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The Journal of Critical Realism has issued a call for papers for a special issue on "critical realism and the self." The concept of the self is seen as crucial for social change and emancipatory theorizing. The special issue aims to explore various aspects of the self, including subjectivity, reflexivity, authenticity, personhood, and identity. Submissions can be theoretical or applied, and can engage with critical realism or critique it. The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2024, and the final papers are required by November 19, 2024. [Extracted from the article]

Farhat Hasan, Paper, Performance, and the State: Social Change and Political Culture in Mughal India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, xv+155 pp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim:   This article presents a discussion of nursing education development in the People's Republic of China in its historical, economic and sociopolitical contexts., Background:   China has a population of 1·3 billion with about 2·18 million nurses. With the recent surging economic and social development in China, nursing education has undergone transformation changes in the past two decades., Data Sources:   Online bibliographical databases from 1990 to 2010 were searched including CINAHL, MEDLINE, Wan Fang Data and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure. Search terms included nursing education, China and development., Methods:   Thematic analysis and narrative synthesis were used to identify and report themes from literature., Results:   Database searches yielded 1674 papers, and 34 met the inclusion criteria for review. The standard of nursing education varies greatly in different parts of China, because of its huge size and population, with pre-registration programmes offered at the secondary, associate degree and baccalaureate level. Multi-level nursing education is one of the major barriers for professional development. There is a need to upgrade the pre-registration education to at least associate degree level. There is also a need to enhance graduate nursing education at master and doctoral level to prepare advanced practice nurses, nurse scientists and nursing faculty. conclusion:  The challenges for nursing education development in China are echoed and encountered in many parts of the world. The experience in China and the lessons learned would be relevant to developing countries. Nursing in China must continue to develop in parallel to international trends. Promoting communication and maintaining international links are important for the global development of nursing practice., (© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

This state of the art paper has been developed through EuroPrevall, a European multicentre research project funded by the European Union which aims to improve quality of life for food allergic individuals. Food allergy (whether clinically diagnosed or self-perceived) represents a major health issue in Western societies and may have a considerably greater impact on society than was previously believed. However, the social impact of food allergy has never been systematically investigated using validated instruments. Combining the information from studies on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) with epidemiological data on prevalence will ultimately give some indication of the magnitude of the social impact of food allergy in Europe. HRQoL can be assessed with disease-specific questionnaires, which are being developed in EuroPrevall. These instruments will be used to identify HRQoL problems associated with food allergy, and to assess the effectiveness of interventions and to guide the development of regulatory policies.

This paper investigates the translation of medical information into clinical practice and the role of thoughtful dissent by exploring the influence of sociological factors on change, the impact of evidence-based medicine (EBM), and the role of industry. Changing practice related to hormone therapy for menopausal and post-menopausal women provides context for this discussion. Medical change involves diffusion of ideas to potential users and ongoing reconciliation of new information with old ideas; this process is influenced by sociological factors including values and experiences, interpersonal relationships and local context. While EBM has alerted doctors to the importance of high quality research and theoretically provides a tool for translating research into practice, there are important problems with its application: (1) it has resulted in a reductionist approach to research and illness; (2) there is a considerable gap between research findings and the complex environment of clinical practice; and (3) EBM has been appropriated by experts, thus corporately developed 'standard-of-care' documents have become instruments of external regulation, and EBM has ceased to be a tool in the hand of individual clinicians. In addition, industry impacts the translation of knowledge by significantly influencing academia, researchers, medical publications, consensus conferences, and practising doctors. While questioning doctrinaire practices or directives is a daunting prospect for individual clinicians, the translation of knowledge into practice and evolution of medical thought is dependent on the progressive role of thoughtful dissent.

The contributors to this discussion were invited to submit comments, each from a different standpoint, on the paper by John Caldwell and Thomas Schindlmayr that appeared in the preceding issue of the journal. The invitation was issued with the approval of these authors, and the journal is grateful to them for allowing their paper to be used to generate debate on the issues they had raised. The discussion is followed by the authors' response to it.

Secularization theory allows for transitory religious revivals under certain conditions, such as extreme societal crises or state weakness. The country of Georgia has witnessed the largest religious revival of Orthodox countries and one of the most striking religious resurgences worldwide. This paper gives both a statistical and historical description of this revival and asks whether it is a counterexample to secularization theory. We show that the main thrust of the religious revival in Georgia lasted 25 years and seized the entire society in what was mainly a period effect. The most significant cause for the revival was a major societal and economic crisis starting in 1985 combined with a very weak state, creating massive individual insecurity. In these circumstances, the Georgian Orthodox Church was able to provide identity for individuals and legitimacy for governments. Other possible causes of the revival-state funding, too rapid modernization, or emigration-can be excluded as primary drivers of the process. The Georgian case shows a situation in which secularization theory expects transitory revivals and is thus not a counterexample., (© 2023 The Authors. The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science.)

The record of past human adaptations provides crucial lessons for guiding responses to crises in the future 1-3 . To date, there have been no systematic global comparisons of humans' ability to absorb and recover from disturbances through time 4,5 . Here we synthesized resilience across a broad sample of prehistoric population time-frequency data, spanning 30,000 years of human history. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of population decline show that frequent disturbances enhance a population's capacity to resist and recover from later downturns. Land-use patterns are important mediators of the strength of this positive association: farming and herding societies are more vulnerable but also more resilient overall. The results show that important trade-offs exist when adopting new or alternative land-use strategies., (© 2024. The Author(s).)