The Hobo Anomalous: Class,minorities and political invention in the Industrial Workers of the World

This article is an analysis of minority political invention in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Against the tendency in recent social and cultural theory to dichotomize class and difference, it argues that it was in and through the IWW's formulation of class that minority political and cultural invention occurred. Using the framework of Deleuze and Guattari's minor politics, the article shows how the IWW's composition in the simultaneously diffuse and cramped plane of work operated against the major political identities and subjects of worker, immigrant, American, citizen and 'people', and towards the creation of minority political knowledges, tactics and cultural styles premised on the condition that 'the people are missing'. Seeking to understand the IWW's modes and techniques of invention, the article explores the general plane of IWW composition, its particular political and cultural expressions (in songs, manifestos, cartoons and tactics), and its minor mode of authorship. The article focuses in particular on two aspects of IWW minority composition, the itinerant worker, or hobo, and the politics of sabotage.     

Resources and strategies of interest groups and industry representatives involved in federal forest policy

This study analyzes the resources and strategies of public interest groups and industry representatives involved in federal forest policy in the state of Oregon during the early 1990s. While many studies have examined the role of interest groups in the policy process, few have compared empirically the resources available and strategies pursued by industry representatives and public interest groups in a particular policy domain. Utilizing survey data from 133 business representatives and 326 public interest groups involved in federal forest policy, the study argues that public interest group influence derives primarily from the ability to mobilize human resources; the financial resources of these groups tend to be modest. Industry and industry-supported groups, in contrast, possess considerable financial power while enjoying less support from the public. Consequently, industry interests tend to focus their efforts on more traditional forms of influence such as the persistent lobbying of natural resource agencies and elected officials. Public interest groups, in contrast, tend to devote considerable efforts to building public support in urban core areas to build the capacity to pressure governmental decision-makers.     

THE FAMILY FIRO MODEL: A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR ORGANIZING FAMILY TREATMENT

This paper presents a model for organizing family issues and family treatment. Schutz's FIRO model is offered as a framework for organizing family issues into inclusion, control and affection categories. Following Schutz's theory of group development, we propose that inclusion, control and affection constitute a logical hierarchy of core issues to be dealt with in treating multiproblem families-inclusion first, then control, and then affection (intimacy). Furthermore, we propose that the FIRO model can be used to organize theories of family therapy. We attempt to demonstrate that different family therapies are best suited for one of the three core issues of family interaction. We advocate an "intelligent eclecticism" based on the premise that when an issue is appropriately matched with a therapy, therapeutic effectiveness should be enhanced. We also discuss implications of our Family FIRO model for clinical practice.     

Pregnancy-related dropouts and gender inequality in education: A life-table approach and application to Cameroon

In this study, I used a life-table approach to estimate how much hypothetical reductions in pregnancy-related dropouts would help close the gender gap in educational attainment. Using the schooling histories of 6,686 pupils, I partitioned Cameroon's gender gap in education into "pregnancy-related" and "non-pregnancy-related" components and simulated the impact of reductions in pregnancy-related dropouts on this gap. The results suggest that such reductions would have substantial payoffs in this setting, but payoffs would be the greatest where societies also address gender inequities before puberty and outside the realm of pregnancy. Reductions in pregnancy-related dropouts complement but do not replace efforts to reduce gender discrimination in schooling. Recent data from Demographic and Health Surveys should make it possible to extend this analysis to other countries.     

The Transport System and Society’s Metabolism in the UK

This paper analyses the interrelation between the transport system and measures of resource consumption such as material and energy consumption over a 60-year period (1937–1997) in the UK. Non-motorized transport and time consumption for mobility are estimated in addition to conventional measures of transport. During the period analyzed, the UK population grew by 20% while transport of goods and persons increased more than threefold and material and energy consumption almost doubled. The transport intensity of domestic material input (DMI) doubled to 300 ton-kilometers (tkm) per ton of DMI while the transport intensity of domestic energy consumption (DEC) doubled to 20 tkm per gigajoule (GJ) of DEC. Thus, while the material and energy intensity of GDP declined significantly, a well-established trend in many advanced countries, the transport intensity of materials and energy consumption rose. These findings suggest a close link between transport, economic development, and long-term structural transformations. In the case of personal transport, a rebound effect was also observed: whereas the average speed of transport has greatly increased, the average number of hours per day devoted to personal transport has not declined.     

The impact of cash-benefit reform on parents’ labour force participation

This paper evaluates the impact of a recent Norwegian family-policy reform. The reform provides benefits of up to NOK 3,000 (approximately € 400) per month to families with one- to three-year-old children, who do not utilize state-subsidized day-care centres. We investigate the reforms effect on parents labour force participation. We find that, on average, the reform reduced womens labour force participation and increased the specialization of work between couples. We find that the effect of the reform depends on womens schooling. Specifically, the labour force participation of highly educated mothers fell by more than that of mothers with less education.I am grateful to Associate Professor Espen Bratberg and Professor Alf Erling for their valuable comments. My special thanks to Kjell Vaage, Arild Aakvik and Afsane Bjorvatn for helpful suggestions. This paper was presented in a seminar at the Department of Economics, University of Bergen, Norway. I am thankful to the participants of the seminar for their positive feedback. The paper has also benefited from the reports given by three anonymous referees. I am also thankful to Professor Heather Joshi for helpful remarks on the paper. Responsible editor: Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Have the relative employment prospects for the low-skilled deteriorated after all?

Has the relative unemployment propensity for the low-skilled increased during the 1990s? We address this question empirically, based on two notions of low skills; i) low education, and ii) low ability, conditioned on education and work experience. Ability is identified by previous earnings. Evaluated by the education-based measure, we find that unemployment propensity has not developed unfavourably for the low-skilled. Evaluated by the ability-based measure, it has. We uncover a steady deterioration of employment prospects for persons with low ability relative to others with similar formal qualifications. The adverse employment effects of being low-skilled are stronger the higher is formal education.All correspondence to Knut Røed. The paper is part of the project Sorting, exposed groups and labour market programs financed by the Research Council of Norway. We wish to thank Rolf Aaberge, Paul Gertler, Harald Goldstein, Karl Ove Moene, Jon Strand, Steinar Strøm, Asbjrn Rødseth and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

The fertility contribution of Mexican immigration to the United States

Crucial to the long-term contribution of immigration to a receiving country's population is the extent to which the immigrants reproduce themselves in subsequent, native-born generations. Using conventional projection methodologies, this fertility contribution may be poorly estimated primarily because of problems in projecting the number of immigrants who are at risk of childbearing. We propose an alternative method that obviates the need to project the number of immigrants by using the full sending-country birth cohort as the risk group to project their receiving-country childbearing. This "sending-country birth cohort" method is found to perform dramatically better than conventional methods when projecting to 1999 from base years both before and after the large increase in inflows of Mexican immigrants to the United States in the late 1980s. Projecting forward from 1999, we estimate a cumulative contribution of Mexican immigrant fertility from the 1980s to 2040 of 36 million births, including 25% to 50% more births after 1995 than are projected using conventional methods.     

Subjective Distributions

A decision maker has to choose one of several random variables whose distributions are not known. As a Bayesian, she behaves as if she knew the distributions. In this paper we suggest an axiomatic derivation of these (subjective) distributions, which is more economical than the derivations by de Finetti or Savage. Whereas the latter derive the whole joint distribution of all the available random variables, our approach derives only the marginal distributions. Correspondingly, the preference questionnaire needed in our case is less smaller.