The roles and values of wild foods in agricultural systems

Almost every ecosystem has been amended so that plants and animals can be used as food, fibre, fodder, medicines, traps and weapons. Historically, wild plants and animals were sole dietary components for hunter–gatherer and forager cultures. Today, they remain key to many agricultural communities. The mean use of wild foods by agricultural and forager communities in 22 countries of Asia and Africa (36 studies) is 90–100 species per location. Aggregate country estimates can reach 300–800 species (e.g. India, Ethiopia, Kenya). The mean use of wild species is 120 per community for indigenous communities in both industrialized and developing countries. Many of these wild foods are actively managed, suggesting there is a false dichotomy around ideas of the agricultural and the wild: hunter–gatherers and foragers farm and manage their environments, and cultivators use many wild plants and animals. Yet, provision of and access to these sources of food may be declining as natural habitats come under increasing pressure from development, conservation-exclusions and agricultural expansion. Despite their value, wild foods are excluded from official statistics on economic values of natural resources. It is clear that wild plants and animals continue to form a significant proportion of the global food basket, and while a variety of social and ecological drivers are acting to reduce wild food use, their importance may be set to grow as pressures on agricultural productivity increase.</jats:p

Impact of curriculum on understanding of professional practice: A longitudinal study of students commencing dental education

This longitudinal study examines changes in understanding of dental practice among a cohort of students in the early years of a dentistry programme. In their first two professional years, we identified five distinct understandings of dental practice that we have ordered from least to most comprehensive: relieving pain or generally caring for teeth, carrying out particular dental procedures, diagnosing and treating dental problems or diseases, evaluating and responding to oral health, and finally, evaluating oral health and preventing oral disease in the community. At entry into the dental program the most common understandings among both men and women focused on dental procedures or diagnosis and treatment. The largest changes in students’ responses at the end of the first and second professional years were generally in line with the emphasis of the curriculum in each of these 2 years, although prevention was not clearly featured. These data suggest that at least some students responded to the curriculum and, hence, highlight the impact of the curriculum on students’ emerging understandings. We conclude that curricula can have a key role in the development of understanding of professional practice during professional programmes, although the impact of curricula is not always as expected and merits investigation

Relational Autonomy, Paternalism, and Maternalism

The concept of paternalism is intricately tied to the concept of autonomy. It is commonly assumed that when paternalistic interventions are wrong, they are wrong because they impede individuals’ autonomy. Our aim in this paper is to show that the recent shift towards conceiving of autonomy relationally highlights a separate conceptual space for a nonpaternalistic kind of interpersonal intervention termed maternalism. We argue that maternalism makes a twofold contribution to the debate over the ethics of interpersonal action and decision-making. Descriptively, it captures common experiences that, while not unusual in everyday life, are largely absent from the present discussion. Normatively, it describes a type of intervention with justification conditions distinct from the standard framework of paternal-ism. We explicate these contributions by describing six key differences between maternalism and paternalism, and conclude by anticipating and responding to potential objections