[Develop the rural ecology in the New Era]

Rural ecology is a comprehensive field of study that takes the rural social-ecological-economic systems as the objective object and emphasizes spatial carrier governance. The development of rural ecology in the New Era embodies and implements comprehensively the core concepts of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Cha-racteristics for a New Era, including harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, rural revitalization, green development, and the comprehensive construction of a socialist modernized nation. Under the goal of Chinese-style modernization, rural ecology exhibits characteristics distinct from the past, such as the integration of research objects, the intersectionality of basic theories, the computational feature of technical methods, and the orientation of exporting outcomes. To provide disciplinary support for modernization-oriented science to meet the new demands of country's rural development, effectively narrating the story of sustainable rural development in China and providing fundamental guarantees for the safety of rural systems, a number of issues such as paradigm innovation in research, improvement of data quality, and integration of comprehensive technologies, should be fully considered.

The cultural policies of schistosomiasis control in China: a historical analysis

China has a history of using cultural policies to control infectious diseases, including schistosomiasis, which was once hyperendemic in the country. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, significant achievements have been made in schistosomiasis control, with a decrease in the number of cases and infection rates. This study provides a historical analysis of cultural policies in schistosomiasis control in China. During the Mao era (1949-1976), socialist ideology shaped cultural policies that included mass mobilization campaigns, propaganda, and cultural education to promote health practices, and community participation and empowerment. During the Reform era (1978-2012), there was a shift towards market-oriented policies and individual responsibility, and cultural policies promoted behavioral change, but there were challenges in implementing them in a rapidly changing society. In the "New Era" of socialism (2012-now), cultural policies are focused on promoting comprehensive schistosomiasis control strategies, technological advancements and innovation, and international cooperation. The Chinese experience in schistosomiasis control provides valuable lessons for other countries facing similar challenges and underscores the importance of cultural policies in promoting health and well-being.

Work, marriage and premature birth: the socio-medicalisation of pregnancy in state socialist East-Central Europe

Reproductive health in state socialism is usually viewed as an area in which the broader contexts of women's lives were disregarded. Focusing on expert efforts to reduce premature births, we show that the social aspects of women's lives received the most attention. In contrast to typical descriptions emphasising technological medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation, we show that expertise in early socialism was concerned with socio-medical causes of prematurity, particularly work and marriage. The interest in physical work in the 1950s evolved towards a focus on psychological factors in the 1960s and on broader socio-economic conditions in the 1970s. Experts highlighted marital happiness as conducive to healthy birth and considered unwed women more prone to prematurity. By the 1980s, social factors had faded from interest in favour of a bio-medicalised view. Our findings are based on a rigorous comparative analysis of medical journals from Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

Women, Reactors, and Nuclear Weapons: From Revolutionary Liberation to the "Miss Atom" Pageant in (Post-)Soviet Russia

This article considers the Soviet Union's successful efforts to employ more women specialists in nuclear science and technology, from the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and the Soviet atomic bomb project to the Cold War and the present. Despite their contributions to building a Cold War military machine, women rarely reached the pinnacle of the scientific enterprise due to persistent views about their lesser capabilities as specialists. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a vastly changed social, political, and cultural climate, the claimed socialist equality of women gave way to more traditional views of their status in Russian society. For the nuclear enterprise, this change emerged in activities that had disappeared under communism such as the annual "Miss Atom" beauty pageant, a striking departure from Soviet attempts to involve women equally in science and technology.

Satisfaction and continuance intention of blended learning from perspective of junior high school students in the directly-entering-socialism ethnic communities of China

BACKGROUND

Blended learning in DESEC only started after the introduction of the internet in recent 5 years. However, there is still no research paying attention to this region, because the area is remote and research subjects are not easily accessible. This article has potential application value in helping the government and educational institutions to make decisions on blended learning strategies supporting poverty alleviation through education in poor and remote areas and ethnic region. The study will be the first to examine satisfaction and continuance intention of blended learning in the DESEC.

OBJECTIVE

To identify junior high students' perception of satisfaction and continuance intention for blended learning in DESEC. To identify the strongest factors affecting junior high students' satisfaction and continuance intention of blended learning in DESEC.

METHODS

A subsample of 635 junior high students participated online survey with consent of their parents verbally in computer room in schools under teacher's instruction. Data was coded and analyzed to generate descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Structural equation model was used to evaluate the model of satisfaction and continuance intention of blended learning.

RESULTS

The level for evaluating students' agreement on each of item were interpreted "agree" (3.76-3.89). The model explained variances (R2) of Continuance Intention, Satisfaction and Perceived usefulness were 0.665,0.766,0.718 respectively. Information quality, self-efficacy and confirmation directly and indirectly contribute to junior high students' satisfaction with blended learning, which further confirmed their continuance intention of blended learning.

CONCLUSION

Information quality was the strongest factor affecting the junior high students' continuance intention of using blended learning, while confirmation was the strongest factor affecting the junior high students' satisfaction of using blended learning in DESEC. Junior high students do not have a strong and distinct perception on satisfaction and continuance intention for blended learning in DESEC.

Economic inequalities in contemporary rural China: How does political capital matter?

To assess how the transition from state socialism to a market economy has impacted the social stratification order in China, some prior studies have debated whether the economic privileges of the political redistributors have declined relative to the emerging market elites, while others have examined the coevolution between the two in urban institutional contexts. This study provides new insights into how political capital influences economic inequalities in contemporary rural China by revisiting informal social institutions. Drawing upon a unique nationally representative household survey and using surname sharing with the village cadres to infer shared lineage membership, we find that lineage-based political ties help rural Chinese households to materialize income as well as asset advantages over fellow villagers bereft of such ties. Furthermore, the economic privileges of political connections are larger in villages with lineage groups than those without, and larger for villages of more frequent kin interactions than those of less frequent kin interactions. Our results extend prior findings on the coevolution between political and market elites by going beyond formal institutions and examining grassroots-level evidence in contemporary rural communities.

Economizing Socialist Aid: China's Failed Surgical Plant in Algeria, 1973-80

China is currently a source of technology for the developing world, yet little is known about its transfer of modern technologies before the 1980s liberalization. This article excavates a failed surgical turn-key project that China planned in the mid-1970s at Médéa in state socialist Algeria. The case of South-South collaboration analyzes how three principles-simplification, economization, and improvement of labor efficiency-dominated the negotiations and design process. The Chinese aspired to transfer technology suiting Algeria, but were restricted by capital input, technological capacity, and the pragmatism of convenience, as well as a distorted vision of Algerians' needs. This article puts Chinese industrial aid into perspective within the history of appropriate technology, examining the asymmetries in perceptions, interests, and priorities that sank this early attempt at South-South cooperation. By uncovering the often-neglected perspective of Chinese aid technocrats, it also breaks the stereotype of Maoist China ignoring cost effectiveness in its foreign aid.

The Politics of Rationality in Early Neoliberalism: Max Weber, Ludwig von Mises, and the Socialist Calculation Debate

Initiated by Mises and popularized by Hayek, the socialist calculation debate staked a political position on a methodological axiom: the "irrationality" of state planning. This article argues that Weber's typology of "formal" vs. "substantive" rationality at once drew from Austrian School marginalism and helped frame Mises and Hayek's critiques in the calculation debate. In turn, this debate shaped an anti-socialist front among the early neoliberals before their vaunted gatherings in Paris and Mont Pèlerin. Through social scientific interventions, early neoliberalism split economics (qua market rationality) from politics (qua social justice) so as to place the latter beyond the epistemological pale.

Neoliberal Economic Thinking and the Quest for Rational Socialism in China: Ludwig von Mises and the Market Reform Debate

This paper investigates the long first decade of reform in China (1978-1992) to show that Mises became relevant to the reconfiguration of China's political economy in this period. Mises's critique of socialism came to be debated throughout the 1980s and Chinese economists developed their own reading of Mises and the socialist calculation debate. When Deng Xiaoping reinstated market reforms in the early 1990s, a history of thought review of the possibility of rational socialism and socialist markets helped to justify the Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics as the official designation of China's economic system to this day.

Innovation and Maladjustment: Contraceptive Technologies in State-Socialist Poland, 1950s-1970s

A range of contraceptive technologies was available in Poland between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Following the legalization of abortion in 1956, a public health campaign, supported by the communist authorities, popularized contraception. Based on archival sources, press items, and popular medical literature, this article is the first systematic study of contraceptive technologies in postwar Poland before the pill, which also examines the trajectories of female barrier methods and spermicides. The availability and quality of these contraceptive products fluctuated in the centrally planned economy, and they were ascribed at times contradictory values. Thus, the circulation of contraceptive technologies was shaped by concurrent processes of innovation and maladjustment disconnected from the authorities' declarations of support for contraception as an alternative to abortion. Focusing on the materiality of contraceptive technologies sheds new light on the history of reproduction in postwar Poland.

Repurposing Mises: Murray Rothbard and the Birth of Anarchocapitalism

This article examines how Murray Rothbard, though he claimed to follow Ludwig von Mises very closely, ended up making a number of radical leaps that Mises never did. It argues that Rothbard constructed anarchocapitalism by repurposing Mises's economic theory. First, whereas Mises responded to interwar socialism, Rothbard redeployed his mentor's economics in response to the militarism of the right-wing. Second, whereas Mises defended the market as a consumers' democracy against ideas about economic democracy, Rothbard developed an anti-democratic view of the market in response to the egalitarianism of the counterculture. These differences in context account for the distinctiveness of anarchocapitalism.

Voices from Silence? Reflections on 'Coming out' in Socialist Czechoslovakia

The region of Central and Eastern Europe and oppressive social conditions in former socialist society often became symbols of the impossibility to articulate non-heterosexual identities under the conditions of a totalitarian regime. This study analyzes data from 19 in-depth interviews with people older than 50 living in the Czech Republic who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. It focuses on the ways in which their forced silence and inability to speak about their sexual desires resonated throughout their biographical narratives. The first part of this paper focuses on themes surrounding the absence of representations of non-heterosexual identities in socialist Czechoslovakia's public sphere and the impact of this absence on participants' perceptions of their own life experiences. The second part of the paper analyzes the ways in which participants relate to their own coming out and their reflections on their previous lives in relation to newfound opportunities to live outside of heterosexual norms. The paper strives to problematize the concept of "silence" as one of the defining features of this generation, in contrast with the concept of coming out as a sign of emancipation in younger generations.

From occupational to existential class: How to analyze class structure in hybrid societies (The case of Serbia)

In this article, we propose a model to analyze the class structure of hybrid post-socialist societies in South-East Europe (SEE), using the case of Serbia. We argue that, in such hybrid societies, social inequalities are generated by several mechanisms of similar strength: exploitative market mechanisms (based on economic capital) and different types of social closure mechanisms (based on political and social capital). Their influences are intertwined and cannot be analytically isolated or reduced to a common foundation. Therefore, occupational class analysis in these societies can have only limited explanatory power. In an attempt to overcome these challenges, we were forced to modify the instruments of several established approaches to class analysis. These modifications included (1) a reconceptualization of Bourdieusian notions of political, social, and cultural capital, (2) a different operationalization of social space, (3) identification of specific mechanisms of generating social inequalities, (4) paying attention to both practical and discursive classifications of lifestyles in the establishment of symbolic boundaries, and (5) relying on differential association analysis for identifying class boundaries. Our analysis's final result is a model that enables studying general social inequality, that is, generalized social advantage/disadvantage, in SEE post-socialist societies.

Sex and gender norms in marriage: Comparing expert advice in socialist Czechoslovakia and Hungary between the 1950s and 1980s

First, we argue that sexuality was central to socialist modernization: Sex and gender were reformulated whenever the socialist project was being revised. Expertise was crucial in these reformulations, which harnessed people's support for the changing regimes. Moreover, the role of the expert in society grew over time, leading to ever expanding and diversified fields of expertise. Second, gender and sexuality stood disjointed in these changes. Whereas in the early 1950s sex was a taboo subject in Hungary, in the last three decades of socialism it was gradually acknowledged and emancipated, along with a discursive push to alter gender roles within marriage. Conversely, Czechoslovak experts paid close attention to sexuality and particularly to female pleasure from the outset of the regime, highlighting the benefits of gender equality for conjugal satisfaction; yet, they changed course with Normalization (1969-1989) when they embraced gender hierarchy as the structure for a good marriage and a fulfilling sex life. It follows that gender and sexuality can develop independently: Change in one is not necessarily bound to similar progress in the other. Thus, third, whereas there was a shared initial push for gender equality, there was no unified socialist drive for the liberalization of sexuality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

"Who generates this city"? Socialist strategy in contemporary London

This essay, based on a "militant ethnography" of the attempts of the small radical grassroots activist group, Our London (a pseudonym), to mobilize a collective oppositional politics through activities around an election campaign, engages critically with E. Laclau and C. Mouffe's arguments on discourse and collectivity in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985). I argue, on the basis of my findings, that while their model does provide insights that help describe the process of building collectivity from among disparate perspectives and identities, we need to go beyond a focus on discourse alone and consider the ways politics is shaped by material contexts. This is necessary if we are to understand the continued appeal of class politics as well as the difficulties in mobilizing collectivity in highly unequal and fragmented cities. From an activist perspective, the essay also highlights how developing a conception of collective interests and a critique of overarching systems of exploitation can be important in building political unity.

The Consequences of Ageist Language are upon us

The COVID‒19 pandemic has highlighted the ease in which ageist language is employed and ageist stereotypes are used to characterize older adults. These are harmful and display an impressive lack of future thinking - as younger and middle-aged adults who use this language and forward these concepts also hope to live long lives. The disproportionately negative outcomes for older adults in this pandemic in part, reflect social and economic inequalities that are manifest throughout the life course of marginalized groups including persons of color. They also reflect major problems with institutional living be it in prisons or nursing homes. Social workers and allied professionals can work to address these manifestations of ageism in part by employing inclusive language - as advised by the Reframing Aging Project, working to build and support strong intergenerational relationships, working to eradicate social and economic disparities at all life stages, and advocating for a more critical look at institutionalization of older adults.

The Introduction of Pavlovian Theory and the Change of the Medical System in China in the 1950s: Focusing on the Construction of the Protective Medical System

In the 1930s, Stalin established Pavlovian theory as a socialist medical theory, criticized bourgeois science and ideology, and consolidated his dictatorship. Stalin used Pavlov's theory to emphasize the interaction between man and environment and the inheritance of acquired characteristics, trying to ensure the legitimacy of the socialist system reform in politics and society. Therefore, if the Soviet scientists and doctors did not conform to Pavlov's theory, their research would be strictly controlled, making free and creative research impossible. In the 1950s, China and North Korea, which accepted the socialist political model of the Soviet Union, also had this dogmatic tendency. In 1950, China signed the "The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship," initiated the movement of learning from the Soviet Union in politics, economy, society, education, law, science, medical care, and other aspects, and established a socialist country based on the Soviet model. In Chinese medical circles, through the "Pavlov Learning Movement," they accepted the health care system and medical technology of the Soviet Union without any criticism, and carried out the ideological transformation of intellectuals to wipe out the influence of western capitalism. Moreover, Virchow's 'Cellular Pathology' and Mendel's 'Genetics' were denounced as reactionary bourgeoisie theory, and Pavlov's theory became a socialist medical theory based on dialectical materialism. As a result, the Communist Party of China reorganized the medical and scientific knowledge system based on Pavlov's theory, and took it as an important ideological tool to establish the socialist medical system. In the 1950s, Chinese medical workers strengthened ideological education through the "Pavlov's learning movement," applied this theory to clinical practice, and implemented new treatment methods such as "Sleep Therapy" and "PPM(Psychoprophylactic Painless childbirth Method)." In addition, hospitals implemented the "Protective Medical System" and established the socialist medical system. The goal of the protective medical system was to eliminate the negative stimulation which has adverse effects on the treatment of patients and to establish a patient-centered medical system. Therefore, the hospital launched a comprehensive effort to create a clean environment, eliminate all kinds of noise, cultivate a friendly working attitude, and improve nutrition. As a result, the hospital environment and the working attitude of medical staff improved and the treatment rate of diseases also improved, while the mortality rate of patients decreased. At the same time, with the strengthening of political education for doctors, nurses and patients in hospitals, hospitals have become places to educate socialist laws and ideology. In addition, in order to prove the superiority of Pavlov's theory, medical workers carried out unscientific sleep therapy on patients, so people's body became an experimental space for of socialism. Moreover, in the implementation of PPM, women could not tell the pain of childbirth, but under medical control, they were in a contradictory situation of enduring labor pain. The Communist Party of China has established its national identity by promoting its image of "rescuer", which liberates the patients from the pain of disease, and the "welfare" image of taking good care of the people's body. The Communist Party of China has reconstructed the metaphors of "sickness" and "labor pain", making it an indispensable medium for the concepts of socialism, women's Liberation and medical welfare to be engraved on the people's body. Therefore, through the clinical practice of sleep therapy and PPM, we can understand how the Communist Party of China controlled the people's body, and such policies and systems demonstrate the "medical" governance mode of socialist control over the people.

What happened to the Second World? Earthquakes and postsocialism in Kazakhstan

There is an assumption that with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Second World ceased to exist. Yet the demise of the Communist bloc as a geopolitical reality did not mean that it stopped exerting a defining influence over how people think and behave. This article examines how the postsocialist state in Kazakhstan deals with potential crises such as earthquakes and the extent to which the Soviet legacy still shapes intellectual debates, state structures, and civil society organisations in in that country. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, this paper re-examines the Second World in its historical context and re-establishes it as a conceptual framework for considering disaster risk reduction in the former Soviet bloc. It argues that it is essential to pay attention to this legacy in Kazakhstan both in policy and practice if earthquake risk reduction is to be made more effective.

Between Defectological Narratives and Institutional Realities: The "Mentally Retarded" Child in the Soviet Union of the 1930s

This article analyzes the gap between the defectological narrative of care and the reality of institutional life for children with learning disabilities in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. It shows that, under Stalin, the Soviet discipline of defectology entailed a promise of correction and social integration that aligned well with the official rhetoric of triumphant socialism and that incorporated new, specific ideological meanings into its long-standing narrative of care. I also show that the defectological narrative was rarely realized in practice due to not only scarce material resources but also a profound reversal of defectological and Marxist conceptions of labor. By analyzing the disconnect between rhetoric and reality in the treatment of "mentally retarded" children in prewar Stalinism, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of the Soviet system and ideology of care.

Reconsidering 'Set the People Free': Neoliberalism and Freedom Rhetoric in Churchill's Conservative Party

It is often assumed that 'Hayekian' or 'neoliberal' influences lay behind Conservative attacks on socialism in 1945 and subsequent calls to 'set the people free' in 1950 and 1951. This assumption has had consequences for our understanding of late-1940s Conservatism and for wider interpretations of post-war politics. Heeding recent calls to reconnect the inter-war and post-war parties and to pay closer attention to how opponents and contexts generate arguments, this article revisits senior Conservatives' rhetoric between 1945 and 1951 to break the link between neoliberal influence and freedom rhetoric. First, it argues that the rhetoric of 1945 was derived from a distinctly Conservative lineage of interwar argument and reflected strategies developed before the publication of F. A. Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom'. Second, it demonstrates that senior Conservatives' emancipatory rhetoric in opposition after 1945 was neither a simple continuation of these themes nor primarily a response to the public's growing antipathy towards rationing and controls. Rather, such rhetoric was a complex response to Britain's immediate economic difficulties and the political challenges presented by austerity. Finally, the article sheds new light on the strategy that governed the party's campaigns in 1950 and 1951. Churchill and others' calls to 'set the people free' stemmed from a belief that the rhetorical opportunity lay in reconciling liberty with security. In that sense, the leadership had moved beyond begrudging compromises with the 'Attleean settlement' and was instead attempting to define a new identity within the parameters of the welfare state.

Emergence and Development of LGBTQ Studies in Post-Socialist Bulgaria

This article explores the development of LGBTQ studies and scholarship in Bulgaria. In part, it brings to the forefront the personal experiences of some of the first Bulgarian scholars working on LGBTQ studies. The personal is interpreted in part through explorations of Bourdieu's concept of "symbolic violence." Elaborating on the challenges regarding the emergence and the development of LGBTQ studies on an institutional and personal level, I discuss three main topics: (1) the emergence and the development of LGBTQ scholarship and university courses in Bulgaria; (2) the main institutional obstacles and the "symbolic violence" within the academia against scholars dealing with LGBTQ subjects, including issues of funding, evaluation, and discrimination; and (3) the future development of the subject in Bulgaria, with a particular attention to the need for "LGBTQ studies solidarity" to overcome the disadvantaged position of LGBTQ scholars in post-socialist countries.

Idling in Mao's Shadow: Heroin Addiction and the Contested Therapeutic Value of Socialist Traditions of Laboring

The Chinese government has come under attack by international critics for forcing drug users to labor in the name of treatment. While joining these activists in criticizing conditions in compulsory labor centers, former detainees who congregated at a drop-in center in southern Yunnan also defended the therapeutic potential of socialist legacies of laboring. Shuttling between laboring in state compulsory centers and idling in a market economy, long-term heroin users saw their difficulties in recovering from addiction as inextricably linked to their inability to find suitable work opportunities. Certain drop-in center attendees maintained that earlier Communist laboring projects had helped wayward citizens, including drug addicts, "merge into" society as productive workers. This group evoked the stable long-term jobs and benefits once provided by local state-owned enterprises and the radical revolutionary power of "remolding through labor" they imagined to have existed in the first years of the People's Republic as powerful alternatives to their recent crisis of idling. The nuanced ways that drop-in center regulars revisited the potential healing power of earlier traditions of socialist laboring as remedies to their contemporary struggles complicates long-standing debates about coercion in treatment and the responsibility of the postsocialist state towards marginalized workers.

[The elderly as witnesses of three epochs: from socialism to the market.]

The article examines the specificity of the elderly social memory as witnesses of three epoch. Modern elderly have a unique experience that allows them to look at the social and economic situation in the country from the perspective of the past epochs of the soviet time, perestroika and market period. The research was carried out with the help of biographical method based on in-depth semi-structured interviewing. As the study showed, a positive shift has occurred in elderly people's attitudes towards the market. The elderly are nostalgic for stability, certainty of social environment and security in the Soviet period, but nevertheless they accept market conditions as the ones that facilitate their existence. Different social epochs form different types of people according to the ratio of social and personal. The elderly note that at the present time there has been a certain positive turn towards equalization of public and personal ratio. The future of the country is viewed by the elderly in the synthesis of the market and socio-economic advantages of socialism. The reflection of socio-economic changes by modern reflecting seniors was performed based on the personal experience which can be the basis for Russian society social memory enriching.

A state of limbo: the politics of waiting in neo-liberal Latvia

This article presents an ethnographic study of politics of waiting in a post-Soviet context. While activation has been explored in sociological and anthropological literature as a neo-liberal governmental technology and its application in post-socialist context has also been compellingly documented, waiting as a political artefact has only recently been receiving increased scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a state-run unemployment office in Riga, this article shows how, alongside activation, state welfare policies also produce passivity and waiting. Engaging with the small but developing field of sociological literature on the politics of waiting, I argue that, rather than interpreting it as a clash between 'neo-liberal' and 'Soviet' regimes, we should understand the double-move of activation and imposition of waiting as a key mechanism of neo-liberal biopolitics. This article thus extends the existing theorizations of the temporal politics of neo-liberalism.

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."