2,434 research outputs found
Best Practices in Intercultural Health
This paper presents some of the background research that contributed to the discussions within the Inter-American Development Bank's policy and strategy regarding indigenous health issues. The paper's conceptual approach and good practice research helped focus the discussion on the importance of intercultural health practices to promote indigenous peoples' access to allopathic health as well as to strengthen those traditional health practices based on indigenous peoples' own knowledge, culture, social networks, institutions and ways of life, that have shown their effectiveness. The paper presents five intercultural health experiences (in Suriname, Guatemala, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia) that are considered best practices in the field. Although poorly financed, these experiences highlight the significance to indigenous peoples of health models that bridge the gap between state-financed allopathic health services and their own indigenous health systems. This study however, does not represent a medical trial on the efficacy or efficiency of intercultural health models.Afro Descendents & Indigenous Peoples, Health Care, intercultural health, health care, indigenous peoples, health care services
Globalization, Alienation and the Loss of Other-Wiseness
The author focuses on the impact of globalization
on different aspects of civil
society. He argues that the global division
of labour, and the exodus of transnational
corporations has resulted in a
new configuration of the forces of integration
and fragmentation of regional
economies. Postmodernist emphasis on
heterogeneity and uniqueness of cultural
life has given the Radical Right
justification for excluding attention to
those considered as cultural minorities.
Rather, we are reduced to a common
denominator of economic strength as
the only criterion of value and legitimacy.Le point de mire de cet article est l'impact
de la globalisation sur les différents
aspects de la société civile. L'auteur développe
une argumentation selon laquelle
la division globale du travail et
l'exode des entreprises supranationales
a entraîné une fragmentation des économies
régionales et une reconfiguration
des forces d'intégrations. L'emphase
postmoderniste mise sur le caractère à la
fois hétérogène et unitaire de la vie culturelle
a fourni à la Droite Radicale des
justifications pour marginaliser ceux
que l'on considère comme faisant partie
des minorités culturelles. Pire, nous en
sommes réduits à considérer le dénominateur
commun de la puissance économique comme
le critère exclusif de toute
valeur et de toute légitimité
Natural Capital and Biodiversity:Money, Markets and Offsets
This chapter is concerned with the commodification of biodiversity, and in particular with the development of offset markets as a means to achieving “no net loss” or “net gains” in biodiversity. The chapter places the commodification of biodiversity in the context of wider debates about the commodification of environmental goods. What are the sources of environmental problems such as biodiversity loss? Market endorsing arguments in neo-classical welfare economics claim that their source lies in the incomplete commodification of environmental goods and the solution in their commodification. Market-sceptical positions are critical of arguments for commodification and more strongly claim that the generalised commodification of environmental goods is itself a source of environmental problems. The chapter shows how commodification of biodiversity and offset markets illustrate some of the problems with the commodification of environmental goods: environmental governance is rendered consistent with systemic growth imperatives that are a source of environmental problems; market modes of valuation foster ubiquitous substitutability; forms of injustice result through the displacement of burdens and the loss of places and livelihoods that meet vital biological and social needs. These problems are related. The design of systems of environmental governance consistent with continuing economic growth requires places and habitats to be substitutable so their destruction can be compensated with “no net loss.” The shift in location shifts burdens and impacts. Where it is most “efficient” to shift them is to the poor. Environmental problems such as biodiversity loss have their source not in incomplete commodification, but rather in their commodification
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