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A major programme of health reform was announced in 2009. China is growing fast, and is beginning to engage with the international social policy community to discuss and review the consequences of rapid industrialization. As a specific part of social policy, health policy shares some of the characteristics of a policy area driven by the consequences of industrialization, but it also has its own particular features. This article reviews the general relationship between state and citizens in the health field by way of an introduction before focussing more specifically on Chinese patterns of health inequalities, and the pressures for reform. The 2009 reform of health policy and its dynamics are then presented, and the article concludes that there has been a deterioration in Chinese health policy, which threatens to undermine the benefits of economic growth for Chinese people.

In this article, a sociological analysis of the DSM, particularly axis II, is presented. Every discipline poses its own questions and answers them with its own particular methods. In this case, the distinction is drawn between an analysis that examines the DSM from the outside as an object of study and an analysis that examines the DSM from the inside, which attempts to serve the interests of the professional work being studied. This article takes the former approach, and the DSM is analysed in relation to the general problems of classification systems, the diffusion of innovations and the effects of social context. The conclusion reached is that the DSM has been very substantially shaped by external influences. This is consistent with the general dissatisfaction felt in both the clinical and research fields with the performance of axis II definitions of personality disorder. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper two disparate areas of social science theory, actor-network theory and policy networks, will be brought to bear on the problem of explaining the rapid development of an area of medical science and health policy in the UK. There has been a surge of interest in the treatment and management of personality disorder from within both the psychiatric profession and government ministries, and particularly those personality disorders deemed to be severe or dangerous. This has resulted in the development of a new psychiatric classification, the ‘dangerous and severe personality disorder’ (DSPD), and the funding and development of a new service to deal with it. Major new mental health legislation has been set in train to provide legal backing for the pre-emptive detention of patients with such a diagnosis, despite widespread uncertainty over its status, reliability or predictive capability. In the process of presenting and analysing this development, actor-network theory and policy networks will themselves be reviewed and compared, and common and incompatible elements, foci and mechanisms identified.

Why has there been a very rapid elaboration of the category of personality disorder within psychiatric classifications over the last 20 years ? Personality disorder is the site of considerable psychiatric controversy. Its classification, diagnosis, and treatment are disputed not only within psychiatry, but also in closely related fields of forensic and psychological work. For severe cases, the Home Secretary in Britain has recently suggested that pre-emptive incarceration is justified, and many psychiatrists feel that personality disorder is not amenable to treatment. This paper seeks to make a contribution to the sociology of psychiatric knowledge, drawing both on recent work on the sociology of science and technology, and on the relationship between psychiatric practice and government in the late 20th century

In this paper, two examples of the close relationship between a national social welfare system, and explicit transnational influences are discussed. Both the state socialist and Scandinavian models have a recognized structure independent of the particular countries in which they have been implemented, although they are both associated with a home base, Russia and Sweden respectively. Our examples, Estonia and Finland, faced both common and specific national problems following 1991, which led to rapid change in each country’s economic situation and pressure on their respective welfare systems. There were elements of continuity and discontinuity with the main tenets of their respective welfare models, and both structural factors and cultural diffusion will be explored to understand the origin of these changes. The paper could be seen as a case study of welfare changes in the "borderlands" where "old empires meet". The countries were chosen because they are peripheral to what were rival spheres of influence and because they see themselves as having much in common. We also expect changes to occur more rapidly in peripheral areas.