Suchergebnisse

In this comment, I build on Shiffman's call for the global health community to more deeply investigate structural and productive power. I highlight two challenges we must grapple with as social scientists carrying out the types of investigation that Shiffman proposes: the politics of challenging the powerful; and the need to investigate types of expertise that have traditionally been thought of as 'outside' global health. In doing so, I argue that moving forward with the agenda Shiffman sets out requires social scientists interested in the global politics of health to be reflexive about our own exercise of structural and productive power and the fact that researching global health politics is itself a political undertaking.

This article discusses the methodological and conceptual issues surrounding a long-term follow-up study of girls adopted from orphanages in China around the age of two years. The aim of the study was to see if any effects of early negative experiences affected the women some 45 years later. Seventy-two out of the original 100 women were assessed by means of interviews and questionnaires that explored their health, behaviour, achievements, life satisfaction, self-esteem, relationships, ethnic identification, community connectedness and personality profiles. The results were compared with data from the UK National Child Development Study of children born in 1958. It was found that on the measures used, the adopted women were little different from the national population, suggesting that early disadvantage can be reversed and positive developmental pathways re-established. The article then reviews the methods and instruments used to assess adults in mid-life, especially those sensitive to identifying adversities resulting from early neglect. It is suggested that checklists of psychological problems may be insufficient to produce a complete picture and that a wider range of measures is needed to capture important features of interpersonal relationships and parenting histories, with an additional requirement to incorporate the experiences and variables introduced by adoption. Two concepts – 'life-long preoccupations' and 'a carapace' – are suggested as especially useful in this respect.

This paper examines Stanley Cavell's theories from the perspective of a 'politics of cinema' and engages in a critical reading of Sofia Coppola's 2006 film, Marie Antoinette.

The concept of 'health security' has been increasingly apparent in recent years in both academic and policy discourses on transborder infectious disease threats. Yet it has been noted that there are a range of conceptualisations of 'health security' in circulation and that confusion over the concept is creating international tensions with some states (particularly from the Global South) fearing that 'health security' in reality means securing the West. This article examines these tensions but puts forward an alternative explanation for them. It begins by looking at the different 'health securities' that characterise the contemporary global health discourse, arguing that there is in fact a good deal more consensus than we are often led to believe. In particular there is a high level of agreement evident over what the major threats to 'health security' are and what should be done about them. These are a particular set of health risks which are primarily seen as major threats by Western developed nations, and contemporary global responses – often couched in the language of global health security – have a tendency to focus on containment rather than prevention. The article makes the case that to resolve the tensions around (global) health security there is the need for a more explicit recognition of the primary beneficiaries of the current system, and of who is bearing the costs. Only following such a recognition can meaningful debates be carried out about the appropriate prioritisation of global health security in relation to other global health governance priorities.

Alan Rushton discusses thinking over the last 30 years in developmental psychology as it affects fostering and adoption. He charts significant progress in six areas and assesses BAAF's contribution to various aspects of this accumulating knowledge.