The Nazi rag-pickers and their wine: the politics of waste and recycling in Nazi Germany

This article offers a first attempt to examine systematically the politics of waste and recycling in the Third Reich, one of the first modern states to articulate ‘zero waste’ as a political goal. It presupposes that waste, both in its material realities and its everyday representations, offers a powerful guide to any society's implicit order. With respect to Nazi Germany, the suggestion that such presumably neutral materials as trash, waste and garbage order social relations has particularly sinister implications. Focusing on scrap collectors and salvaging practices inside Germany and in Nazi-occupied Europe, this article argues that waste management and recycling were integral to the Nazi racial order and crystallized as central strategies to administer the chaos of war. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers in party, industry and society performed their loyalty and re-imposed order by collecting paper, bottles, metal scrap, kitchen garbage, rags and bones with the explicit goal of closing the energy cycle, extending the Reich's resource base and increasing the regime's war-making capabilities. In pursuit of these goals, the Nazi state attempted not only to conquer its many enemies but also to erase the evidence of its own proliferating military setbacks. These efforts notwithstanding, the reclamation of waste did not have the power to reverse the fortunes of war. The Nazi politics of zero waste recycled chaos instead.     

Condorcet's jury theorem,dependency among jurors

With the aid of a simple discrete probability model, the Condorect Jury Theorem is extended to situations where there is dependency between judgement. It is shown that negative intra-voter correlation improves on jury competence in the sense that the probability of a correct decision increases. Positive correlation, on the other hand, tends to decrease jury competence. The results given here are obtained with the aid of simple recursion relations.     

The effect of social homogeneity on coincidence probabilities for pairwise proportional lottery and simple majority rules

The Condorcet efficiency of Pairwise Proportional Lottery Rules (PPLR) is considered under various assumptions concerning the likelihood that given voters' preference profiles are observed on three alternatives. Representations are developed for the expected Condorcet efficiency under impartial culture, impartial anonymous culture, and a generalization to Pólya-Eggenberger distributions. PPLR is shown to be equivalent to a random selection process in the limit of voters under impartial culture. However, relatively small increases in social homogeneity, as measured by Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance, cause significant increases in the Condorcet efficiency of PPLR.Professor Berg's work was partly supported by the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.     

The evaluation of treatment in therapeutic communities: Problems of design and implementation

The evaluation of therapeutic communities provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between evaluation methodologies and the constraints imposed by the nature of the treatment setting. In most therapeutic communities the environment represents the primary vehicle of treatment and, as a result, virtually every aspect of the program's operations are, directly or indirectly, related to the treatment goals. This paper examines some of the problems this situation creates for the evaluation of such programs. It suggests that the need to develop an effective working relationship with the program becomes the primary concern of the evaluation process, and it analyzes the use of specific techniques involved in establishing this type of relationship. Such an approach may be useful in other settings where the unique characteristics of the program become the primary constraint in evaluation design and implementation.     

Bayesian estimation of a proportional hazards model for double-censored durations

Double-censored data consist of uncensored, left- and right-censored observations and occur in survival time analysis. In this paper, parametric Bayes estimation is investigated for a proportional hazards model with durations subject to double-censoring. We prove consistency and asymptotic normality of the posterior mean with the Bernstein–von Mises theorem. In addition, we estimate asymptotic standard errors. A simulation study shows that the finite-sample performance is similar to that of the maximum likelihood estimator. Finally, the proposed model is applied to rating transition data. The analysis suggests that an upgrade of a rating increases the duration in that class by about 10 days on average.     

Differences in Tobacco Use Among Two-Year and Four-Year College Students in Minnesota

Abstract

Objective: This study compares tobacco use rates among two-year and four-year college students and explores the demographic variables that predicted that behavior. Participants: 9,931 students at 14 two-year and four-year colleges in Minnesota participated. Methods: Students at 11 schools completed an online survey, and students at 3 schools completed a paper survey in 2007. Results: After controlling for sex, age, ethnicity, relationship status, hours of work per week, and number of school credits, attending a two-year college predicted current and daily smoking (odds ratio [OR]) = 1.70, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.52–1.89; OR = 3.47, 95% CI = 2.94–4.11) and smokeless tobacco use (OR = 1.65, 95% CI = 1.32–2.06; OR = 1.64, 95% CI = 1.06–2.53). Conclusions: Although two-year college students comprise approximately two fifths of the college student population, surveys of college student tobacco use have focused nearly exclusively on four-year college students. Two-year college students should represent a priority population for tobacco control because attending a two-year college predicts increased tobacco use.     

Split Return: Transnational Household Strategies in Afghan Repatriation

Split return is a common strategy of repatriation among refugees and migrants. Facing great uncertainty, both economically and security‐wise, households disperse in two or more locations in order to minimize risk. The phenomenon is well‐known in migration studies and in studies of return from the distant diaspora, but is studied less among the overwhelming majority residing in countries neighbouring their own. This article draws on experiences from Afghanistan, comparing split return to similar strategies in migration generally and in refugee situations specifically. It suggests that while splits are conceived as a temporary measure, they often become a lasting form of life. Opportunities for split return are often crucial for the willingness to start repatriation, as well as for the sustainability of the household's economy upon return. The article develops the concept of split return in relation to contextual factors, intensity of networks (at origin and in exile) and household composition.     

Left-censored dementia incidences in estimating cohort effects

Lifetime Data Analysis - We estimate the dementia incidence hazard in Germany for the birth cohorts 1900 until 1954 from a simple sample of Germany’s largest health insurance company....     

Do you feel like an insider? Job security and preferences for Flexibilization across Europe

The paper analyses the determinants of public opinion on flexibilisation of work contracts. While the literature on new labour market divides has rapidly expanded, few contributions directly look at employees’ demands for labour market regulation. By using a multi-level data set for 25 European countries, we find that the subjectively assessed job security is an important and valuable predictor of preferences for flexibilisation. In particular, those with very low and very high levels of perceived job security prefer flexibilisation compared to those with medium levels. We also show that the effect is stronger in countries with stricter employment protection legislation. The findings contribute to the literature on new divides of labour market politics in several ways. First, our empirical operationalization is related directly to the core of insider-outsider theory, the protection of work contracts. Second, subjective assessment of employment security yields important complementary insights into a debate usually focusing on objective measures. Third, we find that the (subjective) divide is context dependent; it is much more visible in countries where employment protection regulation is strong.