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Issues are discussed regarding the appropriateness of children assuming the role of interpreter between the general practitioner (GP) and adult patient in primary health care consultations. GPs faced with operational constraints due to the limited availability of professional interpreters will accept children in this role.

This paper addresses the extent to which equity of treatment is received by people of different ethnic groups from the British National Health Service. Using data from the General Household Surveys of 1984-91 it examines the use of general practitioner, outpatient and inpatient services using three different methods to adjust for need and for other possible confounding variables. The results do not suggest there is any gross pattern of inequity between ethnic groups, except perhaps with respect to the Chinese population which displays consistently low levels of utilisation. However, while use of GP services by minority ethnic groups is in general as high or higher than the white population, use of outpatient services is low. Some of the results also suggest that there may be important ethnic differences underlying the broader finding of equity. For example, females of Pakistani origin report low levels of GP use. More generally, excess use of GP services among several minority ethnic groups appears to be associated with need, while people from most minority ethnic groups who do not report illness display especially low use of outpatient services relative to the corresponding group in the white population. The paper examines the implications of these findings. [C] 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Key words - equity, health care utilisation, ethnic groups, General Household Survey, Britain

It's the importance of this local self-provisioning that turns a farm future into a small farm future. But a small farm future only represents a decline from the large farm present if you consider the latter to be a lofty civilisational summit to which humanity has laboriously climbed. The better future I write about here is a small farm future. [Extracted from the article]

This article investigates whether equity is achieved in health service utilisation by children and young people aged 0-19 years. Data from the British General Household Survey 1991-4 is used to examine the influence of ethnicity, along with social class, housing tenure, family structure and employment of parents on the use of general practitioner, outpatient and inpatient services. Health status is the most powerful predictor of use for each health service and there is no evidence of socioeconomic inequalities. However, a clear 'ethnic paradox' persists after controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors. South Asian children have a higher utilisation of GP services than any other ethnic group, but the use of hospital services is lower for children in all minority ethnic groups relative to the white population. Possible explanations for this paradox are examined in relation to indirect indicators of service quality. There is no evidence to suggest that South Asian children visit the doctor more frequently for a given illness episode than white children, but having a non-UK-born mother is associated with increased consultation and reduced use of outpatient services relative to UK-born South Asian parents.

The global agrifood system is examined in various scholarly literatures, including consumption studies, which are not well integrated. This paper presents data on producer–consumer relations from a small agroecology (vegetable box) scheme in England in order to ground an analysis of ‘ethical consumption’ within this wider agrifood context. It draws on the work of Daniel Miller in particular in order to theorise consumer motivations among box scheme customers, while critiquing the implicit ‘eco-pragmatism’ of Miller and of other consumption sociologies. Employing a range of perspectives – including McKim Marriott’s transactional analysis and the agrarian populist impetus in the food sovereignty movement – the paper articulates a revised green critique of contemporary consumerism which, it is argued, can illuminate some of the theoretical presuppositions of consumption theory and inform emerging efforts to establish agroecology and sustainable food production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The nature of the relationship between humankind and the natural world construed in the Bible's book of Genesis has long been a matter of debate. To the well-known "despotic' and 'stewardship' interpretations of Genesis, J. Baird Callicott has more recently formulated what he terms a 'citizenship' interpretation, based upon Aldo Leopold's concept of the land ethic. Callicott's interpretation, while compelling in many respects, pays insufficient attention to the tragic view of the relationship between people and the natural world articulated in Genesis. When addressed to the question of agriculture--a fundamental concern of Genesis--this tragic view offers grounds for a rapprochement between all three interpretations as different modalities of a 'land ethical' agricultural practice. This has significant implications for the development of a contemporary land ethical or 'enlightened' agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]