Making subaltern shikaris: histories of the hunted in colonial central India

Academic histories of hunting or shikar in India have almost entirely focused on the sports hunting of British colonists and Indian royalty. This article attempts to balance this elite bias by focusing on the meaning of shikar in the construction of the Gond ‘tribal’ identity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial central India. Coining the term ‘subaltern shikaris’ to refer to the class of poor, rural hunters, typically ignored in this historiography, the article explores how the British managed to use hunting as a means of state penetration into central India’s forest interior, where they came to regard their Gond forest-dwelling subjects as essentially and eternally primitive hunting tribes. Subaltern shikaris were employed by elite sportsmen and were also paid to hunt in the colonial regime’s vermin eradication programme, which targeted tigers, wolves, bears and other species identified by the state as ‘dangerous beasts’. When offered economic incentives, forest dwellers usually willingly participated in new modes of hunting, even as impact on wildlife rapidly accelerated and became unsustainable. Yet as non-indigenous approaches to nature became normative, there was sometimes also resistance from Gond communities. As overkill accelerated, this led to exclusion of local peoples from natural resources, to their increasing incorporation into dominant political and economic systems, and to the eventual collapse of hunting as a livelihood. All of this raises the question: To what extent were subaltern subjects, like wildlife, ‘the hunted’ in colonial India

Social support, volunteering and health around the world: cross-national evidence from 139 countries

High levels of social capital and social integration are associated with self-rated health in many developed countries. However, it is not known whether this association extends to non-western and less economically advanced countries. We examine associations between social support, volunteering, and self-rated health in 139 low-, middle- and high-income countries. Data come from the Gallup World Poll, an internationally comparable survey conducted yearly from 2005 to 2009 for those 15 and over. Volunteering was measured by self-reports of volunteering to an organization in the past month. Social support was based on self-reports of access to support from relatives and friends. We started by estimating random coefficient (multi-level) models and then used multivariate logistic regression to model health as a function of social support and volunteering, controlling for age, gender, education, marital status, and religiosity. We found statistically significant evidence of cross-national variation in the association between social capital variables and self-rated health. In the multivariate logistic model, self-rated health were significantly associated with having social support from friends and relatives and volunteering. Results from stratified analyses indicate that these associations are strikingly consistent across countries. Our results indicate that the link between social capital and health is not restricted to high-income countries but extends across many geographical regions regardless of their national-income leve

Adolescent Risk-Taking, Cancer Risk, and Life Course Approaches to Prevention

AbstractAdolescent risk-taking may have long-term consequences for adult cancer risk. Behaviors such as smoking and sexual activity, commonly initiated during adolescence, may result—decades later—in cancer. Life course epidemiology focuses on unique vulnerabilities at specific development periods and their importance to later development of disease. A life course epidemiological perspective that integrates social and biological risk processes can help frame our understanding how specific adult cancers develop. Moreover, life course perspectives augment traditional public health approaches to prevention by emphasizing the importance of unique windows of opportunity for prevention

What Can History Teach Us about the Next Pandemic?

The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative is a research program that employs historical analysis to confront present and future problems in world politics. The 2011 topic is the History and Future of Pandemic Threats and Global Public Health. This panel discussion covers historical global pandemics and their lessons for the future. The speakers are George Korch, principal deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Erez Manela, professor of history, Harvard University; Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine, University of Michigan; Randall Packard, professor of the history of medicine, Institute of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University; David Rosner, co-director, Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, assistant professor, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The panel is moderated by Stephen Morse, professor of clinical epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and director, USAID PREDICT Program