Trans lives in the ‘gay capital of the UK’

Recent geographical interventions have begun to question the power relations among lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people, challenging assumptions that LGBT communities have homogeneous needs or are not characterised by hierarchies of power. Such interventions have included examinations of LGBT scenes as sites of exclusion for trans people. This article augments academic explorations of trans lives by focusing on ‘the gay capital’ of the UK, Brighton & Hove, a city that is notably absent from academic discussions of gay urbanities in the UK, despite its wider acclaim. The article draws upon Count Me In Too (CMIT), a participatory action research project that seeks to progress social change for LGBT people in Brighton & Hove. Rather than focusing on LGBT scenes, the article addresses broader experiences of the city, including those relating to the city as a political entity that seeks to be ‘LGBT inclusive’ and those relating to the geographies of medical ‘treatment’ that relocate trans people outside the boundaries of the city, specifically to the gender identity clinic at Charing Cross Hospital in London. It argues that trans lives are both excluded from and inextricably linked to geographical imaginings of the ‘gay capital’, including LGBT spaces, scenes and activism, such that complex sexual and gender solidarities are simultaneously created and contested. In this way, the article recognises the paradoxes of the hopes and solidarities that co-exist – and should be held in tension – with experiences of marginalisation.     

Culture,emotional transnationalism and mental distress: family relations and well-being among Taiwanese immigrant women

Immigrant women's vulnerability to mental distress has been recognized in the literature and yet the socio-cultural causes of their distress have rarely been explored. On the basis of a case study of Taiwanese immigrants residing in Chicago, this article illustrates the dynamic contexts within which Taiwanese immigrant women's distress is produced at home and explains the social and cultural factors that engender the women's distress. In this article I argue that Taiwanese immigrant women frequently shift back and forth between Taiwanese and American cultural norms in an effort to apply effective behavioral guidance and justifications to interactions with their spouses, children and in-laws. The term ‘emotional transnationalism’ is used to describe the psychological experience associated with transnational cultural practices. Distress is often generated as these women struggle with feelings of ambivalence and contradictions that confront them in their search for cultural identities. The severity of distress is largely determined by the power hierarchies between women and those with whom they interact. Married women's status as subordinate to their in-laws creates more negative experiences than any other status.     

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.     

复杂理论视角下城市健康地理学探析

城市公共健康问题是根植于所依托的地域空间背景下的复杂问题,因而,目前学界主要以还原论的模型假设来分析影响城市健康的复杂多因子关系时存在一定局限。本文在分析城市健康地理问题的"地方"复杂性基础上,提出用复杂理论认识城市的健康问题,将城市健康地理系统看作为具有开放性、组分的知识局限性、自组织性、路径依赖、涌现性、正反馈和锁定特征的复杂系统。从复杂理论视角探讨了当前城市健康地理学研究的三个主要议题,进而提出复杂理论视角下城市健康地理学研究框架及未来研究展望。     

2001—2015年全球健康产业贸易网络特征研究

基于2001—2015年195个国家间健康产业贸易矩阵,采用社会网络分析方法,分析了全球健康产业贸易网络特征。结果表明：①绿色农产品、保健食品行业和药品行业全球贸易参与性最高,保健康复、健康家居行业区域性较强。②健康产业的出口集中控制在少数国家,而健康产业需求普遍性较高。③全球可以分为欧洲及中东亚、美洲、中东及南亚、亚太地区、东南非洲5个健康产业子群。④欧美在药品、保健品、农产品等行业具有控制优势,中国在保健康复、家居行业居主导地位。⑤欧美国家长期居于贸易核心地位,中、印等亚太国家控制作用显著提升,多元化趋势显现。⑥全球健康产业网络格局是由科技水平与科研投入、健康理念、产业政策等因素综合带动形成的。     

Gendering activism,exile and wellbeing: Chilean exiles in the UK

Drawing on the case of Chilean exiles in the UK this article looks at the experiences of exiles through a gender lens. The analysis argues for the need to recognise the gendered nature of spaces of political activism in order to highlight the contribution made by many Chilean women to life in exile. Using a gender lens sheds light on the multiple ways in which many women were indirectly the victims of abuse under the military regime and how this impacts on their mental health and wellbeing. The analysis also provides new insights into how forced migration impacts on gender roles and norms among those living in exile. The article primarily focuses on the experiences of women who arrived in the UK as the ‘wife of’ political activists, a group whose needs have been frequently overlooked.     

Political Ecologies of Global Health: Pesticide Exposure in Southwestern Ecuador's Banana Industry

Pesticide exposure in Ecuador's banana industry reflects political economic and ecological processes that interact across scales to affect human health. We use this case study to illustrate opportunities for applying political ecology of health scholarship in the burgeoning field of global health. Drawing on an historical literature review and ethnographic data collected in Ecuador's El Oro province, we present three main areas where a political ecological approach can enrich global health scholarship: perceptive characterization of multi‐scalar and ecologically entangled pathways to health outcomes; critical analysis of discursive dynamics such as competing scalar narratives; and appreciation of the environment‐linked subjectivities and emotions of people experiencing globalized health impacts. Rapprochement between these fields may also provide political ecologists with access to valuable empirical data on health outcomes, venues for engaged scholarship, and opportunities to synthesize numerous insightful case studies and discern broader patterns.     

Unions,Parties, and the Politics of State Government Legacy Cost

Many American state governments have made extensive promises to pay for employees’ health care and other benefits in retirement. Currently estimated at over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities, these other postemployment benefits (OPEB) are creating a major fiscal problem for state governments. In this article, we examine the politics of OPEB. We seek to explain the variation in the generosity of OPEB across U.S. states. We argue that party competition theories do not adequately explain the outcomes we observe. Instead, we draw on the emerging Schattschneiderian approach to the politics of public policy to show that public union strength conditions a party's incentives to represent unions’ interests. In states where public sector unions are strong, unions can find their way into either party's coalition. We find that Republicans are more responsive to public union interests than either their ideological brand or prior research would suggest. It is only in states where public employees are weak that Republicans can act unilaterally and enact their preference for less government spending. To test our theories, we carry out an empirical analysis using a newly assembled data set of per capita OPEB liabilities across 49 states.     

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.