A retrospective comparison of allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell and bone marrow transplantation results from a single center: A focus on the incidence of graft-vs.-host disease and relapse

To detect the effect of the stem cell source, allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantations (alloPBSCTs) performed between 1995 and 1997 from human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-identical siblings in 40 patients with acute and chronic hematological disorders were compared with a historical group of 40 patients with similar variables who had received allogeneic bone marrow transplants (alloBMTs) between 1993 and 1995. Patients in both groups were identical except that both the recipient and the donor ages were, on average, higher in the alloPBSCT group (26 vs. 36 [p = 0.005] and 27 vs. 32 [p = 0.024], respectively). Patients received similar therapy excluding posttransplant granulocyte colony-stimulating factor administration (97% in alloBMT vs. 12.5% in alloPBSCT). The median time to reach neutrophil counts >0.5×109/L and platelet counts >20×109/L was 13 and 14 days, respectively, in patients receiving alloPBSCTs compared with 19 and 27 days in patients receiving alloBMTs (p = 0.0014 and p = 0.0002). The alloPBSCT group required similar transfusions of red blood cells or platelets. The incidence of grade II-IV acute graft-vs.-host disease (aGVHD) was similar in both groups. However, chronic GVHD (cGVHD) of all grades developed in 78.1% of patients in the alloPBSCT group after a median follow-up period of 12.5 (range 0.5-34) months. In alloBMT recipients, cGVHD of all grades developed in 21.4% after a median follow-up period of 38 (range 0.5-62) months (p = 0.00001). Day 100 transplant-related mortality was also similar: 20% (8 of 40) in the alloBMT patients and 17.5% (7 of 40) in the alloPBSCT group. Although not statistically significant, a relatively higher relapse rate occurred in the alloBMT group (21.4 vs. 10.7%). The estimated disease-free survival in month 24 was 51.3% for alloBMT and 54.6% for alloPBSCT, and the estimated overall survival in month 24 was 56.1% for alloBMT and 64.6% for alloPBSCT. In conclusion, this retrospective comparison suggests that alloPBSCT from HLA-identical donors is associated with faster engraftment, fewer transfusions, and no greater incidence of aGVHD, but a high incidence of cGVHD

Using social reproduction theory to understand unfree labour

Most scholarship within social reproduction theory focuses on women’s paid and unpaid care and domestic work, typically within the global North. Rarely has social reproduction theory grappled with unfree labour in commodity supply chains, particularly in the global South. However, these labour relations also involve gendered power relations that cut across the productive and reproductive realms of the economy, which can be illuminated by social reproduction theory analysis. In this article, we reflect on how social reproduction theory can be used to make sense of unfree labour’s role in global supply chains, expanding its geographical scope and the forms of labour exploitation encompassed within it. Conceptually, we harness the insights of social reproduction theory, and Jeffrey Harrod and Robert W Cox’s work on ‘unprotected work’ in the global economy to examine how gendered power relations shape patterns of unfree labour. Empirically, we analyse interview and survey data collected among cocoa workers in Ghana through LeBaron’s Global Business of Forced Labour project. We argue that social reproduction theory can move global supply chain scholarship beyond its presently economistic emphasis on the productive sphere and can shed light into the overlaps between social oppression, economic exploitation, and social reproduction

The TOMA Approach to the Soma Mining Massacre

In his column in the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet on May 17, 2014, Turkish academic and media commentator Emre Kongar used the term “Soma-Toma model” to characterize the political economy of 2014 in Turkey. Soma is the name of the town where a mining accident took place on May 13th, taking the lives of 301 miners[i]. Soma has come to symbolize the very high human costs of hyper-developmentalism and crony capitalism for the working class of Turkey. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), Turkey ranks as the third worst country in the world and the worst in Europe in terms of workplace deaths. Fatal workplace accidents have become so commonplace in Turkey that many union activists and commentators are now preferring to use the term murder instead of “accident”. In the Soma case, the fact that repeated warnings by engineers, technicians, workers at the site and opposition politicians in parliament regarding the risks of production methods, were willfully ignored by the mining firm and the government in the weeks and months preceding the disaster has led some activists and commentators to use the term massacre to refer to the “accident”. </p

The Disciplinary Boundaries of Canadian Identity After September 11: Civilizational Identity, Multiculturalism, And the Challenge of Anti-Imperialist Feminism

This article aims to explore the ways in which Canadian identity has been reconfigured in the post-September 11 period. There has been a campaign to increasingly define Canadian identity along civilizational lines, as part of "Western civilization" and in a "clash of civilizations" framework. This re-configuration seeks to situate Canada internationally as an unconditional partner of the United States in foreign policy; internally, it has led to a re-whitening of Canadian identity and increased marginalization of its nonwhite minorities. Such an emphasis in national identity may appear to be a retreat from multiculturalism as the policy in effect in Canada since the 1970s; alternatively, it may represent a crystallization of certain inequalities, as well as inherent ambiguities and tensions, present in liberal multiculturalism even in the best of times. The focus of this article on the violent political reaction to a speech Sunera Thobani made in October 2001 reflects on notions of Canadian national identity and belonging in the post-September 11 period. </p

Three Surprises of the Gezi Park Protests

Starting on May 28, 2013 and still continuing as this article goes to press, Turkey has witnessed the several-week occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul and huge protests, which have spread to 78 out of Turkey’s 81 provinces. The protests, which originated in reaction to plans for replacing the park with a shopping mall, were not simply about this park, but became a lightning rod for grievances against the policies of the governing party, the AKP. Those policies promoted unfettered neoliberal growth—including “urban renewal”—with creeping Islamization, conservative regulation of lifestyles, political repression, and police brutality that choked political dissent. The scope of protests have exceeded what anyone even imagined in the initial days of action in the park. The largely unplanned protests, especially those in Gezi Park and the adjacent Taksim Square, offer three surprises that may promise a better future for Turkish politics. </p

(Some) Turkish Transnationalism(s) in an Age of Capitalist Globalization and Empire: “White Turk” Discourse, the New Geopolitics, and Implications for Feminist Transnationalism

This paper proposes that regional feminisms would be productive in avoiding some of the problems of “global feminism” or the co-opted shapes feminist transnationalism might take when it serves the priorities of international organizations or imperial powers. While Middle Eastern feminists would especially benefit from regional transnational links—given the nature of the social, economic, political, and geopolitical challenges that face the women and the people of the region in an age of capitalist globalization and empire—the paper warns that some dominant feminisms in the region may not be up to the task. The focus of the paper is on “white Turk” identity and ideology which have emerged in Turkey since the 1980s and have significantly influenced political and intellectual orientations among intellectuals, including liberal feminists. It is argued that this influence negatively impacts the capacity of liberal feminism both to articulate inclusive analysis and politics that would address different groups of Turkish women and to relate to other feminist groups in the Middle East.</p

In the Privacy of our own Home: Foreign Domestic Workers as Solution to the Crisis in the Domestic Sphere in Canada

Despite marked increases in the participation of women in the labour force, neither the availability and quality of socialized child care arrangements nor the division of housework between men and women appear to have changed radically. The structure, demands and pressures of the labour market in Canada allow for less flexibility in the accommodation of family needs and responsibilities than is the case in several European countries. Under these circumstances, housework and child care remain private burdens to be shouldered mainly by women, who must either work double and triple days or find substitutes. </p

Dance of Orientalisms and waves of catastrophes: culturalism and pragmatism in imperial approaches to Islam and the Middle East

This article focuses on a seeming contradiction between ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘Islamophilic’ approaches in contemporary Western policies and discourses on the Middle East. While Islamophobia continues to shape some domestic policies of Western states and provide ideological justification for the wars they wage abroad, ‘Islamophilic’ tendencies in foreign policy have also emerged, especially in responses to the ‘Arab Spring’. Not clearly noted in Western public discourse, this represents a historical continuation of Western support for Islamism common during the Cold War, but is also a shift from the Islamophobic discourse of the post-cold war period, especially since 9/11. While Islamophobic and Islamophilic discourses may appear to be opposites, the paper argues that they represent two sides of the Orientalist logic, continuing to reduce understanding of Middle Eastern societies and politics to a culturalist dimension. Unlike traditional Orientalism, they treat Middle Eastern people as political subjects, but approach them as defined by their culture and religion. They define ‘moderate’ Islamism as the typical (and preferred) politics of the people of the region. Focusing on specific recent developments, the paper suggests that, rather than paving the way to more peaceful relations with the region or to internal peace and stability there, the Islamophilic shift in Western policy may rather lead to new waves of catastrophes by further destabilising and fragmenting the region, threatening to evoke new waves of Islamophobia in the West. </p