100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

Laws,Desires, and Contaminations—Mutuality with a Price: Commentary on Paper by Taras Babiak

In this commentary on Tara Babiak's analytic work with a very disturbed, almost autistic young man, I take up the function of gender categories as defense and as potential; the power of enactments in analytic treatment; and the difficulties of homophobia in patient, analyst and culture. I focus on the uses and functions of gender and ideals of masculinity in the patient's identity. A central enactment early in the treatment gave rise to intense transference and countertransference scrutiny. I suggest the long shadow cast by this enactment, which was both hopeful and provocatively destructive. I discuss the quandaries (analytic, personal, and cultural) for the analyst working with a patient for whom phobic dread may be a defense against fragmentation and madness.     

When the Learning Disabled Go to College

Abstract

During the last decade, federal laws have provided for remedial education in elementary and secondary schools for students with learning disabilities, preparing large numbers of them for college. Federal law also mandates helping learning-disabled students with their needs once they matriculate. Declining numbers of high school graduates in the aftermath of the baby boom have made more colleges open their doors to these students. The disabilities, and the accommodations they require, arrive in college with the rest of a student's baggage, demanding attention. Colleges and universities have chosen a variety of approaches, from specific remedial programs and individual accomodations according to need to more general programs. Some colleges pretend these disabilities do not exist and seem oblivious to their presence on campus. Learning disabilities can have an impact in every class and lecture hall and can contribute to unhappiness and the college's attrition rate. On the other hand, responsive and responsible programs provide students with the resources for the same education, honors, and opportunities as their nondisabled peers.     

A Law to Protect, a Law to Prevent: contextualising disability legislation in China

Disability-related legislation in the People's Republic of China has gone largely unrecognised in the North, with the exception of the Maternal and Infant Health Care Law. Failure to contextualise the law has resulted in a simplistic presentation of the Chinese government's response to disability and impairment. This paper takes a first step towards redressing that imbalance. Recent disability legislation is outlined. The emergence of eugenicstyle policies in China is then reconsidered, with reference to the history of Chinese eugenics, the national interests of the current Chinese government and the internationalisation of disability. The complexity of the Chinese government's response re-opens the debate on the place of prevention within a politics of disablement.