Responsible and responsive knowing in medical diagnosis: the medical gaze revisited

The medical gaze has long been privileged over the voice of the patient as the source of medical knowledge, in western societies. The ontology (that is, the very existence) of symptoms invisible to scientific observation will thus tend to be questioned by medical professionals. Yet any gaze, even the medical one, is refracted through the lenses both of social‐cultural stereotypes and of gender, and its seeings are shaped by these refractions. In this article, two family physicians and an epistemologist examine certain “unexplained” disorders, in a conversation informed by a feminist perspective: they bring a feminist point of view to bear on these issues. Medically unexplained disorders, which occur most frequently in women, are disabling conditions for which objectively observable symptoms and/or scientific causal explanations are not available. The approach taken in this article makes some of the assumptions underlying clinical knowledge more clearly visible: the authors' conversation situates diagnostic activity in medicine as a gendered, power‐infused social interaction within a cultural context where the gold standard of medical knowledge is very narrowly set. The participants propose responsible and responsive knowing as alternative strategies for knowing well. As they are presented here, these strategies incorporate an awareness of the inherent uncertainty of medical knowledge, raise questions about those to whom the knower is accountable, acknowledge the patient's experiences, and attend to the potentially oppressive effects of expert knowing.     

‘for Wales,see England?’ suffrage and the new woman in Wales [1]

With a few notable exceptions, Wales has generally been portrayed as an overtly patriarchal nation, the haven of anti-suffragists. The first part of this article reassesses this reputation. It is argued that national as well as local historical specificities must be taken into account in order to achieve a more accurate representation of suffrage history in Wales and Britain. The second part examines Welsh suffragism in the context of the nationalist Cymru Fydd movement of the 1890s as it appeared in the English language nationalist periodicals Young Wales, The Welsh Review and (the bilingual) Cymru Fydd.     

Radical right‐wing voters from right and left: Comparing Sweden Democrat voters who previously voted for the Conservative Party or the Social Democratic Party

As in many other European countries, the political system has undergone rapid changes in Sweden while a radical right‐wing party – The Sweden Democrats (SD) – has grown from a negligible position into one of the country's largest parties. SD has been winning voters from both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and particularly from Sweden's two largest parties, the Conservative Party (Moderaterna, M) and the Social Democratic Party (S). The present study investigated the extent to which SD voters who previously voted for one of these two parties differ from each other, and compared these SD voters with current Conservative Party and Social Democratic voters. The results showed that 1) economic deprivation offers a better explanation for the past mobility from S, than from M, to the SD; 2) no group differences were found between previous M and S voters in attitudes connected to the appeal of an anti‐establishment party; and 3) views on the profile issues espoused by the radical right, most importantly opposition to immigration, did not differ between SD voters who come from M and S. However, SD voters – particularly SD voters who had formerly voted for the Social Democratic party – differed from the voters of their previous parties in several aspects. It is thus possible that many SD voters will not return to the parties they previously voted for, at least as long as the immigration issue continues to be of high salience in the society.     

‘The Foreign Within’: State–Civil Society Relations in Russia

Abstract

The development of Russian civil society is linked to authoritarian government, fear of ‘colour revolutions’ and the ‘sovereign democracy’ that legitimises state control of civil society. This article acknowledges the narrowing room for manoeuvre of contemporary Russian civil society and discusses NGOs’ practices in the context of government pressures, the politicisation of transnational connections and the increasing geopolitical tension surrounding Russia. It describes the localisation and depoliticisation of Russian NGOs as well as their disruptive practices, and explains how narrowing civil society identities inform the self-governing of NGOs. Finally, it argues that seeing Russian civil society in simple dichotomies further narrows these identities.     

Sustainability and peace building: a key challenge

The overarching challenge facing the growing number of international peace-building interventions is to achieve sustainable peace. This paper illustrates this proposition through a brief investigation of the situation in Timor-Leste as the UN mission withdraws at the five-year state-building mark, and in Haiti as a ninth UN mission is established. Adopting the view that participatory democratic governance will best ensure long-term peace, the paper maintains that to build sustainable peace requires transformation on three interrelated fronts: (a) transformation of the society from one that resorts to violence to one that resorts to political means to resolve conflict, requiring that the elite negotiate and that there should be widespread social dialogue and reconciliation; (b) reform of the governance framework to seek to ensure both that a negotiated governance arrangement between parties prevents future conflict and the adoption of basic democratic governance; and (c) the creation of meaningful institutions that will be sustainable after the mission leaves. These institutions cannot be imposed from outside, but must be bodies that re able to perform their core function and are committed to doing so.     

The meaning of “late socialism”: analyzing Estonians’ post-communist memory culture

The aim of this article is to elaborate one aspect of post-socialist memory culture in one Baltic state, namely, which meaning is given to the late socialist period (1960–80) in Estonians’ personal narratives. Reminiscing about events of twentieth century has a meaningful place in the integration of the Baltic Sea region in the twenty-first century. The tensions between memory politics and personal experiences expressed in biographical accounts will also be explored. In the 1990s, late socialism was understood in Estonians’ cultural memory as part of a discontinuity discourse. In the early twenty-first century, the same period is understood more along the lines of a paradigm of everyday life.