Mortality in Mexico. Some considerations on rural-urban differentials

"In this essay, certain aspects related to rural-urban mortality differentials in Mexico are analyzed....[These include] the availability, advantages, and limitations of different sources of information and the disparity of levels and tendencies according to particular indicators of acceptable reliability, especially those deriving from recent demographic surveys conducted in Mexico. The findings confirm an inverse ratio between size of settlement and mortality, and reveal a widening of the differentials over time." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Caring for the elderly: a European perspective on today and tomorrow

There is always a temptation to suppose that one's own problems (whether personal or national) are unique. They rarely are. The "problem" of the elderly is no exception and so there is no particular point in looking to the specific characteristics of one's own health, social service, and social security systems for causes. There is, however, every reason to be looking at them for the consequences. They can also exacerbate the causes. In this paper we sketch the principal features (economic, social, and demographic) that have contributed to the "problem" of the elderly in Europe and then outline the main intellectual issues that need to be explored and resolved. That sounds a bit pompous but, if one is to avoid an intellectual morass consisting of the various assertions about needs, obligations, and so on that emanate from rival concerned parties and various professional interests on the one hand, and simplistic political slogans whose only virtue is that they cut the Gordian Knot (but provide no real enlightenment) on the other, then we need to be doing just this. We shall take a few things for granted: that cost-containment is not the be-all-and-end-all of policy; that value for money depends equally on what you get as on what you spend; that overall expenditure per head is mainly determined by income per head (though some countries have managed to get and stay below the regression line); and that it "ain't so" that all one needs to do is to "leave it to the market." To have justified each of these would have taken too much space so we can only assert them and trust that, in swallowing these camels, you won't strain at the gnats to come.     

Chicano youth gangs and crime: the creation of a moral panic

The relationship between Chicano gangs, crime, the police, and the Chicano community is complex. Neither the problem of youth gangs nor the specialized police units created to cope with this problem arises in a social vacuum. Rather, both emerge from a particular historical structuring of social, economic, and political relations. This paper investigates how and why a moral panic arose concerning Chicano youth gangs in Phoenix in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A variety of qualitative and quantitative data from media reports, interviews, and juvenile court records are used to assess whether it was the actual behavior of Chicano youths or the social imagery surrounding them that formed the basis for the gang problem in Phoenix. I suggest that the image of gangs, and especially of Chicano gangs, as violent converged with that of Mexicans and Chicanos as different to create the threat of disorder. In addition, it was in the interests of the police department to discover the gang problem and build an even greater sense of threat so as to acquire federal funding of a specialized unit.     

Morgentaler v. The Queen in the Supreme Court of Canada.

In Morgentaler v. R., the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the abortion provisions in the Criminal Code. In a five to two split, a majority of the Supreme Court judges found that section 251 offended a pregnant woman's constitutionally protected right not to be deprived of her "life, liberty, and security of the person." Sheilah Martin reviews the three majority judgments and focuses on the decision written by Madame Justice Wilson. She believes that Madame Justice Wilson's opinion merits special attention in several regards: her conclusions on the constitutional rights of pregnant women; her recognition and validation of women's perspectives on abortion; and her approach to balancing women's interests in reproductive self-determination against the state's interest in regulating reproduction. Sheilah Martin concludes that this decision will reverberate far into the future. Even though it fails to establish clear guidelines concerning governmental power to control access to abortion, its principles outline the legal framework in which future litigation will occur, and it will limit and shape the terms of any ensuing political debate. In addition, Madame Justice Wilson's judgment holds great promise for those looking to the Court to promote the rights of women and other historically disadvantaged groups.     

Reviews

Rajan Menon, Soviet Power and the Third World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986, ix + 261 pp. £18.50.

Georgi Arbatov, Cold War or Detente? The Soviet Viewpoint. London: Zed Books, 1983. xviii + 219 pp. £16.95, $30.00 h/b; £4.95, $8.95 p/b.

Jonathan Steele, World Power: Soviet Foreign Policy under Brezhnev and Andropov. London: Michael Joseph, 1983, xii + 287 pp. £14.95.

Imre Vincze, The International Payments and Monetary System in the Integration of the Socialist Countries, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984, ix + 185 pp. £20.50, $32.00.

M. M. Kostecki ed. The Soviet Impact on Commodity Markets, London: Macmillan, 1984, xl + 271 pp. £25.00.

Gerhard Fink ed. East‐West Economic Relations Now and in the Future: Die Ost‐West‐Wirtschaftsbeziehungen heute und morgen, Vienna: Springer‐Verlag, 1985, 100 pp. DM 34,00.

András Köves, The CMEA Countries in the World Economy: Turning Inwards or Turning Outwards, Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985, 248 pp. £18.25.

Ger P. van den Berg, The Soviet System of Justice: Figures and Policy, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster (series Law in Eastern Europe No. 29) 1985, xiii + 374 pp incl appendices, indices and references, £56.95, $71.50.

Eugene Huskey, Russian Lawyers and the Soviet State. The Origins and Development of the Soviet Bar, 1917–1939. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, xii + 247 pp. £19.00.

David Lane, Labour and Employment in the USSR. Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books (distributed by Harvester Press), 1986, 280 pp. £28.50.

Martin McCauley and Stephen Carter, eds. Leadership and Succession in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. London: Macmillan, 1986, xiii + 256 pp. £27.50 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Leslie Holmes, Politics in the Communist World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, xi + 457 pp. £25–00 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. xi + 308 pp. £27.50, $39.50 h/b, £9.95, $12.95 p/b.

Joseph J. Collins, The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: a Study in the Use of Force in Soviet Foreign Policy. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1986, xv + 197 pp. £22.50, $31.25.

Leszek Buszynski, Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia. London: Croom Helm, 1986, 303 pp. £25.00.

William J. Kelly, Hugh L. Shaffer and I. Kenneth Thompson, Energy Research and Development in the USSR: Preparations for the Twenty‐First Century. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1986, xvi + 417 pp. £62.50.

Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, London: Macmillan in association with CREES, University of Birmingham, 1985, xix + 354 pp. £30.00.

Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: a Contemporary History, London & Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986. 531 pp. £27.50.

Edward Acton, Russia: The Present and the Past, London and New York: Longman, 1986, xiii + 342 pp. £17.50 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Robert Service, Lenin: A Political Life. Vol. 1. The Strengths of Contradiction. London: Macmillan, 1985, x + 246 pp. £25.00.

Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez and Richard Stites, eds., Bolshevik Culture. Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985, xii + 304 pp., $27.50.

Josef Garlinski, Poland in the Second World War, London: Macmillan, 1985, xxi + 387 pp., £25.00

Andreas Dorpalen, German History in Marxist Perspective. The East German Approach. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1985, 542 pp., £24.50.

Walter Parchomenko, Soviet Images of Dissidents and Nonconformists. New York: Praeger, 1986, xv + 251 pp., $33.95.

Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual. Vol. 9 (1984–1985). Edited by David R. Jones. Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1986. x + 313 pp., $69–50.     

Reviews

Alexander Yanov, The drama of the Soviet 1960s: a lost reform. Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1984, 141 pp. $8.50.

Karen Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, xiv + 426 pp. £22.50.

Christer Jônsson, Superpower: Comparing American and Soviet Foreign Policy. London: Francis Pinter, 1984, viii + 248 pp. £18.50.

Joseph Nye, The Making of America's Soviet Policy. Yale University Press, 1984, £20.00.

Alexander Dallin, Black Box: KAL 007 and the superpowers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985, xii + 130 pp. £14.25.

Alex Kozulin, Psychology in Utopia. Toward a Social History of Soviet Psychology, Cambridge Massachusetts, London: The MIT Press, 1984, xi + 179 pp. £16.65.

Timothy Edward O'Connor, The Politics of Soviet Culture. Anatolii Lunacharskii. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, and London: Bowker Publishing Company, 1984,193 pp. £35.50.

Alexander Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge. The Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1917–1970). Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1984, x + 484 pp. £23.95

Lawrence Badash, Kapitza, Rutherford, and the Kremlin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985, xi + 129 pp. £20.00.

Mark Popovsky, The Vavilov Affair. Archon, Hamden, Connecticut, 1984, viii + 216 pp. £21.40.

Timothy Dunmore, Soviet Politics 1945–53 London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1984, vi + 167 pp. £20.00.

George Ginsburgs, The Citizenship Law of the USSR, Law in Eastern Europe No. 25 (general editor F. J. M. Feldbrugge). The Hague, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983, 406 pp. £50.00.

R. F. Miller and F. Féhér (eds.), Khrushchev and the Communist World. London and Canberra: Croom Helm and Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1984, 243 pp. £15.95.

Michael Haynes, Nikolai Bukharin and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm Ltd., 1985, vii + 136 pp. £14.95.

Bernd Bonwetsch (ed.), Zeitgeschichte Osteuropas als Methoden‐ und Forschungsprob‐lem. Osteuropaforschung: Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Osteuropa‐kunde, Band 13. Berlin: Verlag Arno Spitz, 1985, 192 pp. DM 28,00.

Marie Lavigne, Economie Internationale des pays Socialistes, Paris: Armand Colin, 1985, 255 pp.

Marcel Drach, La crise dans tes pays de l'Est, Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1984, 127 pp. FF. 31.

L. Csaba, Kelet‐Europa a Világgazdaságban. (Eastern Europe in the World Economy), Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadö, 1984, 316 pp., bibliography but no index.

Michael Shafir, Romania: Politics, Society and Economics, London: Frances Pinter, 1985, xvii + 232 pp. h/b £18–50, p/b £6.95.

Nicholas G. Andrews, Poland 1980–81. Solidarity versus the Party, Washington: National Defense University Press, 1985, xii + 351 pp.

Peter Raina, Poland 1981. Towards Socialist Renewal, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985, vii + 472 pp. £20.00.

Stephen D. Kertesz, Between Russia and the West: Hungary and the Illusions of Peacemaking 1945–1947, London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985, xix + 299 pp. £18.95.

Mårta‐Lisa Magnusson (ed.), Bogen i Sovjet. Fra forfatter til laeser, Esbjerg: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1985, 106 pp. p/b, 74–75 DK Kr.

Margit Nielsen, Udenrigsøkonomi i Østeuropa—tilpasning eller krise? Esbjerg: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1985, 99 pp. p/b, 65–00 DK Kr.