Adult Mortality Five Years after a Natural Disaster

Exposure to extreme events has been hypothesized to affect subsequent mortality because of mortality selection and scarring effects of the event itself. We examine survival at and in the five years after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami for a population‐representative sample of residents of Aceh, Indonesia who were differentially exposed to the disaster. For this population, the dynamics of selection and scarring are a complex function of the degree of tsunami impact in the community, the nature of individual exposures, age at exposure, and gender. Among individuals from tsunami‐affected communities we find evidence for positive mortality selection among older individuals, with stronger effects for males than for females, and that this selection dominates any scarring impact of stressful exposures that elevate mortality. Among individuals from other communities, where mortality selection does not play a role, there is evidence of scarring with property loss associated with elevated mortality risks in the five years after the disaster among adults age 50 or older at the time of the disaster.     

Contested Cosmopolitanisms: Global Meetings and Local Mobilizations

This article analyzes the ways that Pittsburgh anarchist activists, politicians, and journalists framed the 2009 G‐20 meetings and protests through a content analysis of newspaper articles and activist documents. Our analysis found that cosmopolitanism was a central discourse, but it was also contested. Pittsburgh anarchists introduced an open‐community cosmopolitanism that prioritizes the local over the global as a site of struggle and also embraces expansion of rights and commitment to diversity and inclusivity. Somewhat unexpectedly, this open‐community cosmopolitanism was successfully transmitted beyond activist discourse into the public and the local media. The anarchist activist open‐community framing challenged Pittsburgh residents to question whether increased global corporate investments were best for Pittsburgh and, in doing so, fostered connections between local anarchist activists, local journalists, and local Pittsburgh residents. To reflect on the ways that activists contribute to ideas of cosmopolitanism, this article presents a theoretical model that incorporates individual and collective dispositions and multiple ideological standpoints. We also show how movement groups may strategically draw on these shared cosmopolitan dispositions to expand their movement base, communicate their messages, and challenge the hegemony of global capitalism.     

Partitioning polytomous variables in multiway contigency analysis

Examples involving analysis of survey data in the form of three-way contingency tables, some variables in which are polytomous, are presented to demonstrate the possibility of specifying models in terms of the particular categories of the polytomy that enter into relationships with the other variables. Solution of this problem is logically a prior step to the collapsing of polytomous variables if, indeed, that step can be justified at all. The methods used are those associated with incomplete multiway contingency tables. Such tables arise in the present connection when the polytomous variable is represented as a set of dichotomous formal variables.     

NOTES and COMMENTARIES

With this issue, we are initiating a section for notes and commentaries, to which contributions are invited. It is our hope that this section will serve an important purpose in permitting our contributors to publish brief reports, notes on research, commentaries, and other short items of a scholarly nature which do not ordinarily fit within the framework of an article .—T he E ditors     

Poverty and Social Context in Remote Rural Communities1

Abstract Many urban analysts studying poor inner city communities argue that social isolation in poor neighborhoods perpetuates poverty. This paper extends analysis of social context to rural areas, comparing a chronically poor coal-dependent Appalachian community with a more diverse, resource-rich community in northern New England. The Appalachian community has more limited job opportunities and over time the scarcity of jobs in a volatile coal economy generated a divided social context. In contrast, the community in northern New England offers both more opportunities for work and has a stable, working middle class that invests in and uses public goods; the poor are not deliberately segregated. These differences in communities' socioeconomic context are reflected in poor women's experiences and aspirations.     

The life-expectancy of industrial civilization: The decline to global equilibrium

A new paradigm is needed for industrial civilization, because neither the traditional theory of exponential industrial growth nor the more recent steady-state hypothesis can satisfactorily explain historical data. As a basis for the paradigm, the long sweep of human history is divided into three phases: (1)pre-industrial, (2)industrial, and (3)de-industrial. This essay focuses on the second, or industrial, phase. The paradigm is embodied in four theories. The first theory states that industrial civilization can be graphed over time by energy-use per person in the shape of asingle pulse waveform. The second theory is derived from a well-established principle of human ecology. It defines a set ofnecessary conditions for the advance, stagnation and decline of industrial civilization in terms of world total energy-use and world total population. Next, the subject ofgoverning is analyzed in terms of ten requirements for system control. The third theory is derived from this analysis. It relates thesize, orcomplexity, of a society over time to the average energy-use per person in that society. Historical population and energy-use data and other considerations are used as the basis for the fourth theory. This, a predictive theory, states that thelife-expectancy of industrial civilization is less than 100 years.