New Directions in the History of Medicine in European, Colonial and Transimperial Contexts

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Colonial Medicine ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Networks ◽  
The Relationship

In the late 1970s scholars of Europe and its colonies began probing the relationship between medicine and empire. In the decades since, following the cue of Steven Feierman, John Janzen, Megan Vaughan and Randall Packard, the literature has demonstrated that colonial medicine constructed an African ‘other’ and greatly contributed to harmful practices that did not improve the overall health and welfare of the local populations European administrations claimed to be civilising. Through the 1990s, scholarship concentrated primarily on local agency and socio-economic and political factors that furthered our understanding of how medicine and health care operated in a colonial context. These foundational studies have enabled the most recent wave of research in the history of medicine to turn its attention to questions of public health, especially as it relates to the politics of development, nationalism, and decolonisation. Historians, including Sunil Amrith and Clifford Rosenberg, have emphasised the significant role medicine has played in projecting state power in European colonies and have shown how international organisations became prominent agents in shaping national and global health policies. However, their important work has left unanswered questions about the intellectual networks that formed the elite scientific and medical minds of the day and the legacies of health policies under colonial rule.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ECONOMIC CRISES AND HEALTH

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 477-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIRSTY WALKER
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
History Of Public Health ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTDuring periods of recession, both historians and policy-makers have tended to revisit the multi-faceted relationship between health and economic crisis. It seems likely that the current economic downturn will trigger a new revival of efforts to gauge its implications for people's health around the world. This review will reflect on aspects of the relationship between health and economic crisis, exploring some of the unanswered questions within the historiography of the Great Depression and health, and suggest new directions that this work might take. Within a broadly transnational framework, I will reassess the diverse historiographies of interwar public health, in order to highlight ways in which the methodologies used could inspire future studies for neglected areas within this field, such as Southeast Asia. In doing so, I will illustrate that the effects of the interwar economic fluctuations on health status remain imprecise and difficult to define, but marked a transitional moment in the history of public health.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Medical History ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Global History ◽  
Current State ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medical Traditions

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine celebrates the richness and variety of medical history around the world. In recent decades, the history of medicine has emerged as a rich and mature sub-discipline within history, but the strength of the field has not precluded vigorous debates about methods, themes, and sources. Bringing together over thirty international scholars, this book provides a constructive overview of the current state of these debates, and offers new directions for future scholarship. There are three sections: the first explores the methodological challenges and historiographical debates generated by working in particular historical ages; the second explores the history of medicine in specific regions of the world and their medical traditions, and includes discussion of the ‘global history of medicine’; the final section analyses, from broad chronological and geographical perspectives, both established and emerging historical themes and methodological debates in the history of medicine.

An Alternative Account of the History of Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Diaz-Andreu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Studies ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Historians of science (whether philosophers, epistemologists, historians of science, or sociologists of science) have been stubbornly reluctant to deal with archaeology in favour of other disciplines such as geology and medicine. Most histories of archaeology have, therefore, been written by archaeologists and this book is no exception. Being trained in the subtleties of stratigraphy and typology does not, however, provide archaeologists with the necessary tools to confront the history of their own discipline. Many of the histories of archaeology so far written revolve around a narrow, almost positivistic, understanding of what the writing of one’s own disciplinary history represents. This volume attempts to overcome these limitations. Questions addressed have been inspired by a wide range of authors working in the areas of history, sociology, literary studies, anthropology, and the history of science. It uses the case of nineteenth-century world archaeology to explore the potential of new directions in the study of nationalism for our understanding of the history of archaeology. Key concepts and questions from which this study has drawn include the changing nature of national history as seen by historians (Berger et al. 1999b; Hobsbawm 1990) and by scholars working in the areas of literature and political studies (Anderson 1991); transformations within nationalism (Smith 1995); new theoretical perspectives developed within colonial and post-colonial studies (Asad 1973; Said 1978); the relationship between knowledge and power (Foucault 1972 (2002); 1980b); and the consideration of social disciplines as products of history (Bourdieu 1993; 2000; 2004). Perhaps historians and sociologists of science’s lack of enthusiasm to engage with archaeology derives from its sheer lack of homogeneity. The term comes from the Greek arkhaiologia, the study of what is ancient. It most commonly encompasses the analysis of archaeological remains, but the emphasis on what body of data lies within its remit has always differed—and still does—from country to country and within a country between groups of scholars of the various academic traditions. For some it revolves around the study of artistic objects, as well as of ancient inscriptions and coins, for others it encompasses all manifestations of culture from every period of human existence.

In My Time of Dying

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Over Time

This book is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, the book explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a 400-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. The book considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time. From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, the book shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world's most vibrant cultures of death. The book explores the unfolding background of that culture through a diverse range of issues, such as the symbolic power of mortal remains and the dominion of hallowed ancestors, as well as the problem of bad deaths, vile bodies, and vengeful ghosts. The book reconstructs a vast timeline of death and the dead, from the era of the slave trade to the coming of Christianity and colonial rule to the rise of the modern postcolonial nation. With an array of written and oral sources, the book richly adds to an understanding of how the dead continue to weigh on the shoulders of the living.

History of the greenhouse effect

1990 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.D.H. Jones ◽  
A. Henderson-Sellers
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Greenhouse Effect ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Atmospheric Sciences ◽  
Level Change ◽  
Oceanic Response ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Increasing Temperature ◽  
The Relationship

The greenhouse effect is now commonly accepted by the scientific community, politicians and the general public. However, the misnomer 'greenhouse effect' has perpetuated, and there are a number of aspects of the effect which are poorly understood outside the atmospheric sciences. On such misconception is that greenhouse research is a recent phenomenon; another is that glasshouses are warmed by the same mechanism as lies at the heart of the greenhouse effect. This review traces the theory as far back as 1827, highlighting new directions and significant advances over that time. Four main themes can be discerned: 1) certain radiatively active gases are responsible for warming the planet ; 2) that humans can inadvertently influence this warming; 3) climate models are designed to permit prediction of the climatic changes in the atmospheric loadings of these gases but that they have not yet achieved this goal of prediction; and 4) many scenarios of changes, and especially of impact, are premised on relatively weak analysis. This latter point is illustrated by an examination of the relationship between increasing temperature and sea level change (the oceanic response to atmospheric warming). Current research suggests that sea-level rise is not likely to be as high as had previously been anticipated.

scholarly journals Anatomical Theatres and the Teaching of Anatomy in Early Modern Spain

2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Àlvar Martínez-Vidal ◽  
José Pardo-Tomás
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
New Work ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Synthetic View

The knowledge and interpretation of the practice of anatomy in the Renaissance have recently undergone a profound change. To a large extent, this is the result of new directions taken in the social and cultural history of medicine since the late 1970s. In the last decade, several important works have been published, which are undeniable evidence of this historiographical change. However, there has as yet been no attempt to produce a synthetic view of all this new work, in which there is not always agreement. Such a synthesis would undoubtedly produce an interpretation of Renaissance anatomy very different from the traditional one.

scholarly journals Postcolonial Political Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Busbridge
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The One ◽  
Dynamics Problems ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
The Relationship

Postcolonial political theory is an emerging subfield of political theory, although its parameters and particular meanings are less than clearly defined and subject to contestation. Related to a more general critique of political theory’s traditional Eurocentric bias, postcolonial political theory is motivated by three key issues: first, how colonialism shaped the traditional Western canon; second, the broad silence on colonialism and its legacies in mainstream political theorizing; and third, the tensions, particularly within liberal political theory, between its universal pretentions and culturally specific Western location of articulation. The scope of inquiry in postcolonial political theory is broadly responsive to postcolonialism, a body of thought concerned with tracing, engaging, and responding to the cultural, political, social, and economic legacies of Western colonialism, particularly the period of European colonial rule between the 18th and mid-20th centuries. With a particular emphasis on the relationship between power and knowledge, postcolonial theories and approaches take the development of modernity as coterminous with European colonial and imperial projects, and therefore examine the ways in which modern systems of knowledge are implicated in colonial relations of power. Postcolonial political theory similarly treats political modernity as imprinted by Western colonialism and imperialism, making for distinct political dynamics, problems, and forms of injustice, on the one hand, and shaping the history of European political thought, on the other. In this regard, postcolonial political theory does not just call for a widening of the remit of political theory beyond the traditional European canon to include non-Western texts, voices, and perspectives. It also raises profound questions about the ways in which the categories, ideas, and assumptions of political theory have been complicit in and served to legitimize the domination of colonized peoples and indigenous, non-Western, and subaltern minorities. Postcolonial political theory seeks to articulate alternative modes of theorizing that can better speak to the concerns of justice for the formerly colonized, indigenous peoples, and those affected by the neo-imperial features of the current global order. An important element of this is concerned with methodology, in particular the use of multidisciplinary insights from history, cultural studies, and anthropology, among others, as well as thinkers and texts that would not conventionally be considered “political” according to dominant Western conceptions of politics.

Hanbang Healing for the World: The Eastern Medicine Renaissance in 1930s Japan-ruled Korea

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Flowers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Western Medicine ◽  
Unusual Case ◽  
Effective Resistance ◽  
Colonial Medicine ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Medical Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Abstract The story of the 1930s Eastern Medicine Renaissance in Korea is an unusual case in the history of colonial medicine. Responding to Japanese colonial rule that began in the first decade of the twentieth century, a few thousand Korean physicians of Eastern medicine complied with the new registration requirements, but they turned that compliance into effective resistance. By organising conferences, publishing journals and books, and through the new medium of advertising, the physicians refuted Japanese official arguments of the superiority of Western medicine. The Koreans flipped on its head the Japanese rhetorical argument of Koreans and Japanese as one body (with the Japanese as ‘the head’) and persuaded the Japanese that they could learn from Korean medical practices. Flipping the Japanese trope of Korean weakness upside down, Koreans thereby used their version of Eastern medicine to demonstrate Korean strength.

The Oxford Handbook of Populism

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The People ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe

Populist forces are increasingly relevant, and studies on populism have entered the mainstream of the political science discipline. However, no book has synthesized the ongoing debate on how to study the phenomenon. The main goal of this Handbook is to provide the state of the art of the scholarship on populism. The Handbook lays out not only the cumulated knowledge on populism, but also the ongoing discussions and research gaps on this topic. The Handbook is divided into four sections. The first presents the main conceptual approaches and points out how the phenomenon in question can be empirically analyzed. The second focuses on populist forces across the world with chapters on Africa, Australia and New Zealand, Central, Eastern, and Western Europe, East Asia, India, Latin America, the post-Soviet States, and the United States. The third reflects on the interaction between populism and various issues both from scholarly and political viewpoints. Analysis includes the relationship between populism and fascism, foreign policy, gender, nationalism, political parties, religion, social movements, and technocracy. The fourth part encompasses recent normative debates on populism, including chapters on populism and cosmopolitanism, constitutionalism, hegemony, the history of popular sovereignty, the idea of the people, and revolution. With each chapter written by an expert in their field, this Handbook will position the study of populism within political science and will be indispensable not only to those who turn to populism for the first time, but also to those who want to take their understanding of populism in new directions.

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