The emergence of multiple sclerosis as a nosological category in France, 1838-1868

Neurologists have retold a story about the discovery of multiple sclerosis (MS) in essentially the same form from the 1870s to the present. Upon close analysis this narrative was found to be problematic. Once the nosological category of MS came into existence in 1868, physicians reread the scientific past through this new category and created a linear story. Following generations received this story uncritically, rereading the past through the conceptual lens of their own times. Writers selected the earlier cases, illustrations, and medical writings in the literature for inclusion in the discovery narrative and did not analyze them in their original historical contexts. The author offers an alternative account of the discovery of MS. The creation of the disease category of MS by Charcot in France was the result of several converging factors including a new histopathological technology, a unique relationship between patient and physicians in the clinic, a unique relationship between the clinic and the autopsy room, and a neurological culture emphasizing disease specificity.     

Book reviews

CHINA

JANE KATE LEONARD. Controlling from Afar, The Daoguang Emperor's Management of the Grand Canal Crisis, 1824–1826. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1996. 331 pp. Maps, figures, notes, reference list, index. US$50.00, hardcover.

KAM LOUIE and LOUISE EDWARDS, editors and translators. Censored by Confucius: ghost Stories by Yuan Mei. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. xxxv, 223 pp. List of stories by theme, illustrations, preface, introduction. US$67.95, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

KARMA LEKSHE TSOMO. Sisters in Solitude: two Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Ethics for Women. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. xii, 198 pp. US$19.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

MARK T. BERGER and DOUGLAS A. BORER, editors. The Rise of East Asia: critical Visions of the Pacific Century. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. xii, 308 pp. Introduction, editors’ preface and acknowledgments, figures, tables, index. US$25.99, UK£15.99, paper.

SOUTH ASIA

LISE McKEAN. Divine Enterprise: gurus and the Indian Nationalist Movement. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1996. xviii, 361 pp. Index, plates, bibliography. US$21.99, paper.

STANLEY J. TAMBIAH. Leveling Crowds: ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. Berkeley: California University Press, 1996. x, 395 pp. Index, plates, maps, bibliography. US$20.00, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

NGUYEN VAN CHINH. Social Change in Rural Vietnam: children's Work and Seasonal Migration. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, 1997. 65 pp. A$8.00, paper.

JOHN GILLESPIE, editor. Commercial Legal Developments in Vietnam: Vietnamese and Foreign Commentaries . Singapore: Butterworths Asia, 1997. A$81.25, hardcover.

MARGARET LEIDELMEIJER. Van Suikermolen tot Grooibedrijf: technische Verniewing in de Java‐Suikerindustrie in de Negentiende Eeuw . [From sugar mill to factory: technical innovation in Java's sugar industry during the nineteendi century]. Amsterdam: Neder‐lands Economisch‐Historisch Archief, 1997. 388 pp. Tables, graphs, photographs. Dfl.52.50, paper.

NIELS MULDER. Inside Philippine Society . Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1997. No price given.

FAYDUMAGAT. Itneg (Tinggian) Justice & Conflict Resolution. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1996. No price given.

RAUL PERTIERRA. Explorations in Social Theory and Philippines Ethnography. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1997. vii, 262 pp. Foreword by Clive Kessler. Introduction, photographs. No price given, paper.

DAVID M. E. ROSKIES, translator and editor. Black Clouds over the Isle of Gods and Other Modern Indonesian Short Stories . Armonk, New York, London, England: M. E. Sharp, 1997. xxiii, 224 pp. Introduction, notes and comments, suggested readings, glossary, index. US$62.95, hardcover; US$19.95, paper.     

THE BUILD-UP AND DURATION OF SUBSIDY-INDUCED EMPLOYMENT EVIDENCE FROM U.K. REGIONAL POLICY*

ABSTRACT. The paper takes microlevel data on U.K. regional policy instruments and other financial assistance payments to industry to examine the time profile of assisted employment up to five years after the date of assistance. The theoretical analysis indicates factors bearing on the employment effect of industrial assistance and highlights the possibly key role played by the firm's access to private funds. The results from the regression analysis indicate that both the build-up and duration of subsidy-induced jobs vary between assistance form and firm, and that assistance is generally ineffective in large firms. Elsewhere, assisted jobs accumulate over a period of three years, but then are lost to policy at high rates.     

Book reviews

AUSTRALIA IN PEACE AND WAR: EXTERNAL RELATIONS 1788–1977, T.B. Millar, ANU Press, Canberra, 1978, 578 pp.

CHINA AND AMERICA: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW RELATIONSHIP, William Barnds, ed., New York University Press, New York, 1977. $15.00 cloth.

CHINA AND THE WORLD SINCE 1949, Wang Gungwu, The Macmillan Company of Australia, December 1977, $17.50 bound, $8.75 paper.

THE DIPLOMACY OF DETENTE: THE KISSINGER ERA, Coral Bell, Martin Robinson, London, 1977, pp. 278.

THE PROBLEM OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE, Volume IV: CB DISARMAMENT NEGOTIATIONS, 1920–1970, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1971.

CHEMICAL DISARMAMENT: NEW WEAPONS FOR OLD, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1975.

DELAYED TOXIC EFFECTS OF CHEMICAL WARFARE AGENTS, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1975.

ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCE OF THE SECOND INDOCHINA WAR, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Almquist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1976.     

The precarious and the transitional: labor casualization and youth in post-bubble Japan

ABSTRACT

In recent decades economic globalization and neoliberal restructuring have constricted longstanding pathways to middle-class citizenship in Japan and other postindustrial economies. Much attention has been given to how the shift from ‘lifetime’ salaried employment to ‘flexible’ labor markets has disenfranchized many young people, leaving them struggling to reconcile dominant middle-class expectations of adulthood with neoliberal economic realities. Taking an anthropological approach, this article reconsiders this prevailing assessment of labor casualization by examining ways in which young casual workers in Tokyo’s retail, service, and creative industries navigate the transforming economy. Their circumstances, choices, and self-representations shed light on the active role they play in the formation of alternative transition regimes that challenge normative transitions to work and adulthood in Japan. These findings have broader implications for the limits of conventional social scientific approaches to the impact of economic crises and neoliberal restructuring on youth in the early twenty-first century.