The linkage effects of raw material processing in economic development: A survey of modeling and other approaches

Processing of primary raw materials has become an important and widely recommended strategy for economic development. Yet, even as the councils of many LDCs call for primary commodity producers to gain greater participation in downstream activities, there remain doubts on fundamental questions:What comparative advantage and what disadvantages do processing activities have in the LDCs?What linkages do processing activities offer?What is the potential contribution of processing to economic goal attainment in the LDCs?In this article we survey the material on processing, particularly with respect to modeling direct and indirect linkages between processing and the LDC economies. The article examines the following topics: (1) the literature on processing in economic development; (2) modeling processing linkages; and (3) outstanding questions regarding processing linkages.We focus on quantifiable linkages between the processing industry and the rest of the economy. There is also the possibility of other linkages, such as the development of entrepreneurship and management talent and technology, that are more difficult to quantify. It is important to distinguish between micro linkages, which refer to the direct impact on supplier and user sectors, and macro linkages, which include indirect general economic effects transmitted through government revenue and expenditures, the money supply, and foreign exchange availabilities.     

Cedar Point: A Park in Progress

This is a biography of an amusement park, Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, by its marketing director. This life history, using sources close to the park and in the popular press ouer many decades, traces the many shifts in circumstance, philosophy and mood in its development ouer a span from 1897 to its present status as “one of the great parks of the country.” This case study of a single park that has incorporated characteristics of many growth stages ofparks ingeneral serues as a capsule history: from its beginnings as a resort; expansion of rides and attractions during the flush years of the 1920s; the backsliding deterioration of the Depression years and the immediatepost- War period; the decline of the big-city parks and the moue to the suburbs in the 50s; and the Disney effect: the advent of the national super theme park, with its revolutionary impact on the traditional park concept. According to Hildebrandt, Cedar Point is “the only modern superpark that also has an ancient history…. the only old-time amusement park to successfully make the transition to the new amusement park culture.”     

Contingent on Context? Social Work and the State in Australia, Britain, and the USA

Correspondence to John Harris, School of Health and Social Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. E-mail: j.harris{at}warwick.ac.uk Summary The notion that social work is an international profession,operating with generally similar goals, methodologies, and commonvalues is considered critically. Examining the political andsocial contexts of three countries with liberal democratic governments—Australia,Britain and the United States—the role of social workwithin the welfare processes of each country is compared. Whilesocial work as an identifiable professional activity sharessome features, it is argued that the idea of its having a coreessence needs to be tempered with a realistic assessment ofthe importance of contextually created difference. Recent andrapid developments in the institutional context, such as thoseexperienced in these three countries, further underscore thelimited utility of the notion of a common professional project.     

Understanding PTSD: Forgetting "Trauma"

The concept of "psychological trauma" conflates emotional responses to traumatic events such as motor vehicle accidents, muggings, and house fires, responses to natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and responses to war, chronic physical abuse, prolonged torture, and repeated gang-rape as an act of "ethnic cleansing." It is argued that, from a psychological, human, and moral perspective, use of a single construct to describe responses to such a range of horrific happenings makes no sense. The benefits and limits of conceptualizing PTSD as a unifying concept for describing psychological responses to calamitous events are discussed. The consequences (with respect to clinical work, research, and social policy) of failing to distinguish between responses to relatively circumscribed traumatic events, more extreme, prolonged, or repeated individual traumatization, and collectively experienced mass violence against entire communities are examined.