Identifying Relevant Cases of Conversion and Drift Using the Comparative Agendas Project

One of the most important phases of case‐oriented research is identifying the relevant population of cases. The best practice scheme suggests first identifying the positive and then the negative cases, based on the assumption that the population is small and known. This scheme is inapplicable when the population is unknown, as is the case with many public administration and public policy outcomes, which are often less visible. However, most research either ignores this difficulty or recommends a single case study. This article suggests that when the population is unknown scholars can apply the possibility principle to identify the relevant population of cases. In order to do so, a large dataset is required. In policy studies, the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) can serve this aim. This article highlights CAP's applicability for case selection based on the possibility principle in two less visible policy outcomes: conversion and drift. In that, it not only addresses an overlooked challenge but also promotes both CAP as a useful tool for qualitative researchers and the expansion of comparative work on conversion and drift.     

Precision Medicine: Historiography of Life Sciences and the Geneticization of the Clinics**

In 2013, Hans Jörg Rheinberger proposed that Mendelian genetics and molecular biology were “scientific ideologies,” that is, for him they are systems of thought whose objects are hyperbolic; they are not, or not yet, in the realm of and not, or not yet, under the control of that system. This article proposes that precision medicine today is a scientific ideology and analyses the implications of this statement for historians of biology, genetics, and medicine.     

Gender and Science

While there are several different approaches to the study of gender and science, this paper focuses on the consequences of the introduction of the concept of gender on studies of scientific and medical practices. It is limited, in the main, to historical studies of twentieth-century biomedicine, which allows an examination of the validity of scientific assumptions underlying our understanding of the natural world, the genesis and the present status of scientific definitions of masculinity and femininity, and the ideological basis of science-based technological interventions in the domain of sexuality and reproduction.     

U.S. Migration, Translocality, and the Acceleration of the Nutrition Transition in Mexico

Migrant flows are generally accompanied by extensive social, economic, and cultural links between origins and destinations, transforming the former's community life, livelihoods, and local practices. Previous studies have found a positive association between these translocal ties and better child health and nutrition. We contend that focusing on children only provides a partial view of a larger process affecting community health, accelerating the nutrition transition in particular. We use a Mexican nationally-representative survey with socioeconomic, anthropometric, and biomarker measures, matched to municipal-level migration intensity and marginalization measures from the Mexican 2000 Census to study the association between adult body mass and community migration intensity. Our findings from multi-level models suggest a significant and positive relationship between community-level migration intensity and the individual risk of being overweight and obese, with significant differences by gender and with remittance intensity playing a preponderant role.     

Publications received 1984–1985

José Manuel Sánchez Ron (1997): INTA. 50 años de ciencia y técnica aeroespacial (Madrid: INTA)

Dieter Hoffmann and Kristie Macrakis (eds.), Naturwissenschaft und Technik in der DDR (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), pp. 410.

Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker (eds.), Science, Technology and National Socialum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 422.

Keith Wailoo, Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth‐Century America, (Baltimore &; London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), xii+288 pp., ill.

Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Islands and the Origins of Environmentalism. 1660–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 (HB) and 1996 (PB)), pp. xiv+540.

Peter Galison, Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Mkrophysics. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997) pp. xxv+955.     

Les «Faits scientifiques» et leur public: l’histoire de la détection de la syphilis

In the 1910's and 1920', thanks to the conjunction of scientific views concerning the specificity of anti-bacterial antibodies, of lay ideas about the existence of anti-bacterial antibodies and of the perceived importance of developing a syphilis test for public health officials, the community of serologists collectively transformed a relatively inefficient diagnostic test described by Wassermann in 1906 into an "incontestable scientific fact". This "scientific fact" established the equivalence: Wassermann positive individual=person infected with the germ Treponema pallidum, the etiological agent of syphilis. It modified the boundaries of the nosologic entity "syphilis", medical practices, professional attitudes, lay perceptions of syphilis, and health policies. In the 1950's, however, discrepancies between Wassermann test data and epidemiological data and, on the other hand, the development of specific anti-treponemal tests, destabilized the previously stabilized "scientific fact". A high percentage of Wassermann positive individuals were redefined as "biological false positifs", that is persons who suffered from chronic affections able to induce positive results of the Wassermann test. The equivalence Wassermann positive person=individual infected by Treponema pallidum was replaced by the equation: Wassermann positive person=individual infected by Treponema pallidum or biological false positive. The new perception of the Wassermann test again changed scientific views, professional practices and lay beliefs. The history of the Wassermann reaction illustrates the complicated interaction between "scientific facts" and "social facts", and the mutual shaping of both.     

Communists and the 1948 War: PCP,Maki, and the National Liberation League

This paper analyzes the way in which Palestine's Jewish and Arab communist parties, the PCP-Maki and the National Liberation League, acted during the 1948 war. Both groups made separate and different efforts to make the two-state solution a reality as originally conceived in the UN partition plan. Ironically, the decisive Jewish victory in the war resulted in an asymmetry between the Jewish Communists the Palestinian Communists when they were unified toward the end of the 1948 war. Despite Maki's labors for an Israeli victory, its standing in the nascent Israeli political system toward the end of the war remained marginal. The concept of Jewish–Arab cooperation under the aegis of the USSR was seen by the Zionist establishment as dangerous and subversive.     

UNDERCOVER BOSS BLUES

Undercover boss is a reality TV show designed for and by people who take capitalism for granted and who are reflecting on crises that are part and parcel of what it means to live under a capitalist system. Undercover boss was first launched on Channel 4 in the UK in 2009, and country‐specific spin‐offs have since appeared in 16 other countries, including Australia, Colombia and Poland. Like the other variants, the UK version is not only an exploration of workplaces inflected by neo‐liberal logics, but also an exploration of how businesses are responding to the financial crisis of 2008. In the UK version, the bosses agree to go undercover in the hope that low‐level employees might provide some insights from their structural position into how to improve the way the company responds to its customers. This is a show that revolves around revealing some of the ‘shoulds’ of business from a worker's perspective, but in doing so, it uncovers a few of the dilemmas generated when corporations put neo‐liberal principles into practice.