The Filmmaker's Triage: The Doctor Figure and Images of Trauma

ABSTRACT

While writing a fictionalised feature film screenplay set around the character of a South African doctor during his year of compulsory community service in a rural hospital, I began researching how this figure has been represented in other narrative films, particularly those stories told in an African setting. A number of films and television dramas, some made by African filmmakers and others by filmmakers from outside of Africa, have been produced around the medical encounter. My interest lies not in assessing the health messaging found in these films and programs, which is better left to the health educationalists and medical sociologists, but in examining the fictional doctor figure as the main protagonist in these films. While the sociocultural and political dimensions of medicine, health and illness are relevant, I refer to them only in passing while exploring the fictional imagery of the doctor figure within the imagined filmed-Africa as it appears in the films The Last Face, Beyond Borders and Le grand blanc de Lambaréné.     

The context of American millenarian revolutionary theology: The case of the ‘identity Christian’ church of Israel

It is popularly believed that the millenarian Christian Identity theology movement in the United States is inextricably associated with revolutionary violence. This article examines the Church of Israel, an important center of Identity theology, to determine whether or not that popular impression is consistent with the facts in this case and with the Identity movement as a whole. It differentiates among the competing appeals of the far right wing offering taxonomies of organization types and ideological appeals. The conclusion is that while Christian Identity theology represents a revolution within the religious tradition, its adherents have rarely resorted to revolutionary violence, following a pattern familiar to earlier millenial movements in which the dominant motif was partial withdrawal from society punctuated by unusual and exceedingly short outbursts of violence.     

The political use of military power in the Mediterranean by the United States and the Soviet Union

Since 2003, state control in the Russian economy has increased significantly. This has affected mainly, but not only, the oil industry. This policy development gives some grounds for concern about Russia's long-run growth. Its origins lie in power struggles within the political elite, in efforts by members of that elite to enrich themselves and in a profound distrust on the part of that elite of any sources of power that they do not themselves control. One result is that business confidence has been dented, the growth of oil output has slowed, and future GDP growth depends more heavily than before on further growth in oil prices.     

On the strategy of social planning

Social planning deals centrally with human values—values which are important even though they do not appear as explicit factors in the classical problems of social welfare.The philosophical question as to whether facts can provide a logical basis for values need not be considered by the planner. He focuses, rather, on the specific interplay of values and facts in the concrete context of his concern.In the analysis of this interplay we can distinguish a number ofprinciples, criteria for the specification of social ends; for instance, the maximin principle, that improvements in a value distribution consisting in cutting off the bottom of the distribution have priority over raising the top.Social ends, in turn, are analysable intoideals, goals, andobjectives—directions, regions and points, respectively, in the value space.Cutting across these are the desiredqualities of the experience of pursuing those ends, qualities allowing for the assessment of planned alternatives by configurational judgment, rather than by a presumed summation of component values.A report submitted to the Social Planning Group of the Planning Board of Puerto Rico in 1958, not previously published.     

Meaning or Measurement? Researching the Social Contexts of Health and Settlement among Newly-arrived Refugee Youth in Melbourne, Australia

What are the most appropriate methodological approaches forresearching the psychosocial determinants of health and wellbeingamong young people from refugee backgrounds over the resettlementperiod? What kinds of research models can involve young peoplein meaningful reflections on their lives and futures while simultaneouslyyielding valid data to inform services and policy? This paperreports on the methods developed for a longitudinal study ofhealth and wellbeing among young people from refugee backgroundsin Melbourne, Australia. The study involves 100 newly-arrivedyoung people 12 to 18 years of age, and employs a combinationof qualitative and quantitative methods implemented as a seriesof activities carried out by participants in personalized settlementjournals. This paper highlights the need to think outside thebox of traditional qualitative and/or quantitative approachesfor social research into refugee youth health and illustrateshow integrated approaches can produce information that is meaningfulto policy makers, service providers and to the young peoplethemselves.     

Distributive Justice and Attitudes Toward the Welfare State

Current debates concerning the viability of the welfare state evoke the question of the social bases of support of the welfare state. Past research has documented fairly consistent relationships between sociodemographic characteristics and attitudes toward welfare policies. Yet, the nature of these relationships is not well understood. In the paper we argue that the level of support for the welfare state is largely determined by the principles of distributive justice espoused by individuals as well as their images of society. We develop a theoretical framework, which outlines the structural relationship between social attributes, principles of justice, perceived conflict, and support for the welfare state. Using data from a recent population survey on the legitimation of inequality, conducted in Israel in 1999 (N = 1057), we test a number of hypotheses. For the empirical analysis we use structural equation modeling with multiple indicators. Our findings reveal substantial support for policies aimed at reducing inequality. At the same time we find strong support for rewards according to merit and unequal earnings distribution. The impact of social attributes on attitudes toward the welfare state is partially mediated by the justice principles and images of society.