Illusions of care: Iraqi students between the Ba’thist State and the Stasi in socialist East Germany, 1958–89

For four decades, Iraqi students came to the German Democratic Republic for education, political refuge, or to burnish their credentials. In 1969, Iraq opened diplomatic relations with the GDR, simultaneously extending its persecution of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) into East Germany by means of a complex bureaucratic apparatus of diplomatic organs, security services and student organisations. While ICP members were eventually protected by the Stasi, this entangled them in a system that offered care at the cost of obedience. The on-going campaign against ICP students ultimately played an outsized role in undermining the relationship between the SED and the Iraqi Ba’th.     

The Meaning of Normality: the controversy about the mental health campaign in Sweden 1969

At the height of the Swedish welfare society, a campaign with the aim of promoting mental health issues within the Swedish labour market was launched. The title and purpose of the campaign, ‘Mental health – an action of increased understanding and solidarity at work’, was to illuminate mental health issues at work. Surprisingly to the organizers, the mental health campaign stirred up major opposition, especially from the political left. The idea of mental hygiene in an industrial and workplace setting, a cross-breed between the values of the Human Relations School and psychiatric science, was received with deep mistrust. The campaign caused an agitated debate in the media about power relations between employers and employees. The political disagreements were exposed in a number of articles in the daily newspapers and in the evening papers during the summer of that year. This article undertakes an investigation of the campaign literature and the media debate. The interpretation of the debate highlights different opinions about the meaning of normal mental health. Four different views of normality and mental health which demonstrate the complexity of the issue are presented. Mental health could mean adjustment and harmony, it could be a medical weapon to suppress the working class, it could even mean a neutral state of absence of mental problems, or lastly it could be a claim for the right to live a normal life.     

‘It’s one of the first times I’ve felt fully engaged’: developing student engagement using blogging as a form of assessment

There is a widespread debate in higher education about how best to support students in becoming more active and engaged learners. Geographers have occupied a central position in these debates having long been concerned with understanding and creating teaching spaces that encourage active and experiential learning. Recent pedagogical innovations have seen a movement away from a reliance on lecturing as the key pedagogical method and a redefinition of the roles of both teacher and learner. In this paper, we look at the role that assessment, specifically assessed blogs, can play in enhancing student engagement. Drawing on interviews with Course Organizers from two case study courses, student focus groups, and course evaluation surveys we show the various ways in which blogs enhance engagement. We draw attention to how blogging enabled students to personalize their learning and make it more meaningful to them, as well as to foster greater engagement with the course materials including making connections across the course as a whole. Further, we show how blogging enabled students to develop transferable skills that would stand them in good stead for the rest of their time at university and in their future professional lives.     

Separate and unsanitary: African American women railroad car cleaners and the Women's Service Section, 1918-1920

The Women's Service Section (WSS) investigated federally controlled railroad stations and yards at the end of World War I. Few women worked in car cleaning before the war, and railroad management preferred to block women workers, especially African Americans, from gaining any kind of foothold in railroad work. African American women were the single largest group of railroad car cleaners during this period but they were routinely denied adequate facilities, including toilets, locker rooms, and dining facilities throughout the railroad system. By raising the issues of facilities, workers' rights, and public health, these women shaped federal policy and widened the agenda of the WSS to include a direct attack on segregated workplaces. This article argues that African American women car cleaners launched an industrial campaign that wove together concerns about racism, sexism, and health issues, and successfully removed barriers to women working in a predominately male industry.     

On making noise: Hokkolorob and its place in Indian student movements

This article focuses on the 2014 Hokkolorob (‘Let there be noise’) movement at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, in the state of West Bengal, a student agitation that ultimately led to the forced resignation of a vice-chancellor after intervention by the Chief Minister of the state. This movement has passed into campus folklore, with a Wikipedia entry devoted to it signposting its distinctive cultural features, including public art and hashtag activism. However, in many ways Hokkolorob did not entirely fit the pattern of student protests at other Indian universities, not only because it achieved short-term success, drawing the wider public into openly expressed sympathy with the agitating students, but also because it eschewed party politics and opened the way for new expressions of dissent. Moreover, it drew attention to the problem of providing safe spaces on campuses to students across genders and orientations. Unique among the many upheavals in the Indian higher education landscape over the past few years, Hokkolorob needs to be understood in the context of a crisis that affects both the public university and the Indian polity.     

Iranian University Students' Politics in the Post-Reform Movement Era: A Discourse Analysis

Based on the discourse analysis of the statements of the university student organizations in the period between 1996–2006, this paper will address the pros and cons of five approaches to politics in the post-reform movement era based on five discourses among university students in the past decade of Iranian politics and their consequences for reshaping the Iranian polity. This article first discusses five socio-political processes, i.e., Islamicization, social differentiation, limited political competition, transformation of Shi'ite authority, and personalization of power, which led to four social and political schisms in Iranian society; inequality; political, social, and cultural discrimination; and secular/Islamist tension. Referring to these schisms, political discourses shape the ideologies and actions of Iranian student movements. These discourses are social justice, tradition, totalitarianism, pluralism, and Islamic democracy. Even if these discourses were no more than intellectual pronouncements by the university students, they have been powerful enough to extend to the Iranian political society.     

Exploring youth socio-spatial perceptions of higher education landscapes through sketch maps

Previous research on broadening participation in higher education and Science Technology Engineering and Math has inadequately examined the role of place. This article explores the socio-spatial perceptions of youth of a college campus and changes in perceptions youth experience during their transition from being a university neighbor to becoming part of a university community. This study uses sketch maps and qualitative Geographic Information Systems to document the changing perceptions of 43 youth aged 14–18 during their participation in a university program. The results suggest that some students started to identify with campus spaces as a university student or employee rather than as a neighbor of the university.     

中世纪欧洲大学生学习及生活费用的考察

大学日常生活史愈益为当代学者所关注。本文则主要对一位中世纪欧洲大学生的总花费及各项主要费用在其中所占的比例作了大致的估算。从总体来看,在中世纪欧洲各大学,膳宿费、获得学位所支出的各项费用和听课费占了大学生花费的绝大部分,而现代大学中学生每学年开学交纳的高额入学注册费在中世纪大学则微乎其微。而且,不同时代、不同地区、不同专业、不同阶层的大学生的花费亦有差别。大学通常本着贫富有别的原则收费,从而使贫富学生获得相对等同的教育机会,而教俗统治者和富人的捐资助学也为学生完成大学教育作出了贡献。可见,让贫穷学生进入大学并完成其学业可以不必通过降低收费标准,而是可以通过减免或免除其部分费用的方法来实现。但总的来看,在中世纪欧洲,就读大学的费用是昂贵的,绝大部分大学生仍然是占人口极少数的富有阶层的子弟。     

基于面板数据的劳动力流动的区域差异研究——以国有企业大学生就业为例

在大学教育转型的背景下,大学生就业难成为当前社会的一大焦点,化解大学生就业困局对于我国经济社会可持续发展具有重要的意义。为此,本文利用1999-2008年我国国有及国有控股企业的面板数据,通过实证测算大学生就业和工资之间的关系,探索大学生就业影响因素及其区域差异。研究结果发现:大学生就业增量和工资之间呈反比关系,而且大学生就业增量表现出明显的区域差异,表现出东部最强,西部最弱的大学生就业的区域聚集。出现这种情况的原因实际上由当前大学生劳动力市场区域分割、行业分割以及连年扩招造成的。为了改变这种局面,需要大力促进地区平衡发展、营造公平的就业竞争环境以及健全的就业激励和保障机制,同时还要完善就业服务体系,加强就业导向的实习指导和服务,提升大学生就业能力和就业素质。     

Psychiatry and race during World War II

Although the American literature on "war neuroses" expanded during World War II, psychiatrists remained more interested in dramatic instances of "combat fatigue" than in the problems of soldiers who broke down far from the field of battle. This bias in the medical literature shaped both diagnosis and treatment. It had an especially powerful effect on African American soldiers who, in the "Jim Crow" army of World War II, were assigned in disproportionate numbers to service units. When military neuropsychiatrists did write about troubled young African Americans, many revealed a racial conservatism that was surprising given the liberal environmentalist paradigm of the day. (Here, a particularly useful source is the two-volume history of Neuropsychiatry in World War II, produced by the Medical Department of the U.S. Army.) The major challenge to such views came from the National Medical Association (NMA). Despite its many criticisms of military medicine, the NMA argued that African American soldiers and veterans needed more, not fewer, psychiatric services. NMA members also joined their white counterparts in the campaign to diminish the stigma of mental illness, especially among the families of soldiers returning home. We need more investigation of the subsequent history of race and psychiatry, especially within the Veterans Administration.     

‘From motives of generosity,as well as self‐preservation’: Thomas Branagan,Colonization, and the Gradual Emancipation Movement

The idea of colonizing free blacks in areas distant from white settlement has had a long history in the American antislavery movement. A decade before the American Colonization Society formed in 1817, an Irish immigrant in Philadelphia, Thomas Branagan, argued that creating a black settlement in the newly‐acquired Louisiana Purchase territories would encourage slaveholders to emancipate their bondspersons while also saving white society from a number of ills he associated with a biracial society, most notably racial mixing, poverty and violence. Branagan’s plan never gained acceptance, but the idea of sending free blacks to the American West to encourage emancipation did catch the attention of gradual emancipationists associated with the American Convention of Abolitionists. This group considered a similar scheme as the lesser of two evils once the Colonization Society began its campaign to send America’s blacks “back” to Africa. Neither plan met with success, but their existence reveals an important link between colonization and the early antislavery movement.     

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.     

‘The Most Developed of the Underdeveloped Nations’. US Foreign Policy and Student Unrest in 1960s Spain

Throughout the 1960s, Spanish students staged a strong opposition against the dictatorship of General Franco. Also during this decade, the U.S. Foreign Service in Spain began to pay great attention to these students for two key reasons. On the one hand, student protests posed a threat to US defensive interests in a country with a high strategic value during the Cold War in southern Europe. However, on the other hand, campus agitation could lead to positive effects for the United States if students’ expectations of social change were channeled toward national development in a context of order and political stability. So, how could student activism and idealism be directed toward a controlled modernization of Spain? This article attempts to answer this question by studying American programs aimed at disseminating the principles of modernization theory in Spanish universities as an instrument to (1) influence students’ political and intellectual socialization and to immunize them against radical ideologies and (2) channel students’ aspirations towards constructive and responsible reform of their country's socioeconomic structures.     

An experimental evaluation of an anti-corruption intervention among Ukrainian university students

In this paper, we investigate experimentally the effect of an anti-corruption intervention – an info folder based on materials developed by Transparency International – on Ukrainian university students’ willingness to participate in an anti-corruption campaign and their general attitude toward corruption. In a survey of 600 students in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, individuals were randomly exposed to either the anti-corruption folder (treatment group) or a folder with information about Lviv (control group). The results suggest that students who have previous experience with bribing are more open to the campaign, while the effect on the total sample is not statistically significant. Furthermore, the intervention increases the overall perception that corruption is a (long-term) part of society rather than a temporary phenomenon. Finally, students with experience in corrupt practices tend to adopt a more negative view of corruption. For those without such experiences, however, we find some indication that the treatment could bolster the acceptance of corruption by instructing the students about its dissemination. The effects of this intervention are therefore ambivalent and appear to depend on the students’ previous exposure to corruption.     

THE CO-PRODUCTION OF NARRATIVE IN AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CITY: AN ANALYSIS OF CINCINNATI, OHIO, IN TURMOIL

In April 2001 Cincinnati, Ohio, erupted into violence and protracted unrest after the police shooting of an unarmed African‐American named Timothy Thomas. African‐American interest groups in the city subsequently organized an economic boycott of downtown businesses. In response to the demonstration and the boycott, the Cincinnati government issued a marketing campaign entitled ‘We're On the Move!’, intending to give nod to past failures and launch forward movement on their part. In this article I investigate the entirety of these events as narrative moments under the auspices of urban entrepreneurialism to answer the question: How does the local population inform, rather than simply mediate, the narrative administration of an urban entrepreneurial form of governance? I then turn to a response to the campaign by an African‐American newspaper columnist in Cincinnati to underscore a dialogic relationship between an entrepreneurial city and its citizens as it forms the presentation of entrepreneurialism. In turn, this conception allows for a more nuanced version of entrepreneurial governance more generally.     

公共服务设施可达性、个人社会资本与居民心理健康——基于北京的实证研究

利用2018年来自北京的问卷调查数据,本文探讨了公共服务设施可达性、个人社会资本及其交互作用对居民心理健康的影响。研究发现：公共服务设施可达性对心理健康具有显著的正向影响,且对新市民的影响更突出。个人社会资本中密切交往的网络规模、从社会网络中获取经济支持两个维度对其心理健康有显著正向作用,但在新市民和本地市民群体间不存在显著差异。个人社会资本能够强化公共服务设施可达性对心理健康的正向影响。本文验证了社会生态学的健康促进模型的相关假设,即外部环境特征和个人社会资本相互嵌套共同影响个人健康水平。鉴于此,健康城市规划需兼顾“硬件”与“软件”层面,既要构建公平正义的空间环境,还需加强社会资本和社会组织培育。     

Models of masculinity: sex education,the United States Public Health Service,and the YMCA, 1919-1924

In 1918, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) told American parents that "it is no longer possible for you to choose whether your child will learn about sex or not." According to the PHS, most American boys learned about sex from "improper sources" by the age of nine. The "unfortunate effect of these early impressions" had, PHS warned, not only resulted in a gross misunderstanding of sex, but also been a major factor in the spread of venereal disease (The Parents' Part [the U.S. Public Health Service, 1918], p. 5). To counter and correct this miseducation, PHS joined with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) to create a sex education program aimed at adolescent boys. Officially launched in the spring of 1919, the "Keeping Fit" campaign provides a unique insight into the federal government's attempt to medicalize and regulate American sexuality through the forum of public health.     

Explaining Gun Deaths: Gun Control,Mental Illness,and Policymaking in the American States

Seeking to test two commonly proposed solutions to gun deaths in the United States, we examine the extent to which (1) tougher gun control laws, (2) greater access to mental health services, and (3) a combination of both approaches affect the rate of gun deaths in American states. We find that tougher gun control laws, as well as a combination of both approaches, are associated with a lower overall rate of gun deaths, and with a lower rate of nonsuicide gun deaths, while only tougher gun control laws are significantly associated with a reduction in the rate of gun-related suicides. Our findings serve as an initial guide to policymakers seeking to reduce the rate of gun deaths in their states.     

Engendered/endangered: women,tuberculosis, and the project of citizenship

The anti-tuberculosis campaign of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was an unprecedented display of medical authority and public health purview. With accumulating evidence that the disease disproportionately struck the poor, tuberculosis by the early decades of the century was perceived epidemiologically as embedded in individual practices including hygiene and domestic order. Tuberculosis was in a sense a trope for national degeneration, and as such it became the vehicle for a self-conscious thrust towards national renewal and moral regeneration. This paper uses a feminist Foucauldian framework in its analysis of the anti-tuberculosis campaign. In the case of San Francisco, efforts to combat tuberculosis centred in part on women in their roles as wives and mothers. Women were the gatekeepers of health because they were responsible for keeping the home clean and bacillus free. Not only did this focus become a medical legitimization of women's domestic duties, but it also became a discourse of citizenship. Whether explicitly or implicitly, physicians concentrated their attention on white middle class women in their messages of health maintenance. Within sanatoria, a primary agenda of tuberculosis treatment was the inculcation of middle class behaviour into the working class patients. The anti-tuberculosis campaign was thus a part of the early-twentieth-century project of nationhood where citizenship was largely calculated through the lens of class and race.     

Cosmopolitan or ethnically identified selves? Institutional expectations and the negotiated identities of international students

The identities of young people, including students, are influenced by their institutional contexts. In central Melbourne over the past decade, international students largely from Southeast Asia have been presented with the expectations of universities in which they are enrolled and churches with which many are affiliated. But the subject positions offered to students by universities and churches diverge: universities expect of their students cross-cultural interaction and a forming global cosmopolitanism, whilst churches expect devoutness to be exhibited through close interaction amongst international students, often in national and ethnically specific groupings. Drawing from lengthy interviews with students and institutional service providers, this paper finds that the influence of religious organisations on the social forming of students is more direct and effective than the influence of universities. The churches draw their student members tightly and persuasively into ethnically identified groups, whose members enact a sociality almost entirely conducted in relation to those churches. The universities, in contrast, are less directive and insistent about their expectations of cosmopolitan interactions. Students whose sociality seems compliant with university statements are those whose plans to be cosmopolitan were developed independently of university expectations.