“Ice is strong enough for a man but made for a woman”

This paper is concerned with the cultural and gendered context of crystal methamphetamine use among Asian Pacific Americans, and draws on recent sociological discussions on masculinities and feminities. The data are based on an ethnographic study of moderate to heavy ice users, and compares the experiences of Asian Pacific American women and men in their initiation to use, their motivations to continue using, and the changing nature of their relationship to the drug and significant others. The paper concludes with a gender comparison of the violence associated with crystal methamphetamine use.The research for this paper was supported by a grant to theInstitute for Scientific Analysis from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01-DA06853) awarded to Patricia Morgan, Ph.D., entitled Ice and Other Methamphetamine Use: An Exploratory Study. The data collected for this paper was helped by the collaborative efforts of the study research staff: Jerome Beck, Douglas McDonnell and Rachel Gutierrez. The author also acknowledges the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Hawaii. The opinions and conclusions are those of the author.     

Migration as family strategy: Rural-urban labor migration in India during the twentieth century

"The article analyzes the role of families in processes of rural-urban migration in India in the twentieth century. It shows that the continuous circular form of this migration should be explained as a consequence of rural family strategies. Already established kinship relations or marriage opportunities in the future act as a centripetal force, drawing the labor migrants back to their communities time and again. In addition, the article shows how labor migration is informed by economic and cultural considerations which determine the socioeconomic behavior of men and women."     

Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations: Coordination Failures and Fiscal Outcomes

This article estimates the fiscal impact of coordination failures in intergovernmental fiscal relations. The coordination failures considered here are due to agency problems arising from the delegation of fiscal powers to sub-national governments, and "common pool" problems associated with funding decentralised government spending through intergovernmental transfers. Particular attention is focused on the trade-off between coordination and fiscal decentralisation. Evidence provided for a sample of thirty countries suggests that coordination failures are likely to result in a deficit bias in decentralized policy making, particularly in the case of developing countries, for which the benefits of decentralization may be over-stressed. Developed countries were found to be less adversely affected by coordination failures and have therefore managed to pursue fiscal consolidation in a decentralized setup.     

Reviews

Rudolf L. Tökés (ed.), Opposition in Eastern Europe. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St. Anthony's College, Oxford, 1979. xxiv + 306 pp. £12.00.

Hannes Adomeit and Robert Boardman (eds.), Foreign Policy Making in Communist Countries. Farnborough: Saxon House, 1979. 164 pp. $19.00.

C. G. Jacobsen, Soviet Strategic Initiatives: Challenge and Response, New York: Praeger, 1979. xiv+168 pp. £13.00.

Donald D. Barry & Carol Barner‐Barry, Contemporary Soviet Politics: An Introduction. Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1978. ix + 406 pp.

T. H. Rigby, Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom 1917–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. xvi + 320 pp. £16.75.

Stephen White. Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Study in the Politics of Diplomacy, 1920–1924. Macmillan, 1979. xiii + 317 pp. £12.00.

Roy Medvedev, The October Revolution. Translated by George Saunders; foreword by Harrison E. Salisbury. London: Constable, 1979. xv + 239 pp. £6.50.

Constantin A. Krylov. The Soviet Economy. How It Really Works. Lexington Books, 1979, xiv + 255 pp.

Jon Bloomfield, The Passive Revolution: Politics and the Czechoslovak Working Class, 1945–48. London: Allison & Busby, 1979. 290 pp. £10.00 (pb. £3.95).

Jan B. de Weydenthal, The Communists of Poland. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978. 217 pp. $7.95.

Leslie Dienes and Theodore Shabad, The Soviet Energy System. Washington: V. H. Winston & Sons, 1979. Distributed by Halsted Press, vii + 298 pp. £12.00.

R. S. Mathieson, Japan's Role in Soviet Economic Growth. Transfer of Technology since 1965. New York: Praeger, 1979. xxi + 278 pp.     

Recovery of human remains after shark attack

Two cases of fatal shark attack are reported where the only tissues recovered were fragments of lung. Case 1: An 18-year-old male who was in the sea behind a boat was observed by friends to be taken by a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). The shark dragged him under the water and then, with a second shark, dismembered the body. Witnesses noted a large amount of blood and unrecognizable body parts coming to the surface. The only tissues recovered despite an intensive beach and sea search were 2 fragments of lung. Case 2: A 19-year-old male was attacked by a great white shark while diving. A witness saw the shark swim away with the victim's body in its mouth. Again, despite intensive beach and sea searches, the only tissue recovered was a single piece of lung, along with pieces of wetsuit and diving equipment. These cases indicate that the only tissue to escape being consumed or lost in fatal shark attacks, where there is a significant attack with dismemberment and disruption of the integrity of the body, may be lung. The buoyancy of aerated pulmonary tissue ensures that it rises quickly to the surface, where it may be recovered by searchers soon after the attack. Aeration of the lung would be in keeping with death from trauma rather than from drowning and may be a useful marker in unwitnessed deaths to separate ante- from postmortem injury, using only relatively small amounts of tissues. Early organ recovery enhances the identification of human tissues as the extent of morphologic alterations by putrefactive processes and sea scavengers will have been minimized. DNA testing is also possible on such recovered fragments, enabling confirmation of the identity of the victim.     

Methadone extraction from minimal amounts of biological fluids

A new solid phase extraction method was studied to extract methadone from small amounts of biological samples, by using little disposable columns prepacked with reverse phase sorbents. Two different commercial kinds of reversed phase columns prepacked with octadecylsilane (ODS) were tested; the results were compared to those obtained by a direct liquid/liquid extraction method. Gas chromatograms of extracts obtained by means of ODS reversed phase columns showed a good signal/noise ratio resulting in higher sensitivity (20 ng/ml as detection limit), in comparison with the liquid/liquid extraction method.