Gold Ash: Contested yet Immortal, The Exceptional Potency of Burmese Alchemy

‘Gold ash’ (shway pya), a substance Burmese alchemists produce through a complex process of the combination and burning of metals, is considered by many Burmese as the most potent medical ingredient existing in the country. In this article, I explore the factors underpinning its exceptional potency. Grounding my analysis on ethnography conducted in Myanmar since 2004, and more specifically on the case study of Master U Shein (1926-2014), the most well-known alchemist of the country, I illustrate the multiple facets of gold medicine’s potency and show how they emerged from the dialogue between the substance and the layers of meanings it has come to acquire by its existence within a specific social and political space. In particular, I show how gold medicine has come to occupy a controversial position given that it both contrasts with the biomedical paradigm and is perceived as a threat to state power. I argue that although this controversial position limits its growth, it also provides it with a specific political power, which, alongside the medical and spiritual power traditionally attributed to it, allows it to circulate in that inimical space. I also show that such resilience has been aided by the blurriness and weakness of the regulatory system as well as the great inadequacy and inaccessibility of the biomedical system

Tackling concentrated worklessness: integrating governance and policy across and within spatial scales

Spatial concentrations of worklessness remained a key characteristic of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, even during the period of decline in aggregate levels of unemployment and economic inactivity evident from the late 1990s to the economic downturn in 2008. The failure of certain localities to benefit from wider improvements in regional and national labour markets points to a lack of effectiveness in adopted policy approaches, not least in relation to the governance arrangements and policy delivery mechanisms that seek to integrate residents of deprived areas into wider local labour markets. Through analysis of practice in the British context, we explore the difficulties of integrating economic and social policy agendas within and across spatial scales to tackle problems of concentrated worklessness. We present analysis of a number of selected case studies aimed at reducing localised worklessness and identify the possibilities and constraints for effective action given existing governance arrangements and policy priorities to promote economic competitiveness and inclusion

Destination 2010: the achievements so far

This reports sets out progress against the targets contained in the Destination 2010 Regional Economic Strategy. It provides a snapshot of progress made in delivering the strategy using data from 2004, the latest available at that time

A legacy handbook for enterprise

Legacy Handbook reviewing emda's experience of enterprise activity. Identifies key achievements and draws out lessons learned that may be relevant to successor bodies active in this area

Cointegration Analysis: An International Enterprise..

Cointegration analysis is truly an international enterprise, with researchers from most continents and major countries participating. You will, of course, recognize that the very word is Danish, in the same sense as menu is English. The history of the concept and related notions, as this is central to understanding its present position in the econometrician’s toolkit is recalled. Then the idea is illustrated with an example of how we conceive of cointegration in the context of an issue such as inflation, which has been the centre of much economic policy and even more theoretical and empirical analysis.

<i>Rehabilitation doxa</i> and practitioner judgment. An analysis of symbolic violence on health care provision in the Scottish prison system

This paper presents an analysis of the symbolic conditions which govern health care provision in the Scottish prison system. The paper considers the wider context of Scottish prisons, where health care provision follows a similar structure both in juvenile and adult prisons. Our intention is to provoke a debate about the doxa (Bourdieu, 1977), which underlies decision making in respect of health care in prison, in a political environment where pragmatism, allied to the ‘pathologisation’ of social policies, health and criminal justice has been a hegemonic force.<br/

Beyond shareholder primacy? Reflections on the trajectory of UK corporate governance.

Core institutions of UK corporate governance, in particular the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers, the Combined Code on Corporate Governance and the law on directors’ duties, are strongly orientated towards the norm of shareholder primacy. Beyond the core, however, stakeholder interests are better represented, in particular at the intersection of insolvency and employment law. This reflects the influence of European Community laws on information and consultation of employees. In addition, there are signs that some institutional shareholders are redirecting their investment strategies, under government encouragement, away from a focus on short-term returns, in such a way as to favour stakeholder-inclusive practices by firms. On this basis we suggest that the UK system is currently in a state of flux and that the debate over shareholder primacy has not been concluded