The Diffusion Of Cigarette Smoking: An Exploratory Analysis

Rates of cigarette smoking vary considerably by age, sex, social class, geographic area, and period, but current theories of smoking behaviour were not intended to account for many of the major trends. A diffusion model has been used to explain the adoption, spread, and discontinuance of a number of new behaviours and techniques. In this thesis, a number of empirical generalizations developed by Rogers (1982) are tested using several approaches and data sets to determine the goodness of fit smoking behaviour with the diffusion model. These include predictions about the nature of the diffusion curve, the characteristics of cigarettes, and the characteristics of early adopters of smoking and cessation.;Several techniques are used to test these generalizations. Historical and recent patterns of smoking are described using survey and aggregate data for Canada and the United States. Canada Health Survey data are used to reconstruct estimates of rates of smoking for sex-birth cohorts for 1900-1978. The cohorts are stratified by region, education and occupation to examine patterns of adoption and cessation by geographic area and socioeconomic status. Log-linear analysis with a logit model is used to determine predictors of adoption, cessation and smoking level among individuals.;Results provide considerable support for the classic diffusion model. Estimates of rates of smoking conform generally to a diffusion curve. The diffusion model explains some but not all sex differences in patterns of cigarette smoking, and much of the variation by region and socioeconomic status. Sex differences in rates of smoking persisted for many years and disappeared only recently among younger cohorts of smokers. Both smoking and cessation occurred earlier in regions with characteristics that would predict early adoption and among smokers with higher socioeconomic status.;These analyses provide clues about future patterns of smoking. High rates of smoking found in late adopter categories are expected to decline faster than lower rates found among early adopters, resulting in increasingly similar patterns of use by region and social class, as has already occurred by sex. Late adopter groups will continue to be the most important target for prevention activity

You Are and You Ain\u27t: Redneck Literature and the Imposition of Identity

Redneck images pervade contemporary American culture and provide a pattern for national behavior. As globalization and multiculturalism change the demographics of the nation, covert Redneck codes enforce previous hegemonies of race, class, and gender. Imbued with incontestable American character, the Redneck becomes an ideological force capable of defending the nation from destabilizing cultural incursions. The maintenance of these Redneck codes relies on the continued reassertion of Southern and Appalachian stereotypes, since these regions must be maintained as authentic homelands for the identity character.;In this project, I locate a literary genealogy for the American Redneck and examine the roots and function of that identity through the complementary lenses of American Studies and Cultural Studies. My methodology draws on the seminal work of Henry Nash Smith and Richard Slotkin and their attention to the function of myth and symbol in American culture, with theoretical overlay from Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard, and Guy Debord. In considering the issues of representation present in these latter cultural theorists, I seek to reinvigorate Slotkin\u27s notion of the narrative, instead of the discursive, expression of ideology. By examining primary texts ranging from Fenimore Cooper\u27s Leatherstocking Tales to Erskine Caldwell\u27s Tobacco Road, and pop-cultural texts like Smokey and the Bandit, and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, I demonstrate how the mythological presence of the redneck narrative works to create a representational ideological category of hegemonic identity. The simulated and constructed realities of textual reception map onto the lives of the American working poor to emphasize a realistic if fully phantom and constantly shifting sense of common American identity. The notion of an authentic Redneck becomes normalized through the repetition of stock Southern and Appalachian myths, which in turn makes possible the hegemonic activation of these narratives. The force of representation seeks to make possible only dominant perspectives, defending hegemonic power from potential disruption

(5S,6S)-4,5-Dimethyl-3-methyl­acryloyl-6-phenyl-1,3,4-oxadiazinan-2-one

The title compound, C15H18N2O3, is an example of an oxadiazinan-2-one with significant inter­action between the N3-acyl and N4-methyl groups. These steric inter­actions result in a large torsion angle between the two carbonyl groups, not present with acyl substituents with less steric demand

(5R,6S)-4-Isopropyl-5-methyl-6-phenyl-3-propanoyl-2H-1,3,4-oxadiazinan-2-one

The title compound, C16H22N2O3, was synthesized during the course of a study on (1R,2S)-norephedrine-derived 1,3,4-oxadiazinan-2-ones. The conformation adopted by the isopropyl group is pseudo-axial relative to the oxadiazinan core. The allylic strain contributes to this conformational arrangement

(5S,6R)-5-Methyl-6-phenyl-4-propyl-1,3,4-oxadiazinane-2-thione

The title mol­ecule, C13H18N2OS, is an oxadiazinanthione derived from (1R,2S)-norephedrine. There are two molecules in the asymmetric. Both adopt roughly half-chair conformations; however, the 5-position carbon orients out of opposite faces of the oxadiazinanthiones plane in the two molecules. In the crystal structure, they are oriented as a dimer linked by a pair of N—H⋯S hydrogen bonds. The absolute configuration has been established from anomalous dispersion and confirms the known stereochemistry based on the synthetic procedure

Explaining the social gradient in smoking and cessation: the peril and promise of social mobility

Smoking in high-income countries is now concentrated in poor communities whose relatively high smoking prevalence is explained by greater uptake but above all by lower quit rates. Whilst a number of barriers to smoking cessation have been identified, this is the first paper to situate cessation itself as a classed and cultural practice. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out in a working class community in the North of England between 2012 and 2015, I theorise smoking cessation as a symbolic practice in relation to the affective experience of class and social mobility. I show that ambivalence about upward mobility as separation and loss translated into ambivalence about smoking cessation. The reason for this was that the social gradient in smoking operated dynamically at the level of the individual life course i.e. smoking cessation followed upward mobility. A serious health problem was an appropriate reason to quit but older women continued to smoke despite serious health problems. This was linked to historical gender roles leading to women placing a low priority on their own health as well as the intergenerational reproduction of smoking through close affective links with smoking parents