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.     

The Costs of Exclusion: Gender Job Segregation,Structural Change and the Labour Share of Income

While women's share of employment has risen in many countries over the last two decades, gender job segregation has worsened, with women increasingly excluded from ‘good’ jobs in the industrial sector. In this article, the determinants of gender job segregation are assessed using panel data for a broad set of developing countries covering the period 1991–2015. The effect of gender job segregation on all workers, via the labour share of income, is also analysed. The results identify two major contributors to gender job segregation — the rising capital/labour ratio and the ratio of female/male labour force participation rates — indicative of ‘crowding’ and exclusion as economies move up the industrial ladder. The analysis further indicates that the crowding of women into lower quality jobs has a negative effect on workers as a whole by dampening the labour share of income. Those processes are influenced by global and macroeconomic conditions and policies that have circumscribed the expansion of high‐quality jobs relative to labour supply, intensifying competition for ‘good’ jobs and weakening labour's bargaining power.     

Rescue excavation of a third‐millennium BC tomb at Al‐Khubayb,Sultanate of Oman

A third‐millennium BC tomb was subject to a rescue excavation in connection with the construction of a new road near the village of Al‐Khubayb in the Sultanate of Oman. It yielded a small number of finds, especially small metal objects that belonged to a later reuse of the tomb in the Samad period. As all diagnostic finds from the tomb date to the reuse, its architectural elements were the only indicator for the construction date of the tomb. Besides its small size and large wall thickness, which might suggest that the tomb is a transitional type between the Hafit and the Umm an‐Nar periods, its separation into two chambers and its facade made of white, dressed stones, can be seen as a clue for a construction date of the tomb in the Umm an‐Nar period.     

Red Aesthetics,Intermediality and the Use of Posters in Chinese Cinema after 1949

Abstract

This article focuses on the aesthetic and affective techniques of saturation through which posters legitimated the Party-State in Mao’s China by closing the gap between everyday experience and political ideology. Propaganda posters were designed to put into practice the principle of unity, as conceptualised by Mao Zedong. The argument posits that while the “poster” is normally a printed edition of a painting or design intended for mass distribution in this way, the term may fairly be deployed to capture other cultural objects that function as “posters”, in that they provide public, political information that expresses or constructs a political self in aesthetic form. This approach requires a metonymic understanding of a visual field in which cultural objects are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. The essay draws on recent in-depth interviews with poster artists of the 1960s and 1970s.     

Here be monsters: the Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853 and the growth of Dublin department stores

This article explores the juxtaposition of the 1853 Irish Industrial Exhibition in Dublin and the dramatic rise of department stores in the city during the same decade. It analyses the aims, structure and reception of the 1853 Exhibition within the context of the Irish industrial movement, the economic modernity of the post-Famine era and the dramatic changes to consumer culture which were occurring during the 1850s. The article takes as its focus the hitherto neglected ‘monster house’ controversy – conducted in pamphlets and public lectures – regarding the growth of Dublin's department stores. Coinciding with the 1853 Exhibition, the controversy rehearsed many of the same concerns regarding economic and social structures in Irish urban society in the wake of the Famine. Consideration of the ‘monster house’ controversy alongside the issues raised by the 1853 Exhibition allows a new perspective on the development of middle-class urban life in Dublin during the mid-nineteenth century.