Developing practice in breastfeeding

This paper reports on an approach to practice development in breastfeeding as part of a national programme of work to address inequalities in maternal and child nutrition. The production and dissemination of evidence and guidelines is necessary but not sufficient on its own to effect change in practice, particularly when dealing with complex public health issues. In the case of breastfeeding, review evidence and national guidance have shown that multifaceted changes are essential if policy aspirations are to be realized. The objectives of the programme described here were to (1) inform and enable practice development in breastfeeding in low-income areas; (2) evaluate the impact of approaches used; and (3) develop robust approaches and appropriate material for use nationally. A conceptual framework was established, and a six-stage process is outlined. The recruitment of four sentinel sites across whole health economies, involving professionals and the voluntary sector, was an essential component of the programme. The strength of the model is that it provides a structured, cross-sectoral approach to practice development in public health. A key challenge is to identify whose responsibility it is to resource practice development when a number of disciplines and sectors are involved. This question needs to be addressed if public health guidance is to be of sustained benefit

Tales of Tools and Trees: Phylogenetic analysis and explanation in evolutionary archaeology

In this paper, I study the application of phylogenetic analysis in evolutionary archaeology. I show how transfer of this apparently general analytic tool is affected by salient differences in disciplinary context. One is that archaeologists, unlike many biologists, do not regard cladistics as a tool for classification, but are primarily interested in explanation. The other is that explanation is traditionally sought in terms of individual-level rather than population-level mechanisms. The latter disciplinary difference creates an ambiguity in the application and interpretation of phylogenetic analyses. Moreover, I argue that, while archaeologists have claimed that “cladistics is useful for reconstructing artefact phylogenies” (O’Brien et al. 2001), these reconstructions only contribute minimally to the explanatory research agenda of evolutionary archaeology

Tales of tools and trees : phylogenetic analysis and explanation in evolutionary archaeology

Evolutionary theory has outgrown its natural habitat. Increasingly, researchers outside biology frame their questions and results in evolutionary terms, and propose counterparts to mechanisms and entities that are central to our understanding of the organic world. This second Darwinian revolution has not escaped philosophical scrutiny. Critical reflections (e.g., Sober 1991) have focused mostly on general theories of cultural evolution, such as dual-inheritance theory (Boyd and Richerson 1985), or on general issues such as the lack of clarity and unanimity concerning the unit and level of selection. However, research in evolutionary economics, engineering and archaeology rarely mentions general frameworks such as dual-inheritance theory and only occasionally discuss the possibilities of defining suitably general evolutionary concepts. Instead, the results reported are gained by applying specific tools and techniques to problems within a particular discipline. This paper focuses on one example of these local efforts at Darwinizing culture, namely phylogenetic reconstructions of tool traditions, as recently given by evolutionary archaeologists