Gay,Mexican and immigrant: intersecting identities among gay men in Los Angeles

This paper draws on a multi-sited ethnographic research study of sexual identity formation among self-identified gay Mexican men in Los Angeles, Mexico City and Cuernavaca. Relying primarily on in-depth interviews with 24 gay immigrant men and extensive participant observation in Los Angeles, this research explores the intersection of sexuality, social class, ethnicity and immigration in the participants' daily lives and identity formation processes, the potential ways that transnational social networks shape their identities, and the ways that sexuality impacts the contours of their transnational networks. This article argues that the participants' identities as gay men are best understood as hybrid constructions that integrate elements of the gender-stratified activo/pasivo model of homosexuality and the object-choice gay model of homosexuality, and that the integration of these models into their identities is impacted by social class, geography, and immigration. Further, this paper argues that the subjectivities of the gay immigrant men in this study are best understood within a transnational intersectionality framework which conceptualizes identities as hybrid constructions that are produced through the interaction of several salient social forces.     

Nationalism versus civilisations: an assessment of alternate theories on the future of ethnic identity and conflict

The end of the Cold War has caused a reassessment of the future basis for conflict and identity. While Samuel Huntington predicts that super-national ‘civilisations’ are becoming the basis for identity and conflict, many dispute this arguing that either past ethnic and national bases for identity and conflict will remain the norm or that world integration and interdependence will cause the world to unite. This article examines an aspect of this debate using data on ethnic conflict from the Minorities at Risk data set, as well as data collected independently. Specifically, it assesses whether post-Cold War ethnic conflict, and by inference ethnic identity, is more influenced by civilisational or ethnic variables. The analysis shows that separatism, a nationalist variable, is considerably more strongly associated with ethnic rebellion than are civilisational differences. Furthermore, in the multi-variate analysis civilisational differences are, if anything, associated with less ethnic rebellion. Also, separatism and various political variables more strongly influence ethnic rebellion than do civilisational differences. Thus, this study strongly supports the contention that, at least as of the late 1990s, identity continues to be based on national end ethnic factors rather than civilisational ones.     

Realizing Civilization through Patrilineal Descent: The Intellectual Making of an African Racial Nationalism in Tanzania, 1920–501

The emergence of an African racial nationalism in Tanzania was as much an intellectual re-articulation of basic categories of identity as it was a response to the racial inequities of coastal East African society and European colonial rule. This article explores the intellectual agency of African thinkers who operated within structures of thought that understood civilization as something diffused from outside of Africa—either in the form of Swahili Islamic culture or the European civilizing mission. Writers and poets within Tanzania between the 1920s and 1940s came to assert an African racial identity by inverting the norms of Swahili society that valorized patrilineal descent from the Middle East. Instead, they argued that Africans can only become civilized and realize their nation/race by honouring male ancestors from inside the continent. In practice this meant that African writers demanded to exercise greater control over the sexual behaviour of African women, whose fidelity to racial purity, they alleged, was critical for Africans to realize civilization and political advancement. In the process of these debates, African writers working within the idiom of descent retooled the intellectual building blocks that would support the African nationalist movement in Tanzania during the 1950s and after.     

Public support for Hispanic deportation in the United States: the effects of ethnic prejudice and perceptions of economic competition in a period of economic distress

This paper investigates the effect of ethnic prejudice and perceived economic competition on support for deportation and alternative policy options concerning the handling of undocumented immigrants. Using a national survey conducted in early 2009, data are analysed using bivariate and multinomial regression techniques. Ethnic prejudice and perceived economic competition were found to be significantly related to support for deportation in the face of alternative options, controlling for the effects of age, sex, employment status, nativity, race, party identification, and education. Furthermore, majority support for deportation was found among conservatives, moderates, Republicans, and Independents. Even among liberals and Democrats, substantial numbers supported deportation. During the recent economic recession, perceived economic competition and ethnic prejudice were dominant influences on deportation preferences, and deportation appears to have become a mainstream policy option. However, we speculate that deportation preferences are relatively shallow and unstable owing partly to the dependence of immigration public opinion on economic cycles, and, ultimately, the unfeasibility of deportation as a policy option.     

Preferences and the price of stability in matching markets

This paper studies welfare tradeoffs in two-sided, one-to-one matching markets. We begin by providing theoretical upper bounds on a utilitarian price of stability, and show that these bounds vary with the composition of participants’ ordinal preference lists. We then turn to simulation experiments to describe how changes in basic characteristics of agents’ preferences can increase or decrease the average price of stability as measured by both utilitarian and Rawlsian welfare criteria. Our results indicate that markets featuring moderate degrees of correlation and positive intercorrelation in the preferences of participants exhibit the steepest tradeoffs between stability and utilitarian welfare and between stability and Rawlsian welfare.     

Aging,Depression, and Wisdom: A Pilot Study of Life-Review Intervention and PTSD Treatment With Two Groups of Vietnam Veterans

Vietnam War veterans are a sometimes overlooked subgroup of the aging baby boomer generation. Forty years after the war ended, war veterans still seek out VA or Vet Center counselors to assist with traumatic stress symptoms. However, there currently are no specific age-related protocols for treating older war veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nor have established PTSD interventions incorporated gerontology content for these older trauma survivors. This pilot study juxtaposed life review within regular PTSD group counseling for 12 Vietnam veterans at a community-based Vet Center using a partial crossover design. The Life Review and Experiencing Form (LREF) structured the delivery of the life review component. T-tests and repeated measures ANOVA were used to examine depression and self-assessed wisdom outcomes using measures previously tested with older adults. Findings suggest that life review prior to PTSD group therapy has clinical benefits for reducing symptoms of depression and increasing self-assessed wisdom. The study illuminates the possible relationship of traumatic stress symptom effects on the natural reminiscing process for older veterans and provides insights into methods for more age-appropriate treatment for trauma survivors participating in Vet Center and VA programs nationwide.     

Admissible utility functions for health, longevity, and wealth: integrating monetary and life-year measures

The value of reducing health and mortality risks is often measured using value per statistical life (VSL) or one of several life-year measures (e.g., life years, quality-adjusted life years, disability-adjusted life years). I derive the utility function that is admissible when preferences for health and longevity, conditional on wealth, are consistent with any life-year measure (LYM) and examine the implications for marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for increases in health, longevity, and current-period survival probability. I conclude that marginal WTP for any LYM is decreasing and that VSL is increasing in the LYM. These results imply that cost-effectiveness analysis using a fixed monetary value per LYM is not consistent with economic welfare theory and that the benefit of a health improvement cannot be calculated by multiplying the change in a LYM by a constant.     

Protecting the Public's Health in An Era of Bioterrorism: The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act

During the fall of 2001, public health law scholars at the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities were asked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a series of national partners to develop the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA). The MSEHPA provides a series of modern powers for states to consider in responding to catastrophic public health emergencies, including bioterrorism events. Since December 2001, provisions based on the MSEHPA have been introduced in nearly 40 states and passed in 20. Underlying the development of the act is a long-standing debate between legal and ethical scholars and law- and policymakers as to the appropriate ways to balance individual and communal rights. The drafting challenge was to create a comprehensive model law that provides adequate powers to protect the public's health while also respecting individual and group rights. The MSEHPA empowers public health agents with broad authority and simultaneously limits the exercise of power in time, duration, and scope to accomplish communal goals of abating serious public health threats. Coercive public health powers, particularly isolation and quarantine, are exercised on a temporary basis, only so long as are reasonably necessary and only among persons who justifiably may pose a risk to others because of their contagious conditions. Individual rights to contest the coercive use of public health powers, even during an emergency, are secured.