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Scholarly Discourse (scholarly + discourse)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences60%

Selected Abstracts

Gendering the History of Women's Healthcare

GENDER & HISTORY, Issue 3 2008
Monica H. Green
This essay examines the genesis and continuing influence of certain core narratives in the history of western women's healthcare. Some derive from first-wave feminism's search for models of female medical practice, an agenda that paid little attention to historical context. Second-wave feminism, identifying a rift between pre-modern and modern times in terms of women's medical practices, saw the pre-modern European female healer as an exceptionally knowledgeable empiricist, uniquely responsible for women's healthcare and (particularly because of her knowledge of mechanisms to limit fertility) a victim of male persecution. Aspects of this second narrative continue subtly to effect scholarly discourse and research agendas on the history of healthcare both by and for women. This essay argues that, by seeing medical knowledge as a cultural product , something that is not static but continually re-created and sometimes contested , we can create an epistemology of how such knowledge is gendered in its genesis, dissemination and implementation. Non-western narratives drawn from history and medical anthropology are employed to show both the larger impact of the western feminist narratives and ways to reframe them. [source]

THE PANOPTICON'S CHANGING GEOGRAPHY

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 3 2007
JEROME E. DOBSON
ABSTRACT. Over the past two centuries, surveillance technology has advanced in three major spurts. In the first instance the surveillance instrument was a specially designed building, Bentham's Panopticon; in the second, a tightly controlled television network, Orwell's Big Brother; today, an electronic human-tracking service. Functionally, each technology provided total surveillance within the confines of its designated geographical coverage, but costs, geographical coverage, and benefits have changed dramatically through time. In less than a decade, costs have plummeted from hundreds of thousands of dollars per watched person per year for analog surveillance or tens of thousands of dollars for incarceration to mere hundreds of dollars for electronic human-tracking systems. Simultaneously, benefits to those being watched have increased enormously, so that individual and public resistence are minimized. The end result is a fertile new field of investigation for surveillance studies involving an endless variety of power relationships. Our literal, empirical approach to panopticism has yielded insights that might have been less obvious under the metaphorical approach that has dominated recent scholarly discourse. We conclude that both approaches,literal and metaphorical,are essential to understand what promises to be the greatest instrument of social change arising from the Information Revolution. We urge public and scholarly debate,local, national, and global,on this grand social experiment that has already begun without forethought. [source]

The role of electronic preprints in chemical communication: Analysis of citation, usage, and acceptance in the journal literature

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 5 2003
Cecelia Brown
This study characterizes the usage and acceptance of electronic preprints (e-prints) in the literature of chemistry. Survey of authors of e-prints appearing in the Chemistry Preprint Server (CPS) at http://preprints.chemweb.com indicates use of the CPS as a convenient vehicle for dissemination of research findings and for receipt of feedback before submitting to a peer-reviewed journal. Reception of CPS e-prints by editors of top chemistry journals is very poor. Only 6% of editors responding allow publication of articles that have previously appeared as e-prints. Concerns focus on the lack of peer review and the uncertain permanence of e-print storage. Consequently, it was not surprising to discover that citation analysis yielded no citations to CPS e-prints in the traditional literature of chemistry. Yet data collected and posted by the CPS indicates that the e-prints are valued, read, and discussed to a notable extent within the chemistry community. Thirty-two percent of the most highly rated, viewed, and discussed e-prints eventually appear in the journal literature, indicating the validity of the work submitted to the CPS. This investigation illustrates the ambivalence with which editors and authors view the CPS, but also gives an early sense of the potential free and rapid information dissemination, coupled with open, uninhibited discussion and evaluation, has to expand, enrich, and vitalize the scholarly discourse of chemical scientists. [source]

Thick Prescriptions: Toward an Interpretation of Pharmaceutical Sales Practices

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2004
MICHAEL J. OLDANI
Anthropologists of medicine and science are increasingly studying all aspects of pharmaceutical industry practices,from research and development to the marketing of prescription drugs. This article ethnographically explores one particular stage in the life cycle of pharmaceuticals: sales and marketing. Drawing on a range of sources,investigative journalism, medical ethics, and autoethnography,the author examines the day-to-day activities of pharmaceutical salespersons, or drug reps, during the 1990s. He describes in detail the pharmaceutical gift cycle, a three-way exchange network between doctors, salespersons, and patients and how this process of exchange is currently in a state of involution. This gift economy exists to generate prescriptions (scripts) and can mask and/or perpetuate risks and side effects for patients. With implications of pharmaceutical industry practices impacting everything from the personal-psychological to the global political economy, medical anthropologists can play a lead role in the emerging scholarly discourse concerned with critical pharmaceutical studies. [source]

Big Questions for a Significant Public Administration

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 2 2001
John J. Kirlin
During the 1999 "Building Bridges Tour" (see Stivers 2000), PAR readers encouraged the editors to focus more attention on the so-called "Big Questions/Big Issues" of the field of public administration. In response to this suggestion, we created a new forum for scholarly discourse simply called "Big Questions/Big Issues." This inaugural forum begins with a context setting essay by John Kirlin,a leading proponent of the Big Questions/Big Issues perspective. Kirlin' essay is immediately followed by Laurence E. Lynn Jr.'s thought provoking piece, "The Myth of the Bureaucratic Paradigm: What Traditional Public Administration Really Stood For." Lynn' essay is important for it takes to task those who carelessly attack "traditional public administration." We asked J. Patrick Dobel (University of Washington), David Rosenbloom (American University), Norma Riccucci (State University of New York at Albany), and James Svara (North Carolina State) to respond to Lynn' essay. We invite PAR readers to join the conversation using PAR' message board online at ASPA's Online Community (http://www.memberconnections.com/aspa/) or by writing directly to theauthors and/or editors.,LDT [source]