Inter-generational micro-class mobility during and after socialism: The power, education, autonomy, capital, and horizontal (PEACH) model in Hungary

We propose a theoretical model of how occupational mobility operates differently under socialism than under market regimes. Our model specifies four vertical dimensions of occupational resources-power, education, autonomy, and capital-plus a horizontal dimension consisting of linkages among occupations in the same economic branch. Given the nature of state socialist political-economic institutions, we expect power to exhibit much stronger effects in the socialist mobility regime, while autonomy and capital should play greater stratifying roles after the market transition. Education should have stable effects, and horizontal linkages should diminish in strength with market reforms. We estimate our model's parameters using data from surveys conducted in Hungary during and after the socialist period. We adopt a micro-class approach, though we test it against approaches that use more aggregated class categories. Our model provides a superior fit to other mobility models, and our results confirm our hypotheses about the distinctive features of the state socialist mobility regime. Mobility researchers often look for common patterns characterizing mobility in all industrialized societies. Our findings suggest that national institutions can produce fundamentally distinct patterns of mobility.

Exploring Couple Attributes and Attitudes and Marital Violence in Vietnam

Using a couple-centered approach, this study focuses on the relative attributes and attitudes of spouses as predictors of marital violence. Analysis of data from Vietnam showed that 37% of married women have ever been hit by their husbands. Regression results found that husbands with lower resources or status than their wives were more likely to have abused. Results also found that the association between husbands' gender attitudes and marital violence depends on the level of equity of wives'attitudes. The decline in violence among couples in which husbands expressed gender equitable attitudes was greater when wives also expressed equitable attitudes.

Informed Consent in China: Status Quo and its Future

Informed consent is one of the fundamental rights of a patient. However it used to be ignored in mainland China and was neither academically discussed nor a matter of practical concern until recent years. Paternalism was dominant in the practice of traditional Chinese medicine which was intensely influenced by Confucianism. The historic medical paternalism was reinforced under communism and the planned economy due to the communist beliefs. But it has been frequently challenged in recent years with patients' awakening awareness of rights and the advent of rights-defending litigation culture in the course of the transformation to market economy. Nevertheless, the current Chinese laws lag behind this patients' awakening awareness and litigation culture. The resulting deficiency in Chinese laws governing medical relations has created dilemmas and chaos in the resolution of medical disputes. In conclusion, the author appeals for the amendment of Chinese law and tries to point out how it should be amended.

'Clueless about contraception': the introduction and circulation of the contraceptive pill in state-socialist Poland (1960s-1970s)

This paper discusses the introduction of the pill into the state-socialist Polish market in the late 1960s and its circulation over the following decade. Abortion, legalised for socio-economic reasons in 1956, had been available practically on demand since 1959, and there were no legal obstacles to contraception. The pill first appeared in Poland in the early 1960s, but was not widely available in pharmacies until 1969, when the local pharmaceutical industry began production. Throughout the 1970s, only two brands were widely available: Femigen and Angravid. The pill played a marginal role in family planning during the 1960s and 1970s in Poland, with cycle-observation, backed by the possibility of a legal abortion, being the main resource for birth control. This was due to structural limits to the distribution of the pill on a centrally-planned market closed to Western pharmaceutical companies, cultural patterns of sexual behaviour, and the availability of abortion.

Barry Commoner, a great presidential candidate (1917-2012)

Dan LaBotz reflects on Barry Commoner's political leadership in the Citizens Party and his campaign for the presidency of the United States. He argues that Commoner brought together environmental activists, consumer activists, and labor unions in what was a socialist campaign that prefigured the ecosocialist movement.

Homage to Barry Commoner, a precursor of ecosocialism (May 28, 1917-September 30, 2012)

Barry Commoner died September 30, 2012, at the age of 95. Daniel Tanuro reviews Commoner's books to remind us of both his scientific and political contributions. Tanuro sees Commoner as a scientist and a Marxist whose research and writings as well as his role as a public spokesperson laid the foundations of ecosocialism.

Transition, tradition, and nostalgia; postsocialist transformations in a comparative framework

The concepts of transition and tradition have not been the object of much original theoretical work in recent Anglophone socio-cultural anthropology. The term transition has been applied loosely to the demise of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and their replacement by market economies and more pluralist forms of government. However, these objectives have proved elusive and most anthropologists therefore speak of open-ended "transformation processes" rather than a linear shift to capitalist democracy. Use of the concept of tradition has been much influenced by the work of historians on the "invention of tradition". This paper explores how societies, in particular elite groups, construct different types of tradition in the wake of historical caesurae. Paying particular attention to the concept of nostalgia, it compares perceptions of the past in Britain, where social change has been largely gradual, with those in empires and states which experienced sharp political discontinuities in the twentieth century. To explain and understand nostalgia for socialism in large sections of the population in many postsocialist states, it is necessary to investigate not only economic and social mobility and related material factors but also factors pertaining to identity, especially collective identities.

[Christa Kohler's "communicative psychotherapy" as an integrated psychotherapeutic concept and its biographical, scientific and historical context]

"Communicative psychotherapy" was developed in the 1960s by the East German psychotherapist and psychiatrist Christa Kohler (1928-2004) for the treatment of "neuroses". Similar to established present-day psychotherapeutic methods, such as cognitive behaviour therapy, it combined diverse therapeutic approaches into an integrated treatment programme. This included individual and group therapy, exercise, work and occupational therapy. In contrast to modern psychotherapeutic practice, communicative psychotherapy was based on a firm system of values, namely socialist ideals. According to this system, psychological breakdown was viewed and treated ideologically. In addition, any lack of conformity with the East German system was likewise regarded as a psychopathological deviation, which should be subjected to psychological treatment. The latter concept requires a critical analysis from a current-day perspective. For the first time, this paper concentrates on Kohler's work on neuroses and the theory and practice of her communicative psychotherapy, albeit without neglecting Kohler's other scientific works, her biographical information and her Stasi documents.

When love meets drugs: pharmaceuticalizing ambivalence in post-socialist China

In this article, I examine the interaction between intimacy and psychiatry to explore the ambivalences in the use of pharmaceuticals in psychiatric practice. Of particular interest is how pharmaceuticals come to constitute in multiple ways what pathology is and what form of life needs to be restored, and how psychiatric medications reconfigure the ambivalence of intimacy in post-socialist China. Following the life of Mei, a female psychiatric patient, for two years, I have made a series of discoveries related to medicine and intimacy in China. Specifically, I show that psychopharmaceuticals indicate a diseased body that threatens the intimate bond. They also highlight a socially suffering subject that is in lack of love from the intimate partner who demands the latter's redemption. I discuss how these multiple and contradicting meanings of psychopharmaceuticals and intimacy are socio-historically situated. Thus, while previous research in medical anthropology criticizes pharmaceuticalization for reducing the socio-political life (bios) to a biological body (zoē), I argue that these life forms co-exist in a pharmaceutical "zone of indistinction" (Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1998), in which they constitute and contradict each other. This discussion warns researchers against falling back into the usual orientation of either biomedicine or the social sciences.

Serve the people: understanding ideology and professional ethics of medicine in China

The article explores the communist ideology that has guided the formation of professional ethics of medicine in China. It first explores the constitutions of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party and codes of practice for medicine enforced since 1949, showing that the core of the ideology in relation to health provision and doctor-patient relationship has always been 'serving the people wholeheartedly'. The ideological undertaking, however, has never been successfully exercised. In the pre-reform era, the bureaucratisation of health professionals led to the emergence of 'bureaucratic medicine' featuring negligence of patients' interests. In the reform era, the prevailing commercialisation of health care is in fundamental conflict with the ideological commitment to serving the people. As a result, the socialist professional ethics of medicine has not been satisfactorily practiced in reality.

Chicago neoliberalism versus Cowles planning: perspectives on patents and public goods in Cold War economic thought

In post-Sputnik America, when many policymakers and social scientists feared the Soviet Union had a technological advantage over the United States, assessing the relative importance of patents for inventive activity and examining whether scientific research constituted a public good were paramount concerns. The neoliberals of the University of Chicago and the planners of the Cowles Commission both spoke to these issues. This paper sheds light on their views on patents and public goods in the late 1950s and early 1960s by examining representatives of Cowles and Chicago, Kenneth Arrow and Ronald Coase, respectively. Furthermore, it evaluates whether their views on patents and public goods clashed with the interests of RAND, at which both Arrow and Coase worked at some point during this time period. The paper argues that the Chicago-neoliberal position of Coase undermined the interests of RAND, while the Cowles-planning conclusions of Arrow furthered those interests.

Health and wealth in Uzbekistan and sub-Saharan Africa in comparative perspective

The study investigates the magnitude of differences in child and adult mortality by wealth in Uzbekistan, a former soviet country of Central Asia, and compares it with similar indicators from sub-Saharan Africa. Data were derived from Demographic and Health Surveys. An "Absolute Wealth Index" was built from data on goods owned by households and quality of housing, and scaled from 0 to 12. Wealth was distributed evenly in Uzbekistan, with a symmetric distribution around a mean of 5.5 modern goods. In sub-Saharan Africa, on the contrary, the wealth distribution had a lower mean (2.5) and was highly skewed towards the left, revealing a high proportion of very poor people. Adult and child mortality levels were lower in Uzbekistan. Despite these major differences, the relationships between mortality indicators and the wealth index were similar in the two cases. The magnitude of mortality differentials by wealth was of the same order in both cases, with gradients ranging from 2.5 to 1 for child mortality and 1.5 to 1 for adult mortality (poorest versus richest). However, mortality levels remained lower in Uzbekistan than in sub-Saharan Africa at the same level of wealth for both children and adults. A similar relationship was found between nutritional status and wealth index in both cases. On the contrary, there were no differences by wealth in use of health services and level of education in Uzbekistan, whereas wealth gradients were steep for the same variables in sub-Saharan Africa. The study suggests that mortality differentials were primarily due to nutritional status, and not to access and use of health services or to education. The discussion focuses on health and social policies during the colonial and post-colonial period that have produced these patterns.

The second modern condition? Compressed modernity as internalized reflexive cosmopolitization

Compressed modernity is a civilizational condition in which economic, political, social and/or cultural changes occur in an extremely condensed manner in respect to both time and space, and in which the dynamic coexistence of mutually disparate historical and social elements leads to the construction and reconstruction of a highly complex and fluid social system. During what Beck considers the second modern stage of humanity, every society reflexively internalizes cosmopolitanized risks. Societies (or their civilizational conditions) are thereby being internalized into each other, making compressed modernity a universal feature of contemporary societies. This paper theoretically discusses compressed modernity as nationally ramified from reflexive cosmopolitization, and, then, comparatively illustrates varying instances of compressed modernity in advanced capitalist societies, un(der)developed capitalist societies, and system transition societies. In lieu of a conclusion, I point out the declining status of national societies as the dominant unit of (compressed) modernity and the interactive acceleration of compressed modernity among different levels of human life ranging from individuals to the global community.

Opposition to enlargement as a symbolic defence of group position: multilevel analyses of attitudes toward candidates' entries in the EU-25

Despite the sociological and geopolitical significance of EU enlargement and opinion toward it, extant literature is lacking a theory of enlargement opinion and an examination of opinion in the wake of the 2004 enlargement. This paper fills these gaps by developing a symbolic defence of group position model to explain opposition to the entries of candidate states (as of 2005: Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, and Turkey) and to examine how these explanations differ for post-Communist EU members. Results of hierarchical multinomial logistic models of Eurobarometer (European Commission 2005) data from the EU-25 support the notion that the symbolic nature of enlargement shapes the effects of interests, threat, and other factors on opinion depending on candidates' position in a culturally and historically-rooted hierarchy of 'European-ness'. Attitudes toward Turkey's entry are less shaped by material interests than attitudes toward other candidates' entries, which is explained by Turkey's position at the bottom - and post-Communist countries' position in the middle - of this hierarchy in the post-Cold War era. Attitudes toward Turkey's entry are rather a function of the perceived threat that it poses to the group position and identity of Europeans, which is defended by the politically knowledgeable. While the lower levels of threat in post-socialist EU member countries help to account for their lower levels of opposition to candidates' entries, people in these countries to a greater extent use European identity as a way of symbolically distancing themselves from Turkey. Implications are discussed.

When worlds collide

ABSTThe UK has a strong tradition of innovative evaluative health care research. There are, however, considerable forces impeding collaboration between clinicians, academics, patients and their advocates and industry. This paper argues that, if the UK is to regain a position at the forefront of clinical research into evaluation of care, some of these forces need to be overcome. Now, with explicit encouragement from funders within the UK's NHS, it is urgent that all parties discover better ways of working together so that more broad and meaningful research can be produced in a timely fashion.

Evolution of Scottish migration patterns: A social‐relations‐of‐production approach

"The evolutionary pattern of Scottish migration is interpreted in relation to Zelinsky's Mobility Transition model and the Marxian concept of changing modes of production. The prime explanatory framework is shown to be the emergence, maturing and current faltering of capitalism."

Health and mortality in Eastern Europe, 1965–85

The author explores reasons and indicators for the high morbidity and mortality rates of Eastern Europe and the USSR during the period 1965 to 1985. "Epidemiological reasoning would prompt profound questions about the impact of governance on health conditions in these areas. The populations...have different languages, cultures and histories....[and] vary in material and technical attainment. The most obvious common characteristic of these countries is that they have all been ruled by Marxist-Leninist states.... After more than two decades of health decline...it is perhaps not premature to inquire into whether the health problems evidenced in these countries might be in part systemic."