'The ravages of permissiveness': sex education and the permissive society

In this article we explore how sex education in schools has become an adversarial political issue. Although sex education has never been a wholly uncontroversial subject, we show that for two decades after the Second World War there was a broad consensus among policy-makers that it offered a solution to public health and social problems, especially venereal disease. From the late 1960s, this consensus came under attack. As part of a wider effort to reverse the changes associated with the 'permissive' society and legislation of the late 1960s, moral traditionalists and pro-family campaigners sought to problematize sex education. They depicted it as morally corrupting and redefined it as a problem rather than a public health solution. Henceforth, the politics of sex education became increasingly polarized and adversarial. We conclude that the fractious debates about sex education in the 1980s and 1990s are a legacy of this reaction against the permissive society.     

A geopolitics of drinking: Debating the place of alcohol in early republican Turkey

Following contemporary shifts in geopolitical scholarship that interrogate perspectives on identity, culture, and everyday life, this article confronts contestations over the place of alcohol in early republican Turkey. Debated today in terms that mirror the headscarf question, our study establishes a basis for scrutinizing this topic by focusing on the nation-state's first deliberations over prohibition, transpiring in the first session of the Grand National Assembly. Like the current push to intensify regulation of alcohol, 1920s prohibitionism brought together an array of narratives that included but also exceeded Islamism. In particular, progressive public health advocates provided crucial support for the narrow passage of a prohibition law that lasted until Kemalists consolidated their rule. Amid this discourse, competing players interpreted differently the ongoing American prohibition experience and deployed conflicting narratives to bolster their positions. Relying upon proceedings from the early parliament and other primary sources, this article about the place of alcohol contributes both to analyses of ongoing affairs within Turkey and to progressive geopolitical engagements with matters of governance and public space, regulation and prohibition, public health, and secular-religious rivalries.     

Ulama in Islamic Law‐Making and Adjudication in Contemporary Egypt

The article examines the legislative and judicial tasks of Islamic jurists and how they carried it out in constitutional or general legal structure. While the Pakistani experiment was inspired by the Iranian model of jurists' involvement in legislatures, Egypt took a different path by not recognizing any official role for Islamic jurists with ambiguous recognition of Islamic jurisprudence. The legislative role could take the form of incorporating Islamic jurists into the legislature, establishing a committee partially made up of Islamic jurists, or handing over some legislative task to an Islamic jurisprudential institution. Despite the fact that Islamization was intended to respond to the people's requests, it employed autocratic and authoritarian mechanisms. The project attempted to replace the typical class of socially recognized jurists with appointed committees entrusted with Islamic codification. The experiment was challenged for its operation and its Islamicity but never introduced Shari'a courts or Islamic clerical legislation.     

Freedom of information and transparency in Scotland: Disclosing persons as things and vice versa (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Contemporary ideals of democratic governance hold that public trust in the workings of public authorities is achieved through measures such as allowing free access to information. Yet 18 months participating in and observing the activities of users of Freedom of Information legislation – introduced in Scotland in 2005 – and civil servants disclosing information under it reveals that public trust and transparency do not always flow from increased access. Treating ‘transparency’, not as a known phenomenon, but as something that emerges in ethnographic observation and analysis, this article moves beyond an idea of transparency as being the simple revelation of an object by a subject, and in doing so challenges the fixed distinction between persons and things on which transparency as it is understood by Freedom of Information legislation appears to rely.     

‘We do have space in Lausanne. We have a large cemetery’: the non-controversy of a non-existent Muslim burial ground

In the context of the administration of spaces assigned by municipalities for the burial of the dead, this article provides a critical analysis of the techniques for the governance of political collectives of citizens implemented by public authorities. More broadly, this article shows how funerary practices (i.e. the social practices surrounding death—the rituals, the legislation, etc.) can be used to develop a critical reading of the social relations that structure the social production of space. To this end, the authors use the conceptual tools provided by critical legal geography to explore the controversy surrounding the development of a ‘carré confessionnel’ (denominational area) within the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery in Lausanne, Switzerland. Here, a focus on the techniques that allow ‘nomosphere’ technicians to convene a subset of the citizens within the public space reveals the administration of cemeteries as a means of governance, a method for mobilising bodies and a paradoxical means of managing flux.     

Public Opinion and Policymaking in the States: The Case of Post-Roe Abortion Policy

Whether public opinion should be expected to play a role in the shaping of abortion legislation in the states is a debatable question. Representation is a difficult task, especially if legislators receive mixed cues from the public, activists, and the political parties. In this study, we find that grass-roots activism and public opinion tend to match, and both are reflected in state abortion policy. In addition, more Pro-Life policies are found in states with a tradition of conservative policies in other areas, Republican majorities in the state legislature, more Catholic residents, and fewer women legislators. These patterns hold true for a composite index of abortion policies and for the specific policy area of government funding of abortions. Slightly different patterns occur for parental consent laws, though these statutes also tend to reflect general preferences on abortion and interest group activity in a state.     

The Privatization of Health Care Cleaning Services in Southwestern British Columbia,Canada: Union Responses to Unprecedented Government Actions

This paper analyzes the political dynamics between a newly elected, right‐leaning provincial government and a left‐leaning public sector union that resulted in the privatization of 4000 health support housekeeping jobs in southwestern British Columbia in less than a year. The article documents how government set the stage for privatization, the struggle that ensued when the union resisted concessionary bargaining, and the new challenges that emerged for both union and management once housekeeping and other support services were taken over by multi‐national service corporations. This case is significant because the size and scope of this privatization and the legislation that facilitated it are unprecedented in Canadian history.     

‘Prevention of evil,production of good’: Jeremy Bentham’s indirect legislation and its contribution to a new theory of prevention

ABSTRACT

This paper critically analyses current depictions of prevention and tries to offer a new theoretical reflection on the concept by reconstructing it on the basis of Jeremy Bentham’s writings on indirect legislation. It is my aim not only to explore Bentham’s concept of indirect legislation as an outstanding example of enlightened social/public policy, but also to show to what extent his thoughts might be a fruitful contribution to a necessary reconceptualization of current conceptions of prevention, which are heavily criticized by many scholars.     

Economic Resources and Political Power at the Local Level in Post-Soviet Russia

In the 1990s in local government in Russia, the dominant trends might be described as neo-Soviet because of their apparent continuity with patterns that prevailed before the end of communist rule in that country. The promise of independence for "local self-government," as set forth in the Russian Constitution of 1993 and subsequent legislation, largely has been frustrated. The tendency of privatized economic enterprises to divest themselves of responsibility for social benefits, and the lack of an adequate base for financial independence for local governments, have made it necessary for local officials to rely heavily on the regional authorities for support. Within local government, the elected legislature usually is subordinate to a dominant executive leadership. Those features of contemporary local government in Russia are explained by the consequences of decisions adopted by the country's post-Communist leadership, including the method and content of economic reform. The results are unfavorable both for the resurgence of the local economy and the growth of democracy at the local level.     

Social and Spiritual Capital: Building ‘Emotional Resilience’ In Communities and Individuals

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between mental health, mental health promotion, religious communities and general issues of public health. It begins with an exploration of what is meant by mental health drawing a distinction between it, mental illness and mental health promotion, and argues that mental health can have a profound impact on physical health. The relationship between religious communities and the mentally ill is analysed next. Despite the attitudes of many in mental health provision, religious communities can offer a supportive environment for the mentally ill. The article avoids a ‘faith communities—good’, ‘mental health services—bad’ dichotomy, recognizing that religious communities can be excluding and discriminatory. The ambiguity of some experiences is recognized: are they forms of religious experience or symptoms of psychosis? The article highlights the inceasing advocacy of the user/survivor movement. In the final section, the relationship between mental health and public health is explored. It is suggested that religious communities can be places for the promotion of mental health. Mental health promotion is understood as aiming to strengthen both individuals and communities; its value is explored in relation to public health issues. It is suggested that those who are socially excluded are at a greater risk of some form of mental illness and that this may well impact on their physical health. Related to this are the beneficial effects of opportunities for participation in decision making, be it in the workplace or the local community. The article ends by arguing that service providers and service users need to be involved in decisions and planning. Further, some elements of mental health promotion will need to involve those outside the statutory sector.     

Policy Design and the Acceptability of Environmental Risks: Nuclear Waste Disposal in Canada and the United States

This article examines the controversial process of developing high-level nuclear waste disposal policy in Canada, with some comparison to experience in the United States. It argues that a policy design perspective can assist in understanding the difficult social and political issues associated with waste disposal and the environmental and health risks that it poses. I examine several critical questions related to such an endeavor and link them to long-term goals of building a sustainable society. Success in formulating and implementing a nuclear waste policy in Canada will depend on the nation's capacity to create requisite processes of public participation. Particularly important are those actions that can help the public understand and assess environmental risks, including related ethical and social issues, and build public trust and confidence in the siting processes and the implementing agencies.     

Sources and Pseudo‐sources on the foundation of the Valamo Monastery

The article discusses the understanding of the road as a collective duty and institutionalized public space in late medieval Finland and the Swedish realm, as presented in the legislation of King Magnus Erikssons' law (landslag) of the late 1340s. After an introduction on the nature of past scholarship on the history of roads in Europe and Finland, the theoretical framework on the production and social implications of space on historical roads is discussed. The spatial understanding of the road in late medieval Finland is then studied in the context of medieval normative legislation, of which the main interest here is on King Magnus Eriksson's law, which was the major medieval law code valid in Finland. In the code, issues concerning roads and their maintenance are distributed to various sections of the law, but the main body of the legislation is set in Bygningabalken and Edsöresbalken. The analysis shows that, in the bygningabalken, the road and facilities attached to it such as bridges were rather exclusively discussed in the context of common duty, where the word common seems to be inherently understood as something obliged and insisted by the crown. In the edsöresbalken instead, the spatial dimensions of the road were brought forward in the context of the sworn peace of the realm, where the judicial space produced by the traveller was considered as a product of the road and the actual motives of travelling of the individual using it. The analysis of the respective chapters and decrees of the code shows that, from the point of normative legislation, the road was not only a recognizable space of its own but also constituted a judicial condition capable of producing distinctive social implications for those involved in the maintenance and use of roads in medieval Finland.     

Punctuated Equilibrium in Limbo: The Tobacco Lobby and U.S. State Policymaking from 1990 to 2003

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. tobacco policy has been an intense and acrimonious issue between antitobacco advocates and the tobacco industry. In the United States, the tobacco industry has responded to heightened state antitobacco litigation, adverse public opinion, and public health advocacy by aggressively mobilizing against tobacco taxes and regulations. This article examines whether these tobacco policy trends can be generalized to punctuated equilibrium theory ideas that policy monopolies are stable over long periods and usually change because of sharp and short-term exogenous shocks to the policy system. From 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp mobilization by health advocates in all states and a significant rise in new legislation to control tobacco use. The tobacco industry, nevertheless, was able to generally keep state tobacco taxes low and counter significant regulatory threats to tobacco sales. From this, I conclude that the policy monopoly favoring the tobacco industry did not significantly change, despite the symbolic appearance of punctuation in the policy system.     

Governing population, public health, and malaria in the early Turkish republic

In the early Turkish republic of the 1920s, population was a central question of concern for the leadership of the Kemalist state. This article focuses on how a demographic discourse concerning population – in terms both numerical and medical – provided a basis for emerging programs in public health, confronting the very real threats posed by disease. Employing the example of the nascent republic’s anti-malarial campaigns, this study thus examines the discursive, cartographic, and legislative measures employed in combating this widespread disease in the wider contexts of nation-building. In doing so, it traces one vital trajectory of the development of modern governmentality (i.e., that of public health) in the case of Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s, prior to the wartime slowing of state investments (due to national defense priorities), the post-World War II infusions of foreign aid and the incorporation of DDT in confronting malaria.     

辽宁省城市基本公共服务质量差异的时空分析

基于基本公共服务的内涵,从教育服务、文化服务、卫生服务、基础设施服务、社会保障服务、生态环境服务和信息服务7个方面构建了基本公共服务质量评价指标体系,运用熵值法对2003-2011年辽宁省城市基本公共服务质量进行综合测度,并以此为变量,利用差异系数和基尼系数对辽宁省各市基本公共服务质量差异的演变过程与空间格局进行定量分析。结果发现:辽宁省各市基本公共服务质量整体为上升的趋势,表现出较为明显的规模特征,沈阳市和大连市两极突出;2003-2011辽宁省城市基本公共服务质量区域差异总体扩大的基础上,呈现先扩大后缩小的演变趋势,且以文化服务、卫生服务和基础设施服务的差异为主;空间上,公共服务质量空间提升极化作用不断增强,表现为不断向"沈阳-大连、盘锦-本溪"的"十字"轴线紧靠。     

State politics,railroads, and Civil Rights in South Carolina, 1883–89

In 1889 the General Assembly of South Carolina repealed the state's Civil Rights Act (1870), following a protracted debate that had been prompted by the United States Supreme Court's decision in the Civil Rights Cases (1883). This article examines in detail the contours of the civil rights controversy in South Carolina and, in doing so, identifies a number of competing dynamics, among them outside corporate interests (in this case, railroads), local state interests, and regional loyalties. Taken together, these different factors demonstrate conclusively that civil rights in South Carolina during the 1880s was a contested space. They also shed important new light on the development of de jure segregation in the South and, in particular, the complex relationship between Jim Crow legislation and the social and economic issues related to railroad expansion.     

Richard Bourke: For the Honour of God and the Good of Man

The Church Act (1836) was arguably the most significant ecclesiastical legislation in Australia's history, as it profoundly impacted on the nation's social and political development in its formative years. The Act was instigated by Governor Richard Bourke and was welcomed by the people as establishing “religious equality on a just and firm basis.” However, historically it is often categorised as being part of Bourke's liberal reform agenda where the legislation's attributes of religious toleration have been magnified and its function to expand Christianity minimised. The fact that Bourke was a devout Christian is something that none of his biographers have disputed, but this belief is rarely portrayed as fundamental to his motives. This article explores the nature of Bourke's Christianity and discusses how that influenced his public policy in relation to religion and education. It reveals a complex man who had sincere orthodox Anglican faith, but recognised the part played by other denominations in the Christian mission. This examination will demonstrate the difficulty in differentiating between secular and spiritual motives and intentions in this period.     

State,peasant, mosquito: The biopolitics of public health education and malaria in early republican Turkey

State officials in early republican Turkey framed malaria as both a medical and a political issue. In doing so, they engaged in public health education campaigns not only to resolve medical concerns but also to better govern the country's population and promote a broader modernist agenda. This article employs primary sources from Turkish archives and other collections in order to examine the governmental and the biopolitical implications of this experience. We thus scrutinize the civilizational discourse employed by politicians and physicians as they dealt with this “village disease,” the peoples who they encountered—and taught, and the obstacles that they perceived to exist within the traditional curative beliefs and practices found throughout rural Anatolia. Emphasizing modernist ideals in their medicine as much as in their politics, we conclude that health officials' lessons for waging an effective “war” on malaria targeted not just the disease but also its perceived societal sources of origin and—hence—the very populace it presumably sought to protect.     

User Fees and Family Policy: Attempting to Recover Costs for State-Provided Child Support Enforcement Services

This study looks in depth at three family policy issues surrounding one state's attempt to recover costs for child support enforcement services provided to nonpublic assistance families. The issues are whether a cost recovery user fee should be assessed; to whom the fee should be assessed; and how to develop a fee structure to meet criteria established by the policy agents. The original study was mandated by the state legislature. Recommendations were made to the legislature to continue one small fee, discontinue another unpopular fee, and institute three new broad-based fees that would allow for nearly full cost recovery. In an election year the legislature accepted the first two recommendations but chose not to pursue the three new fees. Implications for policy development are drawn, focusing on the impact of user fees on service recipients and the role of the public sector in providing services that are available in the private sector in an era of tighter budgets.     

Capturing Curiosity: Using Internet Search Trends to Measure Public Attentiveness

While scholars have made great strides in formulating theories and measuring public attention, “most important problem” and media‐based indicators are less than ideal measures. In order to address this shortcoming, this article borrows from health‐care epidemiology to measure public attention based on Internet search trends. In doing so, it reviews the innovative ways in which scientists have used search activity to track the spread of infectious disease, discusses the ease and flexibility with which search data can be gathered, and then subjects a Google‐based search measure to a series of validity tests. In particular, the analysis subjects the proposed measure to a battery of visual and statistical tests for convergent validity by comparing it with the most commonly used media‐based measure of public attention—issue coverage in the New York Times. Across a range of policy issues (health care, global warming, and terrorism), the proposed measure demonstrates convergent validity. The article concludes by posing a series of important questions that the new measure will allow researchers to address.