Brazell, Karen W.

Also available as a printed booklet and from the Dean of Faculty website https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/Memorial Statement for Karen W Brazell, who died in 2012. The memorial statements contained herein were prepared by the Office of the Dean of the University Faculty of Cornell University to honor its faculty for their service to the university

Group solidarity and social order in Japan

This paper seeks to explain why Japan has attained a higher level of social order than comparably developed western national societies. To do so, it distinguishes the attainment of local order in social groups from the global order in national societies. Recent models of spontaneous, self-organizing order are insufficient to account for global order. In contrast to the more popular normative explanation of order in Japan, which holds that a consensus on fundamental values derived from Confucian roots is an essential cause, this paper proposes a solidaristic theory built on rational choice premises. This new theory views global order as a by-product of dependence and visibility mechanisms within key social groups such as families, schools and firms. A wide range of comparative evidence reveals that the solidaristic theory provides a superior explanation of the high level of social order in Japan than the normative one

A multinational Delphi consensus to end the COVID-19 public health threat

Abstract Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic 1,2 . Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global threat to public health. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of fragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches 1 , while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach 2 that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust and engage communities 3 in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by 184 organizations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end