Vol. 25 - Fall 2019

Elizabeth Rieser-Murphy, J.D.

Don’t Rock the Boat? Assessing Exposure to Chinese Economic Activity as a Driver of Pro-China Voting Behavior at Taiwan’s Local Executive Elections Yun-Da Tsai

“A Disquieting Pattern of Unfortunate Attachments”: Queer Women and the Pathologization of Deviant Sexualities, 1880-1920 Grace Maurer

Speech Rights of Labor Unions Post-Citizens United Giliann Karon

Shawn A. Shinder & Alexander W.L. Rein

Canopy of Peace?: Israeli Afforestation, Religious Zionism, and the Roots of Memory Joseph Weinger

& international affairs

Methamphetamine in China: Understanding the Geographic Distribution of Production

FALL2019 journal of politics

Noemi’s Story: Why Comprehensive Universal Representation of 1 Immigrant Children Is Essential in the Era of Trump

Volume XXV

Fall 2019

Journal of Politics & International Affairs Fall 2019 • Volume XXV New York University

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Fall 2019 • Volume XXV

Journal of Politics & International Affairs

fall 2019 • VOLUME XXV

FALL 2019 • VOLUME XXV Notes On The Contributors

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Noemi’s Story: Why Comprehensive Universal Representation of Immigrant Children Is Essential in the Era of Trump

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Don’t Rock the Boat? Assessing Exposure to Chinese Economic Activity as a Driver of Pro-China Voting Behavior at Taiwan’s Local Executive Elections

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“A Disquieting Pattern of Unfortunate Attachments”: Queer Women and the Pathologization of Deviant Sexualities, 1880-1920

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Speech Rights of Labor Unions Post-Citizens United

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Methamphetamine in China: Understanding the Geographic Distribution of Production

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Canopy of Peace?: Israeli Afforestation, Religious Zionism, and the Roots of Memory

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Elizabeth Rieser-Murphy, J.D.

Yun-Da Tsai

Grace Maurer Giliann Karon

Shawn A. Shinder & Alexander W.L. Rein

Joseph Weinger

This publication is published by New York University students. The university is not responsible for its contents.

FALL 2019 • VOLUME XXV

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE The Journal of Politics & International Affairs at New York University is a student-run publication that provides a forum for outstanding student work on relevant, thought-provoking topics in the domestic and international landscape, including research in political science, economics, history, and regional studies.

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Articles published in the Journal of Politics & International Affairs do not represent an agreement of beliefs or methodology, and readers are not expected to concur with all the opinions and research expressed in these pages. Instead, we hope that these pieces are able to inform and inspire dialogue in the NYU community by addressing a wide variety of topics and opinions.

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Janet Lee DIGITAL MANAGING EDITOR Ava Vecellio ASSOCIATE EDITORS Remie Arena Roshni Rangwani Oluwatona Campbell Emmanuel Hidalgo-Wohlleben Dylan Liang EDITORS Mona Chen Pragya Parthasarathy Rob Loeser Grace Buechler Fabiha Khan Emily Dai Alan Sun Keerthana Manivasakan Mina Mohammadi Cassie Yermack DESIGN EDITOR & COVER PHOTO Phoenix Chen WEBMASTER Mara Davis SPECIAL THANKS Emily Anderson Center for Student Life Publication Advisory Board

Once a semester, the Journal publishes the most excellent submissions from student writers across the nation, especially those from New York University. We are excited to compile and present the unique perspectives and critical analyses on the most salient events of our times.

This edition of the Journal is especially exciting and filled with many “firsts.” We are featuring a piece by NYU alum Elizabeth Rieser-Murphy J.D., who outlines her experience as an attorney with unaccompanied immigrant children. In accordance with such, this semester's journal investigates the speech rights of labor unions as well as the history of unfair treatment to queer women. We are also excited to present international pieces surrounding Taiwan’s voting behavior, Chinese black market trade, and Jewish environmental practices of Israel. Please enjoy reading these phenomenal pieces as much as we have enjoyed choosing, discussing, and editing them.

To keep up with the Journal or get involved, we hope you will follow us on our website (jpianyu.org), Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As always, we encourage you to send us your incredible research, papers, and theses. We will be waiting to read what you write next.

Janet Lee, Editor-in-Chief

Our editorial staff accepts submissions for consideration throughout the year. To submit your work, or to inquire about being published on our website, email jpia.club@nyu.edu.

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Join JPIA's digital team: Our website publishes short blogs that are often around 500 words and feature unique, and creative insights into political issues, current events, and international affairs. We also welcome long-form, reported pieces that are typically 1,000-2,000 words, allowing writers to explore more complex topics with a heavier research component than the blogs. Please reach out to the Editor-in-Chief or Digital Managing Editor for more information on applying to be a digital staff writer.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ELIZABETH RIESER-MURPHY, J.D.

Elizabeth Rieser-Murphy is a staff attorney specializing in immigrant youth issues in The Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Law Unit- Federal Practice in New York City. Since 2013, she has represented unaccompanied immigrant children in federal courts, New York family courts, and administrative proceedings. A graduate of the University of Miami Law School, she also holds a Master's Degree in Education from New York University and a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations from University of Delaware. Prior to law school, Elizabeth worked as middle school teacher in the Bronx, NY.

YUN-DA TSAI

Yun-Da Tsai is a 2019 graduate of New York University's College of Arts and Sciences, where he graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude in International Relations and minored in Japanese and Chemistry. His regional concentration was in East Asia, where his undergraduate thesis work examined Taiwanese voting behavior for pro-China parties in the context of the intimate cross-Strait economic relationship. Yun-Da is now a first-year at The George Washington University Law School, where he seeks (for now) to eventually focus on public international law and comparative law.

GRACE MAURER

Grace Maurer is a 2019 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences with a major in Social and Cultural Analysis and a minor in American Sign Language. Within Social and Cultural Analysis, Grace focused on gender and sexuality studies, culminating in her senior honors thesis on the development and subsequent oppression of female queer identity throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in the American Northeast. Throughout her time at NYU, Grace worked as an intake counselor at a youth services center, an NGO Management intern at a Brooklyn environmental non-profit, and a head counselor at the summer camp she grew up attending in upstate New York. Originally from Virginia, Grace is currently working in New York City and applying to graduate programs within the U.S. and abroad.

GILIANN KARON

Giliann Karon is studying political science at American University with a concentration in American government, as well as a minor in media communications. After she graduates this May, she wants to pursue a dual MPH/JD and eventually work in reproductive rights policy.

She hails from Cleveland, Ohio. When she’s not interning at Public Citizen or participating in student radio, you can find her cooking or attending indie rock concerts.

Fall 2019

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SHAWN SHINDER

Shawn Shinder is a senior at NYU’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, studying Business and Political Economy with a minor in East Asian Studies. Shawn interned at IBM, where he worked with the analytics and data science practice to study patterns of customer behavior.

Shawn is currently writing an honors thesis that researches Ukraine’s institutional development through the lens of its state-owned and privatized firms. Shawn is passionate about political economics and studies focusing on trust, social capital, and societal institutions as related to economic growth. He hopes to use innovative econometrics techniques to link together diverse topics throughout the fields of economics, political science, and sociology. In his spare time, Shawn enjoys working with NYU’s largest student-run organization, Model United Nations, ballroom dancing, traveling, and exploring NYC’s underground music scene.

ALEXANDER REIN

Alexander Rein is a senior at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business studying Business and Political Economy with a minor in history. He is currently the Co-President of TAMID Group at NYU, an organization that offers pro-bono consulting services to Israeli technology startups and actively manages an investment fund. After graduation, Alexander will be working as an investment banking analyst at Miller Buckfire & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in financial restructuring. In his free time, Alexander enjoys following his favorite soccer team A.F.C. Bournemouth and volunteering for the Guide Dog Foundation.

JOSEPH WEINGER

Joseph Weinger is a senior at the Gallatin School, NYU. Originally from the Orthodox Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois, Joseph moved to NYC for his studies with a strong interest in interrogating social structures and historical formations. Working with his advisor, sociologist Kimberly DaCosta, he has shaped his concentration around Critical Theory and Sociology with a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies, drawing on a combination of classical social theory, (post)Marxist critique, and queer and feminist epistemologies. Much of his coursework is split between the Gallatin School and CAS’s Departments of Sociology and Social and Cultural Analysis. With a particular interest in cultural sociology, Joseph has greatly benefitted from Gallatin’s—and NYU’s—ethos of radical critique. Joseph spent a semester abroad at NYU London in 2017, more recently travelled to New Zealand through the Dean’s Honor Society, and

Journal of Politics & International Affairs

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ELIZABETH REISER-MURPHY, J.D.

Noemi’s Story: Why Comprehensive Universal Representation of Immigrant Children Is Essential in the Era of Trump Elizabeth Rieser-Murphy, j.d.

According to the United Nations, youth under the age of twenty comprises fourteen percent of the global migrant population. 1 2 Several years ago, as a staff attorney in Legal Aid’s Immigration Unit, I represented a seven-year-old girl named Noemi.3 Noemi traveled to the United States with an aunt and was separated from her at the border. No parent or legal guardian were with Noemi when she crossed the border. As a result, the U.S. government designated Noemi as an unaccompanied immigrant child.

Noemi was detained alone in a federal shelter for children.4 Eventually, Noemi was released to the care of a relative. The first time we met, Noemi’s relative told me that Noemi was jumpy around men and cried often. She wouldn’t leave her relative’s side. Noemi’s relative feared Noemi had been abused before arriving to the United States. After Legal Aid connected Noemi to counseling, she began to open up. It took a long time for Noemi to feel comfortable sharing her traumatic experience with me. Eventually, Noemi told me that an older relative had grabbed her and done things that made her sad. At the suggestion of a social worker, we read picture books together—after reading one picture book about sexual abuse prevention, she opened up about what happened to her. Noemi eventually was granted asylum and is now flourishing as an elementary school student in New York City.

1 The author would like to thank her colleagues at the Legal Aid Society for their contributions to this piece.

2 UNITED NATIONS DEPT. OF ECON. AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, INT’L MIGRANT STOCK 2019, https:// www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/ MigrationStock2019_TenKeyFindings.pdf.

3 Name changed for privacy reasons.

4 See, e.g., Riane Roldan, Number of Detained Migrant Children Without U.S. Sponsors Spikes, Federal Official Says, Texas Tribune, July 23, 2019, https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/23/migrant-childrenindefinite-detention/.

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Although the rights of migrant children are enshrined in multiple international treaties5, current U.S. policies have undermined children like Noemi.6 Without access to counsel, migrant children—along with their rights—are increasingly at risk. In May 2019, the Trump administration attempted to rescind a six-year-old memo, which allowed the case of unaccompanied children to be heard at the Asylum Office.7 Recently, a federal court judge in Washington, D.C. issued a preliminary injunction to temporarily prevent the current administration from implementing this policy.8 This is just one of a myriad of attacks on children—in July 2019, the U.S. published an interim final rule which makes asylum unattainable for anyone, including unaccompanied children, who passed through another country on the way to the United States.9

Navigating this increasingly complex landscape is an impossible task for children who do not have legal counsel. We have known for years that having a lawyer is the “single most important factor” in determining the success of a child’s immigration case.10 Yet despite the grave impact of these proceedings, children are not guaranteed legal counsel under the law.11 As a result, immigrant children are largely unrepresented in immigration courts nationwide.12

Since 2014, the Immigrant Children’s Advocate Relief Effort (ICARE), funded by a unique public-private partnership in New York City, has prioritized the representation of vulnerable, immigrant 5 See e.g., Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 (III) A, U.N. Doc. A/RES/217(III) (Dec. 10, 1948); Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (adopted on 28 July 1951; treaty in force since 22 April 1954); Int’l Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Dec. 16, 1966, S. Exec. Rep. 102-23, 999 U.N.T.S. 171; Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (adopted by the General Assembly on 10 December 1984; treaty in force since 26 June 1987).

6 Hamed Aleaziz, The Trump Administration Is Considering A Proposal That Could Make Asylum Tougher For Unaccompanied Children, BUZZFEED, Oct. 2, 2019, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ hamedaleaziz/trump-proposal-unaccompanied-minors-asylum; Eli Hager, Trump’s Quiet War on Migrant Kids: How the Administration is Turning Child Protection into Law Enforcement, THE MARSHALL PROJECT, May 1, 2018, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/05/01/trump-s-quietwar-on-migrant-kids 7 USCIS, Updated Procedures for Asylum Applications Filed By Unaccompanied Children, John Lafferty, May 31 2019, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Refugee%2C%20Asylum%2C%20and%20 Int%27l%20Ops/Asylum/Memo_-_Updated_Procedures_for_I-589s_Filed_by_UACs_5-31-2019.pdf 8 https://cliniclegal.org/resources/class-action-lawsuit-seeks-protection-asylum-seekers-who-arrived-unaccompaniedminors.

9 Dept. of Homeland Security and Executive Off. Of Imm. Rev., Asylum Eligibility and Procedural Modifications, 84 FR 33829, July 16, 2019, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/07/16/2019-15246/asylumeligibility-and-procedural-modifications.

10 TRAC, Representation for Unaccompanied Children in Immigration Court, https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/ reports/371/ 11 J.E.F.M. v. Lynch, 837 F.3d 1026 (9th Cir. 2016).

12 TRAC, Children: Amid a Growing Court Backlog Many Still Unrepresented, https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/ reports/482/.

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ELIZABETH REISER-MURPHY, J.D.

children. The ICARE Coalition, consisting of The Legal Aid Society, Catholic Charities, The Door, Central American Legal Assistance, Kids in Need of Defense, and the Safe Passage Project fight for these most vulnerable youth. The impact of the ICARE Coalition cannot be overstated. When represented by an ICARE attorney, our young clients are granted the ability to stay in the United States 95% of the time.

The Legal Aid Society has expanded our representation of vulnerable immigrant children and engaged in impact litigation on their behalf. Earlier this year, the Legal Aid Society won the first federal class action case in the nation against the Trump Administration’s policies towards immigrant youth in New York who applied for special immigrant juvenile status.13

New York state has long been a leader in the country in protecting the rights of young people.

In state court proceedings that have the potential to dramatically impact a child’s life, New York has long recognized that a child’s voice should be heard and the child’s unique legal interests should be protected.

Immigration court proceedings for children are similarly life-altering proceedings – in many instances a matter of life and death. There are currently over 16,000 unrepresented immigrant children in New York state.14 Odds of representation in New York can vary based on a variety of factors including where someone lives15 or how they entered the United States. Unfortunately, a child’s ability to have legal counsel in immigration court depends on being lucky enough to secure free representation from a nonprofit organization or paying thousands of dollars in fees to private counsel.16

Every immigrant youth in New York state should have access to publicly-funded, comprehensive, holistic legal representation, as well as important trauma-informed supports in their community. Legislators in Albany have made important first steps towards universal representation that should be commended.17 However, full funding of universal representation of immigrant children should include, at a minimum: guaranteed competent and holistic legal representation until the age of 21; funding for immigrant youthfocused impact litigation; funding for social workers as part of a holistic legal representation model; comprehensive health insurance to the age of 21; and access to and funding for culturally and linguistically competent mental health services, education, summer, and after-school programming. Noemi’s case illustrates the important difference comprehensive legal representation can make in a child’s immigration case. These children are our neighbors and our community members. They make meaningful, positive contributions to our communities and they need our help now more than ever. It is time for New York to take the lead and fully fund statewide comprehensive legal representation for immigrant children.

13 R.F.M. v. Nielsen, 365 F.Supp.3d 350 (S.D.N.Y. 2019).

14 TRAC, Juveniles — Immigration Court Deportation Proceedings, https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/ juvenile/.

15 TRAC, https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/addressrep/.

16 Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou, The Thousands of Children Who Go to Immigration Court Alone, THE ATLANTIC, Aug. 21, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/children-immigrationcourt/567490/.

17 N.Y. State Assembly, Bill A7815B, https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/a7815. The bill passed the N.Y. Assembly and referred to the N.Y. Senate.

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Don’t Rock The Boat? Assessing Exposure to Chinese Economic Activity as a Driver of Pro-China Voting Behavior at Taiwan’s Local Executive Elections Yun-Da Tsai

Taiwan since democratization has seen regular alternation of parties in power, although explanations of such electoral behavior have not been rigorously tested. I approach the subject by looking at the debate over the future course of cross-Strait economic ties as a significant driver of Taiwanese voting behavior and argue (a) Taiwanese voters view the cross-Strait economic interaction as mainly zero-sum competitive in nature and (b) Taiwanese voters behave rationally in casting their votes on such an issue. I test these arguments using local executive electoral data and constructed Chinese trade competition and linkage indices, following Dell et al. (forthcoming), in a time-series cross-section linear-log regression. I find Taiwanese voters vote away from the pro-China Pan-Blue coalition regardless of the nature of the interaction with China; however, Taiwanese voters are also capable of discriminating between the different interactions and voting accordingly, in line with general electoral theories on voting behavior. 1,2 Introduction

Since the democratization of island politics from one-party Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) rule over two decades ago, Taiwan has seen two major political coalitions-each led by a major party-contest elections that have been perennially dominated by the issue of cross-Strait ties. The Pan1 This paper was originally submitted in order to satisfy the thesis requirement for the Spring 2019 undergraduate International Relations honors major at NYU's Wilf Family Department of Politics. I extend my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisor, Professor Amanda Kennard; to my thesis section's teaching assistant and worker of wonders, Rafael Ch; to my fellow IR honors graduating class of 2019; and to my dear friends and peers Kevin Zhang (CAS '16), Sunny Hong (CAS '19), Eric Overgaard (GLS '20), Will Zhang (CAS '20), and Kristina Zheng (CAS '21).

2 The terminology used in this paper regarding Taiwan, the Republic of China, China, the People's Republic of China, and so on is not an endorsement, negation, or even attempt to wade into the political controversies surrounding the status of Taiwan on behalf of one side of the Taiwan Strait or the other. I have made an effort to follow the examples set in the literature for the use of particular terminology and description of some of the charged issues surrounding the Taiwan Strait. I have no need to evaluate the merits of the claims advanced by either rival government and decline to do so in this paper.

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YUN-DA TSAI

Blue coalition led by the KMT generally favors closer relations with the mainland and asserts a national identity constructed around “Chinese nationalism,” rejecting Taiwanese independence. The Pan-Green coalition led by the Democratic Progressive Party (Minjindang, DPP), on the other hand, generally favors an distinct “Taiwanese” identity (“Taiwanese nationalism”) and de facto independence for the island.3 Taiwan has seen the peaceful alternation of these two coalitions in power since 1996—the first direct election for the President of the Republic of China (ROC)—at both the national and local levels, often with sizable amounts of voting swing from one coalition to the other across elections.

Theories seeking to explain Taiwanese voting behavior—especially the presence of vote swing between two ideologically opposed political coalitions—recognize cross-Strait relations as the chief concern of Taiwanese voters, with two distinct dimensions: (a) economics, namely whether or not the island should expand economic ties and deepen economic integration with the mainland; and (b) national identity, specifically whether or not a distinct “Taiwanese identity” is incompatible with “Chinese identity,” a question that weighs heavily on the issue of reunification with the mainland (Schubert 2004; Fell 2004; Cheng and Tam 2005; Choi 2015). The vast majority of literature on drivers of Taiwanese electoral results advocates for one of the two dimensions as the chief driver of votes for one coalition or the other, usually with a qualitative tabulation of the perceived key issues at a particular election.4 Which dimension of cross-Strait relations drives Taiwanese voting behavior? There is no wide consensus in the literature (or in everyday political discourse) regarding the identity of the principal driver of Taiwanese voters at the polls.

As such, I approach the question from the economic dimension, which offers more directly quantifiable and definite data suitable for an attempt at quantitative analysis and identification of explanatory mechanisms of economically driven voting behavior for Taiwan. I adopt this approach not to challenge the common explanation of national identity as a driver of voting behavior, but rather to test if economics is one crucial driver (of undoubtedly many) of Taiwanese voting behavior. The objective difficulty in specifying explicit components of national identity that are quantifiable and testable also deter me from attempting a quantitative analysis from the national identity angle.

3 E.g., Schubert (2004). The spectrum of possible policy positions regarding independence for Taiwan or reunification with China is actually quite expansive, owing to the number of variables that can be stipulated — e.g. preference for de jure (as the Republic of China or some “Republic of Taiwan”) or de facto independence, timing and conditionality of any reunification with the mainland. Although the bifurcation of Taiwanese politics into the two main camps is a fairly convenient shorthand reflective of the chief policy debates on cross-Strait relations, there do exist several smaller parties in Taiwanese politics that advocate for ideas on the extreme ends of the spectrum (i.e., the pan-Blue Chinese New Party’s call for immediate reunification with the mainland or the pan-Green Taiwan Independence Party’s advocacy for immediate independence as a Taiwanese republic), not to mention that there is also significant variation among the factions in the KMT and DPP as well. See Wilson (2017) for an example of how the mainstream two-party split obscures more extreme positions on ROC territorial claims in the South China Sea. 4 E.g., Cheng and Tam (2005), which analyzes the 2004 presidential election with an ethnic cleavage approach to explain how the DPP eked out victory; Chen (2016) argues the debate over the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement between Taiwan and China allowed for the KMT to win the 2012 presidential election.

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What is the effect of economic interactions with mainland China on Taiwan’s voting behavior?

Literature regarding cross-Strait economic ties (including the growth in cross-Strait trade (Lin 2005), World Trade Organization entry by Beijing and Taipei in the early 2000s (Cho 2005), and the growing prominence of the Taiwanese business community (Taishang) in cross-Strait integration efforts (Keng and Schubert 2010) offers mixed conclusions. Additionally, the literature’s examination of the political effects of greater exposure to the economic activity of the mainland and the degree of cooperation and competition with Chinese industry Taiwanese exporters face5 lacks convincing explanations for how Taiwanese voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship. perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship.

If economic interactions with mainland China affect Taiwan’s voting behavior, the perceived nature of the interaction (i.e. “competition” or “cooperation”) must be identified to offer a precise mechanism to explain any observed effects. The distinction between competition and cooperation is crucial, as I conceptualize coalition preference by Taiwanese voters differently in each case.

If the cross-Strait economic relationship is recognized by voters to be primarily competitive, then Taiwanese voters should vote for the coalition that espouses policies favorable for Taiwanese export competitiveness abroad in the interest of protecting themselves—in other words, voting “pro-Taiwan” for the Pan-Green coalition, with its cautious attitude towards additional engagement with the mainland, stress on the distinct “Taiwan” brand to differentiate similar exports in competition with China, and focus on diversifying Taiwan’s trading partners to secure access to more markets and offset losses to Chinese competition.

Alternatively, if the cross-Strait economic relationship is construed by voters to be primarily cooperative, then Taiwanese voters should vote for the coalition whose policies liberalize restrictions on trade with the mainland in favor of additional economic integration with China in order to reap greater boons from corresponding economic growth experienced by China—policies which the Pan-Blue coalition has consistently presented during their control of the presidency and legislature. Additionally, this “proChina” Pan-Blue voting is colored by the desire of voters to pick the coalition that presents the least likelihood of disrupting cross-Strait economic interactions; the comparatively warm Pan-Blue (especially the KMT) relationship with Beijing versus the frostier (if not outright hostile) interactions between the PanGreen coalition and the mainland thus also favors voting Pan-Blue in an effort to “not rock the boat” and preserve the status quo.

I argue that Taiwanese voters, being well-informed about the immediate practical effects and longer-term trade-offs of cross-Strait economic interactions, view the relationship with China as primarily competitive. Accordingly, voters in localities that are more exposed to Chinese export competition should vote away from pro-China Pan-Blue candidates at elections. The effect may be diminished, however, by economic benefits reaped from the recognized trend in the past decade of expanding economic ties with the mainland. Assuming all else held constant and Taiwanese voters act rationally, localities with higher exposure to direct economic ties with China should have increased vote share for Pan-Blue candidates at elections. In both cases, the basic logic of the voter is the same: voting in their best self-interest, Taiwanese citizens vote (a) to protect themselves from exposure to foreign competition and (b) to maintain access to 5 E.g., Leng (2017), which looks at cross-Strait economic relations through recent developments in Taiwan’s information technology sector in the face of rising Chinese economic and political power.

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YUN-DA TSAI

the lucrative economic market of China.

In order to assess whether exposure to Chinese economic activity is a driver of Taiwanese voting behavior and, if possible, to identify the Taiwanese voter’s perception of the cross-Strait economic relationship, I construct, following Dell et al. (forthcoming, June 2019), an index of exposure to export activity mapped onto 1996 employment data by industry at the township-level of administrative unit.6 I then conduct a time-series cross-section linear-log regression analysis, clustered by township with fixed effects, of the constructed index on vote share by township for each coalition and the leading parties thereof in the five local-level executive elections starting in 2001 and ending in 2018.7 The township-level administrative unit is selected because it is the first meaningful aggregated administrative unit in terms of data collection by the government in Taiwan and the number of possible observations. Local executive elections are chosen as the election type of interest to exploit the “midterm”-like and lower stakes nature of the election (compared to the feasible alternative of national presidential elections) to maximize possible observable sincere voting behavior across the entire island. I control for commonly noted influential factors on voting behavior as argued by voting literature: population; voter turnout; and incumbency (by party identification) at the local executive, national executive, and national legislature. I also include terms to control for fixed effects of year, township, and the interaction effect between the two.

Data is drawn mainly from government databases of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Local executive election results down to the township level by candidate raw vote count and vote share, including the number of eligible voters registered in the township and the calculated voter turnout, is from the Central Election Commission of the ROC, as is the political party affiliation of incumbents. Candidates are identified by the political party formally endorsing their candidacy on the ballot (i.e., the party name is printed next to the candidate name). Candidates without official printed endorsement by a registered political party are classified as independents and not belonging to any coalition. Political parties are assigned as belonging to the Pan-Blue coalition, Pan-Green coalition, or neither by virtue of their professed platform, stance on the issue of Taiwan independence, and confirmation the existing literature. Township6 The types of township-level administrative divisions are districts (區 qu, subdivisions of special municipalities and provincial cities, including special municipal mountain indigenous districts (直轄市山地原住民

區 zixia-shi sandi-yuanzhumin qu)); county-administered cities (縣轄市 xianxia-shi); urban townships ( 鎮 zhen); rural townships (鄉 xiang); and mountain indigenous townships (山地鄉 shandi-xiang).

Note that in actual names the type of township is often shortened to one character (區 qu for all types of districts; 市 shi for all types of cities, including provincial cities and special municipalities one level up; 鎮 zhen for urban townships; and 鄉 xiang for all types of rural townships), which may be confusing in

identifying the exact type of township-level unit. There is no practical difference between the types in terms of balloting for local executive of the unit one level up.

7 I use the term “local executive” to refer to the position that heads the executive branch at the level immediately under the national government for each county-level administrative division, namely the magistrates

of the counties (縣長 xianzhang), mayors of the provincial cities (市長 shizhang, formerly 省轄市長 shengxiashi-zhang before provinces were streamlined in 1998, see McBeath 2000), and mayors of the special municipalities (市長 shizhang, formally 直轄市長 zhixiashi-zhang). Voting and employment data used is specified to the township-level, right under the county-level.

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level employment data, broken down by industry, is from the “Industry and Service Census”8 taken in 1996, available at the Statistical Bureau, National Statistics of the ROC website. Trade data on the value of Taiwan’s exports to China, sorted by the type/sector of product for construction of the exposure index in the “cooperation” scenario, is drawn from the website of the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the ROC. In the “competition” case, I select the United States as the common foreign market shared by China and Taiwan and draw the value of Chinese exports to the United States by product type/sector from the World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) database.

I find statistically significant decreases in vote share for Pan-Blue local candidates in both the “competition” and “cooperation” models, which suggests that higher exposure to economic interactions with China, whether indirect export competition or direct export connection, induces Taiwanese voters to vote primarily to protect themselves and punish pro-China candidates. This blanket assessment of all Chinese economic activity, however, does not hold when the indices for export competition and economic linkage are regressed alongside each other. In such a “mixed” scenario, holding all else constant, vote share for Pan-Blue candidates is indeed reduced for townships with higher exposure to export competition from China; likewise, holding all else constant, vote share for Pan-Blue candidates is increased given a higher exposure to direct export links to China. This latter finding suggests Taiwanese voters indeed behave rationally when assessing the facets of the cross-Strait economic relationship. My argument is thus supported by my findings; I elaborate on the formal theoretical mechanism in the sections below.

The practical implications for my findings, however, are more mixed. Taiwanese voters are not construing the cross-Strait economic relationship in absolute terms of solely competition or cooperation.

The perceptions, while grounded in the same voting logic, yield two opposing voting outcomes. While I find that economic interaction with China is a statistically significant driver of voting behavior with regards to the pro-China Pan-Blue coalition, the utility of economic exposure to China as an accurate and meaningful predictor of Pan-Blue vote share is questionable. I cannot outright conclude that economic voting is the chief or sole driver of Taiwanese voting behavior at local executive elections. Given the limitations of my design, I also cannot expressly rule out the influence of identity politics (with regards to the issue of reunification with China) in driving voters away from pro-China candidates.

The arguments and methods I advance here serve as a rudimentary attempt at addressing phenomena observed in Taiwan’s fledgling electoral democracy. The sui generis peculiarities of Taiwan’s international legal situation, the domination of domestic political discourse by the perennial issue of crossStrait relations, and the island’s status as one of East Asia’s few democracies makes it a unique area for research, particularly in testing whether or not pre-existing theories explaining phenomena observed in other democracies are applicable to explaining phenomena observed in Taiwan. With the overwhelming majority of literature regarding political developments in Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait being qualitative, the proliferation of possible explanations for drivers of Taiwanese voting behavior and focus on specific 8 工業及服務業普查 gongye ji fuwuye pucha, specifically the Table 6 (表六 biao liu) of the 1996 results (85年普查結果統 計表 85-nian pucha-jieguo tongjibiao) sorted by the county-level administrative division (地區別統計表 diqubie tongji-biao, 縣市報告 xian-shi baogao) on the Chinese-language version of the website for “professionals.”

The English-language version of the site only specifies the employment data by industry down to the aforementioned level of administrative unit, with no disaggregated township-level data available.

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iterations of the quadrennial presidential elections leaves ample room for a more systematic, long-term approach. I do exactly that by harnessing the accessible and detailed electoral and domestic economic data for the island at township-level specificity while also seeking to test a fairly popular explanation for Taiwanese votes for the Pan-Blue coalition. Owing to my research design and the availability of data, I also test (in passing) other theories on voting behavior that have been advanced for the more established democracies in Europe and North America.

The rest of the sections proceed as follows. A brief review of literature on Taiwanese political and electoral developments since democratization along with a cursory examination of literature regarding the economics of trade competitiveness is followed by my theoretical argument, where I lay out the two models of perceiving cross-Strait economic interactions and advance hypotheses with regards to voting behavior. Section four discusses my research design, including the data I use in constructing variables of interest—namely, the exposure index. Results of the regression analysis across the two independent models and a mixed model follow in section five. Section six concludes with a discussion of the meaning of the results, preliminary critiques of the approach I advance herein, and grounds for future work.

Background & Literature Review

The following section is divided into three parts: (1) a summary of Taiwanese political developments prior to democratization, with the main focus being on the formation of the political coalitions that have dominated Taiwanese politics since the 1990s; (2) a survey of the extant literature on Taiwanese elections, theories for Taiwanese electoral behavior, and theories on general voting behavior; and (3) a survey of literature regarding the impact of trade competition on local labor markets, social stability, and political behavior.

The overarching theme of this review is that literature specific to Taiwan is overwhelmingly qualitative in nature, often limited in analysis to a specific single national election, and varied in explanations for Taiwanese electoral results; on the other hand, the trade competition literature is predominantly quantitative in methodology and analysis, with the impact of Chinese trading power a key concern of the literature from this field. There is a dearth of literature on the intersection of the two topics, namely quantitative research done on the impacts of growing Chinese trade power and trade competitiveness on Taiwan’s young democracy. As such, this paper seeks to step into this gap and offer useful insight on a pressing issue that has ramifications for other democracies with significant and sustained economic interactions with China, in East Asia and beyond.

Historical Context and Main Debates

The area ruled by the government of the Republic of China consists mainly of the island of Taiwan proper, the small islands scattered immediately off the shore of Taiwan, and the island groups administered as Penghu County (the Pescadores), Kinmen County (Quemoy), and Lienchiang County (Matsu) (“Geography & Demographics”). The government itself, seated in the capital Taipei, is descended from the KMT forces, under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which withdrew from mainland China after suffering defeat at the hands of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in the Chinese Civil War. The “free area” controlled by Chiang’s forces was reduced to its present extent by 1950, organized into two provinces:

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the province of Taiwan (臺灣省 taiwan-sheng), consisting of Taiwan, the islands immediately adjacent, and Penghu; and the province of Fujian (Fukien, 福建省 yu fujian-sheng9), consisting of Kinmen and Lienchiang Counties.

One-party KMT rule before the 1990s was characterized by heavy-handed authoritarianism, which was carried out under the legal framework of a suspended constitution and martial law. Four decades of KMT rule saw the brutal suppression of a Taiwanese armed uprising in 1947, the relocation of nearly two million KMT supporters from the mainland to the island, denial of self-governance for local Taiwanese, and the imposition of campaigns across almost all facets of daily life to Sinicize the population at the expense of local cultures-all of which contributed to a major social cleavage by identity (Fleischauer 2007). Invasion attempts by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were fended off by the ROC (with United States intervention) in 1954-5 and 1958 (“The Taiwan Straits Crises”), which also offered ample justification for martial law in the name of suppressing the “Communist Rebellion” and eventually reclaiming the mainland (“History of Constitutional Revisions”).

The death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975 and the loosening of some of the harsh conditions under martial law by his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo led to increased and open agitation for democratic transition. The flourishing of the island’s economy—fueled by government infrastructure projects, gradual economic liberalization, strict trade controls, and the growth of a vibrant high-tech industrial sector— placed Taiwan among the newly industrializing economies of the “Four Asian Tigers” by 1980, with per capita gross national product surging by over sixtyfold since KMT rule began (Tsai 1999). Political opposition to the KMT, loosely organized in form of the 黨外 dangwai (literally, “out of party”) movement, coalesced into Taiwan’s first formal opposition political party with the formation of the DPP in 1986 (Copper 1989; Fleischauer 2007)10. Martial law was peacefully ended the following year (Fravel 2002), which coincided with relaxation of restrictions on cross-Strait contact and local political liberalization (“HISTORY”); Chiang Ching-kuo’s death in 1988 propelled Taiwan-born Lee Teng-hui to the presidency.

Under Lee, indigenization (i.e., “Taiwanization”) of government officials and political discourse, combined with the abolishment of the temporary provisions suspending the 1947 ROC Constitution and successive rounds of constitutional amendments to reflect the reality of ROC situation, gave way to the first direct elections for the national legislature (立法院 lifayuan) and the constituent assembly (國民大會 guomin dahui)

9 Not to be confused with Fujian Province of the People’s Republic of China, which controls the mainland component of the old pre-1949 Fujian/Fukien Province.

10 外省人 waisheng-ren, “people from out of province,” i.e., mainland-born and relocated to Taiwan after 1945, versus 本省人 bensheng-ren, “people from this province,” i.e., Taiwan-born. This distinction gets murkier with successive generations of cross-marriage and continued residency in the “free area.”

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11

by 1992 and the first direct presidential election in 1996 (“Constitution”).

Since 1996, democratic politics on the island have been dominated by a practical two-party system divided primarily on the issue of Taiwan’s relationship with the mainland. The identity cleavage— owing to the origins of the two main parties—serves as one major dimension for political differentiation among the parties and coalitions, with the fundamental debate centered around the conception of a “Taiwanese” identity and whether or not such an identity, if recognized to exist, is compatible with a “Chinese” identity (Friedman 2009). The debate over recognizing the so-called “1992 Consensus,”12 in which representatives from both sides of the Taiwan Strait adopted a resolution in Hong Kong declaring both sides of the Strait as belonging to “one China” without specifying a particular government as the sole legal representative of this “one China,” is another major flashpoint in political discourse, with the KMT asserting the existence and binding nature of the Consensus while the DPP rejecting the Consensus outright during its control of the presidency (Wei 2016). The highly contentious nature of these two debates, along with the ROC government’s continued insistence on being the sole legal representative of all China, has essentially frozen the cross-Strait political relationship (along with Taiwan’s international relations at large) in a peculiar place: Taiwan exists as a sui generis international legal entity, formally recognized or disavowed as the sole legal representative of all China by members of the international community while maintaining de facto independence, some semblance of an international legal personality distinct from the PRC, and a wide range unofficial trade and diplomatic ties. This political status quo has remained relatively unchanged since democratization; Taiwanese voters have proven in successive elections to prefer policy positions that maintain this status quo on cross-Strait ties, which has, in turn, moderated the island’s political parties on the matter (Fell 2004; Fell 2005; Schubert 2004; Huang and James 2014; Wilson 2017).

As such, the political debate over expanding economic ties (and integration) with the mainland takes place in the context of the identity debate in cross-Strait ties. While a consensus may exist among the island’s political parties regarding maintenance of the cross-Strait political status quo, namely agreeing to disagree with the PRC over the status of Taiwan without taking up extreme actions to destabilize the understanding, the issues surrounding liberalization of restrictions on economic interactions with the mainland and the future course of Taiwan’s foreign trade and investment policies serve as another arena for political competition, albeit colored with the possible existential threat of overly exposing the island’s economy to the comparatively massive one of the mainland (Saunders 2005). Expansion of trade ties and 11 As an aside, the constituent assembly, formally the “National Assembly” in English, was derisively mocked as the “ten-thousand-year assembly” (萬年國會 wannian guohui) because the KMT-controlled government did not hold new elections for a majority of the assembly’s membership (representing mainland constituencies) after 1948, the legality of which was confirmed by a judicial ruling permitting the exiled members to continue in their seats until fresh elections could be held (under KMT control) in the mainland. The KMT thus dominated the Assembly for almost the entirety of its existence in Taiwan, even when fresh elections were finally held for the full Assembly in 1991. The National Assembly was ultimately effectively abolished in 2005 amid a spate of constitutional reforms.

12 I place the phrase “so-called” because the 1992 Consensus was coined by KMT legislators to challenge DPP control of the presidency. See media coverage, e.g., Shih (2006) in the Taipei Times, “Su Chi admits the ‘1992 Consensus’ was made up.”

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moves towards further economic integration, especially in the early 2010s under President Ma Ying-jeou (KMT), has divided the political coalitions along similar lines as the identity debate: the KMT supports closer economic ties with the mainland in order to secure continued economic growth for Taiwan while the DPP expresses concerns over deepening economic integration with the mainland as it allows for the PRC to gain increasing leverage over the island and threaten Taiwan’s de facto independence (Lin 2005; Tanner 2007; Yuan 2016). The latter concern has become increasingly acute, as more recent literature notes the increased politicization of the Taiwanese business community with regards to cross-Strait economic issues (Keng and Shubert 2010; Tsai 2017) and the prominence of cross-Strait economic integration as a deciding factor in presidential elections (Chen 2016).

Explanations for Taiwanese Electoral Behavior

The literature analyzing Taiwanese electoral behavior is mainly qualitative and primarily limited to discussions about some particular single issue that is theorized to influence the voter calculus at a particular election or string of elections. While more general analyses of long-term electoral behavior do exist, which have produced a loose consensus on the policy issues facing the Taiwanese electorate, there is no consensus on the decisive weight of a particular issue over another in driving electoral behavior. The decisive nature of a particular issue depends heavily on the context of the election—a conclusion that is confirmed by the numerous papers centered on single-election analyses. Additionally, the literature on Taiwanese elections focuses almost exclusively on island-wide elections for the president and national legislature.

The literature recognizes the existence of a consensus reached by the mainstream parties on the political issues of the wider cross-Strait relationship, namely a preference for the status quo of de facto but not de jure independence for Taiwan. Schubert (2004) presents this political consensus as grounded in the national identity debate and argues that the construction of Taiwan’s national identity via “state identity” instead of “ethnocultural identity” roots “Taiwanese nationalism” in a “liberal and civic” identification with the de facto sovereign state ruling over the island. While this construction of national identity does not rule out being part of some greater Chinese nation (i.e., eventual reunification with the mainland), the political association with being a member of the “Taiwanese nation” rules out reunifying with the mainland on the (considerably illiberal) terms dictated by Beijing. Consequently, mainstream political parties competing for votes, acting as reflections and amplifications of facets of this national identity, are bound by recognition of de facto independence, with no electoral incentive to advocate for destabilizing changes to the cross-Strait political status quo. On the other hand, while Saunders (2005) does find that the general Taiwanese electorate overwhelmingly favors the status quo, his survey of long-term cross-Strait trends notes that the increasing sense of a “separate Taiwan identity” may be a destabilizing factor in the island’s politics, especially in the face of rising Chinese nationalism on the mainland, the birth of third party alternatives to the KMT and DPP advocating more extreme positions on the subject of Taiwanese independence, and the unclear degree of constraint the electorate’s preference for the status quo places on any Taiwanese administration in pursuing changes to the preexisting cross-Strait political situation.

Alternative explanations for the status quo preference include Huang and James (2014), who sketch out (but do not formally test) a game theoretic explanation of the staying power of the status quo

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and second-mover advantage to coin “Aquamarine” as the appropriate metaphorical color to describe the convergence of the Taiwanese electorate on maintenance of the status quo against the alternatives of immediate unification with the mainland or outright de jure independence. Stockton (2010), while not explicitly passing judgment on the ideological positions of the parties contesting the 2008 national legislative election, finds that electoral rules are a major determinant of the resulting party system, with Taiwan’s transition from a single nontransferable vote to a mixed-member majoritarian electoral system favoring the larger (and more moderate mainstream) parties13 and the consolidation of the political landscape towards a two-party system. Stockton’s findings echo other literature on electoral reform, specifically the Japanese experience with electoral reform in the early 1990s14 (Christensen 1994; Horiuchi and Saito 2003) and suggest the conclusions of general electoral theories hold for Taiwan fairly robustly.

Specific issue-centric and election-centric analyses exist as well. Cheng and Tam (2005) use the 2004 presidential election, in which Chen Shui-bian (DPP) edged out Lien Chan (KMT) for re-election by a margin of less than 0.3% of votes cast, to explore the ethnic cleavages that complicate the construction of some common national identity and underlie the debate over reunification/independence. They argue that the DPP’s ethnic policies—support for the Hakka community in northern Taiwan; redirection of government resources to southern Taiwan, which is dominated by those of Southern Fujianese descent— along with a succession crisis in the KMT leadership allowed for Chen’s narrow victory, although they also note significant vote swing and high likelihood of strategic voting behavior at presidential elections.

Chen (2016) approaches the 2012 presidential election, which delivered incumbent Ma Ying-jeou (KMT) a second term, with a particular focus on the impacts of a 2010 cross-Strait free trade agreement and the efforts by the KMT-led Pan-Blue coalition (along with Beijing) to convince the Taiwanese electorate of the benefits of further deepening cross-Strait economic ties. Chen’s case study analysis notes the particularly heated political conflict over the signing of the free-trade agreement that crystallized the positions of the two main coalitions; the framing of the agreement by the KMT as a purely economic (and not political) means for Taiwan to escape economic marginalization and improve economic competitiveness; and the moderation of the DPP’s position on the agreement from outright rejection to cautious and wary tolerance, should the DPP secure the presidency. Chen conditions his argument in a manner similar to mine: while the argument focuses on economics as a key driver of Taiwanese electoral behavior, the argument is not designed with the intention to rule out other factors as not important at the election.

13 Stockton (2010) finds the KMT benefitted the most from the electoral reform, the DPP came a distant second, and third parties (including parties advocating more hardline stances on the reunification/independence debate) were essentially wiped out, thus setting the stage for a practical two-party system at the national level.

14 Japan did essentially the same thing during the politically tumultuous 1990s by shifting its legislative elections for the National Diet from a single non-transferable vote system to a mixed-member majoritarian system.

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Effects of Chinese Trade Competition

The literature on trade competition is mainly quantitative in nature and focuses on assessing the impacts of export/import competition on domestic economic, social, and political behavior. For the purposes of this paper, literature explicitly dealing with the effects of Chinese trade competition is selected, with all of the quantitative literature being not directly related to Taiwan. Qualitative literature from Taiwan regarding the Chinese is also offered below to note additional arguments regarding Taiwanese perceptions of the cross-Strait economic relationship.

Autor et al. (2013) examine the effects of Chinese import competition on domestic labor markets in the United States at the regional economic level by mapping trade shocks to local labor market outcomes. Employing a host of other models to demonstrate the robustness of their findings, Autor et al. find that exposure to Chinese import competition—as operationalized by a constructed index Dell et al. (forthcoming) that I borrow for our respective empirical strategies—causes statistically significant decreases in both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing employment; declines in wages, especially in non-manufacturing sectors; drops in household incomes; and marked increases in transfer payments (e.g. federal, state income assistance), specifically for disability, retirement, and medical payments. These negative changes that come with exposure to increased Chinese import competition are not evenly distributed among the US population; Autor et al. note the possible contribution to “public ambivalence toward globalization” along with “specific anxiety” about growing trade with China.

Feigenbaum and Hall (2015) find that localized economic shocks from trade competition, specifically Chinese import competition, cause members of the United States House of Representatives representing affected districts to vote in the more protectionist direction on roll-call votes on trade bills while leaving voting patterns on all other types of bills unchanged. Employing two separate quantitative techniques to prove the robustness of their findings, Feigenbaum and Hall argue that the effects of such localized shocks on political behavior affect incumbent behavior without a statistically significant observed corresponding “punishing” of incumbents in succeeding electoral contests after a shock. Incumbents employ the very public and highly symbolic ritual of the roll-call vote to not only cast their vote, but to signal to their constituents that they are actively responding to negative effects of a localized trade shock.

They also note the voters’ difficulty in assigning responsibility to individual legislators for economic shocks from trade, thus possibly illustrating the uniqueness of trade shocks, among the extensive list of other negative economic shocks, in that electoral wrath is not immediate or directed when constituents feel or perceive the negative effects of an international trade shock.

Dell et al. (forthcoming) apply the index for change in international competition per worker per municipality—as devised by Autor et al. (2013)—to construct a model for changes in manufacturing employment per municipality in Mexico. Dell et al. differs from Autor et al. in that the trade relationship of interest is not import competition, but rather export competition in a common foreign market, namely the export competition faced by Mexico generated by China in the common market of the United States.

Dell et al. finds that “trade-induced job loss” causes significant increases in violence, an effect that is particularly acute in municipalities with transnational criminal organizations, with the argument resting on the logic that (negative) changes in local labor markets that make drug trafficking more lucrative in a locality lowers the opportunity cost of criminal activity and spurs violent fighting between drug trafficking

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groups as they compete for control over a municipality.

With regard to Taiwan’s exposure to Chinese trade competition, Taiwan’s economy is recognized to be particularly linked to the mainland’s, especially after liberalization of trade restrictions began in earnest in the 1980s. Lin (2005) finds that Taiwan’s sizable trade imbalance with China (a surplus at the time) not an immediate cause of concern (a la DPP rhetoric regarding economic ties with the mainland) but notes Taiwan’s diminishing trade surplus with the United States in favor of a ballooning trade surplus with China, caused by the Taiwanese investment boom in the mainland, shifting of intermediate goods exports from the United States to China, and localization of China-based Taiwanese business operations. Lin concludes by attributing the cross-Strait trade imbalance to the relative success of the Taiwanese industry in upgrading itself and maintaining an edge in comparative advantage over its mainland counterparts amid the growing integration of business operations across the Taiwan Strait.

This fairly optimistic outlook on deepening cross-Strait economic ties, however, is not shared by Tanner (2007), who describes Taipei’s approach to economic integration as defined by two contradictory forces: (1) a “powerful desire” to use China’s burgeoning economic growth to improve Taiwan’s own international economic competitiveness15 ; and (2) a constant wariness of economic overdependence on the mainland, which would otherwise give Beijing another tool to advance its policies upon its rival government in Taipei. Tanner also details the growing fear among certain segments of the Taiwanese electorate of the “hollowing out” of Taiwanese industry with the movement of high-tech industries (and their high-skilled labor) across the Strait and the general impotence of Taipei’s wide array of policies seeking to slow the pace of economic integration and seriously monitor investment flows going both ways across the Strait.

While nowhere near a representative sample of Taiwanese voters, the peculiar predicament of the Taishang, the Taiwanese business community, in the literature warrants a brief survey as well. Keng and Schubert (2010) investigate the common “allegation” that the Taishang are agents of Chinese reunification efforts, sorting the possible political roles for the Taishang in cross-Strait relations into four typologies (two benefiting Beijing and two benefiting Taipei) and qualitatively reasoning out the realistic possibility that the Taishang fall clearly into one of the four role types. Keng and Schubert argue against construing the Taishang as effective agents of Chinese political influence on Taiwan or lobbyists for Taiwan in China, instead labeling Taishang as an “effective stabilizer” of the cross-Strait relationship owing to their outsized economic significance for Beijing—as directors of Taiwanese investment flows, conduits of high-tech and high-skilled knowledge, and absorbers of sizable segments of the massive Chinese labor market—but also drawing attention to the need for more caution and speedier economic integration efforts in the future.

Tsai (2017), in his detailing of the long-term trends of Taiwanese investment in the mainland 15 Among other factors, Taiwan’s peculiar international legal status is a significant barrier to conducting business, a barrier made all the more higher in cost if the business being conducted is done in the name of a government. The insistence by Beijing and Taipei to recognize one and terminate all ties with the other and refusal to recognize and collaborate with each other in international forums complicates matters intensely, e.g. Cho (2005), who details the political games at the World Trade Organization by the two rival governments to advance their respective interpretations on cross-Strait political relations and the “one China” issue.

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since 1991, outright claims Taishang are neither political agents nor economic hostages, with Taishang voting for the pro-China KMT being a direct consequence of their desire for “stable and predictable” China policy. Additionally, Leng (2017), in his examination of Taiwan’s information technology sector as a case study in evolving cross-Strait economic relations, notes Taiwanese firms’ embrace and incorporation of the massive Chinese market as a critical component in their global supply chains and questions the viability of such arrangements in the face of rising Chinese economic, technological, and political clout. China is rapidly advancing into sectors formerly Taiwan’s sole domain in the cross-Strait economic relationship; Leng briefly mentions proposals for further economic integration with the mainland to accommodate for imminent groundbreaking changes before acknowledging their political infeasibility in Taipei16 and warning of the “hard choices on the domestic front” that Taiwan must ultimately make for the future of its own national development.

Theoretical Argument

I advance the following theoretical argument with the explicit positive approach of seeking to identify if exposure to economic interactions with China is a driver of Taiwanese electoral results. This construction makes it impossible for me to ascertain if economics is the sole driver of Taiwanese voting behavior; likewise, I do not intend to rule out other possible issues as key drivers at Taiwanese polls.

In line with the conclusions drawn by Stockton (2010) about the feasible applicability of general voting theory on Taiwan’s democracy, I assume Taiwanese voters behave rationally, namely that voters will vote for the best option to serve their own interests. Additionally, I assume Taiwanese voters are wellinformed about the situation surrounding the cross-Strait relationship, specifically the economic dimension thereof.

I propose two possible perceptions of the cross-Strait economic relationship: (1) “competition,” in which Taiwanese voters perceive China’s trade to be in direct competition with Taiwan’s trade in essentially a zero-sum interaction, especially in a common foreign market; and (2) “cooperation,” in which Taiwanese voters perceive China’s trade as a feasible cooperative entity able to benefit Taiwan’s trade in a non-zero-sum interaction owing to recognized economic integration with the mainland. This bifurcated construction of possible perceptions of the nature of China’s trade yield two possible outcomes with regards to vote share, which neatly corresponds with the two major coalitions that have defined Taiwanese politics since the 1990s.

If Taiwanese voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship as primarily competitive, voters more exposed to Chinese trade competition should vote to protect themselves at elections and cast ballots for the coalition, policies of which strengthen Taiwanese trade competitiveness against China in “pro-Taiwan” voting behavior. The Pan-Green coalition—with its wariness of the increased economic integration with the mainland, advocacy for diversification of Taiwan’s trade partners away from solely 16 E.g., the “Sunflower Movement” protests that managed to occupy the buildings housing the national legislature and the headquarters of the executive branch in 2014. The ratification of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement and concerns regarding Taiwan’s economic over-dependence on China were the cited cause of the protests.

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China (namely, towards Southeast Asia) to offset losses to Chinese competition, and stress on “Taiwan” branding to distinguish Taiwanese exports from similar Chinese exports—would be the benefactor of such pro-Taiwan voting behavior. I construct the following hypothesis in terms of voting away from the “proChina” Pan-Blue coalition for sake of comparability of results and consistency.17

H1: If voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship as competitive, the voters more exposed to Chinese trade competition will vote away from Pan-Blue candidates

Additionally, a competitive perception of the cross-Strait economic relationship would also generate wariness of further economic integration with the mainland, owing to concerns over the loss of Taiwan’s comparative advantages. Voters with a competitive perception view the risk of the mainland incorporating Taiwanese resources—accessed through deeper economic integration—as too high and too large a cost in a potential trade-off with increased cross-Strait trade replacing trade lost to Chinese competition in other (foreign) markets. Thus, voters more exposed to direct trade links with China (i.e., exports to China) should also vote to protect themselves by voting Pan-Green at elections in order to slow the pace (or outright limit) further economic integration in favor of diversifying trade partners. Again, for the sake of consistency and comparability of results, I construct the following hypothesis as a move away from the “pro-China” Pan-Blue coalition.

H2: If voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship as competitive, voters more highly exposed to direct export links with China will vote away from Pan-Blue candidates..

On the other hand, if voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship as primarily cooperative, voters more exposed to direct trade activity with China (i.e., exports to China) should—while still voting for their own best interest—vote for the coalition that seeks to liberalize trade restrictions with the mainland. This is in order to open up additional economic interactions with China and to benefit more greatly from China’s comparatively breakneck economic growth. The Pan-Blue coalition, which has consistently pressed for further liberalization of cross-Strait economic ties and implemented economic integration agreements with China, would be the recipient of votes cast with a “cooperative” perception of the cross-Strait economic relationship.

H3: If voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship as cooperative, voters more highly exposed to direct export links with China will vote Pan-Blue.

With the same cooperative perception of cross-Strait economic ties, voters highly exposed to

17 While there is not a formal coalition for the diverse array of third parties, many of which are single-issue local

parties (e.g. the Hakka Party 客家黨, or the Kinmen Gaoliang Party 金門高粱黨), there are enough third parties to siphon votes away from the two mainstream coalitions such that not voting for one coalition does not automatically guarantee that vote goes to the opposing coalition. Additionally, independents of varying policy positions do attract significant amounts of the vote at certain elections, e.g. Ko Wen-je, the incumbent Mayor of Taipei City.

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Chinese trade competition should vote Pan-Blue at elections. The deepening of cross-Strait economic ties should offset any economic losses in foreign economic markets as a consequence of Chinese trade competitiveness.

H4: If voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship as cooperative, voters more highly exposed to Chinese trade competition will vote Pan-Blue.

Lastly, in line with the two assumptions on the rationality and well-informed nature of Taiwanese voters, I assume voters can discriminate between the two types of economic interactions with China (trade competition versus trade linkage). Controlling for the other type of interaction, greater exposure to Chinese trade competition should cause voters to move away from the Pan-Blue coalition while higher exposure to direct export links with China should cause voters to vote for the Pan-Blue coalition. This crude approximation of the multiple layers of the cross-Strait economic relationship—which is nowhere near the more realistic exercise of plotting all possible intermediate perceptions on my constructed competitioncooperation perception spectrum—outlines my hypothesis that most closely illustrates a pragmatic voting approach on such a complicated issue.

H5: Holding the other type of interaction constant, voters more highly exposed to Chinese trade competition will vote away from Pan-Blue candidates and voters more highly exposed to direct export links with China will vote Pan-Blue.

This last hypothesis essentially portrays Taiwanese voters as sufficiently sophisticated to properly attribute differing effects of each main type of economic interaction with the mainland in order to substantiate a truly mixed assessment of the cross-Strait economic relationship (i.e., a “love-hate”18 relationship).The practical implications of it depend on the actual magnitude of each interaction’s respective statistically significant coefficient. The net direction of the vote swing cannot be definitively determined at the theoretical stage; the mixed literature on the matter are of little assistance as well.

Empirical Design

In order to test the hypotheses constructed in the section above, I construct indices to measure exposure to Chinese export competition and exposure to direct export links to China (i.e., Taiwan’s exports to China) following Autor et al. (2013) and Dell et al. (forthcoming). I then employ a time-series crosssection linear-log regression analysis to test the relationship between each constructed index and the PanBlue vote share at local executive (county-level) elections, with controls for population, voter turnout, party incumbency at the national (president and legislature) and local executive (magistrate and mayor) levels, and fixed effects for township, year, and township-year interactions. The controls are selected to account for generally recognized non-economic factors that may influence vote share and thus confound any observed results. Three regression models are used: one with the index measuring exposure to Chinese 18 I borrow this term, as coined in a discussion over possible results, from my esteemed TA, Rafael Ch.

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export competition (hereinafter the “competitive model”); one with the index measuring direct export links to China (hereinafter the “cooperative model”); and one with both indices in the same regression to control for each other (hereinafter the “mixed model”).

Data

The first group of data needed is for the construction of the exposure index. Per the stipulations of Dell et al. (forthcoming, June 2019), the exposure index is constructed as follows:

where ΔICW(iy) is the change in international competition per worker faced by Taiwanese township i between the initial year 0 and year y. L(ij,0) is the employment of industry j in township i in the initial year, L(Tj,0) is the total initial Taiwanese employment for industry j, and L(i0) is the total employment in municipality i. I adopt the interpretation given by Dell et al. for ΔICW(iy): “the change in exposure to international competition per worker in municipality i” in terms of United States dollars, with a higher value for a township indicating the proportionally larger share of employment in the township in industries where exports are predicted to grow, given the values of initial baseline year 0.

The time-sensitive component ΔUC(jy), the predicted change in exports, in industry j between year 0 and year y, is composed as follows:

where Exp(j,0) is the value of exports in industry j goods, Exp(0) is the total value of exports in the initial year, and ΔExp(y) is the change in total value of exports for year y compared to the initial year.

This index ΔICW(iy) is chosen to measure exposure owing to its use in the trade competition literature and its relative flexibility in constructing different indices for different country-partner pairs with fairly limited amounts of data. The component that determines the actual meaning of the index (i.e., exposure to what trading interaction) is the predicted change in exports ΔUC(jy). For the “competitive model,” the index measures exposure to Chinese trade competition in a common foreign market and uses data for Chinese exports to the United States, as the United States is the chief foreign market for both China and Taiwan (Clarke 2008). For the “cooperative model,” the index uses data for Taiwanese exports to China to measure exposure to direct trade links with China. The “mixed model” is simply the two aforementioned indices contained in the same regression; no further modification of the exposure index is necessary.

Two types of data are needed to construct the exposure index: employment data by industry by township in Taiwan, and export data for the relevant country pairing. Employment data is drawn from the 1996 edition of the “Industry and Service Census” administered by the Statistics Bureau, National

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Statistics of the ROC. The quinquennial survey, specifically the Chinese-language edition of it, collects data at the county-level administrative unit regarding the number and types of businesses, individuals employed, and average salary by township-industry. In 1996, the categories of industries numbered ten: mining; manufacturing; construction; water and gas utilities; wholesale trade, retail trade, and food services; transportation, storage, and communications; finance, insurance, and real estate; industrial and commercial services; and other miscellaneous social, personal, and related community services.

Export data for the “competition” index is drawn from the World Bank’s World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) database. Exports from China to the United States in the period of 1992-2017, as reported

by China in United States dollars, are classified by the World Bank’s product group categories, numbering 16: animal; chemicals; food products; footwear; fuels; hides and skins; machinery and electronics; metals; minerals; miscellaneous; plastic or rubber; stone and glass; textiles and clothing; transportation; vegetables; and wood products. For the “cooperation” index, data regarding Taiwanese exports to China in the period of 1995-2018 were drawn from the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the ROC, which reported 21 distinct categories along with a miscellaneous product classification.19

The database of the Central Election Commission of the ROC provided the electoral results needed to generate the dependent variable of interest (vote share of the Pan-Blue coalition) along with controls for population, voter turnout, and incumbency. Elections for local (county-level) executives— namely magistrates of counties, mayors of provincial cities, and mayors of special municipalities—are selected as the elections of interest owing to their timing in between presidential elections (a la “midterm elections” in the United States). As the first immediate level of local government under the national government, elections for local county-level executives allows voters to reasonably vote not only for short-term interests, but also to signal the incumbent national president and legislature on voters’ relative satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the conduct of the national government, especially when the same party controls both the national and local governments. The relatively lower stakes of these elections may induce voters to vote more genuinely than at higher-stakes elections, such as the quadrennial contest for president.

The election database, including the local electoral cycles of 1997-8, 2001-2, 2005-6, 2009-10, 2014, and 201820, also contains the number of registered voters and the valid ballots cast at election at the township level. As the central government only conducts a national census every ten years (the last one being in 2010), I take advantage of Taiwan’s “opt-out” voting system—namely, so long an individual is registered (in accordance with the law) with a local government, the Central Electoral Commission will mail a ballot if the individual is eligible—to serve as a proxy for population per township. Results are listed by candidate name, official party endorsement or registration, raw vote count, and vote share in the township. The party identification of incumbents is also present in the dataset. Over the two decades of direct local executive elections, 16 distinct registered political parties have contested the elections along with a sizable number of non-affiliated independents. Electoral districts are fortunately identical in boundaries with township administrative boundaries, which spares additional effort needed in splicing and 19 Please refer to the appendix for the full names of the product categories for Taiwan’s exports to China.

20 Taiwan did not synchronize its local level elections for counties/provincial cities and special municipalities until 2014. Prior to that, counties/provincial cities had elections first, followed by special municipalities within a year.

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dicing vote share across administrative boundaries, cf. congressional districts for the United States House of Representatives.

Variables21

The following variables, listed in order of variables of interest, controls, and fixed effect terms, are used for the time-series cross-section linear-log regression analysis. With the dataset essentially a panel dataset by township-year (coding, YEAR), the independent variable of interest is the logged exposure index, specified for the particular model (lag1_deltaICWi for the “competitive model”; lag1_ROC_deltaICWi for the “cooperative model”); the dependent variable of interest is vote share for the Pan-Blue coalition (vote_ share_BLUE), although vote shares are also calculated for the KMT (vote_percentageKMT), the opposing PanGreen coalition (vote_share_GREEN), and the DPP (vote_percentageDPP). Control variables are the population proxy (eligiblevoters), voter turnout (voterturnout), party identification of the incumbent at the local executive level by coalition (incumb_local_BLUE, incumb_local_GREEN), party identification of the incumbent at the national executive by coalition (incumb_pres_BLUE, incumb_pres_GREEN), and party identification of the party controlling the national legislature (incumb_lifayuan_BLUE, incumb_lifayuan_GREEN). Fixed effect terms are fixed effects for the township (i.coding), the year (i.YEAR), and the interaction term for townshipyear fixed effects (c.coding#YEAR).

The indices are constructed by mapping the relevant export categories, reported by either WITS or the Bureau of Foreign Trade, onto the industry employment categories provided by the “Industry and Service Census.”22 I construct three versions of each model’s index: the exposure index of the preceding year only, lagged by one year (lag1_deltaICWi, lag1_ROC_deltaICWi); the average value of the index for the preceding two years, lagged by one year (twoyravg, ROC_twoyravg); and the average value of the index for the preceding four years, lagged by one year (fouryravg, ROC_fouryravg). The purpose of the two averaged indices is to test (in passing) for any particular “midterm voting” behavior or “full term voting” behavior. For the former, voters cast their votes as judgment of the performance of the incumbent national government over the first two years of their term; for the latter, voters cast their votes as judgment of the local executive’s performance over the entirety of the preceding term. Note that the raw indices are reported in units of United States dollars per worker (per specific municipality, if relevant).

Due to the wide and uneven spread of the indices across the 369 municipalities across the six election cycles, I log the indices to normalize the indices and produce interpretable results. For illustrative purposes, the raw one-year lagged index for exposure to Chinese trade competition (lag1_deltaICWi) ranges from 0 to 353,475.9 (mean of 32140.76 and standard deviation of 29052.34) while the logged version of the same index (loglag1_deltaICWi) ranges from 6.257276 to 12.7557 (mean of 9.919438 and standard deviation of 1.094625).

The dependent variable of interest, the vote share of the Pan-Blue coalition (vote_share_BLUE), is reported in terms of a proportion ranging from a value of 0.0000 to 1.0000. Note that this proportion does not necessarily imply that the party or coalition ended up winning a particular township or the wider 21 Please see the appendix for a table of summary statistics.

22 For the exact mapping of the export categories onto the employment categories, please see the appendix.

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county-level executive position, as vote_share_BLUE (and the other vote share variables) are calculated by summing up the individual vote shares of the various candidates contesting county-level executive posts disaggregated at the township level. The county-level executive, like the national-level executive, is elected in a straight plurality ballot. The 16 political parties that contested local executive elections over the past two decades are classified as belonging to either the Pan-Blue coalition, the Pan-Green coalition, or neither coalition on the basis of their positions regarding the issues of unification/independence and whether or not to proceed with further deepening of economic ties and economic integration with the mainland.23 Vote shares were aggregated at the township level to produce one overall vote share for each township.

Eligible voters (eligiblevoters), as a proxy for population, are reported in raw population numbers.

Voter turnout (voterturnout), as calculated by the Central Election Commission as the number of ballots cast divided over the total number of eligible voters in a township, is reported as a proportion between values of 0.0000 and 1.0000. All incumbency variables are dummies, scaled from 0 to 1, with a 1 noting the relevant coalition (BLUE or GREEN) controlling the specified office or institution (local, pres, lifayuan) at time of election.

Fixed effect terms generated for the purpose of the regression are township fixed effects (i.coding), year fixed effects (i.YEAR), and the interaction term for township-year fixed effects (c.coding#YEAR). Fixed effects are employed for the purpose of controlling for the wide diversity of economic attributes (among other factors) across the 369 townships, possible time-related variation across electoral cycles, and particular time- and township -specific variation that may confound the effect of factors of interest.

Regression Model

The mathematical formula for the linear-log regression analysis is as follows. For the “competition model,” one-year lagged exposure index (Chinese trade competition, i.e., Chinese exports to the United States) on Pan-Blue vote share:

where Y is the predicted Pan-Blue vote share (ideally vote_share_BLUE); β1 is the coefficient of interest for the independent variable of logged one-year lagged exposure index (coded on Stata as loglag1_deltaICWi); β2 through β6 are the coefficients for control variables for population (eligiblevoters), voter turnout (voterturnout), incumbency at the local executive level (incumb_local_BLUE), incumbency for president (incumb_pres_BLUE), and incumbency for control of the national legislature (incumb_lifayuan_BLUE); γi(coding)i is the term for township fixed effects for township i; δy(YEAR)y is the term for fixed effects for year y; and [γi(coding)i * δy(YEAR)y] is the interaction term for fixed effects for township i in year y.

23 See the appendix for the full list of parties and the mapped coalitions.

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Additional regressions were run with the two- and four-year averaged indices (twoyravg, fouryravg; logged as logtwoyravg and logfouryravg) replacing the one-year lagged index (lag1_deltaICWi)

For the “cooperative model,” one-year lagged exposure index (direct export links with China, i.e., Taiwan’s exports to China) on Pan-Blue vote share:

where Y is the predicted Pan-Blue vote share (ideally vote_share_BLUE) and the only change is β1 being the coefficient of interest for the independent variable of logged one-year lagged exposure index (coded on Stata as loglag1_ROC_deltaICWi).

Additional regressions were run with the two- and four-year averaged indices (ROC_twoyravg, ROC_fouryravg; logged as logROC_twoyravg and logROC_fouryravg) replacing the one-year lagged index (lag1_ ROC_deltaICWi, logged as loglag1_ROC_deltaICWi).

For the “mixed model,” which is the two one-year lagged exposure indices side by side in the same regression model on Pan-Blue vote share:

where Y is the predicted Pan-Blue vote share (ideally vote_share_BLUE) and the coefficients of interest are β1 and β2, for the independent variables of logged one-year lagged exposure to Chinese trade competition (loglag1_deltaICWi) and direct export links to China (loglag1_ROC_deltaICWi); the remainder are control variables (β3 through β7) or fixed effect terms (γi(coding)i , δy(YEAR)y , [γi(coding)i * δy(YEAR)y]). Additional regressions, as in the above two single-index models, were run with the two- and four-year averaged indices.

Results

The results of my regression model are presented in three parts: (1) the two single-index models and the resulting Taiwanese perception of the cross-Strait economic relationship; (2) findings of the “mixed model”; and (3) the brief analysis of “midterm” or “full term” voting behavior. I find statistically significant negative change in vote share for Pan-Blue candidates across the two single-index models, suggesting that Taiwanese voters perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship as primarily competitive in nature and confirming hypotheses H1 and H2. In the “mixed model,” I find statistically significant results for both indices; controlling for each other, the directions of the coefficients confirm hypothesis H5, confirming that holding all else constant, Taiwanese voters behave rationally when parsing specific facets of the complicated cross-Strait economic relationship and vote in their best interest. The ultimate overall

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perception of the cross-Strait economic relationship is mixed.

“Competition” versus “Cooperation”

TABLE 1 and TABLE 2 display the regression results for each model across the three different versions of the same respective exposure index. The “competitive model,” with the independent variable as the logged per capita dollar amount of exposure to Chinese export competition in the United States market, renders a statistically significant (to the 0.05 level) negative coefficient across all three time variations of the exposure index, with effect size diminishing over longer averaged periods of the index. All else equal—when controlling for population, voter turnout, three levels of incumbency, and fixed effects for township, year, and township-year—a one percent increase in exposure per worker to Chinese export competition in the United States market on average causes a 0.0996 percentage point drop in votes for Pan-Blue candidates at local executive elections. A 95% confidence interval for change in Pan-Blue vote share in this competitive one-year lagged only exposure index model is between -.1768046 and -.022463 percentage points (a drop of roughly 0.02 to 0.18 percentage points). When standardized, the predicted drop in Pan-Blue vote share given one standard deviation increase in the exposure index is 0.695 standard deviations—a fairly sizable (if not noticeable) vote swing.

The “cooperation model,” as an alternative model to test the Taiwanese electorate’s overall perception of the cross-Strait economic relationship, finds similarly statistically significant (to the 0.05 level) negative changes in Pan-Blue vote share across all three variations of the exposure index, with a larger coefficient size that, like the “competitive model,” diminishes over longer averaged periods of the exposure index. In the case of this model, holding all else equal—controlling for population, voter turnout, three levels of incumbency, and fixed effects for township, year, and township-year—a one percent increase in exposure per worker to Taiwanese exports to China on average causes a drop of 0.204 percentage points in votes for Pan-Blue candidates at local executive elections. The 95% confidence interval in this case is -.3613849 to -.0459123, namely a drop in Pan-Blue vote share of 0.046 to 0.36 percentage points. When standardized, an one-standard-deviation increase in per worker exposure to direct export links with China causes a drop of 1.967 standard deviations in Pan-Blue vote share—a considerably sizable change in vote share, especially when compared to the prior model.

These findings, in line with the predictions of hypotheses of H1 and H2, suggest that Taiwanese voters do, on average, perceive the cross-Strait economic relationship in a competitive light. Exposure to either main economic interaction—competition or cooperation—both yields voting behavior away from the “pro-China” Pan-Blue coalition, which under my proposed mechanism is grounded in rational voting behavior seeking to protect one’s best interest. Not only do Taiwanese voters vote away from Pan-Blue candidates in the “competitive” model, which suggests a possible preference for protectionist measures against encroaching Chinese trade competitiveness abroad, they also vote away from Pan-Blue candidates in the “cooperation” model as well. Such tendency may indicate a general wariness (if not rejection) of the Pan-Blue position that increased economic integration with the mainland can supplement economic losses in other markets, especially if Taiwanese voters perceive the losses are caused by China’s growing trade competitiveness. The highly significant (to the 0.01 level) positive vote swings for the DPP and the Pan-Green coalition—across both models and variations of the respective indices—offer ample support

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for this conclusion.

However, I cannot definitively rule out other factors as drivers of such vote swing away from the Pan-Blue coalition; perhaps the influence of the charged debate over national identity and the emergence of some “Taiwanese” identity distinct from “Chinese identity” may also drive voters away from the more “pro-China” Pan-Blue coalition. Alternatively, with the KMT vote share (vote_percentageKMT) in mind as the dependent variable of interest, the vote swing away from the KMT is significant to the 0.01 level across both models and the six duration-varying indices and larger in coefficient size than the overall Pan-Blue loss in vote share. The splintering of the KMT and the rise of viable independent candidates not affiliated with the Pan-Blue coalition securing votes would be another possible explanation for the swing against Pan-Blue, and more specifically, KMT candidates at local elections (e.g. Choi 2015).

TABLE 1 Competitive Model (All Indices), Camp & Leading Party Vote Share VARIABLES

(1) One-year lagged index

log of Chinese Export

-0.0996**

Competition Exposure

[-2.539]

Index, lagged 1 year

(0.03924)

(2) Two-year average index

log of Chinese Export

-0.0951**

Competition Export

[-2.539]

Index, 2-year average

(0.03745)

(3) Four-year average index

log of Chinese Export

-0.0836**

Competition Export

[-2.539]

Index, 4-year average

(0.03291)

Constant

1.642***

1.586***

1.459***

[3.766]

[3.825]

[3.981]

(0.43586)

(0.41460)

(0.36648)

Controls?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Observations

1,836

1,836

1,836

R-squared

0.538

0.538

0.538

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 T-statistics in brackets; robust standard errors in parentheses.

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(1) One-year lagged index

(2) Two-year average index

33

(3) Four-year average index

The list of controls are: population proxy (eligiblevoters), voter turnout (voterturnout), three levels of incumbency (incumb_local_BLUE, incumb_pres_BLUE, incumb_lifayuan_BLUE), and fixed effects terms (i.coding, i.YEAR, c.coding#YEAR).

TABLE 2 Cooperative Model (All Indices), Camp & Leading Party Vote Share VARIABLES

(1)

(2)

(3)

One-year lagged index

Two-year average index

Four-year average index

Vote share of all Pan-Blue

Vote share of all Pan-Blue

Vote share of all Pan-Blue

candidates

candidates

candidates

log of Exposure Index

-0.204**

of Taiwan's Exports to

[-2.539]

China, lagged by 1 year

(0.08021)

log of Exposure Index

-0.179**

of Taiwan's Exports to

[-2.539]

China, 2-year average

(0.07059)

log of Exposure Index

-0.112**

of Taiwan's Exports to

[-2.539]

China, 4-year average

(0.04431)

Constant

2.544***

2.288***

1.635***

[3.238]

[3.336]

[3.773]

(0.78571)

(0.68591)

(0.43341)

Controls?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Observations

1,836

1,836

1,836

R-squared

0.538

0.538

0.538

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 T-statistics in brackets; robust standard errors in parentheses The list of controls are: population proxy (eligiblevoters), voter turnout (voterturnout), three levels of incumbency (incumb_local_BLUE, incumb_pres_BLUE, incumb_lifayuan_BLUE), and fixed effects terms (i.coding, i.YEAR, c.coding#YEAR).

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Mixed Perceptions

The “mixed model,” which incorporates both indices in the same regression as controls for each other, supports hypothesis H5. Namely, Taiwanese voters can and do discriminate between different facets of the cross-Strait economic relationship and vote accordingly. TABLE 3 displays the results of the regression. Unlike the single-index models, where the significance level was to 0.05, the “mixed model” finds statistically significant results to the 0.01 level for both indices across all three time-averaged variations. Additionally, for Pan-Blue vote share, the size of the coefficient grows as the index accounts for longer durations of time—the opposite of the single-index models.

For the one-year lagged index for exposure to Chinese trade competition, holding all else equal— controls for number of eligible voters, voter turnout, three levels of incumbency, and township, year, township-year fixed effects, and the effect of the index for exposure to direct export links with China— for every one percent increase in per worker exposure to Chinese trade competition, Pan-Blue vote share diminishes by 0.174 percentage points, with a 95% confidence interval of the drop being between -.2836371 and -.0641872 (a drop of 0.06 to nearly three-tenths of a percentage point). The standardized relationship is given a one standard deviation increase in exposure to Chinese trade competition, Pan-Blue vote share declines by 1.213 standard deviations. For the other index—one-year lagged index for exposure to direct export links with China—a one percent increase in exposure to Taiwanese exports to China yields an increase of 0.152 percentage points for Pan-Blue candidates at local executive elections. The 95% confidence interval for the increase is between .0827418 and .2209051 (an increase of 0.08 to 0.22 percentage points). When standardized, a one standard deviation increase in exposure to direct export links with China yields a 1.466 standard deviation increase in Pan-Blue vote share at local executive elections.

Given these mixed results, in line with hypothesis H5, Taiwanese voters do in fact behave rationally; they vote against policy positions that would weaken them in the competitive framing of the cross-Strait economic relationship, despite the fact that voting to maintain (if not further expand) cross-Strait economic ties to continue reaping the economic benefits of the cross-Strait relationship. Additionally, the highly significant, inverted directions, and larger coefficient sizes of the two coefficients for the DPP and PanGreen candidates at large suggests a fairly bifurcated political arena when it comes to policy preferences for the cross-Strait economic relationship.

Midterm Voting?

A summary test for whether or not “midterm voting” (or even “full term voting”) is a statistically significant phenomena in Taiwanese local executive elections returns inconclusive results. While in general the two-year and four-year averaged indices across the two single-index models have smaller coefficient sizes than the one-year lagged index used to generate the results above, the fact that all indices report statistically significant results means that no clear distinction can be made between the three indices per model. Are voters judging the incumbent national administration (usually having just served two of four years for the term) when they go to the polls? Are voters consciously evaluating the entire period since the last local election when casting a ballot? The lack of a clear difference between the statistical significance of the three indices across the two single-index models or even the mixed model makes drawing conclusions

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about the validity or even existence of some mechanism for midterm or full term voting difficult.

TABLE 3 Mixed Model (All Indices), Camp & Leading Party Vote Share VARIABLES

(1)

(2)

(3)

One-year lagged index

Two-year average index

Four-year average index

Vote share of all Pan-Blue

Vote share of all Pan-Blue

Vote share of all Pan-Blue

candidates

candidates

candidates

log of Chinese Export

-0.174***

Competition Exposure

[-3.117]

Index, lagged 1 year

(0.05580)

log of Exposure Index

0.152***

of Taiwan's Exports to

[4.322]

China, lagged by 1 year

(0.03513)

log of Chinese Export

-0.176***

Competition Export

[-3.177]

Index, 2-year average

(0.05537)

log of Exposure Index

0.152***

of Taiwan's Exports to

[4.345]

China, 2-year average

(0.03507)

log of Chinese Export

-0.198***

Competition Export

[-3.462]

Index, 4-year average

(0.05719)

log of Exposure Index

0.154***

of Taiwan's Exports to

[4.532]

China, 4-year average

(0.03400)

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Constant

0.969***

0.989***

1.218***

[3.306]

[3.425]

[3.834]

(0.29302)

(0.28867)

(0.31771)

Controls? Observations

Yes

Yes

Yes

R-squared

1,836

1,836

1,836

0.538

0.538

0.538

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 T-statistics in brackets; robust standard errors in parentheses The list of controls are: population proxy (eligiblevoters), voter turnout (voterturnout), three levels of incumbency (incumb_local_BLUE, incumb_local_GREEN, incumb_pres_BLUE, incumb_pres_GREEN, incumb_lifayuan_BLUE, incumb_ lifayuan_GREEN), and fixed effects terms (i.coding, i.YEAR, c.coding#YEAR).

Conclusion and Discussion

The findings of the empirical approach advanced herein suggest that Taiwanese voters, on average, view the cross-Strait economic relationship in a primarily competitive framing, possibly in a zerosum manner, and vote away from pro-China Pan-Blue candidates. This is to protect themselves from rising Chinese trade competitiveness and reject the presumption that expansion of economic ties with the mainland will offset economic losses incurred in foreign markets attributed to Chinese export competition.

A one percent increase in exposure to Chinese trade competitiveness on the logged exposure index drives Pan-Blue vote share down by 0.0996 percentage points (significant to the 0.05 level), while a one percent increase in exposure to direct export links with China drops Pan-Blue vote share by 0.204 percentage points (significant to the 0.05 level). However, when indices for trade competition and direct linkage are regressed together, Taiwanese voters have voting behavior that is fairly rational: one percent higher on trade exposure decreases Pan-Blue vote share by 0.174 percentage points (significant to the 0.01 level) and one percent higher in direct export links yields an increase in Pan-Blue vote share of 0.152 percentage points (significant to the 0.01 level).

The first practical implication of my findings is that Taiwanese voters do appear to behave rationally, a conclusion in line with the suggestion by Stockton (2010) that general electoral theories can be applied to Taiwan’s electorate and democracy. Second, Taiwanese voters remain particularly wary about expanding economic ties with the mainland, with the overall perception of the cross-Strait economic relationship being primarily competitive. However, the two opposing directions of vote swing for the indices of competition and cooperation, as noted in the “mixed model,” renders cross-Strait economic ties as a potentially unreliable predictor of vote share. Given the fairly close margin between the two changes in predicted vote share under the “mixed model,” other factors and issues, used in conjunction with crossStrait economic ties, may be a better predictor of vote share at local elections. The construction of my theoretical argument does not expressly rule out the importance of other issues as key drivers of Taiwanese voting behavior. Perhaps the oft-cited desire of the Taiwanese electorate to maintain the political status quo precludes long-term voting for Pan-Green coalition, with its inclinations for pushing for a distinct

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“Taiwanese identity” and actual de jure independence. Maybe the splintering of the KMT is the actual cause of the swing away from Pan-Blue (and KMT) candidates? Plenty of alternative explanations exist, several of which can be rigorously tested in a quantitative setting to vet their explanatory power.

Testing the findings of this paper at the presidential, national legislative, or even local legislative levels would be a ground for future research, as the quantitative research on Taiwan remains few and far between. This paper is one of the first to systematically and quantitatively test some commonly cited explanations for particular voting behavior in Taiwan. While I approach the question of what drives Taiwanese voters from the economic angle, future work can address the national identity, military balance, and ethnic cleavage angles surrounding the contentious political environment on the island at present.

Additionally, further exploring general electorate theories developed in European and North American democracies and their relation to East Asian democracies would create important and foundational literature for future Taiwanese political science work to be based on.

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Appendix A

A1. Table of summary statistics VARIABLES

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

N

mean

sd

min

max

eligible voters

2,210

46,462

58,836

88

448,450

lag1_deltaICWi

1,845

32,141

29,052

0

353,476

loglag1_deltaICWi

1,840

9.919

1.095

6.257

12.78

lag1_ROC_deltaICWi

1,845

8,872

8,449

0

43,826

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loglag1_ROC_deltaICWi

1,840

8.342

1.516

3.360

10.69

twoyravg

1,845

30,328

28,085

0

333,924

logtwoyravg

1,840

9.814

1.165

6.035

12.72

ROC_twoyravg

1,845

8,295

8,101

0

40,080

logROC_twoyravg

1,840

8.221

1.585

3.094

10.60

fouryravg

1,845

27,707

27,339

0

331,970

logfouryravg

1,840

9.631

1.279

5.696

12.71

ROC_fouryravg

1,845

7,536

7,928

0

39,792

logROC_fouryravg

1,840

7.960

1.785

2.439

10.59

voterturnout

2,210

0.688

0.0739

0.131

0.926

vote_share_BLUE

2,214

0.474

0.157

0

1.000

A2. List of elections and participating political parties

Chinese Name

English Name

19971998

20012002

20052006

20092010

2014

2018

Local Executive

Local Executive

Local Executive

Local Executive

Local Executive

Local Executive

Independents

None

無

無

無

無

無

無

中國國 民黨

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)

PanBlue

中國國 民黨

中國國 民黨

中國國 民黨

中國國 民黨

中國國 民黨

中國國 民黨

民主進 步黨

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)

PanGreen

民主進 步黨

民主進 步黨

民主進 步黨

民主進 步黨

民主進 步黨

民主進 步黨

新黨

New Party (NP)

PanBlue

新黨

新黨

新黨

建國黨

Taiwan Independence Party (TIP)

PanGreen

建國黨

社會改 革黨

“Social Reform Party” (SRP)

None

社會改 革黨

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DON'T ROCK THE BOAT?

41

綠黨

Taiwan Green Party (Greens)

None

綠黨

親民黨

People First Party (PFP)

PanBlue

親民黨

台灣團結 聯盟

Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU)

PanGreen

台灣團結 聯盟

保護台灣 大聯盟

Taiwan Defense Alliance (TDA)

PanGreen

保護台灣 大聯盟

客家黨

Hakka Party (Hakka)

None

三等國民 公義人權 自救黨

“Self-Help Party” (SHP)

None

三等國民 公義人權 自救黨

人民民主 連線

People’s Democratic Front (PDF)

None

人民民主 連線

教科文預 算保障e 聯盟

“The e-Union Guaranteeing Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Budgets” (eUnion)

None

教科文預 算保障e 聯盟

民國黨

Republican Party (MKT)

PanBlue

民國黨

金門高 粱黨

Kinmen Kaoliang Party (KKP)

None

金門高 粱黨

樹黨

Trees Party (Trees)

None

樹黨

親民黨

客家黨

教科文預 算保障e 聯盟

Journal of Politics & International Affairs

42

YUN-DA TSAI

A3. List of export sectors and mapped employment categories A3(a). China’s exports to the United States CHINESE EXPORT CATEGORY

MAPPED 1996 TAIWANESE INDUSTRIES

All Products

All

Capital goods

**

Consumer goods

**

Intermediate goods

**

Raw materials

**

Animal

1. Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Chemicals

1. Manufacturing

Food Products

1. Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Footwear

1. Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Fuels

1. Utilities

Hides and Skins

1. Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Mach and Elec

1. Manufacturing

Metals

1. Mining

Minerals

1. Mining

Miscellaneous

**

Plastic or Rubber

1. Manufacturing

Stone and Glass

1. Mining

Textiles and Clothing

1. Manufacturing

Transportation

1. Transportation, Storage, Communications

Vegetable

1. Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Wood

1. Manufacturing

A3(b). Taiwan’s exports to China TAIWANESE EXPORT CATEGORY

MAPPED 1996 TAIWANESE INDUSTRIES

Total

ALL

Machinery and Mechanical Appliances ; Electrical Equipment ; Parts Thereof ; Sound Recorders and Reproducers, Television Image and Sound Recorders and Reproducers, and Parts and Accessories of Such Articles

Manufacturing

Products of The Chemical or Allied Industries

Manufacturing

Textiles and Textile Articles

Manufacturing

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Manufacturing

Base Metals and Articles of Base Metal

Manufacturing

43

Pulp of Wood or of other Fibrous Cellulosic Material ; Waste and Scrap of Paper or Paperboard ; Paper and Paperboard and

Manufacturing

Articles Thereof Raw Hides and Skins, Leather, Furskins and Articles Thereof ; Saddlery and Harness ; Travel Goods, Handbags and Similar Containers ; Articles of Animal Gut (Other Then Silk-Worm

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Gut) Miscellaneous manufactured Articles

Manufacturing

Optical, Photographic, Cinematographic, Measuring, Checking, Precision, Medical or Surgical Instruments and Apparatus ; Clocks and Watches ; Musical Instruments ; Parts and

Manufacturing

Accessories Tnereof Articles of Stone, Plaster, Cement, Asbestos, Mica or Similar Materials ; Ceramic Products ; Glass and Glassware Natural or Cultured Pearls. Precious or Semiprecious Stones, Precious Metals, Metals Clad with Precious Metal, and Articles

Mining

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Thereof ; Imitation Jewellery ; Coin Vehicles, Aircraft, Vessels and Associated Transport Equipment Footwear, Headgear, Umbrellas, Sun Umbrellas, Walkingsticks, Seat-sticks, Whips, Riding-crops and Parts Thereof ; Prepared Feathers and Articles Made Therewith ; Artificial

Transportation, Storage, Communications

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Flowers ; Articles of Human Hair Works of Art, Collectorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Pieces and Antiques

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Live Animals; Animal Products

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Wood and Articles of Wood ; Wood Charcoal ; Cork and Articles of Cork ; Manufactures of Straw, of Esparto or of Other Plaiting

Manufacturing

Materials ; Basketware and Wickerwork Prepared Foodstuffs; Beverages, Spirits and Vinegar; Tobacco and Manufactured Tobacco Substitutes

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Mineral Products

Mining

Vegetable Products

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

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YUN-DA TSAI

Animal or Vegetable Fats and Oils and Their Cleavage Products; Prepared Edible Fats; Animal or Vegetable Waxes

Wholesale, Retail Trade, Food Services

Arms and Ammunition ; Parts and Accessories Thereof

Manufacturing

其他 (all others)

A4. Result tables not included. Please contact author for more information.

A5. Data sources

Employment data was drawn from the quinquennial “Industry and Service Census,” specifically the 1996 edition, which can be found on the Chinese-language edition of the Statistics Bureau, National Statistics of the Republic of China site below: <https://www.stat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=2234&ctNode=543> Electoral data, consisting of county magistrate, provincial city mayoral, and special municipality mayoral elections was drawn from the database of the Central Election Commission of the ROC. Their database, accessible online, gives vote counts disaggregated all the way down to the village level along with overall statistics regarding the population at a level of administrative unit, the number of eligible voters, the demographics of the candidates, incumbency, and so on. <http://db.cec.gov.tw/> Data regarding Chinese exports to the United States were drawn from the World Bank’s World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) database, which has a fairly user-friendly interface and ample visual data representation for seeing trade data. The relevant data for use in this paper is “Product Exports by China to United States” by year. <https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Year/2017/TradeFlow/Export/ Partner/USA/Product/All-Groups> Data concerning Taiwan’s exports to mainland China is drawn from the database of the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the ROC. The interface is a bit onerous to work with, but export data by product type is readily available for download. <https://cus93.trade.gov.tw/ FSCE020F/FSCE020F?menuURL=FSCE020F> All data was either compiled directly from disparate spreadsheets via Stata or combined outside of Stata via Microsoft Excel and imported into Stata for the purposes of running the regressions. A file containing all the data and Stata files used in this paper can be downloaded from: <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GIcYToI_7R2bbzRsYcKgvOyFC0uaOJ9k/view?usp=sharing>

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“A Disquieting Pattern of Unfortunate Attachments:” Queer Women and the Pathologization of Deviant Sexualities, 1880-1920 Grace Maurer

Boston marriages were a Victorian quasi-marital formation where two unmarried women lived together as a man and wife would. The women in Boston marriages in the 19th-20th centuries were often exclusively white, wealthy, and generally well-educated career women. Simultaneously, the racialized ‘threat’ of female homosexuality began circulating in cultural discourse. Homosexuality was revealed to be prevalent in reform schools and women’s prisons, yet only the interracial lesbian relationships—marked as legibly ‘deviant’—drew institutional concern. From1886, Richard von Krafft-Ebing established sexology as a “scientific” discipline directly descended from earlier racial classification “science.” The sexologists’ theories coalesced with the institutional discourse on “deviant” lesbianism, racism, and sexism—situating the pathologization of queer women within a matrix of race, class, social status, and criminality.

Introduction

Though the 1880s-1920s are usually framed by contemporary scholars as an era of universal heteronormativity, certain forms of female queerness were widely permissible amongst privileged women, who were protected by cultural assumptions of asexual innocence. Simultaneously, queer women who already existed outside of the Victorian norms of womanhood were subject to state surveillance and intervention. The non-normative identities of surveilled queer women rendered their sexuality as legibly ‘deviant’ to the state. Early sexologists and authorities situated the ‘problem’ of female homosexuality within a matrix of race, class, and reproductive concerns, building racist and sexist assumptions into the framework that first defined lesbianism as it is understood today. The purpose of this thesis is twofold.

Firstly I will examine two forms of female queerness in the 1880s-1920s American Northeast, Boston marriages and relationships between incarcerated women. In the span of this examination, I will locate where, why, and what kinds of female queerness were identified as a ‘threat’ to society, and which were tolerated. Secondly, I will analyze the oppressive structures that attempted to contain or ‘cure’ the ‘danger’ of female homosexuality from the 1880s to the 1920s.

Often, current frameworks of sexuality are retroactively applied to historical figures and cultures,

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GRACE MAURER

which dismisses the actual understandings of sexuality of the time. The 1880s-1920s was a transitional period, from pre-World War I to the “Roaring 20s”, and some of the women historians would now consider lesbians actively rejected the label of ‘lesbian’ that had emerged during that time. The backlash to Reconstruction efforts and the racial anxieties of the post-Civil War United States, combined with legacies of racial ‘science,’ imbued the discourse on sexual deviancy with racial logic. This was done to the point where early studies of sexual ‘perversion’ were framed through a racist lens. Additionally, the medicopsychological field during this era “formed specific mechanisms of knowledge and power centering on sex” through the “hysterization of women’s bodies,” “a pedagogization of children’s sex,” “a socialization of procreative behavior,” and the “psychiatrization of perverse pleasure” (Foucault 103-105). The state viewed sexuality as an object of control, focused on managing the sexualities of women, children, and ‘perverts.’ The “hysterization of women’s bodies… thoroughly saturated” women’s bodies with “sexuality” and imposed a “biologico-moral responsibility” upon women to uphold the role of the ‘procreator’ in the nation (104). This ensured that the development of queer female oppression was dually shaped through a lens of sexist reproductive and gender roles.

The mainstream cultural understandings of white, upper-middle-class women as generally asexual outside of marriage allowed privileged queer women a great deal of freedom to engage in romantic relationships with one another before the 1920s. Lillian Faderman posits that the introduction of Freudian sexual theory stripped cultural assumptions of innocence from lesbian relationships in her book Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. Sigmund Freud’s main influences on the topic of female homosexuality arose from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and "The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman," which were published in 1905 and 1920, respectively. Here, I disagree with Faderman; I argue that Freud was not necessarily the most influential sexologist, although his ideas were the most popular sexological theories in the U.S. In Chapter 3, I detail the earlier sexologists who paved the way for Freud’s theories and methodologies, and who had equal, if not greater, impact on the field of sexology. Freud, however, is oft-cited as the “Father of Psychology,” and his unconventional theories caused enough of a commotion in the field that he is cast today as the preeminent theorist.

The women who had the freedom to engage in homosexual relationships relatively undisturbed in the late 1800s were exclusively white, usually educated career-women or otherwise wealthy from inheritance. Relationships between affluent, educated women began to take the form of ‘Boston marriages,’ or two women living together as companions as a husband and wife would. In her 1981 book, Surpassing the Love of Men, Lillian Faderman describes how Boston marriages were born out of earlier traditions of ‘romantic friendships,’ or similarly intense relationships between two women without actual cohabitation.

Faderman analyzes correspondence between women in Boston marriages in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, which was written ten years after Surpassing the Love of Men. Rose Elizabeth Cleveland and Evangeline Marrs Simpson were one couple whose letters Faderman examines in her considerations of the sexual nature of Boston marriages.

For my argument on the relative permissibility afforded to white, affluent lesbians, I also turn to Evangeline Marrs Simpson and Rose Cleveland’s relationship. Rose Cleveland was sister to U.S. President Grover Cleveland and acted as First Lady from 1885-1886 until her brother married. In 1889,

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Rose Cleveland met and fell in love with Evangeline Marrs Simpson. Evangeline and Rose began writing each other passionate letters after their first meeting, met multiple times to continue their relationship, separated for ten years while Evangeline was married to a Bishop. They later reunited after his death and moved to Italy together in 1910 (Salenius 74). In Rose Elizabeth Cleveland: First Lady and Literary Scholar, Sirpa Salenius dedicates a chapter to Rose and Evangeline’s life together. Faderman uses examples of their correspondences to show that some Boston marriages were definitively sexual as well as romantic. In her book, Salenius cites the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which led me to find “Into the Open: Lesbianism at the Turn of the Century” by Paula Petrik in the Archives (Salenius). Petrik, now a professor at George Mason University, wrote “Into the Open” as a graduate student at the University of Montana. Petrik was the first researcher to decipher and analyze the letters between Rose and Evangeline, which had previously been in an unmarked box in the Minnesota Historical Society’s Archives. “Into the Open” contains multiple excerpts from the letters, and excellently reconstructs the history of Rose and Evangeline’s romance.

While privileged women found companionship and escaped social judgment through Boston marriages, incarcerated women and girls in prisons and reform schools were heavily surveilled and their queerness policed through racialized lenses. In An American Obsession: Science, Medicine and the Place of Homosexuality in Modern Society, Jennifer Terry analyzes how racist colonial classification systems constructed the framework for emerging sexual classification systems. The racial logics Terry describes are present in “A Perversion Not Commonly Noted,” an article written by Dr. Margaret Otis in 1913, and in The Girl Problem: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York 1900-1930, a book written by Nicole Rafter and Ruth Alexander in 1998.

Otis relayed thoroughly subjective observations through an authoritative tone of medico-psychological objectivity while revealing the ways sexologists of the time rationalized sexual ‘deviancy.’ Alexander and Rafter’s work on young women in two women’s reformatories gives a much more detailed and nuanced historical analysis of “deviant” behavior.

In addition to the surveillance of subjugated women by patriarchal institutions, scrutiny towards queer women greatly proliferated following the establishment of sexology as a scientific field, and the introduction of sexological theories in America. The sexologists I analyze in chapter three are Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, and Sigmund Freud. Krafft-Ebing established sexology as a discipline in 1886 when he published Psychopathia Sexualis and coined the term ‘inversion’ to describe what would later be called homosexuality. Ellis made the groundbreaking assertion that inversion was simply a “variation” of “normal” human sexuality, and radically proposed that homosexuality was not a disease that needed to be cured in Sexual Inversion, published in 1895 (Ellis 32). Freud, in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, argued that all forms of “perversion” were developmental phases that all humans passed through, and in which some became “stuck” (Freud 1905). In 1920, Freud published “Psychogenesis of Homosexuality in a Woman,” an in-depth study of a single white, wealthy, otherwise “non-hysterical” patient in Vienna.

All three of the sexologists I analyze grounded their theories, and thus constructed the field of sexology, through the lenses of race, gender, deviance, physicality, disease, and degeneration. The institutional oppression of queer women in the U.S. and the creation of pathologizing theories by the sexologists interacted to construct female homosexuality through an intersectional framework of oppression.

This framework cemented the lenses through which female homosexuality was defined, understood, and “dealt” with by state and society. Examining how this configuration was constructed in the early-mid 1900s

Journal of Politics & International Affairs

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GRACE MAURER

reveals a formative moment for the enduring logics that privilege some queer women, dismiss others, and affect all.

As mentioned in my introductory paragraph, accounts of historical queers are often called upon as evidence that LGBTQ identity has always existed. This claim is generally made to advance a narrative that fixed sexuality is inherent in a person’s nature, and therefore homosexuals must have always existed as they do now. I argue that through a contemporary lens, women in relationships with women in the 1880s-1920s may be considered lesbians but would not have necessarily considered themselves as such.

The shifting nature of sexuality, queerness, and cultural norms are imperative in understanding historical queerness and in locating historical moments of “queer utopia” (Muñoz). Considering historical fluidity is also helpful in moving away from a linear-progressive timeline of queerness that points to a previous all-encompassing oppression, an LGBTQ Civil Rights movement beginning with the Stonewall Riots, and assumes that progress will continue to advance in the future. In this paper, I attempt to illuminate the moments of queer utopia in the 1880s-1920s and to expose the oppressive framework that was constructed through racism, classism, and surveillance during this time.

Literature Review Boston Marriages, Romantic Friendships, and Permissible Lesbian Romance

In Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Sixteenth Century to the Present, Lillian Faderman examines love between women through literature, letters, magazine articles and more to trace a lineage of female queerness from the Renaissance era to the 1980s. Faderman details specifics of Boston Marriages and romantic friendships by analyzing materials from the period of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Faderman considers the important fact that women were considered nonsexual outside of marriage until Freudian discourse proliferated in American society, which is crucial to establishing how “innocent” romance between women was gradually reframed as deviant.

Ten years later, in 1991, Faderman wrote Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, which greatly expands upon the information about Boston marriages in her previous book. In this book, Faderman elaborates upon the circumstances that gave rise to the possibility and popularity of Boston Marriages from a legacy of romantic friendships. Faderman explores how the founding of women’s colleges and expansion of career opportunities created a need for women to find partners in other women, rather than sacrifice their independence for a husband and children. Classism is also brought up in this book, which is central in understanding who was allowed to engage in lesbian relationships under society’s radar. Faderman argues that the work of the sexologists became “popular wisdom” after World War I and greatly “altered views” of female sexuality (Faderman 35). Faderman further analyzes erotic correspondence between women who rejected the label of lesbian to illustrate that their sexualities did not fit neatly within modern frameworks.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers includes excerpts of letters between Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Marrs Simpson, which were written about at length by Paula Petrik in her 1978 unpublished paper “Into the Open: Lesbianism at the Turn of the Century.” Here, Petrik constructs a timeline and narrative of Rose and Evangeline’s decades-long romance through their written correspondence. This paper illuminates the romantic traditions and style the couple used, and excellently identifies subtle hints within the letters to

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show where the women were consciously hiding their relationships from others. “Into the Open” is an indepth study that shows both the challenges and the triumphs of Boston marriages through the lens of Rose and Evangeline’s relationship. For more context on their specific relationship, I turn to Sirpa Salenius’ book Rose Elizabeth Cleveland: First Lady and Literary Scholar, wherein Salenius fills in background information on the two women, details Rose’s previous written works surrounding fictional same sex love, and writes about the legacy the couple left behind.

Surveillance, Segregation, and Female Queerness in Reform Schools

“A Perversion Not Commonly Noted” by Margaret Otis provides a direct historical account of lesbian activity amongst young women under surveillance in boarding schools. In 1913, Otis observed romantic relationships between girls living at boarding and reform schools in her capacity as a sexologist, concluding that a difference in race took the place of a difference between sex; her paper was published in the June-July 1913 volume of The Journal of Abnormal Psychology. While Otis’ observations were likely biased to support this conclusion, it highlights an important link between racism, classism, and the construction of female homosexual “deviance.” “A Perversion Not Commonly Noted” was, as Otis pointed out, one of the first published works examining sexual relationships between women in the United States. In Queering the Color Line (2000), Siobhan Somerville posits that the racial transgression, not lesbian sexuality, is what made these romances notable to Otis and other early sexologists. Framing lesbian sexuality as “deviant” hinged on racist logics and surveillance and illuminates how relationships between women eventually became entirely taboo—sexuality and race were inextricably linked.

Another in-depth study on female sexuality in surveilled environments is The ‘Girl Problem’: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900-1930 (1998). In this book, Ruth Alexander and Nicole Rafter study the “sexual delinquency” of young women in New York from 1900 to 1930. This book includes descriptions of and correspondences between specific lesbian couples in New York women’s freformatories. Alexander and Rafter base their work upon historical records from the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills and the Western House of Refuge for Women at Albion. The authors analyze the treatment of incarcerated lesbians while examining letters between lovers, which show similarities and differences from the letters between women in Boston marriages. Rafter and Alexander argue that the ‘problem’ of female homosexuality in these institutions was squarely located within anxieties surrounding racial mixing, as interracial lesbian relationships attracted institutional concern while intra-racial relationships did not.

Sexology and the Construction of Oppressive Frameworks

Richard von Krafft-Ebing established sexology as a discipline in 1886 with his study Psychopathia Sexualis, wherein he defined “inversion” as “sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex” (Krafft-Ebing 342). Krafft-Ebing argued that Europeans had evolved to be able to control their animalistic sex drive through “morality,” but “savage races” had not, making them predisposed to “perversions” (2). Havelock Ellis, in Sexual Inversion (1897), compared “inversion” to other “abnormalities,” including colorblindness, to emphasize that homosexuality was not necessarily a disease (Ellis 318). Although Ellis was radically sympathetic to homosexuals, he theorized that lesbians committed

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more crimes than gay men because of their “combined infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy” (201). Krafft-Ebing and Ellis both analyzed human sexuality through a matrix of racist and sexist logics, but came to different theoretical conclusions regarding the cause of “inversion.” These authors help trace the genealogy of racism in a direct line from racial to sexual science, and in establishing the context in which Sigmund Freud developed his theories.

Freud’s theories surrounding homosexuality were established in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). His paper “Psychogenesis of Homosexuality in a Woman” (1920) was one of the first published psychoanalytic studies of a lesbian. Freud discussed both Krafft-Ebing and Ellis’ previous works on “inversion” in Three Essays, which demonstrates how well-established sexology was by the time Freud entered the field and how the other theorists influenced his work. “Psychogenesis of Homosexuality in a Woman” provides a deeper understanding of how Freud understood female sexuality. Freud was brought in by an affluent young Austrian woman’s parents to “cure” her sexuality, but he found this impossible due to the girl’s strong will and “otherwise” healthy mental state. Freud grounded his analysis in his theory of the Oedipus complex and pinned the reason for the girl’s homosexuality on a convoluted combination of desire for her father and jealousy towards her mother.

I turn to An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and the Place of Homosexuality in Modern Society to clarify how sexological theory emerged from and reinforced racialized classification systems. Jennifer Terry researched historical materials dealing with homosexuality to argue that moral panics over homosexuality are tied to American social anxiety regarding shifting social and sexual norms. Terry examines the medicalization of homosexuality, specifically how the framework used to pathologize homosexuality was born out of and intertwined with racial classification “science.” European anthropologists and scientists used racial classification systems to justify the subjugation of non-European “primitive” people, and the same logic was eventually applied to sexual classification. Thus the interlocking histories of racial and sexual hierarchy constructed the framework of intersectional oppression in which queer women existed during the 1880s-1920s.

Interaction with Modern Queer Theory

In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Muñoz uses a Blochian framework to build a vision of queer utopia and frame queerness as a horizon of potential. Muñoz draws from and critiques structuralism, relationalism, temporality, and perhaps most importantly, hope as a “critical affect and a methodology” (Muñoz 4). Throughout this book, Muñoz analyzes performances, art, poetry, literature, and his own experiences to construct a hopeful vision of a queer future that radically deviates from the current assimilationist politics of the mainstream gay movement. Muñoz fundamentally disagrees with the “antiutopianism,” which he argues is culturally pervasive in the LGBTQ community.

Linear, “straight” history is drawn upon by mainstream theorists who point to an “apparently inevitable movement from tragedy to farce” as an unavoidable pattern of history (Qtd. Muñoz 17). The difference between the “romance of community” and the “romance of singularity” is intensely relevant to the evolution of queer identities. Muñoz’s strategy in defining queer utopias is to draw upon the past as evidence of triumph, a strategy that I follow while demonstrating how the history of queer female identity is not a linear-progressive narrative.

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Adrienne Rich, in Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, defines what she names a “lesbian continuum.” The lesbian continuum encompasses all forms of “primary intensity between and among women” (Rich 649). I use Rich’s theory of a lesbian continuum to argue for the existence of an overlapping queer continuum, incorporating Muñoz’s ideas to explain why. Through the combination of Muñoz and Rich’s theories, I locate moments of queer utopia and trace a genealogy of the lesbian/ queer continuum in my analysis of queer women in the 1880s-1920s. Queerness, Muñoz argues, is “not here yet,” but can be “distilled from the past and used to imagine a future” (Muñoz 1). In my discussion of contemporary queer theory, I aim to “distill” the queerness of the 1880s-1920s and illuminate the oppressive frameworks that were co-constructed with queerness itself, which established the lenses that are still used to understand homosexuality.

I use Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction for multiple points of analysis. Foucault’s theory that power runs within and between every part of society is useful in discussing how the queer women in the 1880s-1920s employed their power to remain under society’s radar, express themselves while incarcerated, and defy authorities’ attempts to constrain their sexuality. Scientia sexualis, the Western method for uncovering the truth of sexuality, emerged from the 19th-20th-century pursuit to draw sexuality into the realm of provable science. Foucault’s conception of scientia sexualis is that sex was transplanted from the domain of religion to the realm of medical science. This was done by reconstructing sexuality as a secret, objective truth within each person that could be discovered through confession and psychoanalysis. I utilize scientia sexualis to analyze the sexologists from a multidimensional perspective and examine their naturalization of sexuality as a “universal truth.”

Chapter One: Boston Marriages

White heteropatriarchal norms largely controlled the lives of women in the 1800s. Women were viewed as daughters, wives, and mothers, but rarely ever individuals with any possibility of escaping the control of men. The Victorian woman was conceptualized as an empty vessel, responsive to the needs of her family but on her own, completely non-agentic. For white women born into status, wealth, and privilege, innocence was taught as vigorously as it was assumed. Cultural norms demanded that privileged women contain their sexuality to the small sphere of reproducing with their husbands, and claimed that on their own, women had no sexual drive. Men were understood as the aggressor in the sexual realm, and Victorian women were charged with keeping male lust at bay. In an era when there was little opportunity or social mobility for women, the power structures of an entirely patriarchal society ensured that women remained largely constrained to a single fate: domesticity. A small exception to these constraints was the tradition of romantic friendships, which were intimate and passionate friendships between young women who would exchange gifts, write letters, and even openly proclaim love for each other. These romantic friendships were encouraged by affluent families because they were thought to prepare young women for ‘real’ courtship with men, and sexual contact between women was hardly considered a possibility (Faderman 1991).

However, a new sphere of possibilities was made available for wealthy white women when women’s colleges began operating. College-educated women could pursue careers and were surrounded mostly by women for the duration of their time at school. In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Lillian Faderman

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argues that the introduction of women into women-only social environments, alongside the newfound career opportunities educated women had, made the existence of Boston Marriages possible. Further, the same families that allowed their daughters to pursue education had been nurturing the tradition of romantic friendships for decades prior. The term “Boston marriage” comes from the novel The Bostonians, written by Henry James in 1885. James’ fictional novel centers on two women who live together and appear to fall into a romantic friendship but reads today as romantic love. The novel introduces a male character who romantically pursues one of the women, eventually succeeding in an unhappy ending. In a review of The Bostonians published in The Atlantic in June 1886, Horace Scudder argued James pushed his characters so “near the brink of nature that [the reader] step[s] back and decline[s] to follow” (Scudder).

Scudder described this “brink of nature” as the reader’s hesitation “about accepting the relation [between the two female characters] as either natural or reasonable” (Scudder). “Boston marriage” entered popular discourse in New England after the circulation of this novel, naming a familial formation that excluded men and children. While some suspicion about the nature of Boston marriages circulated, especially in the reviews of James’ controversial novel, the relationships were largely left alone by the legal system.

Many women in Boston marriages were successful career women and thus were in the public eye often. Women in New England in the late 1800s often socialized in overlapping spheres, creating possibilities for women in Boston marriages to become close with other couples in similar formations.

Sarah Jewett and Annie Fields, two writers who lived together in Boston from 1881 until Jewett’s death in 1909, were surrounded by a close circle of female friends who were also in Boston marriages. Some authors have gone as far as to call their social circle a “support group” for women in Boston marriages, but this is disputed by other scholars (Faderman, Fryer). One of the remaining controversies surrounding Boston marriages is the question of their sexual nature or lack thereof. Searching for evidence of sex in Boston marriages is rooted in claims that a static lesbian identity has always existed; conversely, discounting any possibility of sex between women in Boston marriages upholds the idea that homosexuality is a modern invention. Several scholars insist that the possibility of sexual contact between women in these formations is not of importance, because their emotional intimacy and love for each other are evidence enough to align them with modern conceptions of what a lesbian is (Faderman 1981).

One couple that was evidently sexual in their relationship, however, was Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Marrs Simpson. Rose Cleveland, the sister of U.S. President Grover Cleveland, acted as First Lady from 1885-1886 until her brother married. In 1889, Rose Cleveland met and fell in love with Evangeline Marrs Simpson. Evangeline and Rose began writing each other passionate letters after their first meeting, met multiple times to continue their relationship, and separated for ten years while Evangeline was married to a Bishop. The pair reunited after his death and moved to Italy together in 1910 (Salenius 74). Their letters were often explicitly erotic and evinced a passionate love that lasted for more than a decade. Letters between women in Boston marriages and romantic friendships were incredibly important. Letter writing was considered a necessary skill during this time, and the letters between female couples offer auto-biographical accounts of their lives and romances. In the Ladies Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness, published in 1860, Florence Hartley dedicated a chapter to the “art” of letter writing (116). Hartley wrote that “letters written to gentlemen should be ceremonious and dignified [...] it is better to avoid correspondence with gentlemen, particularly whilst you are young, as there are many

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objections to it” (116). Hartley advised young women to write letters to suitors “as if they were printed in the newspapers, would cause you no annoyance” and to “drop the correspondence” if the gentleman “begins to ask” the young lady “to keep such and such passages secret” (116). The Victorian norms of letter-writing cautioned women to remain graceful, delicate, and conservative in their correspondence.

These constricting expectations did not deter all women from writing secret sentiments to their lovers. In one of their early letters, Rose professed her intense feelings for Evangeline: “Ah, how I love you, it paralyzes me—it makes me heavy with emotion... I tremble at the thought of you—all my whole being leans out to you... I dare not think of your arms” (Faderman 1991, 11). These romantic sentiments escalated throughout their initial letters, including implicit acknowledgments of Rose’s fear to commit to Evangeline: “Ah Eve, Eve, surely you cannot realize what you are to me—What you must be. Yes, I dare it now—I will no longer fear to claim you—you are mine by everything in earth and heaven—by every sign in soul and spirit and body.... Give me every joy and all hope. This is yours to do” (Faderman 1991, 33).

Rose’s promise to “no longer fear to claim” Evangeline reveals some awareness of the potential consequences the women would face if the nature of their relationship became public.

Evangeline Marrs Simpson and Rose Cleveland’s letters to each other were kept in an unmarked box in the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection of Evangeline Marrs Simpson Whipple’s letters and personal papers until their discovery by an anonymous tipster in the 1970s. The “mole” sent a tip about the unlisted letters to Barbara Gittings, at that time the coordinator of the Gay Task Force of the American Library Association, who informed Jonathan Ned Katz, a gay historian. Katz sent multiple letters to the Minnesota Historical Society, which lifted the restriction on the letters for researchers in 1978. Rose Cleveland’s handwriting proved to be extremely difficult to read, and Katz alerted other queer historians to their existence rather than transcribe them himself. Eventually, Paula Petrik, at that time a graduate student, deciphered the letters and used them to write her unpublished paper, “Into The Open: Lesbianism at the Turn of the Century” in November 1978 (Katz). “Into The Open” has been used by both Lillian Faderman and Jonathan Ned Katz to construct the history of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Marrs Simpson’s relationship. Two paper copies of “Into The Open” exist in the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Paula Petrik uses Rose and Evangeline’s letters to each other to craft a compelling narrative of two women whose love transcended physical and social obstacles. In “Into The Open,” Petrik examines how the geographic distance between Rose and Evangeline heightened the longing described by both women in their letters. Rose and Evangeline first met in Florida, then parted ways and began writing to each other. Petrik follows Evangeline and Rose’s letters chronologically as they exchange expressions of passion, craft plans to meet again and express melancholy at their separation. At one point, Rose slept with Evangeline’s letters underneath her pillow and claimed in her subsequent letter to Evangeline that she “felt for the letters and tried to feel [Evangeline’s] hand” (Petrik 12). Petrik locates a pause in their communications between April 23rd and May 5th of 1890 as the dates of Rose and Evangeline’s first vacation together in New York. After the New York vacation, their correspondence continued to escalate in expressions of desire; Rose even playfully invoked Cleopatra and Antony:

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“Ah, my Cleopatra is a very dangerous Queen, but I will look her straight in those wide open eyes that look so imperious and will crush those Antony-seeking lips, until her arms close over (alas, for my hair with all those armlets), and she becomes my prisoner because I am her Captain... How much kissing can Cleopatra stand?” (Faderman 1991, 33) In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Lillian Faderman turns to this specific quote as an example of “remarkable erotic fantasy and role playing” (33). Rose and Evangeline frequently used the delicate language of the time, but in one letter, Rose wrote about Evangeline’s “sweet life beneath” and beseeched her to “carry [Rose’s] body to the summit of joy, the end of search, the goal of love” (33). These two letters marked an intensification in Rose and Evangeline’s relationship from romantic sentiments to expressions of physical desire.

Although the two women openly flirted and professed eternal love in their letters, Rose and Evangeline’s correspondence revealed efforts to conceal the nature of their relationship from both the public and close acquaintances. In several of the letters, Rose or Evangeline indicate that they must obscure the truth of their relationship from their household servants or relatives, if not hide its existence entirely (Petrik 14). An attitude of prudence and hesitation is frequently expressed from Rose to Evangeline amid in romantic declarations: “You are mine, and I am yours, and we are one, and our lives are one henceforth— please God, You alone can separate us—I am bold to say this—to pray to live by it—am I too bold, Eve,-- tell me?” (Petrik 12) Here, Rose demonstrates a desire to be reassured by Evangeline that she is not being “too bold” in her affections, while simultaneously indicating that she was aware of the social norms their relationship violated.

Historians have hypothesized that Rose and Evangeline lived together at Rose’s home, the Weeds, from October 1890 to April 1892 because of the plans outlined in their letters and the absence of communication between the two during this time (Salenius 72). In 1892, however, Evangeline chose to separate herself from Rose and accepted the courtship of Henry Benjamin Whipple, a 70-year-old bishop living in Minnesota. As Evangeline and Henry Benjamin Whipple began courting, Rose wrote Evangeline a promise “to take [herself] out of [Evangeline’s] way for awhile, at least—and to reappear only when I can act gracefully and well in my new role” (Petrik 16). Rose then went abroad to Europe and later returned to the United States in 1894 to resume her career in higher education (Salenius 73). In 1895, Rose wrote a letter to Henry Whipple to congratulate his successful courtship of Evangeline: “Evangeline keeps somehow full in the faith that you love her... Ah, how much we need, all of us, all the love we can get” (Petrik 17). While Petrik describes this line as evincing a “certain ironical overtone,” both Petrik and Salenius seem to agree that Rose’s letter to the Bishop was “gracious” and “polite” (Petrik 17, Salenius 73). Rose’s promise to Evangeline in 1892, her subsequent trip to Europe, and her wistful remark to the Bishop imply a serious heartbreak and reconciliation. Rose lost both her lover and her closest friend to a heteronormative relationship with a man, spent time away from Evangeline to reflect upon and overcome her heartbreak, then returned to “act gracefully and well” in her “new role” as Evangeline’s acquaintance.

The trajectory and era-transcending emotions expressed in the first half of Rose and Evangeline’s

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relationship certainly resonate with modern understandings of romance and heartbreak. With or without the evidence of the sexual nature of their relationship, the two women shared an incredibly intimate and intertwined partnership that falls on what Adrienne Rich calls “the lesbian continuum.” The lesbian continuum, per Rich, includes “a range—through each woman’s life and throughout history—of womanidentified experience,” including a wide spectrum of “primary intensity between and among women” (Rich 649). This continuum encompasses everything from the “sharing of a rich inner life,” which is evident within romantic friendships and Boston marriages, to the “bonding against male tyranny” and the “giving and receiving of practical and political support” (649). While Rose and Evangeline embodied a relationship that is characterized as a lesbian in the way LGBTQ and queer scholars currently define the term, Rich’s assertion of a lesbian continuum illuminates the necessity to include all romantic friendships and Boston marriages in the understanding of a historical spectrum of queerness.

Although Rose began a new relationship with a woman named Evelyn, who moved into the Weeds with her in February 1899, Rose and Evangeline reconnected via letter-writing in September 1901 when Bishop Whipple died (Petrik 30). Rose and Evangeline both spent several years traveling separately, their correspondence regaining its former frequency by 1905, before reuniting in the United States in 1910 and returning to Europe together (Salenius 74). The couple finally settled in Bagni di Lucca, an Italian town, in 1912. Evangeline and Rose lived together in Italy, worked as volunteers throughout World War I, established a school for girls, opened Red Cross workrooms where they employed refugee women to make clothing and supplies for soldiers’ families, and later volunteered with Spanish influenza victims (Salenius 78). Rose Cleveland contracted the influenza and died in 1918 at the age of 72. Evangeline Marrs Simpson dictated in her will that she be buried beside Rose Cleveland (Petrik 31).

Numerous factors constrained Evangeline and Rose’s relationship, from the aforementioned cautiousness evident in their letters and a shifting social consciousness regarding homosexuality. The Oscar Wilde trial in 1895 created a moment of negative visibility for homosexual subjects, and the circulation of sexology in the early to mid-1900s provided the framework to identify and control, or “fix,” homosexuals. While I discuss the latter movement at length in Chapter 3, it is important to hypothesize here that Rose and Evangeline were aware of these cultural developments and adjusted the visibility of their relationship accordingly. In “Into the Open,” Petrik argued that 19th century women were not aware of the “social and moral implications of any lesbian intimacy or sexual contact” due to a “high degree of sexual misinformation and ignorance” during this time (Petrik 33). It is inarguable that sexual misinformation and ignorance dominated cultural understandings of sexuality, yet sexual knowledge was expanding immensely through scientific research (Foucault). I contest that it is an underestimation of the women involved in queer relationships to claim that they were completely unaware of the social and moral implications of their intimacy, sexual or not . This self-awareness is evident in Evangeline’s decision to pursue a heterosexual marriage, and her later move to Italy with Rose, where the Napoleonic Code had decriminalized “private acts by private individuals,” and therefore homosexuality, in 1865 (Aaron, Petrik 32). Further, women in Boston marriages and romantic friendships passionately celebrated their love in extremely self-aware language throughout their correspondences.

The women in Boston marriages and romantic friendships both drew from and constructed a Victorian romantic discourse in their correspondences. Mary Rozet Smith, a wealthy young socialite, and

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Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, lived and worked together for over 30 years, and considered themselves married (Faderman 1991, 26). In a 1904 letter to Mary, while they were apart, Jane wrote: “You must know, dear, how I long for you all the time, and especially during the last three weeks. There is reason in the habit of married folks keeping together” (26). Mary and Jane even “shared a double bed” every night they were together, and were not especially covert in their intimate habits or relationship (26). In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Faderman argues that the two women “understood (regardless of the sexual nature of their relationship) that they could rely on the protective coloring of pearls and ladylike appearance and of romantic friendship” to keep scrutiny at bay (28). The women in Boston marriages essentially “passed,” as we understand that term today, as heterosexual, respectable, unmarried women. The fact that women in these formations could shield themselves from being stigmatized as “deviants” with their wealth, status, and whiteness working in combination with cultural assumptions of female innocence was central to the wide permissibility of Boston marriages.

Shared goals and careers were common aspects of 19th and 20th century relationships between women. Carey Thomas, a feminist and the President of Bryn Mawr from 1894 to 1922, wrote to her childhood friend Bessie King in their adolescence: “There [a theoretical house the two girls would cohabitate in as adults] we would live loving each other and urging each other on to every high and noble deed or action, and all who passed should say ‘Their example arouses me, their books ennoble me, their ideas inspire me, and behold they are women!” (29) In this passage, Carey Thomas both expressed a desire to live while “loving” her friend, and for their relationship to become an exemplar of feminist accomplishments to all who encountered them. Carey did eventually enter into her ideal formation while teaching at Bryn Mawr and lived with Mamie Gwinn, another professor, until Mamie eloped with a married, male philosophy professor. After Mamie’s departure, Carey fell in love with Mary Garrett, a wealthy philanthropist who donated “a fortune” to Bryn Mawr in exchange for Carey’s promotion to president of the college in 1894 (30). Mary and Carey subsequently shared a home at Bryn Mawr until Mary’s death in 1915.

Women in romantic friendships embodied the successful integration of professional and personal spheres. Almeda Sperry was a former prostitute who was so “strongly affected” by a lecture on “white slave traffic” given by Emma Goldman, a prolific anarchist activist, that she joined Emma in her anarchist work (34). Almeda and Emma entered into a romantic friendship which was explicitly erotic, clearly shown in a letter Almeda wrote to Emma in the early 1900s: “Dearest... If I had only had courage to kill myself when you reached the climax then—then I would have known happiness, for at that moment I had complete possession of you [...] I wish to escape from you but I am harried from place to place in my thots. I cannot escape from the rhythmic spurt of your love juice” (34) Despite her relationship with Almeda, Emma later wrote to a friend in 1928 that “the Lesbians are a crazy lot. Their antagonism to the male is almost a disease with them. I simply can’t bear such narrowness” (34).

This does not demonstrate the failure of Emma to self-identify as a lesbian because of an unawareness of the implications of her homosexual relationship, but her purposeful non-identification as a lesbian because of the cultural understanding of lesbians necessitated that they hated men, which she did not.

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Privileged queer women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries created their marriage formations, fulfilled their desire for independence, complete agency, and a life centered entirely around other women. While it is difficult to discern whether or not women in these relationships had genital sex, Faderman argues that the most significant definers of lesbian relationships have been “the commitment, intense emotional exchanges, and erotic exchanges which can be but are not necessarily genital,” and that these women were therefore the “foremothers” for “women in intimate relationships with other women today” (Faderman 1981, 19). These women, however, were not only foremothers for lesbians, but for a wide range of diverse romantic and familial formations, as well as the practice of creating new formations outside the boundaries of what already exists. Notably, the women in Boston marriages are named as “foremothers,” yet non-privileged queer women during this time are generally excluded from this historical designation. In chapter 2, I will argue that queer women who existed outside of Boston marriages had an equally important role in constructing lesbian identity.

The women who lived in romantic friendships and Boston marriages certainly existed on Adrienne Rich’s lesbian continuum, and I argue that they exist within an overlapping queer continuum.

Queer and lesbian are not mutually exclusive identities or political formations; the emergence of queer theory has lent extensive fluidity and nuance to LGBTQ history and scholarship. Queer women in earlier eras have a place within both lesbian and queer theorizations. I identify these women as queer because of their expressed dissonance with the term “lesbian” during their lives and the wide, fluid range of sexual and emotional relationships that they partook in. As Faderman points out, the term “queer” would seem “alien” to these women, but the powerful reclamation of the former slur has created an identifier that rejects questioning, justification, and stereotypes. In short, using queer as an identifier rejects society’s efforts to pin individuals into a neat, easily understood box. The women in same-sex relationships did not have a universal self-identity, nor was there any term that was applied to them by others until the introduction of pathologizing theories in the early-mid 1900s. Further, the women in queer formations broke gender norms, compulsory heterosexual marriage, childbearing expectations, and sexual norms.

Through this framework, women in romantic friendships and Boston marriages can be understood as both lesbian and queer subjects, icons, and foremothers because they existed in a space that was not yet defined and rejected society’s definition.

Through the lens of José Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, romantic friendships and Boston marriages can be reframed as instances of “queer utopia.” In Cruising Utopia, Muñoz defines “antiutopian” LGBTQ politics as activists only fighting battles they see as realistically winnable. Antiutopianism relies upon the assumption that oppression was worse in the past and will continue to naturally lessen as time goes on. This assumption is a central facet of linear-progressive notions of history, or “straight history.” Muñoz uses historical moments of queer utopia to argue that queer people should yearn for an “abstract utopia” while using hope as a methodology to strive for a “concrete utopia” in the immediate future. The previous moments of queer utopia that Muñoz includes show that progress can be achieved and dismantled regardless of the progression of time. The “romance of community,” an important aspect of queer utopias, was central to Boston marriages. The romance of community includes radical collectivity, kinship past heteronormative frameworks, and intimate community ties, as opposed to a “romance of singularity” grounded in individualism. Women in Boston marriages not only relied upon

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their partners, but their friends, social circles, other women in similar formations, and their professional spheres.

It is imperative to analyze who was excluded from Boston marriages in this discussion, and why.

As I have previously mentioned, Boston marriages were not available to women of color, poor women, or women (especially young women) under state surveillance. In the next chapter, I will examine how most queer women were subjugated during the same time that wealthy, established white women were relatively free to engage in relationships with one another. This does not invalidate the potential in framing Boston marriages and romantic friendships as queer utopias; rather, it evinces the necessity to analyze the complex matrix of race, class, age, and social status that affected how queer women were treated by society.

Chapter Two: Surveillance and Deviancy

While upper-middle-class, educated, white women were enjoying Boston marriages and romantic friendships, young, impoverished, and/or “delinquent” women were subject to state surveillance and early theorizations by sexologists. These identities were co-constructed; though both were forms of female queerness, they were binarily positioned on the axes of race and class. Given this, the different forms of female queerness must be examined with equal weight and importance to understand the mechanisms that oppressed some queer women and turned a blind eye to others. The enduring social structures that allow some queer women freedom and impose sanctions on others are particularly lucid through an analysis of both women in Boston marriages and incarcerated queer women. Women who align with traditional social norms of womanhood, such as the women in Boston marriages, exist in unmarked identities; they do not exhibit any differences from dominant cultural characteristics/identities (Tannen 1993).

During the 1880s-1920s, whiteness, wealth, conservative dress, social standing, and respectable public behavior rendered women in Boston marriages unmarked to mainstream Victorian society. The marked identity and characteristics of queerness had not been fully defined or disseminated in American psychological discourse or culture, therefore, nothing about Boston-married women made them marked for state intervention. The queerness of otherwise-normative women was not considered threatening to the white heteropatriarchy until queerness itself was identified as a “danger.” Incarcerated women during this time, however, already occupied marked identities due to race, class, immigration status, “inappropriate” social behavior, or any combination of the above. These characteristics, already marked as different from the mainstream cultural norms, making the queerness of incarcerated women notable and policeable.

In Bad Girls: Race, Crime, and Punishment in New York State, 1893-1916, Leigh-Anne Francis examines the “intersections of gender, race, and class by exploring crime, punishment, labor and community in New York City and Auburn Prison” (Francis ii). In her chapter on the racialization of crime and evil, Francis argues that in “popular discourse on crime, a girl or woman’s ‘badness’ -- i.e., her moral condition -- was analyzed through a gendered and racial lens that differentiated black female criminals not only from victims, typically imagined as white, but also from white female criminals -- that is, bad black girls from bad white girls” (79). White women were designated as “victims,” and black women as “victimizers,” due to the societal “conviction” that “a woman’s ‘external physical appearance’ reflected her ‘internal qualities of character’” (Qtd. 79). Similarly to the sexological discourse I discuss in chapter 3, women of color and their “crimes” were “perceived through a racial lens as evidence of the ‘primitive’ qualities of the race”

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(Qtd. 80). White women were conceptualized as “biologically incapable of committing serious crimes,” while black female criminals were portrayed as hyper-masculinely brutal, sexual, and physically masculine (81). The racialization of criminality, and its direct linkage to the hyper-sexualization and masculinization of the black female body shaped how incarcerated queer women were identified and why they were considered a “threat.”

In the early-mid 19th century Northeast, the two options for women deemed criminal by the state were prisons or reformatories. Reform schools claimed to “redeem” their charges’ morality rather than punish them, yet relied heavily on punishment nonetheless. According to one reformatory, the Western House for Refuge at Albion, NY, the aim of the reformatory system was “to strengthen [female delinquents’] character and awaken within [them] the desire to go back out into the world and live a good and useful life” (Qtd. in Rafter 69). Generally, reform schools only housed women in their early 20s or younger. In the 1908 article “Reformatory Treatment of Women,” Isabel Barrows listed the reasons why women were sent to reform schools, then argued for the usefulness of the system. According to the 1904 census, 56.6% of arrested women had “committed offenses against society;” within this, “25.7% offended chastity” and “74.3% committed offenses against public policy, drunkenness, vagrancy, or disorderly conduct” (Barrows 130). Reformatories were first founded in the United States in 1824 for both boys and girls and became such a favored method of dealing with juvenile offenders that 56 reformatories were operating by 1920 (“Reformatory Schools”).

Women who were taken to reformatories were first housed in “reception buildings” and kept isolated for several weeks while they were stripped of their personal possessions and medically examined (Rafter 71). The stated purpose of this quarantine period was to ensure the new inmates would not spread diseases to the reformatory population, but it had the effect of demoralizing and frightening the women.

The quarantine period functioned to break the will of rebellious charges, who emerged compliant to be “reformed.” In The “Girl Problem”: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York 1900-1930 (1998), Nicole Rafter and Ruth Alexander examine the records of two reform institutions, the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills and the Western House of Refuge for Women at Albion, from 1900-1930 to analyze the emergence of female sexual deviancy as a “societal problem.” Per Rafter and Alexander, the “‘opportunities’ provided by Bedford Hills and Albion were supposed to approximate those afforded adolescent girls growing up in white middle class homes” (72). The majority-female administrators of reform institutions intended to instill “the habits of deference, chastity, and respectable toil” within their charges (69). The reform schools Alexander and Rafter studied housed the women in cottage-style houses with humble but modern amenities, including kitchens and living rooms, encouraged the girls to politely socialize with one another, and provided both academic classes and vocational training for “respectable employment” (74). The reformatories also employed strict disciplinary methods, from “loss of meals,” “solitary confinement,” and occasional “brutal physical punishment” for unmanageable girls (75).

Although reform schools were idealized as affording girls more dignity and opportunities than prisons, the girls were sanctioned with harsh discipline often, and their interpersonal relationships with other young women within the institution were heavily surveilled and policed. The inmates of the reformatories were forced to permit the institution to censor their mail, and all correspondence was thoroughly scrutinized.

In 1913, Margaret Otis, a psychologist, wrote “A Perversion Not Commonly Noted.” This

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paper, originally published in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, was a condemnation of same-sex romance between girls in “reform schools and institutions for delinquent girls” (Otis 113). What made the overwhelming prevalence of female romance notable, however, was when it was interracial and predicated upon white girls maintaining a “feminine” role while black girls adopted a “masculine” persona to pursue them (Somerville). As Rafter and Alexander point out in The “Girl Problem,” romance between inmates was intraracial as often as it was interracial, but the assumed hypersexuality of black women made the interracial relationships legibly deviant before female homosexuality was itself a marker. The sanctions leveled at incarcerated women were aiming to “correct” gender deviance and racial mixing, and the projection of masculine sexual aggression onto black women fused interracial female relationships with a familiar “immorality” to heterosexual sexual experimentation. Otis emphasized that the trend was a serious ‘perversion’ and was not, as Otis expected her contemporaries to assume, explained by “mental defectiveness” (116). Otis claimed, “some of the girls indulging in this love for the colored have, perhaps, the most highly developed intellectual ability of any girls of the school” (116). Otis defined the white girls as highly intelligent manipulators who enable the “aggressive” black girls to romance them and implied that black girls, in general, had no intellect to comment on. In Otis’ analysis, the black girls were the true sexual deviants, while the white girls passively manipulated their attention as a game they were drawn to out of boredom and an absence of suitable men. Through Otis’ elaborate construction of motive, the fault of true deviance was latched onto non-whiteness and the white girls were framed as mischievous, naive enablers who would realize the immorality of both interracial mixing and “inappropriate” sexual relationships when they reintegrated into society. The white girls were constructed as pliable; they could be “fixed,” whereas the black girls’ “inborn deviancy” rendered them a lost cause.

In her paper, Otis quoted various “captured” notes between lovers to support her deeply racist argument. Although Otis portrayed the black girls in the institutions as unintelligent and aggressive, they were literate and emotionally sensitive throughout their correspondences with their “loves.” To demonstrate the trivial, flighty nature of the relationships, Otis described frequent arguments between couples despite her claim that “the idea of loyalty is present:” “This morning when you were going to the nursery you threw a kiss to Mary Smith. If you care for her more than you do for me, why, don’t hesitate to tell me. I don’t love you because you said you loved me. I could have kept my love concealed if I cared to. I will certainly regret the day I ever wrote or sent my love to you if this downright deceitfulness does not stop” (Qtd. In Otis 114-115) Further, Otis implied that the romances lived and died in the gossip-centered social environment of the all-girls institutions: "It was not long ago that one of your friends sent me a message saying that you didn’t love me, but you didn’t want me to know that you didn’t, for fear I would curse you.

Well, you need have no fear. I never curse any one. I have been so careful over here of every little thing I did, for fear some one might carry something back to you, that I had been deceitful. Noindeed! I am not deceitful” (115) All of the letters Otis included are anonymous, and the names of the institutions she observed are also unmentioned. Throughout her article, Otis crafted an argument that emphasized the threat of interracial

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lesbian “love-making,” while building in assertions of girlhood foolishness to maintain the white girls’ relative naivety as they were caught up in what Otis portrayed as a game. According to Otis, the white girls were only drawn into sexual deviancy by the black girls’ willingness to chase their “lover.”

Although Otis analyzed the letters through a trivializing lens, compelling romantic declarations between the young women break through her argument. One anonymous white girl was caught and punished for her relationship with her “Baby,” and subsequently wrote to a close female friend of her internal turmoil: “Oh sister dear now this is between you and I. Lucy Jones asks me to give Baby up, for she tried to tell me that Baby does not love me. Don’t you see what she is trying to do?

To get my love back. Ah! Sister darling, I might say I will give my Baby up, but ah, in my heart I love her and always shall [...] Ah! I shall never throw Baby down; I don’t care what happens, for trouble does not change my mind one bit, and I hope it’s not changing yours” (115) This letter tied into Otis’ argument that the romances were constantly in turmoil, but the writer’s declarations that she loves “Baby” and “always shall” mirror similar proclamations of love between the women in Boston marriages discussed in the previous chapter. The acknowledgment that “trouble” will occur, but it will not change her mind “one bit” evinces a high level of awareness of the lengths the school authorities, and by extension, the state, will go to prevent the lovers from being together. Otis attempted to construct these relationships as immature and fickle in nature, yet serious to the participants and threatening in their consequences for society. However, including the letters of the girls inadvertently demonstrated their self-awareness, determination to overcome oppressive constraints, and parallels to socially-accepted romantic traditions.

In her study of reform schools, Otis underestimated the girls’ abilities to understand themselves, their actions, and their desires. Otis effectively deprived the girls she wrote about of agency and imposed her own narrative upon their stories and letters. In contrast, Nicole Rafter and Ruth Alexander state in The “Girl Problem” that “young women and girls were historical actors rather than powerless victims of convention and authority,” and an effort to “restore the young women who became the ‘girl problem’ to the status of historical subjects engaged in reflection, gesture, and action” drives their argument (Rafter 3, 7). Similarly to the institutions that Otis studied, Bedford Hills was a reform school for “delinquent” girls that officials segregated after an investigation revealed interracial lesbian romance. While lesbian relationships “occurred between women of the same race at Bedford Hills,” an investigation conducted by the Board of Charities in 1914-15 concluded that Bedford Hills had to be segregated because of a “‘disquieting pattern of ‘unfortunate attachments’ between white and black women” (91).

In a similar line to Otis’ argument, the Board of Charities appealed to “white middle-class fears that the Caucasian race was not sufficiently invested in its own preservation” by predicting that “the white girls involved in romantic attachments with African American inmates would forfeit the privileges and obligations of their race and ‘take up living in colored neighborhoods’ after their release from the reformatory,” and would therefore promote “race suicide” (92). In contrast to Otis’ analysis, however, the Board of Charities portrayed the black inmates “as the recipients of white affection” (92). The logics of Bedford Hills’ segregation relied upon the social anxiety of race-mixing, and did not offer any analysis of

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“deviance” or perversion; lesbianism was framed as “a portent of race degeneration” (92). It is interesting to note that interracial lesbianism was theorized to lead white women to promote “race suicide” by living in black communities and/or having mixed-race children, yet lesbianism in general was not conceptualized as “race suicide” even though white lesbians who never married may not have any children. Through this argument, white lesbianism was framed as solely situational and temporary, made possible by the assumed hypersexual masculinity of the black women. The element of racial mixing is what led officials to become concerned about the societal “problem” of lesbians.

The term “race suicide” was coined by sociologist Edward Ross around the turn of the 20th century. Ross’ conception of race suicide was based on what he saw as a necessity to “regulate” the “social order in the image of a natural order,” which was “idealized” as “nostalgically reconstructed” “American rural family whose moral and physical character was thought to have been shaped by generations of experience on America’s frontiers” (Lovett 79). Concerns about race suicide were located in a web of social anxieties about women’s shifting roles, increased immigration and what “native-born Americans” saw as immigrant failure to assimilate adequately to American culture, mass internal migration from the country to cities, industrialization, and backlash to Civil War Reconstruction efforts. Additionally, immigrants and non-white populations were constructed as hypersexual and hyper-fertile bodies whose “lesser” offspring would overtake the “native-born” white Anglo-Saxon population if white women continued to have children at decreasing rates. Theodore Roosevelt himself said in one speech that “the chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land [...] the greatest of all curses is sterility, and the severst of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility” (American Radio Works).

Thus, the responsibility for preserving the “American race” was placed squarely upon white, working-class women. Contraception was framed as obstructive to this “noble” goal, and was considered harmful to the national aim of white reproduction, and therefore the nation itself.

Alongside the widespread concerns over race suicide, female reformers entered the public sphere using the logic that the woman’s place was in the home, but the public sphere was itself a home and poor citizens were akin to children who needed to be taken care of. Female reform activism during the early 1900s was framed around a rhetoric of “maternalism,” or the concept that mothers have a unique insight into caretaking for social good (Lovett 5). Maternalism aimed to restore the downtrodden poor white to an imagined nostalgic ideal, similar to Ross’ American rural family ideal, and greatly influenced the development of social welfare (6). In turn, social welfare policies were predicated on upholding repressive gender norms of mothers fulfilling household duties and breadwinning fathers. The state was invested in working-class women being unpaid domestic workers and reproducing as many well-raised white citizens as possible, and the linkage between the private sphere of domesticity and public governance that the maternalist reformers created allowed “increased government management of private life” (7).

This coincided with what John D’Emilio locates as the development of the nuclear family in response to capitalism’s development in “Capitalism and Gay Identity.” Before industrialization, families were large, self-sufficient units that required multiple children as laborers, until free-market capitalism made wage labor a “permanent condition” for men and a temporary one for unmarried women (D’Emilio 51). The family was reconstructed as a center of emotional fulfillment rather than economic survival, and sex itself was reframed from a necessity for creating productive offspring to a mode of romantic relation

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between husband and wife (52). Emerging concepts of true romantic love affected why people married, and how long they stayed married; in 1889 the U.S. had the highest divorce rate in the world, which fed into reformer’s concerns about the degenerating family (Lovett 7).

The decline of self-sufficient rural households, and therefore a declining birthrate, created tension with the newly-popularized concept of an emotionally supportive, democratic nuclear family life where the child was a precious figure to be valued and protected. Reformers in the early 1900s latched onto this tension and reconstructed an imagined self-sufficient agrarian family ideal as both emotionally fulfilling in the capitalist nuclear family sense and nationalistically “American-born,” i.e. white. Attempts to recapture a nostalgic imaginary motivated the state to legislate in order to control “undesirable” reproduction and encourage “American-born” families to reproduce at higher rates. These controls were deployed through eugenic policies, such as California’s 1909 forced-sterilization law, and state intervention on behalf of wayward young women, as in the case of the reformatories discussed in this chapter.

Otis did not explain why the girls in the reform schools she studied were incarcerated, but Rafter and Alexander analyze the rationale behind why certain girls were sent to Albion and Bedford Hills: they were runaways, “sexually promiscuous,” prostitutes, petty criminals, or sent by “concerned” family.

“Sexually promiscuous” girls were often victims of assault or rape. Most of the girls in the institutions were women of color, impoverished or lower-middle class, and/or had been sexually abused or assaulted.

As previously mentioned, these women were convicted under the guise of “offenses against society” such as offending chastity, public policy, being drunk in public, being a vagrant, or acting with disorderly conduct (Barrows 130). The convergence of race, gender, social status, and sexual deviance within reform institutions illuminates how notions of queer female deviance were developed in a complicated web of social anxieties and prejudicial surveillance. In Queering the Color Line, Siobhan Somerville analyzes “how discourses of race and gender buttressed one another, often competing, often overlapping, in shaping emerging models of homosexuality” (Somerville 17). The classification system for homosexuality itself developed out of earlier models of racial hierarchy, according to Jennifer Terry in An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and the Place of Homosexuality in Modern Society.

Supposed racial differences, bolstered by the racist hypersexualization of black women, made interracial female relationships legible as a “problem.” Theories of racial differences in the mid-1800s fell into either “monogenesis” or “polygenesis” models, both of which constructed white as superior and black as atavistic (Somerville 22). Monogeny claimed that all races were members of the same species, descended from a single line, whose differences were due to the climate in which they settled. This conveniently aligned with the Biblical story that all humans were descended from Adam and Eve, who were presumed white by the mono-geneticists (23). Polygeny argued that different races were separate species entirely, with “distinct biological and geological origins,” and came to be called the “‘American school’ of anthropology” (23). Polygeny relied on the body as a “readable text with particular anatomical features carrying racial meaning,” which predicted “intelligence and behavior” (23). The racial differences theorized by the anthropologists were located largely on the black female body through invasive and violating physical examinations. The anatomy that was read as evidence of inferiority on the black female body varied, but was often focused on genitalia. Racial inferiority was “located as the literal excess” of black female bodies, which was “at times masculine, others exaggeratedly feminine” (27). Sexual deviancy was coupled with

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theories of inferiority, and thus the study of sexual deviancy “inherited tendencies” to racialize “abnormal” sexualities (27). When sexologists began studying queer women, they conducted similarly invasive physical examinations on female homosexuals, focusing on abnormal genitalia which they could read as a physical manifestation of abnormality.

In the early studies of lesbians, the “myth of the large clitoris” manifested as a marker of queerness (28). This myth was already popular in analyses of the supposed hypersexual nature of black women. This linkage created an assumption that black women, therefore, had a propensity to be homosexual. Somerville quotes Havelock Ellis, an early influential sexologist, to point out that 1900s society had less suspicion towards intimacy and affection between women, which the sexologists used as cause to conduct their violating physical examinations on suspected lesbians (28). Further, the psychological model of “abnormal sexual object choice” linked interracial desire and homosexual desire (34). Interracial deviance became a lens for sexologists to frame homosexual deviance, which was evident in the concerns expressed by reform institutions and state appendages. Otis claimed that “the difference in color takes the place of the difference of sex;” the visual contrast of two different colored bodies became an indicator for the homosexual nature of a lesbian relationship.

Rafter and Alexander include letters between one couple, Rae Rabinowitz and Jewel Foster, in their discussion of interracial lesbian romance in Bedford Hills. Rae was a white Jewish woman who was sent to the reform school because she ran away from home and was “sexually promiscuous,” despite the latter being an assumption based on her account of being raped by two soldiers after she ran away from an abusive father. Jewel was a black inmate who was one of Rae’s multiple girlfriends, and adopted the “persona of a white woman and became ‘mama Blondie,’ addressing Rae as ‘my own loving Daddy’” (96).

In one letter to Rae, Jewel wrote that she intended “to be a good true mama to you now and out in the big world,” and continued to describe her fantasies: “beautiful daddy... teasing and trying to fuck me and do everything that goes with...

I bet you’d make me ask for more, for I am glad to say that I can’t get enough jazz’ [...] I am your little Mama Blondie Indeed I love my daddy I scream I do” (Qtd. In Rafter 97) These letters, as Alexander and Rafter point out, show an intricate role-play between the two women who had extremely limited opportunities to spend physical time together. This role-playing mirrors Rose Cleveland’s earlier letter to Evangeline Marrs Simpson, wherein she likens herself to a “captain” and Evangeline to Cleopatra. Though Jewel and Rae adopting the personas of “Mama Blondie” and “Loving Daddy” may demonstrate a fantastical escapism from the harsh reality of the reform institution, it also exhibits an adherence to romantic letter-writing norms, albeit through informal language. The fantasy also notably reverses the dynamic that Otis constructed as the underlying framework of interracial lesbian romance: Jewel becomes the white, subservient “Mama Blondie” and Rae is the authoritative “Daddy.”

Through their subversive letter-writing the queer women under state control in the early 1900s crafted their own worlds, practices, and desires. In certain forms, the incarcerated women adhere to romanticized norms and traditions while deviating in style and circumstance. Although the women under surveillance were subject to the first moral panic over female homosexuality, their marked status as “degenerates” internally allowed them to deviate even further from strict social norms in order to “give

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evidence of their own power” (96). Subjugated queer women at this time were arguably more self-aware of the moral and social implications of their queerness than the privileged women in Boston marriages and romantic friendships, yet pursued their desires regardless. The joyful defiance of patriarchal authority has grown to become a defining feature of the modern queer community. Both the power that the state exerted over queer incarcerated women and the power the women exercised through their defiant queerness are examples of what Michel Foucault names “productive power.”

Power, per Foucault, runs within and between every part of society, rather than simply being a mechanism used by the “powerful” to oppress people below them in the social hierarchy. Biopower is one such form of power, that of power over bodies, and fuels what Foucault names “biopolitics” (Foucault 139). Foucault locates sex as the hinge between bio-politics, politics of an entire society, race, or species, and anatomo-politics, or the politics of a single body (139). When capitalism began necessitating nuclear family structures, sexuality became a mode of power for the state to regulate both individual bodies and the broader society. The capitalist state was invested in nuclear families to produce and raise capitalproducing citizens, and began imposing legal sanctions on non-reproductive sexual pleasure (141). In the case of incarcerated women in the late 1800s and early 1900s, punishment surrounding sexual pleasure that worked against the state goal of reproducing white heteropatriarchy functioned to control individual women and institution populations at large. The state was invested in the reproductive and sexual lives of women, and deployed considerable power to reform women who had stepped outside of Victorian norms into a mold of respectable, productive womanhood. In the case of the older, wealthy, white, well-educated women discussed in previous chapters, the state had no reason nor power to intervene in their reproductive or sexual lives; they were too socially-established and respectable to be considered deviant or in need of saving. Some of the women in Boston marriages were maternal reformers themselves, actively creating the circumstances for less-privileged queer women to be placed in institutions. The discourse surrounding queer behavior within institutions and the behavior management “solutions” it produced spread to other institutions and seeped into psychological journals, eventually providing sexologists with the first case studies of female homosexuality and constructing early theories of female homosexual deviance.

Chapter Three: Sexology, Beyond Freud

Sexology, or the study of sex, was established as a discipline by German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing when he published Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886. European sexological texts were often translated into English and made available in America, where scientists expanded upon European theories and constructed their own. For example, Psychopathia Sexualis was translated and disseminated in Englishspeaking countries in 1903 (O’Leary). Sexological theory defined how sexually “deviant” women were identified, why they were considered a threat, and how intervention was conducted. Intervention, in these cases, took the forms of psychological therapy, violating physical examinations, incarceration, or efforts to “cure” the women. Throughout the eighteenth century, European “natural historians” had “dedicated enormous energy to constructing taxonomic schema” which ordered humans “according to particular structures, functions, and distinguishing characteristics” (Terry 30). The racial hierarchies developed by the Europeans “served as evidence” for “arguing” which people had the right to self-govern (30). Comparative anatomy and anthropology “emerged” from the racial classification project as methods to examine racial

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groups for physical differences as proof of inferiority (31). In An American Obsession, Jennifer Terry explains how the study of sexual deviance was born from a legacy of racial classification, and how similar methods of invasive physical examination for evidence of inferiority were used on both racial and sexual minorities.

In Modernism and Perversion: Sexual Deviance in Sexology and Literature, 1850-1930, Anna Schaffner examines the development of sexology and how it influenced literature of the time. As scientific models of human behavior overtook Christian understandings of sinful choices, sexologists reframed sexual deviancy from an immoral behavior to a “pathologized medical condition” (Schaffner 2). The “pervert ceased to be a sinner and instead became the patient” (3). The perversions constructed, then studied by the sexologists reflected social anxieties over changing norms, economic structures, technological developments, scientific discoveries and the broad reorganization of society caused by industrialization (6). Initially, philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and authors like Max Nordau blamed deviancy on the corrupting influence of “decadent” modernity (8). Through the writings of the sexologists, the understanding of perverts as corrupted by civilization eventually shifted to the opposite concept that deviants corrupt the “social body” (9). Early sexologists constructed degenerate individuals as dangerous to “national strength and purity,” which created an imperative for society to intervene and “fix” the disease of perversion. This tied into eugenic theories, which were gaining traction in the United States at this time, that “diseases” and undesirable traits could eventually be eliminated by state intervention in reproduction. Further, politicians and public commentators scapegoated deviants for core societal “problems” that caused mass anxiety.

Sex had previously been a matter of religious confessional, which created a “great archive of the pleasures of sex” that disappeared without a trace to suit “the purposes of the Christian pastoral” (Foucault 63). As society shifted with “protestantism, counter-reformation, 18th century pedagogy, and 19th century medicine” sexologists began an extended endeavor to understand the truth of sexuality in scientific terms (63). When sexuality was drawn into the domain of science, the confessional aspect of sex became more than “simply saying what was done;” finding the “truth” of sex required “reconstructing” the “thoughts that recapitulated it, the obsessions that accompanied it, the images, desired, modulations, and quality of the pleasure that animated it” (63). In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault defines scientia sexualis as the Western procedure for uncovering the truth of sexuality, which emerged through the research of the sexologists described in this chapter. Scientia sexualis demands that “sex speak the truth” and that sex tells us “the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our immediate consciousness;” essentially, scientia sexualis relies on confession, often coerced, to reveal “unconscious truths” which are fit into conceptual boxes and located as the cause of any range of physical or mental symptoms (69). The methods of the sexologists combined medical examination with sexual confession, which reconstructed “the procedure of confession in a field of scientifically acceptable observations” (64). Multiple sexologists used dream interpretation, free association, and hypnosis to uncover so-called “unconscious desires” which caused a patient’s “perversions,” namely Sigmund Freud.

The emergence of sexology as a truth-seeking operation grounded in confession and psychological analysis constructed sexuality as a secret, even within an individual’s own consciousness (66).

In the two previous chapters, I have discussed multiple authors’ assumptions that women in relationships with other women did not fully understand their own sexuality or the implications of their intimate lives.

This reasoning, present in the early sexologists’ case studies up through current discussions of historical

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queers, rests on the idea that a universal sexual truth resides within individuals, and confession is necessary to fully analyze and explain it for the good of society. Scientia sexualis defined sexuality as: “being ‘by nature:’ a domain susceptible to pathological processes, and hence one calling for therapeutic or normalizing interventions; a field of meanings to decipher; the site of processes concealed by specific mechanisms; a focus of indefinite causal relations, and an obscure speech that had to be ferreted out and listened to” (68) The sexologists parsed sexuality out of confessions, coerced or not, and out of physical examinations where the body was read as a nonverbal confession to “deviancy.” Confession shifted from a religious mechanism to a “ritual of discourse” between patient and doctor as sexuality was written into the realm of science and knowable “truth” (61). Sexuality was understood to be a scientific fact by the sexologists; therefore causes and effects must exist. Once the “perversions” were written into existence, “perverts” were scapegoated for an array of national and societal problems.

Despite the widespread public scapegoating of “perverts,” the sexologists aimed to change laws in favor of the “deviants” they studied. This legal activism was driven by the sexologists’ aims to understand, contain and potentially cure “perversions” for the good of degenerate individuals and the society (13). The sexologists generally promoted decriminalization of deviant behavior, but still advocated for intervention to “fix” the individuals. Schaffner examines how sexologists shifted from a focus on the “problem” of masturbation to homosexuality in the late nineteenth century when the construct of “sodomy” was replaced by the precise definition of “homosexual” by Károly Kertbeny in 1869 (13). In the initial concerns over masturbation, sodomy, and later homosexuality, men were the normative subjects that researchers first studied. Women were frequently a theoretical afterthought, and the concerns over female “perversions” were imbued with additional stigma due to cultural understandings of women as inherently more “pure” than men. Homosexuality became the “most discussed of the perversions” near the turn of the century, turning into “the new emblem of moral corruption” that was “feared and contained,” but also “celebrated as a challenger of the existing sexual order” (14). The obsession surrounding homosexuals was both fueled by sexological studies and created a demand for more theories to be written and disseminated in the interest of creating solutions to what was understood as a mass societal issue.

Psychopathia Sexualis was written by Richard von Krafft-Ebing in 1886; he first published it with the subtitle “With Special Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study.” The “antipathic sexual instinct” that he later defines is male homosexuality. Krafft-Ebing begins Psychopathia Sexualis by describing the “hidden laws of nature” which guarantee the “propagation of the human race” (Krafft-Ebing 1). Animalistic sexual drive ensures human procreation, but man “elevates his superior position” by controlling and reshaping his sexual urges through a rubric of “morality, the sublime, and the beautiful” (1). Krafft-Ebing frames “sexual feeling” as crucial in the development of all human accomplishments and transcendence above animals. However, sexual feeling has such power that it “may easily degenerate into the lowest passion and basest vice” (2). To prove this claim, Krafft-Ebing discusses the sexuality of “savage races;” he argued that “Australasians, Polynesians, [and] Malays of the Philippines,” for example, were in an earlier phase of moral development where they were vastly less refined and much closer to the state of animals than Europeans (2). Krafft-Ebing then explains physiological and anthropological “facts” to define which manifestations of sexuality are pathological. Krafft-Ebing used

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197 case studies as examples for the myriad sexual afflictions he defines.

Earlier “scientists” of racial classification relied on studying physical traits of people of color to prove anthropological theories that non-white races hadn’t yet evolved to the phase of development white Europeans had reached, and were therefore as unfit to self-govern as women and children. In Psychopathia Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing directly connects the racist theory that non-white races exist in a developmentally inferior state to Europeans with animalistic, “unrefined” sexuality that tends towards perversion. The logic of people in an “earlier phase” of moral, physical, or mental development as incapable of autonomy framed intervention in both non-European countries and queer lives as the moral responsibility of “refined” white men. In the classic example of this line of thought, “The White Man’s Burden,” a poem written by Rudyard Kipling in 1899 on the eve of the Philippine-American War, calls for America to “take up the White Man’s burden” as Britain had through colonization. This poem neatly summarizes the white attitude towards people deemed unfit to be sovereign; the “white man’s burden” is to “civilize” and control people who are “half devil and half child” (Kipling). Kipling’s description of Philippine people as “half devil” and “half child” displays both the mental immaturity and the moral perversion 19th century anthropologists projected onto non-European people. European racial “scientists” viewed people of color as having an underdeveloped moral compass and possessing sexual excess that was read through violating physical examination. As mentioned above, sexological classification of perversions descended directly from traditions of racial classification. During this era of ‘scientific’ classification, people of color and queers were both constructed as blameless for their inborn “perversions,” which infantilized huge populations and gave patriarchal European imperialists ‘factual’ justification to impose brutal oppression on bodies existing outside heteropatriarchal white norms. White “deviants,” however, could be “cured,” whereas people of color were subjected to white European control and violence. This difference is crucial in analyzing the intersectional frameworks of oppression leveled against queer women of color during this time.

Havelock Ellis, in Sexual Inversion, critiques Krafft-Ebing’s work as too unfocused and subject to much theoretical change throughout his multiple editions of Psychopathia Sexualis (Ellis 69). However, Ellis praises Krafft-Ebing as doing a “great service” to the “study of sexual perversion” through his “clinical enthusiasm” with the “firm conviction that he was conquering a great neglected field of morbid psychology which rightly belongs to the physician.” Additionally, Ellis claims that Krafft-Ebing’s mass accumulation of case studies and self-reports from “perverts” were analyzed and published without any “false shame,” which theoretically aided “fellow-sufferers” in their quests for answers and solutions (70). Ellis identifies Krafft-Ebing’s initial theory that inversion, a “sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex,” was a degenerative condition (70). In the last edition of Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1902, Krafft-Ebing shifted his theory from inversion as a degenerative condition to a “variation, a simple anomaly,” which he acknowledged aligned with the opinion that “inverts” had of themselves (71). This, Ellis argues, both evidences a similar shift in thought among sexological theory and paved the way for Sigmund Freud and others to investigate homosexuality as a normal and common sexual variation (71). The theoretical shift from degenerative condition to inborn variation, however, maintained that homosexuality was a negative mode of being and continued to encourage containment and attempts to ‘fix’ queer people. Both conceptual frameworks infantilized queer people as ‘sufferers’ who needed

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psychologists to guide them in achieving ‘normal’ sexuality.

In a radical move, Havelock Ellis asserted that homosexuals did not necessarily want or need to be “cured,” himself putting quotes around “cured” (Salmagundi 31). Ellis’ use of quotes implies a doubt towards the idea of a “cure” for homosexuality. Ellis compared homosexuality to colorblindness, and “color-hearing,” to make the claim that homosexuality cannot be accurately considered a disease (32).

Ellis wrote that “many people imagine that what is abnormal is necessarily diseased,” but “that is not the case, unless we give the word disease an inconveniently and illegitimately wide extension” (Ellis 318).

While discussing the idea of “curing” homosexuality, Ellis emphasized that “it is better than a man should be enabled to make the best of his own strong natural instincts, with all their disadvantages, than that he should be unsexed and perverted, crushed into a position which he has no natural aptitude to occupy” (341). In Ellis’ view, inverts should aim to be chaste rather than force themselves into “normal sexuality.”

Ellis points out that social stigma towards homosexuals does great damage to their mental state and being discovered by the public forces accomplished individuals into lives of shame or suicide.

Female homosexuality was rarely given equal consideration in early theories of homosexuality, but Ellis devotes Sexual Inversion to women and men in equal measure. Ellis acknowledges that homosexuality is equally common in women and men, but that the social norms of physical intimacy between women both shield them from suspicion and enable homosexual experimentation (218). Without identifying the formations as Boston marriages, Ellis includes accounts from women who lovingly cohabitate with other women they share career goals with. The “energetic emotional” women in these relationships are classified

by Ellis as existing on the “borderland of true sexual inversion” (220). The gray area that defines these relationships as somewhat, but not quite, homosexual is that “sex in these relationships is scarcely the essential and fundamental element” compared to emotional intimacy and devotion (219). Ellis includes a passage written by one American woman “in a respectable educational position:” “when we [her friend who had experienced anxiety sleeping alone] began regularly to sleep in the same room, the physical part of our affection grew rapidly very strong. It is natural for me generally to caress my friends, but I soon could not be alone in a room with this one without wanting to have my arms round her [...] For some time it satisfied us fully to be in bed together. One night, however, when she had had a cruelly trying day and I wanted to find all ways of comforting her, I bared my breast for her to lie on.

Afterward it was clear that neither of us could be satisfied with-out this. She groped for it like a child, and it excited me much more to feel that than to uncover my breast and arms altogether at once [...] Much of this excitement was sexually localized, and I was haunted in the daytime by images of holding this woman in my arms. I noticed also that my inclination to caress my other women friends was not diminished, but increased. All this disturbed me a good deal. The homosexual practices of which I had read lately struck me as merely nasty; I could not imagine myself tempted to them; — at the same time the whole matter was new to me, for I had never wanted anyone even to share my bed before; I had read that sex instinct was mysterious and unexpected, and I felt that I did not know what might come” (221)

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After experiencing disgust with her recognition of sexual desire, the woman wrote to a trusted older man who replied with a “tender warning” to restrain herself from engaging in intimate acts and encourage her partner to do the same (221). This proved to be unsuccessful when the woman brought it up with her partner, who replied that she “wanted” her in “all ways” and that it saddened her to know that the woman was “trying not to want her in one way because [she] thought it was wrong” (221). Thereafter, the woman attempted to resist giving into her “fears and scruples” and to give her “friend” “all the love,” and “all the kinds of love” she could (221). While “keeping her eyes open for danger,” the women “did as [they] liked doing,” including sleeping in the same bed, sitting “as close together” as they “wished,” and kissing “each other as often” as they wanted to, “which was very many times a day” (221). As a result of this, the women loved each other “very warmly,” and the author of the letter wrote that “no temptation to nastiness has ever come” (222).

The inclusion of this letter and similar testaments to the emotional fulfillment women could experience when in a loving relationship with another woman speaks to Ellis’ radical acceptance of what he recognized as the neutral, organic nature of homosexuality. Like some of the women discussed in the first chapter, the woman who wrote this letter did not consider herself ‘homosexual’ and was disturbed by the thought that her own relationship with another woman had taken a sexual turn. The “temptation to nastiness” seems to refer to genital sex, which bolsters some contemporary scholars’ arguments that women in Boston marriages could have potentially viewed sex as temporary temptations in otherwise sensual, yet physically restrained intimate lives. Ellis theorized that in women, homosexuality is “as likely to be accompanied by high intellectual ability” as it is in men (Ellis 196). Margaret Otis’ assertion that many of the white women engaging in homosexual behavior were the most intelligent in their class similarly constructs white homosexual women as harboring both masculine intelligence and feminine manipulativeness.

In relation to the linkage between criminality and female queerness previously discussed, Ellis claimed that lesbians commit more crimes than gay men due to a “combined infantile impulsiveness and masculine energy” (201). The “infantile impulsiveness” was a product of womanhood, and the “masculine energy” was either the cause or the result of ‘inverted’ sexuality. White queer women were framed as more intelligent due to their masculinity, but infantilized through the assumption that women were naturally irrational. The same framework was not applied to queer women of color; the queerness of people of color was characterized through the racist anthropological theory that people of color were morally and intellectually underdeveloped and therefore predisposed to perversion. The high rate of homosexuality in women’s prisons was understood as a direct result of the linkage between criminality and female queerness, along with the near-universal prevalence of homosexuality in single-sex environments (210).

Despite arguing for the rights of homosexuals, Ellis validated the damaging conception of lesbians as predisposed to criminality, which ties in with racist ideas of women of color as predisposed to lesbianism.

Sigmund Freud argued against Ellis’ concept that “inverts” necessarily displayed “character inversion,” or physical qualities, drives, and character traits of the opposite sex in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud 1905, 8). Freud wrote that character inversion is found with “some degree of regularity” in inverted women, but not men; therefore, it could not be the universal cause of homosexuality (8).

Despite the contributions of the sexologists already analyzed in this chapter, Freud is often claimed as the

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preeminent figure in psychosexual theory. Per Schaffner, this is due to Freud’s “concise, elegant” language within a “well-established field of less-readable volumes” (Schaffner 137). The context for Freud’s work to be understood already existed. Ellis considered homosexuality a variation, however, Freud explained perverse sexuality as a phase all humans pass through and in which some became developmentally ‘stuck.’

Freud, in sexological tradition, used anecdotal case studies to claim his theories as correct. Freud’s study of women largely focused on hysteria, which he first theorized was caused by child abuse (160). Hysteria, however, was a ‘catchall’ diagnosis for a variety of behaviors and symptoms in women, which led to hysteria becoming a ‘widespread’ diagnosis. Freud “refused to believe that child abuse was that ubiquitous,” and thus reframed his theory of neuroses as reliant on “unconscious desires” (161). This ultimately shaped his entire psychoanalytical framework and the development of the Oedipus Complex theory.

It is crucial to note how Freud’s theory of “unconscious desires” enabled him, and other Freudian psychologists, to infuse meaning into dreams, fantasies, and behaviors of patients in whatever way suited their diagnosis. This concept effectively allowed psychoanalysts to project their own assumptions and ideas onto a patient. Additionally, women were conceptualized as being more repressed and seen as more neurotic. This grounded the entire field of psychoanalysis in a system of physically, mentally, and behaviorally examining women to find internal weaknesses. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud describes the cause of hysteria as “thought formations” which are “held back in a state of unconsciousness” and “find an outlet through the process of conversion into somatic phenomena—the hysterical symptoms” (Freud 1905, 24). Hysterics, mostly women, showed “a degree of sexual repression in excess of normal measure” and “an instinctive flight [...] from any intellectual preoccupation with the problem of sexuality” (25). Further, Freud posits that “in the unconscious psychic life of all neurotics (without exception), we will find stirrings of inversion and fixations of the libido upon persons of the same sex” (27). The cause of hysteria, antipathy and ignorance towards “normal” sexuality, could easily be viewed as a consequence of the Victorian morality that demanded chastity from women, often through fear tactics and legal sanctions for promiscuity (as noted in the previous chapter on incarcerated women). By creating a system of diagnosis and intervention based on “unconscious desires,” rather than expected reactions to social imperatives, Freud framed women as ignorant of their own desires and incapable of understanding their own sexuality.

Freud, paradoxically, claimed in 1926 that female sexuality was an unknowable “dark continent” for psychology (Gilman 169). The usage of the term “dark continent” reveals a racial dimension within Freud’s analysis of female sexuality, “in terms of the medicalization of the black female body during the nineteenth century” (169). Freud, like racial scientists, frequently turned to physical examination for evidence of “perversion” within his patient’s psyches. Evidence of racial logics are present elsewhere within Freud’s theories; the term “fetish” was originally coined by “European critics” in the 16th century to describe “materialized gods” that some Africans had incorporated into their religious practices (Matory 2).

In Three Essays, Freud described psychological perversions wherein “the normal sexual object is replaced by another one that bears some relation to it but is entirely unsuitable to serve the normal sexual aim” (Freud 1905, 16). These substitutions, according to Freud, “are not unjustifiably likened to the fetishes in which savages see their gods embodied” (16). After this comparison, Freud reframes fetishism as a sexual perversion, thereby racializing the concept of fetishes and sexualizing the worship of “materialized

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gods.” Freud’s overarching theory that sexual perversions are developmental phases in which people are “stuck” further implies that “fetishism” within African religions was evidence of being similarly “stuck” in a “primitive” state of development.

In 1920, Freud published “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman,” a case study of a “beautiful and clever girl of 18, belonging to a family of good standing” who had “pursued a certain lady ‘in society’ who was about 10 years older than herself ” (Freud 1920, 13). Freud had been contacted by the young woman’s concerned parents. The lady “in society” was locally infamous for living with a married woman as her lover, and having “promiscuous affairs with a number of men” (14). The first area of concern was that the young woman had no regard for her own reputation, and the second was her attempted suicide after her father had seen the pair on the street and thrown them an “angry glance” (14). Freud discussed the girl’s physical characteristics to show she did not have overwhelming evidence of “physical hermaphroditism,” and points out that “in both sexes the degree of physical hermaphroditism is to a great extent independent of the psychical hermaphroditism,” yet the coincidence in both is more common in women than in men (19). After dismissing the question of inherent versus acquired homosexuality as “fruitless and inappropriate,” Freud launched into a convoluted explanation of the girl’s homosexuality. Essentially, the girl yearned for a kinder mother and was jealous of her own mother for her recent pregnancy (21). The girl, according to Freud, unconsciously desired to have her father’s male child, and “turned away from her father and from men altogether” after repressing her resentment and jealousy towards her mother’s pregnancy (21). Due to this, “she [psychologically] changed into a man and took her mother in place of her father and her love object” (22).

The girl proved frustrating to Freud, who could not complete her psychoanalytic treatment.

After Freud explained his grand theory to her, she “replied in an inimitable tone, ‘How very interesting,’ as though she were a grande dame being taken over a museum and glancing [...] at objects to which she was completely indifferent” (25). At one point, the girl fed Freud fake dreams to purposely mislead him and, as Freud claimed, “to gain [his] interest and [his] good opinion,” or “perhaps in order to disappoint [Freud] all the more thoroughly later on” (27). This, much like the defiance of the incarcerated queer women in chapter 2, evidences a high degree of self-awareness which stands in direct contrast to the sexologists’ theories that women were thoroughly unaware of their own sexualities. Queer women’s defiance of authority and insistence on self-knowledge queered them further; their rebellion against normative constructions of passive womanhood made them even more “dangerous” to heteropatriarchy and pathologically “incurable”. Regardless of the patient’s self-knowledge, Freud and other sexologists insisted on reading their own meaning into the patient’s narrative. This reinforced the conception of queer subjects as infantilized, helpless beings who needed intervention regardless of their self-concept.

While Freud did not write the last theories of sexology, his contribution along with a number of factors coincided to strip women of cultural assumptions of innocence during the 1910s and 1920s.

Women had been able to gain some economic independence during World War I; mass migration to cities encouraged nightlife and experimentation; white women gained the right to vote in 1920. The “Roaring 20s” created a new era of sexual freedom that was, at least partially, a backlash to decades of Victorian morality. The sexologists’ theories constructed how sexuality, in particular female queerness, was conceptualized and handled by society, which endured despite shifting norms of sexual freedom. Sexology

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emerged from racial classification systems, which linked racist theories to sexual “deviance,” and which was further shaped by prevalent social anxieties. These systems emphasized “deviants” as detrimental to national health, infantilized “perverts” as existing in atavistic moral phases or immature psychological developmental periods, and ultimately framed “deviants” as unfit for self-determination. In regards to queer women, sexologists maintained a need to scrutinize female sexuality more so than male sexuality for evidence of queerness, linked lesbianism with masculine criminality, and focused on women’s supposedly immature inability to understand and deal with their own sexuality. The sexologists laid the pathologizing groundwork for queer women, which continues to impact the way society regards and understands female queerness.

Conclusion

Throughout this thesis, I have discussed women in Boston marriages, incarcerated queer women, racially charged homosexuality panics, the development of sexology, and retroactively applied modern queer theory to frame 19th-20th century female queerness as a sphere of possibility and meaning that is intensely relevant to understand the continuing pathologization of female homosexuality. Women in Boston marriages were shielded from medico-psychological intervention by Victorian cultural assumptions of innocence working in tandem with whiteness, wealth, and social status. Simultaneously, women already marked as ‘deviant’ by the state were identified as a ‘threat’ through the lenses of race, class, or social standing before queerness itself was a marker. Sexology emerged as a discipline in the late 1800s aiming to reveal the “truth” of sexuality, and to contain or ‘cure’ sexual “perversions,” which were scapegoated as causes of national ‘degeneration.’ The work of sexology was twofold: it both defined homosexuality as a ‘threat,’ and stripped women of cultural assumptions of innocence by emphasizing that women were as likely as men to be ‘perverse.’ The discipline of sexology was directly descended from racial ‘science,’ which structured sexology around and within established racist and sexist hierarchies. The development of sexology and institutional panic over female homosexuality co-constructed an oppressive framework that understood and ‘dealt with’ female queerness within a matrix of racism, classism, and sexism. These theoretical lenses were universal amongst the sexologists, the state, and state authorities, even if the ways they were deployed and the conclusions each group came to differed.

As discussed previously, all of the queer women in the 1880s-1920s rightfully deserve recognition for constructing new formations, defying oppressive norms, creating moments of queer utopia, and paving the way for future generations of women who love women. The lesbian continuum, as coined by Adrienne Rich, encompasses a wide range of “woman-identified experience” and certainly includes the queer women during the 1880s-1920s. The fact that the identity “lesbian” was first entering cultural discourse at this time, and the rejection of this label by some of the women discussed leaves a theoretical space that I fill with my assertion of an overlapping, intertwined queer continuum.

The women in Boston marriages, the women under surveillance in prisons and reform schools, and all of the queer women who existed outside of these spaces and formations during the 19th-20th centuries did not have a universal self-identity, or a single community. Queer, originally used as a pejorative against homosexual people, was reclaimed by activist groups such as Queer Nation in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Rand). Queer theory is “not a singular or systematic conceptual or methodological

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framework, but a collection of intellectual engagements with the relations between sex, gender, and sexual desire” (Spargo 9). This thesis is a queer theoretical project to analyze how pathologizing groundwork was laid in the 1880s-1920s and to celebrate the anti-normative relationships, practices, and identities women during this era created. Through the examination of this particular historical moment, the disparate ways in which queer women were initially identified, conceptualized, and subjugated are shown to congeal into a powerful, multifaceted oppressive system. Dissecting the framework that constructed the system of pathologizing female homosexuality reveals the enduring logics that affect queer women in varying ways.

There are multiple limitations to this thesis. The time period I researched was a 40-year period that was packed with queer meaning and defining moments, yet was nonetheless a small slice of the vast history of queerness. My intent in researching this time period was to capture a moment of shifting norms and possibilities as an entry point into understanding the development of queer female identities, and their subsequent oppression. Through recounting and analyzing two different forms of female queerness, and the simultaneous development of sexology, I hope to have illuminated the ideological fibers which intertwined to form a complex web surrounding and shaping female queerness. Another limitation was the scope of this thesis; I was only able to analyze a handful of sources for each chapter because I researched within four main themes (Boston marriages, incarcerated women, sexologists, and Queer theory). While each topic had much existing scholarship, they were rarely all considered in conversation with one another.

Given more time, a larger-scale project would be able to dive deeper into the subsections within my thesis and perhaps reinforce, or disprove, my theorizations.

As mentioned above, Queer theory is not singular or systematic, but a “collection of intellectual engagements” within the realms of sex, gender, and desire (Spargo). Queer theory tends, by nature, towards abstraction and theoreticization. In this thesis, I have attempted to both ground my theoretical arguments in concrete historical reality, and analyze historical queerness through Queer theory to create space for recognition regardless of ambiguity. For this reason, I have actively refrained from attempting to “prove” that the women in this study align with what we currently recognize as lesbians; the ambiguity of these historical figures imbues this analysis with a crucial fluidity that crystallizes within a Queer theoretical lens.

Viewing this fluidity as positive, rather than as an obstruction to this research, respects the self-identification of the women featured in this thesis and situates them within a Queer continuum rather than a linearprogressive timeline of LGBT development. “Queer time,” according to Jack Halberstam, “is a term for those specific models of temporality that emerge within postmodernism once one leaves the temporal frames of bourgeois reproduction and family, longevity, risk/safety, and inheritance” (Halberstam 20). The individual women in this research experienced Queer time within their own individual lives, and their lives coalesced in a broader continuum of Queer time, space, and experience that stretches throughout and within history.

The groundwork that was established during this time was rooted in race, class, and surveillance.

Women in Boston marriages were granted tacit acceptance due to their assumed sexual innocence, until sexology collaborated with institutional discourse to solidify lesbian relationships as perverse taboos. Queer women who already existed outside of white Victorian norms were heavily policed from the beginning of their lives; when they formed relationships with other women, authorities noticed because their existing non-normative qualities rendered their queerness legibly deviant pre-sexology. The sexologists’ interest in

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female homosexuailty was sparked by the surveillance of young women by their families and guardians, rather than self-reports from the “deviants,” as was the case with male homosexuality (Krafft-Ebing).

These factors collaborated to shape the pathologization of female queerness, as it was emerging, to be complicated by factors of race and class. Although the Queer community has experienced triumph and progress since the 1920s, the lenses through which queer women are oppressed remain constant. Queerness remains situated in a matrix of racism, classism, and sexism, amongst other factors which have emerged since the time period of this thesis. The usefulness of this research lies in the potential for understanding the present by examining the past.

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Speech Rights of Labor Unions Post-Citizens United Giliann Karon

When the Supreme Court held that corporations and unions could spend unlimited treasury funds on electioneering communications in 2010, the balance of political power shifted in favor of wealthy corporations. Unions are subject to burdensome disclosure law under the National Labor Relations Act. Unions suffered a loss of funding in 2018 when Janus v. AFSCME struck down fair-share laws as unconstitutional. Corporations can collect revenue from dissenting shareholders and are not subject to disclosure requirements.

Since corporations usually back Republican candidates and unions usually back Democratic candidates, Citizens United has allowed corporations to tilt the election in favor of the Republican party.

Introduction

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions have the same First Amendment rights as people in a case called Citizens United v. FEC. In a slim 5-4 decision, the Court struck down a statute in the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Act (BCRA) that banned corporations and unions from using treasury funds to make independent expenditures. These independent expenditures are used to make television or radio advertisements calling for the election or defeat of a candidate. This ruling overturned decades of campaign finance law and legal precedent. Per the decision, corporations and unions have the same First Amendment rights as people concerning campaign finance law. People express their opinions by donating to political campaigns or making independent expenditures. Since political contributions are an extension of speech and individuals comprise corporations and unions, the Court believed that these organizations should have the same rights as people.

Even though corporations and unions have the same speech rights, the playing field is anything but level. Many unions, like AFL-CIO and Teamsters, have spoken out against the ruling. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has even proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. If the entire US labor movement pooled all its assets together, it would be less than 0.10 percent of

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the assets of the four largest banks in the United States1. Since corporations have much more money than unions, Citizens United tilts the balance of power in favor of wealthy corporations and their executives while harming American workers.

Both unions and corporations are 501(c) organizations, sometimes called “politically active nonprofits.” They are also known as “dark money” organizations because they are not required to disclose their donors, meaning their money can come from wealthy individuals or even foreign actors. Social welfare organizations, like the NRA and Sierra Club, corresponding to section 501(c)(4) of the internal revenue code. For this reason, social welfare organizations are called “501(c)(4)s.” Labor unions are called 501(c)(5)s for the same reason. Both c4s and c5s collect donations to use on independent expenditures, like television advertisements. Even though these organizations are designated as nonprofits per the tax code, they are allowed to engage in political activity as long as it is not the organization’s primary function. But the IRS has not enforced the primary purpose rule, so politically active nonprofits are free to flood the airwaves while undisclosed mega-donors foot the bill2.

Though these types of organizations existed before Citizens United, their amount spiked after the ruling. The organizations also spent more money on election cycles after 2010. These politically active nonprofits spent $171 million more in the 2012 election cycle than in the 2008 election cycle3. And 60 percent of these 501(c) organizations were created after 20104. Citizens United did not create the dark money problem, but the Court’s ruling certainly exacerbated it.

Elections are now more expensive than ever. The side with the most money, usually corporations, wins. Unions must comply with labor law requirements, which limit how much money they collect in dues.

Some unions are subject to disclosure laws, even though corporations are exempt. This essay will analyze why corporations have a larger pool of funds compared to unions and how this results in Republicancontrolled legislatures.

Union Regulations

This ruling opened the floodgates for corruption and allowed powerful special interest groups to have a stronghold of the electoral process. In addition to the unequal assets between corporations and unions, decades of case law and legislation allows corporate speech to drown out labor speech.

Unions are subject to strict financial and speech regulations. They must report their spending to the Securities and Exchanges Commission, even though other 501c organizations do not have to disclose

1 Wiist, William H. "Citizens United, Public Health, and Democracy: The Supreme Court Ruling, Its Implications, and Proposed Action." American Journal of Public Health 101, no. 7 (2011): 1172-179. doi:10.2105/ ajph.2010.300043.

2 Barker, Kim. "How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call It Public Welfare." ProPublica. March 09, 2019. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on-elections-and-call-it-publicwelfare.

3 "Data on Campaign Finance, Super PACs, Industries, and Lobbying." OpenSecrets. http://www.opensecrets.org/.

4 Ibid.

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their donors5. If a member objects to the political speech that unions spend their dues on, the member may request a refund of their dues. The ability to request back money used on political speech to which the union member dissents is called an opt-out right. Union opt-out rights reduce the amount of money that unions have on hand. As a result, unions cannot spend as much money on electioneering communications, and this lessens unionsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; influence in the political process. Weakening unionsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; power weakens the voices of women and minorities, who are overrepresented in labor unions6. In a political environment where women and minorities are the primary targets of conservative policies, unions are a necessary tool to protect the most vulnerable workers.

Since opt-out rights significantly lessen the resources that unions can use to defend their workers, corporations have an advantage. Of course, opt-out rights make sense. Why should someone have to pay for political speech that they disagree with? The issue, however, is that there are no similar laws regarding corporations and their dissenting shareholders.

Citizens United strengthened the speech rights of unions but gave corporations a comparative advantage. On the one hand, unions can spend money to influence the outcome of a federal election.

Conversely, their messages are silenced because corporate-backed candidates usually beat union-backed candidates. To win re-election and appease their corporate donors, these candidates will support bills that benefit corporations at the expense of unions, and the cycle continues. Unions have more political speech rights post-Citizens United, but their voices are drowned out by corporations.

Partisanship of Corporations and Unions

Since more money yields more political influence, corporate-backed candidates have a better chance of beating union-backed candidates. Generally speaking, corporations support Republican candidates, and unions support Democratic candidates. The Republican platform advocates for deregulation and lower corporate tax rates so the free market can run its course. Corporations support Republicans because their policies are better for their businesses, but also because politically connected firms have a higher equity value and are more likely to be bailed out in times of economic distress7.

Republican economic policies enrich corporate executives, often at the expense of workers and their unions. In recent years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have introduced right-to-work laws.

These laws make union membership optional and weaken security agreements between workers and employers. Weak security agreements mean that unions cannot effectively negotiate with their employers about wages and working conditions, rendering the union practically useless. With fewer members, unions 5 Kennedy, Liz, and Sean McElwee. "Do Corporations & Unions Face the Same Rules for Political Spending?"

Demos. July 23, 2014. https://www.demos.org/research/do-corporations-unions-face-same-rules-politicalspending.

6 "Two Thirds of Union Members Are People of Color And/or Women." Daily Kos. August 24, 2017. https://www. dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/24/1692946/-Two-Thirds-of-Union-Members-are-People-of-Color-and-orWomen.

7 Klumpp, Tilman, Hugo M. Mialon, and Michael A. Williams. "The Business of American Democracy: Citizens United, Independent Spending, and Elections." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013. doi:10.2139/ ssrn.2312519.

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are unable to collect as many dues so they cannot make as many independent expenditures as corporations.

When corporations align themselves with Republicans and use their vast pool of funds to make independent expenditures, Democrats lose and unions suffer.

Unions flock to the Democratic Party because of their longstanding support of organized labor and workers’ rights. In 1936, labor unions aligned with the Democratic Party to help re-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt8. FDR’s commitment to organized labor was reflected in the National Industrial Recovery Act (allowed for collective bargaining) and proposed the second Bill of Rights9. Since then, the Democratic Party has branded itself the party of the middle class. Its policies support collective bargaining and workplace democracy. As a result, labor unions almost always endorse Democratic candidates.

Asymmetrical Laws

Union power should be measured relative to corporate power. Unions can spend as much as they want, but does that matter if corporations have four times the amount of money to work with? Corporations outspend unions four-to-one10 because their incomes come from investments and loans, rather than union dues and fees11. Unions simply do not have the resources to spend as much as corporations.

Opt-out rights intensify this gap in assets. Nonmembers who work in a unionized workplace do not have to pay dues, but they do have to pay fees that cover the costs of collective bargaining to avoid free-riding (but this was overturned in Janus in 2018). In 1961, the Supreme Court held that union members have a First Amendment right not to pay union dues if the union funds political speech that the members disagree with. This case, called International Association of Machinists v. Street, held that unions could only use dues from dissenting members to cover the cost of collective bargaining activities, not political speech12. There are Supreme Court rulings that dictate how unions can use their money, but there are no equivalent decisions for corporations and dissenting shareholders. If a corporation supports a political position that a shareholder disagrees with, the shareholder cannot prevent their money from funding political communications.

In 2018, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to organized labor when they struck down “fair share laws” in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Fair share laws require public sector nonmembers in a unionized workplace to pay for fees to cover the costs of collective bargaining13.

The Court held that fair share laws violated freedom of association. The Supreme Court again stripped 8 Schlozman, Daniel. "The Alliance of U.S. Labor Unions and the Democratic Party." Scholars Strategy Network. https://scholars.org/brief/alliance-us-labor-unions-and-democratic-party.

9 "Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal - American Memory Timeline- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources." Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/ presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/unions/.

10 Garden, Charlotte. "Citizens, United and Citizens United: The Future of Labor Speech Rights?" William & Mary Law Review 53, no. 1 (2011).

11 Ibid, 12 Nelson, James D. "Corporations, Unions, and the Illusion of Symmetry." Virginia Law Review 102, no. 8 (2016).

13 "The Facts About the Janus Case." American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. https:// www.afscme.org/now/janus-for-leaders.

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labor unions of a critical source of revenue, thus limiting their power to negotiate fair wages and safe working conditions. In turn, the decision also reduced the amount of money that unions have to spend on political advertising. Once again, there are no laws that limit how corporations collect money from shareholders.

Unions also suffer a representation gap. Not all employees that want to join unions can do so.

Last fall, researchers at MIT surveyed Americansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; attitudes towards joining a union. They found that 48% of workers would join a union if they were able to. This percentage is 16% higher than in 1995 when a similar survey was conducted14. This representation gap occurs because employers are often resistant to unions. Employers will coerce workers out of joining unions. They retaliate against pro-union workers and hold mandatory meetings to dissuade workers from joining unions. As a result, less than 10% of all unionization efforts are successful in obtaining a collective bargaining agreement15. This gap limits the number of dues that unions collect with which to fund political speech16. There are no similar situations regarding corporate shareholders. Shareholders cannot opt-out of funding any political speech, and they are certainly not coerced out of buying shares.

Since the 1950s, union membership has been declining, leaving unions with less money to spend on political communications. According to the Economic Policy Institute, union membership was at its highest in 1945. 33.4 percent of American workers belonged to labor unions. As of 2017, only 10.7 percent of American workers belong to unions17. This number has been steadily declining for the past few decades due to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. In 1947, President Truman signed the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibits certain types of boycotts and outlines strict picketing procedures. The law also gives states the right to ban union shop agreements, which allows employers to hire nonunion workers as long as they join the union within a certain amount of time.

In 1959, Congress passed the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), which requires private-sector unions to disclose their donors to the Securities and Exchange Commission, even though corporations are exempt from disclosure requirements. Even though Citizens United allowed unions and corporations to make independent expenditures without establishing a separate segregated fund, unions must still track their money to ensure that only authorized funds go towards political activity18.

This law was designed to prevent corruption and abuses of union money, but it just creates another burden for unions. The LMRDA tightened rules on the types of boycotts that were allowed and banned certain

14 Kochan, Thomas, Duanyi Yang, Erin L. Kelly, and Will Kimball. "A Growing Number of Americans Want to Join a Union." PBS. September 03, 2018. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-growing-number-ofamericans-want-to-join-a-union.

15 Ibid.

16 Garden.

17 Ingraham, Christopher. "Union Membership Remained Steady in 2017. The Trend May Not Hold." The Washington Post. January 19, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/19/ union-membership-remained-steady-in-2017-the-trend-may-not-hold/?utm_term=.e6c9678bf2f9.

18 Ibid.

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forms of picketing19. Labor speech traditionally receives less protection than other forms of speech20.

Corporate speech, on the other hand, receives just as much protection as any other type of speech.

The Taft-Hartley Act and its subsequent amendments placed strict limits on union activities and allowed employers not to hire workers if they belonged to a union. To further codify these union restrictions, states passed right-to-work laws. These laws permit nonunion members from opting out of paying money comparable to union membership dues to cover the cost of collective bargaining activities, which both members and nonmembers benefit from. Since 1947, 27 states have passed right-to-work laws21. Taft-Hartley allowed employers to exert more control over their unions. It consolidated power at the top, rather than allowing workers to have more control over their wages and conditions.

Unions are at a disadvantage in terms of the ability to organize and spend. They face legal and monetary barriers. As a result, their political speech is not as effective in changing the attitudes of politicians and voters compared to corporations.

Electoral Consequences

Since corporations support the Republican Party and corporations have more money to spend on political speech, Republicans have an advantage over Democrats. This gap was most visible in the 2016 elections. 2016 was the most expensive election cycle. Outside groups spent a record total of $1,665,594,62322. 501(c)(5) organizations spent $27,249,449. 501(c)(4) organizations, the politically active nonprofits that corporations often use to consolidate their undisclosed political contributions, spent $149,433,265—over five times as much as 501(c)(5) groups.

Unsurprisingly, four out of the five 501(c) organizations that spent the most money on electioneering communications in the 2016 election were conservative. And the money won. With help from the four top groups (National Rifle Association, US Chamber of Commerce, Freedom Partners, and Club for Growth), the Republican Party secured the presidency and both houses of Congress. Of course, correlation does not imply causation. A plethora of other factors—including but not limited to sexism, possible Russian interference, and voter suppression—led to the Republican victory of 2016. But given the astronomical amount of corporate spending and the tendency of corporations to support the Republican party, it can be inferred that independent corporate expenditures swayed the results of the election to some extent.

After all, that is what has been happening since 2010. Nour Abdul-Razzak, Carlo Prato, and Stephane Wolton analyzed the political consequences of lifting independent expenditure bans. They compared the share of seats held by Republicans between states that had banned corporate contributions before 2010 and states that had not. Their research shows that the political party aligned with the most efficient interest groups has an electoral advantage. They also contended that because corporations are more likely to take advantage of loosened regulations. Since corporations align themselves with the 19 "NLRB.gov." NLRB. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are/our-history/1959-landrum-griffin-act.

20 Garden.

21 "Taft-Hartley Act Overview." Findlaw. https://employment.findlaw.com/wages-and-benefits/taft-hartley-actoverview.html.

22 Opensecrets.org.

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Republican party, Republican candidates have an advantage over Democratic candidates23.

The three researchers eventually discovered that lifting the corporate expenditure ban increases the share of Republican votes by 7.2 percent and the share of Republican seats by 11.5 percent. Effects of lifting the ban are only realized in the House, not the Senate. Outside spending increases the probability of Republican victories in the lower chamber by 5.7 percent. The effects on the upper chamber are not statistically significant. They also found that candidates become more ideologically extreme as outside spending increases. Lifting corporate expenditure bans shifts the Republican party platform further right, the researchers concluded. These shifts to the right are more apparent in states with weaker union laws24.

The researchers also contended that the timing of the decision gave the green light to unlimited independent expenditures. Citizens United was argued in 2010, right before the congressional elections that determine congressional district boundaries for the next ten years. Because of this, the researchers concluded that the state legislatures’ shifts to the right could have effects on a federal level, possibly creating gerrymandered districts.

Abdul-Razzak, Prato, and Wolton were not the only researchers that identified an uptick in Republican-held seats post-Citizens United. Tilman Klumpp, Hugo Mialon, and Michael Williams analyzed 29,698 state House races and 8,517 state Senate races in 49 states to observe how Citizens United impacted election results. 22 of these states had banned independent spending by corporations and unions before 2010. To get a clear picture of how the Court’s ruling affected election results, the three researchers compared three election cycles prior to 2010 and two election cycles after 201025.

Klumpp, Mialon, and Williams determined that not only are Republican candidates more likely to win their respective races, but they are more likely to get reelected. Democrats are less likely to enter the race. In fact, one in every 10 Democratic candidates will drop out of a state legislative race in states that banned independent corporate and union expenditures before Citizens United. The findings were not uniform across all states. Some states had a larger Republican advantage than others, but Republican candidates still had an advantage throughout all 49 states monitored. The researchers attribute the Republican advantage to the fact that corporations have more resources with which to fund political speech.

Corporations have a larger influence over politics not just because of their larger pool of assets and fewer regulations, but also because they influence a broader range of policies. There are corporations in all policy areas. There are healthcare corporations, petroleum and natural gas corporations, and defense corporations. This means corporations can create advertisements specific to their policy areas. Unions, on the other hand, only advocate for union rights. Of course, there are unions for different occupations, and their advocacy differs depending on the profession. Lockheed Martin can release advertisements supporting a candidate that would increase the defense budget, but it wouldn’t make sense for Teamsters 23 Abdul-Razzak, Nour, Carlo Prato, and Stephane Wolton. "How Outside Spending Shapes American Democracy."

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2823778.

24 Ibid.

25 Klumpp, Tilman, Hugo M. Mialon, and Michael A. Williams. "The Business of American Democracy: Citizens United, Independent Spending, and Elections." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013. doi:10.2139/ ssrn.2312519.

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to release an ad about the defense budget. Many corporations have a union that corresponds to that same occupation. Aetna is to United Nurses & Allied Professionals as Exxon Mobil is to United Steelworkers. But as addressed in part IV, legal restrictions prevent unions from influencing policy as much as corporations do.

Even though unions exist for a variety of occupations, not all occupations can unionize. For example, private practice doctors cannot bargain collectively26. Since all occupations are not represented in the American labor movement, unions cannot influence as many policy areas as corporations do. Unions have been active in other policy areas, such as health care and pensions, but their interests are still not as wide-ranging as corporations. Because corporate interests are not limited to a single policy area, they have an influence over federal and state policies.

Summary and Conclusion

The odds are stacked against labor unions. Through restrictions on protesting, optional membership, the repeal of fair share laws, disclosure requirements, and opt-out rights, unions have a quieter voice and less money with which to create political advertisements. This disparity manifests itself in federal and state election results. Multiple studies have confirmed links between lifting the ban on corporate expenditures and a larger share of seats held by Republicans. Since Republicans usually support right-towork laws, Republican majorities in state legislatures will enact these laws to maintain their control and erode unions’ power.

To make the playing field truly level, Citizens United must be overturned. This way, corporate speech will not drown out union speech. Additionally, banning corporate and union independent expenditures will ensure that elected representatives are not beholden to their wealthy donors, but instead to their constituents. Elections would be less corrupt and more democratic. Killing Citizens United is not a revolutionary idea either. In fact, 88% of Americans want to reduce the influence of large donors and corporations27.

Simply put, Citizens United is an assault on our democratic values. In order to make America genuinely democratic, every citizen should have an equal voice, regardless of their income. Though corporations and unions are made up of individuals, they are wealthier than any one individual could ever hope to be. The American electoral system was designed so every citizen could have an equal amount of influence over politics. In order to continue the Founding Fathers’ vision of democracy, Citizens United must be overturned.

26 "All Doctors Need A Union -- A Union Like UAPD." Union of American Physicians and Dentists. https://www. uapd.com/all-doctors-need-a-union/.

27 Balcerzak, Ashley. "Study: Most Americans Want to Kill 'Citizens United' with Constitutional Amendment – Center for Public Integrity." Center for Public Integrity. May 10, 2018. https://publicintegrity.org/federalpolitics/study-most-americans-want-to-kill-citizens-united-with-constitutional-amendment/.

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Works Cited

Abdul-Razzak, Nour, Carlo Prato, and Stephane Wolton. "How Outside Spending Shapes American Democracy." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2823778.

"All Doctors Need A Union -- A Union Like UAPD." Union of American Physicians and Dentists. https:// www.uapd.com/all-doctors-need-a-union/.

Balcerzak, Ashley. "Study: Most Americans Want to Kill 'Citizens United' with Constitutional Amendment

â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Center for Public Integrity." Center for Public Integrity. May 10, 2018. https://publicintegrity. org/federal-politics/study-most-americans-want-to-kill-citizens-united-with-constitutional amendment/.

Barker, Kim. "How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call It Public Welfare." ProPublica.

March 09, 2019. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on elections-and-call-it-public-welfare.

"Data on Campaign Finance, Super PACs, Industries, and Lobbying." OpenSecrets. http://www. opensecrets.org/.

Garden, Charlotte. "Citizens, United and Citizens United: The Future of Labor Speech Rights?" William

& Mary Law Review 53, no. 1 (2011).

Gunn, Dwyer. "What Caused the Decline of Unions in America?" Pacific Standard. April 24, 2018. https://psmag.com/economics/what-caused-the-decline-of-unions-in-america.

Ingraham, Christopher. "Union Membership Remained Steady in 2017. The Trend May Not Hold." The

Washington Post. January 19, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/ wp/2018/01/19/union-membership-remained-steady-in-2017-the-trend-may-not hold/?utm_term=.e6c9678bf2f9.

Kennedy, Liz, and Sean McElwee. "Do Corporations & Unions Face the Same Rules for Political

Spending?" Demos. July 23, 2014. https://www.demos.org/research/do-corporations-unions face-same-rules-political-spending.

Klumpp, Tilman, Hugo M. Mialon, and Michael A. Williams. "The Business of American Democracy:

Citizens United, Independent Spending, and Elections." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2312519.

Kochan, Thomas, Duanyi Yang, Erin L. Kelly, and Will Kimball. "A Growing Number of Americans

Want to Join a Union." PBS. September 03, 2018. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a growing-number-of-americans-want-to-join-a-union.

"Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal - American Memory Timeline Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources." Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/ teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/ unions/.

"Machinists v. Street, 367 U.S. 740 (1961)." Justia Law. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/ us/367/740/.

Nelson, James D. "Corporations, Unions, and the Illusion of Symmetry." Virginia Law Review 102, no. 8 (2016).

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"NLRB.gov." NLRB. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are/our-history/1959-landrum-griffin act.

Schlozman, Daniel. "The Alliance of U.S. Labor Unions and the Democratic Party." Scholars Strategy

Network. https://scholars.org/brief/alliance-us-labor-unions-and-democratic-party.

"Taft-Hartley Act Overview." Findlaw. https://employment.findlaw.com/wages-and-benefits/taft-hartley act-overview.html.

"The Facts About the Janus Case." AFSCME. https://www.afscme.org/now/janus-for-leaders.

"Two Thirds of Union Members Are People of Color And/or Women." Daily Kos. August 24, 2017. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/24/1692946/-Two-Thirds-of-Union-Members are-People-of-Color-and-or-Women.

Wiist, William H. "Citizens United, Public Health, and Democracy: The Supreme Court Ruling, Its

Implications, and Proposed Action." American Journal of Public Health 101, no. 7 (2011): 1172 179. doi:10.2105/ajph.2010.300043.

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Methamphetamine in China Understanding the Geographic Distribution of Production Shawn A. Shinder & Alexander W.L. Rein This paper uses multivariate regression models to analyze the relationship between geography and the production of methamphetamine. Although the current literature emphasizes economic variables and the presence of corruption, we hypothesize that geographic factors, such as proximity to Hong Kong and North Korea, should be the primary consideration when predicting the location of methamphetamine production. To run the regression models, we divide our data into three blocks: Economic, Geographic and Corruption. We determine that geography is the most statistically significant factor. Upon further analysis, we construct a new mechanism to consider our hypothesis, which outlines geography and corruption as distinct influencers based on financing options which lead to different ownership structures. Ultimately, our results demonstrate that illegal industries are consistent with the Coase Theorem, insofar as determining output efficiency according to ownership structures.

Introduction

The illegal narcotics trade in China has been shaped by factors as varied as history, geography, politics, and factor endowments. Historically, due to China’s proximity to the Golden Triangle and the Opium Wars, opium has played a fundamental role in China’s drug trade1. Since the 1800s, the development of advanced networks of planting cooperatives has led to opium production relocating south of China’s border, coalescing in Myanmar and other Southeast Asian nations2. Concurrently, China has become more efficient at producing synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine, ecstasy, and nimetazepam3.

Ephedra, the plant used to produce pseudoephedrine and ephedrine (the precursor chemicals necessary to produce meth) is legal in and indigenous to Northern China. Furthermore, China’s large population and rapid economic growth, has made illegal drug enforcement increasingly difficult. Anecdotally, most 1 Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud, and Joël Meissonnier. Yaa Baa: Production, Traffic, and Consumption of Methamphetamine in Mainland Southeast Asia. NUS Press, 2004.

2 “A People’s War Final.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

3 Zhang, Yong-an. “Asia’s ATS Epidemic: The Challenges for China.” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001

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Chinese crystal meth laboratories are in Southeastern China, particularly in Guangdong Province4.

This paper seeks to identify the main factors that have caused crystal meth production to locate in South and Southeastern China. More formally, we intend to develop a model that detects the profitability and accessibility of certain provinces to the general production of illicit goods. We hope to be able to quantify each factor that contributes to production and attempt to formalize the significance of each input in terms of impact on output.

Theory & Literature Review

Methamphetamine production is a highly secretive and complicated illegal industry. There is a distinct lack of literature related to the production of methamphetamine in China. The Chinese government presents a major barrier to collecting accurate production estimates and often impedes general data accumulation. The Chinese government also makes official statements specifying that imports from surrounding high-risk countries, particularly Myanmar, have caused the Chinese drug problem5.

Currently, most researchers define drug production as being caused by favorable conditions such as the prevalence of corruption, augmented by the economic situation6. This paper attempts to create a link between a site’s level of production and its underlying corruption, geographic positioning, and economy.

These overarching classifications break down into more complex individual subcategories that we explore in-depth.

To facilitate any large-scale illegal activity in China, corruption is a necessary component.

Corruption occurs at the local, provincial and national levels. At the local and provincial levels, officials can easily be bribed to overlook and even hide illegal activities. For example, former Lufeng Public Security Bureau Chiefs Chen Junpeng and Chen Yukeng have been convicted of taking bribes and protecting drug traffickers7. Some local officials support these production networks to produce much needed economic growth. Cai Dongjia, the provincial official for Boshe county directly encouraged meth production after his efforts to build industrial parks failed8. Furthermore, corruption allows precursor chemicals to be purchased at price points that boost profit margins9. We use a variable built around the number of provincial arrests in anti-corruption cases. A possible limitation behind using corruption arrests as a substitute variable is the politically charged nature of the arrests. Xi Jinping has personally vanguarded the anti-corruption campaign, raising the potential for police power abuses in power consolidation10.

4 Crime, United Nations Office on Drugs and. 2006 World Drug Report: Analysis. United Nations Publications, 2006.

5 “Acting DEA Administrator Meets With Drug Control Officials in China.” P&T Community, January 13, 2017.

6 Carlos Dobkin and Nancy Nicosia. “The War on Drugs: Methamphetamine, Public Health, and Crime.” The American Economic Review 99, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 324–49. ;“Methamphetamine Reporting Act: Michigan State Police Methamphetamine Investigation Team” Accessed May 5, 2018. ;Global Illicit Drug Trends 2003. United Nations Publications, n.d

7 “广东制毒‘第一大村’何以成为‘法外之地’-图闻- 东南网.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

8 Ibid.

9 Zi Yang, "Ural China and the Asian Methamphetamine Trade: A Case Study of Lufeng," 10 Nectar Gan, "Xi Jinping Thought – the Communist Party’s Tighter Grip on China in 16 Characters," South China Morning Post, October 25, 2017, , accessed May 6, 2018.

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Geographic location is also important to consider when deciding where to build and operate meth laboratories. As explained by Brainard’s Proximity-Concentration Trade-Off Theory, there is an inherent conflict between moving the production process closer to the consumer to cut transportation costs or creating a clustered production chain to maximize cost-efficiency11. Such theories do not apply cleanly to illicit goods, as the risk of transporting drugs exaggerates costs. The high street value of most illegal narcotics is largely attributed to risk factors12. Ephedra, the main ingredient needed to synthesize meth, is grown in northern provinces such as Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, Gansu, and Xinjiang13. Ephedra is legal in China since it is commonly used for medicinal purposes, allowing for uninhibited transportation of precursor chemicals14. Access to water or a port should be more important than proximity to raw materials for Chinese producers looking to sell abroad. Transporting finished meth throughout China is incredibly risky due to draconian narcotics laws, so producers should seek to export it as quickly as possible.

Chinese meth manufacturing should be negatively affected by proximity to North Korea, which possesses state-sponsored meth production. Since the early 2000s, North Korea has been producing large quantities of meth, mostly trafficked through Northeast China or Russia’s major port of Vladivostok. Under the guidance of expert chemists, North Korea manages to produce the purest and most concentrated meth in the world15. U.S. officials claim to have recovered batches containing over 98% pure crystal meth16.

According to the theory set out by Sappington and Sidak, state-owned enterprises (SOE’s) often marginalize and attempt to outcompete rival private firms. In highly competitive industries, extremely concentrated SOE’s often engage in highly anti-competitive behavior, such as operating at a loss or attempting to use their privileged access to resources to price out competitors17. Chinese producers, who are more segmented than their DPRK counterparts, fight over a limited market share and against superior-grade meth. The DPRK competitors also act defensively when exposed to competition and will set prices far below the Chinese suppliers’ marginal cost. Logically, such conditions are unfavorable and will negatively impact production.

Proximity to Myanmar should be a favorable factor because of external economies of scale. In comparison to North Korea’s strong internal economy of scale, Myanmar’s meth production is segmented (i.e. populated by smaller manufacturers). According to reports produced by UNODC and the DEA, Myanmar is one of the largest meth pill suppliers in Southeast Asia, one of the largest meth markets in the world. Behind Mexico, Myanmar produces the second-largest amount of meth in the world18.

11 S. Lael Brainard, "An Empirical Assessment Of The Proximity-Concentration Trade-Off Between Multinational Sales And Trade," American Economic Review 4269 (1997): , accessed May 6, 2018, doi:10.3386/w4269.

12 Tom Wainwright, Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel (London: Ebury Press, 2017).

13 Crime, United Nations Office on Drugs and. 2006 World Drug Report: Analysis 14 “China Ephedrine, Ephedrine Manufacturers, Suppliers | Made-in-China.Com.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

15 Keegan Hamilton, "North Korea's Huge Role In Global Meth Trade Revealed In Insane Criminal Case," Business Insider, April 4, 2014, , accessed May 6, 2018.

16 “Manufacture Seizures of Illicit Laboratories.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

17 Sappington and Sidak, “Anticompetitive Behavior by State-Owned Enterprises: Incentives and Capabilities .”

Accessed May 5, 2018.

18 “Manufacture Seizures of Illicit Laboratories.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

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However, production is done by small and poor communities, or various rebel factions concentrated in the Shan State region to generate highly needed foreign reserves. Based on Michael Porter’s clustering framework, industry clusters spill over international borders, especially ones as porous and under-regulated as the Myanmar/China border19. By that logic, technical expertise and strong supplier networks from Myanmar should be positive factors in our model. Stronger competition leads to information sharing and innovation, so the meth industry thrives when closer to this border region. Based on evidence from Brookings, comparative advantages have offset the profitability of Myanmar’s meth production towards its heroin production, indicating that industry clusters have relocated further East20.

Proximity to Hong Kong should also be favorable to the quantity of meth produced. According to UNODC reports from the early 2000s, Hong Kong was one of the largest meth-making hubs in the region21. A “historical accident” (the seizure of the island by the British), has built a cultural foundation around the sale and production of illicit drugs. Based on HSBC reports, Hong Kong is not only one of the area’s largest financial hubs, but also a regional leader in financial crimes such as money laundering22 . According to Brouwer and Case, the production of illicit drugs in the United States and Mexico requires large criminal syndicates to raise the capital necessary for production. These syndicates and their extended networks allow producers to connect with dealers and sell their products in bulk23. In Mainland China, there is a distinct lack of organized criminal gangs. In contrast, the Triads are a very notable and concentrated criminal organization located in Hong Kong. Xinmin notes that due to weak competition from domestic gangs, the Triads could expand into local Chinese territories entirely unopposed24. Meth’s relatively low fixed costs and very high profit margin would make it a lucrative investment opportunity. Due to the need for constant financing and the presence of money laundering, Xinmin asserts that the Triads have stepped in to fill the role of traditional investors, much like Mexican cartels have done in the U.S. and Mexico25.

Considering the demand for direct investment and supplier networks, clusters of meth production have likely thrived from proximity to Hong Kong.

Beyond spatial positioning and corruption, the local economy and demographics should play a role in the determination of favorable locations for meth production. We subdivide this factor into four specific variables: GDP, the importance of exports, overall population size, and the presence of major 19 Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (London: Macmillan, 1990).; “A People’s War Final.”

Accessed May 5, 2018.

20 “A People’s War Final.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

21 Brownfield, William R. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report: Volume I: Drug and Chemical Control.

DIANE Publishing, 2011.

22 "Hong Kong Monetary Authority - Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT)," Hong Kong Monetary Authority - Press Release - Residential Mortgage Survey, , accessed May 06, 2018.

23 Kimberly C Brouwer, Patricia Case, Rebeca Ramos, Carlos Magis-Rodríguez, Jesus Bucardo, Thomas L. Patterson, and Steffanie A. Strathdee. “Trends in Production, Trafficking, and Consumption of Methamphetamine and Cocaine in Mexico.” Substance Use & Misuse 41, no. 5 (January 1, 2006): 707–27. https://doi. org/10.1080/10826080500411478.

24 樊新民. “我国毒品社会问题新趋势与应对思路.” 广东社会科学, no. 02 (2015): 188–93.

25 Ibid.

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ports. Based on our hypothesis, higher provincial GDP should positively correlate with meth production.

One possible explanation for higher provincial GDP leading to more meth being produced is the concept of ‘hiding in plain sight.’ The theory, which is the primary framework used by the U.S. government, states that the profits from drug production can be hidden when considering the overall province/state’s wealth. When dealing with developing countries, state-led oversight committees lack the resources needed to investigate the growth of illegal profits, particularly if the trend seems consistent with that of the whole province26. Larger administrative subdivisions, such as provinces or states, may exhibit higher GDP’s when producing more meth27. Furthermore, according to Tinbergen’s Gravity Model, high GDP should lead to more trade with other high GDP areas. Higher trade predicts an increased demand for an area’s exports, leading to more production of both legal and illegal goods28.

Alternatively, if we were investigating smaller administrative subdivisions, such as on the local or township level, lower GDP would be a better predictor. Lower relative GDP and lower wages are highly correlated, and the lack of quality employment creates increased motivation to engage in illegal production29. The scope of this paper will not cover the local level, as data would be unreliable and increasingly difficult to secure.

Increased population size should also imply higher levels of production. Population size leads to increased difficulty in enforceability and the increased supply of labor. Like GDP, higher populations allow producers to hide their activities. Enforcement agents cannot address all cases; the lack of funds makes the opportunity costs of investigations much higher when the total quantity is also greater. The labor supply is also highly correlated with population, giving producers more bargaining power in terms of setting wages, as well as a greater possibility of finding skilled laborers30.

Hypothesis

According to the UNODC, “the drug problem and corruption have a mutually reinforcing relationship. Corruption facilitates the production and trafficking of illegal drugs and this, in turn, benefits corruption"31. In this paper, we predict that corruption should not be the only factor responsible for output. In China, cross-provincial trade is still somewhat restricted, as there exist many formal tariffs and checkpoints to inspect products shipped32. When transporting drugs, each barrier presents mounting bribe payments or the possibility of the smuggler’s arrest. Due to high risk and the many checkpoints between 26 Ibid.

27 “Illicit Drugs and Economic Development.” Accessed May 6, 2018. https://www.incb.org/documents/ Publications/AnnualReports/Thematic_chapters/English/AR_2002_E_Chapter_I.pdf 28 Ibid.

29 “Illicit Drugs and Economic Development.” Accessed May 6, 2018.

30 J.h Tressler and C.f Menezes, "Labor Supply and Wage Rate Uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory 23, no. 3 (January 31, 1980): , accessed May 6, 2018, doi:10.1016/0022-0531(80)90023-x.

31 "The Drug Problem and Organized Crime, Illicit Financial Flows, Corruption and Terrorism," World Drug Report World Drug Report 2017 17, no. XII (June 30, 2017): , doi:10.18356/550b8369-en.

32 Carsten A. Holz, "No Razors Edge: Reexamining Alwyn Youngs Evidence for Increasing Inter-Provincial Trade Barriers in China," SSRN Electronic Journal, 2006, , doi:10.2139/ssrn.887683.

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Chinese provinces, the costs of transporting finished products are particularly distorted. Based on these provincial checkpoints, we begin to analyze provinces as individual actors in the division of labor for synthetic drug production. Comparative advantages should begin to emerge as the ‘inter-province tariffs’ divide suppliers. Without considering each province’s comparative advantage, it would be impossible to determine which province may be the most productive and the largest exporter of drugs. Our hypothesis is that geography will be the most important factor, as it largely contributes to the differentiation of these comparative advantages. Therefore, our model will present a far more accurate depiction of productivity between provinces, which directly leads to higher output.

Data

Our methodology for analyzing data will be through the formation of multi-variate regression models. These require the categorization and quantification of all variables.

The regression model will be constructed around the following variables: ports, distance to the DPRK, distance to Myanmar, distance to Hong Kong, provincial GDP in USD, exports as a percentage of GDP, a provincial corruption index, and provincial population33. Regarding absolute values, we assume that the Chinese central authorities may have committed some data tampering. Although we are unaware of the scope of such data tampering, since we are employing all Chinese provinces in our regression, we assume that all provinces will have similar incentives to tamper. Therefore, numerical inconsistencies should be approximately uniform across a larger dataset, and geographical patterns should still be upheld.

Distances will be calculated in terms of kilometers and measured ‘as-the-crow-flies.’ Distances, provincial GDP, and population will be obtained from official government databases. Additionally, the presence of ports will be measured as a categorical variable. A value of 1 will be given to provinces with more than 2 ports, and a value of 0 will be given to those with less than 2 ports34.

Measuring corruption in China is difficult due to the ambiguity of what constitutes corruption and the low availability of public data. Research on Chinese corruption necessitates a focus on indirect proxies for corruption. Sociology papers often utilize subjective proxies of corruption, such as indices of perceived corruption. Perceived corruption is beneficial when determining the presence of localized corruption, making it an excellent variable for small-N case studies, or extremely localized regressions that use categorical predictors. However, perceived corruption is a poor variable for this paper because it cannot be quantified on a larger scale35. Our regression model relies on comparisons between large geographic areas, and few interviewed subjects are experts in all provinces, making them incapable of providing comparable results. Ordinality makes studies of perception useful only when reinforcing other, more reliable, proxies.

Objective methods of measuring corruption differ between scholars. Some, such as Zhu, go for 33 “National Data.” Accessed May 5, 2018. http://data.stats.gov.cn/english/.

34 Refer to Appendix 1, Tables 1 and 2 35 Boliang Zhu. “MNCs, Rents and Corruption: Evidence from China” Princeton Press. Accessed May 5, 2018. https://www.princeton.edu/politics/about/file-repository/public/Zhu_MNCs-and-Corruption-in-China. pdf.

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the direct approach. Zhu uses the exact amount of people arrested on corruption charges by province36.

However, the direct usage of law enforcement statistics in operationalization is problematic due to the nature of law enforcement in China. There are concerns regarding police targeting suspects who are directly opposed to the current regime, and anti-corruption campaigns are frequently associated with a restructuring of the distribution of political power37.

Prior to Zhu’s literature, Golden and Picci attempted to quantify Chinese corruption by province based on the level of direct investment in infrastructure relative to the physical quantity of infrastructure38.

Their model realized that the disparity between the two implies that rent-seeking had appropriated funds. Difficulty in securing such data would make Golden and Picci’s model very difficult to replicate.

Additionally, there is the possibility that poor accounting, as well as differences in accounting methods, may explain some of the discrepancies.

Kao et. al attempted to operationalize government efficiency levels in every Chinese province to indirectly reach corruption39. Their model is incredibly helpful even when disproven by research conducted by Aidt, who asserts that corrupt governance does not necessarily result in poor government efficacy. Corruption can promote allocative efficiency by allowing agents to circumvent distortions created by various government procedures or policies40.

This paper operationalizes corruption using the methods of Cole, Elliott, and Zhang41. In order to determine the variables responsible for FDI flows, their paper indirectly created a novel measurement for corruption. Zhu established the expectation that the most corrupt provinces have the most arrests, but, with an opaque legal system in place, China should exhibit a reverse relationship. The theory is consistent with Shleifer and Vishny’s analysis that provinces should experience corruption in a self-reinforcing manner, where one corrupt official incentivizes other officials to act similarly to maximize individual returns42.

Therefore, when considering that each provincial official in China experiences the same incentives to commit corrupt activities, we can derive a constant provincial supply curve for corruption43. The demand curve is the demand for provincial leaders to address the problems of corruption. The equilibrium point 36 Boliang Zhu. “MNCs, Rents and Corruption: Evidence from China” Princeton Press. Accessed May 5, 2018. https://www.princeton.edu/politics/about/file-repository/public/Zhu_MNCs-and-Corruption-in-China. pdf.

37 Ibid.

38 Golden, M. A., and L. Picci, 2005, „Proposal for A New Measure of Corruption, Illustrated with Italian Data‟, Economics and Politics, Vol. 17 (1), pp. 37-75.

39 Kao, A., Huang, J., and J. Pan., 2005, „China Governance Efficiency and Foreign Direct Investment‟ (Chinese), Review of Taiwan Economics, Vol. 11, 2, pp. 131-56.

40 T. S. Aidt, 2003, „Economic Analysis of Corruption: A Survey‟, The Economic Journal, Vol. 113 (491), pp. 632-52 41 Cole, Matthew., Elliott, Robert, J., Zhang, Jing..“Corruption, Governance and FDI Location in China: A Provincelevel Analysis.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

42 Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny, "Corruption," The Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, no. 3 (August 1993): , doi:10.3386/w4372.

43 Ting Gong. “Dangerous Collusion: Corruption as a Collective Venture in Contemporary China.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 35, no. 1 (March 1, 2002): 85–103.

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in such a relationship is the total amount of arrests per capita. When a province is less corrupt, we expect there would be more arrests, as there is a greater dedication to addressing the problems of corruption. The opposite is true for the most corrupt provinces.

We operationalized corruption in terms of a ranking between provinces. Our data uses the number of arrests related to corruption per 100,000 people, per province. To include a more diverse amount of time periods, we included the rankings for three periods. The rankings for the three periods are then averaged out to create a final ranking that is put into the regression model. The source of this information is China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), cited in Cole, Elliot, and Zhang’s study44, 45.

Finally, this regression model necessitates the operationalization of the dependent variable: meth production. Given China’s repressive data network, finding information on meth production is almost impossible. Foreign drug-enforcement agencies, such as the DEA or Europol, often run into major problems with data transparency when interacting with the National Narcotics Control Commission of the PRC46. Therefore, creative steps must be taken to find related variables for comparison purposes.

Research done by David Wittmer of Kentucky University has noted the presence of a small, but statistically significant, correlation between the number of burn victims and meth production47. Areas with higher concentrations of laboratories should be subject to more burns, largely due to the dangerous nature of meth production. The volatile synthesis of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine leads to frequent explosions and burns. To further prove the association between burns and meth production, there is an observable trend in the increasing number of burn victims after 2001, when meth production started to become a serious problem for mainland China. Although relevant in Wittmer’s research, the type of burns is not relevant to our model’s assumptions. Hospitals who admit burn patients in a largely opaque and corrupt province would be concerned with having large numbers of chemical or thermal burns on their datasheets.

The data shows uncharacteristically low levels of chemical burns in provinces with high concentrations of heavy industry48.

While there is a correlation between meth production and burn victims, correlation does not imply causation. Most chemical burns are caused by cleaning products, so using this data as our main proxy for production could be a major shortcoming. Additionally, time inconsistencies between datasets negatively affect our data’s accuracy, limiting its efficacy for a large-N regression.

Other proxy variables are the presence of violent crimes. According to Dobkin and Nicosia, meth (and more generally any drug) production, is highly correlated with an increased incidence of violent

44 Matthew Cole., Elliott, Robert, J., Zhang, Jing..“Corruption, Governance and FDI Location in China: A Provincelevel Analysis.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

45 Refer to Appendix 1, Table 3 46 “Acting DEA Administrator Meets With Drug Control Officials in China.” P&T Community, January 13, 2017.

47 Cheng, Wenfeng, Shujun Wang, Chuanan Shen, Dongxu Zhao, Dawei Li, and Yuru Shang. “Epidemiology of Hospitalized Burn Patients in China: A Systematic Review.” Burns Open 2, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 8–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burnso.2017.10.003.

48 Ibid.

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crimes49. Since all firearms (even airsoft rifles) are illegal in China, the presence of them belies a particular demand for protection50. Noticing this trend, Yunqing has asserted that meth production in China is highly correlated with gun seizures51. Since enforceability is extremely limited, statistics on gun seizures by province may also help us rank meth production. The major flaw in these proxies is the difficulty in collecting data, as well as the general unreliability of any data that may be secured. This inaccuracy would only allow us to create ordinal measures, which are not favorable when measuring correlations in a large-N model. Therefore, we keep all the previous correlations in mind when assessing the validity of our production data source: drug production cases processed by the Supreme People’s Court52.

We operationalize production using drug production arrest data available from the Chinese government. The Chinese government publishes criminal and civil cases online through the Supreme People’s Court database. Our model uses the percentage of drug production cases out of total cases in every province (we also incorporate a scaling factor of 1,000 to allow for better readability). We believe that creating a proxy is necessary because using the raw number of production arrests would fail to account for the sizes of provinces and, most importantly, the efficacy of the police department. A police department that is incapable of enforcing drug crimes should be just as inept at policing regular crimes.

When considering both total arrests and drug arrests together, we can avoid biases caused by different police forces around the country. The proxy we use is not the actual amount of meth being produced, but how many of total criminals are associated with drug production. This measure assesses both the profitability and the opportunity for meth production, which we assume should be highly correlated to production, as any opportunities should be seized by rational actors. We assume a uniform incentive exists for the provinces to tamper with case data. If every province is incentivized to lower the amount of cases, a trend will still emerge across geographic divides.

The main problem associated with this variable is the weight that some smaller provinces may end up carrying. In these cases, although small provinces cannot surpass larger provinces in terms of production, they have a much higher incentive. Therefore, we will keep in mind the size of provinces when proceeding into our Analysis and Discussion sections. A point to clarify: we conducted a logarithmic transformation of the exponentially distributed dataset on production, which is a poor fit for a regression model53. To clarify, when referring to the aforementioned proxy, we will henceforth directly associate it with total drug production54.

Although Cole, Elliot & Zhang demonstrate that the fewer corruption arrests are made, the more corrupt a province is, this is not the case for drug production. In the case of corruption, varying outcomes 49 Dobkin, Carlos, and Nancy Nicosia. “The War on Drugs: Methamphetamine, Public Health, and Crime.” The American Economic Review 99, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 324–49.

50 “58 Arrested, 40 Weapons Seized as Chinese Police Crack International Arms Network | South China Morning Post.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

51 Cao Yunqing 曹云清, 走私犯罪的现状与发展趋势 [Smuggling-related Crime and its Future Trajectory], Journal of Jiangxi Police Institute 6

52 “首页 - 中国裁判文书网.” Accessed May 6, 2018. http://wenshu.court.gov.cn/.

53 See Appendix 2, Figure 1 54 Refer to Appendix 1, Table 4

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base on the demand for enforcement. But in drug production, demand for enforcement should be constant between provinces, as there are no differences between provincial incentives. This theory assumes that there is no structural profit-seeking from the meth industry in each province (i.e. the provincial bureaucracy does not center its operations around protecting meth production). One potential downfall would be to mistake inefficient policing for lack of production arrests, and the consequential lack of production. Yet such deduction does not mean that there is no demand for enforcement, but that a province is unable to effectively police itself.

The biggest shortcoming in the data is the correlation between variables. According to the Kommerskollegium’s research, corruption falls as GDP rises55. Therefore, correlation between GDP and corruption might interfere with our data (because of the need for uncorrelated independent variables for regression models). Regression models typically avoid statistically significant correlations since it is harder to explain which variable has more impact on the model.

Analysis

The regression model examines observations from eight different factors. After ensuring that our data is normally distributed, we begin looking at bivariate linear regression models of each factor and its effect on total meth production56. Our first set of observations deals with geographic variables.

As a province’s distance from North Korea increases, so does its total meth production57. However, as a province’s distance from Hong Kong increases, its total meth production decreases58. We also observe that when distance from Myanmar increases, meth production decreases59. Then we analyze the relationship between economic factors and total meth production. Population may have a slight effect on production (due to the theory of ‘hiding in plain sight’) and varies significantly between provinces. The model controls for population to better analyze other factors60. The model shows a very weak relationship between gross regional product (GRP) and total production61. A province’s exports is slightly positively correlated with total production output62. The box plot is used to interpret the correlation between ports and production, because ports are deemed a categorical predictor. It is crucial to note that there are comparatively more provinces with two or more ports in this data set, which may have biased results. We observe that provinces with less than two ports have a smaller interquartile range as well as median production than those with two or more ports63. The last set of observations explores the impact of corruption on total production. The bivariate model shows a clear positive relationship: total production increases when corruption increases64.

55 Kommerskollegium. “Trade and the Fight against Corruption.” Accessed May 5, 2018.

56 See Appendix 2, Figure 1 57 See Appendix 2, Figure 2 58 See Appendix 2, Figure 3 59 See Appendix 2, Figure 4 60 See Appendix 2, Figure 5 61 See Appendix 2, Figure 6 62 See Appendix 2, Figure 7 63 See Appendix 2, Figure 8 64 See Appendix 2, Figure 9

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After preliminary individual bivariate tests, we form multivariate regression models out of the variables based on their relations to one another. We separate the different variables into blocks due to the large quantity of variables, and the limited number of observations. When simultaneously considering all predictors, it is impossible to determine with confidence if any of the variables is individually significant.

Therefore, consistent with the original theory section, we form three blocks: Economic, Geographic and Corruption. The Economic variables include multports (the categorical interpretation of ports), GRP (Gross Regional Product) and exports percentage of GDP. The Geographic variables include distance to North Korea, distance to Hong Kong and distance to Myanmar. The Corruption group consists only of the average ranking of provincial corruption cases, as established in the data section. Population is considered as a control variable. The constructed groupings are plugged into a regression model separately.

Once conducting the regression, we distinguish which variables are significant within each grouping, and then consider their impact in relation to the variables significant in other groupings. By doing so, we attempt to maximize the adjusted R-squared, which demonstrates that our models fit the results better.

Multivariate Linear Regression of Methamphetamine Production in China M1

M2

M3

M4

M5

M6

Geography NK

0.0012984**

0.0006957*

0.0005892

HK

-0.0014284***

-0.0007965**

-0.0008888**

Myanmar

0.0009882

Econonmics GDP

-0.003156

Mulport

-0.289702

Export

0.068157*

Corrupt, Rank

0.025411 0.067262*

0.063403*

0.0217591 0.0082011

Pop.

-0.0055341

0.022533

0.002155

-0.002075

-0.0073556

-0.0051498

Constant R-Sq. Adj. N

-1.2767842

0.098046

-0.827443

-0.844358

0.5862383

0.8897392

0.2885

-0.0244

0.0557

0.05884

0.262

0.2366

30

30

30

30

30

30

P-Value: *** P < 0.01; ** P < 0.05; * P < 0.10

The first test is between the Geographic grouping of variables65. The p-value of 0.0403 of the

65 Refer to M1 in the regression model on Page 18

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variable distance to North Korea suggests it has a strong correlation with production. Additionally, the coefficient has a positive sign relationship, which means that as one draws further away from North Korea, log(production) grows. The production growth’s scale is irrelevant in this paper, because the units used (one being distance, one being a proxy unit) are entirely different from one another, and thus unsuited for comparison . The result is consistent with our theory. We hypothesize that due to North Korea’s statesponsored meth production, the market will be saturated by a strong competitor, crowding out Chinese manufacturers. The variable, distance to Hong Kong, has an even lower p-value of 0.0107, making it even more significant in this model. The negative sign correspondence means that distance from Hong Kong will decrease the amount of meth produced. This finding is consistent with our theory, since Hong Kong triads are noted as strong investors in the capital-intensive meth market. The p-value of 0.1833 of the variable distance to Myanmar implies no statistical significance. It is possible that in this model distance to Myanmar is irrelevant because of the other much stronger influences. Alternatively, like Hong Kong, Myanmar is located south of China. The correlation between the two factors may also have caused some multicollinearity, and as a result the model fails to distinguish between the influence of the two continuous predictors. Regardless of the reason, any further tests that compare the Geographic block will omit Myanmar due to its relative insignificance. Population in this model has a p-value of 0.5697, which means it is statistically insignificant. Such a result is consistent with our previous assumptions. Population serves as a good control because it does not seem to be strongly correlated with production, especially when considering other far more relevant factors.

The second block tested is the Economic grouping of variables66. The GRP variable, with a p-value of 0.2182, is not statistically significant. GRP’s insignificance disproves the U.S. theory that concerns the rising wealth causes issues in enforceability. In China, the strength of available surveillance systems and the government’s concern with security may have decreased the impact of GRP on production.

Additionally, multport (the port variable) has a p-value of 0.6718, which is also statistically insignificant.

We believe that a flaw might exist in the model, because the number of ports is strongly correlated with the total number of exports. Otherwise, the flaw may lie in the port variable as a whole, because the number of ports says little about the quality of and traffic through the ports. However, exports have a p-value of 0.0864, meaning that a province’s exports are moderately significant to the model. Exports have a positive relationship: as exports increase, production also increases. The exports variable is more indicative of the quality and quantity of trade that passes through the province. Provinces relying more heavily on trade would be more inclined to sell any goods they have, both legal and illegal. Since we have originally posited that producers want to ship drugs from close to the source of production, they would find significant advantages in provinces with much ongoing trade. In further Economic block comparisons, multport and GRP are omitted due to insignificance. Population is insignificant with a p-value of 0.3140.

The third block tested is the Corruption grouping of variables67. In this model, the ranking of corruption scores a p-value of 0.0664, making it moderately correlated with production. The positive sign relationship means that more corruption results in higher production levels. This finding is very coherent with our original theories. Corruption entails both immunity from law enforcement and potential benefits 66 Refer to M2 on Page 18.

67 Refer to M3 on Page 18

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in the forms of favorable prices or procurement of required tools and goods. This model also consists with the theories of previous literature, which state that corruption is correlated with production. Population is again insignificant with a p-value of 0.8276.

After the first round of tests of the relationships between factors in individual blocks, we now run tests between significant variables in different blocks. In multivariate regression model four, we compare the Corruption and Economic blocks68. In previous tests, we determined that corruption (ranking) and exports (as percentage of GDP) are the only significant variables, and thus these are the only predictors included.

In this test, exports are found insignificant on production, with a p-value of 0.3060. However, corruption is still moderately significant with a p-value of 0.0841. The sign-correspondence is again a positive relationship which demonstrates that production is positively influenced by higher corruption. The fact that corruption is more significant than economic variables is highly consistent with our hypothesis. The economic situations in a province are far more circumstantial, while the corruption present is much more of an active factor. Economic situations should not be as influential, since both â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hiding in plain sightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and a propensity to trade are far less impactful than a corrupt provincial governor, who can provide assistance to the production team. Furthermore, population is again found to be insignificant, with a p-value of 0.8462.

The fifth multivariate regression model tests the relationship between Geographic and Economic factors69. In this model, the tested variables are: exports (as percentage of GDP), distance to Hong Kong, distance to North Korea and population. Exports are found insignificant, with a p-value of 0.3498.

Distance to Hong Kong turns out to be highly significant, with a p-value of 0.05. The sign-correspondence is negative, implying that distances further from Hong Kong result in less production. Distance to North Korea is also found to be significant with a p-value of 0.0618, though not to the extent as distance to Hong Kong is. The findings show that Geographic variables are more significant than Economic variables, which partially result from multicollinearity as coastal provinces tend to trade more and are geographically closer to Hong Kong. However, the more likely explanation is the aforementioned active vs. circumstantial factor.

Being near Hong Kong provides active benefits, while propensity to trade only somewhat increases the extent to which producers can export illicit goods. Since both models have invalidated the significance of the Economic variables, we remove this block from further tests. Therefore, any relationships seen in the Economic variablesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bivariate plots are correlational rather than causational; when combined with other more significant factors, the Economic block is found irrelevant. As in other models, population is insignificant with a p-value of 0.4694.

Our final multivariate regression model tests the relationship between Corruption and Geography, the two remaining significant blocks70. In this model, the variables tested are distance to Hong Kong, distance to North Korea, corruption (ranking) and population. In this model, distance to North Korea is found to be statistically insignificant with a p-value of 0.1388. However, distance to Hong Kong is found to be highly significant, with a p-value of 0.0331. Most importantly, corruption obtains a p-value of 0.8308, making it statistically insignificant. This model proves that geography has a greater impact on production than corruption.

68 Refer to M4 on Page 18 69 Refer to M5 on Page 18 70 Refer to M6 on Page 18

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Given the importance of geography, and the multivariate regression models we have established, we interpret M1 as the best fitting model71. M1 has the highest adjusted R-squared coefficient of 0.2885.

Using this model, we are able to analyze theoretical cases. For example, our regressions exclude Tibet because of the lack of critical data points such as corruption. Using this geographical framework, we can estimate the amount of production in Tibet. Distance from Hong Kong is simply too great to have any meaningful impact, because the operation would lack the capital necessary to create scale. However, given that Tibet is also far from North Korea, a low level of production might exist. The long distance to North Korea and other major Chinese producers implies that a local industry arises out of limited competition.

Though M1 excludes corruption, we believe that corruption may still have an effect, which we will explore in the Discussion section of this paper. In short, Tibet’s high corruption may still facilitate production.

Discussion

We hypothesize that while corruption facilitates the production and trafficking of illegal drugs, geography would be the most important factor in meth production. The high risks of drug smuggling and the many checkpoints between Chinese provinces lead to high transportation costs for potential producers72.

Additionally, upon closer investigation of the regression models, we identify a new mechanism responsible for the importance of geographic variables relative to corruption. We interpret corruption and geography as independent factors rather than ones that complement each another.

When comparing geography and corruption, we can split the factors into two distinct potential sources of investment. Proximity to Hong Kong gives a producer access to investment from the Triads, whereas a corrupt politician is similar to a patronage resource coming in the form of both tangible and intangible benefits. The two ‘ownership’ structures are necessarily in conflict with one another based on the Coase Theorem. According to Coase Theorem, property rights are important, because when a rational actor possesses property rights, they are incentivized to act in utmost efficiency. However, cases where ownership rights are not so clear will necessarily result in less efficient outcomes due to the impediments which the inability to bargain creates73. In the case of an investment from Hong Kong, we assume that either the producer or the Triads maintain ownership rights, who are therefore incentivized to bargain to efficient outcomes74. On the other hand, corruption may also provide desired financial benefits from politicians, but the ensuing transference of ownership rights, and the murky status where producers enter in terms of future political, financial and social costs, is deleterious to efficient outcomes.

One possible flaw in our multivariate regression models is the potential for multicollinearity between our different variables. It may have occurred as some provinces are both close to Hong Kong and highly corrupted. For example, Guangdong, identified as China’s second largest meth producer, is ranked as the second most corrupt but also the closest province to Hong Kong. It is difficult to determine with certainty which factor is most responsible for its propensity to produce.

71 Refer to M1 on Page 18 72 Carsten A. Holz, "No Razors Edge: Reexamining Alwyn Youngs Evidence for Increasing Inter-Provincial Trade Barriers in China," 73 COASE, Ronald H. “The Problem of Social Cost.” Journal of Law and Economics, 1960, 1–44.

74 樊新民. “我国毒品社会问题新趋势与应对思路.” 广东社会科学, no. 02 (2015): 188–93.

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To extricate the importance of each variable, we inspect specific observations in our multiregression model to see if individual factors hold up. Fujian, another province close to Hong Kong, has relatively average corruption, but a similarly high level of output. Gansu has the highest level of corruption, and even grows ephedra, yet it still produces below average output. The only factor that is significantly correlated and can explain this phenomenon is Gansu’s long range from Hong Kong, which is particularly impactful on quantity of production. Although it is impossible to determine corruption as insignificant, we can posit that when combined with geography, variable corruption does not necessarily have a strong impact. These cases corroborate our ownership structure mechanism, because corruption and distance to Hong Kong are not necessarily complementary factors and can be interpreted as discrete options. Based on Fujian’s output in comparison with Gansu’s output, the Hong Kong ownership structure produces a higher output value.

We offer suggestions for further research stemming from our study’s limitations. Due to our usage of provinces as the unit of analysis, we are implicitly limited in the amount of possible observations.

When considering a low number of observations, it is difficult to find a large number of variables that produce significant results in multivariate regressions. In the future, we recommend the usage of more observations/cases. Widening the criteria, such as focusing on urban areas or smaller size administrative divisions, can significantly increase the number of cases considered.

Additionally, we recommend the utilization of more variables. We acknowledge that several alternative factors exist for further consideration, but we lack the necessary amount of observations to increase the number of variables. Potential variables worth investigating include the number of local pharmaceutical companies, inflow of ephedra (or trade to provinces that produce ephedra), and the percentage of populations that have degrees in the sciences.

Furthermore, we recommend investigation of the accuracy of our findings on ownership structures in other illegal industries (such as counterfeit luxury goods) or a shift of focus on legal industries.

Recent trends have witnessed the rise of legal synthetic drugs (new psychoactive substances). The effects and harms of such drugs are similar, and often identical to those of current illegal synthetic drugs on the market. It is important to consider whether their legitimacy, albeit poor reputation, has similar effects on their distribution throughout China.

Conclusion

In this paper we analyze the production of methamphetamine in China. To examine the relationship between Economic, Geographic and Corruption variables to the production of meth, we construct several indices and proxy variables on the provincial level.

We hypothesize that Geographic variables will have the greatest influence. The data suggests that our hypothesis is correct: provinces in the Southeast produce the most meth. In contrast, Economic variables are found to be negligible. The Corruption variable’s significance is more difficult to compare relative to the Geographic variables. Multicollinearity necessitates that we conduct single-case analyses to determine the individual impact of each factor.

The results imply that production is determined by factors operating individually, rather than collectively. Corruption and Geographic variables are both the determinants of production, but findings

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show that their influence results from alternative methods of financing. Different financing options modify the ownership structures of illicit production, and therefore affect their production outcomes. The provincial comparative advantage we observe is due to the Coase Theorem’s application on the illicit drug industry.

These findings suggest that there exists a gap in the current literature. As previously stated, most experts have cited Corruption and Economic variables as the strongest predictors of meth production for their ubiquity. Corruption is categorized as the sole dynamic, endogenous variable. The current literature fails to account for the impacts of exogenous variables and to consider the intermediary concept of ownership structures on illicit production.

When applying our findings to unobserved cases, researchers must attempt to speculate on the inflow of exogenous investments into the area. Although the distance to Hong Kong is solely a domestic determinant in China, distances to other criminal syndicates or financial hubs can be major influencers internationally.

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Appendix 1 Table 1: Economic Variables

Province

GDP of

GDP of China

Pop. 2016 (in

Major

Exports per

Exports (as a % of

China in

in 2016, by

Millions)

Ports

Province

GDP) 2016

2016, by

region (in

in 2016 (in

region (in

billion dollars)

billion dollars)

billion yuan)

Guangdong Jiangsu Shandong Zhejiang Henan Sichuan Hubei Hebei Hunan Fujian Shanghai Beijing Anhui Liaoning Shaanxi Jiangxi Guangxi Inner Mongolia Tianjin Chongqing Heilongjiang Yunnan Jilin Shanxi Guizhou Xinjiang Gansu Hainan Ningxia Qinghai

8,085.49 7,738.83 6,802.45 4,725.14 4,047.18 3,293.45 3,266.54 3,207.05 3,155.14 2,881.06 2,817.87 2,566.91 2,440.76 2,224.69 1,939.96 1,849.9 1,831.76 1,812.81 1,788.54 1,774.06 1,538.61 1,478.84 1,477.68 1,305.04 1,177.67 964.97 720.04 405.32 316.86 257.25

1,273.31 1,218.71 1,071.25 744.12 637.35 518.65 514.42 505.05 496.87 453.71 443.76 404.24 384.37 350.34 305.51 291.32 288.47 285.48 281.66 279.38 242.3 232.89 232.71 205.52 185.46 151.96 113.39 63.83 49.9 40.51

109.99 79.99 99.47 55.9 95.32 82.62 58.85 74.7 68.22 38.74 24.2 21.73 61.96 43.78 38.13 45.92 48.38 25.2 15.62 30.48 37.99 47.71 27.33 36.82 35.55 23.98 26.1 9.17 6.75 5.93

113 27 12 27 9 0 7 5 10 23 8 1 9 6 2 2 8 4 2 1 3 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1

654.14 330.96 144.31 273.45 45.32 26.2 24.76 44.

14.28 87.23 166.38 25.46 25.97 44.81 15.8 24.15 12.63 5.2 41.66 33.56 4.92 8.86 4.91 12.53 3.99 13.91 1.92 3.47 2.05 0.36

51.37337378 27.15650815 13.47115378 36.74827624 7.110679535 5.051541696 4.813227452 8.712056251 2.873977066 19.22592726 37.49331942 6.298273021 6.756481588 12.79025392 5.171756119 8.28977242 4.378330131 1.821481567 14.79089089 12.01233329 2.030534053 3.804400747 2.109962915 6.096786305 2.151409138 9.153497 1.693239264 5.436321918 4.10828126 0.888629738

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Table 2: Geographic Data

Province

Distance to North Korea (KM)

Distance to Shan State (Myanmar) (KM)

Distance to Hong Kong (Kowloon) (KM)

Guangdong Jiangsu Shandong Zhejiang Henan Sichuan Hubei Hebei Hunan Fujian Shanghai Beijing Anhui Liaoning Shaanxi Jiangxi Guangxi Inner Mongolia Tianjin Chongqing Heilongjiang Yunnan Jilin Shanxi Guizhou Xinjiang Gansu Hainan Ningxia Qinghai

2080 848 776 1231 1224 2309 1540 954 1809 1577 953 809 1180 424 1522 1669 2338 1017 725 2032 932 2808 461 1233 2188 3218 1930 2647 1726 2610

1611 2461 2460 2309 2020 1028 1705 2386 1518 2066 2531 2634 2188 3176 1834 1787 1110 2844 2653 1204 3911 426 3514 2146 1071 2484 1639 1260 1856 1535

115 1320 1547 942 1326 1426 947 1727 625 597 1225 1961 989 2313 1524 1320 563 2337 1912 1064 3049 1324 2576 1667 849 3328 1765 535 1816 2268

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Table 3: Corruption per Province (2001)

Province

Cases/100,000 Ppl

Ranking

Guangdong Jiangsu Shandong Zhejiang Henan Sichuan Hubei Hebei Hunan Fujian Shanghai Beijing Anhui Liaoning Shaanxi Jiangxi Guangxi Inner Mongolia Tianjin Chongqing Heilongjiang Yunnan Jilin Shanxi Guizhou Xinjiang Gansu Hainan Ningxia Qinghai

2.28 3.31 4.5 3.16 3.86 2.67 3.49 4.27 2.59 3.67 3.22 2.95 3.03 5.05 3.35 3.85 3.02 2.92 7.03 2.72 3.66 3.66 5.12 3.35 2.97 4.03 2 2.88 2.93 3.31

29 15 5 18 9 27 13 7 28 11 17 22 19 4 14 10 20 24 1 26 12 12 3 14 21 8 30 25 23 16

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Table 3: Corruption per Province (2002)

Province

Cases/100,000 Ppl

Ranking

Guangdong Jiangsu Shandong Zhejiang Henan Sichuan Hubei Hebei Hunan Fujian Shanghai Beijing Anhui Liaoning Shaanxi Jiangxi Guangxi Inner Mongolia Tianjin Chongqing Heilongjiang Yunnan Jilin Shanxi Guizhou Xinjiang Gansu Hainan Ningxia Qinghai

2.32 3.3 6.09 3.12 3.76 2.61 3.29 4.49 3.11 3.28 3 3.08 3.61 5.41 3.19 4.91 2.83 3.25 6.88 2.56 2.76 2.76 4.72 3.19 3.05 3.21 1.74 2.76 3.79 3.31

29 13 2 19 10 27 14 7 20 15 23 21 11 4 18 5 24 16 1 28 26 26 6 18 22 17 30 25 9 12

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Table 3: Corruption per Province (2003)

Province

Cases/100,000 Ppl

Ranking

Guangdong Jiangsu Shandong Zhejiang Henan Sichuan Hubei Hebei Hunan Fujian Shanghai Beijing Anhui Liaoning Shaanxi Jiangxi Guangxi Inner Mongolia Tianjin Chongqing Heilongjiang Yunnan Jilin Shanxi Guizhou Xinjiang Gansu Hainan Ningxia Qinghai

1.99 3.03 3.06 2.98 3.34 2.42 2.81 3.74 2.09 3.42 2.18 2.3 2.38 4.62 3.17 4.82 2.8 2.94 5.24 2.42 2.29 2.29 4.25 3.17 2.95 3.33 1.9 2.33 2.53 3.39

29 14 13 15 10 22 18 6 28 8 27 25 23 4 12 3 19 17 2 21 26 26 5 12 16 11 30 24 20 9

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Table 3: Corruption per Province (2003)

Province

Average Ranking of Time Periods

Guangdong Jiangsu Shandong Zhejiang Henan Sichuan Hubei Hebei Hunan Fujian Shanghai Beijing Anhui Liaoning Shaanxi Jiangxi Guangxi Inner Mongolia Tianjin Chongqing Heilongjiang Yunnan Jilin Shanxi Guizhou Xinjiang Gansu Hainan Ningxia Qinghai

29 14 6.666666667 17.33333333 9.666666667 25.33333333 15 6.666666667 25.33333333 11.33333333 22.33333333 22.66666667 17.66666667 4 14.66666667 6 21 19 1.333333333 25 21.33333333 21.33333333 4.666666667 14.66666667 19.66666667 12 30 24.66666667 17.33333333 12.33333333

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Table 4: Production Arrests (Dependent Variable)

Province

Arrests

Production Arrests Production Arrest / Arrests

Scaled Production Arrests / Arrest (*100)

Guangdong Jiangsu Shandong Zhejiang Henan Sichuan Hubei Hebei Hunan Fujian Shanghai Beijing Anhui Liaoning Shaanxi Jiangxi Guangxi Inner Mongolia Tianjin Chongqing Heilongjiang Yunnan Jilin Shanxi Guizhou Xinjiang Gansu Hainan Ningxia Qinghai

2527598 3117415 794559 3734768 3077134 2351651 1648392 1974289 1785250 1868736 1142600 936386 2389076 1334258 1435162 862014 1078190 993819 842679 1319917 1067902 739844 1649945 794559 545375 359172 595890 122307 344197 180567

24399 3737 2225 4277 570 13576 1415 385 13823 10109 8236 13 4098 1799 630 756 9247 1872 1374 621 866 1079 201 1389 1694 204 1388 2700 1120 595

9.653038181 1.198749605 2.80029551 1.145184922 0.185237302 5.772965461 0.858412319 0.195006911 7.742893152 5.409538854 7.208121827 0.013883164 1.715307508 1.348314944 0.438974834 0.877015919 8.576410466 1.883642796 1.63051411 0.470484129 0.810935835 1.458415558 0.121822243 1.748139534 3.106119642 0.567973005 2.329288963 22.07559665 3.253950499 3.295175752

0.009653038 0.00119875 0.002800296 0.001145185 0.000185237 0.005772965 0.000858412 0.000195007 0.007742893 0.005409539 0.007208122 1.38832E-05 0.001715308 0.001348315 0.000438975 0.000877016 0.00857641 0.001883643 0.001630514 0.000470484 0.000810936 0.001458416 0.000121822 0.00174814 0.00310612 0.000567973 0.002329289 0.022075597 0.00325395 0.003295176

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Appendix 2 Figure 1: Histogram of the Logarithmic Transformation of Production Arrest Data

Appendix 3 Figure 2: Bivariate Regression of Distance from North Korea and Total Production

Figure 3: Bivariate Regression of Distance from Hong Kong and Total Production

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Figure 4: Bivariate Regression of Distance from Myanmar and Total Production

Figure 5: Bivariate Regression of Population (control) and Total Production

Figure 6: Bivariate Regression of Gross Regional Product (GRP) and Total Production

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Figure 7: Bivariate Regression of Exports and Total Production

Figure 8: Box Plot of Ports by Province

Figure 9: Bivariate Regression of Corruption and Total Production

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Canopy of Peace?: Israeli Afforestation, Religious Zionism, and the Roots of Memory Joseph Rafael Kaplan Weinger

Considering the theoretical and symbolic implications of transforming land and discourses of peace in the construction of national identity, this project intends to navigate the linkages between nature and the State of Israel through the Jewish National Fund’s afforestation practices. An ethnographic reflection, this sociological analysis consists of meditations on four landscapes in Israel/Palestine at which I conducted visits in August, 2019: Neot Kedumim, the Tzora Forest, the Forest of the Martyrs, and the United States Independence Park. At two sites I performed the well-known Jewish ritual of tree-planting. These lands serve as rich physical-cum-symbolic sites of historical and collective memory, nostalgia, and willful amnesia that I deconstruct.

This analysis takes up myriad discourses of Zionist praxis, including knowledge of the land, rootedness, naturalization of the Jews, and memorialization through living nature. I identify the erased legacies of Palestinian life in an effort to locate the JNF’s ritual as a practice of colonial land management. Employing critical sociology, this paper considers the social structures of nation and religion and the discursive ideologies through which Zionism operates.

Introduction

The task of writing the impossible, (not the fanciful or the utopian but ‘histories rendered unreal and fantastic’), has as its prerequisites the embrace of likely failure and the readiness to accept the ongoing, unfinished and provisional character of this effort, particularly when the arrangements of power occlude the very object that we desire to rescue.

Hartman (2008, 14)

This research, premised on a reflectivity of the self, grapples with complex historical and sociocultural processes around land and memory. I focus primarily on the efforts of the Jewish National Fund/Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael (herein referred to as the JNF), Israel’s premier environmental organization. The JNF has labored for over a century to aid in the construction of the State of Israel through nature by enlisting diasporic communities to contribute towards building and imagining the nation

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physically and symbolically. In Israel/Palestine,1 nature is nationalistic and the development of land relates to collective memory, rootedness, and trauma. Here, afforestation has become a form of memorialization as Jews worldwide are encouraged to send funds to commemorate an occasion or individual, meanwhile assisting in greening the land as an environmental praxis. Through this process, nature becomes abstracted and the human/nature bifurcation is mediated through the lens of state-building. In relation to these forests, other questions of land and memory arise. Much scholarship has identified various villages that were purchased or absorbed to be used for Jewish settlement, common land, and forestation, but whose memories have been erased from the historical archive (Braverman 2009; Bardenstern 1998; Kadman 2015). Nature is often used as it benefits conceptions of statehood and Israel/Palestine’s landscapes are discursive domains of power writ large. Understanding these forests as sites of contestation, I ask how it is that these lands, used to symbolize peace and memory, can also instantiate pain of another’s displacement.

Multiple collective memories, nostalgias, and longings inhabit the same symbolic and physical spaces.

These forests are concomitantly loci of memorialization and also palimpsests of a collective amnesia.

I ask: How might this forest-building capacity encapsulate as a simulacrum the connections that exist between human and nature, living and dead, Israeli and Palestinian, American and Israeli? And how can environmental transformation be used in the project of state-making? Nature, forests, and trees serve as entry points to begin thinking about political ecology, human geography, and the subjectivity of truth.

This research presents an intimate analysis of the workings of interpellation (Althusser 1970).

Sociological in discipline, my analysis draws from classical theories of space, history, and ideology to explore the ways in which nationalist identity is produced. Theory is supplemented by field research. I use reflexive ethnography, a form of participant observation, to explore my experiences at four forests—Neot Kedumim, the Tzora Forest, the Forest of the Martyrs, and the United States Independence Park—in Israel/Palestine.

In contradistinction to typical ethnography, the observations here center both self and society, rather than solely an “other.” I eschew myriad traditional methodological expectations of sociological inquiry and writing—by weaving together theory, empirical observation, and personal narrative—in an effort to center the subjectivity that is often paradoxically disavowed in the institutionalized discipline, though this subjectivity lies at the heart of every sociological work. Additionally, much is unknown, or cannot be known, of the history of Israel/Palestine. I follow the critical impetus to write counter-histories, meanwhile ensuring that I “respect the limits of what cannot be known,” as Hartman opines (2008, 4). It is my intention to use critical sociology as an imaginative exercise to explore the present while demanding an alternative future. I do so not to dispel myths of the historical archive, as many historians already have, or to criticize for the sake of criticizing, but to reach the “ideological substructure” of Zionism (Shafir 1996, 26).

1 Following much critical scholarship, I use the terminology “Israel/Palestine,” rather than “Israel.” I recognize the contested lands not solely in the occupied West Bank but across Israel proper. Geographically, borders are disputed and highly transitory, while historically, prior to the State’s founding in 1948 (a period which this analysis takes up), the entire land had been referred to as both Israel and Palestine for centuries. Braverman (2009, 2) importantly qualifies under a “politics of knowledge” that “‘Palestine’ should be fully present in the analysis done by critical scholars, first and foremost by the act of naming it.”

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A Note on History

While I do not present a comprehensive history of the long and contested struggle over Israel/ Palestine, the competing narratives that constitute Israeli and Palestinian knowledge, or current debates around land and power, I am deeply concerned about the implications of narrating, reading, and writing history (for key debates around Zionism, see Alexander 2006; Arendt 2008; Kimmerling 1983; Kimmerling 2001; Morris 2003; Said 1992). Given the implicit vulnerability of history to subjectivity and the dangerous revisioning of historical narratives through hegemony and intentional erasure, any analysis of Israel/ Palestine in the academy is premised on an already unstable site. “The archive is inseparable from the play of power,” Hartman (2008, 10-11) declares, which is aptly applicable to the archive I utilize here. I follow Benjamin’s (2003, 391) historical materialist orientation towards history: “Every age must strive anew to wrest tradition away from the conformism that is working to overpower it.” This work strives to do just that by abandoning the conformism of the Zionist intellectual tradition, which demands an unwavering adherence to a progressive narrative of Jewish redemption. By doing so, I risk virulent accusations of antisemitism—stemming from a complex dialectic of post-Holocaust anxiety and Zionist nationalism—which subjects any critical work to immediate repudiation and delegitimization (Alexander and Dromi 2011).

Even my own Jewish identity does not escape this risk. In the face of persistent calls of inaccuracy, the matter of Israel/Palestine emerges as an impermeable subject off-limits to research, lest one intentionally wish to risk both career potentials and familial relationships. I have been repeatedly warned that one cannot possibly research Israel/Palestine as the effort is not worth the predictable onslaught of harm to credibility. The theoretical frameworks upon which I rely generally stem from Marxist critique and radical epistemologies; I draw on the scholarship of various Jewish and Palestinian thinkers, some of whom have impugned the very telos of Zionism. However, unless I engage with those who have been most affected

by Zionism I am colluding with the hegemonic regime of those in power. Given this foundation, such positioning may open this work up to calls of bias. I hold close to the words of Butler (2012, 27) who, in her “parting” from Jewishness, best articulates the inescapability of subjectivity: The text is skewed by my own formation, but it means to document what can and must be done with one’s own formation, how it must be repeated in new ways, and where a departure from formation becomes ethically and politically obligatory (for reasons both internal and external to that very formation). This, then: my symptoms, my error, my hope…

I concur: this text is skewed by my own formation.

II. Memory Collective Memory: A Cultural Framework

What role does sociology play in interpreting historical structures? And how does one explore, conceive of, and write about histories that are widely contested? I believe the first step in conceiving historical structures sociologically is acknowledging that memory is both constructed and political. What we remember, how we remember, and even who can remember is shaped by—and reflexively shapes— social structures. The concept of collective memory has become a central component in interrogating the

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ways in which the self is imbricated alongside many others within a collective. Halbwachs’s (1941/1992; 1950/1980) landmark theories of collective memory present the inextricability of individual memory and collective context. He explains collective memory as the set of social representations regarding the past that are called upon in constructing the present. Notably, Halbwachs (1950/1980, 80) distinguishes between memory and history: “Collective memory differs from history….It is a current of continuous thought whose continuity is not at all artificial, for it retains from the past only what still lives or is capable of living in the consciousness of the groups keeping the memory alive.” History is temporally static—part of the past, he writes—while memory is dynamic and unstable. This memory is structured but also structuring, as Bourdieu (1976, 72) similarly writes about habitus, in a complex dialectic of self and society. “The framework of collective memory confines and binds our most intimate remembrances to each other,” Halbwachs writes (1941/1992, 53). Under this conception, any individual memory is inseparable from the collective. Halbwachs bifurcates memory as either individual or collective but nonetheless sees the personal as inherently social and located in the present. As he writes, “the mind reconstructs its memories under the pressure of society” (1941/1992, 51). Imposed cultural beliefs and norms can and do dictate the bounds of individual epistemology. As Baldwin (1998, 119) elegantly declares, “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”

Within the ambit of nationalist ideology, collective memory serves an indispensable purpose: it allows for collectivist identity to be constructed and united upon a particular history. Although Halbwachs does not directly address collective memory in the service of state-making, he concurs, “If certain memories are inconvenient or burden us, we can always oppose to them the sense of reality inseparable from our present life” (1941/1992, 50). Collective memory is shaped to fit the desires promulgated by hegemonic authority. Thereby, collective memory can be used to legitimate a culture’s beliefs, practices, and histories (Olick, Vinitsky-Seroussi, and Levy 2011). Commemorative acts and strategies are particularly useful in this regard. By employing collective memory in the service of nationalism, symbolic acts sever the distance between memory and socially constructed histories. Memory requires acts of preservation, remembering, recovering, and reconstructing in intimate and individualized ways. While collective memory, particularly in the context of nationalism, relies upon sociality, interaction, and networks, it is the individual who takes up memory to negotiate personal identity. Memorialization is one means allowing this process to occur, wherein both individual and collective wrest a version of the past into the present through the process of remembering. Though it may appear obvious, remembering is political, indeed a socially constructed process inextricable from the workings of power.

Within Jewish Israeli society particularly, collective memory has been widely embraced as a tool for the Zionist imagination in recalling a particular constructed past in the service of maintaining authority over the present. Zerubavel’s (1995) seminal review of Israeli national traditions reveals that Zionism has hegemonically constructed a collective memory through its transformation of culture. Zionist history, Zerubavel argues, has narrativized the contemporary Jewish conquest of Israel/Palestine as a progressive story, classifying the establishment of the Jewish state as a divine redemption from exilic misery.

Zionist historiography and culture have been constructed in reference to a desired historical continuity between antiquity and modernity, wherein the Hebrew nation’s heroic past is consistently referenced and recalled in periodizing—and thereby legitimizing—Jewish presence in Israel/Palestine. The collective

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memory of Jewish Israelis, and of diasporic Jews worldwide, has been shaped around this temporal linkage to the biblical era and beyond. Notwithstanding the Zionist structuring of collective memory to support a Jewish salvation and return, Zerubavel (1995, 215) is critical of the violences that have emerged out of the discordance of Israeli and Palestinian collective memories: The desire to recover the Hebrew nation’s ancient roots was a major motivating force in the construction of the Zionist master commemorative narrative. Yet in this process, Zionist collective memory suppressed other groups’ memories that were in conflict with its own reconstruction of the past….Zionist memory portrayed the land as empty and desolate, yearning for the return of its ancient Hebrew inhabitants. The Zionist master collective memory was thus supported not only by the marginalization of Jewish experience in Exile, but also by shutting out others’ experiences in the ancient land after the majority of Jews had left it.

The Zionist collective memory exists in contradistinction to the collective memories of those who also inhabit the spaces of Israel/Palestine. It is within the interstices of this contradictory assemblage of memories that I find myself exploring the constructed landscapes of Israel/Palestine.

Individual Memory

[E]veryone has a capacity for memory [memoire] that is unlike that of anyone else, given the variety of temperaments and life circumstances. But individual memory is nevertheless a part or an aspect of group memory, since each impression and each fact, even if it apparently concerns a particular person exclusively, leaves a lasting memory only to the extent that one has thought it over—the extent that it is connected with the thoughts that come to us from the social milieu.

Halbwach’s ([1941] 1992, 53)

In my formative years, the way I came to know myself as an American Jew (never a Jewish American) was deeply embedded in historical constructions of Jewish personhood that saw a certain inextricability between am yisrael (the people of Israel) and eretz yisrael (the land of Israel). But I am not Israeli. In fact, in my lifetime I have spent just under 20 days in the country. Yet, my upbringing, like those of many American Jews, has been significantly shaped by an attachment to that land. I was raised in a religious Zionist Orthodox community in Chicago wherein my identity was produced through an unwavering attachment to the Jewish state. I was instructed from a young age to understand the deep connection I held to a country of which I was not a citizen. I sang Israeli songs, recited the Hatikva (national anthem) daily each morning, and longed for the day when I, too, could fulfill the ostensible Jewish destiny: aliyah (emigration). In the meantime, I planted trees in Israel. Dozens of them. Not always with my own hands, as most were planted through donations. I received many JNF certificates to prove my deed (see Appendix A), which I proudly hung on my bedroom wall. I also planted trees with my own hands at the Neot Kedumim nature reserve in 2012 when I visited Israel/Palestine with my Jewish middle school. Growing up, tree planting was the most direct involvement I had with the project of Zionism. I performed the act with the intent of instantiating my rootedness in this distant place.

My family’s decades-long involvement with the JNF’s efforts also influenced my view that this practice was a Jewish ritual. For example, Figure 7 below depicts my father planting pine trees in a JNF forest

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in Israel/Palestine in 1981. Additionally, my family planted a grove of 1,000 trees through the JNF to commemorate the lives of my grandparents and often purchased single trees to mark special occasions.

Figure 7: A newly planted landscape in Israel/Palestine as captured by the author’s grandfather, 1970.

Photo from author.

When I reached university, I was confronted by an epistemological incursion: how could it be that the Jewish people are entirely consumed and motivated by an identification with a socially constructed project of possession and nationalism? Before I ever stepped foot on the land for the first time in 2012 I had memories of Israel. These memories certainly could not have been phenomenologically perceived through interaction and observation in a place I had never yet seen with my eyes or felt with my hands. But my epistemology of Jewish belonging and statehood entailed a view of Israel/Palestine that saw this land as my own, as my rightful home. The cultural framework within which I was raised constituted my individual memory as collectively informed, as Halbwachs writes in the passage quoted above. I have observed through my participation in JNF’s tree planting that the institutions and networks I have participated in imbue deeply ideological yearnings for connection to the Jewish state through education, symbolic interaction, and ritual. This praxis erases historiography—the forests I visited are ideological facades, as I later detail—and creates anew the pernicious nationalist logic

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that legitimizes militarism, occupation, racialization, and ethnocratic (undemocratic) governmentality.

Prior to the epistemological incursion I identify above, my subjectivity was linked to a complex assemblage of American and Israeli exceptionalism. I was instilled with a rigid conception of land and ownership, wherein I internalized Lockean conceptions of liberalism upon which America is founded. I was taught that land can be privatized and enclosed from the state of nature by rational actors through purported universal agreement (Locke 1689/2002, 30-47). Of course, following this ideology, I believed that land ownership necessitates productivity, and capitalist labor practices commensurably fulfill this duty. Said (1979, 26-27) critically expounds on this viewpoint: Among the juridical distinctions between civilized and non-civilized peoples was an attitude toward land, almost a doxology about land which non-civilized people supposedly lacked. A civilized man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him; on it accordingly he bred useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built. For an uncivilized people land was either farmed badly (i.e., efficiently by Western standards) or it was left to rot.

Out of this logic emerges the legitimation of dispossession, as Wolfe (2006) duly documents in his theory of comparative settler-colonialism. Locke and his contemporaries have presented the historical shift from common land to private property as a story of progression, one of productivity and virtue that is conspicuously absent of certain peoples and processes. Growing up in a consumer-capitalist society entails the naturalization of these very notions of individual rights, property, and ownership. For example, I was taught quite simply that my family owned our house because my parents labored, earned money, and purchased the land, despite out-positioning within unceded native Potowatami territories.

What was ours was not anyone else’s; our home’s boundaries delimited our rightful property. But what Lockean privatization ignores are the many historically contingent structures of power and hegemony around settling and dispossession, empire and race.

It is under these erasures of historical structures that I was raised to consider American land as my own, to participate as a productive member of civil society, and to continue embodying the propriety of the capitalist and neoliberal citizen. But it is also under these structures of privatization that I was explained the exclusive rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, and encouraged by the religious Zionist movement of American Modern Orthodoxy to link religiosity, nationalism, and land. Israel’s primitive accumulation—often by dispossession—by the early “pioneers” of the 19th century and the nation’s founding in the mid-20th century was purportedly premised on the work of rational actors who rightfully purchased land from uncivilized occupiers. If the land was not purchasable, it was conquered under the guise of a “just war.” My personal memory of Israel/Palestine—even before I saw the land with my own eyes—was formed under socially constructed collective contexts. I was taught to believe in Israel as my homeland, home being a signifier for rightful belonging. Israel’s Law of Return codifies my right as a Jew to “return” to the geographic spaces that purportedly belong to me. I was heavily encouraged to one day make aliyah, the process of emigration to Israel. And the religious education system in which I was raised highly encouraged American students to join the Israel Defense Forces upon graduation.

These components structure a strong attachment to the Israeli state. Additionally, growing up in a Modern Orthodox religious Zionist community entails the religious celebration of Israel with a daily prayer, the

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Prayer for the State of Israel, and a weekly prayer recited every Sabbath, the Prayer for the Soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. The opening section of the latter prayer reads: He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Forces, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God, from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the approach of the Aravah, on the land, in the air, and on the sea (Jewish Virtual Library, n.d.).

Israel’s Independence Day is similarly marked annually with the special addition of liturgy merging religion and nationalism, and with exuberant celebrations of song and dance. Through these religious rituals, rights to Israeli land and property are naturalized and sanctified, not simply as politically motivated but as spiritual and divine.

III. Afforestation on Ideological Grounds

A History of the JNF

The history of the JNF’s Zionist objectives, land acquisition, and afforestation efforts is widely documented and discussed (Bar-Gal 2003; Bardenstern 1999; Braverman 2009; Cohen 1993; Fields 2017; Lehn and Davis 1988; Shilony 1998; Tal 2013; Zerubavel 2018). Nevertheless, an analysis of the symbolic interactions that occur in JNF forests must begin with a history of the JNF's institutional efforts. This focus on the JNF as a fixed entity is not intended to obscure the many decentralized and informal networks that constitute Zionism (Shenhav 2007, 24); nevertheless, the institution’s continued role in shaping Zionist discourse cannot be neglected. The organization was first conceived in 1897 at the World Zionist Congress meeting in Basel, Switzerland and was officially established in 1901 at the fifth Congress (Shilony 1998, 55-90). At its conception, the JNF served as the major Zionist body most capable of obtaining land to be used ultimately in establishing a Jewish nation. The JNF soon began to obtain land throughout Israel/ Palestine to be used for the growing number of immigrants and refugees leaving Europe’s persecution and settling the land. Internationalist efforts to raise capital and funding for these projects began in 1902 with the distribution of the Blue Box (a pushke, or donation box) and Zionist stamps to diasporic communities worldwide. The organization spread Zionist ideology across the world through visual mass marketing in an effort to garner donations and youth excitement over the prospects of state-making and land redemption (Bar-Gal 2003, 10-11). For example, the Blue Boxes were placed in Jewish classrooms across the U.S. next to religious material culture, like Sabbath candles. The JNF’s fundraising methods transformed the act of donating into an ideological performance—a Jewish tradition, or sanctified ritual—making meaningful the act of contributing to a future Jewish state. The symbols, colors, phrases, and, particularly, maps on each box and stamp were explicit mechanisms for nationalist devotion (Bar-Gal 2003, 104-122). Quickly, the JNF established itself as the most recognized and active Zionist organization in the world.

The JNF is recognized for its massive forestation projects which developed inextricably alongside the land settlement project. Afforestation was initiated in 1908-1909 with the planting of eucalyptus, cypress, and pine trees at the Herzl Forest using donated funds (Shilony 1998, 126-136). This forest inaugurated the JNF’s effort to establish physical roots across Israel/Palestine through the cultivation of its land. While the JNF positions forestation services under the telos of environmental development, the

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organization has undoubtedly implemented political and cultural Zionism through its praxis. This begs the question—why does Zionism maintain an obsession with (af)forestation? To date, over 240 million trees have been planted over 247,000 acres of land administered by the JNF through the State of Israel and its Land Authority (KKL-JNF, n.d.-a). These forests were not constructed for their economic and material benefits; in fact, very little wood is ever sold from JNF forests. The organization’s practical rationality for afforestation includes combating desertification and global warming, sequestering carbon, improving soil, stabilizing sand dunes, and building green spaces from which residents and tourists can benefit. The critique of this paper is not to say that these benefits have no merit. The organization has more recently prioritized sustainable forestation practices (Tal 2013, 93-122) and is lauded for its scientific advancements in forestation, particularly in the desertous Negev region. Nevertheless, the organization’s ideological underpinnings and symbolic logic directly shape its actions, regardless of environmentalist logic.

From its inception, institutionalized Israeli afforestation provided an immediate physical bond to the land as a process of reclamation and return, both a forward-looking development and backwardlooking “reperiodization” that reinforced the land of Israel/Palestine as the land of the Jewish people (Bardenstern 1999, 158). As Bardenstern (1999, 162) argues regarding the original intention of the JNF’s planting, “The act of planting trees in the present was of heightened significance precisely because it was deemed necessary for it to reinscribe the cycle of collective memory culminating in Jewish return and repossession of the land, from the strategic position of the Zionist reconstruction of Jewish/Israeli collective identity.” Zionist forests, thereby, were constructed to serve multiple purposes: mainly, to assist in the physical construction of the land as a desirable space and to symbolize a (re)posession of place through the cultivation of its spaces. This has always been the primary goal of Zionist afforestation efforts.

Zionist historiography constructs nature through a particular attachment to settling the land, though it is clear that the natural is, by definition, both constructed and political. Geomorphic changes under Zionist praxis has seen the “Judaization” of the landscape and archeology of Israel/Palesetine (Yiftachel 2006; Abu El-Haj 2002; Weizman 2007). This process entails connecting the Jewish people of the modern age to those of antiquity. Various terms are used to describe Zionist and Israeli-state colonial or neo-colonial practices and the violence that continues to erase previous histories of the Palestinians whose lands have been purchased, confiscated, or otherwise forcibly taken. Both the planting of forests and the acquiring of land accomplished by the JNF and the Israeli state are manifestations of the Zionist creation of a frontier under settler-colonial ideology (Kimmerling 1983, 31-65). This ideology entails both expansion and extirpation under a strongly-held nationalist belief. Indeed, the founding of Israel in 1948 saw the destruction (and/or repopulation with Jewish refugees) of over 400 Palestinian villages (Braverman 2009a, 100-103; Morris 2003, 342). Some JNF forests grow on these demolished villages and conceal the remains of dispossession and destruction (Yiftachel 2006, 61; Tal 2013, 87). Klein (2016) specifically terms the JNF’s practices “green colonialism.” Meanwhile, Kadman (2015, 113-117) expertly details the depopulations and renamings of villages alongside their transformations into Jewish land. She found that 62 destroyed villages now constitute JNF sites and the organization largely fails to recognize these villages in signage, official histories, and tourist brochures. official histories, and tourist brochures.

Notably, the Jewish settlement and nationalization of Israel/Palestine constitutes an ethnocratic

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regime that “promote[s] the expansion of the dominant group in contested territory and its domination of power structures while maintaining a democratic facade” (Yiftachel 2006, 3). Zionist ethnonationalism— i.e. the struggle to realize Jewish ethnic statehood—has been partly achieved through the naturalization of Jewish presence in Israel. The JNF’s land practices, particularly the discriminatory policy forbidding land transfer to non-Jews (Braverman 2009a, 50-51), reifies the organization’s participation in constructing Israel’s constitutively exclusive “ethnic democracy” (Smooha 1998). The JNF, as an organization carrying out Zionist theory, does not distance itself from its ethnocratic exclusions. Responding to a lawsuit regarding discrimination in 2004, the JNF stated: The JNF is not the trustee of the general public in Israel. Its loyalty is given to the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in the state of Israel….The JNF, in relation to being an owner of land, is not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state (Adalah, n.d.).

The forests and services by the JNF are at once both private and public. The organization paradoxically admits discrimination but regards this as unproblematically constitutive of Zionism and of the values of the Jewish State.

The JNF’s contributions to Israeli ethnocracy through legal, geographic, and religious measures are central to the institution's mission. Still, sociological investigations have largely avoided examining the institution’s co-optation of collective memory for the diaspora through ideological means and practices.

Collective memory is central to the JNF’s vision of Zionism and a Jewish state. Many JNF forests are commemorative of Israeli political and religious leaders, American presidents, and victims of the Holocaust, through naming and symbolism. Additionally, for decades, Jews have donated to the Fund to virtually plant trees in honor of living and departed family and friends. There are now 23 JNF divisions worldwide, from Denmark to South Africa to Australia, each dedicated to Zionist philanthropy in its respective locale. The organization’s nation-building project has garnered the transnational participation of diasporic Jewry to contribute towards the ideological possession, settlement, and management of Israel/ Palestine’s land. In JNF forests trees instantiate memory. What follows is a description and exploration of my personal interaction with Zionist ideology and praxis through the JNF’s co-optation of nature.

IV. Observations

I conducted ethnographic observations at four landscapes within the borders of the State of Israel established in 1967: the Forest of the Martyrs, the United States Independence Park, the Tzora Forest, and Neot Kedumim. My method was participant observation. In two locations—The Forest of the Martyrs and the United States Independence Park—I solely observed, hiked, touched, and smelled the forests. I recorded my thoughts during and after each visit. In the other two locations—the Tzora Forest and Neot Kedumim—I participated by planting trees with my own hands through the JNF’s planting process. I was not so much observing otherness as I was observing my own responses to place and space and my embeddedness in historical structures. The following sections detail my observations at each site. I intentionally veer from sociological expectations of writing thick description separate from interpretation

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and theory, instead merging them together because my ethnographic process has been deeply informed by the theoretical impetus of deconstruction.

Forest of the Martyrs

Figure 1: Scenic overlook across the Judaean Hills at the Forest of the Martyrs, 2019. Photo by author.

The Forest of the Martyrs (also called the Martyrs’ Forest) was the first stop on my drive through the Judaean Hills in the outskirts of Jerusalem. The forest was originally planted in 1951 with six million trees (primarily pine, in addition to cypress, eucalyptus and carob varieties and indigenous kermes oak, terebinth and styrax) to commemorate the genocide of six million Jews in Europe just a decade earlier (KKL, n.d.-b). Planted using funds garnered in the Jewish diaspora, the forest is foremost a symbolic gesture representing the rejuvenation of Jewish land through growth (Cohen 1993, 65-66). I read the JNF website (KKL, n.d.-b) while visiting the forest and was taken by its description: “The six million trees, planted in 1951, are a living monument of eternally green memorial candles for the six million of our people who perished during World War II.” These “eternally green memorial candles” epitomize the Zionist organization’s symbolic manipulation of landscape wherein trees become more than trees: they

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take on anthropomorphic features.

In the context of memorializing genocide, this forest is successful in its metaphor. The trees cover close to 7,500 acres (Cohen 1993, 65) and to my eyes appeared endless, as Figure 1 depicts above.

Overlooking the trees, I was struck by the vastness of this constructed landscape. Indeed, I was observing six million trees—the number of Jewish people systematically murdered. Visualizing six million lost lives through an ostensibly endless terrain of trees offered me a starkly material basis for the conceptualization of loss. I found myself interpreting this forest as an ideological symbol linking the murdered Jews of Europe to the physical land of Israel. They are referred to as “martyrs,” not victims, ostensibly linking their suffering and ultimate horrific eradication to the salvation of the specifically Jewish land of Israel. It is as if this forest, and the JNF itself, assert that the land of Israel can be claimed, nurtured, and developed out of the ashes of the victims of the Nazi genocide. In fact, it is the lost life itself—transposed to these trees—that roots Jewish resilience and belonging to this land. Walking through the forest among these people-as-trees was emotional. The forest was silent besides the rustle of leaves in the breeze and the crunch of pine needles under my shoes. I found myself thinking about the systematic loss of life, but also the newfound lives of refugees who escaped tragedy and found solace in the land of Israel. These components are made inseparable at this site. The rootedness of the trees in Israeli soil is a physical reminder of the reality that Israel offered a home to the Jewish homeless. Visitors are made to regard the arboreal as the body politic of Jewish sovereignty and belonging. Nevertheless, absent from this site’s discursive domain is any reminder of what the Jewish conquest, settlement, and occupation meant for those already living in this land, in the spaces of this very forest, who now remain displaced.

United States Independence Park

Figure 2 : Rows of commemorative plaques at the Contributors Memorial Site of the United States Independence Park outside Beit Shemesh, 2019. Photo by author.

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Figure 3: Plaques containing the names of American donors to the JNF, including the author’s grandparents, 2019. Photo by author.

I next observed the United States Independence Park (also called the American Independence Park) near the city of Beit Shemesh. This forest was planted by the JNF in 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial of U.S. independence and honor the strong U.S.-Israel relationship. The forest was built through donations of the American Jewish community. Notably, as Figure 2 depicts, the forest contains an area with thousands of plaques commemorating JNF donors. These plaques contain the names of Jewish American families, schools, synagogues, and organizations that have donated large portions of money towards afforestation efforts. It must be noted that the JNF’s practices of afforestation and commemoration through donation are abstracted from nature itself. When donors fund trees, groves, or forests, no such trees or forests are planted specifically for them. No plot is cordoned off and labeled, no tree tagged by name. Rather, a plaque is put in this remote memorial site and the donation is used as the JNF sees fit.

The forest is about an hour’s drive from Jerusalem through largely inaccessible winding and steep roads. Located in a rural area of the Judaean Hills, the Contributors Memorial Site containing the plaques is not listed on any website or map. No road signs direct drivers to the location, which lies off an unpaved road. I only tracked down the location by contacting the JNF, which then provided me with unspecific driving directions. The forest was eerily quiet when I arrived; there were no other people there at the time of my visit—a Wednesday afternoon in early August. Upon arriving I was immediately struck by the vastness of this site. Dedicatory plaques align rows and rows of memorials in long aisles containing endless lists of names. In this desolate forest are the names of countless Jews who have contributed to the Zionist project. Among the names of thousands of donors, it was here that I located a plaque commemorating the Memorial Grove of Betty and Benjamin Weinger, a plot of 1000 trees honoring my paternal grandparents planted in 1998 (see Figure 3, above). I also came across plaques dedicated for my Jewish schools, synagogue, and other acquaintances. Seeing the names of my grandparents, American Jews, at this remote forest in Israel/Palestine struck me as peculiar. My body reacted viscerally upon seeing

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these names, the piloerection of my skin being the most corporeal response. The imagined connection of my family to this land is made literal within the walls of this forest. The inscription of names is a marker, and imagination, of possession.

Tzora Forest

Figure 4: A developing landscape with drip irrigation hoses at the Judaean Foothills Tree Planting Center of the Tzora Forest near Beit Shemesh, 2019. Photo by author.

Figure 5: The author planting an oak tree at the Tzora Forest, 2019. Photo from author.

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While in the first two forests I simply observed, the next two enabled me to perform the ritualistic action of Jewish tree planting. The Tzora Forest, covering around 3,000 acres in the Judaean Plains, was first constructed in the 1950s by the JNF (KKL-JNF, n.d.-d). It now houses the Judaean Foothills Planting Center, a tourist attraction through the JNF that invites the Jewish diaspora to plant trees. Each tree is priced at $18 USD per tree, a symbolic number in Judaism representing life. When I arrived I was met by a JNF forester who leads the afforestation efforts at this site. We drove to the barren area, an uncultivated dry land bordering pine trees on one end and a grove of olive trees on the other (see Figure 4). The site was off an unpaved and unmarked road in a rural area. The section being planted, the forester explained, was badly damaged by large forest fires in 2015. It is now being cultivated and is intended to grow into a large oak forest within 30-50 years.

The forester first explained the significance of Jewish afforestation in a prepared six minute speech before I planted. He explained that the land we were standing on had been severely “mistreated by overgrazing for centuries” and that Jewish pioneers settled there in the 20th century and “brought over a culture of planting,” a phrase he repeated multiple times. Non-Israeli Jews are entitled to plant trees in Israel at any time they wish during the year, he explained, because of the importance of developing the land. This past year, 6,000 tourists came to plant at the Tzora Forest with this forester. Most tourists come as groups on tours while some, like myself, come individually. In contrast, Israelis are not able to plant at this site and elsewhere in the country through the JNF; they can only plant on Tu BiShvat, a biblicallyderived Jewish holiday honoring agriculture and nature. Additionally, the forester explained that usually, trees in Israel are planted in the winter when they have a good chance at survival. In the summer, trees are threatened by high heat, long sunlight exposure, and little to no rain. Rain typically comes once every 15 years in the summer, the forester explained. He expressed how my tree, to be planted in the dry heat of summer, did not have a good chance at survival without the organization’s careful attention and specially developed drip irrigation system, which would ensure my tree was properly nurtured. The JNF would ensure that my tree would thrive for the first two years, he said, because it is crucial to the process of land redemption. After the speech, I was presented with a sapling of a non-native oak tree. The forester dug a hole in the dry land and instructed me to bury the roots and cover the saplings with the dirt (see Figure 5). I planted the tree in the soil (geographic location: 31.7829720, 34.9957920). As the area had no shade coverage, the heat bore down from the sun onto the parched soil and dead brush. The soil clearly lacked moisture despite the drip irrigation hose; when I buried the tree my hands were painfully pricked by the dry soil, dead leaves, spikes, and stones. I struggled to fully cover the sapling because the soil’s property was more comparable to crumbled clay than to traditional moist organic matter.

After planting, the forester handed me the Prayer for Planting Trees by Rabbi Ben Tzion Uziel (see Appendix C for full text) to be said out loud. I opted to recite the prayer fully in Hebrew, which took around three minutes. The experience felt religious—I planted a tree on Jewish land in Israel to fulfill the purported duty of planting as instructed by the Torah and then blessed the tree with a Hebrew prayer. Part of the prayer reads: “And these saplings / which we plant before thee this day, / Make deep their roots and wide their crown, / That they may blossom forth in grace /Amongst all the trees in Israel, / For good and for beauty.” By reciting this prayer I consecrated my brief action of planting. The experience of inserting a sapling’s roots into Israeli soil embodied Zionist ideology of rootedness; asking out loud in a prayer for

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these roots to be made deep collapsed the gap between symbolic and physical.

The forester expressed that I was free and welcome to visit my tree whenever I pleased. I captured the geographic coordinates of the tree on my phone’s map. After, the forester handed me a certificate (see Appendix B) from the JNF and we concluded the visit. The certificate, like others I had previously received, presents a uniquely Zionist dialectic of environmental and religious legitimation. The top of the certificate quotes a biblical passage from Leviticus, “And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees.” Meanwhile, the bottom reads, “This tree will absorb approximately 1.5 tons of carbon from the atmosphere and bring new life to the environment. By planting this tree you have helped curb global warming.” Finally, the back of the certificate reads, “Your contribution will make Israel more beautiful.” These discourses exist simultaneously—I carried out a religious obligation and helped combat environmental degradation with one plant. The certificate also contains a conspicuously blank section where my name was intended to be already written, a reminder of the impersonal nature of this practice.

Neot Kedumim

Figure 6: Israeli flags denote planted tree saplings at Neot Kedumim outside Modi’in, 2019. Photo by

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author.

My last visit was to Neot Kedumim, the 625 acre “biblical landscape reserve” bordering the West Bank near the Israeli city of Modi'in. Neot Kedumim is a nature reserve that has reconstructed what the biblical landscape of Israel is believed to have looked like. The site also contains a tree planting center for the JNF USA where American Jews are invited to again pay $18 USD per tree to plant at the site.

When I arrived I met another JNF forester who, despite working for the American organization, spoke only Hebrew. I followed him in my car to a remote part of the reserve. Like the previous planting, I was handed a sapling of a non-native oak tree. I was asked to dig a hole next to the irrigation hose and plant the tree. I saw that other trees had been planted there and marked with Israeli flags (see Figure 6). These flags reify the JNF’s vision of forestation as a Zionist Israeli act. They embody the Israeli state while their conspicuous presence as the marker of a growing tree links nature and nation. Essentially, these trees grow as functionaries of the state.

I planted the tree next to green brush (geographic location: 319520294, 34.9754674). The soil was extremely dry and when I inserted the sapling into the ground I was unable to fully cover it with dirt. Afterwords I watered the plant from a large jug. The forester handed me a small flag that I inserted next to the sapling. One side of the flag contained the two blue stripes and Star of David while the other side contained the logo of the JNF. I was then handed Rabbi Uziel’s Prayer for Planting Trees to recite again. This time I opted to silently read the English translation. During the process of tree planting at Neot Kedumim I was distracted by the background soundtrack. As I planted, dozens of startling gunshots rang in the near distance. The forester told me that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) practiced shooting at a nearby base and that his son was an instructor there. His casual attitude—he laughed at my surprise— signified that this was not something many Israelis are concerned about. A pertinent reminder of Israel’s robust militaristic culture, the piercing sounds rang loud as I placed the flag of Israel beside my tree. When I completed planting, I filled out a card with my personal details and selected that I planted the tree in my own name, rather than in someone’s honor. The JNF later mailed the personalized certificate to my home (see Appendix B).

V. Discussion

The Discursive Production of Israeli Land

The discourses I encountered—themes of revitalizing the wilderness, conquering the dessert, and colonizing a desolate land—are common to the Zionist discursive production of land. The JNF positions its work under a moral and theological imperative to restore the Jewish Holy Land through Jewish labor exclusively,2 using trees and forests to re-naturalize an ostensible barren area by “planting the promised landscape” (Braverman 2009b, 317). The first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, (1940, 371; quoted also in Tal 2013, 85) emblematically wrote in his biography of the Israeli landscape: “If the land was so valuable now, it had become so through our work and effort, our sacrifice in blood and money….It seems as if God has covered the soil of Palestine with rocks and marches and sand, so that its real beauty can 2 Shilony (1998, 126-127) details JNF’s abolition of Arab labor in 1908 in favor of “avodah ivrit (Jewish labor),” one example of how the Zionist project of Jewish state-making is constitutively exclusive.

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only be brought out by those who love it and will devote their lives to healing its wounds.” This narrative continues to dominate the JNF’s alteration of Israel/Palestine’s landscape; the current World Chairman of KKL-JNF Daniel Atar recently stated in an official video, “Israel has changed from a barren, parched land into a flourishing, green, blossoming country” (KKL-JNF 2019). This ideology at once supplants the historiography of Arab presence and faults non-Jewish Palestinian peoples for purported maltreatment of the land. “[E]nvironmental narratives attempt to retroactively legitimize Israel’s appropriation of land by portraying the victims of this appropriation [Palestinians] as guilty of this land’s deterioration,” Braverman writes (2009a, 87). The JNF depicts its lands as “inalienable ‘Jewish public’ land, never to be sold to or cultivated by non-Jews” (Kimmerling 2001, 25).

The bridging of Zionist theory and praxis through nature also establishes Jewish laborers as the rightful and exclusive stewards of the land of Israel/Palestine. Thereby, I—an American Jew—was able to take part in the Jewish cultivation of the land of Israel/Palestine through the act of planting. The forester at the Tzora Forest followed Weizman’s logic of Jewish devotion to Israeli land by explaining the “culture of planting” as a redemptive act. Similarly, the prayer I was given at each planting most directly linked this act as an inherently Jewish one, regardless of my religious affiliation. Additionally, the Jewish labor directly corresponds to the symbolic situating of these trees as living creatures. Donating funds to JNF’s afforestation efforts and planting trees through these programs substantiates Braverman’s (2009a, 219) notion of “pines as proxy immigrants,” wherein the trees are anthropomorphized as Jewish inhabitants of the land of Israel. As a tourist, I left roots—literally—in the land through the trees I planted. Meanwhile, my grandparents are rooted in the United States Independence Park. While our physical presence is not in Israel, we remain in the land by way of these trees. Tree planting allows nature to be individually and collectively possessed as both property and personhood.

Materiality and Nature

Certainly, the JNF’s particularistic vision of a green Israel is made manifest through its praxis and through the materiality of its trees. The majority of JNF forests comprise monocultural coniferous pine trees which grow quickly, although diversification methods have been recently implemented. Driving through the Judaean Hills, I noted the resemblance of the landscape to those of Europe. The semi-arid landscape did not seem fit for acres of pine trees; in a country severely lacking water resources and rain, the existence of these forests alongside barren hilltops is quite a peculiar site. Braverman (2009a, 89) notes that the JNF selected pine trees in part because of their aesthetic likeness to the Eastern European landscapes: “Although it was intended to work toward negating the image of the exile European Jew, the reconstitution of the Jewish homeland in Palestine and the project of putting down roots in this new place through the Zionist afforestation project nonetheless reaffirms the old European identity precisely by its linking of one homeland to another.” These pine trees effectively link European longing with Zionist belonging and futurity through a process that alters the landscape and its topographic arrangement, despite natural challenges. The collective memories of European immigrants and settler-colonizers are embedded in the construction of Israel’s current natural landscape. Beyond these forests’ ties to place, the trees contained within their bounds are materially significant. The trees symbolize sustenance, life, permanence, and longevity, as opposed to the transience of humanity; they concomitantly represent active care through cultivation and labor as physical, living organisms that breathe, grow, and “green” the desertous landscape.

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While I observed the Forest of the Martyrs, the United States Independence Park, the Tzora Forest, and Neot Kedumim as landscapes that seemingly blend in with the natural topography, most of the trees are not native.3 To my eyes, as a visitor unfamiliar with the local ecology of the Judaean Hills, these forests seem to belong in that they now compose the natural landscape. The trees have grown to their maximum heights and appear to grow without human intervention. However, these forests are constructed for myriad symbolic and physical uses and they continue to require human intervention and management.

For example, frequent fires in Israeli forests are reminders of the precarity of naturally arid landscapes and the inability of humans to dominate natural terrains.

The nature/culture bifurcation can easily be read in the landscapes of Israel/Palestine, wherein nature is subjected to human care, management, manipulation, and destruction. Haraway (1990, 106) notes, “Nature is constructed, constituted historically, not discovered naked in a fossil bed or a tropical forest.” Recognizing the social construction of nature is crucial in the case of Israel/Palestine, though it may not be entirely unique. Despite my observations that the JNF forests were visually wild looking, these forests are highly managed and manipulated spaces. They are scientifically controlled, standardized, and made efficient. Tal (2013, 81) details the various processes enacted by the JNF for decades in its afforestation efforts: The main goal of site preparation was efficiency, and any competing flora in the ‘‘bare’’ shrub lands did not warrant consideration: At the start of the planting process, the ground cover would typically be burned to ensure eradication of existing vegetation.

After the fires, large D-4 bulldozers (known as ‘‘rotaries’’) were brought in with a clearing rake and a three-tine ripper (gigantic steel claws) for ‘‘brush elimination.’’ …

Nurtured by such aggressive preparations, Pinus halepensis —and little else—thrived .

Today, the JNF’s techniques do follow the same destructive form. The organization’s efforts are instead more localized than past mass afforestation. Nevertheless, these forests could not have come about, nor could they exist today, without systemic human intervention. They are one part of the wider Zionist colonial planning strategies that Said (1979, 36) terms the “policy of detail,” which describes the realization of the general colonial vision through meticulous control. The process of constructing these landscapes substantiates the claim that human nature can, and should, conquer the natural. Yet, management of nature is widely critiqued: Davis and Robbins (2018) term this process “arboreal biopolitics” in a Foucauldian framework of power. Davis (1998, 149) asserts that under capitalist modernity, “Nature is posited as hostility, mysterious inexorability, a resistance to be broken…External nature and human nature alike must be conquered by science, industry, the state—and yet other social forces.” Similarly, Benjamin (1970/1979, 104) concludes that “The mastery of nature, so the imperialists teach, is the purpose of all technology.” JNF forests follow the deleterious logic whereby the wilderness must be tamed through the deliberate regulation of growth through technological achievement, or purported progress.

The procedure of planting a tree through the JNF that I experienced exemplifies this logic. At both sites I was handed a tree, told to place it in the ground, cover it with soil, and allow the drip irrigation to nurture the plant. On my part, as the planter, there was no consideration of species type, interaction 3 Importantly, Tal (2013, 142, citing Gould) rejects the romanticized habit of many naturalists who extol native species while denouncing all non-native species as invasive and exploitation.

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with native plants, effects this tree would have on the land, and the resources that would go into caring for it. This afforestation process does not present humans as stewards cohabitating with the land. Rather, humans control the land and shape it to their desires and needs. The Tzora forester’s explanation that the land had previously been overgrazed and uncultivated presents a civilizational discourse that prefers the shaping of this land to the aesthetic desires of a colonial regime. Other than the purported aid to the environment and the religious and aesthetic purposes, I was never told why these forests are being constructed. Whether ecological improvement and divine obligation are enough to justify these political practices, and the extreme manipulation of nature, is unclear.

Religion and Nature

Religious (i.e. biblical) themes of settlement and tree planting significantly permeate the ideological efforts of Jewish/Israeli afforestation. For example, variations of the biblical passage in Leviticus 19:23 are printed on each tree-planting certificate in the original Hebrew alongside an English interpretation (see Appendices A and B). It is important to note that the JNF, in some places, speciously misuses this passage to its benefit through the English translation of the Hebrew biblical passage by decontextualizing the phrase. While the JNF selects only part of the phrase and translates it as “When you shall come to the land you shall plant trees,” the full passage4 is more accurately and fully translated as “When you come to the Land and you plant any food tree, you shall surely block its fruit [from use]; it shall be blocked from you [from use] for three years, not to be eaten” (Chabad). There is an interpretation of this passage in a Midrash (ancient commentary from rabbinic sages, though not taken as commandment) that regards planting trees as an obligation (see Tanchuma, Kedoshim 7). However, the JNF does not cite this interpretation and instead falsely presents the act of planting as a biblically mandated commandment through their translation. This passage buttresses the ideological project of settlement and land conquest through a purported religious obligation, rationalizing the planting of trees through a divine Jewish principle.

When I planted trees in Israel—both through monetary donations and with my hands—and received certificates, I was being hailed to ritualize this action as biblically mandated. This mandate surpasses ecological and environmental desires to impart positive deeds onto the lands from which we benefit; instead, the act of planting is presented as ideologically imperative. Through the politicization of nature, trees are at once imagined, metaphorized (i.e. to be interpreted semiotically as signifiers), and substantiated through their materiality and physicality. Here, trees are imagined ideologically as serving the religious Zionist—and thereby biblical—mission.5 Planting them is a performance of a mitzvah 4 Full Hebrew passage: “‫אֹ֥ל םיִ֖לֵרֲע םֶ֛כָל הֶ֥יְהִֽי םיִ֗נָׁש ׁש֣לָׁש ֹו֑יְרִּפ־תֶא ֹו֖תָלְרָע םֶּ֥תְלַרֲעַֽו לָ֔כֲאַֽמ ץֵ֣ע־לָּכ ֙םֶּתְעַטְנּו ץֶרָ֗אָה־לֶא ּואֹ֣בָת־יִֽכְו‬ ‫”לֵֽכָאֵֽי‬ 5 Still, while JNF’s vision and outreach centers religious Zionism, it must be noted that multiple Zionist ideologies inhabit the same yearnings. Late-19th century political Zionism’s secular vision, for example, imagined a European-like nation-state of refuge for world Jewry while some factions of the Orthodox tradition’s religious Messianism links longing for and presence in Israel to faith (Alexander 2006, 493-497). These visions exist together, often in conflict but nevertheless as inseparable features of contemporary Zionism and its institutions.

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(commandment). It is in the doing of this mitzvah that religious adherence emerges. In the context of religious Zionism, Shenhav (2007, 12) aptly argues, “…religion constitutes or hybridizes the nation, as legitimation, as organizational basis for mobilization, as a source of discourse, and as content of identity.”

Israel’s “content of identity” is presented to the diasporic Jew through a religious framework that sees the settlement of its land as legitimate, necessary, and even obligatory. Although this process of planting is not inherently religious in itself and the JNF is not a religious body, as Kimmerling (2001, 173) has argued Israeli secularism and Jewishness are mutually exclusive. Therefore, the practice must be taken together for its linking of land, religion, and nationalism.

Geographic Ideology

Trees and forests serve a juridical-geographic function, as well. I use Said’s (2000, 180) definition of geography: “a socially constructed and maintained sense of place.” Many of the JNF’s forests, particularly in the greater Jerusalem area, serve as physical borders between Jewish and Arab villages, delimiting space through natural barriers (Cohen 1993, 111-121). They are often classified as security features, as borders separating notions of Jewish rationalism and the peril of Palestinian life, and as preventative features thwarting the expansion of unwanted communities. Perhaps more significantly, afforestation demonstrates continued presence of land: historically, under Israeli land laws, which developed out of both Ottoman and British Mandate legislature, certain agricultural acts including tree planting denoted a legitimate form of land occupation and ownership (Cohen 1993, 3). Through this logic, various Israeli laws following 1948 entitled the then Forestry Division and later Land Authority and JNF to garner land—much of which was used by Palestinians—for use in afforestation, declaring areas “abandoned.” While Tal (2013, 88-89) declares that “only a minute fraction of JNF woodlands are actually located on abandoned Palestinian villages,” these forests do mask collective memory of trauma and destruction under an ideology of security and geographic territorialization.

Diasporic Jews performing the action of planting in Israeli forests enact the ideology of Zionism through the settlement and cultivation of land and attachment to the exclusionary premise of the Jewish right to space. It is necessary to recognize that, despite the JNF’s discursive production of barren space, many of its forests erase the layers of histories that came before afforestation. The land of the Forest of the Martyrs, for example, was not completely unoccupied directly prior to its afforestation in 1951. Kadman (2015, 124-125) identifies five Arab villages destroyed around 1948—Dayr ‘Amr, Khirbat al-’Umur, Kasla, Bayt Umm al-Mays, and ‘Aqqur—upon which sections of the forest currently stand. Not one of these towns is mentioned on JNF’s website or signage. The site of the Jewish collective memory of the victims of the Holocaust exists concomitantly with the erased collective memories of the existence immediately prior to Zionist development of the landscape. Alexander and Dromi’s (2011) sociological framework identifies this dilemma as a common Zionist trope of the “narrowly constructed trauma drama” that socially constructs the ambiguous legacy of the Holocaust to benefit Zionist politics. But how can it be that one inconceivable violence—that of the Holocaust—can mask another—that of the depopulation of Palestinian communities? And how can we commemorate one tragedy out of the literal ruins of another destruction?

Meanwhile, some of the land upon which the United States Independence Park grows was expropriated from the Arabs who lived there prior to 1948. Seven destroyed villages have been identified

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within this site: Sulfa, Jarash, Bayt ‘Itab, Khirbat al-Tannur, Dayr al-Hawa, Dayr Aban, and ‘Allar (Kadman 2015, 125). Five of these villages have been largely erased from Israeli history as they are not written about in most history books or signified through signage (Kadman 2015, 190). Bayt ‘Itab is briefly mentioned in a pamphlet while Dayr al-Hawa is recognized ambiguously in both a sign in the forest and on JNF’s website (“[T]he many remains scattered around are reminders of the Arab Village Deir al-Hawa, which was occupied in the 1948 Hill Campaign” [KKL-JNF, n.d.-c]). This symbolic space intended to instantiate the connection between the United States and Israel—two countries that share distinct exceptionalist frameworks—is in fact premised on both a forgetting of what came before and a conjuring of collective memories of mutual exchange. At the Tzora Forest, where this connection is directly performed through physical planting, historiography is similarly distorted and erased. Kadman (2015, 130) identifies the village of Sar’a’s destruction prior to the Zionist tree planting. However, the forester’s employment of the history of the forest as a progressive story of Jewish pioneers redeeming mistreated lands ignores the deracinated lives of Palestinians.

Ideology and Hegemony

The tradition of a Marxist analysis of power is useful in identifying how subjectivity is produced in the Jewish attachment to Israel. Gramsci’s (1971) hegemony and Althusser’s (1970/2001) interpellation help to deconstruct the process of identification. Gramsci’s (1971) concept of hegemony takes culture as a site of power that can be manipulated to serve the interests of state and capital. He theorizes that the ruling group uses culture to legitimize capitalist dominance. Those in power influence the values, worldview, and social expectations of society through institutions of religion, state, and media. Thereby, the superstructure of culture can be utilized just as physical force and violence can be to reinforce power relations. Domination and consent are inextricable and power operates neither in a top-down nor bottomup manner. Under Gramsci’s Marxism, culture is particularly co-opted to reinforce and legitimize class inequality.

Meanwhile, Althusser’s (1970/2001) anti-humanist conception of ideology stems from a materialist interpretation of power that revokes the conception of agential rule. Ideology, he writes, is a “system of ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man [sic] or a social group,” always dependent on and in some ways determined by the history of the social formations of class position (Althusser 1970/2001, 158). This definition accounts for the subjection of individuals to the social order, which is accomplished through ideological rituals. Both the repressive state apparatus (RSA)—a centralized whole of government, administration, army, police, courts, and prisons—and the ideological state apparatus (ISA)—the multiple distinct realms of religion, education, family, law, politics, communications, and culture—reinforce the power of the ruling class. Althusser (1970/2001, 116) distinguishes the ISA as a structuring force with a material existence that “represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” Ideology “hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects,” he writes (1970/2001, 173), explaining how individuals are recruited or transformed into subjects (though all individuals are “always-already subjects”). Ideology is at once freely adopted and simultaneously enforced.

These frameworks, albeit nuanced, allow cultural praxis to emerge as a site of ideological conditioning. Using Gramci’s theory, I can read the JNF as an institution seeking to legitimize the Zionist regime of discrimination and inequality through a hegemonic manipulation of culture. The prominence

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of the JNF’s ideology in diasporic Jewish communities and their efforts to obscure the settler-colonial reality through religious framing and individual praxis (i.e. donating and planting) demonstrates the complex dialectic of structure and agency. Applying an Althusserian analysis to the JNF sees the organization as a cultural institution or ideological state apparatus that interpellates participants to defend the Zionist belief in divine right to land. The act of tree planting is thereby a materialized ideology. Applying both Gramsci’s and Althusser’s social theories requires that Israel/Palestine not be analyzed strictly as a conflict of nationhood, religion, and/or race, but as one of class, as well. Land, property, and capital are linked ideologies under Zionism but are nonetheless erased through the JNF’s discursive and material practices.

Memorialization

The process of meaning-making in these sites of memorialization has substantial implications for the operationalization of collective memory. These landscapes are living memorials with objects that stand in for the memories of human beings. For many Jewish people these trees reify the notion of Jewish resilience. The Forest of the Martyrs best represents this as the six million flourishing trees seem to redeem the barbarous murders of the six million lost Jewish lives. The plaques at the United States Independence Park similarly ascribe humanity to the realm of the arboreal. Despite this, the collective memories of multiple traumas inhabit these spaces: the Zionist employment of exile to redemption, including suffering and virulent dispossession, exists together with the Palestinian history of dispossession, displacement, and continued historical erasure. The traumas of terror and violence—for all peoples—are written into these sites. These consciousnesses are not equally able to emerge, as a selective collective memory emphasizing Jewish presence in Israel/Palestine’s landscapes represses and erases the “preceding layer of its existence,” the Palestinian presence (Kadman 2015, 4). The JNF’s framing of this process of memorialization attempts to depoliticize the act of remembering. Of course, these acts are imbued with immense political affect. Through tree planting transnational bonds between the Jewish diaspora and Israel are formed that intimately attach to a nationalist agenda of exclusion and militarism. The mobilization of diasporic Jews as stakeholders in Israel’s control of land lies at the heart of this project. Planting trees in fact produces the land as Jewish.

In defiance of rising nationalism, many activists and scholars are combatting the misuse of memorialization and collective memory in the suppression of Palestinian ontology. Sabbagh-Khoury and Rouhana (2014) identify what they term the “return of memory,” the process of renewed collective Palestinian consciousness around the nakba (catasrophe of 1948). Like Morrison’s (1987) notion of “rememory,” which usefully describes the process of recalling traumatic pasts, Sabbagh-Khoury and Rouhana argue that the growing application of the settler-colonial framework to Zionism greatly helps Palestinians revisit past forgotten realities. This renewed consciousness has been activated among some diasporic Jewish groups, as well, including in the United States. And various Israeli organizations, most notably Zochrot, have been educating the Jewish Israeli population around historical Palestinian land seizures and the ongoing erasure of history. Zochrot’s website contains a map of the destroyed Palestinian villages and is a useful tool that documents lands otherwise forgotten. The organization also offers Jewish Israelis frequent tours across Israel/Palestine to view destroyed Palestinian villages and discuss the Palestinian Right of Return through geographic and spatial considerations. Lastly, recent scholarly attempts to revive the collective memory of Palestinian existence (e.g. Kadman 2015) have shed light on

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the responsibility of Israeli and Jewish researchers to reconsider the historical archive.

VI. Conclusion

I must first acknowledge that the participant observation I used in the name of research— the planting of trees through the JNF on the land of Israel/Palestine—cannot be separated from the organization’s intentions or from the historical erasures and continued violations of the sovereignty of the Palestinian peoples. Despite the critique I offer herein, I occupied a specifically Zionist positionality as I planted. I accessed spaces that many cannot, donated to the Fund in order to carry out this research, and accomplished the Zionist ideal of rootedness by planting a tree and reciting a prayer. I believe that the act of planting with my own hands was central to the ethnographic process, but nonetheless recognize that the consequences of this action may counteract the critique in lasting and material ways.

As I grapple with my own identifications with Zionism and Israel, nationalism and religion, and Palestinian solidarity, I am faced with irreconcilable choices. I could follow in the extreme apostasy of Ollman (2005) and offer a “letter of resignation from the Jewish people.” I could selectively “part ways” from the Jewish traditions I disavow, as Butler (2012) has done. I could follow Arendt (cited in Butler 2007), who once wrote “I do not ‘love’ the Jews, nor do I ‘believe’ in them; I merely belong to them as a matter of course, beyond dispute or argument.” I choose to disidentify with the oppressive regime of Zionism, knowing that such a position carries with it the obligation to counter anti-semitism inasmuch as I counter insidious nationalism. Zionism argues for the negation of exile, for the return of the proverbial people of Israel to their geographic spaces. I follow the many Jews who concur that Judaism is not bound to place, that it must not rely on an attachment to the land of Israel for its continuity and vibrancy. This does not prevent me from recognizing Israeli society as a vibrant mixture of Jewish life and place of refuge.

As Butler (2003, 21) writes, “One can be in favour of Israel’s right to exist, but still ask what is the most legitimate and democratic form that existence ought to take.”

All people grow up under ideologies and are interpellated, in different ways, to believe in social constructions as immutable and natural. While I focus here on ideologies of religion and nation, it is clear that race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, class, etc. are equally significant structures that can be deconstructed.

Bourdieu’s (1976) habitus greatly helps to acknowledge how a set of beliefs and dispositions, collective and personal, come to establish the way in which humans are positioned and interact in society. In this way, my personal interactions with Zionism are not sociologically unique. However, these interactions do merit sociological analysis, if not for their banality than for the wider historical consequences of the cultural and political power that Zionism continues to maintain. The attachment I was handed—by familial tradition, education, and religion—to the land of Israel cannot be understated. Neither can the responsibility I maintain to engage and wonder and ask, to embrace hope in countering complacency. If I am to heed Lorde’s (1981) powerful dictum, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own,” I must acknowledge that my rights as a Jew can be, and are, bound in the unfreedom of others. The polemical nature of writing about Israel/Palestine must not occlude one’s ability to perform critical analysis. There is too much at stake here. This research, a pilgrimage of sorts to my “roots,” intends to embrace critical sociology for its imaginative potential grounded in the study of historical structures. I conclude with Kadman’s (2015, 149) own conclusion, finding this passage a fitting explanation of my motivations:

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[E]ven in the face of the most urgent issues of the present, it is essential to deeply know and understand the past—not in order to return to it, fixate on it, sanctify it, or engage in commemoration for the sake of commemoration—but in order to deal in a full, responsible, and tangible manner with the present, which is the product and continuation of the past; in order to know, understand, and comprehend the roots, the loss, the absence; to see the events since then as a single historical sequence; to acknowledge the dispossession and the injustice, to assume responsibility, to bring about a value-based discussion.

This, then: my hope…

Appendix A: Uziel. Provided by the JNF at Neot Kedumim.

Certificate from the JNF Israel (left) and JNF USA (right) denoting tree planting at the Tzora Forest and Neot Kedumim, 2019. Photos by author.

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Appendix B: Prayer for Planting Trees by Rabbi Ben Tzion Heavenly Father Who builds Zion and Jerusalem Take pleasure in Thy land And bestow upon it of Thy goodness And Thy grace

Give dew for a blessing And cause beneficent rains To fall in their season To satiate the mountains of israel And her valleys, And to water thereon every plant and tree.

And these saplings which we plant before thee this day, Make deep their roots and wide their crown, That they may blossom forth in grace Amongst all the trees in Israel, For good and for beauty.

‫םִיַמָּׁשַּבֶׁש ּוניִבָא‬ ‫םִיַלָׁשּוריִו ןֹוּיִצ הֵנֹוּב‬ ‫לֵאָרְׂשִי תּוכְלַמ ןֵנֹוכְמּו‬.

‫םִיַמָּׁשַה ןִמ ָךֶׁשְדָק ןֹועְּמִמ הָפיִקְׁשַה‬ ‫לֵאָרְׂשִי ָךְּמַע תֶא ְךֵרָבּו‬ ‫ּונָל ָּתַתָנ רֶׁשֲא הָמָדֲאָה תֶאְו‬ ‫ּוניֵתֹובֲאַל ָּתְעַּבְׁשִנ רֶׁשֲאַּכ‬. ‫ָךֶצְרַא ׳ה הֵצְר‬ ‫ָךֶּדְסַח בּוּטִמ ָהיֶלָע עַּפְׁשַהְו‬. ‫הָכָרְבִל לַט ןֵּת‬ ‫םָּתִעְּב דֵרֹוה ןֹוצָר יֵמְׁשִגְו‬ ‫ָהיֶקָמֲעַו לֵאָרְׂשִי יֵרָה תֹוּוַרְל‬ ‫ץֵעְו חַמֶצ לָּכ םֶהָּב תֹוקְׁשַהְלּו‬.

And strengthen the hands Of all our brethren, Who toil to revive the sacred soil And make fruitful its wastes.

Bless, O Lord, their might, And may the work of their hands Find favor before Thee.

‫הֶלֵא תֹועיִטְנּו‬ ‫םֹוּיַה ךיֶנָפְל םיִעְטֹונ ּונְחַנֲא רֶׁשֲא‬ ‫םָרֵאְּפ לֵדָגְו םֶהיֵׁשְרָׁש קֵמֲעַה‬ ‫ןֹוצָרְל ּוחְרְפִי ןַעַמְל‬ ‫לֵאָרְׂשִי יֵצֲע רַאְׁש ךֹותְּב‬ ‫הָרָאְפִתְלּו הָכָרְבִל‬.

Look down from Thy holy habitation, From heaven, And bless this land That it may flow again With milk and honey.

‫ּוניֵחַא לָּכ יֵדְי קֵזֲחַו‬ ‫ׁשֶדֹּקַה תַמְדַא תַדֹובֲעַּב םיִלֵמֲעָה‬ ‫ּהָתָמְמִׁש תַחָרְפַהְבּו‬. ‫םָליֵח ׳ה ְךֵרָּב‬ ‫הֶצְרִּת םָדָי לַעֹפּו‬. ‫ןֵמָא‬.

Amen.

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