旅行家的召唤——徐霞客及其西南边陲之旅

徐霞客生前通过史无前例的、系统性与大规模的艰苦旅行,对中国八方所有的名山景观进行了考察,并因其对边陲地貌的细致考察而享有盛名。当时他选择追求自己的志趣,而没有陷入腐败政治和官僚体制的俗世纠缠,由此就像许多同时代的优秀文人一样被誉为奇人。现代知识分子反将他视为一个早期科学家的模型。通过对徐霞客西南边陲之旅的系统性考察,与明末文人"奇"和"癖"的话语相关联,由此提出,只有考虑到中国游记写作的历代仪式伦理功能,才能够更深刻地理解,为何徐霞客游记行为与思想方面的启发,远远超越了东西、古今之别,并提供了跨文化的社会更新潜力。     

The food insecurity―obesity paradox as a vicious cycle for women: inequalities and health

Poverty and income inequality undermine women's health in a myriad of ways. This article discusses findings from the Full Plate Project, which addressed women's experience of food security, obesity, and chronic disease in Atlantic Canada. Through first-hand accounts, it identifies a vicious cycle surrounding the food insecurity–obesity paradox. The cycle's core elements included experiences of poverty, food insecurity and nutritional deprivation, weight gain leading to obesity, stress, and experiences of chronic illness. These mainly qualitative findings provide a vivid and multi-layered analysis of the effects of inequalities on health. A majority of Full Plate participants were lone mothers and unattached women, and existing outside of a two-adult member household framework. The vicious cycles experienced are intertwined and cannot be addressed by compartmentalising elements of health or social services. Evidence indicates that policies must respond fully to the social determinants of health and multiple inequalities related to poverty, gender, age, mobility, disability, location, culture, coping skills, and other dynamics.     

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Exposure,Industry Sector,and Child Health

Population Research and Policy Review - The historic 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (DHOS) led to public distress regarding potential impacts on children in nearby Gulf Coast communities....     

Attitudes of Heterosexual Men and Women Toward HIV Negative and Positive Gay Men

Attitudes of Italian heterosexual men and women toward gay men, both HIV positive and negative, are poorly investigated. Italian culture is still extremely conservative and provides limited support to the gay community (e.g., lack of same-sex marriage recognition). Consequently, gay men experience social exclusion and disparities. The present study explores the association between homophobia and closeness with sexual orientation and HIV status. 261 heterosexual Italian men and women were assessed for feelings of closeness and homophobia after reading a vignette where the character was C1: heterosexual and HIV negative; C2: gay and HIV negative; or C3: gay and HIV positive. Experiences of homophobia and closeness varied depending on gender of participant and condition assigned, and higher levels of homophobia were correlated with lower levels of closeness regardless of HIV status. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Aggregating Political Dimensions: Of the Feasibility of Political Indicators

Political indicators are widely used in academic writing and decision making, but remain controversial. This paper discusses the problems related to the aggregation functions they use. Almost always, political indicators are aggregated by weighted averages or summations. The use of such functions is based on untenable assumptions (existence of homogeneous substitution rates, total compensation, and strict monotonicity). We show through concrete examples how these hidden assumptions are likely to produce results that are basically an artifact of ad hoc decisions, which additionally contradict very fundamental notions common to all credible political theories. We suggest, also through example, that some—necessarily partial—solutions are possible.     

“It's the Beast Thing”

This article examines the representations of men and masculinities in contemporary crime narratives featuring a female protagonist. These “chick dick” stories (which adapt elements from the hardboiled detective novel, film noir, chick lit, and chick flicks) repeatedly engage with the gendered power dynamics made visible and problematic through the intersection of “chick” and crime genres, most particularly the sexualization of violence. In these narratives, popular masculinities operate as deployable concepts to dramatize contemporary gender relations. By tapping into the popular sentiment of a “crisis in masculinity,” chick dick texts also mobilize a rhetoric of unrepresentable male victimization and individual male pathologies. This strategy highlights the spaces and places in which masculinities are made vulnerable at the same time as it offers simplistic and individualized explanations for the systemic sexualized violence that dominate these narratives.