Throughout the 1990s, all Latin American countries but Cuba implemented to varying degrees health care sector reforms underpinned by a neoliberal paradigm that redefined health care as less of a social right and more of a market commodity. These health care sector reforms were couched in the broader structural adjustment of Latin American welfare states prescribed consistently by international financial institutions since the mid-1980s. However, since 2003, Venezuela has been developing an alternative to this neoliberal trend through its health care reform program called Misión Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighbourhood). In this article, we introduce Misión Barrio Adentro in its historical, political, and economic contexts. We begin by analyzing Latin American neoliberal health sector reforms in their political economic context, with a focus on Venezuela. The analysis reveals that the major beneficiaries of both broader structural adjustment of Latin American welfare states and neoliberal health reforms have been transnational capital interests and domestic Latin American elites. We then provide a detailed description of Misión Barrio Adentro as a challenge to neoliberalism in health care in its political economic context, noting the role played in its development by popular resistance to neoliberalism and the unique international cooperation model upon which it is based. Finally, we suggest that the Venezuelan experience may offer valuable lessons not only to other low- to middle-income countries, but also to countries such as Canada.
RESUMEN: La evidencia empírica colombiana parece mostrar, como la experiencia internacional, una relación positiva entre tamaño del Estado y grado de apertura de la economía desde la década de 1970. Para frenar esta tendencia creciente del Estado se necesitan esfuerzos grandes y persistentes en materia de reducción de gastos. El proceso de ajuste fiscal no puede recaer, como hasta ahora, en un mayor endurecimiento de la política tributaria. Se necesita urgentemente modificar en forma drástica nuestro régimen impositivo que simultáneamente elimine distorsiones y permita un aumento de los recaudos permanentes. Desafortunadamente, las alternativas de reformas tributaria y de pensiones consideradas por el Gobierno hasta ahora (agosto de 2004) están lejos de asegurar el equilibrio presupuestal de mediano plazo ; ABSTRACT: The Colombian empirical evidence, since the 1970's, seems to show a positive relationship between government size and degree of economy openness. In order to brake this growing tendency big and persistent efforts are needed with the purpose to reduce government expenditure. The fiscal adjustment process could generate, as currently, tougher taxation policy. It is urgently necessary to modify, in a drastic way, our tax regime that simultaneously eliminates distortions and allows an increase of the permanent tax revenues. Unfortunately, the alternatives of tax and pension reforms that have been considered by the government until now (august 2004), are far from allowing the budget equilibrium in the middle term.
The style of work and professional behavior of party officials of the highest rank of the western regions of Ukraine in the first post-war years is characterized. The specific historical conditions of their professional development in the commandadministrative system are considered. The party leaders of the western regions are analyzed as typical representatives of the new generation, who did not study history from textbooks, but created it with their own hands, with their direct participation. Attention is drawn to the fact that the authoritarian, even dictatorial style of management accompanied the party-Soviet elite at all stages of their career growth. Rising from the "lower classes", they were forced to constantly buckle under the system, prove their "proletarian" and devotion to the Party, constantly suffering from the danger of falling into the ranks of "enemies of the people". Therefore, party functionaries cultivated the rigid, forceful and peremptory leader in themselves. It was determined by their immanent necessity to conquer and maintain a high social status. It is emphasized, that the general behavior of nomenclature officials of the western regions of Ukraine in 1944–1946 fully fitted into the command-administrative system of the Stalinist model. The overwhelming majority of party leaders continued to use military methods of governance, by inertia, showing predisposition for bureaucracy, excessive rigidity and brutality.The nature of the relationships within the government and its representatives with the local population was determined by a number of objective and subjective factors: the low level of professional educational training of the overwhelming majority of officials of the higher and middle management level; frequent personnel fluidity; quite tense schedule of work, actually, with no fixed working hours; household disorder. Serious subjective factors are: newcomers (the absolute majority) did not know local conditions and traditions; the dominance of the atmosphere of total fear, lawlessness, permissiveness, which in total contributed to the formation in the minds of both local residents and party-Soviet functionaries of the image of a Soviet officer as an invader. ; Характеризується стиль роботи і професійної поведінки партійних чиновників найвищого рангу західних областей України в перші повоєнні роки з огляду на конкретно-історичні умови їх професійного становлення в рамках командноадміністративної системи. Партійні лідери західних областей розглядаються як типові представники нового покоління, яке вивчало історію не з підручників, а творило її своїми «руками», своєю безпосередньою участю. Звертається увага, що авторитарний, навіть диктаторський стиль управління супроводжував партійно-радянську еліту на усіх щаблях її кар'єрного росту. Піднімаючись із «низів», вони змушені були постійно прогинатися під систему, дово- дити свою «пролетарськість» та відданість Партії, перманентно наражаючись на небезпеку потрапити до лав «ворогів народу». Тому культивування партфункціонерами в собі жорсткого, вольового, безапеляційного керівника було детерміноване іманентною потребою завоювати та зберегти високий соціальний статус. Наголошується, що загальний стиль поведінки номенклатурних посадовців західних областей України в 1944–1946 роках цілком вписувався в командно-адміністративну систему сталінського зразка. Переважна більшість партійних керівників за інерцією продовжували використовувати військові методи управління, виявляючи схильність до бюрократизму, надмірної жорсткості та жорстокості. Характер взаємовідносин усередині влади та її представників із місцевим населенням визначався низкою чинників об'єктивного та суб'єктивного характеру: низький рівень професійно-освітньої підготовки переважної більшості чиновників вищої та середньої ланки управління; часта змінюваність кадрів; досить напружений графік роботи за умови практично ненормованого робочого дня; побутова невлаштованість. Серйозними суб'єктивними чинниками можна вважати: незнання прибулими (таких була абсолютна більшість) місцевих умов і традицій; панування атмосфери тотального страху, беззаконня, вседозволеності, що в сукупності сприяло формуванню у свідомості як місцевих мешканців, так і партійно-радянських функціонерів образу радянського службовця як окупанта.
AbstractThe legal struggle for women's right to self‐defence since the feminist mobilisation against violence in the 1970s reveals the startling history of the briefly expanded, and swiftly foreclosed, strategies for battered women's freedom in the late twentieth century. Voluminous legal scholarship focuses on the uses, promises and shortcomings of battered woman syndrome in the courts. But a historical accounting of the development and legal career of battered woman syndrome is essential to contextualising why this defence strategy took such tenacious root in the courtroom after the feminist self‐defence cases of the 1970s and what was lost in the lurch toward a psychological theory of women's protective violence.
This article is a comparative‐historical study of ILO action on occupational safety and health (OSH) as fundamental rights. In the two decades following the adoption of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the ILO used a realist lens and prioritized the idea that OSH were dependent upon economic preconditions for their protection. This history is revisited in the light of the new complex of global health uncertainty and the addition of OSH to the framework of fundamental principles and rights at work. The analysis highlights the applicability of a realistic vigilance approach to the ILO's current work on OSH.
Abstract The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on human lives as well as economic and social stability. The United States has a complicated history with biosecurity. The September 11th terror attacks uncovered various weaknesses in the national biosecurity infrastructure that have persisted into the current pandemic. This study explores the implications of framing the infectious disease biothreat as a security threat to improve our capabilities while protecting against the potential accelerated threat of bioterrorism in the post-COVID-19 era. To counter the increasing biothreats, the United States must invest in revamping the biodefense infrastructure to increase our resilience to various biothreats.
The scientific community of both Russia and Turkey has always shown great interest in the history of bilateral relations. The most important source of academic research on this topic is undoubtedly the Russian and Turkish archives. іn this regard, the documents stored in the Başbakanlik Osmanli Arfvleri (BOA ), the Archive of the Ottoman Empire, are of great importance. Until today, no systematic study of Russian-language documents of the Ottoman Archive has been carried out. This study is the first attempt at a comprehensive analysis of a number of unpublished letters of the Russian Emperor Alexander III to the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
We believe that a deep theoretical understanding of the history of the investigation allows us to eventually build it on the basis of the data obtained a full-fledged model of the investigation as an element of the law enforcement system that answers the question: what were the initial formations, what has now become and what are the prospects for the development of this model. The answers to them will help build a modern system of investigative work on a digital platform, since the activities of SD units today, as a rule, are carried out in a closed digital environment.
This article aims to present the image of the Silesian women emerging from the novels by Anna Dziewit-Meller (Góra Tajget [Mount Taygetus], Od jednego Lucypera [All Because of One Lucifer]). The analysis and interpretation focused on the category of silence inscribed in the studied text allow the author to draw conclusions about the complicated family relationships of women, marked by the twentieth-century history of Upper Silesia. In the article, the author posits a thesis about silence as an immanent trait of Dziewit-Meller's protagonists, and asks whether they have a chance of breaking out of the circle of traumas passed down in their families.
AbstractIn the shadows of a Shinto torii (gateway) in São Paulo's 'Japanese' neighbourhood rests the city's first burial ground for enslaved Africans. Recently unearthed, the gravesite is one of the few visible remains of the Liberdade neighbourhood's significance in São Paulo's 'Black zone'. This article excavates the history of the nearby Remedies church, the headquarters of Brazil's Underground Railroad and a long-time museum to the enslaved. The 1942 demolition of the Remedies church, I argue, comprised part of a spatial project of forgetting centred on razing the city's 'Black zone' and reproducing São Paulo as a non-Black, ethnically immigrant metropolis.
This article describes the history, development and social role of the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, which is located on the grounds of the former clandestine centre for detention, torture and extermination, in the intergenerational transmission of traumatic memories of the Argentinian dictatorship. The project is characterised by the cumulative effort of artistic expression, public debate, conflict and tension. Through the presentation of different artistic installations and plays, the article explains the focal function of art practices in spaces of memory that are strongly linked to a traumatic past, as well as how undertaking these practices can lead to the establishment of consensus.
Kashmir has had been recognised as the exception in the entire sub-continent for having authentic literary tradition which other areas are lacking. This paper provides initially a brief political history with the glimpse of both indigenous and British laws and regulations prior to the codification of the laws. The main focus of this paper is on the process of flexibility of the criminal justice system in the pre-colonial period. It tries to show how these different legal systems were in practice, equally plural and made up of multiple layers of rules and authorities—the dharmadhkari, the qazi and the judge.
This book changes our understanding of the Roman conceptions about the sea by placing the focus on shipwrecks as events that act as bridges between the sea and the land. The study explores the different Roman legal definitions of these spaces, and how individuals of divergent legal statuses interacted within these areas. Its main purpose is to chart and analyse the Roman conception of the maritime landscape from the Late Republican until the Severan period. This book integrates maritime history and ethnography with the physical remains of past maritime systems, such as shipwrecks, ports, villages, fortifications, and documented legal rulings
Abstract This introduction presents the symposium on Sam Knafo and Benno Teschke's article in Historical Materialism, 'Political Marxism and the Rules of Reproduction of Capitalism: A Historicist Critique' (2021). It briefly summarises the foundations of Political Marxism, discusses the broader implications of the debate raised by Knafo and Teschke for questions of collective knowledge-production and methods in Marxist historiography, and outlines the seven contributions of the symposium. The introduction concludes by tracing, through the evolution of debates in Political Marxism and the contributions of its protagonists, some of the lineages of Marxist historiography as well as of the history of this journal.
'The Lion, the Children and the Bookcase', Margaret Reynolds C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Anne Frank's diary, or The Diary of a Young Girl, were published in 1950 and 1947 respectively. Frank's document is a testament to history. Lewis's story is usually read as a fantasy or Christian allegory. But both books deal with the experience of racial hatred, betrayal, displacement, alienation, loss of identity and the damage inflicted on adults and on children. This article examines the connections, metaphorical and real, that link Frank's statement of witness to Lewis's reinterpretation of the effects of the 1939–45 war.
