Suchergebnisse

AbstractFive‐year survival rates for many forms of cancer are higher in the United States than other countries in the world. There is some evidence that this reflects effective treatment of the disease, but there is equally compelling evidence that, even if better care is available in the United States, it is not equally accessible to all citizens. Despite the difficulty of interpreting cancer survival statistics, U.S. health policy debates offer a story that is simplistic. Cancer statistics are used to claim that the U.S. health care system is the "best in the world" and that efforts to evaluate the value of technology will compromise the quality of care available to patients with cancer and other life threatening illnesses. The argument that newer and more expensive medical technology always leads to better outcomes makes it difficult to conduct a reasonable public discourse about the merits of further public investment.

Since the reflexive turn in sociology and social anthropology, 'identity negotiation' and the 'insider/outsider' dilemma have been central topics of ethnographic literature. Much of the writings have exposed how the sociocultural biography and the identity of Western researchers interact, contradict and collaborate with the constructed 'self' of the participants of research. However, African development researchers have largely focused on describing the substantive component, with only scant analysis of the research process. In this article, illustration of the author's experiences in the process of undertaking fieldwork on Amhara Credit and Savings Institution, a microfinance institution located in Ethiopia, and its clients, demonstrates that African development ethnographers' interaction with participants of research is affected by their methodological preference and by their political and cultural identity. The article exemplifies that African development ethnographers are partially inhibited in research process and interpretation by boundaries imposed by their own research orientation and by their political and cultural identity.

A cultural turn in the economy has led to growth in what might be called 'spiritual entrepreneurship'.1 This term refers to entrepreneurs inspired by a New Age philosophy marketing spiritual values such as 'self-development', 'holism' and 'deep values'. To shed light on this type of enterprise, the article examines one of its practitioners; Esther Utsi at Polmakmoen Guesthouse in northern Norway. My focus is on how New Age spirituality is here localized, wrapped in local indigenous culture and landscape, and turned into a commodity with market value for both tourists and conference participants. The staging of spirituality simultaneously involves marketing a vacation destination to outsiders, and is also linked to the formation of a reimagined local identity, and incorporated into the redefinition of images and dreams about the northern region.

http://www.africanminds.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/13784602701303358565.pdf ; For several centuries Cape Town has accommodated a great variety of musical genres which have usually been associated with specific population groups living in and around the city. Musical styles and genres produced in Cape Town have therefore been assigned an "identity" which is first and foremost social. This volume tries to question the relationship established between musical styles and genres, and social - in this case pseudo-racial - identities. In Sounding the Cape, Denis-Constant Martin recomposes and examines through the theoretical prism of creolisation the history of music in Cape Town, deploying analytical tools borrowed from the most recent studies of identity configurations. He demonstrates that musical creation in the Mother City, and in South Africa, has always been nurtured by contacts, exchanges and innovations made possible by exchanges, whatever the efforts made by racist powers to separate and divide people according to their origin. Musicians interviewed at the dawn of the 21st century confirm that mixture and blending characterise all Cape Town's musics. They also emphasise the importance of a rhythmic pattern particular to Cape Town, the ghoema beat, whose origins are obviously mixed. The study of music demonstrates that the history of Cape Town, and of South Africa as a whole, undeniably fostered creole societies. Yet, twenty years after the collapse of apartheid, these societies are still divided along lines that combine economic factors and "racial" categorisations. Martin concludes that, were music given a greater importance in educational and cultural policies, it could contribute to fighting these divisions, and promote the notion of a nation that, in spite of the violence of racism and apartheid, has managed to invent a unique common culture.

For decades, NGOs targeting world hunger focused on ensuring that adequate quantities of food were being sent to those in need. In the 1990s, the international food policy community turned its focus to the "hidden hunger" of micronutrient deficiencies, a problem that resulted in two scientific solutions: fortification, the addition of nutrients to processed foods, and biofortification, the modification of crops to produce more nutritious yields. This hidden hunger was presented as a scientific problem to be solved by "experts" and scientifically engineered smart foods rather than through local knowledge, which was deemed unscientific and, hence, irrelevant. In Hidden Hunger, Aya Hirata Kimura explores this recent emphasis on micronutrients and smart foods within the international development community and, in particular, how the voices of women were silenced despite their expertise in food purchasing and preparation. Kimura grounds her analysis in case studies of attempts to enrich and market three basic foods—rice, wheat flour, and baby food—in Indonesia. She shows the power of nutritionism and how its technical focus enhanced the power of corporations as a government partner while restricting public participation in the making of policy for public health and food. She also analyzes the role of advertising to promote fortified foodstuffs and traces the history of Golden Rice, a crop genetically engineered to alleviate vitamin A deficiencies. Situating the recent turn to smart food in Indonesia and elsewhere as part of a long history of technical attempts to solve the Third World food problem, Kimura deftly analyzes the intersection of scientific expertise, market forces, and gendered knowledge to illuminate how hidden hunger ultimately defined women as victims rather than as active agents.

For decades, NGOs targeting world hunger focused on ensuring that adequate quantities of food were being sent to those in need. In the 1990s, the international food policy community turned its focus to the "hidden hunger" of micronutrient deficiencies, a problem that resulted in two scientific solutions: fortification, the addition of nutrients to processed foods, and biofortification, the modification of crops to produce more nutritious yields. This hidden hunger was presented as a scientific problem to be solved by "experts" and scientifically engineered smart foods rather than through local knowledge, which was deemed unscientific and, hence, irrelevant. In Hidden Hunger, Aya Hirata Kimura explores this recent emphasis on micronutrients and smart foods within the international development community and, in particular, how the voices of women were silenced despite their expertise in food purchasing and preparation.

In this article, the author argues that the Progressives can be as much characterized as the antistatists of the nineteenth century as the statists of the twentieth century because their overriding goal was the destruction of the party state and not, directly, the creation of the bureaucratic state. They found in Anti-Federalist political thought a general antistatist template that they used to articulate their specific objection to the nineteenth-century party state. This template comprised a mutual commitment to simple government, the common good as a preinstitutional reality, democracy, direct and responsive government, fear of elite rule, civic education, and cultural homogeneity. Adapted from the source document.