Black Skin, White Masks Revisited: Contemporary Post-Colonial Dilemmas in the Netherlands, France, and Belgium

Several problems beset the immigrant communities and academic scholarship in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. The current politicization of higher education-who gets tenure or governmental financial support for what kind of social science research-results in timid criticism of existing public policies. The greatly differential integration models used in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France have resulted in different ways of collecting data and analyzing the \u27other.\u27 This article addresses how divergent discourses about the \u27other\u27 have been constructed over time: according to the French assimilationist model, ethnic minorities do not (officially) \u27exist\u27; the Netherlands, until recently, embraced a \u27tolerant\u27 multi-cultural model that conceptualized ethnic minorities as \u27units\u27 that could be measured and classified according to gradual progress and development; meanwhile Belgium, due to its linguistic divisions, has created another hybrid. This article, in dialogue with Fanon\u27s Black Skin, White Masks, argues that the social sciences and existing paradigms in these three countries will need to be de-colonized in order to facilitate de-colonization and anti-racist practices in everyday life

The Importance of Simulation as a Mode of Analysis: Theoretical and Practical Implications and Considerations

The notion of game theory, origins and purposes of simulation, simulation as educational innovation, critique and limitations of simulation

Perspectives on the Origins of Merchant Capitalism in Europe

This article critically examines several theoretical perspectives which deal with the origins of capitalism in western Europe. The author examines the main arguments elaborated in these perspectives and attempts to rethink the long-term history of socioeconomic and political processes. In seeking to comprehend the transition from feudalism to capitalism, one should attempt to look at the European Middle Ages without prejudice and see to what extent, why, and how embryonic forms and features of capitalism within an intercity-state system came into being, matured, expanded, and intensified during the long sixteenth century. An alternative theoretical framework is presented, based on the hypothesis that one should move beyond the limited focus of the nation-state as the exclusive unit of analysis, in order to comprehend the European transition. [ A substantially revised version of this article was translated into Japanese and published in the Japanese quarterly journal KAN, Vol. 34, July 2008, p.186-211.

Introduction: Identity Formation and Migration Focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean

This is an introduction by co-editors to the articles published in this issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge. The journal issue focuses on the complexity of identity formations experienced by migrants in the world-system, with a regional focus on Latin America and the Caribbean which have been at the heart of many recent scholarly debates in migration studies and the subsequent emergence of transnationalism. The current issue can be therefore understood as an attempt to establish an intellectual dialogue between different academic disciplines, as well as theoretical perspectives

Global Anti-Semitism in World-Historical Perspective: An Introduction

This introduction to the Spring 2009 issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge begins with a discussion of The Articulation and Re-Articulation of Anti-Semitism in a world-historical perspective, focusing on such topics as Anti-Semitism in the Longue-Durée, Christian Europe\u27s Final Solutions, and Israel and Global Anti-Semitism. It then follows with a survey of the volume\u27s articles which were part of an international conference entitled, The Post-September 11 New Ethnic/Racial Configurations in Europe and the United States: The Case of Anti-Semitism, organized by Lewis Gordon and Ramón Grosfoguel at the Maison des Sciences de l\u27Homme (MSH) in Paris on June 29-30, 2007. The two scholars along with Eric Mielants also served as co-editors of this issue. Part of a series inaugurated by a discussion on Islamophobia, the conference brought a majority Jewish group of scholars together in the hope of bringing to the forum a critical exchange and conversation among the participants. The discussion presented in the introduction is not necessarily representative of the views of the scholars included in the collection

Infiltration of the synovial membrane with macrophage subsets and polymorphonuclear cells reflects global disease activity in spondyloarthropathy

Considering the relation between synovial inflammation and global disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and the distinct but heterogeneous histology of spondyloarthropathy (SpA) synovitis, the present study analyzed whether histopathological features of synovium reflect specific phenotypes and/or global disease activity in SpA. Synovial biopsies obtained from 99 SpA and 86 RA patients with active knee synovitis were analyzed for 15 histological and immunohistochemical markers. Correlations with swollen joint count, serum C-reactive protein concentrations, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate were analyzed using classical and multiparameter statistics. SpA synovitis was characterized by higher vascularity and infiltration with CD163(+ )macrophages and polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs) and by lower values for lining-layer hyperplasia, lymphoid aggregates, CD1a(+ )cells, intracellular citrullinated proteins, and MHC–HC gp39 complexes than RA synovitis. Unsupervised clustering of the SpA samples based on synovial features identified two separate clusters that both contained different SpA subtypes but were significantly differentiated by concentration of C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Global disease activity in SpA correlated significantly with lining-layer hyperplasia as well as with inflammatory infiltration with macrophages, especially the CD163(+ )subset, and with PMNs. Accordingly, supervised clustering using these synovial parameters identified a cluster of 20 SpA patients with significantly higher disease activity, and this finding was confirmed in an independent SpA cohort. However, multiparameter models based on synovial histopathology were relatively poor predictors of disease activity in individual patients. In conclusion, these data indicate that inflammatory infiltration of the synovium with CD163(+ )macrophages and PMNs as well as lining-layer hyperplasia reflect global disease activity in SpA, independently of the SpA subtype. These data support a prominent role for innate immune cells in SpA synovitis and warrant further evaluation of synovial histopathology as a surrogate marker in early-phase therapeutic trials in SpA

DAS28 best reflects the physician's clinical judgment of response to infliximab therapy in rheumatoid arthritis patients: validation of the DAS28 score in patients under infliximab treatment

This study is based on an expanded access program in which 511 patients suffering from active refractory rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were treated with intravenous infusions of infliximab (3 mg/kg+methotrexate (MTX)) at weeks 0, 2, 6 and every 8 weeks thereafter. At week 22, 474 patients were still in follow-up, of whom 102 (21.5%), who were not optimally responding to treatment, received a dose increase from week 30 onward. We aimed to build a model to discriminate the decision to give a dose increase. This decision was based on the treating rheumatologist's clinical judgment and therefore can be considered as a clinical measure of insufficient response. Different single and composite measures at weeks 0, 6, 14 and 22, and their differences over time were taken into account for the model building. Ranking of the continuous variables based on areas under the curve of receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, displayed the momentary DAS28 (Disease Activity Score including a 28-joint count) as the most important discriminating variable. Subsequently, we proved that the response scores and the changes over time were less important than the momentary evaluations to discriminate the physician's decision. The final model we thus obtained was a model with only slightly better discriminative characteristics than the DAS28. Finally, we fitted a discriminant function using the single variables of the DAS28. This displayed similar scores and coefficients as the DAS28. In conclusion, we evaluated different variables and models to discriminate the treating rheumatologist's decision to increase the dose of infliximab (+MTX), which indicates an insufficient response to infliximab at 3 mg/kg in patients with RA. We proved that the momentary DAS28 score correlates best with this decision and demonstrated the robustness of the score and the coefficients of the DAS28 in a cohort of RA patients under infliximab therapy