SYMPOSIUM: RESURGENT ISLAM IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The following is an edited version of the proceedings of a symposium sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council on May 26, 1994, in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. Former Senator George McGovern, President of the Council, introduced the panel; Thomas R. Mattair, the Councis Director of Research and Policy Analysis, was the organizer and moderator; Michael Collins Dunn, Senior Analyst of The International Estimate, Inc., and editor of its biweekly newsletter, The Estimate, was the discussant.     

Managing AIDS in the workplace

Because of the AIDS epidemic and the protections afforded individuals with AIDS under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers are well advised to ensure compliance under applicable law to reduce exposure to employee claims of discrimination and to efficiently manage workplace issues associated with AIDS. Employers should implement AIDS policies and programs designed to educate their workforce to reduce the spread of AIDS and to clear up any misunderstandings about the disease which could wreak havoc in the workplace. This article summarizes suggested action steps for employers and outside resources to consult for guidance.     

The Impact of Environmental Factors on the Measurement of Managerial Efficiency in the Italian Waste Management Sector: Framework and Empirical Evidence

ABSTRACT

The public and private sectors are different in terms of ownership, funding, and control. The degree of publicness influences the decision-making processes, strategies, and actions, thus severely impacting the performance levels. This study contributes to the existing literature on managerial efficiency environmental factors by proposing a framework and methodology for estimating the influence of the “publicness effect.” A new method is tested, relying on the combined integration of three different data envelopment analysis models in the Italian waste management sector. Results show that the “publicness effect” accounts for 33.87% of managerial efficiency for public companies and 11.6% for mixed ones.     

Comparative study of ethanol levels in blood versus bone marrow,vitreous humor,bile and urine

Post-mortem ethanol levels in blood were compared to corresponding levels in rib bone marrow, vitreous humor, urine and bile. In forensic toxicology, a good correlation between blood and a tissue or body fluid is needed to estimate a blood alcohol concentration when blood is unavailable or contaminated. In this study, direct injection and headspace gas-chromatographic techniques were employed to quantitate the ethanol concentrations. Comparable findings by these two techniques showed a reproducibility of results. When the determined bone marrow ethanol levels were corrected for the lipid fraction, a consistent correlation could be established between ethanol levels in blood and bone marrow. The relationship (linearity and ratio range) between ethanol levels in blood and corrected levels in bone marrow was better than that between blood and vitreous humor, bile or urine. This study showed that blood ethanol levels can be predicted by extrapolating the corrected rib bone marrow ethanol level.     

Sufficiency Re-examined: A Capabilities Perspective on the Assessment of Functional Adult Literacy

There is a growing consensus that the dichotomous categories of literate and illiterate should be abandoned. However, the dichotomy has considerable utility in the analysis of educational achievements and inequality in developing countries. Statistics on functional adult literacy are intended to tell us whether people have achieved a minimum level or threshold of functioning necessary for their daily life. We should therefore carefully consider the implications of such change.     

The structures of uncertainty: performativity and unpredictability in economic operations

Abstract

The paper reflects on the presuppositions and consequences of the concept of performativity (understood as the involvement of the observer in the objects and projects he/she describes). The paper proposes a broader notion of performativity, one that not only concerns theory but is also extended to the entire economy, which observes itself in all of its operations. This conception has the advantage of being connected with critical approaches inside economics, which highlight the central role of uncertainty and surprise. It can explain how and why performativity turns into counter-performativity and how financial operators exploit uncertainty when orienting their behaviour, expecting and using the unpredictability of the future.     

Campaign of fear and consumption: problematizing gender-based marketing of weapons

This paper problematizes the fear-based marketing of guns and tasers to both men and women as a function of neoliberalism’s emphasis on consumption as the solution to social problems. Men are marketed dangerous weapons as a way to display their masculinity, while women are told that purchasing guns or tasers is one of the best ways to protect themselves from domestic violence and sexual assault. As the paper shows, that claim is in stark contrast to data about these phenomena, and yet such marketing is often taken as a common sense solution. In addition to detailing why such marketing of weapons is problematic, we offer several recommendations.