Apparent and actual disease landscapes. Some reflections on the geographical definition of health and disease

Like geographical analysis in general, medical geography is based on the assumption that location is the first clue to causal analysis. Against a background of two empirical studies, one dealing with a group of ALS cases and the other with a group of leukaemia cases, this paper argues that it is insufficient to define disease occurrence in spatial terms, referring to patients' places of residence at the time of onset. Since exposure and effect are related to both time and place, geographical studies of ill health in modern society are complicated by high mobility, long periods of latency and environmental change which might cause a distortion between cause and effect. Therefore a different approach is required.     

Origins of the Creutzfeldt and Jakob concept

A review of the publications of Hans Creutzfeldt and Alfons Jakob pertaining to the concept which bears their name (CJD) reveals that they described a neuropathological syndrome and were opposed to its classification as a neurological disease. The evidence on which Creutzfeldt and Jakob based their view is reevaluated, and studies by other workers are cited in which a range of environmental and genetic factors generated the CJ syndrome, challenging the proposition that CJD is a disease with a single cause.     

Skeletal evidence for health and disease in the Iron Age of northeastern Hungary

As part of a project to examine health trends in northeastern Hungary, 171 individuals originating from two Iron Age sites were examined. The analysis produced data comparable with those previously published from the Bronze Age in the same area. Comparison suggests slight temporal increases in most indicators of morbidity. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Historicization of the culture concept

Recent criticisms for culture concept targeted a vision of culture as a hermetically sealed synchronic entity tied to a spatial unit. The article urges the historicization of the concept of culture itself, rather than discarding it altogether. Culture constitutes historical processes of the interpenetration between two mutually constituent forces: the global and the local. Culture through time requires a re‐examination of such concepts as “hybridity,”; “cosmopolitanism,”; and “historical discontinuity of the present from the past.”; Three cases of Japanese historical experiences are presented as examples of possible ways to historicize anthropology.     

Australian defence policy and the concept of self-reliance

Since the Vietnam War, Australian defence policy has been based on the concept of self-reliance—the ability to defend Australia without allied combat forces. Self-reliance arose from concerns about US support in conflict with Indonesia. It has implications for Australian foreign policy, force structuring, joint operations and the defence industry, which were most coherently laid out in the 1987 White Paper. Later White Papers adapted this framework, but the 2013 White Paper seems to move towards a new approach to defence policy and strategy, which continued use of the term ‘self-reliance’ obscures rather than elucidates.     

Possibilities and pitfalls of the concept of national indifference

This introduction to the themed section ‘The history of national indifference. A critical appraisal’ explores the challenges and possibilities of the concept of national indifference. It starts from the premise that national indifference remains a very useful concept to avoid falling into teleological narratives of nationalism. The central argument is that national indifference needs to be theorized as a non-binary, relative concept that is not the complete opposite of national identification. Indeed, the contributions show that national indifference has gradations and can coexist with explicit, banal or everyday forms of nationalism, both among elites and ordinary people, both in and outside of East Central Europe, both before and after the Two World Wars. This central argument results from an engagement with three areas of debate surrounding the national indifference literature, which all relate to its (inadvertent) reproduction of binary understandings of nationalism: the dichotomous conceptualization of east versus west, nationalisation versus non-nationalisation and elites versus masses.     

Recent work on the concept of the state

Stephen Bornstein, David Held and Joel Krieger (eds), The State in Capitalist Europe, London, Allen and Unwin, 1984, pp.170. $24.95 (paper).

Gregor McLennan, David Held and Stuart Hall (eds), The Idea of the Modern State, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1984, pp.240. $28.95 (paper).     

时尚社会：价值观的冲突与转换

当代社会正在演化为时尚化社会。时尚社会有着时尚的价值观,这种价值观把时尚价值看作最高的价值,是对只考虑主体的需要、不考虑客体的利益的传统价值观的极度张扬。由于时尚价值在时尚社会里被过度追逐,带来了严重的生态问题和社会问题。贯彻落实科学发展观,促进人与自然的和谐和人与人的和谐,必须转换传统的价值观,确立一种既考虑主体的需要又考虑客体的利益的和谐价值观。     

《新青年》与近代国家观念的变革

五四时期声名卓著的《新青年》,满腔热情地把国家振兴的希望寄托于青年,构成国家观念更新的新取向;针对民初君主政体的回光返照和共和国家的有名无实,大力播扬"主权在民"的思想,以唤起多数国民之自觉;在俄国十月革命的影响下,接受和宣传马克思主义的国家学说,实现了国家观念的革命性变革.这一变革自有其历史的因缘,更体现了先进者对国家命运的忧患意识和创造"理想之中华"的矢志追求.