Im/possible Lives: Gender, Class, Self-Fashioning, and Affinal Solidarity in Modern South Asia

Drawing on ethnographic research and employing a micro-historical approach that recognizes not only the transnational but also the culturally specific manifestations of modernity, this article centers on the efforts of a young woman to negotiate shifting and conflicting discourses about what a good life might consist of for a highly educated and high caste Hindu woman living at the margins of a nonetheless globalized world. Newly imaginable worlds in contemporary Mithila,South Asia, structure feeling and action in particularly gendered and classed ways, even as the capacity of individuals to actualize those worlds and the “modern” selves envisioned within them are constrained by both overt and subtle means. In the context of shifting cultural anchors, new practices of silence, literacy, and even behaviors interpreted as “mental illness” may become tactics in an individual’s negotiation of conflicting self-representations. The confluence of forces at play in contemporary Mithila, moreover, is creating new structures of feeling that may begin to reverse long-standing locally held assumptions about strong solidarities between natal families and daughters, on the one hand, and weak solidarities between affinal families and new daughters-in-law, on the other.

Income, Trade and Pollution in Central Asia, Russia and China: An Econometric Analysis

The study performs a panel estimation of the relationship between per capita income, trade, and airborne pollution in the five Central Asian nations, Russia and China between 1992 and 2008. First, this study uses an environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis (EKC)- an inverted-U relationship between the increase in income and the level of environmental degradation - to examine how income and pollution are related. Second, the study uses a gravity model to estimate the effect of a regional trade agreement (Shanghai Cooperation Organization: SCO) on incomes and carbon dioxide emissions in the region. Empirical analysis confirms the existence of the rising portion of the EKC curve in the region - a positive correlation between per capita income growth and carbon dioxide emissions- and that the volume of bilateral trade, and not the existence of a regional trade agreement, contributes to the increasing level of environmental pollution.

Income, Trade and Pollution in Central Asia, Russia and China: An Econometric Analysis

The study performs a panel estimation of the relationship between per capita income, trade, and airborne pollution in the five Central Asian nations, Russia and China between 1992 and 2008. First, this study uses an environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis (EKC)- an inverted-U relationship between the increase in income and the level of environmental degradation - to examine how income and pollution are related. Second, the study uses a gravity model to estimate the effect of a regional trade agreement (Shanghai Cooperation Organization: SCO) on incomes and carbon dioxide emissions in the region. Empirical analysis confirms the existence of the rising portion of the EKC curve in the region - a positive correlation between per capita income growth and carbon dioxide emissions- and that the volume of bilateral trade, and not the existence of a regional trade agreement, contributes to the increasing level of environmental pollution.

Democratization, Education Reform, and the Mexican Teachers' Union

This study examines the effect of democratization on a key education reform across three Mexican states. Previous scholarship has found a positive effect of electoral competition on social spending, as leaders seek to improve their reelection prospects by delivering services to voters. However, the evidence presented here indicates that more money has not meant better educational outcomes in Mexico. Rather, new and vulnerable elected leaders are especially susceptible to the demands of powerful interest groups at the expense of accountability to constituents. In this case, the dominant teachers' union has used its leverage to exact greater control over the country's resource-rich merit pay program for teachers. It has exploited this control to increase salaries and decrease standards for advancement up the remuneration ladder. The evidence suggests that increased electoral competition has led to the empowerment of entrenched interests rather than voters, with an overall negative effect on education.