Co‐production in the epidemiological clinic: A decentred analysis of the tensions in community‐based,client‐facing risk work

Public health policies to prevent disease within populations are giving rise to shifting patterns of healthcare delivery in the late modern era. There is an inherent tension in modern medicine between evidence‐based standardisation, on the one hand, and patient‐centred specificity on the other. This tension manifests in recent policy narratives regarding public health risk (which we have characterised in terms of the epidemiological clinic) and co‐production. Drawing on co‐produced data with health trainers (lay health workers tasked with supporting behavioural change in patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease) in a deprived post‐industrial region of England, our decentred analysis focuses on three extended narratives from this data set. Our analysis builds on and develops emerging theories of risk work, informed by Habermas, and we explore the extent to which elite narratives of public health risk are resisted, absorbed, or bracketed off by client‐facing health workers—emphasising the heterogeneity of responses—and locate these responses within the context of the workers' employment conditions, their embodied experiences, and their wider beliefs and traditions. We argue that co‐production—albeit in a highly constrained form—is possible while delivering public health interventions. However, in the context of a community where health is so adversely affected by wider social problems and where task shifting has drawn lower status healthcare workers into these client‐facing roles, workers must find their own ways to negotiate and attempt to reconcile this context with the risk‐framed practices they are required to carry out.     

Contextualizing the meaning of respect: the case of evangelicals in Brazil / Contextualización del significado del respeto: el caso de la comunidad evangélica de Brasil

This article examines the meaning of respect for evangelicals in Brazil. We were particularly interested in the roles which the recognition of equality, achievements and needs would play in the respect experiences of members of this religious minority. With regard to the sources of respect our focus was on Brazilians as a superordinate ingroup and on five different outgroups. As expected, equality recognition emerged as the dominant principle governing intragroup respect. Intergroup respect, however, was governed primarily by the principle of need recognition, especially in relations with religious outgroups. The principles of achievement and equality recognition also played a role in intergroup respect, but only in relations with secular outgroups. Implications for religious groups’ struggles for respect in modern society are discussed.     

Race and imprisonments: vigilante violence, minority threat, and racial politics

The effects of lynchings on criminal justice outcomes have seldom been examined. Recent findings also are inconsistent about the effects of race on imprisonments. This study uses a pooled time-series design to assess lynching and racial threat effects on state imprisonments from 1972 to 2000. After controlling for Republican strength, conservatism, and other factors, lynch rates explain the growth in admission rates. The findings also show that increases in black residents produce subsequent expansions in imprisonments that likely are attributable to white reactions to this purported menace. But after the percentage of blacks reaches a substantial threshold—and the potential black vote becomes large enough to begin to reduce these harsh punishments—reductions in prison admissions occur. These results also confirm a political version of racial threat theory by indicating that increased Republican political strength produces additional imprisonments.     

Financial Intermediaries and Markets

A complex financial system comprises both financial markets and financial intermediaries. We distinguish financial intermediaries according to whether they issue complete contingent contracts or incomplete contracts. Intermediaries such as banks that issue incomplete contracts, e.g., demand deposits, are subject to runs, but this does not imply a market failure. A sophisticated financial system—a system with complete markets for aggregate risk and limited market participation—is incentive‐efficient, if the intermediaries issue complete contingent contracts, or else constrained‐efficient, if they issue incomplete contracts. We argue that there may be a role for regulating liquidity provision in an economy in which markets for aggregate risks are incomplete.     

镁铝尖晶石本征色心的计算机模拟

利用计算机模拟技术和经验参数化方法，通过对镁铝尖晶石(MgAl2O4)晶体结构、晶格形成能及本征缺陷形成能的计算，论证了镁空位VMg^2-、氧空位Vo^2 和少量的AlMg^ 是MgAl2O4中的本征点缺陷．并指出其会以[VMg^2--Vo^2 ]空位对和[VMg^2--2lMg^ ]的形式实现电荷补偿．     

Producing Family Problems: Organization and Uses of the Family Perspective and Rhetoric in Family Therapy

This article applies and extends literature on the micropolitics of trouble and family rhetoric perspectives by analyzing how therapists in a family therapy agency practicing the brief model used family rhetoric in defining and responding to client problems. Family rhetoric is the use of images of family (the family perspective) to (1) persuade others to one's preferred orientation to issues of mutual concern and (2) attribute identities to one's self and others. The article focuses on how the therapists rhetorically enacted and applied the family perspective in interactions with colleagues and clients to define and remedy client troubles. In general, troubles were defined and remedied by treating them as products of clients' family systems, defined as enduring roles, relationships, and perspectives. The therapists sought to remedy client troubles by initiating changes assessed as appropriate for their troubles and family systems. The article concludes by considering some of the implications of the findings and analysis for the sociological study of human service work.     

Rereading The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power

These essays were originally presented at a symposium of the same title that took place at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Toronto on November 20, 2003. The charge to the participants was to to reread the book and make short presentations on it, its significance, the validity of its analysis in hindsight, its historical contribution to our understanding of late communism, its influence on others. The symposium was timed to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of writing of the book in 1973–1974 as well as the twenty-fifth anniversary of its publication in English in 1979.     

Making Sense of Sustainability: Nine Answers to ‘What Should Be Sustained?’1

Abstract The concept of sustainability is central to many current natural resource debates. While the concept has substantial appeal, consensus on its meaning is lacking, especially concerning what combinations of resources or practices should be sustained. The many meanings of sustainability are addressed by first presenting four defining questions: what is sustained, why sustain it, how is sustainability measured, and what are the politics? These questions are used to identify what we see as nine distinct types of sustainability, each reflecting a different vision of which resources should be sustained. Illustrations are drawn from three major renewable natural resource areas—agriculture, forestry, and marine fisheries.     

FINANCIAL FRAGILITY,LIQUIDITY, AND ASSET PRICES

We define a financial system to be fragile if small shocks have disproportionately large effects. In a model of financial intermediation, we show that small shocks to the demand for liquidity cause either high asset‐price volatility or bank defaults or both. Furthermore, as the liquidity shocks become vanishingly small, the asset‐price volatility is bounded away from zero. In the limit economy, with no shocks, there are many equilibria. However, if banks face idiosyncratic liquidity shocks, then the only equilibria that are robust to the introduction of small aggregate risk involve stochastic consumption as well as volatile asset, prices. (JEL: D5, D8, G2)