Question Of Social Inequality Research Articles

Ethics analysis of light and vitamin D therapies for seasonal affective disorder.

The aim of this ethics analysis was to highlight the overt and covert value issues with regard to two health technologies (light therapy and vitamin D therapy), the health technology assessment (HTA) and the disease of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The present ethics analysis served as a chapter of a full HTA report that aimed to assist decision makers concerning the two technologies. First, we used the revised Socratic approach of Hofmann et al. to build overarching topics of ethical issues, and then, we conducted a hand search and a comprehensive systematic literature search on between 12 and 14 February 2019 in seven databases. The concrete ethical issues found concerned vulnerability of the target population and the imperative to treat depressive symptoms for the sake of preventing future harm. Further disease-related ethical issues concerned the questionable nature of SAD as a disease, autonomy, authenticity, and capacity for decision making of SAD patients, and the potential stigma related to the underdiagnosis of SAD, which is contrasted with the concern over unnecessary medicalization. Regarding the interventions and comparators, the ethical issues found concerned their benefit-harm ratios and the question of social inequality. The ethical issues related to the assessment process relate to the choice of comparators and the input data for the selected health economic studies. The concrete ethical issues related to the interventions, the disease, and the assessment process itself were made overt in this ethics analysis. The ethics analysis provided an (additional) value context for making future decisions regarding light and vitamin D therapies.

Epigenetics and aging research: Between adult malleability and early life programming

Aging research explores the basic biological mechanisms of aging and age-related disease. As the ‘aging society’ is framed as one of today’s grand challenges, particularly in the global North, the field is gaining momentum. Epigenetic approaches have become important for aging research. This article explores which kinds of epistemic and biopolitical formations arise with the integration of epigenetics into aging research. Drawing on literature analysis, participant observation at international conferences in Europe, and interviews with selected speakers, we identify two distinctly different ways in which epigenetics and aging have become linked. On the one hand, epigenetics has become important for research focusing on the continuous biological malleability of aging processes in adults. On the other hand, it is integral to research investigating how early life development programs aging trajectories. These perspectives do not only differ epistemically, but also entail distinctly different visions of possible clinical, social, and political responses to the challenges of the aging society. Particularly, questions of social inequality and the growing health and morbidity gap in late-capitalist Western societies figure differently in each perspective. This shows that epigenetics, rather than moving biological research in one specific direction, can participate in heterogeneous epistemic formations with diverging biopolitical momenta.

As relações de gêneros e os sujeitos que atuavam, atuam, no comércio de drogas ilícitas

Este artigo visa problematizar sobre a interferência das relações de gêneros, especificamente as masculinidades, na busca dos sujeitos pelo comércio de drogas ilícitas. Utilizamos o método cartográfico para mapear as histórias existenciais de oito pessoas que estavam presas, problematizando sobre as experiências vividas por essas até serem condenadas no art. 33 do Código Penal brasileiro. Com os resultados das cartografias pode-se colocar que são múltiplas as linhas que interferem na entrada no comércio de drogas, no entanto as relações de gêneros tiveram destaque, a necessidade de se provar “homem de verdade” foi um dos fatores mais presentes nas falas dos participantes. Assim, discutimos a necessidade da Psicologia se distanciar de posicionamentos limitados, por exemplo, de que as ações infracionais tenham suas causas em patologias, ou somente é uma questão de desigualdade social, sendo mais problematizadora das diversas linhas que atravessam e constroem os sujeitos.

The State, Market Reforms and Social Inequality in Nigeria: A Political Economy Interpretation

The neo-liberal economic reforms and corresponding arrogance of the Nigerian governing class on the inviolability of market reforms depicts aspects of the Nigerian crises. The resultant social inequality among social groups because of the implementation of market reforms raises question on its purpose, relevance, and implications. The neo-liberal paradigm had been posed and foisted on the Nigerian economy by external agencies as panacea to its structural distortions and underdevelopment. The market reforms, however, have been pigeon-holed as retarding development and signposting social inequality. Social inequality reflects the social backlash of economic reforms; the lopsided sacrifices of the working people, urban poor, and peasants in relation to the affluence and profligate lifestyle of state officials and their allies, changing lifestyles and decline in the living conditions of affected social groups. The victims of market reforms question its purpose and insist on endogenous, pro-poor and pro-people based alternative economic and developmental frameworks. The political economy approach offers theoretical basis to examine the Nigerian economy, its social classes, and the ensuing social class struggles against market reforms and social inequality. This work poses specific questions to situate the interfaces of state, market reforms and social inequality in Nigeria. Who are the beneficiaries of economic reform programs? Who are the victims of social inequality? How do the victims respond to social inequality? How do economic reforms result in social inequality? How does the Nigerian state deal with the question of social inequality? How adequate are these measures?

Uncertainty and the problem of value: Consumers, culture and inequality in urban China

This article examines the divergent shopping patterns for consumers located in different positions within urban China’s social hierarchy. Drawing upon detailed ethnographic data, the article argues that differentiated class positions in urban China are expressed through the practicalities of daily shopping and consumer practices that involve fundamentally different ‘problems’ of uncertainty and value in the marketplace. It is shown that questions of social inequality are central to understanding not only marketplace behaviors, but also in drawing connections between markets and cultural logics of daily life.

Telling Stories: Sociology, Journalism and the Informed Citizen

This paper argues that the media have failed to provide for informed citizenship. Despite claims in media occupational ideologies to service the information needs of the public, the accumulated verdict of research is that the media provide an inadequate basis for citizens to fulfil their role. The popular press has become integrated into the entertainment industry, and public service broadcasting is being dismantled in form and purpose. New technologies, far from creating an `information society', are fostering a media society, in which the gaps between rich and poor are enlarging. These failings place a larger obligation on critical social research to act as witness to history, but this mission can only be fulfilled if we escape from the threats to independent inquiry both within and without academia. Research into the media must reconnect with wider questions of social inequality, power and process.

Dietary Reconstruction in the Andes: A New Archaeological Technique

Dietary Reconstruction in the Andes: A New Archaeological Technique