Medical Management of Cerebral Vascular Disease

The judicious mixture of surgical therapy and prophylactic therapy with a safe platelet antiaggregant appears at this time to be the best combination of approaches to the axiom: The best time to treat a stroke is before it happens

The Great Transition: The Dynamics of Market Transitions and the Case of Russia, 1991-1995

The market transition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union brings us back to essential issues that Marx and Weber addressed: the genesis of capitalism and the process of economic change. What is the transition and what does it involve - restructuring incentives, creating new laws, learning new culture, or creating new power structures? The answer partially depends on the particular transition (initial conditions, targets, actors\u27 perceptions); but necessary general frameworks remain elusive, and current economic policies and analyses reveal that we understand little more about economic change than a century ago. Recent works on market transitions have furthered our understanding, but also tend to focus on narrow issues: the success or failure of transitions, elite circulation, financial institutions, networks, and privatization and property changes. These timely and useful contributions still do not orient us to a broader dynamic - that is, just what the transition is is left out. Is path dependent policies? Reorganization of financial systems or property control? The rise or collapse of political alliances and a power elite? It is these and more, together in one complex. If we are to understand the process of constructing capitalism, I suggest we look beyond policies and finance to the process of how actors try to understand their worlds, create meaning, and enforce this meaning

Techniques, Technologies and Politics of Crisis and Post-Crisis Economics: Anglo-American Macroeconomics and Alternatives

This paper attempts a critical appraisal of one core debate and theories in economics about the 2008 crisis and post-2008 economic growth and stagnation. In addition to examining formal publications, this essay also examines serious blogs by high-profile economists who are core participants in public discourse over economic policy. Drawing on the general logic of economic sociology and political economy — in particular, an appreciation for more complex microfoundations of economic practice (e.g. power and culture) and institutions—this paper addresses three issues about theoretical frameworks and claims about post-crisis growth or lack thereof: 1) Techniques: economists’ discourses focus primarily on techniques (policies and the like) available to the state and other actors for shaping economic performance, but at the cost of lack of critical distance. 2) Technologies: economists’ discourses generally pay little attention to available institutional tools and techniques for affecting economic performance, which reveals limits to economic theory and theorists, as well as continuing pro-market hegemony in the discipline. 3) Politics: economists do comment on the politics of policy discussions and policies themselves, but politics ultimately remains exogenous to discussions, theory, and models — continuing a fatal weakness of economic theory that has been noted for decades. The paper then examines alternative frameworks grounded in political economy and economic sociology that focus on (and make endogenous) institutions, states and elites, logics of capitalism, and power, and concludes with possible propositions from these frameworks regarding crisis and post-crisis economics. Abstract (Russian): В статье предпринята попытка критического осмысления дебатов и теорий применитель- но к кризисной экономике 2008 г. и последующих росте и стагнации. Помимо официальных публикаций, в данной статье анализируются также блоги известных экономистов — ключевых участников публичного обсуждения экономической политики. В рамках общей логики экономической социологии и политической экономии, в том числе рассматривая глубинные основы экономической практики (прежде всего, власть и культуру), автор исследует три вопроса о те- оретических основах и свойствах посткризисного роста или отсутствия такового: 1) инстру- менты: дискуссии экономистов сосредоточены прежде всего на имеющихся в распоряжении государства и других субъектов инструментах (политики и т. п.) для воздействия на экономику в ущерб критическому подходу; 2) методы: в спорах вокруг экономики обычно недостаточно внимания уделяется институциональным инструментам и методам воздействия на экономику, что ограничивает применение экономических теорий и мнений ученых, а также способствует доминированию про-рыночного направления в экономической науке; 3) политика: экономисты комментируют политику при обсуждении инструментов экономического регулирования, а так- же сами инструменты; при этом политика всегда остается некой данностью (endogenous) в дис- куссиях, в теории и в моделях, порождая фатальную слабость экономической теории, что видно на протяжении десятилетий. В этой связи в статье анализируется альтернативная парадигма, основанная на политиче- ской экономии и экономической социологии, предметом которых являются (и таким образом становятся эндогенными) институты, государства и элиты, логика капитализма и власти. В за- ключительной части статьи в рамках данной парадигмы даны предложения, касающиеся кри- зисной и посткризисной экономики

Sustainable What? An Overview and Assessment of Sustainable Development

Occasionally an academic term becomes a meme in broader media and popular discourse. Among such terms are stagflation , globalization , and the concept that this chapter and volume addresses: sustainable development . Like many other such terms, this concept implies an important subject and broad outlines of research programs and policy initiatives. Yet while provoking consideration of important and often uneasy issues, such a term can also mystify or deflects attention from other related issues. Given the clear evidence of global warming trends and the costs of environmental degradation, the eventuality of peak oil and increasing demand for increasingly scarce fossil fuels (temporarily delayed through the recent recession and discovery of Marcellus Shale deposits of natural gas), and the increasing appeal of more radical ideologies to the losers of globalization (which is starting to include the American and European middle classes), then making sense of environmentally and socially sustainable development is one of the most important issues of our day and years to come. The alternative is the risk of authoritarian politics and military adventure to guarantee control over scarce resources and to control popular outrage over inequality and unmet expectations. Because space limitations make impossible a thorough overview of scholarship and popular discourse related to this totem, this essay has more modest goals: to provide a suggestive (and likely contentious) overview of the nature of this concept and its scholarship, and to provide some critical (and likely contentious) comments regarding how this concept has developed and how scholars (especially economists) have treated it. I focus on social science discourse and the social and political dimensions of sustainable development policies (or lack there of), First, scholarship in the natural sciences is sufficiently technical and often bordering or beyond the boundaries of my own competence. As well, the technical side to debates in the natural sciences about sustainable development is more objective, relative to discourse in the social science and the public sphere and to political decision-making1. Second, the politics of sustainable development policies has dynamics that I could disentangle only in a book-length manuscript, although I will briefly refer to the more general tendencies in the policies of various countries and global institutions. Further, social science discourse is linked to political interests and ideologies, even if indirectly; for example, scholars in the tradition of mainstream economics have vested personal, professional, and likely ideological interests in demonstrating that (relatively) free markets are an optimal way to organize economic activity, and that parsimony of mathematically oriented economic theory, with its reliance on utility maximization and instrumental rationality, remains uncluttered with such complicating variables as environmental costs (externalities), political pluralism and deliberation over social justice,\u27 and the like

War, Fields, and Competing Economies of Death. Lessons from the Blockade of Leningrad

War can create a massive amount of death while also straining the capacity of states and civilians to cope with disposing of the dead. This paper argues that such moments exacerbate contradictions between three fields and “economies” (logics of interaction and exchange) – a political, market, and moral economy of disposal – in which order and control, commodification and opportunism, and dignity are core logics. Each logic and economy, operating in its own field, provides an interpretation of the dead that emerges from field logics of normal organization, status, and meanings of subjects (as legal entities, partners in negotiation, and subjects with biographies and dignity). Using the case of the Blockade of Leningrad, with its massive amount of civilian death, this essay examines how local authorities followed an expedient logic to maintain order; how state workers charged with disposal followed an instrumental logic of gain; and how civilians tried to maintain a logic of dignity but were forced by desperation to act contingently and instrumentally. The analysis suggests a broader application of field theory beyond organizational communities; how culture in fields operates via entities of valence (anchors); and the need to make emotions and social distance clearer in frameworks of fields, culture, and practice

Republic of Poland

Located in east-central Europe, Poland comprises an area of nearly 313,000 square kilometers (about the size of New Mexico). Borders with Germany on the west and Belarus and Russia on the east give Poland notable geopolitical significance. In addition, its flat topography, with no defensible geographical features, has made Poland a prime area for conflict, as the country not only lies between historically powerful nations but also has served as an unwilling conduit for forces between Russia and Germany

Russian Federation

The Russian political system remains subject to sudden radical change--this has been the basic logic of its political history since 1985. Only by understanding the processes and logics of that recent history of change can one understand the present and the (possibly radically different) future. In December 1991 Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (the USSR\u27s largest republic, known as RSFSR), joined Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine in dissolving the Soviet Union and replacing it with the ill-defined Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The RSFSR was transformed into the Russian Federation, and the process of political transformation and state building was under way, and it continues apace

Sotsiologicheskii Neoinstitutsionalizm i Analiz Organizatsii (Predislovie k razdelu)

Доминирующей парадигмой в экономической социологии, распространившейся также в другие разделы социальных наук и политологию, является неоинсмимуционализм (neoinstitutionalism), который иногда ошибочно ассоциируют с новым институционализмом (нев institutionalism) в экономической теории. Подобно друтим социологам, неоинституционалисты удаляют большое внимание власти, культуре и исторической выгоды рассматривают не как аксиомы, а как гипотезы, подлежащие эмпирической проверке. Появившись в ответ на развитие микроэкономической теории, неоинституционализм оказался ее серьезным оппонентом, задающим и обсуждающим вопросы, которые ставят экономистов в тупик (если, конечно, последние вообще осознают их значимость)

Economic Sociology: An Introduction

This insightful key resource presents the clearest, most comprehensive and wide ranging account of economic sociology to date. Hass presents a critical and sophisticated yet approachable analysis of economic behaviour and phenomena. He makes the insights, claims, and logic of economic sociology interactive and accessible to students, while exposing the realities of today’s complex economic world and the challenges of studying economies and societies. This introductory text: provides a sophisticated yet approachable analysis of economic behaviour and phenomena explores economic structures and change from a global perspective-by using comparisons and data from the United States, Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and post-socialist countries shows how domestic and international economic forces work over time to shape modern economies takes a critical perspective of both economic sociology and economics to establish useful insights presents historical narratives showing the development of today’s economic structures and institutions addresses important economic issues directly impacting on students’ lives—from the more visible (economic inequality and organizations) to the less visible (international economic trends, public policy, post-socialism). Incorporating illustrations, case studies, a glossary, chapter notes, and a comprehensive bibliography, this student-friendly text also puts forward suggestions for further project work by showing the reader areas that require further investigation.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1209/thumbnail.jp

Republic of Bulgaria

One of the more orthodox Communist countries in the Warsaw Pact, Bulgaria has slowly but surely made its way out of Socialist authoritarianism and is developing democracy and a market economy. Despite a sizable non-Bulgarian ethnic minority (especial Turks), the country has avoided the ethnic tensions that led to war in Russia (Chechnya) or the former Yugoslavia. The possibility of joining NATO and the European Union promises to bring Bulgaria closer to the West than ever in its history. Bulgaria\u27s party politics were among the more stable in Eastern Europe until the arrival of a new mass movement, but Bulgaria is not on the verge of civil chaos