What role does gender have in shaping knowledge that underpins the practice of midwifery?

Midwifery is an ancient profession that continues to be practiced almost exclusively by women. This paper explores the role that millennia of gender exclusivity has had in shaping the knowledge that informs the profession. Prior to the Renaissance this knowledge was exclusively female, largely oral, tacit and intuitive whilst recognising childbearing as an important transformative period in a woman’s lifecycle. Male scientific enquiry in the seventeenth century into human anatomy extended to women’s bodies and childbirth and disrupted the female ways of knowing. Their positivist ontology focussing on the mechanics of childbirth created an opportunity for intervening in a normal process and receiving payment for it. The perceived structural superiority of a male obstetric ontology of childbirth has posed an existential threat to the midwifery profession. This paper concludes by discussing how 20^th century professional regulation of midwifery has encouraged midwives to use patriarchal structures and frameworks of knowledge to co-exist within the hegemonic biomedical model advocated by the majority of their obstetric colleagues.     

恢复性司法的功效

恢复性司法不仅成为处理犯罪问题的较好方式,还成为帮助村落社会成为更加尊重权利、学习如何成为民主社会的一种方式.恢复性司法最大的前景不在于它比法院审理或者辩诉交易更有直接效果,而在于较之传统的刑事司法,是对犯罪有效干预的承载工具.有越来越充分的证据表明,恢复性司法本身对于减少重新犯罪有直接效果.有关恢复性司法的文献越来越有力地说明,还能够通过更多的正义和当地社区更多地参与决策来减少犯罪.     

F.L. McDougall and the Origins of the FAO

This article evaluates the role of Frank Lidgett McDougall, Australian economist, businessman and public servant, in the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It traces McDougall's development from an advocate of preferential trade within the British Empire to his embrace of a broader, more internationalist, concept of nutrition. By the mid-1930s, McDougall's advocacy of policies to improve nutrition worldwide through "marrying health and agriculture" led to the Australian government's advocacy of such policies in the League of Nations. McDougall was successful in persuading Australian policy makers that proposals to improveworldwide nutritional levels were also in Australia's best interest, by increasing demand for Australian agricultural exports. Finally, McDougall's significant personal role in the establishment of the FAO is assessed as the culmination of his career as a major behind-the-scenes architect of public policy.     

Culturing identities,the state,and national consciousness in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala1⋆

This paper examines the procedural culture that shaped ethnic and national identities in late nineteenth‐century western Guatemala. Rooted in face‐to‐face encounters between departmental jefes políticos (departmental governors) and local Maya communities, this procedural culture emerged from routines of governance such as annual municipal inspections, ethnic struggles for municipal control, and local efforts to title community lands that led Maya and state officials to develop contrasting understandings of each other and their relations. Far from precipitating a national identity of mutual belonging, state formation here intensified the racism and political violence that would rend Guatemala during the century to come.     

Reflections on reforming the Canadian electoral system

Abstract. Canada's plurality vote system has been criticized recently for contributing to the regional and linguistic imbalance of the parties in Parliament. While many of the criticisms are undoubtedly correct, some of the promises held out on behalf of a reformed electoral system are open to question. Before Canada seriously considers abandoning its present electoral system, the assumptions made about alternative systems and the arguments presented on their behalf deserve closer scrutiny than they have so far received. By reflecting on the nature of political change and the representative process in Canada this paper comments critically on the adequacy of some of the claims put forward by the reformers. These claims relate specifically to increased party ‘credibility’ and ‘sensitivity’ under a different electoral system. The paper suggests that some of the claims made on behalf of a reformed system are doubtful, that representation in the sense of acting for others could be more a feature of the current system than of any reformed one, and that further research is needed before any final decision is made to alter the present electoral system. Sommaire. On a critiqueé récemment le système électoral pluraliste du Canada, l'accusant de contribuer au déséquilibre régional et linguistique des partis au Parlement. Beaucoup de ces critiques sont certainement justifyées mais certaines promesses faites dans le cadre d'une reiorme du systeme electoral sont discu-tables. Avant que le Canada n'envisage 1'abandon de son systeme electoral actuel, il faut regarder de plus près qu'on ne l'a fait jusqu'ici les suppositions concernant des systemes de rechange et les arguments presented en leur faveur. En reiléchissant sur la nature du changement politique et sur le processus de la representation en cause, l'auteur fait une critique du bien-fonde de certaines des pretentions avancées par certains reformateurs. Ces critiques portent, plus précisément, sur la ← credibility → et la ← sensibility → d'un systeme electoral different. L'article suggere que certaines des pretentions d'un systeme reiorm6 sont contestables, que la representation dans le sens d'action pour le compte d'autrui est peut-etre beaucoup plus une caracteristique du systeme actuel que de n'importe quel systeme reform^ et que des recherches plus approfondies s'imposent avant que soit prise la decision de modifier le systeme electoral actuel. I wish to thank Duff Spafford of the University of Saskatchewan and Paul McKee, Research Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper; the Warden and Fellows of Nuffield College for the hospitality and assistance accorded me during my sabbatical leave; and the SSHRCC for its assistance through a Leave Fellowship, 1979-80. The case for an altered Canadian electoral system must be examined a good deal more critically than it has been to date. This essay attempts to contribute to that process by examining a few of the claims made recently on behalf of a reformed electoral system and by commenting on those claims in the light of Canadian political experience. The paper is not intended to make a virtue of the present system but it does raise questions about the liklihood of a reformed system living up to its advance bil-ling. How is the problem defined? What are some of the benefits claimed on behalf of a reformed system? What are the notions of representation underlying the arguments? If answers could be suggested to such questions as these, they may give cause to reflect on the general case being made in support of an altered system and on the appropriateness of abandoning or altering the present system without further study. Although the recent literature on electoral reform in Canada has been sizable, its quality has been uneven. Between the two notable contributions of the last decade (the Cairns-Lovink debate of 1968-70 and the Irvine monograph of 1979) a number of government reports, chapters in books, and newspaper articles were published. If some of the arguments and assertions of this admittedly mixed group remain unchallenged they may in the long run prove seductive to an unsuspecting public, academic as well as general, looking for much more to come from a reformed system than it can possibly deliver. Certainly it has not yet been established in the literature that the electoral system warrants such critical analysis in isolation from or, indeed, at the expense of other representational concerns which in themselves may be more crucial to the healthy operation of the Canadian polity than a reformed electoral system.     

The role of the courts in certain educational policy formation

A study of recent court decisions indicates that courts tend to decide cases in education with apparently little or no citation in their opinions of the findings of research studies in the fields of education, economics, psychology, sociology, etc. This may be unique since the courts seem to be more liberal in other areas of the law where inputs from other disciplines (e.g. medicine) are cited and do find their way into the decisions of cases. The implications of this for educational policy formation and educational research need to be more thoroughly examined.This study merely describes a finding and does not purport to state a position or to offer suggestions for a future course of action.