THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN URBAN SPRAWL AND OBESITY: IS IT A TWO‐WAY STREET?

ABSTRACT.  We empirically examine the relationship between obesity and urban development patterns where individuals reside. Previous analyses treat urban form as exogenous to weight, and find higher body mass indices (BMI) among residents of areas with sprawl patterns of development. Using samples of recent movers, we find that the causality runs in both directions. Individuals who move to denser locations lose weight. As well, BMI is a determinant of the choice of a dense or sprawling location. In sum, while moving to a dense area results in weight loss, such locations are unlikely to be selected by individuals with high BMI.     

Multi‐scalar Labour Agency in Global Production Networks: Contestation and Crisis in the South African Fruit Sector

Integration into global production networks poses significant challenges, and also opens up opportunities, for labour agency. Governance by lead firms affects working conditions and can drive precarious employment; this interacts with and can constrain national labour legislation covering labour rights. The global production networks (GPN) approach facilitates examination of commercial value chains, their interaction with institutionally and societally embedded labour markets, and potential leverage points for labour contestation transcending local, national and global scales. This informs analysis of commercial/societal articulations as contested processes opening space for multi‐scalar labour agency within global production networks. This article examines how tensions between global commercial and societally embedded dimensions of global production networks drive precarious work, and seeks to understand the implications for emergent forms of multi‐scalar community‐based labour agency. These questions are explored through an examination of labour casualization and contestation in South African fruit production in 2012–13, using the GPN approach. The authors find that multi‐scalar channels of labour agency leveraging both global commercial and government actors can enable reworking by unorganized community‐based labour to bargain for better pay and conditions, but if the underlying global commercial logic is to be challenged, more systemic strategies are required.     

Impact of the Ryan White CARE Act on the Availability of HIV/AIDS Services

This article assesses the extent to which the availability of HIV/AIDS services in the Baltimore and Oakland eligible metropolitan areas (EMAs) increased after receipt of funding under Title I of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act. Survey data on the availability of HIV/AIDS services in each EMA were collected from samples of organizations at two points in time: 1 year before (1991) and 1 year after (1993) the Oakland and Baltimore EMAs received their first installments of CARE Act Title I funds. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of the data were performed to assess changes in the availability of HIV/AIDS services. The results showed that after CARE Act Title I funding became available, the availability of ambulatory medical and social support services in the Baltimore and Oakland EMAs increased. However, the way service availability increased varied significantly, reflecting differing opportunities and constraints present in each community. In Baltimore, the increase in the availability of HIV/AIDS services was due largely to the creation of new organizations that used Title I funds to provide services (system expansion). In Oakland, relatively few new organizations were created, but existing organizations added new HIV/AIDS services (service line expansion). Our data also indicated that in both EMAs the majority of HIV/AIDS organizations receiving Title I funds expanded the capacity of their existing services to meet growing demand.     

Karin Steiner,Anargharāghava: Das Schauspiel vom kostbaren Raghuspross. Einfühung und Übersetzung

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Rethinking Standardization: the Social Meanings of Mycenaean Metal Cups

Standardization can be conceptualized as a scale, from unique bespoke artefacts to uniform items produced on a factory line. It is usually analyzed in terms of whole objects, but is also applicable to their individual traits, such as shape, material, size, decoration or colour. Objects combining different levels of standardization across these traits are able to transmit more complex social meanings. Through the analysis of the standardization of their form and material, three metal cup types (shallow, stemmed and Vapheio) are singled out as having particular significance within elite Mycenaean culture. The combination of varying degrees of standardization in these vessels created gradients of value that expressed nuances of social identity whilst retaining their core message of high status. Differences in these combinations indicate that whilst shallow and Vapheio cups shared similar roles, the stemmed cup may have been intended to convey individuality within the elite community.     

The Disappearing Body

Although Chile was the first country in Latin America to report cases of anorexia nervosa in 1982, the issue had already gained notoriety during the 1970s, the decade when North American policies and the United States capitalist economy began to infiltrate Chilean society. The category of eating disorders, which may be manifested in a variety of diseases (such as anorexia, bulimia, and compulsory overeating), has only recently become the focus of Chilean literature and, in turn, literary criticism, which has primarily focused on the metaphorical interpretations of these illnesses. One novel that treats the multifaceted manifestations of eating disorders, not merely the metaphorical representations, is Marcela Serrano's Antigua vida mía (1995). The societal demands of unhealthy body images have been the concern of feminist criticism such as Susan Bordo's Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993). In Marcela Serrano's novel the treatment of eating disorders reflects the evolving expectations on women in contemporary Chilean culture. Through the application of Bordo's analysis of the cultural pressures and significances of body expectations, this article delves into the various manifestations of unhealthy eating practices in Serrano's Antigua vida mía and reveals the self-destructive and self-isolating consequences of an often-occulted illness while also recognizing that by treating body image and illness, the author engages in a cultural discourse regarding the expectations and repercussions of cultural demands.