Classic Debate Research Articles

Recovering the Nation's Body: Cultural Memory, Medicine, and the Politics of Redemption

this provocative ethnography, Hogle reveals how the uses of human tissue and organs as therapeutic agents are intimately related not only to expanding arenas of commodification, but also to the politics of nationalism. A challenge to received wisdom about bodies and persons.-Margaret Lock, author of Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America This astonishing portrait of changing understandings of life and death is both profound and revolutionary. While extending classical debates about body parts as gifts and as commodities, it brilliantly transfigures them. Unparalleled in its field, this powerful book redefines the future of medical anthropology.-Sarah Franklin, Reader in Cultural Anthropology, Lancaster University (England) The body is both a site for medical practice and a source of tools for therapeutic and scientific uses. There are many meanings ascribed to the body that both affect and are affected by numerous cultural, economic, political and legal issues. In order to procure and use body organs and tissues, Linda F. Hogle states, scientists enlist a wide array of cultural assumptions. Nowhere is this more evident than in present-day Germany, where the specter of Nazi medical experimentation still plays a large role in national policies governing treatment of both living and dead bodies and the way these policies are put into practice. In their efforts to distance themselves from the atrocities of the past, German medical practitioners and policy-makers have reformulated ideas of bodily violation. Furthermore, the reunification of East and West Germany has engendered new questions about the relationship between individuals' bodies, science, and the state. Recovering the Nation's Body is the first book to analyze the actual practices involved in procuring human body parts, and the first to examine how the German past and the unique present-day situation within the European Union are keys to understanding the forms that medical practice takes within various cultural contexts. Linda F. Hogle is a fellow at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. She has written widely on the anthropology of science and on bioethics and cultural diversity.

The concept of population prevention: application to schizophrenia.

There is currently a debate about the appropriate approach to prevention of schizophrenia. While many argue that prevention efforts should focus on individuals at high risk of developing the illness, others argue for interventions that would reduce the risk in the whole population. This article situates the debate in a historical context. We find its antecedents in a classic 1940s and 1950s debate between British physicians George Pickering and Robert Platt on hypertension and trace a line from Pickering to the influential concept of population prevention formulated by his student Geoffrey Rose. We then discuss the potential application of population prevention to schizophrenia. The article concludes that population and high-risk prevention strategies can be complementary and that it may be feasible and appropriate to use them in combination.

Social Integration, Imitation, and the Geographic Patterning of Suicide

One of sociology's defining debates centers on explanations of the geographic patterning of suicide. This classic debate is revisited using techniques of spatial analysis and data for two geographies: late nineteenth-century French departments, and late twentieth-century U.S. counties. Results of the French analysis contradict Durkheim's claim that imitation plays no role in shaping the geographic patterning of suicide. Suicide rates for northern and southern French departments cluster geographically even when the clustering of multiple dimensions of social integration is controlled. These findings are replicated in a contemporary analysis of nonwestern U.S. counties. Results for the American West, however, support the Durkheimian view that suicide clusters in geographic space only because important structural predictors of suicide, including measures of social integration, do so as well. These discrepant findings are reconciled and it is concluded that the geographic patterning of suicide is shaped by both social integration and imitation.

Social Integration, Imitation, and the Geographic Patterning of Suicide

One of sociology's defining debates centers on explanations of the geographic patterning of suicide. This classic debate is revisited using techniques of spatial analysis and data for two geographies: late nineteenth-century French departments, and late twentieth-century U.S. counties. Results of the French analysis contradict Durkheim's claim that “imitation” plays no role in shaping the geographic patterning of suicide. Suicide rates for northern and southern French departments cluster geographically even when the clustering of multiple dimensions of social integration is controlled. These findings are replicated in a contemporary analysis of nonwestern U.S. counties. Results for the American West, however, support the Durkheimian view that suicide clusters in geographic space only because important structural predictors of suicide, including measures of social integration, do so as well. These discrepant findings are reconciled and it is concluded that the geographic patterning of suicide is shaped by both social integration and imitation.

High School Students Debate Future of Mental Health Care

High School Students Debate Future of Mental Health Care

Do Regulatory and Balanced Budget Requirements Risk Exacerbating Economic Cycles? Or a Paradox of Prudence?

Regulations established for economic agents and policy rules established for governments incorporate distilled wisdom based on (usually unhappy) experience as to what works and what doesn’t. At times, however, these rules require action that appears to run contrary to common sense. At the heart of this question is the classic debate over rules versus discretion in public policy. Automatic rules designed to build in prudent behaviour for an individual entity, whether it be a person, a bank or insurer, or a country, can, in certain circumstances lead to the paradox of prudence noted by Paul Samuelson. Those circumstances arise when the individual entities cease to behave as uncorrelated individuals and become a correlated herd, all heading in the same direction – often because of the same external shock. However, the alternative of discretionary eclecticism has often turned into a slippery. The question thus becomes which is the lesser of the two evils – the rigidity of the rule or the slippery slope of discretionary eclecticism. This note argues in favour of setting rules that meet with common sense and meeting them in the normal course, but not necessarily meeting them. The overwhelming importance of prior credibility is stressed.

Agrarian Questions and Enduring Peasants: A Classic Debate Enters the Age of Globalisation

Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America edited by Deborah Bryceson, Cristobal Kay and Jos Mooij, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 2000. Pp.x + 333. £17.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85 339 477 7 Tom Brass, 2000, Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism: The Return of the Agrarian Myth (Library of Peasant Studies No. 17), London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass. Pp.xii + 380. £45 (hardback); £18.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 7146 4940 6 and 8000 1

Rethinking Productivity: Why has Productivity Focussed on Labour Instead of Natural Resources?

The contribution of natural resources and ecosystems to economic processes still remains under-assessed by market evaluation and productivity analysis. Following the historical lines of the classical productivity debate ranging from the French Physiocrats to early neoclassical growth theories, the productivity concept underwent a gradual transformation from its previous understanding based on natural resources and other environmental factors to its contemporary narrow notion. This paper claims that the course of the classical debate has shaped the scope of predominant contemporary analysis. Except for some very recent findings, multifactor productivity largely focusses on a two-factor model. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) provides a useful step for widening the measurement and notion of productivity.

Memories are Made of This: Temporality and practitioner research

This article sets out to examine the nature of time and how it is constructed within reflective teacher research. The article is motivated on the one hand by a belief in evolving identity but on the other acknowledges a world where such identities are collapsing into interweaving discourses where notions of such evolution are not tenable. It draws on a classic debate between Gadamer and Habermas concerned with how we experience our living in the present, either as a 'being in the world', or as an 'endgainer' aspiring to a new structural framework within which life will be unconstrained by reifications of oppressive relations. After questioning the notion of human agency these views presuppose, the article pursues a resolution offered by Ricoeur and his subsequent work on the close relation between time and the stories we tell about it. Some work arising from a course for teachers is described in which attempts are made to reconcile practice with descriptions of it. In particular, issues of the teachers wo...

After Dogma: Reinhard H¨tter’s Challenge to Contemporary Theology: A Review Essay

Reinhard Hütter’s Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice constitutes an important new proposal for relating theology, doctrine and the life of the church. The central problematic is posed by the privatization of Christianity in the modern world, as exemplified in the classic debate between Karl Barth and Erik Peterson on the status of dogma. Against modern theological constructivism, Hütter argues that theology must be situated within the overall pathos of life in the Spirit, concretely mediated through church practices and the dogma that defines them as a distinctive ‘public’. Despite its sometimes thin exegetical basis, the work offers a fresh, ecumenically promising account of the theological endeavour.

Dendritic mechanisms in brain function and developmental disabilities.

The papers assembled in this special issue of Cerebral Cortex are part of a continuing dialogue on cellular and molecular aspects of synaptic development and their impact on brain function, which was stimulated by a meeting sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (April 30– May 1, 1998 at the NIH). In recent years, various types of dendritic abnormalities have been described in Down syndrome, fragile-X syndrome, Rett syndrome, autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Subtle alterations in dendritic structure or number are precisely the types of abnormalities that would account for a brain that is largely functional, but has subtle deficits in particular cognitive and/or behavioral domains. Remarkable technical advances allow us to focus on the key cellular and molecular events in brain development, synaptic transmission and information processing. This provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the cognitive and behavioral deficits associated with these disorders, and to develop improved therapeutic strategies. Several papers in this issue address the determinants of dendritic structure during development. Tashiro, Minden and Yuste examine the role of small signaling molecules in hippocampal development. They use two-photon microscopy to examine the effects of GTPases of the Rho family transfected into cultured pyramidal cells, and describe the acute effects on the density and morphology of dendritic spines. Hormones and other trophic factors also shape dendritic structure, as evidenced by the profound alterations seen in thyroid hormone deficiency disorders. Thompson and Potter examine the classes of thyroid hormone-responsive genes in the brain as a basis for understanding the effect of hormonal deficiencies on neuronal development. Frotscher, Drakew and Heimrich examine the effect of afferent input on dendritic structure. Using hippocampal neurons co-cultured with entorhinal explants, they show that the granule cell dendritic arbor develops the same laminar specificity in vitro as in vivo, but it is reduced in the absence of entorhinal co-culture. Blockade of afferent activity by tetrodotoxin affects spine morphology on granule cell dendrites but not their density. For several decades, researchers have sought the structural basis of learning and memory. Classic debates have focused on increases in synaptic number versus increasing efficacy of specific synaptic interactions. Three papers in this issue highlight current thinking on structural changes that may provide the basis for functional alterations in neurological pathways. Geinisman reviews changes in the hippocampus associated with long-term potentiation (LTP), a simplified model of memory. Evidence from a number of researchers indicates that LTP is associated with a maturation of synaptic interactions, rather than a net increase in the number of synaptic contacts. Histological studies show a shift from less mature to more mature synaptic profiles, consistent with more efficacious transmission across existing sites and possibly even recruitment of formerly silent synapses. The structural basis of learning is less clear; some studies suggest increases in synaptic number and while others suggest maturation of existing synapses. In a related paper, McAllister reviews studies on the interplay of electrical activity and dendritic structure, which has become a dominant theme in developmental neurobiology. She examines some of the key cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive this dynamic process, and the possible role of neurotrophic factors. Lambe, Goldman-Rakic and Aghajanian examine the effects of serotonin on different regions of pyramidal dendrites within the laminate structure of the prefrontal cortex. They find evidence for layer-specific and compartment-specific effects on synaptic transmission, and discuss these finding in terms of dendritic architecture and the regulation of thalamo-cortical neuro

Revisiting William Morris Davis and Walther Penck to Propose a General Model of Slope ‘Evolution’ in Deserts

Based on research from slopes on rhyolite domes of known age formed over a million-year continuum in eastern California, a classic geomorphic debate is reconsidered and a general model of desert slope development proposed. This study examines steep (∼25° to ∼35°) boulder-dominated slopes that include well, varnished, vertically oriented colluvial deposits. Such deposits are common throughout the arid southwestern United States. Basic field and isotopic dating methods are combined with two surface-dating techniques, cosmogenic chlorine-36 and rock varnish microlaminae, to produce a detailed slope development history with broad implications for geomorphic theory that includes the unresolved geomorphic debate between Walther Penck and William Morris Davis. Slopes in this study are dominated by the on-going desert slope processes of debris flows and in-situ grain disintegration as evidenced by active debris flow features, terminal Pleistocene ages of microlaminae, and chlorine-36 ages progressively younger than potassium-argon ages for slope genesis. Results also indicate that slopes retreat in a parallel fashion as postulated by Penck. Furthermore, the deposits do not exhibit significant changes in grain size, shape, or angularity from genesis to ∼0.6 Ma but change markedly after that time possibly indicating a geomorphic threshold between ∼0.6 and ∼1 Ma, or episodic erosional events throughout the mid to late Pleistocene.

A better red: The transition from communism to coca-cola in Romania

The transition from central planning to market-oriented economies in Eastern and Central Europe provides a fascinating laboratory for research in economic theory and business practice. With the collapse of communism, the inefficiencies of centralized planning have been laid bare. The classic debates between Mises and Lange on the viability of planning, although long resolved in the minds of free-market advocates, have been settled. Poznanski (1992), in an aptly titled book, Constructing Capitalism, makes the following observation: “The experience of state socialist economies also validates the hypothesis that efficient production is not only impossible without market competition but also without private property as a principle form of resource ownership and use control.” Austrian economists and others recognize that privatization of state-owned enterprises and the establishment of a system of property rights are the most important issues in the transition process. Svejnar (1991), for example, states that the absence of property rights is “the Achilles heel of the transition.” Although economists such as Jeffrey Sachs and others, who have served as advisors to various governments in the transition, recognize that privatization is important, they, however, also add other issues such as fiscal reform (i.e., taxes), monetary stability, and so on. Rothbard (1992) has provided some insight into an Austrian perspective dealing with these issues. Problems dealing with privatization, monetary reforms, and so forth are macro issues. Our research has focused more on what we call the micro issues; that is, managerial and entrepreneurial problems in the transition. Among the many challenges confronting economies in transition is the promotion of entrepreneurs hip and successful business practices. Entrepreneurship involves the ability to predict how consumer demand will change and to find cost-efficient ways of supplying new products that govern business success. Exercising this ability and developing the talent necessary for successful market ventures was foreign to Romanians under the old regime. Responding to consumer demand was impossible in the planned economies. To some extent, the mind-set that existed during the communist era remained intact after the collapse of the dictatorship and the liberalization of the economy. Arzeni (1996) contends

Long slow burn: sexuality and social science

Kath Weston's powerful collection of essays, Long, Slow Burn, challenges the preconception that queer studies is the brainchild of the humanities and argues that social science has been talking about all along. To deny this one would have to overlook Kinsey's pioneering research in the 1950s, or the psychiatrist Evelyn Hooker's pathbreaking study of homosexuality, but also in the sex talk that lies at the heart of classic debates on kinship, inequality, cognition, and other foundational topics in the social sciences. What is different now, Weston claims, is the way sexuality has been isolated from other contemporary issues. Not content with its ghettoization as a contained subfield, Weston refuses to draw an artificial line around sexuality.

Los contextos sociales e institucionales de una economía monástica: Santa María de Montederramo en el siglo XIII

RESUMENLa autora se pregunta por las causas de la consolidación y pervivencia de formas institucionales ineficientes desde un punto de vista económico. Se estudia un caso concreto: el monasterio cisterciense de Santa María de Mon-tederramo (Orense) en el siglo XIII para poner en evidencia la existencia de marcos institucionales formales e informales definidores de la acción de unos agentes cuyos intereses se construyeron en el proceso de interacción social, es decir, en contextos socio-culturales determinados y no como fruto de la limitación institucional sobre la naturaleza maximizadora de agentes extemporales. En primer lugar, el artículo presenta las paradojas en los debates clásicos sobre el Císter. Atendiendo a la Regla de la Orden, se acepta que el Císter perseguía varios objetivos: la compactación de las parcelas adquiridas, la tenencia en régimen de propiedad no compartida y la explotación de la tierra con mano de obra propia. A partir del caso elegido se reflexiona sobre la distancia entre los principios teóricos de la Orden y la morfología diversa de los señoríos y sus formas de gestión práctica. Se concluye que los monasterios se convirtieron en aparatos acumuladores de bienes invirtiendo recursos según criterios de reciprocidad, redistribución, identidad y estableciendo redes con las comunidades o con algunos de sus miembros destacados. En este compacto entramado de dinámicas sociales y mentales se fueron configurando sus formas económicas.

Reality transformed: film as meaning and technique

A new look at film that succeeds in combining the realist and formalist sides of an ongoing debate. In Reality Transformed Irving Singer offers a new approach to the philosophy of film. Returning to the classical debate between realists and formalists, he shows how the opposing positions may be harmonized and united. Singer concentrates on questions about appearance and reality, the visual and the literary, and the interplay between communication as a goal and alienation as a hazard in films of every sort. In three exemplary chapters, he provides suggestive readings of Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice, and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game. Reality Transformed will interest the general reader as well as students in all fields related to film studies.

Empirical evidence on alternative theories of inflation and unemployment: a re-evaluation for the Scandinavian countries

The paper re-evaluates some inflation and unemployment models for the Scandinavian countries, utilizing a general to specific methodology. Two nested models are considered to represent a spectrum of unemployment and inflation models in order to examine the monetarist versus new classical unemployment debate, and the Keynesian versus monetarist inflation debate. Using an improved methodology and larger data set different results from those of Akkina and Varamini are obtained. In particular, for unemployment unequivocal support is found for the new classical model, but for inflation, the empirical results support the Keynesian model for Sweden, and reflect mixed results for Denmark, Finland and Norway.

The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia

The Islamic fnlellectual Tradition in Persia is an edited collection of essays by SeyyedHossein Nasr, the Iranian metaphysician and ontolgist, on Muslim philosophers and theintimate relationship between Persian culture and its philosophical schools. The 24 essayswere written over a period of four decades and scattered among numerous journals and collections.The book is divided into six parts: Islamic thought and Persian culture; earlyIslamic philosophy; the works of al Suhrawardj; philosophers, poets, and scientists; laterIslamic philosophy; and Islamic thought in modem Iran. The essays highlight Nasr's prolificand learned scholarship on the development of Islamic philosophy and illuminatemany aspects of the rich philosophical traditions in Islamic Persia and its history.Throughout this unique collection of articles, Nasr covers the lives and works ofmore than fifteen prominent thinkers and scientists who made significant contributions tothe evolution of the Islamic intellectual traditions in the Muslim world in general and inIslamic Persia in particular. Among those covered are al Farabi, lbn Sina, al BirOni, N????irKhusraw, Fakhr al Din al Razi, al Suhrawardi, Quib al Din Shirazi, $adr al Din Shiriizi,and Mullii HadT Sabzawari. Nasr presents their ideas through their actual works andinforms readers of their conditions and life stories in an easy and enjoyable sty le, whichallows the reader to learn about their ideas and conditions through the lives of these greatphilosophers. Their lives and works cover a wide spectrum of the Muslim mind and beara noticeable interplay of ideas from different fields, ideas that can neither be separatedfrom their conditions nor confined to one field.The book touches on many subjects of pure academic interest and provides an insightinto Persian culture. Although the essays are useful in researching the intellectual historyof Muslim philosophers in the largest sense, no one essay researches the development ofspecific ideas or aspects of the Persian philosophers. Nasr 's essays describe al Fara bi asthe "second teacher" in philosophy and elaborates on lbn Sina's contributions to logic andlanguage, metaphysics and cosmology, medicine pharmacology, and psychology. Someof their works cover classical debates on being and existence, what is learned and what isrealized, discursive knowledge and the insights of illumination, and concepts of unity and ...

Absolute versus Relational Spacetime: For Better or Worse, the Debate Goes On

The traditional absolutist-relationist debate is still clearly formulable in the context of General Relativity Theory (GTR), despite the important differences between Einstein's theory and the earlier context of Newtonian physics. This paper answers recent arguments by Robert Rynasiewicz against the significance of the debate in the GTR context. In his [1996] ('Absolute vs. Relational Spacetime: An Outmoded Debate?') , Rynasiewicz argues that already in the late nineteenth century, and even more so in the context of General Relativity theory, the terms of the original Descartes-Newton-Leibniz dispute about space are not to be found. Nineteenth-century ether theories of electromagnetism, and the metric field of GTR, he claims, do not lend themselves to being interpreted clearly as either absolute space a la Newton, or relational structures a la either Descartes or Leibniz. I argue that, while in some imaginable theories Rynasiewicz's claim that the classical debate dissolves would be correct, in fact in the most important historical theories he discusses, this is not the case. In particular, I argue that in both Lorentz's ether theory and General Relativity theory, there is a clear and compelling way to establish connections to the classical absolutist-relationist disputes, and that in both these theories it is the absolutist position that is prima facie victorious. To support my arguments and give a clear overview of the whole debate, I end by offering definitional sketches of relationism and absolutism (substantivalism) about spacetime in the context of contemporary physics. The sketches show the clear connections between these views today and their ancestors in Newton and Leibniz. But at the same time, they indicate how both views are not just claims about existing physical theories, but rather also bets about how future physics will clarify the ontological picture.

Applying the Canon in Islam

According to Smith, the Ndembu diviner applies a "canon" of twenty-four fixedobjects to a client's situation, first selecting a few of the objects by shaking the basket,interpreting the selected objects according to a range of meanings fixed by pub­lic convention, and matching the meanings to the client's particular condition.Brannon Wheeler, in his Introduction to Applying the Canon in IslamWhen the idolaters inimical to the message of Muhammad, upon him bepeace, attempted to criticize the Qur'an for its use of the lowly and the trivial inits rhetorical repertoire, the following verse was revealed in reply.Behold, God does not disdain to propound a parable of a gnat, or of something evenless than that. Now, as for those who have attained to faith, they know that it is thetruth from their Sustainer whereas those who are bent on denying the truth say,What could God mean by this parable? (2:26)This exchange then became the basis for djscussion and debate among theclassical Arabic rhetoricians on the subject of what might and what might not besuitable for use in similes, metaphors, and other comparative ljterary devices.That this debate shouJd be recalled at the outset of a review of a work dealingwith Hanafi fiqh scholarship might seem slrangely out of place. Yet, once onehas acqurunted oneself with the underlying premise of this work, one cannothelp but recall the classical debate and the verses of Qur'anic scripture so oftencited in regard to it. What lies at the heart of the matter is that comparisonsdrawn between disparate and remote subjects are sometimes delightful andsometimes awful. This, after all, is the stuff of literature. There are some comparisons,however, that are simply offensive.In fact, there are some things people just don't like to see compared at all.Period. Things held near and dear often fall under this category, things like one'sreligion, ethnicity, culture, and so on. This is human nature. And that is dangerousground.Of course, I've oversimplified the matter. ln fact, I'm going in a direction thatwas certrunly not intended by the author for his readership. Wheeler's Applyingthe Canon in Islam is not a work of literature. Likewise, hjs use of models andexamples from other disciplines, like anthropology and the history of religion,is a methodological rather than a literary choice. But the fact remains that thechoice Professor Wheeler has made in this matter is one that will not likely bemet with objectivity by Muslims. If I may venture a comparison of my own, thisis rather akin to inviting a Muslim to partake of a meal, a sumptuous and hearty ...