Market-based incentives and residential municipal solid waste

Coalitions of free-marketeers, politicians, and environmentalists increasingly are turning to the use of market-based incentives in formulating environmental policy. One promising application of market-based incentives is in the management of residential municipal solid waste. This article focuses on unit-based pricing programs established in conjunction with community recycling programs. Using data gathered through telephone and mail surveys of 21 cities, we demonstrate the strong potential for unit pricing to improve the efficiency of residential solid waste management.     

Application of Law to the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Childhood obesity is in important respects a result of legal policies that influence both dietary intake and physical activity. The law must shift focus away from individual risk factors alone and seek instead to promote situational and environmental influences that create an atmosphere conducive to health. To attain this goal, advocates should embrace a population-wide model of public health, and policymakers must critically examine the fashionable rhetoric of consumer choice.     

Animal Scavenging and Scattering and the Implications for Documenting the Deaths of Undocumented Border Crossers in the Sonoran Desert,

Since 1998, over 5500 people have died while attempting to cross the U.S.–Mexico border without authorization. These deaths have primarily occured in the Arizona desert. Despite the high volume of deaths, little experimental work has been conducted on Sonoran Desert taphonomy. In this study, pig carcasses were used as proxies for human remains and placed in different depositional contexts (i.e., direct sunlight and shade) that replicate typical sites of migrant death. Decomposition was documented through daily site visits, motion-sensitive cameras and GIS mapping, while skeletal preservation was investigated through the collection of the remains and subsequent faunal analysis. Our results suggest that vultures and domestic dogs are underappreciated members of the Sonoran scavenging guild and may disperse skeletal remains and migrant possessions over 25 m from the site of death. The impact of scavengers and the desert environment on the decomposition process has significant implications for estimating death rates and identifying human remains along the Arizona/Mexico border.     

A Mark for Peter

Abstract

This paper objects to certain forms of punishments, such as supermax confinement, on grounds that they are inappropriately contemptuous. Building on discussions in Kant and elsewhere, I flesh out what I take to be salient features of contempt, features that make contempt especially troubling as a form of moral regard and treatment. As problematic as contempt may be in the interpersonal context, I contend that it is especially troubling when a person is treated contemptuously by her political community's institutions—such as by certain forms of punishment. Punishment is contemptuous if it fails to respect offenders as moral persons, who as such are always capable of moral reform. Respect for offenders therefore requires, at least, that punishment not tend to undermine the prospect of offenders’ reform. I flesh out this constraint by considering various ways in which punishments may tend to undermine offenders’ reform. In particular, I discuss ways in which supermax confinement tends to violate the reform-based constraint. Finally, I address several potential objections to my account.     

Targeting at the Margin: the ‘Glass of Milk’ Subsidy Programme in Peru

This article evaluates the Vaso de Leche (VL) feeding programme in Peru in order to illustrate an evaluation methodology based on targeting criteria for a decentralised transfer programme. We find that the degree of overall targeting of poor individuals attributable to the central government's choice of districts is greater than that attributable to choice of participants within districts made by the municipalities and the mothers' committees. However, when we use a version of a targeting efficiency measure first introduced by Galasso and Ravallion [2003] which we modify to be defined on the values of allocations, the opposite is the case. The community-based decision makers appear to be targeting the poor in terms of the values of the transfers.     

Jenseits von Zentrum und Peripherie

The central question for Karl Marx concerning the specific role of symbolic domination in capitalism challenges us down to the present day. We continue to improperly perceive the symbolic and immaterial structure subjacent to capitalism that is responsible for its peculiar ??symbolic violence.?? This article analyzes two interrelated issues: first, the racism implicated by concepts that articulate central and peripheral capitalism; and secondly, its principal consequence, which is the absence of broad and encompassing concepts in modern social theory. This eliminates a chance to articulate universal contexts??at least as universal as capitalism in its global expansion. The reach of contemporary critical theory is therefore limited in terms of central questions. Among the concepts that are abandoned by the fragmentation and contextualization is that of social class and that of the symbolic violence produced by structural changes that encompass capitalism as a whole. The following article draws on empirical studies concerning under class and the ??new?? middle class conducted in Brazil to illustrate its thesis.     

Acculturation and reported intimate partner violence among Latinas in Los Angeles

This study sought to understand the relationship between acculturation and reporting intimate partner violence (IPV) among Latinas. A cross-sectional interviewer-administered survey was conducted at public health care clinics throughout Los Angeles County. Logistic regression was used to estimate the effect of acculturation on reporting IPV. An increasing trend of reporting IPV was observed among Latinas who were more acculturated (chi-square = 41.02, p = .0006). Highly acculturated Latinas were more likely to report IPV compared with least acculturated Latinas (prevalence odds ration = 2.18, 95% confidence level = 0.98, 4.89) and moderately acculturated Latinas were more likely to report IPV compared with least acculturated Latinas (prevalence odds ration = 1.29, 95% confidence level = 0.69, 2.43). Culturally competent IPV prevention programs may be the key to significantly reducing the number of women exposed to this serious public health problem.     

Class Power and Participatory Equality: Attitudes towards Economic Democracy in Denmark and Sweden*

Proposals for capital sharing (i.e. the spreading of ownership rights to productive assets), also known as 'economic democracy', have been advanced by the trade unions in both Denmark and Sweden. In view of their redistributive intent, these schemes have met surprisingly little enthusiastic response in traditional labor constituencies. The article makes an attempt to explain why . An examination of wage earner attitudes (which goes into greater detail for Denmark) shows that the presently entertained proposals appeal in a cross-cutting manner to conflictual notions of class power and participatory opportunity. The result is a fragmentation of wage earner support.     

Ethical Implications of Physician Involvement in Lawsuits on Behalf of the Tobacco Industry

The statements of physicians who serve as expert witnesses for the tobacco industry reveal subtle but significant problems. Some expert testimony obfuscates the important issues, and some initially reasonable statements later evolve into extreme positions during cross-examination. Such statements fall into a "gray area" of professional ethics, potentially misleading juries and adversely affecting professional integrity. Medical associations can and should strongly enforce professional standards that do not tolerate tobacco industry influence on physician expert witnesses.