309 research outputs found

    Cementing Relations. The Materiality of Roads and Public Spaces in Provincial Peru

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    Este artículo propone analizar cómo el concreto está implicado en la transformación del espacio público en el Perú provincial. Si bien el concreto mejora la capacidad de un estado para producir estructuras confiables y predecibles, también hay límites significativos en relación con su capacidad para la conectividad tanto en el ámbito material como social. La atención etnográfica a la dinámica relacional del concreto revela cómo su promesa de operar como un material genérico, homogéneo y, sobre todo, predecible, se ve constantemente desafiada por lainestabilidad y la heterogeneidad de los terrenos a los que se aplica. La imagen de poder que ofrece el concreto está, por lo tanto, comprometida, ya que la estabilidad y la previsibilidad de esta sustancia sólo es segura si está rodeada e incrustada en relaciones específicas de cuidado.This article sets out to analyze how concrete is implicated in the transformation of public space in provincial Peru. While concrete enhances a state’s capacity to produce reliable, predictable structures, there are also significant limits in relation to its connective capacity in both the material and social domains. Ethnographic attention to the relational dynamics of concrete reveals how its promise to operate as a generic, homogeneous, and above all predictable material is constantly challenged by the instability and heterogeneity of the terrains towhich it is applied. The image of power that concrete affords is thus a compromised one, as the stability and predictability of this substance is secure only insofar as it is surrounded by and embedded in specific relationships of care

    Quality Assurance for KidsMatter Primary: a scoping paper

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    This Scoping Paper reviews and details options for the ongoing quality assurance of KidsMatter PrimaryThis scoping paper was commissioned and funded by beyondblue, the national depression initiative. The Flinders team wishes to thank and acknowledge beyondblue for their ongoing support throughout the development of this report

    Feasibility and impact of a post–discharge geriatric evaluation and management service for patients from residential care: the Residential Care Intervention Program in the Elderly (RECIPE)

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    BackgroundGeriatric evaluation and management has become standard care for community dwelling older adults following an acute admission to hospital. It is unclear whether this approach is beneficial for the frailest older adults living in permanent residential care. This study was undertaken to evaluate (1) the feasibility and consumer satisfaction with a geriatrician-led supported discharge service for older adults living in residential care facilities (RCF) and (2) its impact on the uptake of Advanced Care Planning (ACP) and acute health care service utilisation.MethodsIn 2002&ndash;4 a randomised controlled trial was conducted in Melbourne, Australia comparing the geriatrician&ndash;led outreach service to usual care for RCF residents. Patients were recruited during their acute hospital stay and followed up at the RCF for six months. The intervention group received a post-discharge home visit within 96 hours, at which a comprehensive geriatric assessment was performed and a care plan developed. Participants and their families were also offered further meetings to discuss ACPs and document Advanced Directives (AD). Additional reviews were made available for assessment and management of intercurrent illness within the RCF. Consumer satisfaction was surveyed using a postal questionnaire.ResultsThe study included 116 participants (57 intervention and 59 controls) with comparable baseline characteristics. The service was well received by consumers demonstrated by higher satisfaction with care in the intervention group compared to controls (95% versus 58%, p&thinsp;=&thinsp;0.006).AD were completed by 67% of participants/proxy decision makers in the intervention group compared to 13% of RCF residents prior to service commencement. At six months there was a significant reduction in outpatient visits (intervention 21 (37%) versus controls 45 (76%), (p&thinsp;&lt;&thinsp;0.001), but no difference in readmissions rates (39% intervention versus 34% control, p&thinsp;=&thinsp;0.6). There was a trend towards reduced hospital bed-day utilisation (intervention 271 versus controls 372 days).ConclusionIt is feasible to provide a supported discharge service that includes geriatrician assessment and care planning within a RCF. By expanding the service there is the potential for acute health care cost savings by decreasing the demand for outpatient consultation and further reducing acute care bed-days.<br /

    Regulating mobility in the Peruvian Andes: road safety, social hierarchies and governmentality in Cusco's rural provinces

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    Significant developments in road safety regulation have taken place in Peru during recent years, reflecting international efforts to reduce worldwide fatalities and injuries. A series of measures has sought to bring about transformations in governmentality among passengers on public transport. Seen ethnographically, these have had uneven success on the ground. In rural provinces of Cusco, situated histories and sociologies of mobility have sometimes led to ambivalence, unobtrusive resistance or reinforcement of discriminatory attitudes. This article explores how reception of the regulations has been refracted through class, ethnic and geographical divisions within Peruvian society, and argues for both the applied and theoretical utility of anthropological study of road safety governance

    “Dolls or teddies?”: constructing lesbian identity through community-specific practice.

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    The concept of ‘community’ often presents a problem for queer linguists. ‘The gay community’ is often viewed as an impossible site for research due to its imagined status, whilst local communities of gay people have been considered too heterogeneous and idiosyncratic to draw conclusions from. In this article, however, it is argued that both of these aspects of community can, and should, be a central focus of an investigation into language and sexual identity. Through the analysis of a conversation emerging from a lesbian group, using a sociocultural linguistics framework, it is argued here that the community of practice approach can play a crucial role in understanding how ideologies from ‘the gay community’ are used to construct a coherent sexual identity on a local level. The analysis reveals how the group engages in practices that enable them to construct micro-level personas in direct response to broader, ideological structures of heteronormativity

    Imagining the highway:Anticipating infrastructural and environmental change in Belize

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    This article examines the social and political, as well physical, construction of infrastructure, by attending to the implications of a highway yet to be built. In southern Belize, where the development of rural road networks figures strongly in historical narratives of political and environmental change, the recent paving of a major domestic highway has had distinctive implications for livelihoods and land rights among the predominantly Maya population of rural Toledo district. At the time of research, a plan for a new paved highway to the Guatemalan border animated longstanding debates over territoriality, environment and development, even as the details remained elusive. Bringing political ecology into conversation with attention to the perception of sensory environments, and the affective power of anticipation, I argue for extending anthropological conversations about infrastructure to encompass the meanings and consequences of imagined infrastructures for the ways people encounter, experience and enact social and environmental change

    The identification of airbursts in the past: insights from the BIT-58 layer

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    Airbursts are estimated to be the most frequent type of destructive impact events. Yet, confirmation of these events is elusive, resulting in a major gap in the impact record of Earth. The recent discovery of igneous chondritic spherules produced during a new type of touchdown airburst 430 thousand years (kyr) ago over Antarctica, in which a projectile vapor jet interacts with the Antarctic ice sheet, provided the first trace of such an impact in the geological record. In terms of petrology and geochemistry, particles constituting the BIT-58 dust horizon, which was found in surface ice at near Allan Hills in Antarctica, are almost identical to those produced 430 kyr ago. We demonstrate here that BIT-58 particles were indeed formed during a touchdown event between 2.3 and 2.7 million years (Myr) ago. This represents the oldest record of an airburst on Earth identified to date. Slight geochemical differences with 430 kyr old airburst spherules provide additional constraints on spherule condensation in large airburst plumes. Finding confirmation of airbursts in the paleorecord can provide insight into the frequency of the most hazardous impacts and, thus, has implications for planetary defence
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