bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Costars, aDictyosteliumprotein similar to the C-terminal domain of STARS, regulates the actin cytoskeleton and motility
Authors: Pang Te-Ling , Chen Fung-Chi , Weng Yi-Lan , Liao Hsien-Ching , Yi Yung-Hsiang , Ho Chia-Lin , Lin Chi-Hung , Chen Mei-Yu
Published: October 2010

Through analysis of a chemotaxis mutant obtained from a genetic screen in Dictyostelium discoideum, we have identified a new gene involved in regulating cell migration and have named it costars (cosA). The 82 amino acid Costars protein sequence appears highly conserved among diverse species, and significantly resembles the C-terminal region of the striated muscle activator of Rho signaling (STARS), a mammalian protein that regulates the serum response factor transcriptional activity through actin binding and Rho GTPase activation. The cosA-null (cosA−) cells formed smooth plaques on bacterial lawns, produced abnormally small fruiting bodies when developed on the non-nutrient agar and displayed reduced migration towards the cAMP source in chemotactic assays. Analysis of cell motion in cAMP gradients revealed decreased speed but wild-type-like directional persistence of cosA− cells, suggesting a defect in the cellular machinery for motility rather than for chemotactic orientation. Consistent with this notion, cosA− cells exhibited changes in the actin cytoskeleton, showing aberrant distribution of F-actin in fluorescence cell staining and an increased amount of cytoskeleton-associated actin. Excessive pseudopod formation was also noted in cosA− cells facing chemoattractant gradients. Expressing cosA or its human counterpart mCostars eliminated abnormalities of cosA− cells. Together, our results highlight a role for Costars in modulating actin dynamics and cell motility.
Polypurine-repeat-containing RNAs: a novel class of long non-coding RNA in mammalian cells
Authors: Zheng Ruiping , Shen Zhen , Tripathi Vidisha , Xuan Zhenyu , Freier Susan M. , Bennett C. Frank , Prasanth Supriya G. , Prasanth Kannanganattu V.
Published: October 2010

In higher eukaryotic cells, long non-protein-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been implicated in a wide array of cellular functions. Cell- or tissue-specific expression of lncRNA genes encoded in the mammalian genome is thought to contribute to the complex gene networks needed to regulate cellular function. Here, we have identified a novel species of polypurine triplet repeat-rich lncRNAs, designated as GAA repeat-containing RNAs (GRC-RNAs), that localize to numerous punctate foci in the mammalian interphase nuclei. GRC-RNAs consist of a heterogeneous population of RNAs, ranging in size from ~1.5 kb to ~4 kb and localize to subnuclear domains, several of which associate with GAA.TTC-repeat-containing genomic regions. GRC-RNAs are components of the nuclear matrix and interact with various nuclear matrix-associated proteins. In mitotic cells, GRC-RNAs form distinct cytoplasmic foci and, in telophase and G1 cells, localize to the midbody, a structure involved in accurate cell division. Differentiation of tissue culture cells leads to a decrease in the number of GRC-RNA nuclear foci, albeit with an increase in size as compared with proliferating cells. Conversely, the number of GRC-RNA foci increases during cellular transformation. We propose that nuclear GRC-RNAs represent a novel family of mammalian lncRNAs that might play crucial roles in the cell nucleus.
Wnt-dependent assembly of supermolecular Dishevelled-3-based complexes
Authors: Yokoyama Noriko , Golebiewska Urszula , Wang Hsien-yu , Malbon Craig C.
Published: October 2010

Dishevelled-3 (Dvl3) is a multivalent scaffold protein that is essential to Wnt signaling during development. Although Dvl-based punctae have been visualized by fluorescence microscopy; the physical nature and dynamic character of the such complexes are enigmatic. We use steric-exclusion chromatography, affinity pull-downs, proteomics and fluorescence correlation microscopy to characterize supermolecular Dvl3-based complexes of totipotent mouse F9 cells. The molecular mass of the complexes ranges from that of homodimeric Dvl3 to well-defined peaks harboring supermolecular complexes of 0.4 to 2.0 MDa. Addition of Wnt3a stimulates the formation of Dvl3-based complexes of greater molecular mass within 30 minutes. The presence of DKK1 and knockdown of Dishevelled proteins block formation of the 2 MDa Dvl3-based complexes and also block Wnt3a stimulation of the canonical pathway. Fluorescent correlation microscopy identified supermolecular Dvl3-based complexes with a molecular mass >30 MDa in live cells; these complexes were provoked to form structures with even greater molecular mass by Wnt3a. We establish for the first time the physical and functional nature of very large, supermolecular Dvl3-based complexes.
Understanding PPPs and PPP-based National Accounts
Authors: Deaton Angus , Heston Alan
Published: October 2010

We provide an overview of the theory and practice of constructing PPPs. We focus on four practical areas: how to handle international differences in quality; the treatment of urban and rural areas of large countries; how to estimate prices for government services, health, and education; and the effects of the regional structure of the latest International Comparison Program for 2005. We discuss revisions of the Penn World Table, and their effects on econometric analysis, and include health warnings. Some international comparisons are close to impossible, even in theory, and in others, the practical difficulties make comparison exceedingly hazardous. (JEL C43, E01, E31, O57).
The Structure of Tariffs and Long-Term Growth
Authors: Nunn Nathan , Trefler Daniel
Published: October 2010

We show that the “skill bias” of a country's tariff structure is positively correlated with long-term per capita GDP growth. Testing for causal mechanisms, we find evidence consistent with the existence of real benefits from tariffs focused in skill-intensive industries. However, this only accounts for a quarter of the total correlation between skill-biased tariffs and growth. Turning to alternative explanations, we extend the standard Grossman-Helpman “protection-for-sale” model and show how the skill bias of tariffs can reflect the extent of domestic rent-seeking activities in the economy. We provide evidence that the remaining variation is explained by this endogeneity. (JEL D72, F13, F43, O17, O19, O24, O47)
Value-Added Taxes, Chain Effects, and Informality
Authors: de Paula Áureo , Scheinkman José A
Published: October 2010

We present an equilibrium model of tax avoidance and test its implications using a survey of firms in Brazil. In the model, the credit method used to collect value-added tax (VAT) creates informality chains—clients or suppliers of informal firms are more likely to be informal. An increase in enforcement in a production stage increases formality downstream and upstream. Various empirical measures of formality of suppliers and buyers, and of enforcement downstream and upstream, are positively correlated with formality. When the VAT is applied in a single stage of production at a rate estimated by the authorities, these chain effects disappear. (JEL H25, H26, L14, L21, O14, O17)
Hydrothermal Stability of Layered Silicates in Neutral and Acidic Media: Effect on Engineered-Barrier Safety
Authors: Alba María D. , Castro Miguel A. , Chain Pablo , Orta M. Mar , Pazos M. Carolina , Pavón Esperanza
Published: October 2010

Many environmental applications in the inorganic remediation field are based on the swelling and ion-exchange capacities of smectites, even though these can be affected by hydrothermal treatment in water and acidic media. Here a systematic study of the properties of layered silicates that could affect their hydrothermal stability at different pH is described: type of layers, octahedral occupancy, layer charge, and origin of the layer charge. The silicates studied were selected on the basis of their different characteristics associated with these properties. Kanemite (1:0 phyllosilicate), kaolinite (1:1 phyllosilicate), and pyrophyllite and talc (2:1 phyllosilicates with no-layer charge) were examined in order to determine the effect of layer structure, whereas the hydrothermal reactivity of silicates with different layer charge was analyzed by comparing the talc-hectorite-Laponite® and talc-saponite-trioctahedral vermiculite series. Samples were treated hydrothermally at 300ºC for 48 h in pure water and in a 0.01 M HNO3 solution and the final products were analyzed by X-ray diffraction, scanning electronic microscopy, and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. All layered silicates, except for kanemite, were found to remain intact after hydrothermal treatment in water and acidic media, with only minimal short-range structural changes observed. The extent of the structural changes depended on the octahedral sheet occupancy (greater extent) and the number of isomorphic substitutions (lesser extent), both of which weaken the structure.
Removal of Fe from Kaolin using Dissimilatory Fe(III)-Reducing Bacteria
Authors: Guo Min-Rong , He Qiu-Xiang , Li Yu-Man , Lu Xiao-qiao , Chen Zu-liang
Published: October 2010

LongYan kaolin has a large Fe content which affects the coloring. Bioleaching treatments to remove Fe impurities were conducted here using indigenous dissimilatory Fe(III)-reducing bacteria. The factors that affect bioleaching efficiency include bioleaching time, carbon source, pH, temperature, pulp density, and inoculum density and these were examined. Environmental scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction were used to examine any textural or mineralogical changes at the surface of the kaolin that may have occurred during the bioleaching. Iron impurities in the kaolin were reduced from 0.88% to 0.48% with an increase in the natural whiteness index from 60.8% to 81.5% after 7 days of bioleaching treatment. A granulometric analysis of dispersed kaolin demonstrated that the bioleaching resulted in a decrease in particle size. The results demonstrated that the bioleaching was very effective at improving the quality of the kaolin, where insoluble Fe(III), either adsorbed to the kaolin surfaces or admixed as amorphous forms, was leached out by micro-organisms as water-soluble Fe(II).
Factors Controlling the Evolution of Mineral Assemblages and Illite Crystallinity on Paleozoic to Triassic Sequences from the Transition Between Maláguide and Alpujárride Complexes (Betic Cordillera, Spain): The Significance of Tobelite
Authors: Ruiz Cruz M. D. , de Galdeano C. Sanz
Published: October 2010

The Hercynian metamorphic event is poorly characterized in internal zone complexes of the Betic Cordillera (Spain), as it has been, to a great extent, overprinted by the mineral assemblages formed during the Alpine event. Identification of the signals of the Hercynian episode is easier in series largely unaffected by the Alpine event, such as Intermediate units between the Maláguide and the Alpujárride Complexes, which consist of a set of thrust slices. With the aim of characterizing the Hercynian paragenesis, a detailed comparison of the mineral assemblages of Paleozoic and overlying Triassic sequences, unaffected by the pre-Alpine event, was carried out. Mineral assemblages were characterized by X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, electron microprobe, and transmission-analytical electron microscopy. A rapid increase in the illite crystallinity values was observed at the Triassic—Paleozoic transition in the upper tectonic slices. In addition, the diagenetic to anchizonal dickite-, sudoite-, and pyrophyllite-bearing assemblages, characterizing the Triassic rocks, contrast with Paleozoic assemblages consisting of white K-mica ± paragonite + chlorite + mica-chlorite and chlorite-vermiculite mixed layers + garnet, suggesting that this assemblage corresponds to the Hercynian metamorphic event. This assemblage records temperatures on the order of 400ºC and an intermediate pressure regime. Paleozoic rocks contain, in addition, tobelite, which comprises some of the detrital grains and strongly masks the illite crystallinity values. Tobelite has been identified only in the upper thrust slices, suggesting that changes in the detrital input is primarily responsible for the disappearance of tobelite at the transition from the Maláguide to the Alpujárride domain. Tobelite appears finely intergrown with white K-mica and its origin is uncertain. It could have been inherited as tobelite, but a more likely hypothesis is that the intergrowths of white K-mica and tobelite were formed at low temperature from an NH4-bearing mica precursor.
Envisioning Salvation: An Ecumenical Ekphrasis in Wirnt von Gravenberg's Wigalois
Authors: Brown James H.
Published: October 2010

In his only known romance, Wigalois , Wirnt von Gravenberg uses ekphrasis as a vehicle for articulating religious tolerance as well as differences between medieval Christians and Muslims, and offers an alternative image to what easily could have been an overly simplified, one-dimensional conception of Muslims during the period of the Crusades.
Chartrian Influence and German Reception: Dating the Works of Chrétien de Troyes
Authors: Carey Stephen Mark
Published: October 2010

By examining the triangular relationship between the works of Chrétien de Troyes, Alain de Lille, and the German reception of French Romance, this essay argues for the acceptance of the dates proposed in Claude Luttrell's Creation of the First Arthurian Romance (1974) as the standard for the composition of Chrétien's œuvre.
Hospitality and Status: Social Intercourse in Middle High German Arthurian Romance and Courtly Narrative
Authors: Christoph Siegfried
Published: October 2010

Within medieval German Arthurian romance and courtly narrative leading nobles actively cultivate hospitality and jealously guard their roles within this fundamental social institution. In these texts ideas about hospitality center on notions of power and status, and hospitality becomes an important expression of the implicit rules governing social discourse.
Bullish on Love and Adventure: Chivalry as Speculation in the German Arthurian Romances
Authors: Hasty Will
Published: October 2010

Adventure and love are speculative in the modern sense. In the romances of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach, they tend continually to be oriented towards a conclusion or closure that has not yet occurred, a final result that has not yet been established, a game that has not yet been decided, as this essay endeavors to show.
Orgeluse and the Trial for Rape at the Court of King Arthur: Parzival 521, 19 to 529, 16
Authors: Westphal-Wihl Sarah
Published: October 2010

The rape in book ten of Wolfram's Parzival elicits varied legal remedies: a trial at Arthur's court transitions into a reconciliation that in turn fuels a feud. This essay uses literary evidence to detail the social mechanisms of justice through the filters of gender, status, and point of view.
Faction Fights, Student Protests, and Rebellion: The Politics of Beer-Drinks and Bad Food in the Transkei, South Africa, 1955–63
Authors: Redding Sean
Published: October 2010

This article examines two cases of conflict from the Transkei region of South Africa. In the first instance in 1955, young men caught up in a stick fight after drinking beer were arrested, tried, and convicted, and they received harsh sentences of six months of hard labor. In the second case in 1961, boys at an elite school in Umtata protested their poor food and lodging arrangements, set fire to the school library, and threatened to kill the headmaster. While they were convicted, their punishment of caning was considered a very light sentence. These two cases illuminate the emerging nature of youthful resistance to the inception of home rule that was later to give rise to the Bantustans, as well as the response by state officials seeking to cope with the enlarging rural opposition to the structures of apartheid. The paradox of the strikingly different sentences is examined and explained.
Business Visibility and Taxation in Northern Cameroon
Authors: Muñoz José-María
Published: October 2010

Through an analysis of the taxation of business activities in Adamaoua Province, Cameroon, this article aims to provide ethnographic substance to current debates about the “tax effort” in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the current mission of the tax authorities to identify all potential taxpayers and track their locations, movements, and activities is often presented in the context of nationwide reform and a commitment to making all taxable enterprises visible, a close examination of the government's practices reveals other factors at work. The case of cattle traders in particular shows that taxation policies in Adamaoua today are based on an interplay between, on the one hand, modes of state control and levels of administrative ef-ficiency, and on the other, longstanding repertoires of business practice and idioms of documentation.
Africa in the Age of Obama
Authors: Faulkingham Ralph , Goheen Mitzi
Published: October 2010

With the inclusion of the following commentaries, “Africa in the Age of Obama,” the African Studies Review breaks one of its cardinal rules of not accepting opinion pieces on current issues for publication. However, there is always an exception to any rule.These three articles, originally presented at the Plenary Session of the 51st Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, present ideas of sufficient significance and centrality to Africanist intellectual discourses at this historical juncture to warrant this exception. Both individually and as a collection, these informative and provocative articles decenter common shibboleths of twenty-first century Africanist scholarship and replace these with suggestions for new paths and new ways of seeing and constituting “Africa” in the world today.

As ASR editors, we have been grappling with some of these issues over the past decade while putting together a “mission statement” for the journal, and we are pleased to see these subjects and perspectives presented so eloquently in this coUection.Two perspectives from these narratives are of special interest to the mission of the ASR. First, they encourage a view of “Africa” not as an isolate, but rather as a nexus of complex global relationships in which Africa and Africans, as well as African ideas, practice, and voice—whether as subjects or objects of analysis—are the primary focus. Second, they give voice to, and encourage contributions from, an increasing number of scholars whose primary work, scholarship, and identity are on the continent. Implicitly they call upon these scholars to publish in the ASR and other journals and use these as a two-way conduit, whereby scholarship from the continent may continue to become a significant and integral part of twenty-first century global Africanist discourses.
Superb Intentions and U.S. Policy Constraints
Authors: Wiley David S.
Published: October 2010

Barack Obama's election was an extraordinary event in American and world history, but already in his second year as president, the luster and the popularity of the Obama administration has faded, even among many who mobilized to elect him. In addition to righting two wars, Obama is attempting to fix a broken health care system in the context of a nationally contentious electorate and Congress. He also is coping with a mounting debt burden from seeking to recover from an economic collapse and public anger at an environmental disaster of mega proportions, requiring him to rein in the banks and corporations that were unleashed from public regulation during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. In addition, he is commander-in-chief of the U.S. military and its rapidly expanding U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

This was an administration elected on “hope for change.” Indeed, Obama's election raised expectations across the U.S. and throughout Africa that a man of African heritage, indeed a global person, could be and had been elected. This quintessentially optimistic, intelligent, and gifted American is the product of a Kenyan father and an internationally engaged mother, a multicultural childhood, and a global education as graduate of a private secondary school and elite American universities, and he has been pinned simultaneously with American, biracial, African American, African, and even global identities (see Zeleza 2009).
Introduction
Authors: Schmidt Elizabeth
Published: October 2010

The euphoria greeting the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States seized the popular imagination in Africa, much as it did in the U. S. There was hope and enormous goodwill on the continent, derived from President Obama's special tie to Africa—the dreams from his father that he has translated so eloquently. There was hope that the Obama administration would initiate new policies based on mutual respect, multilateral collaboration, and an awareness that there will be no security unless there is common security—and also that security must be broadly defined, extending beyond the military to include the environment, the economy, and health, as well as political and social rights. Yet as many anticipated, given the enormous and wide-ranging problems confronting the new administration, Africa has not been front and center on its agenda. Although President Obama visited Egypt in June and Ghana in July 2009, only a few months into his presidency, Africa has not become a centerpiece of his foreign policy.

In his much-publicized speech in Accra, President Obama lauded Ghana for its “repeated peaceful transfers of power,” declared that “development depends on good governance,” and urged Africans to take responsibility for their continent: “to hold [their] leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people.” He pledged that the United States would support their efforts and committed his administration to opening the doors to African goods and services in ways that previous administrations have not. He pledged $63 billion to a new, comprehensive global health strategy that would promote public health systems and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, polio, and other devastating diseases. In the months that followed, he pledged to double American foreign aid to $50 billion a year and to develop a multilateral program to combat hunger.
Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) and Norms of Participation in Tanzania: Working against the Grain
Authors: Dill Brian
Published: October 2010

The “institutional turn” in contemporary development theory has emphasized the importance of facilitating the emergence of institutions that will improve citizens' abilities to make choices. More important, it has suggested that the effectiveness of these institutions depends upon their ability to “work with the grain” of the local sociocultural environment. This article argues that community-based organizations (CBOs), as one prominent embodiment of institutional blueprints guiding relationships between state and nonstate actors in development efforts, are a poor fit in the context of contemporary urban Tanzania. This is because they are not consonant with the norms that have long governed popular participation in either the development process or associational life. Although the specific conclusions are limited to Dar es Salaam, the study calls for a method of interrogation that is not only historically and sociologically grounded, but also broadly applicable to other development issues.
Can We Expect More than Symbolic Support?
Authors: Selassie Bereket Habte
Published: October 2010

When I think about the extraordinary writing and speaking phenomenon by the name of Barack Obama, who also happens to be the President of the United States of America, the most powerful country in the world, I can't help asking myself, what can he do for Africa? I ask this not only because he is a son of Africa, but also because I hear in his speeches the words of a man deeply committed to human values, and therefore concerned with the predicament of Africa's people in this age of globalization.

As the first African American elected to the American presidency, Obama represents an extraordinary symbolic change in American politics. No one can underestimate the symbolic significance of his election. Nor should it be considered purely a matter of symbolism; a changing of the guard at the top necessarily involves—or should involve—implications of substantive change. There is the rub—can we expect substantive change of any significance from his election, given the nature and structure of American politics and society?

In connection with that question it is fair to ask: what does the Age of Obama portend for Africa? Two related questions arise concerning this: first, what should Obama do for Africa, and second, what can he do for Africa? As to the first question, what Obama should do for Africa is linked to Africa's need; and we can spend a whole day talking about that and not exhaust it. On the basis of Obama's speeches, including especially his Accra speech of July 11, 2009, and our own sense of Africa's needs, I offer three primary talking points that embrace a set of values or goals upon which all government systems should be based. The first is peace and stability, the second is sustainable economic development and social justice, and the third is democracy and good governance—not necessarily in that order.
Developments in African Governance since the Cold War: Beyond Cassandra and Pollyanna
Authors: McFerson Hazel
Published: October 2010

Twenty years ago, most African countries seemed permanently mired in malgovernance and repression. The end of the Cold War triggered two contrasting developments: governance improvement associated with the end of superpower competition, and deterioration caused by the resurgence of suppressed ethnic conflicts. Based on a variety of evidence, three subperiods can be identified: fragile governance progress from 1989 to 1995; backsliding associated largely with civil conflict between 1996 and 2002; and resumption of progress in recent years. These broad trends mask major intercountry differences—with Ghana the best-known case of improvement and Zimbabwe the worst case of reversal. Overall, African governance is now somewhat better than it was two decades ago. However, the progress is fragile, and improvements in administrative and economic governance have lagged behind those on the political front. Consolidating democracy will thus require institutional capacity building through a combination of appropriate civil society efforts and constructive external pressure to strengthen accountability.
Putting Africa's House in Order to Deal with Developmental Challenges
Authors: Nzongola-Ntalaja Georges
Published: October 2010

However proud Africans must be to have a person of African descent in the White House, they should have no illusions as to how much President Barack Hussein Obama can do for Africa. Africans must put their own house in order for purposes of dealing successfully with the major challenges facing the continent, the most important of which is that of democratic and developmental governance. Obama's priorities are not necessarily those of Africans. They have to do with the role of the United States as a superpower in a global system in which the American military and business corporations play a hegemonic role. In this context, Africa is relevant to American and Obama's global priorities when its resources are needed to strengthen this role, on the one hand, or its humanitarian crises are likely to affect them in an adverse manner, on the other.

What are these global priorities, and how are they likely to affect Africa during Obama's tenure? Following is a brief examination of four major priorities. The first is limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. Operating on the premise that nuclear weapons should be limited to the few countries now possessing them (U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan), the U.S. government has led an international campaign against the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology by other countries, particularly those deemed hostile to Western interests, such as Iran and North Korea. Since South Africa destroyed the nuclear arsenal of the former apartheid state and Libya gave up its nuclear ambitions, the only relevant issue with respect to Africa's role in the spread of nuclear weapons is the question of who has access to Africa's abundant supply of uranium. Denying access to African uranium to “rogue states” and terrorist organizations is an important foreign policy objective of any American government, including the Obama administration.
Diary Evidence for Political Competition: Mambila Autoethnography and Pretensions to Power
Authors: Zeitlyn David
Published: October 2010

An examination of personal diaries kept by Mambila people in Somié village, Cameroon, shows that everyday occurrences and small events, whose importance may have been overlooked at the time and which were forgotten soon after they took place, can be understood, in retrospect, as part of a larger struggle for power in a small Cameroonian chieftancy. This article examines the written accounts of some of these events in the context of diary narratives about community disputes, and it provides a model for the use of diaries and other personal records to illuminate the complexity of decision-making processes in the wider African context.
Views from Below on the Pro-poor Growth Challenge: The Case of Rural Rwanda
Authors: Ansoms An
Published: October 2010

This article focuses on the Rwandan peasantry to confirm how “views from below” can contribute to a better understanding of the ”pro-poor” growth challenge. Based on micro-level evidence gathered in 2007, it examines local peasants' perceptions of the characteristics and degree of poverty for different socioeconomic categories (i.e., peasant groups). It looks at the various opportunities and constraints that influence the potential of these categories or groups for social mobility and their capacity to participate in growth strategies. Further, it considers how local peasants perceive specific policy measures in the Rwandan government's “pro-poor” rural strategies. Their insights could inspire Rwandan policymakers and supporting donors to redirect their efforts toward distribution-oriented growth strategies.
T.H. Marshall's "Citizenship and Social Class"
Authors: Cohen Mitchell
Published: October 2010

An old conservative-minded contention goes something like this: if you start with an egalitarian ethos, you will bottom out at complete leveling. It's a slippery slope to the end of individuality. This was not simply a social or economic claim. Once upon a time, especially in Europe, this attitude stymied equality before the law, a liberal norm most of us would now take for granted. Once upon another time, it was used also to forestall universal suffrage, now a democratic norm in any decent political order. Foes—at least many early ones—of equality before the law or universal suffrage supposed that a society ought to be governed by natural aristocracy. This later became meritocracy for many of them. Surely, this marked considerable improvement, yet meritocracy was often conceived narrowly, with little consideration of how unearned social advantages or disadvantages shape the life chances of most people.
Corn and Country: Nebraska, Mexico, and the Global Economy
Authors: Greene Julie
Published: October 2010

On June 21, residents of Fremont, a small meatpacking town just outside Omaha, Nebraska, voted by 57 percent to deny work and shelter to undocumented immigrants. Why Fremont, Nebraska, and why now? Some observers, not knowing the Fremont measure was cooked up by the same coalition that passed Arizona's law—Kansas City lawyer Kris Kobach, for example, was involved in both measures—are calling it a homegrown, heartland, good ole Nebraskan approach to solving the immigration problem. The fact is that numerous dynamics have combined to make immigration particularly explosive in Fremont: ambitious politicians across Nebraska and nationwide; widespread economic turmoil combined with fast-paced globalization; and neoliberal policies that limit governments' abilities, both in Mexico and the United States, to respond to these widespread transformations. Tying all of it together is the global journey of one transformative commodity: corn. Following Nebraska corn as it travels across the United States, to foreign countries like Mexico and back to meatpacking plants in Nebraska, illuminates the forces that made immigration a hot-button issue in Fremont.
Paul Goodman and the Old New Left
Authors: Flacks Dick
Published: October 2010

I'm still puzzled fifty years later by what it was about the climate and the culture in 1960 that encouraged many young people to think they could make the world over. That was the year when little groups of black students brought down entrenched segregation by putting their bodies over lines they weren't supposed to cross. In that same year, students rose up en masse in Turkey, South Korea, and Japan; a host of African countries declared their independence from colonial rule; John Kennedy became the first person born in the twentieth century to take over the U.S. presidency; Bobby Zimmerman started to perform as Bob Dylan. A strong sense of youth rebellion and generational cleavage was emerging, and it was in that year that Paul Goodman succeeded in publishing Growing Up Absurd.
Something about Christopher
Authors: Alterman Eric
Published: October 2010

Has there ever been anyone quite like Christopher Hitchens? As a writer and a thinker, Hitchens may be the greatest performance artist the profession has ever produced. He is Oscar Wilde without the plays; Gore Vidal without the novels; Edmund Wilson without the ideas; George Orwell without the integrity; and Richard Burton without the movies (and Elizabeth Taylor). What he is not, however, is the author of lasting works of either reportage, criticism, philosophy, or, dare I say it, literature. Despite his myriad (and on occasion, damnnear miraculous) talents as literary critic, columnist, and long-form journalist, Hitchens's genius undoubtedly lies in the art of the argument. "The world I live in is one where I have five quarrels a day, each with someone who really takes me on over something; and if I can't get into an argument, I go looking for one, to make sure I trust my own arguments, to hone them," he has explained, adding, "I would often rather have an argument or a quarrel than be bored, and because I hate to lose an argument, I am often willing to protract one for its own sake rather than concede even a small point."
The Broken Economy
Authors: Levinson Mark
Published: October 2010

Two and a half years after the recession started, Wall Street executives are once again collecting billions in bonuses, businesses are flush with cash, but most of America is still hurting. After a growth spurt at the end of last year, the U.S. economy is slowing, as the fiscal stimulus dissipates and spending contractions at the state and local level undermine injections from the federal government. The growth that has occurred is largely the result of replenishing inventories, and this has run its course. Most distressing, unemployment is at 9.5 percent, a rate historically associated with a severe recession, and it now appears likely that it will rise into next year.
Restoring the Spirit
Authors: Meier Deborah
Published: October 2010

"Our public officials are not much concerned about the 'waste of human resources'.… But … the big causes of stupidity, of lack of initiative and lack of honorable incentive, are glaring," noted Paul Goodman—a half-century ago—in Growing Up Absurd. "Our society cannot have it both ways: to maintain a conformist and ignoble system and to have skillful and spirited men to man that system with." That word, "spirited," is where I rest the heart of our case. Spirited students require spirited teachers, of course. And we are killing off the spirit in the most deliberate way—fifty-five years after Goodman published these words.
Misreading Obama
Authors: Bradley David
Published: October 2010

The nomination, election, and inauguration of Barack Obama signified a multiplicity of things to a multitude of people. To some, it was the realization of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s not-by-the-color-of-their-skin-but-by-the-content-of-their-character Dream; to others, it was the actualization of J. Edgar Hoover's creeping-philosophical-communist Nightmare. To some, it was an international relations marketing coup "redefining the American 'brand'"; to others, it was Viagra for the old Kennedy/Camelot vigor. To many, it was the fulfillment of Biblical prophesies, but some found the text in Isaiah, others in 1 Corinthians, still others in the Book of Revelation. Obama himself foretold this, in his second book, The Audacity of Hope. "I serve," he wrote, "as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." But Audacity itself was a product of a projection: that Barack Obama was a Literary Figure.
Europe in Crisis: What Lessons to Learn?
Authors: Weissman Steve , Browning Frank
Published: October 2010

Nothing feeds jolly bankers and dyspeptic pundits more than a tasty crisis, and this year's turmoil over the Euro has provided an especially rich diet to critics of state-owned enterprises and public sector social programs. "What we're seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state," wrote the columnist Robert J. Samuelson. "Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies." Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron honed the knife even sharper. "Tax increases will not fix things," he wrote. "Only major cutbacks in entitlements can avoid fiscal collapse."
In the Flower City, Take Root
Authors: Brown Michael J.
Published: October 2010

When I tell people that I live in my hometown of Rochester, N.Y., their most common response is, "Why?" Rochester is the fifty-first largest metro region in the United States, a tad smaller than Buffalo and a tad bigger than Tucson. The local delicacy is called the "garbage plate" and is best served after 2 a.m., with a side of Lipitor. Rochester is a snowy place. It is a place where corporate giants—Kodak, Xerox, Bausch and Lomb—once stalked the land but now skulk amid layoffs and falling profits. Rochester is a city with grinding urban poverty, but its suburbs are rather prosperous places from which crops of upwardly mobile students are harvested each graduation season. These students often leave the region, either for college or for work, and many never return. The city elders wring their hands over this "brain drain." The downtown core of the city is deserted after dark and, increasingly, during the work day. Large suburban business parks with rolling green lawns and constructed drainage ponds are luring businesses from the central skyscrapers. Some have characterized Rochester, along with cities like Buffalo, Detroit, and Baltimore, as dying. If I lived in New York, Washington, Boston, Seattle, or San Francisco, no one would ask me why. And yet when people ask how it is that I live here, I am eager to tell them.
Talking about Family Values After "Family Values"
Authors: Skolnick Arlene
Published: October 2010

More than a year ago, the front page of the New York Times featured a story on a new workplace trend. Besides laying off thousands of workers, employers have also been resorting to pay cuts, downgrades, and shortened work weeks more often than at any time since the Great Depression. The article went on to tell what happened to Bryan Lawlor, a thirty-fouryear-old airline pilot who lives in Virginia with his schoolteacher wife and their four children. He had been a captain earning $68,000 a year, in line for a promotion raise. But suddenly, he and other captains were demoted to the rank of first officer, automatically cutting their salaries in half. Lawlor's frank description of his emotional reactions to his new financial situation illustrates, in mild form, symptoms of what researchers have called the "normal pathology" of unemployment or other economic falls from grace. Not allowed to wear his captain's uniform or command an airliner, and no longer the major breadwinner in the family, Lawlor feels "diminished." He worries that the mortgage payments may now be unaffordable, and that the children, who have not been told of the change in family finances, will finally notice when Christmas brings many fewer clothes and toys than usual. And it bothers him that he can no longer pick up the check when the family goes out to dinner with his parents. With a solid marriage, supportive relatives, a roof over their heads, and a still decent twoearner income, the Lawlors are not the hardest hit victims of the current recession. But they could be poster children for the economic forces that have made even solid middle class lives far more uncertain and stressful. And the trouble started long before the financial meltdown of 2008. Indeed, the great untold story of the past four decades is the steady erosion of the economic underpinnings of American families, even while the national economy seemed to be thriving.
New Labour: An Obituary
Authors: Thompson Paul
Published: October 2010

You lose an election with your second worst performance ever, and 20,000 people join the party in the aftermath. Then the leadership contenders—all but one prominent ministers in the last government—compete with each other to distance themselves from that government's policies. There is a simple explanation for these seemingly strange behaviors—a lurch to the Left, similar to what (disastrously) happened after the 1979 defeat to Thatcher. But the people joining the party and joining in the critique are not, by and large, rabid leftists. What these events do mark is a palpable and pervasive sense of relief at the formal end of the New Labour project. I say formal because the project has been politically dead for quite some time. Hollow election victories allowed it to stumble on, zombie-like, across the political landscape, and only an actual defeat could lay the body to rest.
The Existential Problem of Urban Studies
Authors: Katz Michael B.
Published: October 2010

When I became director of the undergraduate Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania in 1983, I was surprised to find that it lacked a multidisciplinary course that aimed to provide a coherent interpretation of contemporary urban America. What accounted for deindustrialized, segregated, financially strapped, often violent cities with their failed public institutions and surrounding white suburbs? I wanted to give the students a single book that explained it all. No such book existed. In the circumstances, I felt compelled to undertake the task of synthesis myself in a single, introductory-level course. I called the course "Urban Crisis: American Cities Since World War II," and first taught it in 1984. The years since have witnessed extraordinary changes in cities, so great, in fact, that the first part of the title, "urban crisis," probably is an anachronism. But maybe not. There is a continuity that has made it possible to retain the intellectual framework of the course while updating the reading list to include, for instance, the surge in immigration and the recent decline in crime. But I had a problem in teaching the course. It tells a story of deindustrialization, population decline, racial segregation, failed public housing, and so on—all of it true and inescapable. And it leaves students depressed; indeed, it leaves me depressed. Wonderful young people, eager to help change the world, confront a tale of powerful structural forces abetted by ambitious politicians, by every level of government, by racism, greedy real estate and corporate interests, and academic researchers impotent to suggest realistic avenues for change. Is this the vision that I want to leave with our students?
Federalism in America: Beyond the Tea Partiers
Authors: Gerstle Gary
Published: October 2010

We hear a lot today about federalism, the doctrine that emphasizes the rights and powers of the states versus those of the federal government. The political Right expresses alarm at the dramatic expansion in central government power that began under George W. Bush during the 2008 financial crisis and that continued during Barack Obama's first eighteen months in office, first through the government's bailouts of financial institutions and the auto industry and then through the passage of the landmark national health care bill. Liberal groups, on the other hand, have turned to federalism in response to the perceived failure of the federal government during the Bush years to address major economic, social, and ecological challenges. Progressive Californians, for example, have been pushing ecologically friendly bills in their state, given the obstructions such legislation has faced in Congress. Massachusetts enacted its own government health care bill in response to a long period of federal inaction on the issue. Many gay marriage and marijuana legalization advocates now believe that they can accomplish more in state rather than national arenas. These advocates want to "free" their states from the grasp of federal authority on the issues that matter most to them. In this essay I explore the historical background to the current interest in federalism and argue that the powers possessed by state governments throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were more capacious, influential, and resilient than we customarily recognize them to have been. The durability of the states as a force in economic, social, and cultural affairs can only be understood by reference to an expansive and constitutionally sanctioned doctrine of police power. Police power endowed state governments (but not the federal government) with broad authority over civil society for at least the first 150 years of the nation's existence. The Civil War posed a sharp challenge to this doctrine, and, for a time, it seemed as though Reconstruction would inter it. But in the late nineteenth century, state legislatures, backed by the federal courts, rehabilitated this doctrine to attack and, in many cases, to reverse the centralization of power in the federal government that the Civil War seemed to have done so much to advance. Federalism finally did weaken in the 1930s and 1940s, but not until the 1960s and 1970s can we say that the central government had superseded the states as the premier center of political authority in America. Federalism's demise, then, is still a relatively recent phenomenon, a fact that fuels the hopes of those who want to see it revived.
The Credit Crisis and the Novel
Authors: Roth Marco
Published: October 2010

After the fall of 2008, when the American economy revealed itself to have been a particularly elaborate house of cards, after the astonishment and the rage and the losses still to be reckoned, those of us who hadn't lost too much—or whose unemployment at least offered time for reading in libraries not yet closed by state budget cuts—could search for novels about the very financial elites whose bubbleblowing actions proved so destructive to everyone but themselves. Who were these barbarians, no longer at the gate, but entrenched firmly in our midst? In what ways were these architects of our doom people just like us, but with more money; in what ways were they very different? Is there anything to be learned from such retrospective explorations of the inner lives of America's latest aristocracy? For the 99 percent of us who live on the wrong side of America's ever-widening income divide, inquiries into the moral and emotional lives of the I-bankers seem almost the height of poor taste, a bad joke on par with the taxpayer-funded bailout of banks that remain in private hands. A conscientious novelist invariably humanizes the characters created, yet it seems a perversion of justice for readers to extend, interest free, the credit of our compassion to the types of people who spend so much of their own emotional capital reducing the rest of us to the collateral of their speculative fantasies.