Population drug use in Australia: a wastewater analysis

Accurate information on drug use in communities is essential if health, social and economic harms associated with illicit drug use are to be addressed efficiently. In most countries population drug use is estimated indirectly via surveys, medical presentations and police and custom seizures. All of these methods have at least some problems due to bias, small samples and/or long time delays between collecting the information and analysing the results. Recently the direct quantification of drug residues in wastewater has shown promise as a means of monitoring drug use in defined geographical areas. In this study we measured 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), methamphetamine and benzoylecgonine in sewage inflows in metropolitan and regional areas of Australia and compared these data with published European data. Cocaine use was small compared to European cities (p<0.001) but was compensated for by much greater consumption of methamphetamine (p<0.001) and MDMA (p<0.05). MDMA was more popular in regional areas (p<0.05) whereas methamphetamine and cocaine were mainly consumed in the city (p<0.05). Greater than 5-fold increases in MDMA use were detected on weekends (p<0.001). This approach has the potential to improve our understanding of drug use in populations and should be further developed to improve prevention and treatment programs.     

France,Britain and the intervention in Libya: an integrated analysis

This article seeks to explain the decisions by Nicolas Sarkozy's France and David Cameron's Britain to intervene in the 2011 Libyan crisis. None of the three major theories of international relations—constructivism, defensive realism and liberalism—can explain on its own such intervention decisions as the Libya case. The article's novel analytical model proposes that each theory emphasizes factors and mechanisms that explain part of the decision-making process and that these factors interact with state behaviour in complex ways. Britain and France initially began to consider intervention because they felt that the emergent norm of the ‘responsibility to protect’ applied to the Libyan case and because they believed the massive flows of refugees fleeing the violence were a threat to their border security. Both countries believed military intervention could be successful at relatively low cost and that if they did not intervene the problem would not be solved. At that point, the Sarkozy and Cameron governments engaged in initial action that made them more likely to intervene by jeopardizing their future economic relations with the Gaddafi regime and making him more likely to threaten them with future terrorist attacks. Taking initial action also meant that French and British prestige would ultimately have suffered had they not intervened to achieve a satisfactory solution to the crisis. Paris and London viewed international and regional support as a critical prerequisite for intervention and they sought and attained it. Finally, the Sarkozy and Cameron governments were able to minimize any domestic political risk of intervening because they had public and/or opposition party support.     

Literary Reviews

Tyranny and redemption. Anthills of the Savannah. Chinua Achebe. London: William Heinemann. 1987. 233pp. £10.95hb

Suffering with stoicism: Kenyan histories. Coming to Birth. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. London: Virago Press. 1986. 150pp. £3.95pb

The Present Moment. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. London: Heinemann. 1987. 155pp. £10.95hb

The politics of the soul. Search Sweet Country. B Kojo Laing. London: Picador. 1987. 318pp. £3.95pb

Images of Istanbul. The Sea‐Crossed Fisherman. Yashar Kemal. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. London: Methuen. 1986. 289pp. £3.95pb

The Birds Have Also Gone. Yashar Kemal. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. London: Collins Harvill. 1987. 122pp. £8.95hb

Enemies within. War in the Land of Egypt. Yusuf al Qa'id. Translated from the Arabic by Olive and Lome Kenny and Christopher Tingley. London: Al Saqi. 1986. 192pp. £4.95pb

Frustrated fantasies. Heartbreak Tango: A Serial. Manuel Puig. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine London: Arean. 1987. 224pp. £2.95pb

Pubis Angelical. Manuel Puig. Translated from the Spanish by Elena Brunet. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 236pp. £9.95hb

Tending towards one voice. Faces and Masks. Eduardo Galeano. Translated from the Spanish by Cedric Belfrage. London: Quartet. 1987. 304pp. £14.95hb

Land of riches. Cuzcatlan. Manlio Axgueta. Translated from the Spanish by Clark Hansen. London: Chatto and Windus. 1987. 255pp. £11.95hb

Autobiography of the age. The Infinite Rehearsal. Wilson Harris. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 88pp. £8.95hb

Caribbean childhoods. Summer Lightning and Other Stories. Olive Senior. Harlow, England: Longman. 1986. 134pp. £2.95pb

Whole of a Morning Sky. Grace Nichols. London: Virago. 1987. 156pp. £3.50pb

Traumas of partition. Kingdom's End and Other Stories. Saadat Hasan Manto. Translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan. London/New York: Verso. 1987. 257pp. £U.95/S18.95hb

Mirroring Pakistan: reflections and distortions. The Thirteenth House. Adam Zameenzad. London: Fourth Estate. 1987. 202pp. £10.95hb

Black Mirrors. Farooq Khalid. Translated from the Urdu by Eric Cyprian. London: Jonathan Cape. 1987. 285pp. £10.95hb

Christopher Shackle. School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Prize poetry. Under Another Sky: An Anthology of Commonwealth Poetry Prize Winners. Edited by Alastair Niven. Manchester and New York: Carcanet. 1987. 103pp. £6.96/S10.95pb     

From Swagger to Self-Advocacy: India’s Postgraduate “Transition” in the World Bank

The International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's facility for low-income countries, has granted India an unprecedented exception to its usual “graduation” policy—extending transitional support to its largest borrower, even though it has crossed the normal eligibility cutoff for IDA’s soft loans (based on per capita income). Before 2012, some Indian officials had called for a “graceful graduation,” believing that India did not need concessionary development assistance any longer. But with IDA graduation imminent in 2013 and facing a limit on borrowing from the Bank’s other window for middle-income countries, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, India successfully appealed for continued IDA access. This article draws on official interviews and documents to show how India secured post-graduation transitional support from IDA—suggesting that while India’s leaders seek to present their country as a rising power with influence in multilateral institutions, they can also be pragmatic in their status demands and quietly persuasive in their economic diplomacy.     

Introduction: Assessing the Social and Political Impact of the Internet and New Social Media in Asia

This paper introduces a special issue on the social and political impact of new information communications technologies (ICTs) in Asia, with specific attention paid to new social media. This paper provides some contextualisation of the broader questions that the principal literature on the subject raises, namely questions about the effectiveness of ICTs as tools for mobilisation and information exchange; mechanisms of censorship and control; and the nature of public discourse on the Internet. In doing so, the paper introduces and locates the articles that comprise this special issue within these debates.     

The Effectiveness of Using New Instructors to Teach an LGBT Ally Development Course

We examined student responses to three new instructors who taught a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) ally development course as described in a study by Ji, Finnessy, and Dubois (2009). Our analysis of the responses indicated that students did improve as LGBT allies in ways similar to those reported in the 2009 study. The findings suggest that the course could be disseminated provided that instructors actively encouraged students to engage in experiences that develop their LGBT ally identities.