LEGISLATING COMMONS: THE NAVAJO TRIBAL COUNCIL AND THE NAVAJO RANGE

The article argues that chronic overgrazing on the Navajo Reservation is the result of policies of the BIA and the Tribal Council. In support of that hypothesis the paper outlines the nature of property rights to grazing land on the Reservation. It shows that BIA and Tribal Council actions have led to the proliferation of small herds since 1933. Small herds increase the resource costs of establishing and enforcing property rights, and they increase the political costs of requiring compliance with grazing rules. Statistical tests reveal a close relationship between herd size and overstocking of the range. The paper concludes that in the absence of the constraints of a private property system, it may be necessary for an outside agency to regulate grazing to avoid the problem of the Commons.     

Success and interpersonal touch in a competitive setting

Early observations of interpersonal touch among American adults have revealed rates of touch well below that of many European and Latin American countries. Conclusions drawn from these results, however, mandate caution since touch has been shown to be affected by age, gender, race, and setting. Observation of mens' televised sports has revealed that high rates of touch often follow a successful performance. The present study attempted to quantify touch within a mixed-gender, competitive setting in both black and white subcultures. Interpersonal touch following a success and otherwise occurring was observed among bowlers during league play. Overall rates of touch were much higher than those reported for other public settings. High rates of touch following a success were reported only for blacks. Unlike previous studies females initiated cross-gender touch as often as did males.     

Rationality and Freedom: Weber and Beyond*

In the tradition of German social thought from Kant and Hegel through Toennies and Simmel, the development of rationality in modern Europe is associated with an increase of human freedom. Weber's work departs from that tradition by providing an incomparably differentiated framework for the analysis of rationality and by associating modern European rationalization with a curtailment of freedom. More careful examination of Weber's oeuvre, however, indicates that he, too, connected rationalization with the growth of freedom in many respects. His amended argument remains valuable today, although ways in which it stands to be improved by incorporating subsequent analyses are suggested.     

Analysis of the relationship between air pollution and asthma

In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to methods for analyzing longitudinal data. A review of some of the issues surrounding the use of regression analysis is undertaken as they relate to a study of the health effects of air pollution in a group of asthmatics. Daily diary recordings of hours with asthma symptoms are found to be positively related to the daily mean concentration of total reduced sulphur as well as to the daily intake of nonsteroidal drug medication. This finding is corroborated using three different statistical models.     

RESPONSE LATENCY VERSUS CERTAINTY AS INDEXES OF THE STRENGTH OF VOTING INTENTIONS IN A CATI SURVEY

This CATI study compares two measures of attitude strength,accessibility and certainty, for the purpose of predicting discrepanciesbetween voting intentions and voting behavior. Accessibilitywas indexed by response latency to a voting intention questionand certainty by a question about the finality of the votingintention. Logistic regression showed response latency to bea better predictor of discrepancies between voting intentionsand voting behavior than certainty. The theoretical implicationsof this finding as well as the practical implications of a methodfor measuring response latencies in CATI election studies arediscussed.