Federal policy mandating safer cigarettes: a hypothetical simulation of the anticipated population health gains or losses.

If manufacturing a safer cigarette is technically possible--an open question--then mandating that tobacco manufacturers improve the safety of cigarettes would likely have both positive and negative implications for the nation's health. On the one hand, removing toxins may reduce the incidence of smoking-related diseases and premature mortality in smokers. On the other hand, smokers might be less inclined to quit, those who have quit might resume the habit, and youth who have never smoked will have one less reason to avoid tobacco use. To assess the expected population health impacts of a legislative or regulatory mandate, we created the Tobacco Policy Model, a system dynamics computer simulation model. The model relies on secondary data and simulates the U.S. population over time spans as long as 50 years. Our simulation results reveal that even if requiring cigarettes to be safer makes smoking more attractive and increases tobacco use, a net gain in population health is still possible.     

Reflections on the prehistory of the Abdālī Afghans

ABSTRACT

The Abdālī Afghans-Pashtuns played a leading role in the creation of the Durrānī polity (est. 1747) – the precursor of present-day Afghanistan. Given their lasting contributions to the process of state formation in Central Asia, it is somewhat surprising that the early history of the Abdālī remains obscure. Nevertheless, authors of recent generations have not been deterred from speculating on the origins of the Abdālī. This article explores the prevailing theories concerning Abdālī prehistory, including the tribe’s purported connection to both the Hephthalites and the Sufi saint Abū A?mad Abdāl, as well as some of the motivations undergirding these theories. It also considers the place of the Abdālī within the Afghan-Pashtun tribal system and ventures to reconcile their Afghan identity with their alleged non-Afghan origins. The present study thus aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of the history of the Abdālī – the most politically prominent group in Afghanistan’s history.     

Too many enemies: Mobilization,marginalization, and political violence

Over the past decades, a pattern has emerged across the Islamic world of secular actors struggling to build sustainable social movements while Islamists show a higher success rate in doing so—a dynamic often accompanied by high levels of violence and little space for dialogue between actors from across the political spectrum. In this article, we illustrate the utility of social movement theory (SMT) in explaining the ability of some movements to mobilize en masse, while others become marginalized. Furthermore, we suggest that SMT is useful in understanding the processes that produce socio-political dynamics conducive to violent rather than non-violent tactics. Through a case study of Bangladesh, where in 2013 the secular Shahbag mobilization was derailed by a massive Islamist counter-mobilization, this article shows how movements not only capitalize on, but actually contribute to, shifts in cultural discourse through political maneuvering and long-term socialization. By anchoring their ideology in pre-existing religio-cultural imagery, Islamists have been successful in casting themselves as “authentic” defenders of Islam and their secular opponents as “atheists.” In such a socio-political context, the space for dialogue among the various political actors is severely limited and the impetus to employ violent tactics strong.     

Signifyin' and Intertextuality: Killer of Sheep and Black Independent Film *

A Very British History—Without the Whingers * * Cf. the Oxford English Dictionary: whinge /winj/ colloq. v.intr. whine, grumble peevishly, vd. gripe.

Peter Hennessy, Never Again—Britain, 1945–1951 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993).

Industrial Cities and Their Working Class: Notes on a Time Gone By

Robert A. Catlin, Black Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980–1989 (The University Press of Kentucky, 1993).

Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Anthony M. Orum, City‐Building in America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).

Against Green Gloom

Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on The Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism (New York: Viking, 1995).

Talking Class(room)

Frances A. Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault, The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look at How Professors and Students are Transforming Higher Education for A Diverse Society (New York Basic Books, 1994).

Working Out

Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future: Scitech and The Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).     

Pakistan: Crisis of a Frontline State

For more than 50 years, Pakistan has functioned as imperialism's “frontline state.” The military has remained the country's dominant political player and the basic precepts of bourgeois democracy remain conspicuous by their absence. Since the military coup in October 1999, the configuration of power in Pakistan has become subject to serious internal contradictions, in large part because of the “war on terror” and the loss of public prestige of the military. These contradictions have intensified in the wake of a lawyer-led street movement sparked by the military top brass' dismissal of the country's chief justice in March 2007. Since then the country's most well-known politician, Benazir Bhutto, has been assassinated and her Pakistan People's Party has swept to power in general elections held in February 2008. However, the crisis of the frontline state has not ebbed, and the oligarchic system of power remains subject to rupture.     

PATRONAGE AND CLASS IN URBAN PAKISTAN

Of the rich academic literature that has emerged on the growth and dynamism of the “informal economy” in South Asia in recent years very little work has focused on the Pakistani context. This article builds upon the growing body of work on “informal employment” by identifying and explaining modes of labor control in the housing construction industry in metropolitan Pakistan. The crucial role of the subcontractor and his exploitative relationship with workers is discussed in a Gramscian framework. Workers are ensconced in a hegemonic relationship with contractors due to oppressive structural conditions as well as a culture of dependency that contractors have nurtured. Against the backdrop of the shift from Fordist to flexible accumulation regimes, the author argues that the present conjuncture is marked by the prevalence of extra-economic forms of control such that workers conceive of contractors as patrons. The instrumentalization of cultural norms of reciprocity by contractors does not mean that the labor–capital relationship is unchanging and rooted in “culture.” In fact, personalized patronage networks coexist with impersonal market ethics dynamically so as to produce and sustain the hegemony of capital.