the Revolution, the government’s effort to draw in inflated currency made it difficult for people to pay rent and taxes. They were in danger of losing their property for payment of their debts. Throughout the 1780s, they protested to the legislature, but they never resorted to violence, and the House of Burgesses did not enforce the laws. The familiarity achieved through economic integration made those in power sympathetic to the common plight.