scholarly journals Does Basic Sanitation Prevent Diarrhea? Contextualizing Recent Intervention Trials through a Historical Lens

Author(s):  
Jesse D. Contreras ◽  
Joseph N.S. Eisenberg

Three of four recent major sanitation intervention trials found no effect on diarrhea. These results conflicted with longstanding beliefs from decades of literature. To understand this discordance, we placed recent trials into the historical context that preceded them in two ways. First, we evaluated the history of published literature reviews on sanitation and diarrhea. Second, we conducted meta-analyses on studies from the most recent systematic review to uncover features that predict effectiveness. We found that 13 literature reviews dating to 1983 consistently estimated a significant protective effect of sanitation against diarrhea. However, these were marred by flawed studies and inappropriately averaged effects across widely heterogeneous interventions and contexts. Our meta-analyses highlight that the overall effect of sanitation on diarrhea was largely driven by sewerage and interventions that improved more than sanitation alone. There is no true overall effect of sanitation because variability between intervention types and implementation contexts is too complex to average. Ultimately, the null effects of recent latrine interventions are not surprising. Instead, the one trial that found a strong relative reduction in diarrhea is the historical outlier. The development of transformative sanitation interventions requires a better understanding of the social and environmental contexts that determine intervention effectiveness.

Author(s):  
Giuseppe Catturi ◽  
Daniela Sorrentino

In every city community, there always exist social, economic and political- administrative bodies, whose activities and organisational structures delineate and convey the historical and cultural periods experienced by that community.The city community we aim at investigating is the Sienese one. Siena is universally recognised for its medieval reminders, as well as for those of the Renaissance, distinctly appreciable in its current urban patterns, painting pieces, and cultural goods, of which it is plenty and rightly proud.The organisation we identified as one traditionally characterising –at least in the last century and a half- and still characterising the Sienese history and culture, is the Ricovero di Mendicità, later named Casa di riposo in Campansi per anziani, unanimously known as “Campansi”.Undoubtedly, the Campansi one is not the only institution whose structural and operational evolution contributed – and keeps on contributing- to shape the history of Siena, from the social, political and institutional points of view. Nevertheless, it is surely one of the most peculiar ones, in that it has been involved in those charitable activities, which exalted Siena since the second millennium, at the time of the restoring and propitiatory journeys to the main religious destinations: Rome, Jerusalem, and Saint James of Compostela.In this study we adopt a business administration perspective, with particular reference to the structure of the accounting system and its related documentation, which the organisation had been producing in order to memorise, summarise and communicate its administrative events, these latter occurring from the exercise of its institutional function. Moreover, we acknowledge the related governance structure, selected with the purpose of making operational decisions, verifying their execution, and controlling the deriving effects. As a matter of fact, there is a tight interdependency between the governance structure and the accounting system of whichever organisation. Particularly, the investigation refers to the period we considered the most significant and interesting, the one comprised between the issuing of the law “Sull'Amministrazione delle Opere pie” (3rd August 1862) and law “Istituzioni pubbliche di beneficenza”, in 1890, respectively known as Rattazzi and Crispi law, from the Prime Ministers in charge at the time of their enactment.


Author(s):  
Ю.В. Ковалева

Представлен историографический анализ развития понятия большие социальные группы и историко-психологический анализ социальных феноменов , связанных с массовыми общественными явлениями в России. Сформулированы актуальные проблемы психологии больших социальных групп, к которым относятся неоднородность оснований для их выделения, недостаточная дифференцированность со сходными понятиями, неравномерность исследований в различные временные периоды и идеологическая нагруженность их разработки. Данная работа была ответом на необходимость восполнения знаний о процессах в таких группах, происходивших в различные исторические периоды развития социальной психологии, с соответствующим им уровнем научного осмысления, а также обобщением этой целостной картины на уровне современного понимания и формулировка перспективных направлений исследований. Целью исследования является установление связи между определением и основными свойствами понятия «большие социальные группы» (его синонимов, аналогов) и особенностями социальной ситуации в определенный период времени, а также реконструкция социальных процессов данного исторического этапа. Проверялась гипотеза о том, что большие социальные группы как феномены социальной жизни формировались в соответствии с историческим временем, а соответствующее им понятие и его свойства с одной стороны отвечали уровню развития гуманитарного знания, а с другой - пытались удовлетворить общественный и политический запрос в объяснении и управлении социальной ситуацией. Использовались методы историографии социальной психологии и психолого-исторической реконструкции . Первая часть статьи посвящена анализу первых двух этапов развития социальной психологии - с середины XIX до начала XX вв. и в 1920-е гг. XX в. The historiographic analysis of the development of the concept of large social groups and historical and psychological study of social phenomena associated with mass social phenomena was presented. Topical problems of the psychology of large social groups are formulated, including heterogeneity of the grounds for their isolation, insufficient differentiation with similar concepts, uneven research in various periods, and ideological loading of the history of its development. The study's main problem was the need to replenish the processes in such groups that took place in various historical periods of social psychology development as well as a synthesis of this holistic picture at the level of modern understanding and the formulation of promising areas of research. The study's purpose was to establish a connection between the definition and the basic properties of the concept of "large social groups" (and its synonyms, analogs) and the peculiarities of the social situation in a certain period, as well as the reconstruction of social processes of this historical segment. The hypothesis was tested that large social groups as phenomena of social life were formed under the past time. The concept and its properties were corresponding to them, on the one hand, compared to the level of development of humanitarian knowledge. On the other, they tried to satisfy the social and political requests to understand and manage the social situation. Methods of the historiography of the history of social psychology and psychological and historical reconstruction were used. The article's first part was devoted to the analysis of the early two stages of the development of social psychology - from the middle of the XIX to the beginning of the XX centuries and 1920 of the XX century.


2020 ◽  
pp. 008124632095404
Author(s):  
Simangele Dlamini ◽  
Solomon G Tesfamichael ◽  
Tholang Mokhele

Place identity studies have attracted considerable interest in South Africa because of its history of separate racial development. However, there is a paucity of studies that have reviewed such studies in the country. This article, therefore, aims to present a selective review of place identity studies in post-apartheid South Africa. A literature search was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. Studies published in English between 1994 and 2020, relating to changing place identities as a result of apartheid in South Africa, were included in our search. The search yielded studies from which four key themes were identified – these being identity and belonging, social identity and discursive practice, cultural symbolism and group identity, and social inclusion and exclusion. These themes attest to the social construction of place identity, with people forming cognitive and affective bonds within groups. In addition, these themes show that mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion are crucial for identity formation in which the self is contrasted with ‘the other’. The studies collectively point to the intricacies surrounding attempts at desegregation and building social cohesion in post-apartheid South Africa.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahana Bhattacharya

State-organised technical education focusing on leather production was introduced in India in the early 1900s. One of its key objectives was to change the entrenched notions about the leather industry—as a ‘traditional’ industry associated with low caste and social status. This article traces the history of this endeavour, locating it within a wider account of the history of technical education in leather production. While some common concerns affected the project in both Europe and India, there were important points of difference, as technical education in leather production in India had to negotiate factors such as the extreme stigma of hides and skins mandated by caste on the one hand, and on the other, their integration within the capitalist colonial economy and their concomitant high profitability. Decisions of who or what were to be taught, and by which pedagogical methods, were produced through these negotiations. The article explores this history through a study of two leading institutions that provided technical education in this field. It highlights how official initiatives of skilling and technical education were, in complex ways, closely mediated by, and in turn mediated their historical context, its social and economic structures, prevailing ideologies and notions of skill.


Author(s):  
Constantinos Koliopoulos

International relations and history are inextricably linked, and with good reason. This link is centuries old: Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, one of the very earliest and one of the very greatest historical works of all time, is widely regarded as the founding textbook of international relations. Still, those two disciplines are legitimately separate. A somewhat clear boundary between them can probably be drawn around three lines of demarcation: (1) past versus present, (2) idiographic versus nomothetic, and (3) description versus analysis. The utility of history for the analysis of international affairs has been taken for granted since time immemorial. History is said to offer three things to international relations scholars: (1) a ready source of examples, (2) an opportunity to sharpen their theoretical insights, and (3) historical consciousness, that is, an understanding of the historical context of human existence and a corresponding ability to form intelligent judgment about human affairs. This tradition continued well after international relations firmly established itself as a recognized separate discipline some time after World War II, and would remain virtually unchallenged until the 1960s. Since the 1960s, attitudes toward history have diverged within the international relations community. Some approaches, most notably the English school and the world system analysis, have almost by definition thriven on history. History plays a fundamental role in the critical-constructivist approach, while realist scholars continue to draw regularly on history. History is far less popular, though not absent from works belonging to the liberal-idealist approach. Postmodernism is the one approach that is almost completely antithetical to the analytical use of history. Postmodernists have characterized history as merely another form of fiction and question the existence of objective truth and transhistorical knowledge. One cannot exclude the possibility that postmodernism is correct in this respect; however, it is highly unlikely that uncountable generations of people have been victims of mass deception or mass psychosis regarding the utility of history, not least in the analysis of international relations.


1909 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-322
Author(s):  
Edward S. Drown

There have been times in the history of architecture when style was inevitable. In the classic period of Greece or in the Gothic period of northern Europe no architect raised the question as to the style in which he should construct a building. That was decreed for him. And we shall perhaps not go astray if we suggest that the inevitableness of that decree was determined by two factors. One was the purpose to be served by the building, the other was the control over the materials. The one factor determined the contents, the other the form in which those contents were to be expressed. The contents depended on the social and spiritual ideals of the time. The form depended on the nature of the building material and on the mechanical ability to use it.


1974 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nicholls

One of the striking facts about the social and political history of Haiti from independence in 1804 to the present is the deep gulf separating the largely mulatto elite groups from the predominantly black masses. The war of the South in 1799 between Toussaint and Rigaud, and the conflicts between Christophe and Pétion, while not primarily caused by color factors, were reinforced by suspicions and hostilities between black and mulatto, with each group accusing the other of prejudice and discrimination. Politics in the rest of the nineteenth century can generally be seen as a tussle between a mulatto elite centered in the capital and in the cities of the South, on the one hand, and a small black elite often in alliance with army leaders and peasant irregulars, on the other. In the years following 1867 these groups formalized themselves into a largely mulatto Liberal Party, and a preponderantly black National Party.


2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (32) ◽  
pp. 5132-5137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette L. Stanton

In light of the increasing population living with a history of cancer in the United States, it is important to attend to quality of life and health in this group, and to develop effective interventions to address psychosocial and physical concerns across the course of the cancer trajectory. The goals of this article are to document the need for attention to psychosocial domains; offer a brief overview of the current status of the empirical literature on effects of psychosocial interventions with cancer survivors, relying on systematic reviews and meta-analyses conducted in the last decade; highlight recent examples of randomized, controlled psychosocial intervention trials directed toward cancer survivors after the completion of primary medical treatments (ie, the re-entry phase and beyond); and identify directions for application and research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
Henrik Lagerlund ◽  

In this article, I present two virtually unknown sixteenth-century views of human freedom, that is, the views of Bartolomaeus de Usingen (1465–1532) and Jodocus Trutfetter (1460–1519) on the one hand and John Mair (1470–1550) on the other. Their views serve as a natural context and partial background to the more famous debate on human freedom between Martin Luther (1483–1556) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) from 1524–1526. Usingen and Trutfetter were Luther’s philosophy teachers in Erfurt. In a passage from Book III of John Mair’s commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from 1530, he seems to defend a view of human freedom by which we can will evil for the sake of evil. Very few thinkers in the history of philosophy have defended such a view. The most famous medieval thinker to do so is William Ockham (1288–1347). To illustrate how radical this view is, I place him in the historical context of such thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Buridan, and Descartes.


1984 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-116
Author(s):  
Werner Bahner

Summary The Renaissance constitutes a new phase in the history of linguistics. The study of modern languages in particular contributed to enlarge the scope of philological concern as scholars try to promote and to codify a young national language. During this time philologists give particular attention to the origin of these vernaculars, distinguishing the different stages in their evolution and developing an especial awareness of chronology. For the representatives of a national philology, Latin is the starting point, the mould according to which the vernaculars are described and classified. Soon, however, more and more traits are recognized which are particular to these living languages, and which do not agree with the traditions of Latin grammar. On the one hand, modifications on the theoretical level are called for, and, on the other, there is a good opportunity to demonstrate the particularity of a given vernacular. All these tendencies can be found for the first time in the writings on Cas-tillian by the great philologist Antonio de Nebrija (1444–1522). Nebrija recognized a series of phonetic correspondences which, much later in the 19th century, are transformed into ‘phonetic laws’ by a rigorous methodology. In so doing the elaboration of orthographic principles had been for him a stimulus for his explications. In his “Diálogo de la lengua”, Juan de Valdés (devoted himself more extensively to the social aspects of Castillian, to linguistic changes, and to the historical causes for the distribution of Romance languages on the Iberian peninsula, stressing expecially the role of the ‘Reconquista’. The work of Bernardo José de Aldrete (1560–1641) offers a synthesis of all these efforts concerning the evolution of Castillian. He discusses all the substrata and superstrata of the language, sketches the different stages of development of his native tongue, examines Old Castillian with the help of medieval texts, and exploits what Nebrija had noted about the phonetic correspondences. In terms of scholarship, Aldrete’s work constitutes the culmination point in the movement engaged in supporting the rights of the Castillian language et in documenting its sovereignity vis-à-vis the Latin tradition.


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