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AbstractAs opium cultivation is increasingly controlled in the Golden Triangle, producers and traffickers have created new markets for methamphetamines (ATS) amongst highland and lowland populations. At the same time, evolving forms of drug abuse also reflect a larger order of social change that directly shapes the consumer market. This article explores how demand for methamphetamines in mainland Southeast Asia emerges in sync with changing value systems fostered by development trajectories within a globalized commodity culture. The primary focus is on Akha highlanders in northwestern Laos for whom dual processes of opium eradication and village relocation directly encourage the currently prominent uptake of ATS. As Akha move into the lowlands to engage in modern capitalist systems of production, increased methamphetamine use emerges as a means to facilitate a greater reliance on sedentization and petty commodity trade. Rather than the uptake of heroin that took place in neighbouring countries, the transition from opium to methamphetamines is a highly charged sign of new social and material relations adopted by the Lao Akha as they enter primitive forms of capital accumulation and wage‐labour.

The specific framing of health within a development context has implications for constructions of wellness and illness and how people react in times of ill health. In Thailand, recent national HIV/AIDS education-prevention campaigns commonly use top-down relay of public health information. This pattern replicates numerous development projects that aim to bring useful and beneficial knowledge to rural villagers. How villagers integrate this information depends, in part, on previous experiences with development programs in general and public health programs in particular. This paper considers the political economy of medical knowledge and multiple local health strategies in rural Northeast Thailand as a background to the contingent response to public health directives.

Legally straight is a fascinating tour through over fifty years of American legal discourse that exposes the hypocrisies and prejudices of the illegality of lesbian and gay marriage and provides mu...

AbstractChildren entering secure accommodation, also known as 'secure care', are prevented from exercising free choice over most aspects of everyday life. This paper focuses on the relationship between agency and violence during transference to and early time in secure accommodation. Sharing interview extracts from 11 young people with experience of secure care as children, we explore how the routine processes of 'suppressing' children's agency supports the emergence of violence. We argue that the manner of transfer to secure accommodation creates a violent encounter that forces children's emotion and agency to redirect and intensify onto the self and others as further violence.

Since 1968, Argus Community, Inc., a South Bronx community-based organization, has had a 70 percent success rate in reclaiming the lives of some of the most at-risk youth in New York City, including juvenile delinquents and drug abusers. In 1987 Argus was selected by the Greater New York Fund as one of six best-managed social welfare agencies in New York. Argus begins by filling in emotional and parental gaps, through an extended family environment that restores trust and develops self-esteem. It moves young people through educational and vocational training to job programs and colleges, among other avenues of future growth. Organizations like Argus can be replicated. The effort must be carried out at the community level, but underwritten by the public sector working with additional private sector resources.

Since 1968, Argus Community, Inc, a South Bronx community-based organization, has had a 70% success rate in reclaiming the lives of some of the most at-risk youth in New York City, including juvenile delinquents & drug abusers. In 1987, Argus was selected by the Greater New York Fund as one of six best-managed social welfare agencies in New York City. Argus begins by filling in emotional & parental gaps through an extended family environment that restores trust & develops self-esteem. It moves young people through educational & vocational training to job programs & Colls, among other avenues of future growth. Organizations like Argus can be replicated. Such efforts must be carried out at the community level, but underwritten by the public sector working with additional private sector resources. HA

Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; Preface; 1: Introduction; I: Methodology for Statistical Analysis of Environmental Processes; 2: Modeling for environmental and ecological processes; 2.1 Introduction; 2.2 Stochastic modeling; 2.3 Basics of Bayesian inference; 2.3.1 Priors; 2.3.2 Posterior inference; 2.3.3 Bayesian computation; 2.4 Hierarchical modeling; 2.4.1 Introducing uncertainty; 2.4.2 Random effects and missing data; 2.5 Latent variables; 2.6 Mixture models; 2.7 Random effects; 2.8 Dynamic models; 2.9 Model adequacy; 2.10 Model comparison

Summary Unpaid carers were profoundly impacted by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and public health responses. In the UK, in March 2020, people identified as clinically extremely vulnerable and their household members were advised to "shield" for an initial 12-week period, which meant minimizing all contacts from outside the household and not leaving the house at all, unless in an emergency. In a modified form, shielding guidance remained in place until August 2020 and was reinstituted from December 2020 until April 1, 2021. This article, reporting on qualitative interviews with 47 unpaid carers in Wales, thematically analyzed using a coding framework, explores the experiences of unpaid carers affected by this shielding guidance and their wider implications for social work with unpaid carers in the future. Findings Participants in our study described ways in which their caring role expanded, due to the need to provide additional practical and emotional support for loved ones who were shielding, and who lost access to other avenues of support. Some also described their caring role as becoming more involved and complex due to the declining health or self-care capacity of the person cared-for as a direct consequence of shielding restrictions. Alongside the increase in their caring responsibilities, carers reported losing access to important avenues of support for their own well-being. Applications We draw on ecological systems theory to highlight the importance during care planning and management of exploring the carer's mesosystem to identify and optimize sustaining forces, and of attending to the microsystem involving the carer and person cared-for.