Reducing Toxic Chemical Releases and Transfers: Explaining Outcomes for a Voluntary Program

Relatively little is known about the possibilities and limitations of voluntary public programs. The so-called 33/50 Program for reducing releases of certain toxic chemicals into the environment provides a useful instance for examination. In an investigation of toxics-reduction outcomes, with states as units of analysis, economic and policy variables help to explain the results. In particular, channels and approaches used In communicating policy intentions are related to outcomes. Voluntary programs can make a difference, but the details of execution, including the extent and nature of field efforts, influence outcomes.     

APPALACHIAN POLICY, THE CORPORATE STATE, AND AMERICAN VALUES: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

This paper explores the historical interplay of Appalachia and America over the past hundred years. The focus is on questions of culture and ideology, policy and values as these have been constituted in the development of our “corporate state” and its penetration and integration of the region. A careful examination of Henry Shapiro's Appalachia on our Mind brings to the surface many of the assumptions and values generally underlying the social and public policies binding the nation and the region. Ideological aspects in the genesis of the region as a social problem receive considerable attention. It becomes apparent that understanding Appalachia hinges on critical, historical perspectives on modern America: the liberal tradition, the technological world-view, and the politicized economy of the corporate state. The notion that “time stood still” in Appalachia (the static image) has developed in ways that deflect or obscure comprehension of the region's particular form of modernization.     

UNDISCIPLINED AND PUNISHED

The title of Robert Doran's collection of essays on Hayden White proves provocative and evocative. Provocative because it claims to mark a move within philosophy that pivots on the work of Hayden White, and this despite the fact that White himself explicitly resists inclusion within such a classification, that is, as a philosopher of history. Indeed, another contributor, Arthur Danto, had as of 1995 declared passé the whole subfield of philosophy of history. Doran situates White, then, in a niche White rejects and in any case one largely abandoned by those who do academic philosophy. Thus a question that this title evokes concerns why—whatever philosophy of history happens to be before Hayden White—after him it becomes a topic of philosophical lack of interest, one pursued almost exclusively by those not associated with departments of philosophy. Given White's professional travails, his acquaintance with another undisciplined academic, Richard Rorty, and his long‐standing friendship with preeminent philosophers of history such as Louis Mink, one might well assume that White eschews Doran's disciplinary labeling for a reason. In this regard, reframing him as this book's title does invites a worry that, if only unwittingly, the book elides discussion of why certain positions excite not merely disagreement but prompt rather a type of professional shunning. In failing to confront White's reception (or rather lack thereof) by historians and his position (or rather lack thereof) within philosophy, Doran passes over in silence a highly salient aspect of White's work.