Deindustrialization and Deaths of Despair: Mapping the Impact of Industrial Decline on Ill Health

A growing literature on deaths of despair has argued that workers’ declining life expectancy in deindustrialized rustbelt areas in the U.S. and the associated deepening of health inequalities signal the profound existential crisis of contemporary capitalism. Competing explanations downplay the negative consequences of “creative destruction” and focus instead on unhealthy lifestyles. This article contributes to this debate by presenting the first empirical analysis of the role of deindustrialization in the deaths of despair epidemic that hit Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Drawing on the thematic analysis of 82 semi-structured interviews in four deindustrialized towns in Hungary, the article constructs a general sociological framework for analyzing deaths of despair applicable to other rustbelt areas. Deindustrialization engenders individual and social processes that affect health by increasing stress and eroding coping resources. By conceptualizing deindustrialization as a fundamental cause of ill health, sociology has great potential to contribute to understanding the root causes of deaths of despair

Lessons from the Political Economy of Authoritarian Capitalism in Hungary

The future of capitalism is not necessarily democratic. Authoritarian capitalism is gaining foothold not only in non-democratic states, such as China but even in countries with strong liberal institutions. From Greece to the US, an increasing number of countries show their symptoms. We need to look beyond the façade of the most visible political manoeuvres to understand how economic and political disciplining of citizens to create decent capitalist subjects can be combined into a political-economic model that ensures accelerated capital accumulation through increased political repression. Hungary is one of the most unusual cases. Hungarian elites followed the good governance blueprints of international institutions, implementing liberal political and economic reforms between 1990 and 2010. For long, the country was considered to be a frontrunner of the third wave of democratisation1, yet now is considered to be a frontrunner of democratic backsliding. Orbán’s political-economic model has been stable for eight years now - Fidesz gained the same amount of seats at the parliamentary election on 8 April 2018 as four years before, and thus Viktor Orbán’s party remains the dominant political force in the country. There are apparent direct political reasons for this, such as the heavily gerrymandered electoral map, the biased media landscape as well as the divisions paralysing the fractured opposition, among others. To understand the emergence of authoritarian capitalism in Hungary, we hav

Did Alcohol Policy Really Cause the Postsocialist Mortality Crisis? Revisiting the Rebound and Affordability Hypotheses

This article reexamines the argument that alcohol policies were the major factor behind the mortality crisis in postsocialist Russia. We show that the correlation between the Gorbachev anti-alcohol campaign (rebound hypothesis), alcohol prices in the 1990s (affordability hypothesis), and mortality reported in previous analyses is not robust to splitting oblasts into Far- East and the rest of Russia. Our analysis conducted on a sample of 534 towns in the European part of Russia also finds no robust evidence supporting the two hypotheses. In contrast, findings linking privatization to mortality are robust to controlling for the anti-alcohol campaign and the affordability of alcohol

A nemzetközi fejlesztéspolitika helyzete és feladatai

A huszonegyedik század hajnalán elgondolkodva a fejlesztéspolitika helyzetén, joggal merül fel a kérdés: vajon az elmúlt évtizedekben követett fejlődési út tényleg közelebb vitte-e a jelen és jövő generációkat emberi jogaik megvalósításához, szabadságuk alkotó kibontakoztatásához? Mennyiben fenntartható és igazságos az a globális rend, melyet a második világháború utáni fejlődés eredményezett? S ha úgy találjuk, hogy a korunk világára jellemző egyenlőtlenségek obszcének, s az ökoszisztéma kizsákmányolásának mértéke esztelen, vajon milyen fejlesztéspolitikákat képzeljünk el magunknak? Jelen tanulmány erre a kérdésre keresi a választ. Ehhez első lépésben azonosítanunk kell a nemzetközi fejlesztés előtt álló legfőbb kihívásokat, majd meg kell vizsgálnunk, hogy a fejlődés eddig bevett megközelítései képesek-e megfelelő választ adni ezekre. Az elméleti áttekintés tanulságait levonva azonosíthatóak a tünetek mögött álló legfőbb okok, majd ezt követően lehetséges egy alternatív jövőkép felvázolása. A tanulmány végül a jövőkép megvalósítását szolgáló közpolitikai lépések vázlatával zárul

Treatment and outcome of Shiga-toxin-associated hemolytic uremic syndrome

Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) is the most common cause of acute renal failure in childhood and the reason for chronic renal replacement therapy. It leads to significant morbidity and mortality during the acute phase. In addition to acute morbidity and mortality, long-term renal and extrarenal complications can occur in a substantial number of children years after the acute episode of HUS. The most common infectious agents causing HUS are enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC)-producing Shiga toxin (and belonging to the serotype O157:H7) and several non-O157:H7 serotypes. D+ HUS is an acute disease characterized by prodromal diarrhea followed by acute renal failure. The classic clinical features of HUS include the triad of microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, and acute renal failure. HUS mortality is reported to be between 3% and 5%, and death due to HUS is nearly always associated with severe extrarenal disease, including severe central nervous system (CNS) involvement. Approximately two thirds of children with HUS require dialysis therapy, and about one third have milder renal involvement without the need for dialysis therapy. General management of acute renal failure includes appropriate fluid and electrolyte management, antihypertensive therapy if necessary, and initiation of renal replacement therapy when appropriate. The prognosis of HUS depends on several contributing factors. In general “classic” HUS, induced by EHEC, has an overall better outcome. Totally different is the prognosis in patients with atypical and particularly recurrent HUS. However, patients with severe disease should be screened for genetic disorders of the complement system or other underlying diseases