The first archaeological case of Madelung's deformity?

An elderly male medieval skeleton excavated from St Gregory's Priory presented with unilateral Madelung's deformity. The right radius and ulna were shortened due to premature fusion of the distal growth plate. The radius displayed lateral and dorsal bowing and the ulna was dislocated posteriorly. Pronation and supination was not possible and the available hand bones presented with disuse atrophy. Degenerative changes had reduced the mobility of the elbow joint and marked cubitus valgus was demonstrated. The unilateral presentation, shortening of the ulna and atrophy of the hand bones and the sex of the skeleton suggest a post-traumatic rather than an idiopathic form of Madelung's deformity. As far as we are aware this is the first archaeological example of this condition.     

A case of dyschondrosteosis in an Anglo‐Saxon skeleton

Osteological examination of a 9^th–11^th century skeleton from Black Gate Cemetery, Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne, reveals Madelung's deformity of both forearms and shortened stature due to reduced tibial length. These are indicative of dyschondrosteosis, a genetically transmitted mild form of mesomelia. This case adds to a small but growing presence of this condition in pre‐modern societies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evidence of a healed compression fracture in a Plio-Pleistocene hominid talus from Sterkfontein,South Africa

The object of this communication is to draw attention to the appearance of this fossil talus Stw 363, which carries a densely adherent fragment on its posterosuperior aspect. We have endeavoured to verify that this bony fragment could be the posterior half of the fractured calcaneus resulting from a fall on to the animal's left foot. Furthermore, it is suggested that this animal survived long enough for this fracture to unite by bone to the posterior aspect of the talus in this grossly displaced and unreduced deformity.     

“A Twist in the Tale” of a Surgeon and his Patient: An Australian First in Seizure Localization

In 1894 at St. Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, George Adlington Syme removed a meningioma from a patient with symptomatic focal epilepsy. The operation stands as the first surgery based on seizure localization in Australia. It is also the country's first documented successful resection of an intracranial meningioma. It followed William Macewen's landmark cerebral localization case on the boy John McKinley by 18 years and Victor Horsley's first epilepsy case on Hughlings Jackson's patient James B. by a mere 8 years. Syme's patient, Constable John G., survived the operation by some 23 years, dying from a gunshot wound to the head in 1917. Newly discovered inquest papers reveal that the coroner's judgment that the death was accidental completely fails to address the more credible scenario of suicide. The story makes for a fascinating epilogue to an important landmark in Australia's neurosurgical history.     

Today's State of Exception: Abu-Jamal,Agamben, JanMofiamed,and the Democratic State of Emergency

Abstract

This essay engages the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and the literary criticism of Abdul R. JanMohammed in critically exploring the contours of the present arrangement of democratic politics in the United States. Giorgio Agamben's exception theory of sovereignty and bare life are deployed in order to grasp the political meaning of surprisingly unprecedented and exceptional recent court rulings in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's death row since 1982. Abu-Jamal's experience of exceptional rulings also requires a critical elaboration of the racialized nature of American democracy. Thus, Agamben's theory finds a critical complement with the work of literary theorist Abdul R. JanMohammed, particularly JanMohammed's formulations of "social death" and the "dialectics of death" for "death-bound-subjects." The theories of Agamben and JanMohammed make clear the nature of Abu-Jamal's political struggle and the state of democratic politics that so often transforms the exception into the rule, specifically in the case of the marginal and dispossessed. The significance of Abu-Jamal's case thus becomes one of understanding the production and reproduction of the state of exception and the (im)possibilities of political transformation and liberation from the arrested state of democracy in the modern world.     

Laundering Leo Strauss

Robert Howse's book on Leo Strauss tries to defend Strauss by emphasizing how different he was from today's “Straussians.” In Howse's telling, Strauss's best-known followers favor war and oppression, though Strauss himself did not. To make this case, Howse relies not only on absurd caricatures of Strauss's students but on highly distorted (or highly selective) accounts of what Strauss himself wrote. Howse tries to make a positive case for Strauss as a “man of peace” by showing that Strauss supported “international law.” He makes that case by depicting “international law” as one continuous tradition since Grotius, oblivious to the many varieties of outlooks and doctrines that have invoked some version of international law. On Howse's account, those who have qualms about the United Nations or the European Union must be regarded as nihilists—hence at odds with “Leo Strauss, Man of Peace.”     

Towards Reconciliation of the Land Issue in Namibia: Identifying the Possible,Assessing the Probable

This paper argues that the case against a major land reform in Namibia is overstated and inaccurate, and that, in spite of its relatively harsh climate, the country contains sufficient land of good enough quality, and a small enough population, to undertake a major land reform. The paper suggests that the reasons why there is generally a conservative estimate of possible solutions to land hunger are largely related to the prevalence of a conservative colonial intellectual legacy in spite of radical ambitions stated by the SWAPO (South West African People's Organization) government. Furthermore, many commentators and officials in Namibia are following a pattern in Africa of ignoring lessons (positive and negative) from other countries—in this case particularly from aspects of Zimbabwe's land reform. The paper explores the comparison with Zimbabwe in order to emphasize the political lessons available for Namibia's land reform, but it also highlights practical lessons which exist, in spite of the fact that most of Zimbabwe's environment is generally much better suited to agriculture than is Namibia's.     

The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High-Medieval Miracle Narratives

This article explores the intersection of medicine, religion and gender within the context of miracle narratives compiled in England and France in the High Middle Ages. Women in miracle accounts have much to tell us about medieval ideas of gendered sickness and health, yet this is an area which has received little scholarly attention. Focusing on stories of female deformity and disfigurement, it is argued that sickness has a feminising effect on women's bodies in these sources, but proposed that symptoms of excess femininity were not always seen as the spiritual hindrance that might be expected.     

The Case of the Case History: Detecting the Medical Report in Sherlock Holmes

Critics have examined both the influence of the medical case model and the newer laboratory sciences on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales, but they have often overlooked key aspects of the stories' turn-of-the-century historical context. I argue that in response to the indefinite rewards offered by the up-and-coming laboratory sciences and the grandiose claims of many of those practicing these sciences, Conan Doyle chose to circle back to an earlier clinical method and to echo a type of case narrative that provides both closure and disclosure via post-mortem exam. Thus, Conan Doyle's stories, with their breakdown into Watsonian history and Holmesian summation, register the value of clinical procedures by using the established medical case study that ends in autopsy as a template. In his fictional echoing of the case culminating in post-mortem exam, Conan Doyle's Holmes stories draw attention to the accuracy of knowledge that only such cases can provide, and in doing so, Conan Doyle highlights the uncertainty inherent in both many Victorian medical practices and the unproven laboratory sciences of the day – an uncertainty, the tales suggest, that could only be remedied by accruing information through this particularly revealing type of case documentation. In the process, the Holmes tales reflect on the case's unique ability to narrate a type of resolution which cannot be otherwise represented. In its emphasis on making comprehensible that which defies mastery through other means lies the case's essential fit with literary narrative more generally – and narratives of detection like the Holmes stories, in particular.     

Literary geography: setting and narrative space

This paper explores some of the ways in which analytical strategies developed within narrative theory might be combined with recent developments in literary geography in the study of setting and narrative space. It suggests that despite narrative theory's urge toward categorization and its associated tendency to conceive of space as relatively stable and fixed, the technical vocabulary developed within the discipline has much to offer the literary geographer. The first section of the paper reviews some of the areas of potential collaboration in this cross-disciplinary overlap, while the second section offers three brief case study readings designed to suggest the potential of a combination of the analytical specificity of narrative studies with the imaginative stretch of spatial theory. The case studies look at setting and narrative space as they emerge in relation to narrative voices and multiple audiences in three case study texts: P.K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (1962), J.A. Mitchell's The Last American (1889), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925).     

Advocacy Coalitions,Policy Stability,and Policy Change in China: The Case of Birth Control Policy, 1980–2015

This study used the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain stability and change in China's national birth control policy from 1980 to 2015. We found that policy remained stable, despite internal and external changes to the relevant subsystem, from 1980 to 2013. The stability was explained by the dominant advocacy coalition's mobilization of considerable resources to defend its policy core beliefs. Policy changes in 2013 and 2015 were caused by a combination of external and internal perturbations, in addition to policy-oriented learning and advocacy by two expert-led minority advocacy coalitions. The case showed that the openness and plurality of China's policy processes had increased over time but were still limited in comparison with those in Western democracies. The case analysis confirmed two policy change hypotheses and suggested a mechanism for policy change: a hierarchically superior jurisdiction is more likely to impose a major policy change when it learns that the change is an adaptation to internal and external perturbations and that adopting the change will serve the jurisdiction's political interests.     

Using an awakening narrative to leave behind a former national‐identity: an investigation of the conversion of national‐identity in Taiwan

National‐identity has become a civil religion and a major source of how people define themselves. Changing one's nationality thus is a salient event/social process in today's society; therefore, people's nationality conversion deserves more academic attention. Treating the convert as a social type and regarding people's self‐reports (or converts' accounts) as topics for analysis, this article examines the Taiwan case to illuminate how people tell their stories of converting nationality. ‘Converts’ usually employed an awakening narrative to leave their former national‐identity behind: For example, the ‘awakening’ plot is readily apparent, a huge contrast between a previous ‘wrong’ self and a current ‘correct’ self is mentioned, and the ‘awakening’ is delineated as an achievement. The symbolic awakening is harnessed as a strategic tool to create discontinuity autobiographically, to justify one's major change, to ensure that one's cognitive security remains intact, and to call for more awakenings. This article further notes that, since narrative itself is a practice, people always have ‘a self in the making’ which determines (and is determined by) how people (re)tell their life stories. Moreover, in Taiwan's case, we see that ‘awakeners’ usually admired early awakeners but blamed late awakeners (which constitutes an interesting triadic group relationship); people may also describe their experience of having multiple awakenings before the ‘grand’ awakening (‘Awakening’). © The author(s) 2015. Nations and Nationalism © ASEN/John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2015     

Multiple Partial Couplings in the Multiple Streams Framework: The Case of Extreme Weather and Climate Change Adaptation

In this paper, I draw insights from a detailed case study of adaptation policymaking to develop a novel interpretation of John Kingdon's original work that shows how policy entrepreneurs can couple the problem, policy, and political streams through multiple partial couplings. Researchers and policymakers often assume that extreme weather opens a window to adopt policies aimed at adapting to long‐term climate change. However, empirical evidence shows that crises can redirect attention to urgent, short‐term goals. Using the Multiple Streams lens in an abductive case study, I investigate how these competing forces interact to influence the policy process. By unpacking Kingdon's familiar “streams” metaphor and elaborating his overlooked concept of partial couplings, I illustrate how the policy entrepreneurs' strategy of issue linking explains Australia's adoption of the 2007 Water Act, one of the world's first major adaptation policies, at the height of its decade‐long Millennium Drought. Employing this novel theoretical understanding offers new insights into this important case. I conclude by developing tentative hypotheses for testing in future studies.     

An Irish Party and the British Parliament: Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party

This essay reassesses the importance of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party, 1880–90, originally published in 1957, with particular reference to its significance in the history of the British parliament. While establishing the book's continuing relevance, both as a study of a specific political phenomenon and as a model for analysing political movements, the essay questions aspects which do not hold up in the light of subsequent research. In particular, O'Brien's account and interpretation of Parnell's behaviour in 1890–1 in the aftermath of the O'Shea divorce case is shown to be inadequate in the light of more recent research and writing.     

Dewey's Materialist Philosophy of Education: A Resource for Critical Pedagogues?

This article looks at some similarities and differences between key elements of Karl Marx's critique of capital and John Dewey's philosophy of education, both substantively and methodologically. Substantively, their analyses of the relation between human beings and the natural world—what Marx calls concrete labour and Dewey generally calls action—converge. Similarly, methodologically they converge when looked at from the point of view of their analysis of the relation between earlier and later forms of life. In Marx's case, it is his comparison of the relation between capitalist society and earlier societies. In Dewey's case, it is his comparison of the relation between adult experience and childhood experience. Dewey's practical realization of his distinction of adult and childhood experience in the creation of a materialist curriculum embodied in the Dewey laboratory school in Chicago (of which Dewey was director from 1896 to 1904) also accords in many ways with Marx's theory of concrete labour. On the other hand, their analyses diverge substantively when viewed from the point of view of their critique of capitalist society; Marx united concrete labour with his concept of abstract labour to provide a basis for criticizing modern society on its own terms rather than in terms of Dewey's concept of a cultural lag. The divergence is explained by their divergent methodologies in analyzing modern capitalist society. Despite this difference, the article concludes that critical pedagogues would do well to incorporate Dewey's materialist curriculum into their own practices—with modifications.     

Engagement or empire? American power and the international order

Three recent surveys of American foreign relations lie at the intersection of topical academic and policy debates. Robert Lieber's Eagle rules? makes a case for American primacy as a precondition for global stability, and in so doing reflects an agenda for US foreign policy that is broadly associated with the current Bush administration. By contrast, Joseph Nye's The paradox of American power argues against US unilateralism, and may be read as an implicit critique of the apparent recent shift in American strategy. Nevertheless, both Lieber and Nye make a case for extensive American engagement with the world as a basis for international stability. By contrast, Chalmers Johnson's Blowback views America's global ‘engagement’ as a thinly disguised diplomatic veil for imperialism. Although they make very different arguments, these three books are usefully considered together. Nye's stress on the importance of soft power, multilateral diplomacy and wider structural changes in the nature of world politics is a useful corrective to Lieber's emphasis on US primacy. But Johnson is right to criticize the excessive and ultimately counter‐productive level of military involvement of the United States around the world. In the absence of a more effective global balance of power, the preconditions for a robust system of international diplomacy as well as the management of globalization will not be satisfied.     

John Marshall,McCulloch v. Maryland,and the Concept of Constitutional Sovereignty

Scholars have long debated John Marshall's intent in his famous opinion in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Despite long-standing disagreement concerning the character of Marshall's nationalism and federalism, interpretations of the opinion typically rely on an incomplete picture of the case. This analysis revisits McCulloch to illustrate his support for national and state sovereignty as defined in the Constitution. It then moves beyond the opinion itself to examine Marshall's defense of McCulloch in a series of newspaper essays he authored in the aftermath of the case. Situated alongside the McCulloch opinion, these essays show that Marshall was as much concerned with defending the sovereignty of the Constitution as he was with adjudicating political authority between national and state governments.     

Poesis and Immediacy: A Reply to Davis

Abstract

It is argued here that the Christian doctrines of Trinity and creation make imperative the notion of "mediation" as God's mode of existing in himself and toward us, as well as our mode of existence in God's grace. This is the case in Saint Thomas's account of grace, and it is also the basic configuration of Sergei Bulgakov's sophiology. Josh Davis's understanding of grace, by opting for immediacy as our mode of dependence on God, ultimately fails to give a full account of human cooperation, and in so doing establishes a competitive relation between human and divine agency.     

One continent,two federalisms: rediscovering the original meanings of Australian federal ideas

Federalism is usually described in political science as a single body of ideas—in Australia's case arriving in the 1840s–50s and moving to constitutional reality in the 1890s. This article re‐examines the origins and diversity of federal ideas in Australia. It suggests that federal thought began influencing Australia's constitutional development significantly earlier than previously described. This first Australian federalism had a previously unappreciated level of support in British colonial policy and drew on Benjamin Franklin's American model of territorial change as a ‘commonwealth for increase’. The revised picture entrenches the notion of federalism's logic but also reveals a dynamic, decentralist style of federalism quite different from Australia's orthodox ‘classic’ or compact federal theory. In fact, Australian political thought contains two often‐conflicting ideas of federalism. The presence of these approaches helps explain longstanding dissent over the regional foundations of Australian constitutionalism.